I Am NOT!

Part One

Fat

My first day of third grade, in the cherry jumpsuit I never wore again.

Chapter 1

You Are

My new backpack, stuffed with the entire back-to-school aisle, bounces off my back as I bob in jelly shoes down the hallway with natural ‘tude. My headband has a stream of ribbons flowing in step. I pass the classrooms for the first and second graders. Babies, I think.

I turn a corner that’s angled like the hook of an elbow and pop into third grade. I find my seat, arranged alphabetically by last name, so it doesn’t take long. Excitement fills the air around me—fills me. It’s an excitement of beginnings, of hope, of promise, of big-kid arrival. Third grade was big-kid time. My mom and dad said so. It’s when you get the big-girl college-ruled paper and not the Neapolitan ice cream paper that shows where the big and little letters should start and stop.

It’s when you near the end of your single digits, age-wise. It’s why I got this extra special outfit, this jumpsuit I had fawned over at an overpriced children’s boutique. Typically, my mom and I only window-shopped there. It’s where the rest of my class shops, but we eye price tags and dream. But today was special. She had saved and saved and bought it for me. I feel like a million dollars in it.

The cherries and cherry stems and leaves cover a black background; red ribbon trims the sleeveless arm holes and ankle cuffs, which puff the legs in a balloon silhouette. I popped my hip out with gusto during our morning back-to-school pictures. I’m ready for big-kid world!

In no time, the clock ticks for recess. My peers, people I assume are my friends because we go to school together, bolt to the new playscape. I wait. Sarah is waiting for Linda. Sarah and I are best friends. In second grade, we gave each other those broken heart charms. I was the BE FRI and she was the ST END.

The second hand on the clock ticks loudly, seconds feel like hours, and I want them to hurry so we can play. I wait silently, impatiently, near the doorframe until finally the two brush past me, arms nearly linked. They stop long enough to eyeball me and declare, You can’t play with us. You’re fat. A quick pivot and they’re down the white-painted-brick, fluorescent-lit hallway, through the double doors that lead to the art room and the next set of double doors that lead to the playscape.

Blinded by the brightness of the hallway and the welling of tears, I stand there alone and try to make sense of it all. What just happened? What is fat? Why am I fat? Why is fat so bad? Is it contagious?

Chapter 2

Climbing into Womanhood

It’s time for a bra, my mom said. I’m not sure what indicator my body gave, alerting her the time for the bra had come. All I know is she is very excited and I am horrified. Horrified for two reasons.

First, I’m having flashbacks to when I got separated from her in the bra section of Bell’s Department Store. I relive the moment on loop the entire drive to go find my own bra. I was maybe six, just tall enough for Madonna-inspired pointy cups to hit eye-level at every turn. Turning and turning, I searched for my mom among the racks of pointed polyester, pads, wires, and hooks until she scooped me up. The drama of it probably lasted all but thirty seconds. It felt like forever. Bras are terrifying.

Second, I’m pretty sure I’m the first girl in my grade to be faced with the bra. It’s because I’m fat and they’re not, something no one lets me forget. I know that’s the reason because we learned in our two weeks of sex ed that boobs are basically fat. My boobs are part of my fat and that is why I’m first. Chunky me with the premature boobs. Boobs suck. I mean stink. I’m not supposed to say suck.

We’re greeted by an older saleslady, who looks like a pencil and does not appear to have boobs herself. She leads me back to the dressing room so she can measure me, before rejoining my mom on the floor to scout for an assortment of possibilities. So exciting!

Left alone, I stand in the yellow box of a dressing room, wishing I could disappear. I ignore the first few bras handed over and under the door. I don’t want to undress. I don’t want to accept the bras. But I cannot ignore the growing pile of lovely options forever. I accept my fate and shed my clothing as if it were a protective layer—slowly, sadly, not wanting to bare myself to even myself.

I begin to try on the weird-looking contraptions. They pinch and are dizzying to get on.

Some close in the back, so I figure out you have to put it on inside out and upside down and then turn it and twist it around you like a stubborn hula-hoop, then flip it right side up and crawl your arms through the holes. Then stand and reach in and readjust all your parts.

Or they close in the front, so you slip your arms through the straps like a vest, then bend over to scoop your boobs and side boob fat into the little triangle-shaped cloths, then clasp them together and then stand up and readjust it all. Bras are exhausting.

