The Fat Club Copyright © 2009 Julie Sea-Borne

There are three of us.  Me, Jan and Mo, all new girls.
We watch the easy familiarity of the others,
Those who joined in the usual post Christmas rush.
During the fatly depressing month of January,
When resolutions have been decisively made,
And, just as decisively, broken.
Now, we sit, in a row, in a cheerless church hall,
On a cold, wet night in March.
Three silent, uncertain newcomers,
We eye each other, wondering, assessing,
Before Mo breaks the ice, names are exchanged and we share,
Reasons … excuses … hopes and expectations.

Mine is a sudden realisation what months of comfort eating,
Binging to forget the pain of a nowhere marriage,
Have done to a once slender frame.
Now I want to reclaim, rediscover, reaffirm, my own existence.
Jan wants to lose weight for her daughter’s wedding in June.
She’s already bought the suit, she explains, tone breathless,
In a size too small, deliberately so.
She will … must … drop at least a dress size, if not two, or else …
The else is left hanging, her fear of failure a palpable thing.
And as for Mo, well, she’s there to lose her baby fat.
Many weeks go by, before I learn her youngest has just turned 21.
Baby fat, come of age.

We meet, each and every Tuesday, come rain or shine.
To trade our successes and our failures.
To encourage, congratulate, commiserate.
Jan loses steadily, safely.  A comfortable two pounds a week.
Plodding and predictable, her smug satisfaction growing session by session.
I lose sporadically and unpredictably, a miserly pound one week,
Then an awe inspiring seven the next.
Recently acquired, my bulk seems to dissipate almost as quickly as it came.
But then, as the others frequently remind me, I am the lucky one.
The young one, the single one, the one who can fill her fridge,
With Perrier, smoked salmon and salad, can have empty cupboards.
The one with no husband to complain, or children to moan.

Mo treads water, lose a pound, gain two, her shiny cheeks crinkling
At each disappointment, inviting us to join in her self-ridiculing.
And we do, for she is our group clown, our court jester, and so, we laugh.
Once, face in deadly earnest, she claims to be anorexic.
And we gaze, dumb struck, at bones buried beneath layers of flesh,
Rippling, rolling mountains of body, bulging through clothes,
Spilling over shoes, tightening under a wedding ring,
Until it had to be cut off by the doctor, from a finger oozing with pain.
Gently, the leader asks the question we are all thinking,
And Mo blinks innocently.  Because, she explains,
Every time I look in the mirror, I see a fat woman.
The room explodes, the class clown has once again entertained.

Jan’s daughter gets married.  She wears her suit with pride.
I achieve my goal.  Weight lost and more beside.
Gradually, life becomes busy, crammed with the pursuits of the
Very thin, the very young, the very single.  I stop going.
Years pass; the fat club is relegated to dim and shady recesses of memory.
Something to be - if not ashamed of - at least, silent about.
Then, quite unexpectedly, I bump into Jan.
Buying treats for her grandchildren.  She displays the obligatory photos,
To which I make all the right noises, before asking, innocently,
If she has seen anything lately of Mo, and, at once, the glow fades.
Her expression becomes sombre, her hand clutches at my arm.
Didn’t I know? She asks.  Hadn’t I heard?

She tells me a tale of a late night call to the ambulance,
Of frantic attempts, of stomach pumps and medical intervention,
All to no avail.  Mo, class clown, group jester.
In reality, so desperate, so unhappy that life became too much,
Too hard, too difficult to endure any longer.
Guilt, rank and cloying, stains my throat.
A guilt that still lingers, recognising that I should have,
Could have, would have, noticed her need, her pain,
If only I’d not been too young, too ignorant, too selfish.
The concern I felt too little and too late.