A strange and grungy Tacoma love story.
Sarah Minnie misunderstood.
Fig. The man clutched the chair across from hers with long bony fingers.
What? Oh? No, thank you? said Sarah Minnie. Why in the world would this tall, emaciated stranger--obviously not a waiter, from his grimy cuffs and stubbled face-- come up to her table in the Downtown Caf and offer her an obscure fruit? Was a fig a fruit?
He slouched onto the chair across from her and stretched his spider legs out under the table. Sarah Minnie shuffled her chair backwards. Her thighs lopped so far over the sides of the small ice cream parlor chair that her skirt came untucked. She pawed at it, as if by securing the cloth under her again, she could contain her fat.
Names Fig, said the man. One eye was slightly askew, and seemed to be staring directly at her breasts. He chewed a toothpick. Love food. He waved his hand to encompass the cluttered eatery. Foods like a religion to me. Every time I sit to table, another worship service.
Nice to meet you? said Sarah Minnie. She wished he would go away. She hated people watching her eat. So many eyes surrounded her, accusing her. Like the elderly man at the next table, who had shaken his head sadly as she entered. The waitresses were talking and laughing behind the counter. The drizzling rain outside whispered to the pavement, saying she had no self control, that fat, fat women like herself shouldnt eat at all. Or should at least have the decency to do it in private, the way bums covered their bottles with paper bags, or bald men wore toupees.
She pulled her body into itself as much as possible. With her feet under her chair and her elbows in at her sides, her body would somehow take up less space, and the mans worn brown loafers stretched out under her table would somehow be farther away. She tilted her head and fiddled with the band of one of her ponytails. She never wore her hair loose, and avoided hats: brims extended too far outside her personal space, imposing on others. At all costs she avoided umbrellas.
In the same way she tried to shrink into her mammoth body, Sarah Minnie tried to shrink her personality into a smaller space than it naturally required. Many of her thoughts, her ideas, her statements, came out as questions, as if theyd been squeezed and forced to come out again in an odd and controvertible shape.
Nice to meet you? she said again. The man seemed distracted, one eye roving in the direction of her ponytails, her ears with the tiny teddy bear earring, her folds of neck, constricted by curves of Peter Pan collar. His other eye seemed to be aimed in the direction of the approaching waitress.
Food, ah, sweet nectar of the Gods! said Fig. To what shall I bow in obeisance this afternoon?
The waitress, a jaunty pink bow in her hair, grinned and smacked gum. She pulled out a ballpoint taped to a plastic spoon and twirled it in her fingers like a baton.
Fig, Fig, she said, shaking her head.
He was a regular at the Downtown. Sarah Minnie had seen him before, muttering over his plate, talking in a loud voice to the person at the next table, talking so that his voice could be heard over the noise from the kitchen, the murmur of other eaters, the clacking of the waitresses black shoes on the scuffed tile floor.
With caviar? With speckled trout, caught fresh from the alpine stream and brought to table by golden palanquin carried by seventeen coal black Nairobi village chiefs? With Baked Alaska, Spanokopita, Sauerkraut, Tenderloin of Veal Medallions smothered in goat cheese and Brussel Sprouts Almondine?? Fig winked at her, and as the waitress glanced over at the specials board, he slipped a soupspoon off his napkin and into the front pocket of his flannel shirt.
Special today is pork chop and deep fried rice, burger with the usual, or lasagna, said the waitress. She popped her gum, twirled her pen like a butterfly fluttering above her pad.
Sarah Minnie wanted them all. She wanted to eat. Burger, lasagna, pie from the display case near the entrance, freezer-case cheesecake, jumbo-size chocolate bars, milk cartons rumbling with milk duds. Pull-apart sandwich cookies, caramels from the supermarket bulk section heaped with an aluminum scoop into a plastic bag. She wanted out of the restaurant, away from the tiny round table, a table truly suitable only for one. She wanted to be free and alone to wander the chip aisle. Not taking too much time, because every second delay was a second less at home, in comfort and solitude, surrounded by open bags, their mouths gaping but silent. They were the best, the only kind of mouths she wanted near her when she was really eating.
Ill have a small salad, no dressing? said Sarah Minnie to the waitress. She looked out the across the February street to the auto parts store where she worked, where her boss and coworkers gathered at a long table, lunch bags scattered, Tupperware containers flipped open, a lineup for the microwave, a jostling and ribbing and guffawing.
The waitress bent over her pad, her nose nearly touching the swirling pen. The gum popping ceased. Sarah Minnie watched her write, but she took a long time, so her eyes jumped to Figs shirt. His sleeves were too short, so that the bones of his wrists protruded beyond the cuffs. The blue and red flannel flapped open, and partially revealed the thin and faded white tee shirt underneath. _ig Mea_ was emblazoned on it in orange letters. Sarah Minnie wondered. What did the rest of the shirt say? Why would this man want that soupspoon? Why had he sat down with her?
Burger, said Fig, slouching back farther in his chair.
The waitress concentrated on her penmanship. Minnie had received a bill from her before, so she knew the pen was curliquing and ornamenting around the Ss of Small Salad, and then underlining the order with lavish flourishes. Fig peered at the bill.
S is for Small? Fig winked at her.
Sarah Minnie pulled at a ponytail. S for Sarah, too. Sarah Minnie. She thought of holding out her hand, but thought too long.
