There Is a River in Egypt

Chapter 1

“She’s totally in denial,” said Stephanie as she sat back on the sofa, unscrewing her eighteenth Oreo top, “it’s like she has no idea how fat she is.”

“It’s weird, right?” Carrie concurred. “I mean denial is one thing, but to be so out of touch with your body to not even realize how huge you’ve gotten - it’s borderline delusional!”

Having settled into her cousin’s house, Stephanie was making herself at home and taking advantage of the abundant supply of snacks and junk food always available in Carrie’s pantry. The two of them had been sitting around all evening as Carrie listened to Stephanie commiserate about her relationship with her husband. Feeling guilty for not having given her cousin a chance to vent when last they met, she was all too eager to listen and be a shoulder for Stephanie to cry upon.

After hours upon hours of crying and bemoaning the lack of love, intimacy and trust that plagued her marriage, Stephanie had grown tired of listening to herself talk about how miserable she was, and as such chose to turn the focus of the conversation on someone else. The unwitting subject in this instance would be their mutual friend Geena.

“I was just telling Karina earlier,” said Carrie, “that I went over to see Geena not too long ago, and I couldn’t believe how fat she’s gotten.”

“She’s huge!” Stephanie affirmed.

“She could barely walk,” Carrie added. “She was huffing and puffing, her belly all hanging out. A couple of times it looked like she might just topple over.”

“Tell me about it,” Stephanie interjected. “I went out with her last week.”

“You did?” Carrie asked, sounding surprised.

“She asked me to go out with her and her friend Carmen to get some drinks,” said Stephanie. “At that point I was so sick of Harold’s shit, I was like ‘Sure! Anything to get me out of this house!’”

“I hear you,” Carrie said, “I’m just surprised; when I saw her it looked as though she hadn’t left the house in a while.”

“Oh no,” said Stephanie. “She goes out! Anytime Carmen is around all of a sudden Geena thinks she has to act like she’s still twenty one or something.”

“Really?” Carrie scoffed. “Ugh! You couldn’t pay me to live through twenty one again!”

“Get this,” Stephanie said, sitting up suddenly, causing her now very full belly stuffed with Oreo cookies to come flopping out of her shirt and over the waistline of her skin-tight stretch pants, “I go over there to pick her up, and she is wearing this dress that looks like she’s going to come tearing out of it at any moment. It was so tight on her, there wasn’t a crevice or a curve left to the imagination. Her boobs were all hanging out, rolls of flab were coming out of the sides. It was incredible! I told her, ‘Geena, you can’t wear that out!’ and she’s just like, ‘Why not? This is my favorite dress!’”

“I think I know the one you mean,” said Carrie. “Is it that light blue summery-looking one with the little pink flowers on it?”

“Yes, girl!” Stephanie cackled.

“She’s had that dress for years!” Chuckled Carrie. “In fact I think she actually wore that to my twenty-first birthday party!”

“Yes she did!” said Stephanie, now laughing uncontrollably. “I told her, ‘Honey, you are way too big for that dress now. Don’t you have something else you can put on? Something that fits you a little better maybe?’”

“And what did she say?”

“Oh, she was just like ‘Well, maybe I’ve put on a pound or two – but this dress still fits me perfectly.’”

“Oh boy!”



Both girls were boisterously belly laughing almost to the point of tears. Neither one of them held any ill-will toward their friend, but they couldn’t help but think it was funny that Geena seemed to think that she was still young and slender when she was in fact the eldest and fattest amongst all in their circle of friends.

“So we’re out,” Stephanie said, “and these two are pounding drinks like water. They’re getting totally wasted, laughing and dancing around. Of course there are a bunch of guys hanging all over them, thinking they’re gonna make an easy score.”

“So creepy!” Carrie excoriated. “Why can’t a fat girl go out and have a good time without a bunch of creepy guys thinking it’s an invitation for them to come and creep all over us?”

“Oh, honey, we needed creep-repellent that night!” Stephanie joked. “We needed some serious Raid up that joint!”

While she considered her clubbing days behind her, Carrie thought back fondly to the many nights she would spend out with her friends, getting dressed to the nines and rolling around town in her father’s limousine. She had the good fortune of being raised in a family with lots of money, but as most will attest to, money doesn’t always lead to happiness.

“So anyway, these two are drunk as hell,” Stephanie continues, “they’re full of liquor and they’re stumbling and wobbling about. Then after last call, they say that they’re hungry and want to go to the diner.”

