chapter 5

When I left the bathroom, I began walking down the corridor towards the hall at just the right time to bump into the very person I had been studying as she came around the opposite corner. We both halted before crashing into each other, and she looked up to meet my eyes as she lowered the chocolate bar she had just put in her mouth. She’d arrived in a light floral dress kept together at the upper back by a knotted strap and a thin green belt over the top. Her hair was done in a bun just above the back of her head. Giving a wordless apology, said entirely with her eyes, as she made a ducking motion to scoot past me and walked ahead of me into the hall, finishing the last of the chocolate bar before pushing the doors open. I noticed the height in her backside and thought I could see it wobbling faintly through the dress. I tried not to judge her or evaluate her body, but I couldn’t help it, I couldn’t help but think that her lower end had grown since I last saw her.

I followed her out, witheringly self-conscious that I probably looked suspicious entering after her, like that, and crossed the floor straight as a ruler to sit down at my easel. I tried to remain patient. But I couldn’t help myself. I turned a little to watch.

Shoving the empty chocolate wrapper into her bag hanging from a hook, she re-tied her hair into a ponytail, then put a hand behind her back, and pulled the strap from its knot, opening the back of the dress, then touching her neck to unclasp the collar. In one swoop, the dress slipped off her shoulders and fell down her body to pool around her feet. Her belly was shockingly round. Her breasts looked swollen, hanging to the side gently, full nipples pointing gracefully down and out above the swell of her stomach, her soft, deepened navel flanked by parentheses of stretch marks indicating the unexpected growth of her midsection, all of them bouncing around in little circular movements as she made her way barefoot across the floorboards towards us. The upper sides of her thighs and hips wobbled as she walked over and passed through the ring of easels, up to the pedestal, where she awkwardly leaned up against it. Using her hand to support herself, she lowered herself onto the edge, then swivelled around on her behind, which thickened where she sat. With a final little jolt to settle into place, her belly spilled onto her lap, extremely round yet somehow pliant, jiggling like a water balloon as she shuffled. It was like she’d taken three, four weeks of the rate she was previously putting on weight, and squeezed it all into a fortnight. The sphere of her belly tried and failed to fold as she sucked in deep into her chest, sitting up and forcing her back to straighten – but as she released her muscles, she slouched, and her belly immediately filled out again. And without anything further than a clearing of her throat, she resumed the familiar, serene pose, fixed her gaze on the floor, and became still as a flower on a windless day.

By the time the session (albeit extended by thirty minutes) was over, and thus the end of the course as a whole had arrived – I had nothing more to show for the journey than a mere outline of our model, riddled with erasure lines, and a little bit of shading that I’d managed to fit in at the end before the final minute was announced. Upon reflecting on my scrappy piece, I managed to perform a mental U-turn. The longer I looked at it, the more I grew fond of its hurried, repetitive inaccuracies. It looked rather, dare I say it, Picasso… The multiple erasure lines indicated a flow of movement outwards. Had this been intentional, I ought to have actually been proud of it. Alas, I was simply relieved, and by proxy happy, that the giant accident on my easel had been the right mistake one to make. Thankfully we weren’t expected to submit our pieces, since this wasn’t a curriculum-based class. So I simply packed up my things, slid my piece into a large protective nylon folder with strictly abided-by humility, and made my way out. I thanked the coordinator by popping my head into her office. The model had already left her pedestal and was no longer in sight, so disappointingly I could not find her to give proper, personal thanks.

I’ll admit, it left me a little disheartened. She had been a model in more than one way, I suppose. There was a strange, alien, almost untrustworthy feeling of lightness in me as I made my way down the corridor, and down the stairwell at the end. A feeling I hadn’t felt in a long time. Confidence. Or perhaps it wasn’t confidence at all, but rather a long overdue -absence of self-loathing, which I was mistaking for confidence. If that was the case, I decided as I jogged down the steps, then I was happy to let myself be pleased with it, nonetheless.

Then I saw her. It was to be the last time, or at least the last time that I knew of.

She was coming back the other way. I noticed she didn’t have her handbag with her; she must have forgotten it, and was returning to retrieve it. All she held was a really big burrito wrapped in tin foil. Truly, it must have been as long as my forearm, and all I could think was if that was the sort of food she’d been eating between sessions, then any mystery as to her gain were non-existent. When she saw me coming, she looked up with a passing smile. I stopped, feeling an inexplicable need to say something, and as my staring at her caught her attention, she did a stammer step, an open expression on her face.

I couldn’t work out what to say except “Hey,” with a pause as large as the Pacific Ocean between us.

She smiled. Soft cheeks swelled on either side of her strong angular nose, an incredible light in her eyes that was not there from when I first remember her. Then again, neither was her protruding stomach. Or the fullness of her chest. She was about to say something, then glanced to the side and looked back at me silently, waiting for me to speak instead. I must have looked like I had something to say. But I didn’t. So we just stood there awkwardly giving each other time and space, waiting for the other to speak but never doing so. I looked at her lunch again. She hadn’t taken a bite out of it yet. The longer I stared at it, the worse I felt. I was rake thin. I wasn’t emaciated, but next to her, I felt shrunken, insubstantial, inadequate. She’d been so thin originally. Like me. Where was that now? Gone, buried under the history of her body as it became plumper, week after week. I was suddenly so conscious of the way my stick arms and legs were exposed in short sleeves in contrast to the substantiality of hers. And it was a contrast that did nothing but make me uncomfortable. I must have looked at my arms and legs, because she had this curious look on her face all of a sudden. Like dismay. Or pity. To this day I hope it was pity and not dismay. Whatever it was, she took me lurching off guard by holding out her burrito in offering. I panicked, couldn’t decide what this was, so I just held my palms out in refusal, but she made this insistent expression at me. Then she pressed her chin against her chest as she looked down at her stomach, pushing it out so it looked larger and gave it a slap, the tight wobble it caused taking the fabric of her dress with it. Looking back up, she made a one-sided grimace and shrugged, holding the burrito back out again, practically forcing it into my chest.