My wild grace and I shift on my right hip. We perch there and tilt towards the airplane window, considering the possibility that I have swallowed an anvil in my daydream. Camera light on my cheeks, red liner sealing thickly my precisely drawn lips, I am sure of it. A rust-encrusted, black-barnacled anvil. And now that it has glubbed its way down my digestive tract, sliding to the seasick rhythm of my peristalsis, it sits, I’m sure, perched in my stomach, dangerously close to my womb. I run my tongue lightly over my teeth to clear away any nasty fuchsia smudges, angle my jaw and smile for the cameras.
I say this to no one, but: the Atlantic sky is looking thick and frothy, all sun and cloud, like banana pudding and lemon meringue. It compels me to dive in, reckless and open-mouthed, to swallow the air until I am full almost to bursting and raining myself. I am reminded of the time in the fourth grade when I ate the class gerbil. This, of course, was back when I was a large American civilian, and a carnivore.
Mr. Weiss, the nice baldheaded teacher, had charged me with pet duty for the afternoon. I had put up quite a dynamic protest, I remember, stomping my feet on the soft green carpet and sending him my sharpest look of malevolence, all to no avail. But I didn’t eat Galileo out of spite. I did hate him for his alien grunts, which interrupted my dramatic readings in English class—a star on the rise, I was!—and for the cedar-and-feces funk he emitted, so offensive and impolite. Anyone who had cared to spend two minutes’ thought on the matter could easily have deduced that I would never have intended to put the nasty rodent into my mouth, and that, in fact, I would sooner have taken a running leap over the George Washington Bridge, or run naked and barefoot through Marcus Garvey Park on Halloween night. But, of course, nobody thought about that. The fat girl ate the gerbil. It was quite a laugh.
The school called my mother, and she arrived more promptly than she had arrived for anything, ever. When I opened the door to the main office where I was to meet her, I saw Mr. Weiss shaking her hand gravely. She muttered long apologies through cascades of mascaraed tears, never bothering to ask me if, after having ingested an entire gerbil, I might need a glass of water or an x-ray. I was whisked onto the A train without so much as a word, and she succeeded in saying absolutely nothing to me until the following night before dinner, when, because my protruding stomach blocked the handle of the cabinet door, she was forced to ask me either to move or to pass her the cayenne pepper for her latest tabloid diet soup. Once this line of communiqué was reopened, I was subject to epics about the embarrassment she felt when her secretary (her secretary!) handed her the yellow message log paper stating that her only daughter had eaten the class pet. I was made to recall that day as the day my mother gave up on ever having grandkids, for what decent black man would marry a girl who would eat a gerbil? What assurance could he have that I would not eat the children and the microwave, too? I understand now, of course, that even my mother could not have known the heights of beauty and fame that I, then an unkempt, sloppy-figured Harlem girl, would one day reach. Still, the memory is painful, all the same.
I look away from the airplane window and notice a pregnant lady with a blonde pig-tail sitting in the aisle seat across from me. She looks at me with a knowing eye, and any loitering doubts vanish. She sees it: just as some potent of human life grows in her pale, gourd-like belly, so in me grows a huge and terrible blend of mold and rust. But all is well, I tell myself, channeling the wisdom of the Mantra-of-the-Month club I’ve subscribed to, and my self-help books-on-tape. Even if this pregnant girl has caught my indiscrete bout of consumption, I am the center of my universe. And who, really, is she?
After a few months I stopped thinking about my gerbil incident, and was reminded of it only by my mother’s sporadic bouts of shame, and by the little white teeth that appeared in the toilet bowl well into the fifth grade. I told no one about the fantastic daydream that had sent my mind into ether that afternoon: I was on an airplane, flying first class, dressed as African royalty. Africa! Africa, of the capital A and the small a, and all the delicious unknown in between. My robes were heavenly, intricately swirled with Benin gold and deep purple, and there were large men and a frenzied air of camera flash around me. The sky was creamy yellow with thick, frothy clouds, several of which looked delicious. I remember now the excitement that had begun to sweep over me, before I was torn from that daydream by LaSharia Bennett’s shrieks of horror at my fur-fuzzed face and shirt.
Since then, I have eaten many things. Telephone cords, fire hoses, nearly anything you would find lining the ground of Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard. And I have learned, with the help of my dear mother, to eat furtively and cover my tracks. It is amazing what gluttony you can get away with, you know, with just a little tact and creative thinking. Last week, for example, my good friend Patrice, who owns a brownstone in Bed-Stuy, invited me over for a barbecue. As I stood in line for a low-cal veggie burger, I was seized by the desire to hang glide. And then I was hang gliding, grip tight on thick black handlebars, my face and feet lifted and battered by air. It was a fabulous feeling, one that I was truly sad to let go of, and perhaps I would have stayed in that daydream longer, had I not gotten a splinter in my throat from the picket fence I had begun to munch on. I had eaten two long planks and was holding a third in my hand, but the pain of the splinter was so huge that I had to abandon my eating and hang gliding to find some water. Now, Patrice is the type who drinks tap water. And, well, you never know what’s in the water these days, so I refuse to touch the stuff. Anyhow, Patrice didn’t have any bottled water (she doesn’t even own a Brita!), so it was iced tea for me. I knew that it would take at least a gallon to dislodge the wood from my throat and wash it down to a less delicate part of my GI tract, but the iced tea was loaded with sugar (Patrice has never had a weight problem) and I really did not want to ruin my diet, so I followed my grandmother’s advice for swallowed fish bones, soaking a piece of bread in the tea and swallowing it whole. In the end I was happy to have rid myself of the splinter, and while I was disappointed with my behavior (carbs are not on my diet), I was able to pass the whole incident off as a party trick (some clowns eat fire, I eat wood).
Things like that happen all the time, and by now I have learned the tricks of the trade. First, I stay away from all animals. No exceptions. My gerbil incident, and a few other carnivorous episodes shortly after, taught me that fat in one’s mouth really does become fat on the hips, the thighs, the belly. And who needs that? Plus, I can eat so much more of other things, like, for example, paint, which has no calories or teeth. Also, another tip: it is very important to stay in the daydream for as long as possible, preferably until present company has begun to scream or cry, for if you stop at people’s quizzical looks or quiet expressions of concern, you will have eaten practically nothing, and you will miss the best part of the daydream. Finally, you must allow yourself to trust in the empathy and human kindness of your audience. For instance, after my gerbil incident, my mother nearly disowned me. But once I gave animals up in favor of other less fattening, synthetic items, I dropped fifty pounds, and her love for me increased tenfold. Such was the case with Patrice and her guests, too, and now that I am thin and famous I can tell you with certainty that people will tolerate almost any strange behavior as long as you don’t eat too much food.
Still, I am embarrassed at times like these, when I seem to have ingested something so unappealing as an anvil in so public a space as this, and with cameras nearby. Had it been a magazine, an air mask, or even some of the cotton that is peeking coyly from the hole in the seat in front of me (in first class!), it would not be so bad. The pregnant lady would not be staring at me, her blonde eyebrows arched in shock. But I’m absolutely sure now that it was an anvil, because when I press here on my pelvic bone I feel a sharp protrusion. Yes, it was an anvil, and the pregnant girl looks as though she might faint at the sight of me. But no matter, really. I am on my way to Africa where I will be regarded as royalty, and when she sees me on television she will remember me with forgiveness and regret.