Bodies

There was a legend about the well in the garden.

It was said that when someone wished upon this well, their wish was heard by a goddess. Taking mercy upon the pitiful souls that have pleaded to her, she grants the wishes to the most deserving of people—those who have the most selfless of desires. Dee had come to realize that she must have had a deeply ingrained selfishness within her. After all, it would have been the only explanation as to why she woke up the next morning in the same body that she had wished away the night before.

“Hey—hey, sleepy head, wake up.”

Dee groaned, rolling away from the harsh light that poured into the room when Amelia opened the curtains.

“We’ve got a long day ahead of us, first we’re going to eat breakfast with Mom, then we’re going to drive out into town so I can show you off to some friends of mine and then...”

Dee stopped listening to her girlfriend as Amelia began to ramble on about her problematic display of possession to family and friends that Dee had long since announced that she disliked. Amelia had assumed that it was her family’s occasional disregard to Dee’s race and ethnicity and insisted that it was never intentional. While it was frustrating at times, Dee wasn’t worried about that. Whether Amelia’s family even knew where Haiti was— much less whether they were culturally competent—was not that important to her, as she had been met with the misconceptions before and knew how to deal with them. It was the fact that they were a ten couple that worried her.

Amelia was thin, lean and welldefined by the healthy lifestyle that she had been brought up on. Dee on the other hand, struggled as an overweight black woman, and attempts to remedy this were few and far for her. Dee’s round body and Amelia’s lean one had earned the pairing the nickname “ten” because of the similarities to the number when they stood side by side.

More than a playful observation made when looking at photos, it was a painful reality that Dee couldn’t live down, most certainly not when Amelia’s family were the main perpetrators of the “endearing” nickname. Dee was suddenly taken out of her musing when she felt a warm body press flush against her. Less than startling, it was comforting when paired with curious fingers that began to trace the curves of her own exposed body, ghosting over her skin ever so teasingly.

“What’s wrong?” Amelia suddenly whispered into her ear before pressing her lips against Dee’s shoulder. “Does it have to do with Grandma asking whether Haitians eat cats?”

Dee wanted to laugh at the playful comment, but she couldn’t bring herself to, instead asking, “Is it weird that when I move, I think about how my body looks--how my body moves in the space around me?” “What do you mean?” Dee sighed softly, turning around, arm now resting upon Amelia’s hip. Amelia, seizing the new opportunity, scooted closer, hand sliding to the small of Dee’s back, breasts now resting against the top of Dee’s stomach as their bodies melded together further.

“When I walk between people, I have to bring my arms up and hold my chest back so my tits don’t brush up against any body. When I walk into certain pathways I have to turn sideways so I don’t get stuck. I have to make sure my ass doesn’t brush up against anybody’s desk when I walk in tight classrooms. I have to be careful of how fast I run because people might see my fat jiggle. I have to consider if other people are overwhelmed or squeezed while sitting next to me. I can’t even dance without worrying how my motion is going to read to other people in comparison to someone who can more their body more freely—like you.”

“See, in high school, I was always worried about how my skin stretched over my bones—what my body was able to show. A lot of people in my family were on the thicker side. Not a thickums like you,” Amelia cupped a handful of Dee’s butt with her hand, giving a firm squeeze as an added emphasis. “But they had some meat on their bones and I just wasn’t making the cut.”

Amelia then let go of Dee, scooting away from her and laying on her back, one leg propped up. She brought her hand up to her stomach, beginning to trace the fine lines of her rib cage before turning to look at Dee. “See, you like this, but I always hated it. Like, as I’m thinking about it, gym class was the worst. If I bent too far back, people would see my ribs. If I had a bikini on, my hips would pop out and I would get the bikini bridge. A lot of girls are gungho for that, but my grandma thought I was starving myself. When I sat on friend’s laps, they’d be like, where’s your ass, it’s so boney.”

“Yeah,” Dee simply whispered, now closing the space between them. She laid her head on Amelia’s chest, leg resting on her partner as she returned the favor of gentle caressing, fingers trailing from Amelia’s breast, over her ribs and stomach before stopping at the hips and traveling back upward. “I get the lesson your trying to say there. Everyone feels self conscious. I just—I don’t need to be skinny. I came to the terms with not being skinny, I just—I just really wish that I was a little bit smaller. You know, I don’t have to be perfect, I just want a flat stomach. I just wanna put on a pair of pants and not have to pull it over my stomach, because otherwise I draw too much attention, otherwise, I’m unladylike—thinking about how my stomach moves and hangs and how people don’t want to see it. I just really wish...”

“Oh my god,” Amelia groaned softly, pulling Dee closer to herself and resting her head on top of Dee’s coarse hair. “You went over to the well, didn’t you?”

Dee smiled sheepishly, turning her face towards Amelia’s chest, almost as if she wanted to bury her face and hide her shame. “I had to try it.”

Amelia let out a squeal before she broke out into laughter. “Oh no, oh no, honey. I love you—Look. So I told you those stories about how the well in the garden granted my wishes as a kid, but that was literally coincidence. It was chance, it was four times out of like, four hundred that I wished on it. My grandma’s legend, I feel like she only told it because my mom and dad were thinking of getting rid of it and since it was a part of her childhood, she just told those stories so we could get attached and...”

Amelia took in a deep breath before sighing audibly.

“I remember when I did that—when I wished something like that. Usually my ‘wishes’ were far and few, but I remember one time just wishing for one week straight. The first night I wished that I would be thick when I woke up the next day. Didn’t happen. Then I asked if I could just be a bit fuller. Nothing. I asked all these variations of the question, like, asked if I could just have it for one day even if I was like in somebody else’s body. Oh god, I even asked if I could win the lottery so I could get like implants and stuff. But nada.”

Dee shifted slightly, sighing as she relaxed into the position. “Well, what did you expect?”

“I could ask you the same thing, stupid.”

“Fair enough,” Dee conceded.

“This is going to sound so fucking cheesy, but, like, I kinda feel like one of my wishes came true though.”

Dee cocked a curious brow, looking up at Amelia’s face in confusion. “That you could live vicariously through a fat person?”

“Ack—NO, you idiot. Don’t call yourself that.” Amelia reached down and patted Dee’s cheek disapprovingly. “Anyway—well, like a few years later, when I was learning to like myself more, I kinda just had a moment where I was like, a body is a body. It is what

it is and yeah, they can change, but like forsome people, they have to live with it. Unless I wanted to end up killing myself with a shit ton of sugar and other crap, I was just gonna have to live with it too.”

Dee simply nodded in response, seeming to listen intently.

“So like, I just wished that I would find somebody that would be okay with that. And I guess I—well, I did find that…you know…when I found you, you know?”

Dee could feel Amelia’s shrug as she ended her statement with a tinge of insecurity. Smiling softly, Dee simply reached up to caress her lover’s cheek, an intense warmth radiating on her fingers, letting

Dee know that Amelia was probably blushing after saying such an embarrassing comment. “How sweet,” Dee whispered. “You’re really such a dork sometimes, you know?”

“Yeah,” Amelia added, rubbing her neck as a nervous laugh escaped her lips.

“But that story tells me something— about the well actually.”

Amelia furrowed her brows in confusion. “What about it?”

“You know that well goddess from the legend? Yeah…well, she’s clearly racist.”

“Oh my god, Dee! Let it go!”

By Elizabeth Martin