Either way, vest or hula-hoop, my reflection is unpleasant. I stare at it. Usually, I try not to look but today, right now, I can’t help but look. These things are just there, somehow drawing even more attention to my belly. It’s almost like I have three bellies now. Three little pillows of skin and fat. And when I bend over to do all the adjusting and readjusting and everything dangles…well, it is hideous watching gravity just taking my body for a spin. The song, Do your ears hang low, enters my mind. Only it isn’t my ears hanging and wobbling to and fro. It’s me. All of me. And I’m alone in this. I know I am. I’m the only hanging and wobbling and trying to squeeze their boob things into pieces of fabric strewn together with wires and straps and clasps.

Loneliness, isolation, washes over me like the yellow light of the dingy dressing room stall; the tears fall uncontrollably.

Sweetheart, how’s it going? Do you want to show me anything?

N-n-no. I don’t want them, I tell my mom, choking on my tears.

Are you crying?

Y-y-yes!

Informed I must pick two, a nude and a black, I pick the first of each color I see up off the floor and toss them over the dressing room door before hurriedly hiding myself under my own clothes. As if my own clothes were a safety blanket, an invisibility blanket. They protect me from the world, hide me from it.

Silence fills the car as we drive home. We drive past the hills, which look like up-turned boobs. The wires of the telephone poles are the wires that were poking me. Everywhere I see signs of what my body is becoming, and I hate it. I just want to be like everyone else. A stick, free of squeezable flesh.

Chapter 3

Open Wide

As if the bra wasn’t bad enough, now I have braces. Metal mouth. I’m not the first. Jesse got a retainer and Chad got braces. But they’re popular. I’m now just more of an outcast. I even tried to make my braces cool by picking rubber band colors that matched the Dallas Cowboys…but no one noticed. I don’t even like football.

My orthodontist thought my idea was cool, but he doesn’t count. During my last exam he also said I have a large mouth. Wow, you can open really big. Bet you don’t have any trouble with Big Macs! Ha, ha!

I don’t eat Big Macs. I guess I look like I do. I’m never opening my mouth wide again. I’m going to start smiling with my mouth shut. Lips tight, jaw clenched. It kind of hurts and it gives me a headache sometimes, but it’s better than people thinking I eat a lot because of the size of my mouth. My front teeth are big too. They look like chiclets.

Chapter 4

Unexpected Visitor

Mom! Mommy!

She rushes in, thinking due to the nature of the scream, I’m somehow being mauled by a bear on the second floor of our suburban home. Seeing no bear, she asks, What’s wrong?

I. Am. Bleeding! I woke up like any old school day, only this wasn’t any old school day. There was blood.

She delicately surveys the scene. Rachel, you got your period!

I don’t want my period!

Yes, you do! You’re becoming a woman!

But I don’t want to be a woman. I want to be a kid!

My mom thinks this whole womanhood thing is exciting. To me, it’s more like being stricken with the plague or leprosy. Only fat girls get puberty early. I learned that too in sex ed. More fat, more puberty-starting-hormone-things. All the cool girls in my sixth grade class are still stick thin. They look like models. I look like a muffin. Or an apple. Our shapes are fruits, I’m learning. Except theirs. They don’t look like a fruit, more like a stem of sugar cane.

Day Two of Womanhood

I walk into school armed with tampons. I’m still mourning the loss of childhood but feeling more comfortable, having read the rather overly descriptive instruction pamphlet in the box of tampons my mom gave me. I’m ready, sort of. I go to the bathroom on occasion to check on everything. I don’t want anything to show. I don’t want anyone to know.

Between afternoon classes, I go to the bathroom. I open one of the grey stalls. The entire bathroom is shades of grey. Grey and black against the white of the toilets. Except this time. This time there was red. The toilet bowl was blood red. Written on the side of the stall is, Rachel thinks she got her period and she’s a woman but she’s not. It’s food coloring. She’s lying.

Red. I don’t know how they found out, but Marla and Cassi did. They are two of the more popular girls. They’re the ringleaders. The principal found out they came to school that day armed with red food coloring. I wasn’t the first to see it. Too many saw it before I did. Marla and Cassi got in trouble, but the damage was done. Another mark against me. A scarlet letter, or scarlet toilet bowl.

Chapter 5

B-Rating

Maybe this is the year, I thought. So many thoughts bouncing in my brain as I waited impatiently for my future.

I was good last year! In volleyball and basketball. I was even MVP of my basketball team! I was the lay-up queen. I practiced all the time in the driveway of our new house. My dad helped me too. He showed me how to aim it just off the square of the backboard to get it right in the net, instead of circling and bouncing around and then off the rim.

My coach last year was amazing. I didn’t know coaches could be that nice, or that good at what they do. She made me feel like I could actually do things. Like I belonged there, like I wasn’t out of place or incapable or just taking up space. She even said that if I practiced hard enough, I could play in high