The Woman My Grandmother Loved.

Chapter Eight

"Did my heart love till now?
Forswear it, sight!
I ne'er saw true beauty till this night."

William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet.

Becky was hungry. It was a Tuesday afternoon at work and there were just minutes to lunch. She taps impatiently at the table, a frown forming over her pretty face as she does so. She wonders if she'll be meeting Anita today. Anita had been talking about some interview for the entire week and Becky hopes that it isn't today. The thought of Anita distracts her only for a little while until the angry rumbling in her tummy takes over. She remembers looking at herself in the mirror the morning. Her stomach wasn't puffy and bloated the way it had been last week and as much as Becky hated to admit it, she loved how the flatness of her tummy made her feel. The way the waistband of her pants sat a little loose and she could put two fingers in it without stretching the fabric.

Her stomach grumbles again and Becky is beginning to feel slightly nauseated; the hunger now causing the acid in her stomach to begin digesting the lining. This isn't fair, she thinks. It isn't fair how some people can simply stuff themselves without having to worry about gaining an inch and here and one there. Becky remembers the last time she had a meal. It was Monday's breakfast. She had been fasting for more than a day now and she cannot help but feel slightly proud of herself.

It feels like an accomplishment, the pain, the twisting in her stomach; all of it. Beauty comes at a price and unaware of it, Becky has begun to pay for it.

It hadn't always been that way. Becky hadn't always been so concerned about what she looked like. She had had the little airs and fancies that every young girl did but it had never weighed so heavily on her before. Every little ounce didn't sit so heavily on her conscience and she hadn't always worried what the extra flab on her stomach looked like in a dress. Becky was the younger child with an older brother who she looked up to. She had always grown climbing the trees in the courtyard in her older brother's hand-me-downs. The two of them had gone by a rule- anything you can do; I can do better. And in a way she had. Becky's mother had passed away when Becky was fourteen and her father was very proud of the woman that he had raised her to be.

A soft-spoken man, he had raised her to be brave and, in a world, where women were looked down at more often than not; he had raised her to be capable enough to look people in the eye and answer when she had to. Becky's father had taught her to put intelligence before what she resembled; telling her that true class stems from a river of deep knowledge.

But it wasn't always easy and, in a house with two men, it was easy to forget that. It wasn't easy growing up as the only girl in the house because when Maureen pulled her braids and called her a buck-toothed simpleton, Becky was simply expected to laugh it off. She was told to brush it off or chase Maureen with a wallop if her older brother was to be listened to. They didn't understand that this wasn't how the world of adolescent girls worked; that there was shrewd politics involved and if she didn't pay heed, she would be left feeling like an outsider forever.

It didn't help when during a birthday party, Colin one of the dashing boys in her class wanted to feel her up and she didn't like it. It wasn't so much as being scared of what Colin did; she wanted to like what he did. Hadn't Mitch done the same to Luna last week? Wasn't she twirling her hair and giggling about how much she had liked it? But why was it that when Colin inched closer and she could smell his neck that all she wanted to do was push him away? She hadn't, though. She hadn't pushed him away. She had let him kiss her and feeling horrible at the relief she felt every time he dropped her at her door.

Colin had been sweet; there was nothing wrong with him. At sixteen; this was considered normal boyfriend behaviour and she still lived in a world where normal was defined by others. If she had been born half a decade later, she would be told that she was allowed to not like it. That she didn't have to compromise who she was in order to fit into a man's world. But then, it was more of a man's world and he exuded his dominance without the slightest regard for anybody else.