For years she worked two jobs to get her son through college. True, the kid could have taken out loans and worked more but why should he? As she pointed out, it was eight bucks an hour for him versus twenty-four bucks for her. So it made more sense for her to work two jobs, right?
Then he graduated. Had a good job of his own. She cut back to one job and filled all the extra time with food.
In a couple of years she was fat. No doubt about it. Getting fatter every week. She'd developed a habit. Long hours of TV and frozen dinners followed up by frozen dessert. She'd have her first dinner around six while she watched the news then around ten she'd repeat the process. She always made a Starbucks stop in the morning - a latte and a scone or two. Then there might be doughnuts at work and maybe a cheeseburger and fries for lunch and a candy bar or two in the afternoon.
No one said anything. They were too polite - at least to her face. She knew what she looked like. Awful. But she couldn't stop herself. She had no other vices.
When it got hard to breathe, she went to a doctor.
``You know what a pound of butter looks like?'' he asked, ``Multiply that by a hundred. There's a hundred pounds of extra fat on you. It's killing you. Crushing your lungs.''
She kept thinking about the hundred pounds of yellow fat that swaddled her. She dreamed about it. She imagined herself being unravelled - the fat being wound off her in long, narrow strips. A hundred pounds of it. How much soap would that make? How many calories that could have fed the hungry?
She knew she couldn't diet so she started to walk. At first just around the block. Then a couple of miles, then ten. She cut back on work again, then she took a leave of absence so she could walk all day every day. Sometimes she ran. No time to eat. She never looked at her body. Never weighed herself. She just thought about a hundred pounds of yellow fat twining about her body, infiltrating every organ (her brain?).
One day a blizzard made it impossible for her to go outside. She took off her clothes and looked at her naked self. Pretty horrible. Then she weighed herself. Seventy pounds of fat were gone. The house was very quiet. She turned on the TV and stretched out on the couch.
Something to eat would be good...she got up and went to the kitchen.