This Week's Story
She
She thought about going to the doctor. But what would she say? She held out as long as she could and when she couldn’t stand it anymore, she went.
“What seems to be the problem?” the doctor said, eyeing her perched on the cold steel table. The woman looked at her feet in their white cotton socks. She felt like she was twelve years old.
“I…I smell.” she said finally.
“Hmmm.” the doctor said, leaning forward, “like what?”
She thought she heard a faint sniffing noise.
“I’m not sure, but I think it’s yeast.”
The doctor frowned. The woman trusted her doctor. She was supposed to trust her doctor.
“How long has this been going on?”
“I suppose a few weeks…. I saw my sister at the beginning of the month…yeah I think about three or four weeks.”
“When was your last period?”
“I should have started this week. But I haven’t yet.” It was Thursday.
The doctor looked up.
“Do you think you’re pregnant?”
“Oh no.” The woman laughed nervously. She shook her head a little to vigorously.
The woman watched the doctor scratch a pen across her file. She shifted on the seat, it was hard and her bottom hurt.
“I was wondering, I was thinking, maybe it could be something to do with the implants…”
It wasn’t very long ago that she had the implants embedded in her chest. She had considered the possibility for at least a year before she had them done. It had been several months since the swelling had subsided. The procedure had progressed without problems. She was two sizes bigger and she loved looking at herself in the mirror.
“Have you had any redness or fluid leaking?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
“Any soreness?”
“No actually they’ve felt fine.”
“Any fever or shortness of breath?”
“No.”
“Swollen feet? Difficulty breathing?”
She shook her head, “No.”
The doctor told her to lie down. After calling in a nurse, he checked her breasts and said there was nothing wrong with her implants. She also got a pelvic exam.
“Well,” the doctor said after the woman had put her clothes back on, “I see nothing wrong. It could be something that you’ve eaten or perhaps a new shampoo or clothes soap. Why don’t you give us a urine sample and we’ll run a pregnancy test just in case. How is your appetite?” She took the clear plastic cup.
“Fine.” The woman said. She forgot to say that she hadn’t changed shampoo or soap since she was a teenager. She forgot to say also, though whether because of forgetfulness or something else she couldn’t have explained, that it had started the morning after she baked the bread. It had been late and she couldn’t sleep so she got up and started to make some bread. She put some music on and danced around the kitchen mixing and kneading and then sitting sleepily on the floor waiting while the dough rose. She remembered her mother telling her, when she was little and they were making bread together, to never taste the bread dough, for if she did her stomach would puff up from the yeast in the dough and she would get sick. She also told her not to eat too much once the bread was out of the oven and they were sitting at the table with a slab of butter and the hot loaf of bread and a knife. She would get fat, her mother told her, her upper arms jiggling as she raised them and she didn’t want to do that because she was such a pretty little thing, wasn’t she?
The woman took the rest of the afternoon off. She could smell herself as she walked down the street and it made her sweat. She walked into a bakery and bought some bread. It was a cool day outside, one of those bright clear autumn days that seem to go on forever. The bakery was warm inside; the windows were fogged around the edges. The woman sat at a table and had a cup of coffee. She scooted away whenever anyone passed next to the table. Fresh loaves of bread were being brought out to the front. They smelled warm and delicious. The smell reminded her of her mother.
She had always been thin. When she was younger she walked to school instead of taking the bus to keep in shape. It was nice, that early morning walk when she was fourteen and fifteen and sixteen. She cut across a field and part of a golf course and came to the school from the back. She liked being alone in the morning. The wet dewy grass brushed her ankles and the birds sang the trees, chirping in front of her and behind her but never alongside her.
She had stayed thin. She watched what she ate, not really dieting but not really not dieting. Sometimes she skipped lunch and went for a walk. When she was older and on her own she didn’t keep any junk food or candy at her apartment. Sometimes she would make a batch of chocolate chip cookies, but she made up for it by going for long walks on the weekends and eating small helpings for lunch and dinner. She would never say that she was on a diet.
She had read information about anorexia when she was young and sometimes she would lie on her bed, like the girl in a book she had read, laying her hands across her pelvic bones to see if her stomach was flat. She didn’t have anorexia; she hadn’t lost her hair and she didn’t count calories or divide up her food to make it look as if she had eaten when really she hadn’t. She was just thin.
The dough had risen and the timer went off on the stove. She had turned it on just in case she fell asleep. She wanted fresh bread in the morning. The woman jerked awake. She had been having a dream about someone chasing her, trying to get her, she didn’t know who but she thought it was male. Some man, someone in charge of something, someone who didn’t want her there and was trying to catch her. It was cold on the floor. She stood up, took the bread dough out of the bowl and punched it down on the counter. It was warm and it felt good to stand up and work her hands into it. Push, fold, twist, push, fold, twist. Just before she rolled the dough into loaves she twisted off a tiny piece and popped it into her mouth. It was soft and slimy and hard to swallow.
