Fall With Grace

Something that not many people know about me now is that I was a fat kid. Pictures suggest I started gaining weight around the time I was eight, shortly after my dad got out of prison, kidnapped my brothers and myself, and brought us to a domestic violence shelter, leaving my Mom. As I write that, it becomes pretty apparent that perhaps this contributed to my weight gain, food was the only comforting and familiar part of my life at that time.

I was in 3^rd grade. It was the last day of school in third grade that my dad first commented on my weight. I remember that day because we got McDonalds and orange Hi-C on the last day. I was very worried I’d miss it, because I had a dental appointment that morning. I remember that we were driving to the school, and I was probably rattling on about the happy meal I might miss, as an eight-year-old does. I remember him speaking sharply and suddenly, meanly, “You don’t need that. You’re the third grader I know that looks like you’re pregnant.”

I remember my eyes welling with tears, that tightening in my throat as I fought not to make a sound. Crying would only make him madder. I remember looking at my belly, seeing the road pass by under my feet. The truck’s floorboard on the passenger side had rusted out, so you had to be careful not to drop anything down there, and as a kid, it was pretty cool to watch the road, so I didn’t mind. I remember looking at my belly, wondering what he saw that I didn’t see. I didn’t look pregnant to me, did I? He dropped me off just after, and I lined up for the assembly. I remember looking at other little girls, at their bodies and thinking, well if only I had a body like hers, with my face, then I’d be pretty. I always did like my face at least.

In fourth grade I started getting teased about my weight, at home just as much as school. My dad taught my borther phrases- “Fatty fatty two by four, couldn’t fit through the kitchen door!” and  “Hey hey hey… here comes fat albert.” The more simplistic options- fatty, fat cow, eat the whole house why don’t you. I’d go to school and stand in a corner and cry during every recess. Eventually I started to pretend I liked to stand there by myself, that I was in that corner intentionally, that I didn’t want to be with the other kids, who care’s if they didn’t want to be with me?

For fifth grade, we’d moved to mid-Wisconsin. I remember liking it there. Making friends for the first time. Learning to love to read. Writing my first research paper. I was still fat, but I didn’t think about it near as much for a little while. But all good things must come to an end, and at the end of 6^th grade, we moved back to northern Wisconsin, the border of upper Michigan.

I will never forget the day it happened. In every man who has ever touched me and left, I hear those words loud and clear, no one will ever love you. We were in the middle of moving, in the summer. I had  very long hair, past my waist. During the moving and the sweating, my hair had developed a gigantic knot. So big that we couldn’t get it out. My dad brought me to the local hair shop and they were able to get it out, though I did lose several inches of hair.

He had been waiting for me to get done outside in the car. I was feeling good about my haircut, in just a few weeks we’d be starting at a new school. I had picked my first day outfit already, and now my hair looked good. I was just shy of 12 years old, and these things mattered.

I got in the car, a burgundy 1967 buick riviera. He didn’t start it. He just stayed there. I looked at him. He was staring ahead. His head dropped down. He said to me, “Keva, if you don’t do something about your weight, no man is ever going to love you. You’ll have to settle for the first man willing to touch you.”

What does one say to that? I certainly believed it. I knew he believed it, it was hard for him to love me because I was fat. The words echoed through the silence in that car until the car roared alive and we began the drive home. I remember looking at myself, watching myself cry in the passenger mirror, the double chin that formed as I looked down to hide my tears. I couldn’t say anything, and those words have impacted nearly everything I have done since.