chapter 3

And the thought is made, and the path is set. WIth an immense sigh, she steels her soul in the forge of her mind and reaches forwards over the table. Seizing the discarded saucer, she picks up the spoon and continues eating.

She finds it is not what she expected. The uncertainty remains, but something about her decision has cleansed her of rogue thoughts, at least for the moment. Something about what she is doing seems, how to put it... right. As she places spoonfuls of cake upon her tongue, she finds no words available to sketch how clean her actions feel. How unconstrained and free. Like it is really her doing this.

Is this how Charlene would feel? Or is it only a heat of the moment sort of thing, fueled by the dopamine of the food? As Melissa swallows the last crumbs of cake, she finds the ghost of her tongue lagging behind in the ecstasy of sweetness. So if this is what it is like, she has a duty to attend to.

Leaving the scoured saucer aside, she returns to the library and starts to type again. But she stops herself. She needs to hide away because of shame no longer. Even if she did feel it, it would be all the more reason to be among the throng again, trapped in the public eye, stood upon the pedestal for viewing in whatever state she was in. Particularly Charlene's.

Ascending the flights of steps again, they represent to her a second challenge now; the first, every step a word or sentence describing Charlene's life, and the second a new struggle. By the fourth flight of stairs she feels slightly winded, and there is a pain in her gut. Standing once more at the upper flight, she looks upon the crowded scene and pants a little.

Bag over one shoulder, she sees her old table is taken, so she finds another by a wall where the stray steam of the chinese kitchen is trapped and bottled up. As she sits down, her nostrils flare at all the smells.

The pain persists - duller than a stitch, sharper than hunger. Was the food bad? But it was only cake.

Looking behind her, she sees the busy Asian chefs taking orders and moving back and forth and calling out to each other. The steam billows about. While she waits for her laptop to start up again, she slides in line, and in short time, orders rice with a double topping of tofu and teriyaki chicken.

At her table again, she pushes her laptop forward to make room for her meal and wonders what the hell is wrong with her. The fact she is doing this to empathize with Charlene is not enough to demolish the irony she feels. She hunches down and starts to eat anyway.

The ache clenches her bowels again, with a shortness of breath. And then, like the moment someone points out to you that you're breathing without knowing it, she realizes she's been holding her stomach in this whole time. Before letting go, she second guesses herself. People are in front of her one table away, and two to the side, and souls young and old are flowing in and out in groups or singles. A girl nearby has direct line of sight with her. But Melissa must empathize with Charlene. Charlene would suck in. No, that is Melissa defending herself again. Before she can spin another persuasive self-justification, she sets herself against the grain of her instinct.
She stops again. What will she look like? She is calm once again as she remembers her sweater might mask something of her bloatedness. Yet again, she is pulled to another thought; the point of this is to understand how Charlene feels. How public humiliation feels.

Anxiety caresses her soul, then agitation slowly takes over. Vexation bats it aside, and finally she lets that final thought decide for her.
Biting her lip and straightening her back, she takes the bottom of her sweater and eases it up over her breasts and off her head, revealing her white shirt beneath. She pulls her arms out of the sleeves, then reaches up to straighten her ponytail back. Picking up her plastic fork and knife, she hunches over the plate and resumes eating.

Licking a stray grain of rice off her lips, the dull ache throbs again, and she remembers what she planned to do. She leans back and sees how far she's been holding in her stomach. The overspill of her hips is visible, yet her underbelly is all but retracted behind the curtain of fabric. And her shirt has failed to cover her whole waist, a thin strip of flesh left exposed just above her waistband.

'I can't do it anymore', she mutters after swallowing one more bite. She swears she can feel a previously swallowed lump settle into her stomach that very moment.

Melissa finally lets go.

Against the limp fabric of her white shirt, a roundness takes shape, bringing with it the faint imprint of a navel. The curve presses forth, forcing the bottom of her shirt to ascend.

Someone at a table stares her way. When Melissa notices them, they act as if they didn't see, but she knows what they saw. Her arm jerks upwards to tug her shirt down, but she is quicker than her reflexes this time. She forces her hand back to the fork and strains the food into her mouth under the weight of someone's gaze she can feel out the corner of her eye. Her other arm goes to cover herself up, but she has to stop that one too. People coming in and out the sliding doors nearby seem too busy to notice, but she feels the wind on her stomach every time the breeze is let in.

Just as she's finishing the last portions of her meal, being eaten at the strangest time of day, two students take the table just across on her left which had been free until now. One is sitting facing away from her, but the other has direct diagonal view of the way she is. Then they notice her the first time, taking a double glance as if to confirm to themselves the out-of-placeness of the way she looks. From then on, as the two friends sit there and talk, Melissa senses the student repeatedly staring at her.

When she is finished with her meal, she packs her laptop into her bag, zipps it up, pushes her plate to the side, stands up awkwardly, and leaves with her eyes downcast and averted from everyone. As she walks, she feels her belly bobbing, and she can feel as well the wandering stares she picks up. Wondering what the hell she's done, legs made weak by either too much food, or self hatred, she sticks to the walls where she'll only be seen from one side. It is too much. She tries to suck in, but there is too much heavy food inside her, and it gives her agony.

Before she can leave, she remembers she has to refill her allowance on her transport card. With nothing to cover her embarrassment, she thinks she feels someone's eyes on her, she sucks in harder. But she cannot sustain the poise for long, and eventually has to give it up while waiting in line, and the awful gasp she makes as she relieves herself makes someone beside her look. Their eyes drop down to her white-shirt bloated stomach. She seems 15 weeks pregnant.
Too aware of their gaze, she angles herself away subtly and steps forward. Still, she knows they are looking.

On the bus, she experiences perhaps the most humiliation she has ever known. The idea was to get a seat at the back of the bus in the corner, and be hidden from view.

Waiting in line for ten minutes with people walking all around her was bad enough, but as soon a she steps on board, a panic strikes her deep in the gut; this is one of the newer busses. They are equipped with normal, forward-facing seats, like every other, apart from two at the front, which for some reason face backwards. The bus is already full. The only seat available is backwards-facing. All manner of eyes watch her.

Swiping her commute card at the receiver, she looks at the floor and shuffles forward. The seat is to her left. There is old green gum stuck to the railing. She steps up to the seat and slides in, her stomach rolling over the waistband.

The bus ride seems longer than usual. She stares out the window and tries to neither scream, nor whimper. The roads are mostly rough, uneven and old. With every bump, her body jumps up against the back of the seat, the back of her shirt hitching further and further up until they hit a particularly deep bump, when all the built-up tension flings the hem of her shirt up the curve of her paunch, and eventually over her navel entirely. Without fabric to hug it, she feels the layer of fat on her stomach agitate. She can tell all eyes are on her.

Repeatedly, she goes to tug her shirt down, or cross her arms over her stomach, but somehow the rules of her game override shame-driven instincts over and again like some holy power. If she is humiliated, then it is what she needs to be. With all eyes on her.

Walking home from the bus stop, she treads with light steps so her stomach will not jolt about.