Memoirs, Ink

Tasty

by Lauren Leatherman

My sister comes to visit me in New York when I'm very thin. Erinn is the first in my family to see me at size zero, weighing 103 pounds. Her train gets in late, and we immediately go to dinner at an Italian restaurant near my apartment on Second Avenue. We order underwhelming salads and make a mutual point of avoiding the bread basket. Afterward, we indulge in three ounces of Tasti D-Lite, a frozen dessert that no one outside of New York has ever heard of. It's made from kelp and evaporated skim milk, so reportedly, it's healthy.  My sister and I ignore the toppings - crushed Oreos, sprinkles, Heath Bar bits - and bring our cups of vanilla-flavored kelp back to my apartment, to eat while watching TV.

Erinn licks her spoon, then studies it. "Do you like this stuff?"

"Of course," I say, which may or may not be a lie. These days, Tasti D-Lite is the only dessert I'll eat. I've trained myself to look forward to it, experiencing a Pavlovian response when I walk by the shop on my street. Still, I'll only order a cup on special occasions.

"Oh," she says. "Yeah, me too."

She doesn't, and it's obvious, but I let this untruth go. I'm enjoying her company. When she visits me in my cramped studio apartment, she sleeps on an air mattress in the kitchen. We have to move out the garbage can, the broom, and the dustpan in order to make the mattress fit, and even then, the fit is tight. Whenever she moves the mattress squeals in dissent. Neither one of us sleeps well, but in the morning, we're still up at seven, sipping coffee. I make her an omelet with fat-free cheese and tomatoes and serve it alongside buttered toast. While she eats this feast, I slowly savor a four-ounce container of sugar-free yogurt. For the first time in her life, Erinn doesn't make so much as one snarky comment about what I'm doing. She pretends not to watch me skim the spoon across the surface of the yogurt, lick it from front to back, then repeat the process for a full thirty minutes. Eventually I tell her she can take the first shower, knowing it will give me forty-five minutes of solitude to practice my yoga.

My yoga is not strictly yoga. Rather, it's a customized blend of power yoga-inspired poses, Pilates, and calisthenics, with cardio bursts thrown in for good measure. The goal is maximum calorie burn. I stand in Warrior Two, transition into Triangle, rest in Downward Facing Dog, hold myself in Crow Pose, and then lie down on my mat and do the Hundred, pumping my arms vigorously by my sides. Because I equate hard work with sweat, I jump to my feet and sprint in place for ten minutes. Once my face is sufficiently dewy, I lie back down on the mat, point my toes in the air, and draw small circles, clockwise and counterclockwise, three sets of eight.

My sister listens to me rave about yoga the whole time she's here. It's not until we're seated in the Hard Rock Café, waiting for a salad (mine) and veggie burger (hers) to arrive that she tells me she's had enough. She's hungry, and irritable, and wet. It's pissing rain outside, and we've been knocked around by tourists and their big plastic umbrellas for the last half hour. Why I decided to take Erinn to Times Square, rain or no rain, I'm not sure. 

"But it's so good for you," I say, trying to change her mind. "Not just physically, but mentally. I feel so much more in touch with myself now."

This is unmitigated bullshit. I've heard that yoga should unite mind and body, intimately joining these discrete forces. The thinking side and the feeling side must flow into each other, their boundaries indistinguishable. Fine. I try to make this happen. Practicing yoga half-assed, though - when you don't respect your body quite enough to feed it - is akin to riding a bike without pedals. It's just not going to get you anywhere. I may spout platitudes about physical/mental empowerment, but I wonder how anyone ever achieves it through yoga. I'm nowhere near this state, and I practice my own butchered form every day.

   It seems a great injustice that I'm so detached from my body. I can't sleep without OD'ing on NyQuil and Chardonnay; my mind refuses to settle down. It keeps telling me that I'm cold and hungry. It regards my body with a wary eye: Not looking quite like yourself today.

