Fat Girl in a Strange Land (2 page)

Elena’s stepfather is sprawled on his back on the bed, snoring softly with his mouth open. The moonlight travels weakly through the sheer curtains and pools around his body. He’s dressed still, though the waistband of his pants are undone and his zipper’s down. I consider returning to the kitchen and finding a knife to slice off what is behind the dingy white briefs that peek out, but that’s not a move worthy of a luchador. So I calculate, as I’ve watched El Súper Fly calculate so many times in the ring.

I land solidly on his chest, and to say I drive the air from his lungs is to understate. I think I hear a rib crack under my massive knees. He tries to cough. Then he tries to speak, but I tear my cape off and ball it into his mouth. He struggles to breathe.

I borrow El Patojo’s gravelly growl to issue my threat. After Elena’s stepfather nods his agreement, I knock him into tomorrow with an illegal blow my father made me learn so I’d always recognize it. He won’t let his luchadores get near any wrestlers who attempt to bring it into the ring, and I’ve had to flag him once or twice so he knows a particularly unscrupulous one has tried to slip it by our notice during a match.

But this is no show ring, and there’s no one around to ban La Gorda for nastiness, so I don’t regret using it.

Sometimes you just have to fight dirty.

III.

Legends have a date of birth.

The legend of El Panzón is born the year Elena’s stepfather goes on a bender he never comes back from, and El Diablo Colorado and his wife adopt the girl.

Everyone gets the gender and the name of the new hero wrong, but no matter. As a luchador he does one thing and one thing only — he makes City of Silver safe for women and girls.

He’s never been seen in the ring, or up on screen, but he has a local following anyway. The itinerant street vendors sell ingenious mini masks to slip over a thumb for thumb-wrestling — and El Panzón’s replica is every bit as popular as El Súper Fly’s or El Diablo Colorado’s. Only El Patojo’s sells more.

I buy a set of each for Elena and me, and when we play our thumb lucha libre, my godfathers gather around to cheer us, and themselves, on. I make sure La Gorda always wins.

In my twenty-first year I discover that the age difference between El Patojo and me has miraculously become insignificant and, after the first time he kisses me, I no longer think of him as my godfather.

Women still throw their panties at him because he has, as I always hear them declare during the ring matches, “a body by God.” But under his mask, El Patojo’s face is goofy and shy, and I couldn’t love it any better.

We marry, and although he won’t wear his wedding ring at the same time as he wears his mask — it would hurt the box office — he comes home every night and revels in my generous body.

Los Enanitos, our tag team of boys, are born; and then La Princesa. We teach them all the best wrestling moves, and when a girl finally has a role in one of my father’s lucha libre movies, it is my five-year-old Princesa.

There is only sporadic need for La Gorda, and I successfully hide my identity from my husband. To him I am just a woman in love with him, in love with food, in love with lucha. If he ever rolls over in bed, opens his eyes, and finds an empty space beside him he is confident it’ll only be a moment until the bed shifts under my weight again.

These are the good years.

IV.

Outside of City of Silver, Guatemalan women and girls die in droves. They suffer gruesome deaths — the bodies, when they appear, are mutilated and disfigured.

Just as El Panzón is known to safeguard his neighborhood’s women and girls, the new darkness that’s taken over the rest of the city has only feminine targets.

The people name him Cabrakán — after the monstrous Pre-Colombian deity responsible for earthquakes — and the mask they say is his has death written in every seam.

Like El Panzón, Cabrakán never enters the ring, but popular imagination pits them against each other, and wagers are made.

V.

I am at peak weight and in the prime of my life.

I know Cabrakán will not set foot in City of Silver — it is a sign of respect for a worthy opponent. My world is secure, but at its borders, the dark.

I’ve watched the girls of City of Silver grow up and move to other neighborhoods in the city — places where I can’t hear the scuttlebutt in order to come to their rescue. I’ve watched them leave, and walk straight into Cabrakán territory, and still I bide.

