Storymania - The Corpulence by Tracy Jean Amelia Tj Harrison

The Corpulence
Tracy Jean Amelia Tj Harrison

The Corpulence

The Corpulence lay upstairs, gravy-stained, sated and inert, transfixed by Lawrence Welk’s televised bubble machine, when Tracy stole the $40.

Tracy had learned this habit from her mother, Doris. Not the thieving, so much as the rationalization for it. She’d seen, on those occasions (rarer and rarer as time went on) when Benjamin, Tracy’s father, seemed to peel off great gobs of cash to Doris, to “take the girls downtown to Holt’s, or, even, Eaton’s, but I’m thinking Holt’s,” and Doris had headed off, north, to Happy Howard’s Bin and Discount Centre, and pocketed the rest.

“There is nothing wrong with these clothes,” Doris assured the girls. “I have no idea why your father’s being so fussy.”

The Corpulence did pretty much the same, if you think about it. When Doris and Benjamin took off on their European vacations, leaving The Corpulence (the temporary baby sitter, a certain Mrs. Whitmore in a past life, a person whom Tracy had decided had her own story) in charge of the children and a hunk of grocery funds, she’d use the money to generate a single, albeit massive, vat of chicken soup from which she ladled out bowls to nourish the girls at breakfast, lunch, and dinner before she hefted herself to the bedrooms aloft. Then, of course, she’d keep the overage.

And, to be fair to The Corpulence, Tracy had, once, casually, mentioned that chicken noodle was her favourite. And The Corpulence had obliged.

However, aside from the obvious grossness of slurping soup, rather than a proper bowl of Alpha-Bits, for breakfast, Tracy noted that the money left was hers and Lilith’s, just as the tens and twenties Tracy lifted from Doris’s open wallet from time to time was hers too, by default.

Tracy didn’t commonly thieve. That was more Lilith’s style. Lilith, the baby sister. The baby Sugarman daughter. Lilith had even shoplifted, and that, to Tracy’s mind was real stealing. Stealing from strangers.

Tracy only stole when necessary, like, to buy the “student” tickets Doris refused her because, technically, at age 12, Tracy was a “child”, though the height bars on all the TTC buses argued against it. Doris simply insisted that Tracy crouch down, even after Tracy had grown a full two inches and been thrown off the bus on three occasions to walk back, humiliated, to her Forest Hill home. Tracy had had enough of that.

Besides, The Corpulence wouldn’t miss it. It was a strange thing about hoarders, Tracy noted: once they had the money, they rarely counted it. Besides, to count it, The Corpulence would have to come down the stairs, her wide, impressive arse assaulting either the wall or the bannister, depending on which cheek was swinging and which leg was balanced to press on the next step, which, frankly, once the parents were out of town and the pot of soup was simmering, she did not, not really.

And besides, really, really besides, the money was going to be put to a good cause.

They had been expressly forbidden, both Lilith and Tracy, from attending the wedding. The wedding was off-limits, most definitely. Not only because it was going to take place in Hamilton, at least 45 minutes out of Toronto, but also because Cheryl, Doris and Benjamin’s niece, the daughter of Benjamin’s eldest sister, Eva, had selected for herself a mate who was deemed entirely unsuitable.

And it was made clear, too, that Desmond wasn’t unsuitable because he was black – a schwartze, as the older, less enlightened, members of the family spat - which he was. It was, everyone agreed, because he wasn’t Jewish. Why Cheryl had selected him as her husband, no one could seem to understand. Even if he was an engineer.

Tracy didn’t understand it quite either. No one had ever said it straight to her face, but she had been raised in the unnatural discomfort of the prejudices that permeated the 1960s. The miasma of it clung to her like a stink, though, as a child of the ‘60s, she hated it and knew it was wicked and horrible and probably a lie. Even her grandmother, Ettie, wouldn’t quite utter the thought. But, there it was, almost a taste in the air: the schwartzim were, somehow, less than the Jews. Their suffering was less than the Jews. Their stories of slavery not quite a culmination of the Holocaust which was, Aunt Fanny and Uncle Murray Loman (Benjamin Sugarman’s middle sister and his loyal brother-in-law) agreed, both a slavery and a genocide. Twice as bad! And, what was worse, those negroes, and, yes, they were Negroes, refused - refused - to transcend their history. So who would want to marry into that?

Yet, Tracy wasn’t quite so sold that, if Desmond had converted - wore a yarmulke, made kiddush, sat at the Passover table - he would have been okay to the family.

Cheryl’s father, Solomon, on the other hand, had been deemed okay at some point. He who had made himself agreeable enough to the Sugarmans to marry Benjamin’s eldest sister, Eva, the beauty of the family, the one who looked most like Greta Garbo with just a swish of Veronica Lake in the mix when she bothered to dye her hair red. (That was before she got sick and lost it all.) She had given him five rambunctious boys who were as impervious to Solomon’s temper and philandering as Eva grew to be, and one daughter. Cheryl.

He, on the other hand, had given Eva the clap and, probably the cancer.

“From the stress,” the Sugarmans nodded.

Benjamin, the baby of the family, never discussed his relationship to his eldest sister and never cried at her funeral, claiming that, as a doctor, he was keenly acclimated to the deficiencies of the human body and the diseases that could beset it. (In those words! Lilith later marveled.) But, with Doris’s encouragement, and, indeed, her insistence, he confronted his putative brother-in-law, Solomon The Reprobate and Shame, The Causer of Clap and Cancer, and demanded that Cheryl be transported from Hamilton to live with him, his wife and two pre-pubescent daughters, Tracy and Lilith, at least until Cheryl finished her last year of high school.

