You Need to Lose Weight

Amanda Lee

My mom doesn’t say I love you. She says Eat more, as chopsticks deftly fill my bowl with the richest ingredients. She says I’ll peel the prawns for you, fingers working to deshell them so mine can remain pristine. She says Have the final piece, and I do, gleefully oblivious to the fact that I’ve had more than double her share. Her love is not that of the immaterial. It fills my stomach, makes my pants sit more snugly around my waist, ticks the bathroom scale up day by day.

You need to lose weight, my mom says, laying the fattiest piece of pork on my bed of rice like a tender gift. Her love speaks in weight, heft, fat, tissue and sinew. She does not know how else to love, the same way I never learnt how else to receive. I hunger for it, devour every bit of affection, lick my fingers hoping to extract the last dregs of flavor.

My mom comes home from the store. She has bought me another dress I can’t fit into. I blame my blossoming womanhood, say that it doesn’t fit around my larger chest. But she smacks my belly, thick from doting. You need to lose weight, she repeats, and offers me a pack of dried mango from the store. I turn the packaging over to read the nutrition label and inhale all 280 calories of affection anyway. She takes the dress for herself; I see how it hangs loosely on her.

We go on a juice cleanse. My stomach makes inhuman noises, clawing at my insides. Why have you left me unloved? it gurgles, sorely unacquainted with lack. By lunch, I will have abandoned the diet. The food I eat then, almost holy, cleanses my body in a different way. My mom persists, says it’s not too difficult. As I shovel food into my mouth, I finally look at her, and think Has she always been this thin? Or has motherhood compelled her to feed me, piece by piece, of her own flesh? Till eventually, she will waste away, becoming nothing but the meat on my family’s table. A sudden, sharply bitter taste forms on my tongue, threatening to make me retch.

I learn to love her in the same way. I breathe care into the wok hei of my fried rice, fold warmth into my egg stir-fry, offer up extra portions of food with devotion. We start new rituals, chopsticks flying as the last piece of beef is passed from plate to plate, like a sacred dance. I’m full, you can have it, she repeats, almost as a chant. I do not relent and am victorious as she finally begrudgingly swallows the meat, hiding the faintest smile as she tastes its slight sweetness.

You need to lose weight, she will say later. I laugh, light-headed, knowing it’s not an admonishment. It’s a blessing.