Like Mother, Like Daughters (17)

As Veronica was being thoroughly wined and dined and Claire was hurtling through her last few months until graduation, Minnie was pretty much the same as always: just a few dollars away from broke, sleepwalking through work, with little motivation to do anything beyond that.

She did decide to make a change that she hoped would put a little extra cash in her pocket and made good on the idea she’d had around the holidays to ask her momma if she could come by for dinner sometimes. Mrs. Emple was so delighted to have a daughter back in the house to cook for that she promised to make Minnie’s favorites every Tuesday night.

The third or fourth week of this saw Minnie sleepily shoveling a forkful of chicken pot pie into her mouth. She was so full she felt like she might faceplant right into the plate in front of her, and still she was eating. It was her mom’s fault for making something so delicious. When Minnie had gone for her fourth helping, her mom had offered to pack up the rest for her so she’d have something for lunch “the next few days.” Not realizing that this was her mother’s way of nudging Minnie to put her fork down, Minnie declined. “I’ll probably finish it all tonight, anyway. Might as well eat it now.”

Minnie’s father had excused himself then—he’d long since finished his dinner—and soon Mrs. Emple did, too, both parents taking some time to clean up the kitchen while Minnie reveled in another week of excess. As soon as her parents had left the table, she’d unbuttoned her jeans, pale flab snuggling right into her lap. That extra space had been enough to get her easily through that fourth slice and convince her to take a fifth. By that point, there were only two slices left, and Minnie wiggled a little in her seat at how good it would feel to have those two slices join the rest in her stuffed gut.

The sixth slice had been difficult, but not impossible. The seventh was the one that nearly made her pass out. The combination of her childhood home’s cozy warmth, the comforting sound of her dad watching the game in one room while her mom chatted on the phone in another, and the solid heaviness of her stomach packed full would’ve been enough to send anyone to sleep. She finished the slice and pushed the plate away, lying back in her chair and giving the stretch of belly that was no longer covered by her t-shirt or her jeans some gentle rubs.

This, she was sure, was the best things could get. Once a week she got to fill up her tank on someone else’s dime, enjoy being stuffed to the gills, and then not think about it again until the next week.

Or, that was how it was supposed to work, anyway. That was the version she kept telling herself. But that version missed key details—namely, that even a once-a-week super binge was fattening her up to the point that she had already outgrown her clothes (not that she’d admit it), and that she was having some trouble making family dinner her only binge of the week.

Once she’d napped on the couch for a bit and slept off dinner just like she had the week before, she already missed the feeling of being at capacity. Even with her gut still a bloated boulder in front of her that made it difficult to drive home, the thought of eating more gave her a rush of pleasure and need. She could usually cool herself down on family dinner night by the time she got home. But then she’d go to work the next day and walk past all the yummy frozen foods and snacks and candies and sodas and beer as she stocked shelves. Her resolve would weaken enough that she’d wind up picking up way too much pizza on the way home and eating it all in one sitting.

On days she wasn’t outright binging, she was snacking. Not quite mindlessly, because every time she paid for anything she worried her debit card might decline, but close enough. Because every snack she wanted was junk, it never felt like she’d eaten anything. She’d down three bags of sour gummy worms, a couple candy bars, and a whole family-sized bag of tortilla chips between meals throughout the day and still feel hungry, still dreaming about a belly full and churning.

Minnie also wasn’t introspective enough to think about why she wanted to stuff herself so badly. Even if she couldn’t just chalk it up to satisfying ordinary hunger, she wasn’t even close to connecting the dots. Not even when it was obvious—like when her hands slipped down the waistband of the oversized boxers she liked to wear to sleep and she found herself coming to the memory of one of her cruise ship stuffings. She wasn’t the type to thing too deeply about anything, preferring to pass out and forget the whole thing instead.

But even with her incredible talent for denial, her clothes forced her to acknowledge that she’d put on some weight. She had no clue how much—she didn’t have a scale at home, and after her brief flirtation with considering weighing herself at Thanksgiving hadn’t thought about it again—but reassured herself it had to only be a few pounds. And besides, in her view (quite literally), the weight was all going to her tits anyway, so was it really so bad if she put on a few?

