The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things

  As we walked toward my building, we knocked our hips against each other and sang a few verses from Friends.

  The only glitch arose when we were in the elevator. As we got on in the lobby, we were joined by Mrs. Myers. She’s an elderly woman who lives on the ninth floor. Whenever she goes to Miami to visit her grandnephew, I feed her Siamese cats.

  As soon as we stepped into the elevator, I noticed Mrs. Myers eyeing Froggy.

  “Anaïs”— she tapped her metal cane on my sneaker —“why don’t you introduce me to your boyfriend?”

  I wasn’t sure whether to be more taken aback that Mrs. Myers confused me with my gorgeous sister or that she called Froggy my boyfriend.

  “I’m Virginia.”

  “I know who you are.” Mrs. Myers prodded her cane toward Froggy. “But who is he?”

  “He’s . . . he’s . . .” I desperately searched for a way to inform her that Froggy and I aren’t boyfriend and girlfriend. “He’s Froggy.”

  “Froggy?” Mrs. Myers looked puzzled.

  The elevator arrived at the ninth floor. As she hobbled out, I heard her muttering, “What kind of name is Froggy for a handsome young boy?”

  The door closed. I glanced fearfully at Froggy, but to my relief, he cracked up. I started laughing, too. By the time the elevator arrived at my apartment, we were both in hysterics.

  We headed straight to my bedroom rather than stopping off for our usual snack. Froggy unlaced his sneakers and kicked them off. We flopped onto my bed and started making out. The kissing was intense from the start. Our lips were open. Our tongues took turns exploring the insides of each other’s mouths. For a moment, I imagined myself as Meg Ryan in the last scene of You’ve Got Mail when she finally learns that Tom Hanks is the man she loves. That’s how good it felt.

  When we finally came up for air, I planted a row of soft kisses along Froggy’s earlobe. He moaned from deep in the back of his throat. The next thing I knew, his hands were inside my shirt.

  I’d carefully selected my bra this morning. It’s tan-colored, hardly as sexy as my black one, but easy to undo, with a simple hook in the back. Froggy got it on the first try. He eased my bra onto my collarbone, leaving my breasts bare under my shirt.

  And now, for the first time in my life, a nonmedical person is touching my chest. He’s stroking my breasts, gently pulling at my nipples. It feels so good that I’m getting wet between my legs.

  After a few minutes, Froggy rolls onto his back, so we’re lying shoulder to shoulder. “Virginia?” he whispers.

  “Yeah?”

  “That felt good.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ve never done that before,” Froggy says quietly.

  “Me neither.”

  As Froggy caresses my hair, I snuggle into the crook of his neck. We’re silent for a few minutes. I’m just thinking that this is the nicest moment in my entire life when I hear the front door unlock. Froggy’s body tenses up. We pull away from each other.

  “Virginia?” Mom calls out. “Virginia?”

  Froggy and I go into panic mode. We fly off my bed. I yank my bra around my boobs and hook it into place. As Mom knocks on my door, I gesture toward my bed.

  Froggy flattens himself to the floor and slides awkwardly under the frame.

  “Virginia?” Mom asks, turning my knob.

  I thank my lucky stars that I always lock the door when Froggy’s over.

  “I’m here, Mom,” I say.

  My heart is racing. I make sure none of Froggy’s appendages are exposed as I cross the room, attempt a calming breath, and open my door.

  “Are you OK?” Mom asks. “Your face is flushed.”

  “I’m fine. I just fell asleep.” I glance covertly at Froggy’s backpack and trombone case. “Why are you home early?”

  “Don’t you remember? We have your doctor’s appointment at four-thirty.”

  “What doctor’s appointment?”

  “I told you last week. That new doctor who specializes in adolescent medicine.”

  “I guess.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re home.”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “I wanted to remind you that I’m planning to discuss your weight with the new doctor.” Mom pauses and adds, “Just so it doesn’t come out of the blue.”

  I’m sure Froggy heard that.

  I’m going to drop dead.

  How could Froggy not have heard that?

  I’m going to get a shovel, dig a huge hole in Central Park, and crawl into it. I’ll pay someone to cover me up with dirt and put a stone on my grave that says: Virginia Shreves, 15, died from utter humiliation.