Who knew what could have been in Cheryl’s 16 year old heart when she was driven to the brown Tudor four-storey? But Tracy’s heart was beating, and it beat even harder whenever Cheryl brought home some young swain from Forest Hill Collegiate Institute whom she could observe fumbling clumsily with her cousin on the red suede sofa in the dimly lit basement.

And now Cheryl was to marry, and Tracy was forbidden from being a witness to this intimacy though she’d witnessed all the others.

And Tracy would have none of that. So she lifted the forty dollars, nudged her baby sister out of her sleepishness, and pushed her out the front door.

No one knew how they made it down to the Bay Street Terminal where the buses to G-d knows where, cranked out their gases, never mind the trek to Hamilton. ROUTE 33 was all that was written, along with FOREST HILL, the bus that took them to the newly built Saint Clair Station. Which took them, south, to Bay Street and the terminal.

It smelled of urine, the Terminal, and reeked of evil and petroleum. If you made an immediate left, you would find the bathroom which was commodious and, compared to the rest of the station, inviting. If you turned right, you’d draw the attention of the adults. Tracy did not want their attention, so she pushed aside the pimps who were eying her sister whom, Tracy reckoned, would probably have made quite a good hooker, as she was pliable and hurting. And while she bought the tickets to Hamilton, she made it clear to Lilith the purpose of the trip.

“Cheryl would want us there. It’s important that we be there.”

Lilith had to make the call once they were in Hamilton. Firstly, Lilith knew the number. Tracy never phoned the Lomans, her aunt, uncle and cousins. She would not and could not forgive them. Every ugly comment about her weight had been measured and judged by each individual member of the Loman family, particularly Gershon Loman, the eldest of the Loman sons, Tracy’s adult cousin.

She wasn’t even that fat. At her greatest, she was 163, but no one - not even Benjamin or Doris - would stand up for her, so she didn’t comment. She just heard what they had to say, and said nothing. She was not, yet, a Corpulence. However, when the Loman’s son, Gershon, died from smoking too much and partying too hearty, Tracy would not extend any measure of good will. Good riddance to rubbish. And she felt nothing more than that, even when she tried, and did not feel badly when the Uncle Murray Loman and his remaining two sons had to stand outside of the cemetery while Gershon was buried. As cohenim, the priests of Judaism, they were not permitted to be on the grounds where the dead lay. Tracy thought that was fitting and stifled herself while she shoveled the dirt over Gershon’s body. So she got her own back. And she would not call the Lomans from the Hamilton bus station. Even for this.

And, secondly, Lilith was social. Tracy was not considered social. This drove Doris and Benjamin insane. Particularly Doris, who was desperate to be in the Lomans good graces.

Auntie Fanny Loman had always been Benjamin’s favourite sister, and Doris, in spite of her great good looks, was regarded as a poor match, though everyone was regarded as a poor match, and Doris should not have been ashamed. Legend had it that when Uncle Murray first came courting Auntie Fanny, Benjamin had greeted him. A nine year old pisher, so it was adorable. Until Uncle Murray felt the wet on his trousers and Benjamin whistled his way out the door, zipping up his pants.

And Doris didn’t know what to make of her daughter, Tracy, who brought her Charles Dickens books with her at every seder, along with the report she was required to write by her father, Benjamin, on the Exodus of the Jews. Tracy had made herself an expert on the Exodus. She had also made herself an expert on Charles Dickens. When asked why she was not playing with the other children, Tracy remarked, “They’re stupid.”

Doris’s teeth ached when Tracy did this, said this. Yet, in some measure, she admired Tracy’s defiance, her not caring what the Lomans thought. So, she hated Tracy, and nagged at her. It was Doris’s sad job to make Tracy compliant. Tracy could not do compliancy.

So Lilith made the call to the astonished relatives.

“I knew you would come!” cried Cheryl.

They were introduced to Desmond’s mute parents who were quickly shuffled off to a corner. Yet, they beamed because Cheryl was undeniably beautiful, and the ceremony had been so very, very nice. Desmond was their eldest son, a prize by anyone’s reckoning. They didn’t need to say anything to prove it.

Tracy and Lilith clung to Cheryl, told her she was beautiful, special, that they couldn’t have been happier for her. They dug their faces into her body and smelled the bride smell. They ate the latkes that had been prepared, and Tracy savoured the cold cuts and slaw that had been left on the side of the table. It was the first meat she had tasted in three weeks.

One of the relatives drove Tracy and Lilith back to Toronto at the end of the reception; Tracy could never recall which one, exactly. Still, CHUM, 1050 AM on the radio dial, lulled the girls back to sleep as they lay at the back of the sedan. Bread played over Tracy’s favourite song over the airwaves: “I want to make it with you...” She wasn’t quite sure what the words meant, but she could guess.

Tracy had not reckoned on The Corpulence discovering their absence. In their defense, Tracy and Lilith claimed they had been in their own rooms, asleep. And, if The Corpulence hadn’t been able to figure that out, how was it their fault? If She couldn’t move, how was this their problem? She had screamed and screamed for them to come up, but they didn’t. Why should they? ‘Specially when they were sleeping. So they said.

But The Corpulence did tell when the parents returned from Europe. England, Spain, Portugal, and whatever. Suspicious, Benjamin and Doris castigated their daughters because they knew that The Corpulence could not have been that inexact. Besides, it wasn’t below Tracy to lie. She lied often and well, they thought.

Satisfied with this show of parental indignation and eager to demonstrate to the Sugarmans her own maternal instincts, The Corpulance ladled out the remnants of the chicken soup and set them before Lilith and Tracy, crossed her wrists before her ample bosom, and gave her own two cents worth.

And while the adults yelled, Tracy bowed her head, and stared at the noodles that sat motionless on the bottom of the bowl. Only every once and a while did she look and savour the small lumps of fat that rose up and hung, fragrant and delicate, from the centre of the soup.