Sarah Minnie, Fig repeated. To the waitress, he said Lots of mayo, creamy gelatinous wiggle smeared on that over-toasted sesame-seed smothered bun, open sesame, voila, number one grade triple damn A amurican grown bellowing red meat beef. He grinned, flashing teeth the color of spring mudpuddles, and stared at Sarah Minnie with one eye. He slurped his tongue slowly along his index finger.
Same check? asked the waitress without looking up. Her pen continued in dizzying circles over the pad. A raucous honking came from the street, the skidding of tires on wet pavement. Sarah Minnie was glad she didnt drive. A siren cried in the distance.
Sarah Minnie misunderstood. Figs presence, his long tongue, his finger made her queasy. She wanted separate checks. She wanted separate tables. She wanted pie.
Yes? she said, thinking of long fingers of pie.
The waitress chuckled, swirling a last flourish over the paper.
She plopped the salad, burger and check on the table a few minutes later, gum popping. Sarah Minnie jabbed with her fork at a lettuce leaf torn in a shape like a jagged grin. The silence at the table contrasted sharply to the clinking of glass and cutlery and chipped brown mugs around them.
Fig stared at her intently, no longer grinning. His eyes were a marbled watery blue. Hurriedly she looked down again, tugged at an earring. The last tomato (was a tomato a fruit?) smirked at her. She felt his stare on the crown of her downtilted head, the flush that spilled over her cheeks and dripped down her neck.
He whacked both palms on the table, as if finishing a thought and then smashing it like a buzzing fly unwise enough to land for a moment on the Formica. Never bought a spoon in my life, he boasted, and slapped his shirt pocket with the back of a hand.
Sarah Minnie laughed. She put her hand in front of her open mouth. He grinned and pushed the hamburger towards her. Meat, tomato and suspiciously bright pickle leered at her from the white round dish. Fig pushed the check towards her also, and not only because she had said she would, she took it.
The frozen cheesecake melted under her tongue. She had cut the cake into quarters, the first bite of the first piece evaporating like water in the desert, the taste of it barely noticed. Shed gotten through the whole day, another day, so well, nothing for breakfast but tea, a salad for lunch, sneaking just onedid just one really count?-- cupcake from the birthday party leavings at work, eating it quietly in a restroom stall, and flushing the sodden paper wrapper. Sarah Minnie always thought it odd that no one could tell how much willpower it took to get through the day.
.And then the bus ride home, feeling the hunger growing, the weight of the day heaving in the pit of her stomach, making her weak and dizzy. Knowing shed never make it home. Knowing she couldnt go home to an empty apartment. Knowing shed already decided not to.
And why shouldnt she stop at the grocery and get food? Sacks of cookies, or jumbo sized candy bars or whole pizzas from the deli case. Just enough for one evening, so that tomorrow the house would be empty, and free and clear of food. Perhaps cheese cake, the kind with cherries in a separate plastic squeeze bag. Or ice cream with flecks of chocolate and orange peel. Perhaps just the cheesecake; she had paid for an unexpected hamburger this afternoon. Perhaps the cheesecake and just one bag of Mars bars. She would take the bus to the Stadium Thriftway, she hadnt been there in at least a week; the cashier wouldnt know her, or at least hadnt seen her for at least a few weeks, so they would think she was having an infrequent binge, or perhaps sudden guests, instead of knowing her nightly habit. Why shouldnt she eat whatever she wanted, anyway? It was her place, her money, her decision. She was nearly thirty, a grown woman. She was hungry.
The fork drew lines like prison bars through the white sweet cheesecake flesh. She took another bite.
Yer dressed perfect for this, Fig said when they met outside under the Tacoma Woolworths awning. It was drizzling. He eyed her baggy pants and her cotton top with the embroidered bears and hearts.
Sarah Minnie thought he was complimenting her wardrobe. Thanks?
Stash something down that waistband, no problem. His finger probed at her waist, tested the elastic. Elastic, spastic, dynastic, chicken in a basket, fantastic, hide all kinds of delicacies down there, couldnt you? He leered.
Sarah Minnie wished for someone standing right beside her, perhaps another hidden portion or mirror image of herself, who would snap out a rejoinder. Sarah Minnie said nothing. She stepped back, and the awning dripped on her head. Sometimes she wished she carried an umbrella.
As soon as they entered the store Sarah Minnie thought of Maggie. There was the lunch counter where she and Maggie used to sit after school, their buttocks lopping over the edges of the round silver stools. Maggie was a flirt, a coquetteif such a quick little word could be used for such a bovine languid girl--a tease. An almost monstrous thing to be in a 200-pound teenager. With boys she batted her eyes, put her hand in front of her mouth and giggled, shoved the arm of someone who had teased her so hard they staggered, and said Oh, do go on!
Maggie was big in a way that Sarah Minnie wasnt. She was overpowering. When she flopped her arm around Sarah Minnies shoulders and yelled, Hey, best friend! Sarah Minnie felt enveloped. Maggie took up all the space in a room, even a room the size of a huge discount department store.
The Woolworths was one of the stalwart remainders of mercantile in a downtown that continually plastered itself with billboards boasting rejuvenation yet seemed to get just a little more shoddy and rundown with every rain. Penneys had pulled out when Sarah Minnie was in junior high, Sears and Markhams years before that. Smaller shops and restaurants, shop windows slopped with neon posterpaint letters, sprung up and died again like dandelions. The downtown clung to a steep hill, overlooking what might, in another parallel life, have been a more beautiful bay than any Sarah Minnie had ever seen in magazines. But she remembered taking the bus to school every morning past cranes, rusted hulls, pulp and paper mills, marine salvage heaps and lumbering belching semis, the sky filled with smoke, steam and acrid fog muggy and tinged with brown. When the bus sloshed through the mud puddle of downtown, it was eerily quiet even on weekday mornings. The old bus would strain and heave like a fat man in the last stages of heart disease as it climbed up the 11th Street hill, the gears pitch relaxing for the few seconds of level street at each intersection, then resuming its painful whine.