That night as she slept she dreamed about something chasing her. Something unknown. There was something inside her that was growing, something she could not control. It frightened her and it became so large it pushed back the thing that was chasing her, pushed it back and scared it off. She was alone. And safe.
It started right after her period. First the smell. She noticed it one morning after her shower. She had just toweled off, her skin was still damp and warm and she smelled yeast. It was so strong she thought she had spilled some in the bathroom when she was baking. Then she reached up to comb her damp hair and her arm brushed against her face. The smell of yeast, stronger than a loaf of freshly risen bread dough swept across her face. Immediately a rush of heat swept over her from her feet to her face. Her stomach felt weak. She wondered how long she had smelled like that. She thought of the people at work and wondered what they said about her. She pressed her nose against her hand.
In the bedroom, she sank down on the unmade bed. She remembered some boys joking when she was a teenager. Something about a woman’s body smelling, something about tuna fish. After that she had always felt vaguely ashamed whenever she heard a group of boys laughing. There was something wrong with her, something she should be able to fix, but she just hadn’t gotten around to doing it yet. The smell rose from between her legs. Though she was alone, no one was in the room or in her apartment, she was embarrassed. She lay back and her hips rose over her flat stomach. She didn’t want to leave. She didn’t want to go to work smelling like that. It was okay for bread, but not for her. She got dressed and called in sick.
At the mall, she stood at the perfume counter for an hour lifting the hard glass bottles to her nose, smelling the sickly-sweet scents. She was sweating and she looked up every time someone walked by. Everyone was looking at her, especially the men. She didn’t usually wear too much perfume but now she wanted to. She picked two of the strongest ones and bought more than she could afford; two medium-sized bottles. She thought the cashier was staring at her when she left.
The perfume worked for a while. She wore it to work and Bob the mail guy told her she smelled good enough to eat. That did not make her feel better; he had always creeped her out. One day in the bathroom, she had just sat down on the toilet, the smell of yeast rose so strong from her that she was afraid to go back into the office. She sat there, as long as she thought she could without arousing suspicion, smelling herself. When she pulled her pants back on the smell of yeast was not so strong but her perfume was starting to smell rancid. She had, without being fully aware of it, stopped wearing her most revealing work clothes that she had started to wear once her breasts had healed. Slowly she was beginning to choose the darker, looser clothes that she had worn before her operation.
That night, when she stood on the scale, as she did as casually as she could every night, she had gained three pounds. The next morning, she called the doctor.
It was after the doctor’s visit that she really began to gain weight. At first, because she had had so little fat on her body, she didn’t notice any change in the way her clothes fit. The first ten pounds slipped on without anyone noticing except the woman and the scale. Then her pants began to get tight around the waist. Someone at work asked her if she had lost weight. ‘You look good’ the man said when she answered no.
Her stomach grew a little puff on her belly that was imprinted from the band of her pants when she undressed in the evening. The rings on her fingers were tighter. Her shirts began to pull under her arms and the pockets of her pants were beginning to crease in a way they never had before. The smell of yeast grew stronger and stronger. She used her vacation days early and spent a week walking and jogging and eating salad. She gained five more pounds. Dressing became a fight. She stuffed herself into her clothes, sucking in her gut to zip up her pants, rounding her shoulders over to fit into her shirt without straining the buttons.
The dreams started when she was forced to go out and buy new clothes. She squeezed into her old clothes for as long as she could. Then she had caught a glimpse of her self in the mirror, her pants cutting her in half at the waist, her belly, rounding out beneath the tight waist. Her shirt straining at the seams. She had always had such good taste in clothes, now she looked like someone trying to be something that she wasn’t. In the middle of the night she would wake up, her pajama top damp with sweat and her heart pounding. She could never remember the dreams; only that she was scared when she woke up. A pit of anxiety had settled in her belly and in the darkness, it grew larger than anything else. One night she woke earlier than usual. She had only been sleeping for an hour or so when a high-pitched noise, like the scream of an animal, jerked her out of bed. Her shirt was soaked. She thought it was sweat until she stood up and she felt something dripping down her breasts. She pulled off her top. Clear fluid was dripping from her nipples. Drip, drip, drip, like a faucet that had not been turned off properly. She couldn’t breathe. She put on a bra, stuffed a sock in each cup and pulled a dry shirt on. By the time she had called her doctor and arrived at the hospital the socks were wet and her shirt had two circles of wetness outlining her breasts.
