The girl’s grandmother lived in a nice house in the country. She collected retro coasters, magnets, napkins, and dish towels with smiling 1950s housewives printed on them. The housewives were in the middle of cooking dinner, saying ironic things such as:
At least I didn’t burn the wine.
By eight, the girl was already a big girl, taller and broader than her eleven-year-old sister. At the time, she was proud of this: she was built better for running and climbing, that was what her mother always said. Her grandmother, though, poked her in the sides and fed her the smaller portion of mac n’ cheese.
My secret ingredient? Xanax.
The girl’s sister got along better with their grandmother. The girl’s sister would tuck her bird legs beneath her body and nap on their grandmother, who read quietly, for hours.
Hopes and dreams would only distract me from making all these casseroles.
Meanwhile, the girl went into the woods, collecting insects and foraging mushrooms. Before she came back in, her mother would hose off her body like a dog's so she wouldn’t smear mud on her grandmother’s linens.
Oops! I dropped my brain in the aspic mold.
A few years later, when the girl began to grow breasts and hips, she decided to be thin.
This is how she did it: she watched the women around her and told herself to eat like they did. If she was really feeling a challenge, she ate even less.
A woman’s place is in the kitchen, surrounded by sharp metal objects.
The girl got into the habit of eating quickly standing up in the kitchen while her grandmother was in a different room. She tried to ignore the ice cream, cake, and pastries. She ate her grandmother’s little fake things: dairy-free yogurt, gluten-free crackers, sugar-free soda.
Her mother caught her eating in the bathroom once and shook her head. “Don’t let her get to you,” she said.
If by happy, you mean trapped with no means of escape, then yes, I’m happy.
The girl got older and went to college. There, she lost weight like crazy. One day, she fainted in class. Her friend took her to the hospital. She had to stay for a couple days.
Eventually, the girl dropped out of school and moved back home. She spent her days walking to her parents’ fridge and drinking protein shakes and eating apples and popcorn, then walking back to her bed. She ran, before she lost her running privileges. She looked at herself in the same full-length mirror she had looked in when she was eight years old. She was turning twenty-three.
That’s okay: I didn’t want a real life anyway.
The girl never spoke with her grandmother about what happened, but she guessed that her grandmother knew, because she began telling the girl she loved her. “I love you,” like that, instead of her usual “Miss you!” or “Sending love!”
“It’s funny,” her mother replied when the girl pointed this out. “I have noticed her saying it lately. She never used to before.”
“Not even when you were a kid?”
“No,” her mother said. “She does, though. She just was raised in a different time.”
Rose Jean Bostwick is a lesbian writer and social media manager living in Montreal, Quebec. She attended McGill University, where she received an Honours BA in English Literature & Political Science and served as Executive Editor of the Bull & Bear Magazine. Rose is the author of one short fiction chapbook, And They Were Roommates (2022), published by Bottlecap Press, and has works in or forthcoming in Wrongdoing Magazine, Catatonic Daughters, Pink Plastic House, Sinister Wisdom (in the Common Lives / Lesbian Lives anthology), and many more. She tweets @softboiledbabe and posts on Instagram @rosej3an and @portraitoftheoslo (on behalf of her kitten).