Tuesdays and Thursdays after schoolthe only afterschool hours Maggie had free from Math team, or scorekeeper for whichever of the boys sports teams was in season--theyd take the downtown bus and meet at the Woolworths lunch counter.
Hey barman!! Maggie would call to the acned boy with the striped apron. Drips of macaroni stuck to the mottled floor, there was always a vague smell of stale coffee and disinfectant from the nearby cleaning supplies aisle, and a huddle of teenagers at one the far end of the counter. Gimme everything youve got! and shed slam the menu down on the table. Those remarks always got her lots of joking attention, but few dates. She always said guys were just for toying with, anyway. Sarah Minnie wondered if, even after everything, Maggie--wherever she was--still thought that were true.
Good bag, too, not big enough to be suspicious, Fig said as they walked in. He checked the whereabouts of the manager, who was over near checkout, deep in discussion with a boy wearing another blue jacket. The managers lips pursed and gaped like a fish, and his voice had the carrying quality of gulls over water, but his words were impossible to make out. The embroidered label on his lapel said JimManager.
Fig tugged at Sarah Minnies arm, heading towards the back of the store. The lunch counter was long gone, and the store was no longer even called Woolworths, but the smell was the same, and the merchandise was the same, and the people looked the same. Highschool boys still couldnt keep their faces clear. Women cashiers still wore either too much hair piled up on their heads, or too much makeup piled up on their faces. An elderly man with a walker still peered at the digestive biscuits. Two little girls still squealed out of sight in the next aisle. Nothing ever did seem to change in Tacoma.
Ah, the consumer extravaganza of lower middle class working class blue collar smelter pulp and paper mill stench like your face forced into a dogfood bag but nevertheless wonderful place to raise the children kind of town, Fig rumbled in her ear, his fingers tight as talons on her arm, her naked skin powdery and soft as marshmallow.
So, whaddya need? He pulled her along, past the canned vegetables, artichoke hearts drowning in baby jars. I get underwear, socks, sometimes a shirt if the managers on break or theyve got somebody new who doesnt really know the ropes yet, doesnt know to keep an eye on the carts going into them dressing rooms. We might even try some shoes, with that bag of yours. I can never get shoes.
I dont need anything?
Aw, come on, you need everything. You need the world on a platter, the whole continent tied up in string and wrapped around your finger, all these goods, foodstuffs, textiles, wrappings, amusements, adornments, allotments, accoutrements, allegedly waiting your allegiance pledged wholly by your expression of desire for them, Just pick up something and youve said you want it. Ahead of her, Fig tossed the words off over his shoulder, as if spitting downwind.
You began at need, and turned into want? Sarah Minnie remembered another arm tugging her towards the interior of the store, past the Tupperware, the mops, the flimsy picture frames, sidetracked at the polyester drawstring blouses, sidetracked again at the toy section with its knock-off Barbie dolls and edible lipsticks.
This is Amurica, land of the free, home of the brave, Anything you want becomes a need, said Fig.
Sarah Minnie let her eyes roam the cosmetics aisle, the hairbrushes, nail polish remover, false eyelashes, curling irons. She pulled at an earlobe. Her ears were bare today, her hair pulled back with plastic clips.
Zounds, confounds, of course, a horse, not a mane not a train but an ear, a vacant empty naked ear, bare as a hare, of course that would be perfect! Fig cupped his hands at either side of her face and tugged hard at her ears. His white hands sent curiously hot flames curling under her jaw. His bloodshot blue eyes gleaming suddenly like stars. Stars on a field of red and white stripes. Sarah thought of the ridiculous sign that stood along the freeway marking the Tacoma city limits. Welcome to Tacoma. All America City, it said.
Of course, of course!! Nice and small, but not inconsequential, easy to reach, easy to palm, and look at you, its exactly completely holistically irredeemably just what you need. Something bright red and dangly and sexy. Lets go.
Sarah Minnie found herself tugged to the revolving earring display, Fig beside her whispering, Choose, choose, nothing to loose, everything to need, nothing called greed, you need some red, to know youre not dead.
Her knees trembled. She giggled. There was one pair, cute tiny pink cats, over which her hand hovered.
A mite small for my taste, said Fig, but pinks on the same road as red. And its your choice. Theyll be yours, so go on. Pick them up, and pick up this pair too, and he pressed a pair of ugly brown stone and diamond drops into her other hand. The cats winked at Sarah Minnie with tiny blue enamel eyes. Did she want them? What did she want?
Fig stole glances around the store. The manager in his sky blue smock coat, arms waving like falling rakes, argued with a customer near the garden tool aisle. A young mother bated hair from her eyes, distracted by two grubby girls whining for coloring books. An old man leaned heavily on a walker. There was no one else in sight.
Its a good time, he whispered. Go.
Sarah Minnie clutched a pair of earrings in each hand. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Her underpants rode up. She felt giddy. Fig hung at her right side, bony fingers digging into the meat of her forearm. He smelled, for some reason, of eggs. Eggs and straw. He spat a splinter of toothpick onto the floor.