 I try to silence it, nicely at first. Stop, I say. This is you now.

But my mind is persistent. This is not you. This is not the woman you're supposed to be.

Woman? Please. I'm twenty-three. And shut the fuck up. I'm supposed to be this thin. I wasn't this thin before because I wasn't trying hard enough.

And now I'm trying very hard.

The food comes. I forget we're talking about yoga. My salad is glistening, lettuce and tomatoes and curlicues of purple onion. Erinn has already taken three bites of her burger. I hadn't realized she'd gotten it with cheese. A bright yellow slice of cheese, peeled from a huge block of bright yellow cheese.

"How's your veggie burger?"

"It's good," she says, taking a sip of her diet soda. "Your salad?"

"Delicious."

"Okay. By the way, I have no interest in talking about yoga."

This shocks me enough that I forget her damn burger. But why should I even bother being shocked? Erinn isn't exactly sensitive to my feelings. When I was twelve, she told me I'd look thinner if it weren't for my thighs, which added twenty pounds to my small frame. Panicked, I tried to coax from her that she was kidding: my thighs looked perfectly fine.

She shook her head. "Nope. They're big."

I kicked her in the shin.

By now, I should be accustomed to her tactlessness, but I keep being duped. Our relationship has evolved, despite my occasional fury. We're close, Erinn and me. Last summer, when I graduated from college and spent three months preparing for my move to New York for grad school, she was more or less my only friend in Syracuse. We'd go to movies together on Friday nights, aware that our sister-dates bordered on pathetic. While our friends were leading interesting lives in more desirable locations, we kept each other entertained with jokes about testicles.

Our method of bonding may have been juvenile, but it worked for us. The day my family left me in New York, suddenly responsible for my future, my sister hugged me - unusual for her - and told me I'd be fine. I didn't want her to leave. As far as I was concerned, she could camp out forever in my hot, tiny kitchen. The thought of her leaving me on my own gave me vertigo. I needed her more than I needed my mother, and I had no idea why.

I try, now, to recall my yearning for Erinn, who shows a blatant disregard for everything I deem important. I ball my hands into fists and sit on them.

 "How's your veggie burger?"

"You already asked that."

Yes, I did, but I was only asking to be polite. When someone asks you how you're finding your dish - your remarkably fresh salad, sans dressing - you in turn inquire about theirs. Societies are built on these bland niceties.

"Jesus, Erinn. Fuck off."

I maybe say this. I'm not sure, because I'm consumed by the taste of her burger. I may as well have picked it up off her plate and shoved it into my mouth. I can feel the mealy texture on my tongue, the chopped carrots and broccoli and chickpeas, all ground up in a food processor and shaped into something resembling a patty. My taste buds perk up; saliva flushes my mouth. I cannot control this reaction, and it's embarrassing. This is how a man must feel when he gets a hard-on at the wrong time.

Erinn sighs. "Where do you want to go after this?"

Anywhere but the goddamn Hershey Store.

I shrug. "Wherever."

The rain hasn't let up by the time we leave the restaurant. We stand beneath the marquee and look out onto Seventh Avenue. Cabs streak past us, spraying street water in their wake. This is the least scenic part of the city. I could give a shit about Broadway, despite my nagging sense that I should. And tourists might be impressed by the big, steaming Cup O'Noodles, but I'm not. I'd like to go home and eat a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream. I wrap myself up in this sweet fantasy as we cross the flooded street.

 

Lauren Leatherman is a writer living in Jersey City, NJ. Originally from Syracuse, NY, she received her MFA in fiction from New York University and is the author of the chapbook How To Lose It (Hamilton College, 2005). Most recently, her short story "Summer before Junior High" was a winner in the 2010 Women in Writing Flash Fiction Competition. She was also shortlisted for the Best New American Voices series. A former instructor at NYU, Lauren now works as a copywriter for the health and beauty sector. She is currently working on a novel about a once-famous indie artist who fakes her death to revive her career.