Caterpillar Chow

The mirror showed a reflection that wasn't my own. An unfamiliar profile in comparison to the one standing in photos taped to the frame. Bending to examine the hollows of her eyes, I stood at odds against her. The stoppered faucet between us began to drip itself dry.

Her form was figment and figure found, features fraught and fearful. Lines of laughter folded neatly into her cheeks and when she looked away, she was there and barely. I braced one hand onto the counter and reached out with the other to trace the leanness of her cheeks. She watched my progress, patient until my finger traced upward and we were eye to eye again.

“I don’t like it," we said.

Air conditioning from above fluttered the topmost photo pinned to the mirror. I peeked at it.

Cheeks plumped by happy health and blushed in mirth. Thick hair fanning over strong shoulders and frozen lifted in a breeze. Whole, round eyes lit to gold from a sun of years ago.

Pain reared its head as a caterpillar in the center of my chest. As my eyes moved over the accompanying photos, inaccurate, fuzzy memories perhaps erroneously kept, the pain began to squirm. It worked to eat its way out of me, nibbling, gnawing, munching outward circles.

It felt appropriate in the moment, my insides shrinking whilst my outsides withered away.

A fist thudded against the bathroom door. “You’d better not be snacking in there!”

The reflection trembled.

Deep in my chest, the caterpillar encircled my tiny heart. In my mind’s eye I saw it tilt its head and chitter selfishly. There was little enough of it left to sate the thought of an appetite. I imagined, almost urged on, the pain of the tiny mouth snacking until nothing was left. Instead, the caterpillar left my heart behind, tracking pity over it in many feet.

The door shook again. “We leave for the gym in five.”

“Okay,” I croaked. I waited until the footsteps pounded away to lean my elbows onto the counter. The floor swayed beneath me and I waited for it to pass.

A handful of magazines were stacked by the toilet. The latest dieting fad, eight new ways to pose in photos to hide a muffin-top, the shining bodies of the elite, what and who it meant to be to be thin, skinny was the name of the game and if you weren’t it, you weren’t anything. Beauty, pretty, stunning, in bright, flashy colours and fonts, rifled through time and time again by a growing, shrinking girl.

The reflection pushed stringy hair behind her ear. “You don’t want to go?”

“No. I feel like I will die.”

“You’d die happy,” she suggested in a wheeze, barely the strength for a shrug.

“I’m not happy.” I focused on her, to the point I could almost pick out each of the freckles atop the pallid skin. And then they blurred to mix with everything else. “I’m hungry.”

“You’re not hungry.”

My chest seared. What was left of a stomach weakly stirred. “I’m… so hungry.”

The reflection swung her head from side to side. “You’ll get fat if you eat. Nobody likes a fat girl,” Mom’s words slid out of her as toxic fumes and its residue lingered in the air. I spat bile into the sink and turned the faucet open to wash it away. The reflection smiled sadly and watched it drain. “She won’t be happy. Don’t you want to make her happy? You can’t be hungry.”

I eyed a photo next to the first. Mom pushing the chubby-cheeked smiler on the swing.

“It’s what she wants,” urged the reflection, "and she'll love you even more. Don't you want that?" I hung my head. The ground began to sway again. Where was my water bottle?

I could hear the footsteps coming back. The caterpillar in my chest was heaving, apparently having found something it couldn’t tolerate. Nausea bloomed in my empty belly and I pushed myself up onto my feet. Up before she could chide me, up before she could get to me. Before she could think me more of a failure.

I locked eyes with my reflection.

“Be perfect,” we said.