  Mom looks like she’s waiting for a response. Did she ask me a question?

  “I guess,” I say, shrugging my shoulders.

  “Let’s leave in ten minutes. I’ll be in my study if you need me.”

  As soon as Mom is gone, I close the door.

  “Coast clear?” Froggy whispers.

  “I think so.” I touch my flushed cheeks. It’s all I can do to remember to breathe.

  Froggy slides out from under my bed. As he brushes the dust balls off his clothes and laces up his sneakers, I can’t look him in the eye.

  We don’t say a word to each other as we tiptoe through the apartment. I nudge him into the foyer. He waves goodbye, but I quietly close the front door.

  I will never, ever, ever be able to face Froggy again.

  I don’t say anything for the entire cab ride up Broadway. The new doctor’s office is near Columbia. That’s almost forty blocks from our apartment, but Mom is on her cell phone the whole time, so she doesn’t notice my silence.

  As the cab pulls up to the corner nearest the hospital, Mom hangs up and turns to me. “Are you sure you’re feeling OK?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You still look flushed.” Mom hands some cash up to the driver. “Maybe you should ask Dr. Love to take your temperature.”

  “Dr. Love?”

  The driver gives Mom her change. She counts the bills and passes a tip to him. “Your new doctor.”

  I slide out of the cab. Someone named Dr. Love should sing lead vocals in a punk band. Or be a porn star. But my doctor? I picture some smarmy, fake-tanned doctor, the kind they cast in hospital soaps.

  Fortunately, Dr. Love turns out to be nothing like I expected. He’s young for a doctor, probably in his early thirties, with cappuccino-colored skin, dark eyelashes, and pencil-thin dreads poking out all over his head.

  I’m sitting on the examining table when he walks in. Mom is out in the waiting room. I’m bemoaning the fact that the paper robe the nurse gave me is smaller than a cocktail napkin. I’m also wondering whether she groaned when she weighed me. It sounded like she did, but I never look at the scale, so I’m not sure whether it was bad news or extremely bad news.

  Dr. Love sits on the revolving stool and extends his hand. “I’m Benjamin Love,” he says. His voice is warm and soothing, like a bubble bath.

  I shake his hand. “I’m Virginia.”

  We chat for a few minutes and then Dr. Love pulls out his stethoscope and wheels toward me. He listens to my lungs and heart, feels my nodes, and presses my appendix. Throughout the examination, he keeps murmuring “very healthy” and “excellent.” When he takes a blood sample, he talks to me the whole time, so the needle barely hurts.

  Once the exam is over, Dr. Love swivels around on his stool, writes something in my chart, and turns to face me again.

  “When your mom made this appointment,” he says, “she mentioned that she wanted the three of us to discuss your weight.”

  I stare at my bare feet dangling over the side of the examination table.

  Dr. Love frowns. “This isn’t something I usually like to do. You are my patient. I want you to feel you can be candid with me, that whatever you tell me won’t get back to your mom.” Dr. Love searches my face. “I’m only going to invite her in here if you’re comfortable with it.”

  I tug at the r
obe. Why doesn’t it cover more of my body? I should send an e-mail to the company that manufactures medical gowns and suggest they make them in a size other than extra-small.

  “So?” Dr. Love asks.

  I don’t know what to say. I’m sure Mom is just trying to be helpful. But sometimes it feels like I’m beyond help, beyond hope.

  “I guess it’s OK,” I say.

  “You guess or you’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  He stands up to leave. “I’ll give you a few minutes to change back into your clothes.”

  “Thanks.”

  When they return, I’m sitting on the examination table, one knee over the other, my arms tight across my chest. Dr. Love settles onto his stool. Mom sits in the hard plastic chair.

  Dr. Love rotates so he’s facing Mom. “What did you want to discuss, Dr. Shreves?”

  Mom’s mouth twitches. “I’m concerned about Virginia’s weight.”

  Dr. Love raises his eyebrows.

  Mom continues. “I was heavy as a child, but I slimmed down by the time I was fifteen or sixteen. I’ve always assumed that’s how it would be for Virginia, but it just doesn’t seem to be happening.”