Then it is our Elena who packs her suitcases and heads for an apartment in Zone 1. Her huge eyes land on mine moments before she boards the bus. “Take care of yourself, mi gordita,” she says. It is just a term of affection in her mouth, something you might call an overweight sister or cousin, but it sends me to my father’s house to stare across the fence at the eucalyptus tree where it all started.

I’m there a long time before I feel a hand on my arm.

“Don’t do it, Gorda,” El Patojo says.

I turn to look into my husband’s lumpy, beloved face.

“I have to,” I say after a moment. “I can’t stand the thought that someday it could be her broken under Cabrakán’s heel.”

“One neighborhood is enough responsibility for a luchador,” he says.

There is a long silence between us.

“How long have you known?” I ask finally.

“Always,” he says. “From the first.”

In middle of the night, I leave our bed to put on my mask and outfit. I don’t know if my husband is awake or not, and I don’t say any special goodbye. No luchador ever does. It’s seven blocks from my front door to the edge of City of Silver, and after that, it’s up to fate.

VI.

The sky tears.

Water falls in sheets that blind and pummel.

The earth bucks.

Stones crack.

Bolts strobe, and turn the scenes unfolding beneath them into a movie.

They say it is this way when the ancient powers walk the same streets. They say it is like this when El Panzón and Cabrakán come face to face.

They say there is no inch of Guatemala City that doesn’t run with corn and rubble turned liquid, like blood, on this night.

VII.

For a while we are evenly matched — he has his moves, I have mine.

We are of a height, and of a weight — if it weren’t for the masks and the colors of our outfits you might not be able to tell one from the other.

He jumps off parapets as if they were the ropes, I dodge and somersault. He propels himself vertical and aims his feet at my chest, I feint away and fall onto him when he’s still prone. His elbow to my solar plexus. My knees to his chest.

He draws up and away when one of his strikes loosens the binding on my breasts.

“You are not El Panzón,” he says.

“There is no Panzón, just me. La Gorda,” I answer.

He spits — not at me but about me.

“Better,” he says. “I’ll break you exactly as I’d break any other woman.”

His attacks turn frenzied then, and after a volley that leaves me with ringing ears and limp arms, I turn myself toward City of Silver and run.

I hear him laugh with delight as he gives chase.

I know there is no safety left in my neighborhood — the respect that stayed Cabrakan’s hand at its borders is gone — and still, it is where I head.

I stumble and fall exactly where the stone idol of la gorda was unearthed.

He comes to stand over me, and in that moment looking up at him I notice that the seams of his mask form the outline of a skull.

I hear a low growl as something flings itself at Cabrakán’s head. It is El Patojo, in full luchador regalia, and his foot connects with the skull’s jaw. Then he’s gone and I hear the distinctive slap of a tag.

I struggle to my feet as El Súper Fly sails at Cabrakán.

They tag in and out as if this were a movie that had been choreographed by a master. El Diablo Colorado, La Princesa, Los Enanitos. El Patojo again.

He tags me.

And then I’m in the ring with them — the team of my dreams, and of my heart.

The people of City of Silver have always had their heroes and their villains in the ring, but they know when the lucha turns real. They come to stand behind us and around us and with us. I hear their roar and feel the trajectory of the clots of clay with which they pelt Cabrakan.

We rout the killer of women. My father gets it on film.

And as the spectators make their way back to their homes, we luchadores and luchadoras limp around giving each other high fives. Then we put our arms around one another and make our way back to my father’s house for a tequila and whatever food I can pull together on such short notice.

There is never an end to evil, so we may have to fight again tomorrow, or the day after.

But that’s okay — we’re behind the masks anyway.

Sabrina Vourvoulias
is a Latina newspaper editor, blogger and writer. An American citizen from birth, she grew up in Guatemala and first moved to the United States when she was 15. She studied writing and filmmaking at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y.

In addition to numerous articles and editorial columns in several newspapers in Pennsylvania and New York state, her work has been published in
Dappled Things
,
Graham House Review
,
La Bloga’s Floricanto
,
Poets Responding to SB 1070
,
Scheherezade’s Bequest
at
Cabinet des Fées
,
We’Moon
,
Crossed Genres #24
, the anthology
Crossed Genres Year Two
, and is slated to appear in upcoming issues of
Bull Spec
and
GUD magazine
.