Now, and Figs mouth came suddenly very near her ear, his hand again on her shoulder, his body pressed close. A fresh toothpick dangled from his lips. It scraped and poked at her cheek as he talked, like a tiny phallus seeking entrance. Just drop em in easy, darlingyou can dare it and I aint lyingeasy, right down that scoop neck beribboned be-hearted be-beared top, and with the other hand put back the other pair.
Sarah Minnie stared at the two pairs of earrings resting on the deep creases of her hands. Figs touch had left a ribbon of sensation, like the trail of a slug, along her fingertips. Something bubbled in her chest, popping fizzing carbonation leapt and coursed up to her head, making her eyes water and her ears ring and her nose itch. A strange strangled laugh trickled out past her throat, and she felt Figs surprised eye on her, the grin snaking out from the corner of his mouth. What should she do? What could she say? She thought of Maggie, but Maggie had gotten pregnant and left her long ago.
Land of the free, place to be, fly like a bee, steeped in sticky sweet nectar honey, said Fig. The cat earrings, pale as skin, flashed silver edges in her palm. The color of flesh, of apricots and peaches. Was an apricot a type of peach? She thought of the fruit pie in the display case of the caf, sticky and pale and oh so sweet, the first triangle bite separated from the rest by the tines of her fork.
Home of the brave, knave, what is that about the Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts, the knave of hearts, he stole the tarts
Sarah Minnie started at the conjunction of her thoughts and his words, at the conjunction of her memory and loss. Her whole body shuddered. She slipped the cats, prick-eared and cold, down the front of her shirt, and set the other pair clattering back on the rack. Just then the manager stepped around the corner. She made a show of stepping away from Fig, shook her head and said, Too much! Too much?
The managers blue jacket flapped on his body as if it were still suspended from one of the clotheslines sold in aisle 11. His voice sirened as it approached them. Figs bony hip pressed against Sarah Minnies padded one. Her heart pounded. He whispered in her ear not to hurry, to look casual.
Can I help you? Can I help you? Have you been helped? yelled the manager.
Figs arm slipped round her waist, sliding up under her shirt. Just browsing, he yelled back at the blue jacket.
The manager flapped his arms again, a gesture which, as Sarah Minnie looked back over her shoulder, looked, not like disgust or anger, but more like a mix of exasperation or resignation. She wondered if the store was always this empty. Perhaps the manager didnt have enough to do. His flapping hand knocked a row of cracker boxes off a shelf. Sarah Minnie heard crunching and muttering and the thud of box against boxor was that her heart?--behind her as she kept walking. Only the slow pressure of Figs hand on her skin kept her from running. Grinning, Fig stopped near the exit and slid a candy bar and a box of toothpicks into his pocket.
The tiny cats jostled up and down between her breasts, real silver studs like claws scratching and cold against the skin. Like the jabs of tiny needles, sending a drug into her veins, the tiny pain sent spasms through her body, to her nipples, down over her stomach, as if the earrings pierced her all over, down the inside of her legs, the flab of blubber around her bellybutton, her labia, and farther inside even than that.
The second bites were always the best. The first, too ravenous, too much need. The last, too full, too little want. The middle bites, the seconds, a beautiful balance between need and want, mouth and stomach, starvation and gluttony. The cheesecake came off in shards of frozen milkyness, only the graham cracker crust soft. She couldnt wait for it to thaw, and besides, liked it, was used to it, frozen hard.
She lay on her bed, the Doritos bag and cheese dip and frozen dinner packages strewn over the carpet. She took another bite, into the middle part of the quarter-round wedge now. She rolled a bite on her tongue, experimented with chewing it on the left side, the right, or sucking and rolling a bite over and over until it dissolved in her mouth. Sarah Minnie felt an immense relief, the relief of once again, escaping. She began another wedge.
For as long as Sarah Minnie could remember, she had needed to escape. At the end of the day, a day of appearing normal, of putting on an act, of nibbling on salads and wanting, wanting.
She didnt know what she wanted, didnt know how to go about getting it if she found out. Sarah Minnie flipped a page of a magazine, took another bite. Maggie would make fun of the thin models in the magazine ads, say they knew how to attract the boys, sure enough, but wouldnt know what to do with one once they caught him. The women in the photos looked so old. Made-up, with hard pouting lips and frightening expressions. Spike heels, sequins and sharp edges. She flipped the pages carefully, wary of papercuts.
Far inside the dilapidated roominghouse, the door creaked shut behind Fig and Sarah Minnie. Of course his door creaks, she thought. Of course the wallpaper is peeling off in strips, brown underneath like grocery bags. Of course his apartment smells like rancid bacon and the windows are covered with a gritty film, so that the foreboding glow of the brewing March storm can barely penetrate. Of course the lumpy couch covered with wadded up blankets is the only piece of furniture except for a spindly end table covered with red cloth and brick-a-brack, and in front of the window, hung all over with clothes, an aluminum stepladder. Could a ladder be called furniture? Sarah Minnie wondered where this man had come from, what kind of home he could have been raised in to learn to hang up clothes on a ladder. She looked around. All the clothes were hung up, though.
Fig handed her the white plastic sack, stretched to bulging with heavy frozen cartons. His idea. It was too early in the day to even think about eating, let alone eat ice cream in front of someone else, something she couldnt ever remember doing. Fig stretched a bony arm above his head. Of course he cant just flip a switch, she thought, but has to reach overhead and yank a chain. The harsh white bulb swung back and forth, flinging lightning into the shadows.
His teeth sank into her neck and worried at a fold of skin, and then he said, Gotta take a leak.
