Like Mother, Like Daughters (1)

The last thing any of the Emple sisters wanted to hear was, “You remind me so much of your mother!”

There was something about that statement that filled each of them with a coil of dread. Then there was guilt on top of that. Their mother, Savannah Emple, was a kind, wonderful woman with many talents. Photographic evidence from her youth showed that she was almost impossibly beautiful. Some still considered her very pretty, even as she approached 50. Admitting that they didn’t want to be like her felt shameful, so of course they all smiled and nodded whenever someone said it, casting glances at each other in the meantime.

They had only ever admitted these feelings to each other. “Mom is great,” Veronica, the eldest, had said once when she was back home visiting from college. “We all know that.” Her younger sisters had both nodded. “But I think we all know that we don’t want to be her.”

The middle sister, Minnie, had grimaced. “We’d never let ourselves go so badly.”

All three sisters took a quiet moment to imagine their mother. Yes, Savannah Emple was lovely in many ways. She was also well over 400 pounds, with every year pushing the scale closer to 500. Her face, even with its double chin, had retained its beauty. But the Emple girls couldn’t see it. When they thought of their mother, they thought of draping, jiggly arms and sagging thighs that rubbed together. They thought of her thick double chin, draping belly, and an ass so wide it had crumpled many a chair.

Most of the time, none of the sisters could imagine getting to that size. It seemed impossible. And yet, every time someone told them, “Oh, I can really see your mother in you,” intending it to be a compliment (and likely referring to their mother in her youth, before a few hundred extra pounds had piled on), they had the stinging realization that it was possible.

The youngest, Claire, stuck out her pinkie. “Can we make a pact to keep each other in check? Like, if one of us starts to get fat, the other two will step in?”

“I will absolutely pinkie promise to that,” Veronica had said with a confident smile. Minnie had reached in, too. All three girls had laughed at the time, so certain that this promise would never be necessary.

At the time, Veronica was the most athletic of all of them. She was on her university’s soccer team and had the quads to show for it. She had just turned 21 and was looking forward to graduation. She’d been careful all four years, focusing on her classes and on training, avoiding the beer-guzzling and late-night munching that had chubbed up some of her teammates over the years.

Claire was the resident cheerleader, and had led their high school team to a couple championships. She was petite, with the compact musculature of a gymnast. And, as a girl who needed to be easily lifted and thrown into the air, she was also obsessive about her diet. The last thing the little brunette wanted to hear was that she was too heavy to be at the top of the pyramid.

Minnie was the tallest and laziest of the three. Her idea of exercise was throwing herself into a mosh pit – which, while certainly enough to work up a sweat, wasn’t exactly a regular enough occurence to be considered a true fitness regimen. She also ate just like Veronica did, but still kept her waiflike figure somehow. She attributed it to her height, and to being, in her own words, “a big-titty goth GF.” She was just about to graduate high school and had no idea what she would do afterward. Maybe alternative modeling? She didn’t like to think too hard about future plans. That, like most things she didn’t want to think about, was a problem for future Minnie.

After they pinkie promised not to let each other gain weight, the pact faded to the back of each of their minds, pushed aside by school and athletics and other more pressing concerns.

Still, none of them ever quite forgot about it.