Still, none of her clothes fit, which required a wardrobe upgrade. But that meant getting dressed in the first place. So she squeezed herself into the jeans she’d come to think of as her “comfy pants,” wincing at the vise-grip of the waistband around her middle. She tried a few different bras, but two of them wouldn’t even close anymore, and the third ripped so badly she had to give up. She tried to squeeze into her comfiest sports bra, but the compression was so intense she could barely breathe, her cleavage spilling out the neckline so dramatically it was comical. It took her ten minutes to get it off, and it took a pair of scissors to do it.

She settled on throwing on one of her thicker band t-shirts—not noticing that it rode several inches up her middle, exposing a thick roll of belly hanging over her jeans—and a sweatshirt so tight it felt like a second skin. Enough to be at least sort of decent in public, even if she knew it wasn’t enough to keep people from staring.

Shopping was nightmarish. She was convinced that her favorite stores had swapped the sizing on everything to cater to waifish teen girls. There was no way she was wearing real 2X tops and 1X bottoms now. She was a large at most!

And bra shopping was ridiculous, but sort of expected. Her band size seemed impossible—42 inches was obviously way bigger than she was, even if they did fit pretty comfortably. They only had one bra in her size—a bandage-colored 42J that looked fucking orthopedic. The woman who sold her the bra told her they could special order her ones that looked nicer, and also recommended a shop online that made custom bras if you sent them your measurements. She took a little pride in that. Even if she’d gotten a teensy bit thicker, at least all the fat was going somewhere fun instead of straight to her gut like her sisters.

Speaking of, she definitely deserved something to eat after all the effort she’d put in trying on clothes. A couple corn dogs and fries sounded amazing right then.

***

A month later, all the extra snacking, a couple custom bras, and another “little” trip to buy more clothes had Minnie’s credit card payment looking pretty devastating. Like, bad enough that she might have to move back in with her parents. But even though she was now having dinner at home twice a week (a girl’s gotta eat, after all), she couldn’t stand the thought.

Thus began her hunt for a roommate. She made posts in the usual places, asked coworkers if they knew anybody looking for a roommate, texted her friends. For a nail-biting couple weeks, she heard nothing. She might have done some extra comfort eating in that time, which only made her financial situation more dire.

As luck would have it, her salvation arrived in the form of Erin, a friend of a friend. Minnie had seen her at a few shows over the years, but they’d never talked before. But when they met up to actually talk about Erin moving in and see if they’d be a good fit living together, they hit it off. And definitely not just because Erin let it slip that she lived off a fat trust fund and basically never had to worry about money. Minnie had the sense to ask why Erin was looking for a roommate when she could definitely afford her own place. Erin shrugged and said she really didn’t like living alone.

It only took them a few days to get everything arranged and get Erin moved in. It was a little bit of a tight squeeze since Minnie lived in a 1-bedroom, but they’d talked it over and agreed that they would try it out for a few months and maybe move to a bigger place later on.

There was an adjustment period of a few days when they were still getting comfortable with each other and figuring out their boundaries. After some initial awkwardness, though, they were basically inseparable. Minnie felt like she’d found another sister—one who actually shared her taste in music and shitty beer. She was also fat, which gave Minnie some comfort—she was definitely smaller than Erin, and her sisters, and her mom, so she could safely categorize herself as merely thick or chubby. Honestly, by comparison, Minnie figured was pretty skinny.

It wasn’t hard to see why Erin was so big, either. She liked to eat, and to Minnie’s pleasure was happy to share. On Minnie’s days off, they would lounge on the sofa together stuffing themselves full of takeout and watching shows together, usually while chugging their way through a case of beer. At first, Minnie tried to keep her appetite in check, especially since Erin always paid for these meals and never asked for her roommate to chip in. But Erin insisted Minnie could have as much as she liked, and always ordered enough for an army anyway.