He sidled over to a door next to the galley kitchen. As soon as it shut someone began banging on the front door. Sarah Minnie hesitated, looking around the bare room full of closed doors. The banging intensified like the thunder of an approaching storm. She opened the door. The knob was greasy.
The old woman started when she saw Sarah Minnie. Her face was caved in around her mouth, and she wore a jaunty orange scarf over her scant tufts of hair. Well! Never knew him ta bring one home befo, she said, eyeing Sarah Minnie up and down. She cackled. Sarah Minnie had never heard anyone actually cackle. It matched the feeling under her ribs, though. Jittery like too much caffeine, harsh and empty like a scraper against peeling paint. Sarah Minnie deliberately misunderstood. Hes never brought home ice cream before? she asked, giving the bag a shake.
The old woman shook her head. She had a mole on the end of her nose and a pipewrench in her hand. Her mouth opened wide, the cackle mutated to a guffaw. She had no teeth. Wheres dat Fib? My sinks backed up again. I give it Drano regular but it just keep constipating up. I tell you, I cant take it any more. Fibs got to do someting.
Fig slammed out of the bathroom, his hand fumbling at his fly. Hey you old witch! he shouted. Shes deaf as a lamppost, witch, bitch, switch, witch hazel for what ails he said aside to Sarah Minnie. He put his arm around the old woman and shouted into her ear, Sound like it needs a fixin, a lickin, a plunging, lunging, strongman unclogging the bowels of the beast, the beauty of the beast, lets go and tame it--be right back he yelled to Sarah Minnie.
Fig had said he was the caretaker of the roominghouse on Market St. One of the monstrous Victorian buildings sagging against the downtown hill for support, and smeared with turquoise trim and rainbow murals leftover from the 60s. The rainbows looked like they had seen more storms than God. Scrawled in felt pen on his apartment door was the line: Come in and tell me about it.
Sarah Minnie set the bag down and waited, hand stuffed in the pockets of her gingham smock, in front of the end table covered with the red cloth. Pyramided on it were a cereal box, several small jars of cut-rate caviar, a plastic apple, a gold foil doily, and some spoons arranged in a semi-circle. An incense stick rested, flopped and burnt to ash, in a half-full bottle of beer. Sarah Minnies heart pounded like a replaying of the pounding on the door. The room was empty, she could just leave a note on the table or scrawled on the woodwork. She could escape. She remembered the convenience store around the corner, where no one knew her. It was early, but she could get a jumbo bag of candy, some donuts and get home before the storm hit.
A tremendous clattering and shouting came from the hall outside. Two huge black men wielding umbrellas burst in, their hair flinging water droplets. Wheres that fool? they yelled, banging the walls and each other with the umbrellas. They were laughing hard. That damn sprinkler gizmo whizzin down on us again, Frank tryin to take a nap in the rain and Missus 3B underneath us yellin something bad about stains in her ceiling!
Sarah Minnie pulled her ponytail. The elastic slipped. She pointed down the hall in the direction Fig had disappeared. The men laughed some more, opened and shut their umbrellas, and staggered toward the door. One turned and poked her gently with the tip of the umbrella and said, You tell him, you tell him, he got to do more than talk sometime. They gave her sly backward glances, still laughing, their broad shoulders damp.
Sarah Minnie walked over to the ladder, trying to steady herself by imagining her own two legs as firmly on the floor. But the ladders legs were long and thin, and her knees were trembling. She saw the T-shirt with orange lettering Fig had been wearing the day she first met him in the restaurant. She reached out and held it up. Big Meal, it said, advertising a local hamburger joint in glaring orange letters that glowed like neon in the dim room. The first rain splattered the windows.
He goes to all the best tailors, said the couch.
Sarah Minnie jumped. She turned aroundif she was 100 pounds lighter she would have whirled.
The blankets heaped on the couch wiggled. Turn around again. Ya got a nice ass on ya.
Sarah Minnie backed up against the window, groped for the sill. Not many people say that? said Sarah Minnie. She heard the smallness of her voice, its shameful incongruity.
Maybe ya dont turn yer back on em enough. The blankets slithered away, and a bald man with beady eyes and very bushy eyebrows swung his short legs onto the floor.
Fig hunched back into the room. Sarah Minnie was surprised at the flood of relief that washed over her at his step. And at the answering, greedy blue stare from his good eye. Thiss Miss S. Miss Small Salad. Sarah Minnie.
Both the men eyed her. Sarah Minnies relief evaporated; she felt a red flush start at her cheeks and flood down over her chest. She could have sworn the light bulb was still swinging, throwing the room into shocks of light and shadow. Rain gasped against the dirty window panes. She turned away, trying to hang the shirt back up on the ladder. Fig went to the kitchen and got a beer.
Sarah..Minnie, said the bald man, and came around the couch, whispering the name under his breath like the sound of a growling dog, or the mumble of someone deep in a nightmare. He walked straight toward her, his pudgy arms outstretched. Backed against the ladder, she looked at Fig, who had set down the beer and was having trouble opening a new box of toothpicks. The bald man ran toward her and squeezed his arms hard around her. She looked down at the top of his head and smelled the German shepherd smell of him. The ladder toppled. Sarah Minnie screamed and pushed him away, noticing with fury as she did so that her scream sounded like a question.
