CHAPTER 5 ¿Who Will help Sonia?
“Sonia is such a chubba”, said Dany, Rhaya’s middle daughter, “like it was already after twelve, and we were in bed, and she said —I need more ice cream, let’s go downstairs— and I was like ¡no way! You already had one whole pint of cookie dough. I was like LOL” Dany smiled fondly. She could see it. Sonia had a problem with food, but found it endearing nonetheless.
“But its not like anyone can can stop her”, she added, exiting the kitchen, carrying a tall glass of cool lemonade in her hand, ready for bed.
Dany and her two other sisters had just been at Sonia’s for a sleepover. It had become tradition with the cousins, the PJ Homey Party. Sonia would write up a list of items for each of them to contribute, junk food being the main protagonist. Lots of it. But Rhaya never bought more than one item per daughter. A large bag of basic potato chips, nothing fancy. A pint of a very basic flavor of ice cream, such as vanilla or strawberry; once in a while cookies and cream or maybe rocky road. Her daughters needn’t take more, Sonia kept a considerable stash at home. She always charmed her Mom into getting her all kinds of goodies for that specific night: cheddar puffs, assorted gummies, bite size chocolate candies, ice cream, the works.
A couple of PJ Homey Parties had been enough for Rhaya to learn. Sonia couldn’t be trusted around junk food. Dany and Nicole, the youngest daughter, didn’t touch anything edible for more than 24 hours after their first sleepover at Sonia’s. They got sick at the sight of food. The girls weren’t used to gorging. They’d been imbued with a clear idea. Some pleasures had natural limits set for their own good. It was almost a question of charm, good manners, practicing the art of limitation. Not Sonia though, she fully belonged to the age of consumerism, food as entertainment and a coping mechanism for restlessness.
Years before, when the Rhaya’s daughters began kindergarten, she noticed adults insisted on using the allure of candy for every occasion. Her own past had lacked clear limits in that department. Before Loud Thought appeared, she had been free to gorge down cookies and pudding pops to her hearts content, at Grandma Claire’s. Pigging out on junk was seen as normal, a given that came along with summer vacation and being a grandchild. Not her mom or any other adult ever said “That’s enough!” or “You’ll make yourself sick”; “You’ve already eaten your share” or “No eating between meals and dirtying up the kitchen again” or “You’re washing each and every thing you dirty up!”
Laxity had given her a potbelly. Odious lingering baby fat made her insecure. A preteen Rhaya had wanted to look older so bad. She had yearned for defined cheekbones, a sharp jaw, like the more beautiful girls at school, the ones who had that special allure that captured desire.
By the middle of ninth grade she became utterly exhausted. Loud Thought demanded such extreme discipline (clear broths to begin every lunch; zero calorie Jello was the only allowed dessert) she was beyond overwhelm. Also, a fresh infatuation arose at school. A young man of dark hair with a reddish sheen. His framed eyes exuded confidence, when he gazed at the groups of school girls passing by. His hands were undeniably masculine, his dark hair slightly messy, like a poet’s.
It got very difficult to hear Loud Thought’s instructions. Her gut became an emotional disaster zone. The same bland, fatless foods, could not appease anxiety. Her belly seemed to acquire a life of its own. It needed soothing, pampering, reassurance that she could survive unrequited love, because it was very clear. He called to lovely Lory every time she walked by. He has spotted her (and who wouldn’t). Cute lanky, gray eyed Lory, with her hair in a bob.
Rhaya sunk her teeth into vanilla twinkies while doing homework, sugar coated doughnuts, generous scoops of vanilla ice cream drizzled with false chocolate syrup. There was no other way. Her belly could not conceive any more bitterness from greens and other fibrous vegetables. It was enough that he didn’t know of her existence. She needed intensity to explode in her mouth, invade her fully, to the brim. Saltiness collided into sweet; crunch gave into soft and moist; heaviness settled in the emptiness inside. It was the only way not to go crazy, in a world with him in it, and her unrelenting self awareness.
In this lonely place called first love, hours passed slowly. Rhaya fantasized. Him, calling out of the blue. Someone gave him her phone number. He had noticed her, she was special, they should see each other, ¿how about a movie? Then Lory’s long legs cut in, carrying her forth like a model. The bob bounced, glistening with liveliness.
