Tipping the Scales

Tipping the Scales, Chapter 01

Odelia laid the stick flat on the toilet tank and checked her watch.

How could she possibly have gotten pregnant? She hadn't been on so much as a dinner date for years... But she also couldn't be entering menopause. Not yet, not before turning thirty.

The only alternative diagnosis she could think of that might explain a missed period was cancer.

Cancer... The word held less terror for her than it should have. If given the choice between a pregnancy or a malignancy, she might welcome the tumor.

She watched the second hand on her watch tick around, thinking five minutes, just five minutes, thirty-seconds longer than a perfectly soft-boiled egg... Five minutes had never felt so long.

What would she do with a baby?

Without a college degree, she'd never be able to get a good job, the kind that paid enough to support a family, and financial responsibility was hardly the only parental obligation she was unequipped to assume. While it was tempting to believe no child of her own could possibly be as obnoxious as her niece and nephew, she knew better than to let herself believe it. If she couldn't control her own life, she couldn't hope to exert much over a kid's.

As the second hand rounded the 'twelve' for its final lap, Odelia jumped. There it was again—that tickling sensation deep within her. A twisting, as if something considerably more substantial than 'butterflies,' had shifted position.

With a trembling hand, she picked up the slender plastic rod and raised it to eye level.

A single line had appeared: a minus sign.

Not a fetus quickening, but only butterflies, only butterflies all along, she told herself, pushing back and tamping down the nagging little voice in the back of her mind that kept repeating you know what you felt.

A minus sign meant she definitely wasn't pregnant. It said so right on the box.

#

The family had left their usual mess at the breakfast table. Crumbs and splatters adorned all four of their place settings, as well as the surrounding floor.

Her brother, Jackson, never tired of sneering at Odelia for the way she ate, but at least she did so carefully and always with the aid of silverware. That was more than anybody else in the family could boast, yet according to him, she was the pig.

It was true that she was an overeater. But if he didn't nag, taunt, and humiliate her every chance he got, maybe she wouldn't have to turn to food for comfort. Not that eating was providing much comfort for her these days... Lately, no matter how much she ate, she remained frustratingly hungry.

Even more frustrating, she had no idea why.

The test proved she wasn't pregnant, and while cancer might explain her ravenous appetite and her scanty and erratic menstruation, it wouldn't account for the weight gain. Cancer victims might become swollen, but Odelia was not retaining water.  Her joints didn't ache and her movements were fluid, and while some of her clothing fit like sausage casings, her skin didn't. It seemed to be growing at the same high speed as the rest of her, and unusually effortlessly, unmarred by so much as a single new stretch mark.

Maybe the root of her problems was psychological... Depression, perhaps? That could wreak changes in a person's metabolism, and God knew she had plenty of reasons to feel depressed. Her life was going nowhere, and for all she could do about it, she might as well have been an insect embedded in amber.