Fig yanked at the bald man, wrestled him away. Toothpicks scattered like nasal particles from a sneeze. Harry! Goddamn crazy half-lobotomized half-wit pur-bald half-brother, get a toupee or something to keep that half-baked sun from fryin what brains youve got left. That aint no way to greet somebody, aint welcoming, you aint well and nobody coming again after a greeting, meeting, treating, like that.
I just wanted whined Harry.
The rain began pounding with fists against the windows. Sarah Minnie ran for the apartment door, wrenching at the knob. Fig pushed Harry onto the couch and ran over to her. He threw his body against the door, keeping it closed. His fingers splayed, knuckles white.
I just wanted ta see if my arms would go round, shrieked Harry behind them.
Let me go! said Sarah Minnie. Let me go?
He didnt mean no harm.
The knob rattled under Sarah Minnies shaking hands. She was crying. She was melting like ice cream from the heat of Figs body. She didnt know whether to sob or laugh, fear or strike out, stay or go.
He didnt mean it, hes just, hes a little like mebecause hes related to me--a little fascinated. Fig put his hands over hers on the doorknob and tried to pries her hands away.
Fascinated? Sarah Minnie did not want to misunderstand.
Yeah, sure, Fig grunted. He gave up trying to get her fingers, with their short nails flaking pink polish, away from the knob. Cant keep my fuckin eyes off you, can I? He got between her and the door, as she still clung to the knob, its old brass slick with the fingerprints of years and years of cheap roominghouse men. The knob lurched back and forth. Figs hands landed on her shoulders, and her fingers slid away from the knob. Wanting more than my eyes on you, though, He shifted his head to focus his other eye on her and said slowly, Wondering what youre doing here, anyway, a girl like you. He pushed her away from the door and his hands slid down over her breasts. Sarah Minnie felt the flush splash over her face and drip down her body. She stumbled and fell back, landing heavily on one knee.
The floor shook. The beer bottle on the rickety table fell over. Lightning cracked. Yellow puddled over the floor. It smelled the way spilled beer always smells, thought Sarah Minnie, remembering highschool keggers, clusters of boys and Maggie, laughing like a beluga in the woods behind the gymnasium, oblivious to the secret hiding in her enlarging body.
The beer smelled like waste and tears, moldy mops and empty bus seats. She eased her body down on the floor and tried to straighten her leg. Thunder rumbled.
A broken bone, a wing in a sling, gotta limb unlimpable, a gam ungambolable, a leg, a peg, the dregs all spilled out on the floor said Fig.
I dont think its broken, just sprained? Sarah Minnies voice was very small. She put her palms on her knee to try to contain the pain.
Could maybe get my arms around that knee, said Harry, coming closer.
Get back, you! yelled Fig, and shoved him with both hands.
The bald man stared at him. Thats the shortest sentence youve ever said to me.
Fig sat down on the floor between Sarah Minnies outstretched legs. Get some ice, he commanded.
There aint nothin here, said the bald man plaintively with his head in the freezer. Just this ice cream on the counter.
Figs one good eye looked straight into Sarah Minnie, and the directness of the look held her off balance, dizzy. The bald man brought the ice cream, and Fig set the gallon container between her legs, resting it against her swelling knee. He put one hand on the knee, and the other slid up her bare leg and under her smock dress. The rain roared down with a sound like late night television static. Without taking his eye from her face, he spoke harshly to his brother. Bring us a spoon, and then get out.
Sarah Minnie slid another wedge of cheesecake away from the remaining quarter. She picked up the tin pieplate, put it on the pillow, and rolled over onto her stomach. She loved the freedom, of having her own place, doing what she wanted, filling the bedding with crumbs if she wished. Privacy was worth a little loneliness, she thought. She knew she would think differently in the morning.
She finished the third wedge, and began to think about chocolate. But she needed to finish the cheesecake, she couldnt leave it, have it leftover, a temptation in the morning. She began on the last piece. It tasted like milk, like oceans of milk, like white paint or white glue or gelatin snow. Like nothing but white. Was white a color? In the last bites of a cheesecake, white wasnt a taste. Barely a sensation at all, not a smell, surely, perhaps a bloated feeling in her stomach, creeping down her legs and up into her chest. Fullness, some kind of fullness, of satisfaction. Sarah Minnie wondered, as she always did at the end of a pie, why she needed that feeling and what it meant. It was a good feeling, yet she was always disappointed when she couldnt eat anymore, when the sensation of desire on her tongue for food on her fork was no longer alive, but a dead thing heavy inside her.
Fig hung around her place all through April, vanishing now and then to rescue Harry from some mishap. It rained. He talked to the blue wooden geese on the walls and derided the needlepoint scenes in imitation wood frames. He liked the collection of little pastel candles in animal shapes, but lined them up in front of the refrigerator and set them on alite. Sarah Minnie stole some matches and some bubble gum. He examined her collection of hair ribbons, smiling in wonder at the ones printed with Disney characters. When he climbed into her bed the first time, he pushed aside the stuffed animals gingerly, but Sarah Minnie snorted, flung out her arms and knocked them to the floor.
He spit toothpicks fragments onto the carpet. Sarah Minnie stole a ceramic bowl with hearts on it and taught him to aim. He complained that there were no mirrors large enough to have sex in front of in her apartment. Sarah Minnie spoke sweetly and questioningly to a man at Levitz furniture, got him to wrap up a large ugly music box and a beveled glass frame, and then picked them up and without paying walked out of the store onto a waiting bus.