“She’s so lucky. Damnit, I look like a stump beside Lory. ¡And then this!” she clasped a chunk of cheek. “It’s fatter than yesterday, I’m sure of it”. Rhaya told herself.
“Not good, no good bone structure” commented Loud Thought.
“He’s right, of course, I‘m coursed” she pronounced, in the privacy of her bedroom.
Tears rolled down quietly. They did almost every day in those weeks. It took her a while to accept that love was unfair, just as body shapes were. By the time Rhaya was out of Jr. high and off to high school, she was still quite thin, though not as bony as before. She still kept up with aerobics, jazzercise, the new low impact workouts, every Monday and Saturday. Still drank diet soda and canned shakes as meal substitutes.
***
On Christmas of her second year in high school, while visiting Grandma Henrrieta , uncle Art gifted Rhaya with an Italian, hand made journal. He’d just returned from Europe and, as usual, brought with him all sorts of exotic items that had little or no real practical use, but had the old world vibe to them. He gave her mom a Spanish fan she would surely never use, and Grandma Henrietta a couple of Venetian porcelain masks she got all excited about. To his niece Art handed the quaint, leather bound notebook. It’s pages were hand crafted with fibrous artisan paper, made of cotton and recycled vegetable fibers. It had a soft leather belt that wrapped around it to keep it snug.
“Something useful for a change” popped immediately in Rhaya’s head. The thought had a particular pitch to it, almost as if a female voice.
Everyone in the family knew Rhaya scribbled and doodled compulsively, since elementary. Once in a while she came up with interesting little phrases similar to Haikus. All of her school notebooks were filled with with informal sketches outside the margins: atoms retraced many times, ballet dancers, open eyes, improvised mandalas, lounging cats, it just depended on her mood.
“Oh it’s a darling” she said to her uncle, as she ran her fingers over the slightly porous pages, a bit surprised at her wording. Rhaya never used the word darling, but it wasn’t unusual for words and expressions to stick. She read plenty of old-fashioned, platonic romance.
A whole winter month lay ahead at Henrrieta’s house, in the dusty border town of Carbonera, in the oldest part of down town. Outside, winter grew bleak. Grayish clouds loomed over the washed out pink Santa Rosita Hotel, and the crumbling walls of homes, more than half a century old. Rhaya found some relief in a paperback novel she found in grandma’s bureau, which turned out to be not bad at all, even if the cover did seem silly. She sat with a helping of Henrrieta’s amazing anise corn cookies, confected with real lard.
“Thank God she makes huge batches” she thought and took a bite of the thick, dense cookie, shaped like a flower. It disintegrated in her mouth like it should. She tasted the toasted corn meal infused with anise and clover.
Heavy relatives paid regular visits surrounding the Christmas season. Their equally huge appetites could not be contained. Henrietta confected her famous Mexican buñuelos, sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon. She worked for days, and made enough to fill four large cardboard boxes. She stowed them on top of the fridge to feed relatives and friends. Rhaya’s huge uncles and aunts from her Dad’s side trooped in and out of the house, all day long. The walls shook with their weighty footsteps, raucous laughter, impetuous hugs. Guests dug into crystal bowls filled with creamy coconut and pecan custards laid in the fridge. The kitchen heaved with the aroma of reheated tamales.
“I’m so far-gone, I’ll have to wait after vacations, then I’ll get back on track. This time it’ll be perfect” Rhaya assured herself. She wished she could reboot her purpose of being thin and graceful, but couldn’t muster the will power. Something was pulling her away. A part of her was oddly fascinated by letting herself be. It wasn’t clear, but she so wanted to enjoy the moment of being almost trapped, stuck in the old house, roaming around rooms, waiting for a lover to come back, like the melancholic protagonist in her book.
December went by. She read on Grandmas old world sofa, by the French lamp, eating corn cookies. Once in a while Rhaya stopped and stared at the leather bound journal she now took with her, every time she moved from one room to another. A thought wanted to come, a decision about that special notebook. A voice.
“I should write something on it, soon”.