  I feel my cheeks flushing and my underarms are moist with sweat.

  “May I ask why you’ve decided to address this now?” Dr. Love asks.

  Mom fiddles with the clasp on her purse. She’s much better at listening to other people’s problems than discussing her own. “It’s so hard being overweight. I want to do everything I can to make life easier for Virginia.”

  Dr. Love is quiet for a moment. When he finally speaks, he addresses me directly. “Let me start by saying that I prefer to look at things in terms of health instead of weight.” He glances over at Mom, who shifts in her chair. “Until I get your blood work back, I can’t give a comprehensive report on your health. But from the initial examination, you’re very healthy, on par with most teenagers.”

  Dr. Love pauses before adding, “I want to be frank with you, however. While you’re not in the range we classify as obese, you’re heavier than average. If you continue to gain weight into adulthood, you’ll be at risk for heart disease, hypertension, even diabetes. So while there’s no reason to panic, it would be beneficial to start thinking about the long term.”

  I glance at Mom. She points her chin toward Dr. Love, as if to say, Listen up.

  “I’d like you to reevaluate your diet,” he says. “Cut down on carbs and greasy foods, exercise at least three times a week. Do you get much exercise?”

  “I’m always encouraging Virginia to come to the gym with me,” says Mom. “Exercise is how I keep my weight down, but she says she finds it boring.”

  Dr. Love frowns. “With all due respect, Dr. Shreves, I prefer not to focus on weight or body size. It’s about fitness and nutrition and feeling good. Once those things fall into place, Virginia will become her natural body type”— Dr. Love gives Mom a long look —“which is different for every person.”

  Mom mashes her lips together.

  “So?” Dr. Love asks.

  “I’m not a jock, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “You don’t have to be a jock to get exercise.” Dr. Love sets down my chart. “I’d be happy to help you figure this out, as long as you’re up for the challenge. Is this what you want?”

  Is this what I want? I want to not be embarrassed around Froggy. I don’t want Brie to trash me behind my back. I don’t want to get any more of those looks from Mom, like she feels sorry for me or she’s ashamed of me. I want to be more like Anaïs and Byron. I want my parents to consider me Shreves-worthy.

  Mom and Dr. Love are waiting for my response. I raise and lower my shoulders. “I want to be healthier.”

  For the next several minutes, Dr. Love talks about nutrition and nonjock ways to get a decent workout. I sit there, listening and nodding. Every once in a while, I glance over at Mom. I think I detect a tinge of pride on her face.

  Mom drops me off on our corner and tells the cabdriver to continue to her office. As soon as I get upstairs, I won’t allow myself to go into the kitchen, like I usually do. Instead, I check my e-mail. I haven’t heard back from Shannon since Saturday, when I demanded the scoop on her friends. There’s no word from Walla Walla, but there’s a phone message from Dad.

  “Ginny,” he says on the voice mail, “I’ve got two tickets to a Yankees playoff game on October nineteenth, assuming they make it that far, which you and I both know they will. Mom and I have a golf tournament in Connecticut that day, so I was thinking you and Byron might like to go.”

  A Yankees playoff game with my brother! I leave a breathless message with Byron, telling him to call me as soon as possible.

  A few hours later, I’m hunched over the dining room table, attempting to finish The Scarlet Letter. Dad walks into the room, munching a handful of cashews.

  “Any word from Byron?”

  I shake my head. “Not yet.”

  “I just got off the phone with Mom.” Dad tosses back a few nuts. “Sounds like you had a productive appointment with that doctor.”

  “Yeah,” I say, flipping to the next page in my book.

  “It’s a good thing.” Dad picks a bit of cashew out of his teeth. “You’ve got a great face, Ginny. Think how much prettier you could be if you lost twenty or thirty pounds.”

  I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach. I’ve always known that Dad was absent on the day they handed out tact. And I’ve always known that Dad is a fan of thin women. But he’s never said it so bluntly — that I’m not that attractive the way I am.

  I can’t speak. I can’t look up. If I do, I’ll burst into tears.

