The Bitching Hour

Author has chosen to publish under a pen name

My relationship with my body is difficult to qualify, but I have spent the better part of the past 20 years trying to quantify it, counting calories consumed and lost, pounds gained and shed, as well as tallying the number of partners I have chosen to share it with and not. It has been a journey of self-hatred as much as it has been of self-discovery, and after many years, I thought to lay index fingers to keys and trace the journey back to my earliest memories of my body.

65

I was always the littlest kid at birthday parties. I remember that at this particular one, I was wearing a fresh pair of white leggings and cowboy boots while sitting quietly next to my mother as the other kids ran around the yard playing. I didn’t ask to join in and didn’t for a second think to because I knew how much my mother liked it when other parents told her how quiet and sweet I was. Mothers liked to take these gatherings as opportunities to talk about what wishes and desires they had for their children. When it was her turn to share, my mother would always say she hoped that some day, I would marry a tall handsome blonde man with green eyes. I had heard her say this enough times to know that that is what she thought embodied beauty, but this was the first time I had reasoned that I didn’t possess any of those traits. I didn’t think to question that whiteness was the definition of beauty, but it made me wonder how I would ever be deserving of anyone wanting to share their whiteness with me.

95

I had been dancing for years and had seen the girls I started with slowly grow bored of coming to classes several times a week and begin to explore other interests. I was always placed in the back despite being the shortest in the class and the most dedicated to the art. I would lie to my parents about what time class started so they would take me to the studio an hour early. I wanted to show Miss Kim and Miss Tracy that I was serious about dancing and that I earned a place in the front. I wanted to be seen. I worked hard. I came to extra classes. I learned to leap higher than the other girls, pirouette for longer, and began pointe way before my feet were ready. On the day of our first big show, 15 beautifully lithe, little ballerina bodies lined up in front of a crowd of dozens of expecting parents and performed the piece from Fiddler on the Roof that we had been working on for two years. I danced behind them through tears knowing that my parents wouldn’t be able to take any pictures of me.

115

More years passed and when 16 ballerinas became 8, I was finally placed in the front where for the first time, I could see myself in the mirror during rehearsals. I was still the shortest, but during that first front line rehearsal I began to notice my tights had holes in my thighs and became aware of the discomfort from the constrictive tightness I felt because my leotard’s fabric had to stretch further out to accommodate my wider hips and my rounder belly. The other girls noticed too. I remember sucking in my stomach to mimic their flat bellies which made the other girls laugh. After class, the seven of them changed and walked over to get ice cream next door. I waited in the bathroom stall for them to be gone so that I could change into my sweats alone.

129

My cousins had all moved from the Dominican Republic to live with their mother in the States. They were older and cooler than me and wore their shorts unbuttoned and even swore. They were beautifully tall and so thin that their bodies were all sharp angles. I remember how much it hurt when they would elbow me in the car, their way of telling me to move over because I was taking up too much space. After a few months of eating junk food and driving everywhere, their beautifully tall bodies began to fill out, a fact that I mentioned to my mother. She responded, “Who are you to talk, you’re fat as shit.” I wanted to defend myself and say that I liked their new softer bodies, but I stayed quiet.

145

My mother asked me what I wanted for Christmas one year. I asked her to please stop calling me fat. I knew we were losing the house and that we would have to move soon. I knew it when Miss Tracy took me aside after rehearsal one day to tell me my parents hadn’t paid for my classes in weeks. I thought that if I asked for a favor instead of some actual gift that I might get something that year. I got nothing that Christmas. My mother was very upset and at times disgusted by my fatness. My aunt would try to comfort her by saying that I could always get liposuction when I turned 18. They agreed that as long as I was getting the fat sucked out of me, I might as well get my nose slimmed too. I remember they drew up an actual list of procedures I could have once I became of age and could finally get the help I needed.