Her blog
Following the Lede
was nominated for a
Latinos in Social Media (LATISM) award
.

She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and daughter. Follow her antics on Twitter
@followthelede
.

The Tradeoff

by Lauren C. Teffeau

I thought I’d be shielded from the stares that have haunted me all these months leading up to the launch. But even within the transport’s walls, I am still me. The ship cannot protect me from myself — no matter how far away we get from Earth.

Montgomery whistles when we enter the common area — our improvised base of operations for the next six months as we’re shuttled to Caldwell, a terraforming prospect nearly a quarter-century in the making.

“Cozy, huh?” He looks my way, a boyish grin dimpling his plump cheek. It’s still a bit disorienting, seeing him like this: an inflated version of his old self.

A noncommittal sound escapes from the back of my throat. Screens line the fore wall, displaying the grounds crew performing their final checks. Workstations butt up against smooth metal walls. Armchairs are corralled in the center of the room, and a flimsy-looking table for eight stands near the pantry door, if my memory of the ship’s schematics serves.

“It’ll do.”

He looks up from his wristcom. “Just like old times.”

No, it isn’t. But I give him a slight smile that turns into a wince as my pack’s straps pinch the skin on the tops of my shoulders. “I’ll be in my quarters. Let me know once everyone’s on board.”

“Of course.”

I ignore his concerned look and lumber back down the hall. Busy adjusting my pack, I nearly run into one of the transport’s crewmembers coming the opposite way. We spend an extended moment pantomiming each other’s movements until I finally press myself up against the wall and suck in a breath.

The crewman jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “I’ll just go the long way.” He backs up, his eyes saucers-wide before he finally turns away, his steps catlike along the corrugated metal floor.

I let out a breath as my body sags back to where it’s most comfortable, all unwieldy and awkward.

When I enter my stateroom, I throw my pack onto a small couch tucked underneath another wallscreen — this one depicting the rest of the spaceport in the distance, gleaming metal and plastic in the morning sun. I’ll put my things away later. Now, I just need… I don’t know what I need.

I ease myself back on the bed and lay flat, listening to my body as it maps itself to the contours of the mattress, then makes new ones.

The climate control system kicks on, but that’s all I can hear except for the beating of my heart — slow and steady and strong — despite all the stress I’ve put on it these last ten months. But orders are orders. Mission integrity and all that.

The prep work has caught up with me. If it were possible for me to sleep the whole way to Caldwell, I would. I always want to sleep these days. But it’s my team’s responsibility to ensure the planet is terraformed on schedule. After doing all the planning, the simulations, it is finally my turn to make it all happen, for real, on my own terms. Clarinda Hilliard, creator of worlds. But I don’t feel all-powerful. I feel tired, a tired that sinks into my bones and hovers behind my eyes.

The fat will eventually burn off, the planet will eventually warm up, and all will be right in the world again. I need to trust in that.

My wristcom chimes — Montgomery alerting me that the remaining team members have boarded and we’ll be taking off shortly. I thank him, then shut my comm channel off entirely.

Three months in, we’ve settled into an almost normal routine. It’s easier being around others, rounded and fleshy like me. Montgomery looks like a wrestler gone soft. Liang, one of the engineers, is all belly with the same spindly legs he’s always had. Garcia, a research tech, is pear-shaped with expanding hips and thighs like some fertility goddess of old.

I can’t tell how much the weight bothers the others — they laugh and joke like the people they were before. Sometimes I wonder why I’m the only one who’s different. How humiliating to think that after all I’ve accomplished, I’m still a vain little girl on the inside.

We aren’t the first team to modify our metabolisms so we’ll store enough excess fat to supplement our energy levels for a mission. On Caldwell, we’ll be working 20-hour shifts every day for 18 months in an arctic climate. Every calorie will count. Our wristcoms will alter our sleep patterns, and the fat will keep us going. Nature’s batteries.