It rained halfway through May. Sarah Minnie stole three cel phones, five pairs of anklets, a potted plant, a silver goblet, and gave seriously thought to getting an umbrella. Fig chuckled, not without dismay, that her plump fingers were as sticky and swift as his. In the bedroom, his swift and sticky fingers continued to astound her, with the things she had lived so long without knowing. She thought sometimes she must be in someone elses life. That someone shed always imagined standing right next to her, who spoke with a loud voice and knew what to say and how to act. When she lay on her back, Figs long tongue sliding up and over the mounds of her abdomen, his fingers deep inside, she thought both he and she must be in some other body. She lifted a silk and organdy dress from the Special Occasion Department at Nordstroms, and went back the next day for matching shoes and a gold-plated paper-weight.
Fig always showed up at her place with something in his pockets, of course. Bits of colored glass from the stained glass place near his building. Breath mints, trial size shampoos, one-shot liquor bottles, fancy individually wrapped chocolates, once an ostrich feather.
One Friday evening she stopped for the newspaper after work and palmed a toothbrush from the minimart, still not used to the shiver which ran up her spine at the small act of defiance
Toothbrush, soothlush, dental, mental, incidentalI cant think what to say, Fig said.
She held out the red plastic as he stood dripping on her floor after his Friday arrival shower. He looked at with half-alarm, half-pleading, and wouldnt touch it.
I dont use no toothbrush.
The bathroom was filled with steam, her hair was matted to her forehead and her blouse clung to her. Strands of blond hair escaped from the ponytail holders, sweat trickled down her temple and into her wilted little girl collar. The damp blouse clung unaccustomedly tight against her profile. Sarah Minnie caught the woman in the mirror smirking at the curve of breast sagging in fullness against her stomach.
Had Maggie been in a bathroom, looking in a mirror, perhaps, when the pains began? When the cramps got so bad she knew they werent just cramps, something she could laugh off, so that she knew she wasnt just a fat girl gaining weight, but a girl becoming a woman in the most inevitable, most joyful and painful way there is? When was the exact moment she knew something had happened to her, and there was no going back?
The smirk evaporated, and Sarah Minnie took a long time tearing off the cellophane wrapper from the toothbrush. The crackling seemed to dispel the steam and heat in the room. She placed the toothbrush carefully next to hers in the blue china holder.
Sarah Minnie saw the alarm in his eye again when she came home the next day with a toaster and a diamond necklace. His teeth were still taupe, the pink bowl full of toothpick leavings.
Just to see if I could do it, you know? said Sarah Minnie. She giggled. She rather liked to alarm him. And I could, it was easy.
Is it real? he asked. He looked at it with one eye and at her with the other.
Of course. The most expensive one in the store? The saleslady was showing me all the different kinds, she had them all out, and then she turned her back? Just for a moment?
The necklace shook in Figs hand. He set it down on the kitchen table, next to the toaster and a pile of colored glass hed brought her last week. Weak sunlight shone in the window, sparkled on the offerings piled on the table.
You needed a diamond necklace?
What you want becomes a need. Thats Amurica. You said so?
Fig slammed out of the room, came back with the red toothbrush. He handed it to Sarah Minnie. I dont want this.
Sarah Minnie did not understand.
Toothbrush, woodthrush, first blush, cunt lush, a device ordained by the vast over-the-counter pharmaceutical get-cleaner-than-though-art infrastructure. A product of hell, of the devil itself, over-the-counter-under-the-table clean out the blessed God-given nutrients in your mouth.
You just dont want to brush your teeth!! She waved the brush in his face. You want to eat and not clean up afterwards. Let me tell you, thats not the way it works. You eat and you have to pay for it, in one way or another.
And are you going to pay for that? asked Fig, pointing at the sparkling pile on the table.
Sarah Minnie stared at the necklace. Ive been paying all my life. She flung the toothbrush at him and ran out.
She ran through the livingroom, out the front door and into the street. The sun straggled from behind clouds, glaring off the parked cars lining the residential drive. She stood panting on the sidewalk. Figs footsteps rapped on the pavement behind her. She turned and hurried blindly down the sidewalk. She wanted to get away from him, from wondering which of his eyes to believe in. A man with his arms full of groceries stepped out of a running double-parked Pinto into an apartment house lobby. Fig was catching up, and running was not something shed ever really tried before.
Sarah Minnie squeezed herself into the front seat of the car. It was a tiny hatchback, the entire back filled with groceries, the entire front now filled with Sarah Minnie. It flashed into her mind that the first time she and Maggie met had been when they were both trying to squish into side-by-side table-and-chair-in-one school desks. Sarah Minnie kept her eyes lowered so that, if she didnt see anyone, no one could see her. But Maggie laughed, of course, and swore at the desk contraption, pounded on it with her big fist, so that the teacher and all the students were shocked at her noise and her mouth. She was sent to the office, and everyone seemed to forget completely what Sarah Minnie most wanted them to: neither girl could fit in her seat. After that, in her gratitude to Maggie, her attachment, her almost worshipping of Maggie, there was no turning back.
Fig banged on the rolled-up window. The man with the groceries rushed up, spilling egg cartons and yelling. She could try to get out, but getting in had been a tight squeeze, and she was stuck. Even in escape, there was no escaping.
She gunned the engine, stomped in the vicinity of the gas petal, and slammed into the car in front of her.
Fig yanked open the passenger door and tumbled in. The man with the groceries pounded on her window, his face a red mask with a huge cutout circle for the mouth, egg dripping from his fingers and smearing the glass.
Go! screamed Fig.
What? What? she screeched back, her hand fumbling at the gearshift.
