I sit on the toilet seat reading while Big Edie1 showers.
“He would do this,” she says, “but you don’t want your boyfriend to see your body, not like this, all in sections. I never used to have sections.”
He would. Her boyfriend2 would sit here while she showered, in case she fell or felt like she might. My mother is 83 years old and overnight she seems to be 110, waking up with what appears to be crippling arthritis, one hand and both feet so puffy they look like they belong to a blow-up sex doll, her skin all taut and shiny. Fred Flintstone feet—like inflatable shoeboxes with toes. The fingers of neither hand will bend. She can’t raise either arm enough to put on deodorant, or a bra. She can barely button or unbutton her blouse.
Most of her life she was 118 lbs and 5’9”. Today, she is 140 lbs and 5’5”. And so, as time and age compress Big Edie into My Little Mommy, her body folds into itself, the skin and subcutaneous fat bulges and subdivides into sections. The same amount of woman, a little bit more woman than she used to be actually, forced into an ever-shortening frame, parts folding like an old gas station map, a stack of folded sweaters, or a well-loved, well-used accordion.
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