For some reason, locked in my second bathroom stall of the night, I imagined Mason trying to pick up Alicia in a bar, not as a joke but because he liked her. She might have been flattered by Mason’s attention. She might have gone back to his apartment and had sex with him. She couldn’t see his true self. Stupid Alicia.
I left my stall and stood in front of the sinks, the newspaper still wedged under my arm. I held it in front of me and stared at Leeta on the front page. Her eyes were fixed on me, as they’d always been. She was out there somewhere, thinking about me, in need of my help. “I’ve been chasing you,” I said, running my hands over the newsprint. This was my moment.
I went back upstairs and found Mason sitting at his friends’ table. None of them were laughing now. Sana would have advised me to go home, arguing that I couldn’t confront all the shitty people in the world. She was right, but I forged ahead. Mason deserved to pay. I would be swift and brutal.
“I don’t want to go home with you,” I said to Mason in front of his friends. “I think you’re ugly.”
It took him a moment to register what I was saying. “Huh?”
“You’re fucking ugly,” I said. “Hideous, in fact.”
Mason’s friends, the three women and two men, looked at each other. This hadn’t been part of the plan.
“I’m ugly?” Mason tried to laugh for his friends. “I’m fucking ugly? Have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror, fatty? You’re disgusting. No man in his right mind would ever lay a hand on you.” No more baby for me.
It felt good to hear him say this, to know the charade was over. “You laid a hand on me. You seemed to be enjoying it.”
“Because I wanted to win a bet.” He laughed again, glancing around the table for support, but the men and women at the table were silent and expressionless, unsure how to react. The big blob had spoken. It could speak. They had always relied on the blob to be quiet, to absorb their taunts and snide remarks and slip quietly through the cracks of life. Now the blob was angry.
Uh-oh.
“You say I’m disgusting, Mason, but I think we both know what gets you off: a nice big fat girl like me. You just don’t want your friends to know.”
Before he could reply, I reached for their table and lifted it, sending bottles of beer spilling everywhere. They leapt from their seats to escape the splashing liquid and crashing amber glass. “You stupid cow,” one of the women said. They scrambled to get clear of the table, but Mason slipped on the wet floor and hit the back of his head against the wall on the way down. He was dazed, lying on his back in a pool of beer, blinking his eyes slowly. His friends didn’t help him.
I placed my foot on his chest so he couldn’t move. My black boots. My colorful tights. I could do this.
“You need to learn some fucking manners!” I shouted.
“Hey, come on,” Mason said. There was a crowd gathering. “I’m sorry, okay? I think you’re pretty, Jennifer. I do.”
“What?” I asked loudly over the clatter of the bar, wanting him to repeat it.
“I think you’re pretty.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “You think I’m pretty?” Of all the things he could have said, this was the least expected. A deep roar came up from my diaphragm. The laugh was so sudden, so vast, that I feared it might rip me apart.
“Say it again.”
“You’re pretty, Jennifer. I mean it.”
I continued to laugh. The laugh was long enough to stretch from the earliest days of my childhood till now, like a shooting star leaving a long trail of light. The trail wrapped itself around all the kids who’d tormented me when I was a girl and all the boys who’d ignored me when I was a teenager and all the young men who’d withheld their affections from me as an adult and all the women who’d excluded and harassed me until now, when Mason told me he thought I was pretty. Finally, I had what I wanted! When the laugh caught up to the present moment, the tail slipped out of my mouth.
Silence.
Mason thought he could throw a crumb in the direction of the fat girl and it would make up for everything that had happened to her in her life, most of all what had happened that night. Telling her she’s pretty was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the winning lottery number, the healing hand of Christ on top of her head. He had been made to believe he had such power. It had been given to him by women like her.