R!! R for Reverse, back up, screw up, get screwed and get out of here!
Sarah Minnie smashed into the car parked behind them. The man began pelting the car with eggs. Sarah Minnie jerked the Pinto forward and into the street.
It was lovely. Delirious. The speed, the anonymity of a car, where people could see only her face and not her body. The response of the car to the slightest pressure of her foot on the pedal--was it even better than sex? She veered around buses, pedestrians and other, larger cars. She heard the hysteria in her laugh and liked it. Fig gripped the dashboard with both hands.
Youre crazy now, woman! he yelled above the skidding of the wheels. She turned left on 11, right on Fawcett, left on 13th, left on Tacoma, left on 12th and roared around the corner onto Market.
Youve got to stop!
You told me to go!! Sarah Minnie yelled back, turning again onto 13th.13th plunged like a waterfall down the hill to the bottom of what was left of city center. Sarah Minnie and Fig and the tiny car plunged also. Grocery sacks leapt from the backseat, flinging catsup and loaves and frozen orange juice. She remembered the highschool boys who boasted of ignoring 13ths stoplights late at night and becoming airborne. She also remembered the freeway entrance at the bottom of the hill. She wondered if there was a corresponding red, white and blue sign that said Leaving Tacoma, All-America City. She decided she would find out.
I didnt meanYoure going too fast!! Fig yelled as the car leapt over the hills, coming down with a heavy thud and smashing of groceries at each flat intersection. The thuds reminded Sarah Minnie she probably weighed as much as the car itself. If it was possible for the car to fly, it might be possible for her, too. She pressed her wide shoe down farther on the gas.
Too Fast!! Too Fast!! Always come in last, brake--fast, breakfaaaaaaast, ham and eggs and marmalaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaade.Figs voice trailed into a scream as the car slid sideways through an intersection. Groceries splashed against the windows, an avocado rolled along the dashboard. Sarah Minnie flung herself at the wheel, turning it and pressing against it with her chest so it belched an outraged honk. A chorus of horns blared back at her from all sides.
Yeah, Im getting to that freeway!! yelled Sarah Minnie at the honking cars, their headlights gleaming accusation like eyes turned toward her in a restaurant. The Pinto banged down over the last hill and onto the flat straightaway leading to the entrance ramp of the freeway.
You aint free and theres no way, yelled Fig, but as he said it he was laughing, his head flung back, Adams apple jutting from the thin neck. Red and white police lights flashed into the car and into his blue eyes. Sarah Minnie hit the gas while looking at him and sideswiped a car. There was a loud scream of metal on metal, and then the wail of an approaching siren. She swerved left and the avocado pummeled towards her. Was an avocado a fruit? Sarah Minnie was almost sure it was. The car roared, Figs lips moved with words she couldnt quite hear.
What?? she yelled. What? Right? R is for Right? And she whirled the wheel to the right. The Pinto sped onto a ramp, cars coming toward Sarah Minnie at high speed, reeling and honking like outraged geese. Figs lips were still moving. Before Sarah Minnie smashed the hatchback into a cement divider she realized it wasnt an entrance ramp at all, but an exit.
Sarah Minnie stowed the pieplate in the grocery sack along with all the other wrappings. She threw it away, brushed off the sheets, tied up the garbage bag, made sure the garbage can lid was on tight, so no stray animals could come along in the night and rummage around, exposing her empty wrappers.
The next morning Sarah Minnie resolved, as she did every morning, to begin eating sensibly, to get in control, to get rid of the fat. The house was clean, the refrigerator was empty. No telltale signs remained. No temptations. She wasnt even hungry. She would have tea for breakfast, a salad for lunch, a sensible dinner. She would change.
The bars of the county jail cell divided Sarah Minnies life into bites, of here and of there. There was filled with people coming and going, papers floating on desks, rubber stamp pads dry of ink, bitten Styrofoam cups. There was a hallway down which she waited to see Fig walk. There the assistant warden slammed the door shut behind her, cleaned his ear with a key from the huge ring attached by a chain to his belt, and said, Well now, Miss Sarah Minnie.
Here was dank and quiet, the only sounds the echo of her breathing, the wardens retreating footsteps and the far-away clanking of other barred doors down other corridors. Here, for some reason, was calm. Here the bandages on her forearms peeled off without painfully pulling the skin, here the bruises on her cheek and legs stopped aching.
Here it was not so hard to admit that Maggies voice calling her, best friend, had probably been a misunderstanding, of a sort.
Sarah Minnie pulled back her shoulders and stretched her legs out in front of her on the lumpy cot. She didnt know how long shed been here, just that it had been a long time. She had no longing for escape, for her room or for her haven full of waiting food. She was free. She leaned back against the bars.
Fig brought her some take out food, a stuffed animal and a toothbrush. Grand larceny, reckless endangerment, driving without a license--youre a wanted woman.
Why did you say to turn there? she asked.
I said, I was saying, you were right.
Oh.
The food, a Coke and some plastic silverware, was from the Downtown Caf. The bill, with its swirling P for Paid was stapled to the bag. She looked out at Figs drawn, strange face. Of course he was wearing his ig Mea shirt. Her eyes traced slowly over the familiar orange letters.
Jes a few minutes you got, said the warden, using a key to clean his fingernails. You, Miss Sarah Minnie, ll have to stay here until the morning.
She opened up the bag and unwrapped the napkin from around the cutlery.
First spoon I ever paid for, Fig said.
She looked into both his eyes, and smiled. Miss Sarah Minnie understood.
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