She didn’t have to tell Minnie twice. Minnie was in absolute bliss. It was just like being back on the cruise—and honestly even better, because she was eating until she was packed full and not having to pay for any of it.

Life became a blur of constant eating. Some small part of Minnie told her she should slow down, that there was no way she wasn’t going to get absolutely huge if she didn’t stop. But crawling into bed giggly and tipsy with her gut so distended she could hardly breathe was so glorious she couldn’t help herself.

At work, she found herself having trouble keeping up. She put that down to being bloated all the time—a hazard of her extracurricular activities. Definitely didn’t have anything to do with the increasingly flabby belly that was starting to get in the way, or her plump thighs pressing closer together with every heavy meal. Maybe her boobs were getting kind of impractically big, but she liked them enough that any difficulty wasn’t worth complaining about.

Really, everything seemed fine—until she managed to pop the button off her very forgiving stretch denim work pants during her lunch break while she inhaled fast food in her car. She couldn’t really see it over her chest, but she heard the loud plink of the button flying to god-knew-where in her car, and she could feel the way her belly surged forward like a pale wave. Even worse, as she shifted around trying to find the damn button—as if she was really going to take the time to sew it back on instead of just buying a new pair—she could hear other seams tearing. Even though she was alone, she felt completely embarrassed. It was one thing to destroy a few bras or outgrow a t-shirt. Popping off a pants button was the kind of thing that only happened to people like her mom.

And as she thought it, she felt a surge of panic. No. No, she wasn’t anywhere close to her mom’s size. She was maybe getting a little too chunky these days, but she wasn’t fat like that. She wasn’t fat at all!

She started breathing hard, her natural denial warring with an abundance of clear evidence.

She drove out of the parking lot and straight home, not even bothering to tell work she wasn’t coming back. She burst in the door of her apartment. Erin was sitting on the couch with several boxes of pizza on the coffee table. Erin looked up in surprise. “You’re home early.” She took stock of her roommate, who looked like she was near tears. “Oof—wardrobe malfunction? Rough. I have clothes you can borrow for now—we can go shopping later if you want.”

Minnie blushed a deep red at the thought that Erin’s clothes would be an appropriate size for her. Erin was so much bigger than she was—wasn’t she? She murmured a quick “thanks” and headed to the bathroom, realizing she could easily confirm she was still smaller than everyone else. Erin had brought a scale when she moved in, and it had sat in their bathroom gathering dust for months. Minnie shut the bathroom door behind her and stepped right on it, certain—hoping—wishing she’d be vindicated. She waited for the scale to talk back to her, telling her exactly what she weighed, but a number never came. Instead, she heard something far worse: “Error—over capacity.”

There was no way. She remembered seeing a label on the scale saying it had a 300 pound weight limit. So it couldn’t be right. Minnie looked at herself in the full-length mirror hanging on the back of the bathroom door. The woman looking back at her didn’t seem real. She had Minnie’s choppy black hair and the giant tits… but they were sitting on top of a soft belly that swooped into a pair of heavy hips and thighs. Her work clothes strained to hold her in and hid absolutely nothing.

Minnie pulled her eyes from the mirror and stripped off her clothes, grunting a little at the effort. It was the clothes. Clothes are heavy. She was way under 300 pounds. Had to be.

She stepped back on the scale, only to hear the automated voice tell her yet again she was too heavy.

She looked back at the mirror, nearly hyperventilating as she cataloged inches of red stretch marks lining her skin. The most shocking ones were on her arms—when did her arms get all soft like that? How had she not noticed?

She pinched and grabbed at herself all over, tears starting to trickle down fat cheeks that were so much bigger than she’d realized. All this time, she’d been telling herself that as long as she was smaller than the “actually” fat women in her life, she was in the clear. And now she’d joined their ranks. In fact—she wasn’t even sure if she was the thinnest of her sisters anymore. With how fast she’d fattened up, she might just have overtaken Veronica and Claire. How embarrassing.

She washed off her face with cool water, trying to calm herself down. The only thing that soothed her was the realization that even if she was fat now, she’d still never be as big as her mom. That was worth celebrating with a whole bunch of pizza.