“My diner?” Carrie said, referring to the diner owned by her father where she worked as a teen, and still sometimes worked as a manager.

“Not even,” Stephanie replied, “we went to the one down on Hamilton.”

“Eww! Why?”

“Why anything at this point?” Stephanie cackled. “At this point I’m just along for the ride.”

“Their burgers are like hockey-pucks,” Carrie chided, thinking about how superior her family’s diner was to their competitor on Hamilton Boulevard, “and their grits are the worst! They’re like sand floating around in scalding-hot water. Our grits are so much better!”

“Oh, yeah,” Stephanie concurred, “so much better!”

“Nice and creamy, with lots of butter and cheese,” Carrie said, licking her lips as her eyes seemed to glaze over. She got lost in thought for a moment before adding, “Their pies aren’t bad though.”

“Well these two would know,” Stephanie dished, “because they ordered every damn pie they had on the menu!”

“Oh my!”

“I thought I was being bad by ordering two entrees,” Stephanie went on to say. “See, I couldn’t decide if I wanted breakfast or dinner, so I just ordered both.”

“Hey, that’s what I would do,” Carrie affirmed.

“Carmen and Geena were on a rampage though. I have never seen two people eat so much in my life – and that includes those insane pizza parties we used to have back in the day.”

“Those pizza parties were pretty epic,” Carrie said, again losing herself in thought as she looked up at the ceiling and reminisced about the good old days, and the obscene amount of pizza her and her friends used to demolish every weekend.

“I noticed something too,” Stephanie said, suddenly seeming to get very serious as she propped herself up on the sofa and leaned forward, “I feel like Carmen kind of gets off on watching Geena eat.”

“You mean,” Carrie stammered, “you think she’s a feeder?”

“Maybe,” answered Stephanie, “all night she was encouraging Geena to have more and more of everything. ‘Have another drink, have another shot! Come on, you can do it! Have some more fries, have another burger, have some more pie!’”

“Definitely sounds like a feeder,” Carrie concluded. “Do you think they’re like – together?”

“I don’t think so,” said Stephanie as she leaned back on the sofa once again, “I didn’t get that vibe. It just seems like she has a preoccupation with fattening people up or something.”

There was a lull in the conversation at that point. It was late and both Stephanie and Carrie were getting tired. There was something on Carrie’s mind though, something that she hadn’t thought to verbalize until just then, but suddenly she felt compelled to get it off of her chest.

“Do you remember that girl Debbie who used to intern at the radio station?” Carrie asked, referring to a radio station in town that was yet another business venture of her father’s.

“She was the one with the dark curls, right?” Stephanie asked, trying to match the name with a face.

“Yeah,” Carrie said, “you know the last time I went over to Karina’s place she was there, and I kind of got this weird vibe. It was like I had walked in on something.”

“I didn’t even know they knew each other,” Stephanie said as she reached for yet another Oreo.

“Yeah, I mean I knew they were cool,” said Carrie, “but it seems like they’ve gotten really close.”

“How does that make you feel?” Stephanie asked after pausing a moment to lick every last bit of creme off of her fresh Oreo cookie.

“I just want her to be happy,” said Carrie as she leaned back and put her hands behind her head. “She’s been through so much, and clearly her relationship with Jeremiah was a disaster.”

“Ugh!” Stephanie scoffed. “Don’t even say his name!”

“I just wish that she would talk to me about it,” said Carrie, her facial expression turning to one of concern. “I mean, I don’t even really know this girl. Who is she?”

“She always seemed nice to me,” said Stephanie, “but then again I never really hung out with her that much, so I wouldn’t know.”

“Next to you Karina is my closest friend,” Carrie said, turning to look at her cousin, “it would just be nice to know what’s really going on with her.”

Carrie and Stephanie stayed up chatting for about another hour before both of them were too exhausted to keep their eyes open any longer. Even though there was a guest room just down the hall, Stephanie opted to just sleep on the sofa for the evening, feeling too tired and unmotivated to even get up or deal with any of her luggage, putting it off until morning.

As Carrie dragged herself off to her bedroom, she thought about all of the things that she and her cousin had been talking about, as well as the conversations that she and Karina had earlier in the day, and she couldn’t help but think of her own relationship. Was Elroy really the one for her? Would he really be the one that she could rely on to always be there for her, no matter what?

Tucking herself into bed, Carrie wondered to herself if maybe her friend Geena wasn’t the only one who was living in denial.