Skinny Matilda's Arc

Chapter 1 of 6

Six months ago Matilda weighed two hundred and ninety pounds. Then the illness came and took two hundred of them. Now she is mostly skin and bones, under a hundred pounds, with short pink hair and a bikini she wears everywhere because the old clothes hang off her like sails. She is back at the country grocery store for peaches. She does not remember why she wanted peaches the first time, the time a stranger laughed at her by the fruit. She only remembers the laugh. Since then she counts every look. Today she is trying not to count, and trying not to care, and trying to lose the last of a weight that is already gone from her body but not from her head. The store sits low under a tin roof, red and cream paint peeling on the porch boards. Inside, the peach display rises in three wooden tiers near the door, each crate heaped with fruit so ripe she can smell it from the register. She is picking out a soft one when a man steps around the stand holding a bundle of red roses wrapped in brown paper. It is Timothy. In high school Timothy walked past her in the hall like she was furniture. Once he told a friend, loud enough for her to hear, that he would rather eat glass. He is smiling at her now like none of that happened. "Matilda," he says. "Wow. You look incredible." He pushes the roses toward her chest. He says he has been thinking about her. He says he always thought she was interesting. He asks if she wants dinner Friday, then Saturday, then any night she picks. When she does not answer he lowers his voice and says he can tell she has worked hard, that she should be proud, that a girl like her now could have anyone. He waits for her to thank him. She watches his eyes move down her ribs and back up. She counts the look. One. She had promised herself she would not count today, but she counts it anyway, because it is the same look the stranger had before the laugh, only dressed up nicer. Matilda takes the roses. She sets them on top of the peaches, stems up, blossoms down in the fruit. "I didn't lose it," she says. "I got sick. I threw it up for four months in a hospital bed. You wanted nothing to do with me at two-ninety. You can want nothing to do with me now." She picks one peach, pays for it at the counter, and walks out past him. On the porch she stops. Her hands are shaking. The peach is warm. She has said the true thing out loud, and the looks are still coming, and she does not know yet how to stop counting them.