  If I lived in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s time, I bet I’d have to wear a scarlet letter on my chest, just like Hester Prynne. Except in my case, it would be an “F” instead of an “A.”

  It’s official. I’m on a diet.

  In the four days since my appointment with Dr. Love, my entire life has changed. I can already fit two fingers into my normally snug waistband. Before long I’ll be sticking an entire fist in there.

  My goal is to lose as much as I can as quickly as possible. I’m not putting a number on it because I refuse to step on a scale unless I’m in a medical establishment. But all I know is that I want to get thin. And fast.

  I’ve tried other diets before. Like in eighth grade when I decided to work out at Mom’s gym. I stumbled along the treadmill every afternoon for a week. But after five days, I was bored to tears. I couldn’t see the point in walking and walking and never getting anywhere. Or there was that time last year when Mom set up an appointment for me with Nan the Neurotic Nutritionist. Nan presented me with a food regimen that consisted of protein powders and low-carb bars. It made me parched just thinking about it. As soon as I left her office, I stopped by Häagen-Dazs and downed an entire dulce de leche milk shake just to get some moisture into my mouth.

  But not this time. This time I’m taking it seriously.

  All week long I didn’t eat a real breakfast. I just grabbed a banana as I headed off to school. On Thursday I took a stalk of celery instead. Big mistake. I had to spend ten minutes in the bathroom at school extracting pale-green celery strings from my braces.

  By lunchtime every day I was famished. Sometimes I even had a hunger headache. But rather than surrendering to my appetite, I’d close my eyes and play a Thin Virginia fantasy in my head. I’d visualize myself partying up at Columbia. See how sexy I look in a bra and thongs and hip-hugger jeans! How much will you charge ME to get into Virgins and Sluts? I had tamer variations as well. Sometimes I’d be laughing with Byron as we jumped for foul balls at a Yankees game. Other times I’d suck in my stomach as Mom proudly introduced me to her colleagues at black-tie events. I even imagined Dad complimenting my body, like he used to with Anaïs. Except I wouldn’t get angry at him and launch into a feminist tirade the way my sister did.

  These visions were enough to make me skip lunch on Tuesda
y, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I steered clear of the cafeteria to avoid being beckoned by Twinkies or a tray of tater tots. Also, it eliminated the stress of finding tablemates, which I couldn’t handle on such a light head/empty stomach. Hiding out in the second-floor bathroom was out of the question, too. If I overheard another comment from the Bri-girls, I’d probably flush myself down a toilet.

  My solution was to go to Ms. Crowley’s office. She always welcomed me warmly. We’d chat for a few minutes, low-key stuff, like what I’m reading for “Ostracism and Oppression.” Then she’d put me to work grading quizzes or suggesting Top 40 songs that could get kids excited about reading The Grapes of Wrath. Ms. Crowley is cool that way, trying to reach students on their level rather than just shoving dead authors down their throats all the time.

  When she didn’t have any work for me, I reviewed my notes from various classes. It was hard to concentrate during class all week, with my abdomen cramping and my brain pulsing from hunger. Sometimes I’d have to put my head on my desk for a few seconds and close my eyes. No one seemed to notice any difference in my behavior, though Ms. Crowley did observe that I was drinking a lot of water.

  Diet Tip #1: Whenever you’re hungry, chug a bottle of Poland Spring to fill your stomach.

  I’m spending my days in a constant state of peeing or starvation. But I know this will all be worth it.

  Besides, it’s not like I have any alternative.

  Friday night. My parents and I have a rare sit-down dinner. Dad cooks himself a steak, and Mom and I have salads and whole-wheat pita bread.

  Diet Tip #2: Allow each bite to linger in your mouth for as long as humanly possible.

  I slowly chew my plate of mixed greens and hungrily gaze at Dad’s meat.

  Dad catches my eye. “I have a proposition for you,” he says.

  “What?” I ask.

  “How would you like me to take you on a shopping spree, to celebrate your new diet?”

  Silence.

  I glance at Mom. When Anaïs was in high school, Dad used to take her on sprees and they’d come home with great outfits. But my shopping always happens with Mom. She’s good at picking out clothes with lots of strategic layers and camouflaging colors.