“I’m not distracted.” Of course I’m distracted. It’s like I’m juggling two extra volleyballs out there. “Maybe I’m a little nervous.”
Kate shrugs. “I’m just saying what Emma told me. And I know for a fact that Reinhold is big on attitude.”
“Attitude? Who said anything about attitude? I’ve got an AWESOME attitude.” I am sure my attitude does not sound awesome.
“Not attitude, exactly. Focus,” corrects Jessa. It occurs to me that it was Jessa, not the coach, who wanted me to try out. It matters to her that I do well. “Just make sure you seem more focused today.”
Are they kidding me right now? I’ve been thinking of nothing but volleyball—well, volleyball and Jackson—well, volleyball and Jackson and whether my ribcage might actually shatter if my breasts get any heavier—for the last week.
“I am focused. I’ve got awesome focus. I’m like a laser.” I make the pew-pew sound, even though I know perfectly well that real lasers do not make pew-pew sounds or any other sound for that matter. They’re light waves. The minute bell rings and I am so laser-focused that I barely even notice as Jackson ushers the flirty Fräulein into class. “A LASER!”
CHAPTER 22
I am not focused. How can I focus?
I used to be able to focus. I didn’t think about my body; it just came along for the ride. I didn’t think about what I was going to wear, as long as it wasn’t scratchy, itchy, too hot, or too cold. I let Mom do most of the shopping, and Mom has good taste. It worked for me. It worked for both of us.
Now Maude and Mavis take up anywhere between 25 and 100 percent of my thinking most of the time (how they feel, how they look, whether anybody can tell how enormous they are, whether they are going to knock into a shelf of wineglasses at Macy’s). School, volleyball, the ever-evolving state of the universe and everyone I know or care about in it, and Jackson have to share the rest. Not exactly focused.
In sixth grade, when everybody else started wearing skinny-strapped bras or camisoles under their tops, I did, too, even though there was no physical reason for it. Mom brought them home, and I put them on. Other girls got slightly thinner, then slightly thicker, but I stayed flat as a pancake.
Flatter. A crepe.
It didn’t bother me, because everything fit fine and felt fine. I still felt more like a kid than an almost adult.
Everything changed in one day during the summer between eighth and ninth grade. I put on a bathing suit and came downstairs to wait for a ride to the pool. Mom took one look at me and said, “Is that the only bathing suit you have?
Two B-size breasts had appeared overnight. B+ even.
Not really, because breast tissue does not instantly inflate like a life raft on a whale boat. But I hadn’t noticed that they’d gotten so big until my mom pointed out that they were nipping out of the swim top that had fit perfectly when we’d visited my grandparents in Florida the winter before. That is, I didn’t notice them until someone else pointed them out to me.
I suddenly had something new to think about.
And I didn’t hate that. Not at first.
A few weeks later, though, they were Cs (you can ask Prince Bakersdozen at the Ninth Avenue Bagelry), and by Halloween they’d hit D. And then they kept on going. It was like Little Shop of Horrors, except in the middle of my own body. I should have called them Audrey, like the maniac plant, but there were two of them, and besides, I knew a kid named Audrey and Audrey was fine and petite and delicate. This was not an Audrey situation. This is a Maude and Mavis situation.
Maude and Mavis are big, gruff names for big, gruff body parts. Flabby and pale and hangy names. Old lady names.
Ugly names.
My best guess now is that they might be H cups. H. AAAAYTCH. 32H. I’m not 100 percent sure, because even if you watch a dozen videos on how to measure, it’s much harder to do on yourself, especially if your breasts tend to hang low. Then the measurement is misleading. Have I considered having my mom or a friend or a stranger in Victoria’s Secret measure me, as every perky-boobed, bra-curious woman on the internet does? NO FUCKING WAY, but thank you for the suggestion.
The exact size doesn’t matter that much anyway because once you get past a couple of Ds, bras are expensive, hideous, or hard to find. Or they pretend to be the right size but don’t actually hold anything up, in, or still.
Here’s what you don’t see on the internet: Me, smashing Maude and Mavis into the four-hooked holster, size 34DDD, I included in the Zappos cart when Mom told me to order some “dressy sandals” for a client’s kid’s bar mitzvah. Props to Zappos, which makes it easy to leave your rejects on the front step for the UPS driver, but since I could hook the thing and my boobs didn’t fall out of it, and I didn’t want to talk to my mom about why I kept getting and sending Zappos boxes instead of walking into any store and grabbing something off the rack like she does, I tossed out the return label and called it good enough. (The shoes didn’t fit right either. At least the bra didn’t give me a blister.) Plus if you consider the size in algebraic terms, it’s 34d3, which sounds about right.
I have two main bras, identical except that one’s white, one’s beige. (It actually said “nude” on the tag. I wonder if Fabergé, maker of fine undergarments for women, knows that not all of their customers are ecru?) They didn’t fit right when I ordered them last year and they really don’t fit right now. The style says “minimizer,” but the only thing minimized is my lung capacity. My breasts squeeze out in every direction, the band feels like I borrowed a belt from an American Girl doll and cinched it around my ribs, and from the waist up I look like a combination of a postnuclear mutation and the spell Harry Potter used to blow up Aunt Marge.
So that’s what I think about when I’m supposed to be thinking about a serve. Or a block. Or world hunger. Or a boy.
All the cute tops Mom bought for me over the last couple of years are packed into a tub, and I spend most of my time tucked under a big gray hoodie.
Mom and I don’t talk about it. I don’t blame her. It’s me. Sometimes she’ll say something like “You never wear that orangey boho top I got you.”
“I don’t really like it,” I’ll say back. Either she doesn’t notice or pretends not to notice that there’s no way I’m going to fit into any of my old things anymore. Or maybe she has noticed, because she only asks about the biggest and flowiest things. But that orangey boho top would hang off my chest like a tablecloth at an autumn wedding. It’s packed in the bin with everything else.
Once in a while Mom will look at what I’m wearing, usually something I’ve been wearing the whole weekend. Big, plain, loose, dark, unnoticeable. That’s what I’m going for. She’ll say, “Want to go shopping for some new things?”