160

My first day of high school was the first morning I would get to choose what to wear to school. I could no longer hide behind my pleated uniform which I had my parents buy two sizes larger than what I fit so that I could hide in the shapeless fabric covering my ever-expanding body. I wore my hair straight and a blue collared shirt and dark denim jeans with the new tennis shoes my mother had gotten me the day before. As I sat in the cafeteria waiting to be ushered into first period gym, I heard the comments the table of boys behind me were making. The bell rang and I stayed paralyzed at that table until everyone, including the teachers, had left. This is the first time I cried about my body.

180

In my second year, I started to wear larger and larger clothing so that I could hide my body. I would immediately stop wearing an item of clothing when I saw another girl wearing the same thing to school and saw how that shirt or those pants were meant to be worn and I felt I had disrespected them with my body.

125

I had stopped dancing that summer because I couldn’t get out of bed. The pain in my arms and legs hurt so much that I would try to sleep most of the day away so that I didn’t have to feel the hurt all over body. I grew six inches that summer. When I got back to school, everyone noticed that I looked different. Gym teachers pulled me aside in the girls’ locker room to poke at my stomach and ask if I had an eating disorder. Girls would corner me in the bathroom to ask how I lost the weight. When my aunt came to visit us from Michigan, she told me how beautiful I looked now that I was thin, but that I was nowhere near as skinny as my mother was when she was my age.

113

I grew addicted to the pain I felt in my back when we would lay down to do floor exercises--the ground too hard on my newly exposed back bones and spine. I would go days without eating. I liked that mother would compliment me on how beautiful my collar bones looked in low-cut shirts.

132

I ate more than I had in years after I began dating my first boyfriend. I rediscovered how food actually tasted during that time. He was concerned by how little I ate when we first got together and he started to make me meals. I quickly gained weight and started to resent him for it. I wouldn’t let him touch me because I was afraid that he would judge the new fat that covered what were once the sharp angles of my body.

125

When I moved to Spain I started working out every single day, multiple times per day. Every calorie I consumed, I sweated out at the gym and my roommate hated me for it. She was twice as fat as I had ever been at my heaviest and it killed her how in shape I was, I heard her say through tears over the phone one day. It motived me to run farther, lift more, and squat heavier. She eventually moved out.

125

When he got off me, I asked if I could clean up. He pointed to the bathroom and I locked the door behind me. I stared at myself in the mirror, searching my face to see if I spotted anything different about it--some new wrinkle or a burst blood vessel in my eye. When I looked at my neck, I saw the clear imprint of where his fingers had dug into my skin, and I immediately projectile vomited into the sink. I’ve never had to shove a finger or toothbrush down my throat to purge. To this day, the very thought of my face in that mirror is enough to make me vomit. I searched the cabinets and found bleach which I used to disinfect the sink after taking a swig of mouth wash and cleaning the taste and scent of vomit from my mouth. I unlocked the bathroom door and gathered my things. He walked me downstairs to his front door, kissed me on the forehead, and told me to drive safe. I was about halfway back to Stanford when I noticed the pain between my legs. I stopped off at the Stanford hospital so that they could do a rape kit in case I decided to press charges. I never did. Eventually I stopped struggling. I remember keeping my eyes open, widening them and trying to remember every detail that room. His bookshelf was lined with Hitchens and Steinbeck. I remembered telling myself not to hate them if it was over, and thinking if it would ever end. For weeks after, I would keep noticing new bruises all over my arms and legs. He snapchatted me over the summer saying how tight and dry I felt that night. Stupid man. Didn’t he realize that when fruit is ready to be eaten, it drips?

114

No one noticed the ten pounds I lost my second summer in Cuba. That’s a lie. My parents noticed. My mother loved seeing my collar bones again, and my father learned not to hug me so tight because it hurt my bones when he did. No one at Stanford noticed though. It’s as though they thought this was how I always was, how I was supposed to be. I started purging.

105

None of my friends have said anything about the 20 pound weight loss. It makes me wonder how much weight I have to lose before someone asks if I’m okay. My mom is starting to worry. I have become more flagrant and purge with the bathroom door open whenever she is home. I want her to know. My dad is afraid to hug me and is constantly bringing me my favorite foods and pleading with me to eat.