An x-ray was done and a breast exam. They did not know what the fluid was. She had no sign of infection; there was no redness or swelling. Her implants were fine. They ran tests and everything came back normal. The doctor told her to keep an eye on it and then went home to sleep. The woman went home and lay in bed and cried. She didn’t want to die. She didn’t want to become one of the horrible pictures her mother had shown her. The pictures of women whose breast implants leaked or ruptured, and infected their bodies. Women with horrible disfigured chests and swollen joints. She slept fitfully.
In the morning, her shirt was wet but when she stood up she was no longer dripping. She took her shower, by now she couldn’t smell the yeast so much. She didn’t know if she was just used to it or if the smell had gone away. When she was dressing she noticed that her bra didn’t fit properly. It was looser than the one she had worn yesterday. Not a lot looser, her breasts just didn’t sit so high, not anything that anyone else would notice. She took it off and check the size, it was the same as all her other ones. She put it back on and pulled on her clothes. She had begun to wear her flat shoes instead of heels. She was 5’6” and had always liked wearing heels. She liked feeling tall; she used to think of herself as a young tree, slim and straight. She had never weighed more than 130 pounds. Now she slipped her feet into a pair of brown loafers. She felt older.
Every night that week her breasts leaked. She began wearing a bra to bed, stuffed with socks, which she changed in the middle of the night, soaking wet. After twice visiting the hospital, the first and second nights, she stopped. The doctor frowned at her in annoyance the second night and ordered a pregnancy test. It came back negative. He told her to get some sleep and stop worrying. The pit in her belly grew bigger.
When she reached 170 pounds she stopped growing. Her body felt huge. Her breasts, after leaking and shrinking, had grown again with the rest of her and now bulged over the top of her bra. Her belly was soft and she touched it cautiously, like someone she did not know. Her shoulders were broad and her legs were like twin pillars, gleaming. She felt taller when she stood up and she measured herself against the wall. She had grown an inch. Her hair was darker and it grew longer than it had ever grown before. She had stopped going to the hairdresser the same day she had bought the perfume. She couldn’t smell the yeast any more. When she walked down the street she could feel her body moving as she walked. It jiggled. It danced. There was a rhythm to it; she could feel it, step, ba-boom-ba, step, ba-boom-ba.
She felt people looking at her when she ate in public. She could feel their eyes on her and she trained herself to stare back at them. When they looked away first it made her smile.
She wanted to dance. It was a powerful urge, the urge to be loud, to move her feet joyfully and laugh. Almost, but not quite, overpowering. She had never thought before about how wonderful large things were. How wonderful it was to take up space, even when no one wanted you too. Mountains and elephants and giraffes and whales. How grand and free! Even the word sounded grand and free to her. Large. The freedom to be large. Largeness. Largess. She laughed.
At her next yearly checkup, the doctor glanced over her chart.
“So, any more problems with the, er, smell?” he asked.
The woman looked at the doctor. She could have sworn he had flushed when he spoke.
“No.” she said.
“You’ve gained forty pounds,” the doctor said.
“Yes.” the woman said.
“Have you been hungrier? I’ll order a pregnancy test for you. When was your last period?”
“No, thank you. I just finished my period last week. I’m not pregnant.”
“Are you sure?” The doctor stared at her. The woman stared back. She had never looked at the doctor before. His hair was thinning and he had a slight paunch of a belly. He looked down at the chart. She leaned forward.
“I’m sure. There is nothing wrong with me.”
“Hmmm. Well we’ll order a couple tests. We’ll see.”
She lied down. A nurse came in and the doctor examined her breasts. He stopped halfway through and went and looked back at her chart.
“Didn’t you have breast implants?” A thin line of fear ran through the woman’s body.
“Yes?” she started to sit up. The doctor put up his hand. She waited, watching him.
“Hmmm. Let’s run a couple tests. I can’t find them.”
The tests showed nothing. No implants, no infection, no sacs of liquid. Just healthy breast tissue.
The doctor ordered a few more tests and then told the woman that because she was in good health and young, she could have two more implants put in with little or no danger to her health. He did not know where the first two had gone. He suggested that she watch what she ate, and get some exercise. The woman left the doctor’s office.
She walked home. She decided she wasn’t going to go to the hospital for any more tests. She thought she might go to the store and buy some new clothes, something red that would look good with her dark hair. Maybe she would learn how to sew. A slender woman, with large worried eyes, passed, redolent of sweetish perfume. A slight sent of yeast wafted after her, cutting the sweetness. She looked back over her shoulder and watched the slight woman scurrying down the sidewalk, her shoulders hunched over, and her head down. She turned back, threw her arms out wide as if embracing the sky and laughed.