A Splash of Lemon

TW: Mentions body weight and dieting, body shaming, disordered eating.

Mother had an affliction since I first started remembering things. She never said anything about it, but I saw the shadow whip behind her eyes. The stash packs of cigarettes on the counter didn’t alarm me until I graduated middle school and our citrus collection in the cupboard seemed like something all families had in case of off-chance nuclear warfare or sudden sanctions on Florida. What gave it away was the frenzied typing. 

Mother wasn’t a secretary. She was a lawyer. A busy one. I didn’t know what type of law she practiced, but I knew Father was just a fingerling afraid of her, counting his pennies as if he was one hair from bachelor-living in the streets of Des Moines, Iowa. Doubtless, Mother’s job was demanding– she put bad guys away from 9 to 5 at the caprice of her genius– but, what was up with all the typing after hours, huh? Ten PM to midnight, Mother didn’t come up for air. Typing, typing, typing. 

And the most suspicious part of it: I was ordered to keep out or else. Father and Me. Strays sulking about the hallway as Mother went along her clandestine business made all the more beguiling by the sound of that darned typing! Her special office was entirely her own and even when I took my first steps from the crib, as Father put it, she remained immune to her motherly instincts– and my obvious infant charms– type, type, typing away on the ancient computer. 

Naturally, the computer became somewhat of a fixation for me. Its belly bloated, the size of it thick with age and failed modernity. Its keys yellowed, oxidized with unrelenting dust eroding the bits in between. I bet the screen looked fuzzy and pixelated like the coat of a peach. I bet the motherboard creaked and moaned like a feeble old man. Of course, all of this was mere speculation. I’d only glimpsed the elderly thing once or twice through the crack in the door. But our unrequited love grew stronger by the absence of sight. I had to touch it the way Mother did. 

Mother typed on weekends as well as weekdays, so I knew she wasn’t writing up some bill or argument. It was all part of her routine. Weekdays: condemning assholes in her flattering pantsuit, dinner, the obligatory interrogation of her daughter’s day, the washing sense of accomplishment upon embodying the Mother Figure, then typing on that technological shipwreck. Weekends: Running by the riverside of the Des Moines tributary, buying grapefruits and lemons, kissing Father once– or twice, time permitting– and typing. I forgot to mention that throughout all of this she smoked like a soldier in the trenches of Verdun. Marlboro lights to keep the habit elegant. Like clockwork, she followed her schema weekly and once I learned it more thoroughly than the pockmarks on my chin, I could undress the computer and my Mother’s secrets. I sat stalking my prey and planned my mission carefully. It took me until the 9th grade. 

It happened that in the year 2004 Mother caught a sick. It was so bad she called off work. Her face flushed tawny and the green of her eye darkened, rich like an overgrown bog. And the next part I’ll tell you will make it seem like I prayed for her tragic end, but I swear I had nothing to do with it. Mother retched for days. She couldn’t keep water down. She couldn’t smoke her suave little cigs. Most notably: she stopped typing. That was when my Father hoisted her up, wrapped her in a sheet to protect the modesty of her corpse, and drove her straight to the emergency room to be poked and prodded back to health. 

I know what you’re thinking and you’re right on the money. I stayed home. I stayed home alone. Just me. Me and the derelict computer in the room Mother forgot to lock in her state of malady. And yes, I did feel at least a scratch of guilt in that space between my spine and lungs where the soul is purported to reside. But in my solitude, I ached for resolution to the mystery of Mother’s typing addiction. 

I creeped into the sacred room slowly, dipping my toe into its forbidden waters. It smelled like her. Tobacco and grapefruit peels. Dark and surprisingly dusty. Did she ever clean in here? Or was she determined to preserve the crypt-like aura of this teasing lair? The computer was enshrined on the desk, tauntingly perched like a crown– the empress of Mother’s kingdom. My fingers pulsed. 

How immodest of Mother to overlook password protecting her beloved machine! Or were passwords anachronistic of computers in the 80’s, which by the looks of it, was this gadget’s birth era? I slipped into the contents, smooth as butter. There was a constellation of folders on the desktop. All benign and comprehensible– Katie Birthday 1989, 1990, etc., Bob Documents, Case Files, Taxes 2000– except for one. One title so inconspicuous at first sight, but oozing with juice. A Splash of Lemon. 

I clicked on it and it instantly projected a hefty list of files organized by date: week, month, year, all included. The product of long nights typing. And seemingly for years, since before I was born. The earliest piece dated from 1981 when Mother was twenty-two, no more, no less. What did she have to say that was so important it needed to be meted out weekly?

Week 3 May 1999 gave me my answer:

Hi there my fat piglets! It’s me again, Debbie Giffenlean, writing to you from Cabo, where the sun makes love to me better than my husband. Care to join me, ladies? 

Now, you all know the drill. It’s May and I have just the thing for you to keep the meat off and the bikinis on! I’m talking to you Diane. Your waist called, she’s sick of eating your belt.

I’ve had a Eureka here in paradise. The more naked you are, the less you want to eat. It’s simple! This week, take your clothes off. Not for your husbands. For you. Once you see that jiggle jaggle you’ll be running to jazzercise faster than a tart to the gynecologist. Say, whatever happened to good old fashioned shame? All this second feminism bullcrap has distorted our sense of purpose. Our hard-working, homemaking, man-loving spirit. 

Let me reiterate: You are not born perfect. You do NOT look good and the only reason James left you DIANE is because you’re lazy and unbeddable. So, this week, reclaim your feminine integrity with this:

Breakfast: A grapefruit and a cup of black coffee

Lunch: Two cigarettes, an orange, and a glass of champagne

Dinner: A hard boiled egg, three cigarettes, and red wine (double the serving if your kiddo flunked her Spanish test- dumber than her father that one!)

And feel free to send this to your daughters so you can save up money for college, not fat camp. Or, if you’re the secretive type, just slowly cut her rations and watch her trim down. That’s what I do!

As always, start your day with a hot glass of water and a splash of lemon! 

Ciao, until next week. 

DG

My mother had never been to Cabo. Her name was not Debbie. And Giffenlean was a stupid last name. I sat reading her acerbic lies wondering what she thought of me. That time when she bought me my first training bra, was she looking at my stomach or my boobs? What scared her more? Then, I thought of Mother eating. Because, Mother ate. She ate when I ate and we ate well. Okay, the quantity of citrus in the closet was possibly a problem, but what’s wrong with a healthy dose of vitamin C?

The rest of the articles proved even more harrowing. The ones from 1982 suggested a cocaine marathon as a quick-slim prophylactic. The ones from 1983 recommended switching to apples for a week. And, why was she yelling at her poor readers? What did Diane ever do to her? 

I typed A Splash of Lemon into the Google search bar and nearly swallowed my tongue. My mother was an underground celebrity. Thousands of comments littered her blog’s basement. Mothers complaining about their daughter’s chub, their absence of male admirers, their resemblance to all sorts of horrible things most memorably: Robin Williams’ portrayal of Mrs. Doubtfire and that ‘stewing turd on the sidewalk.’ The blog was its own political party, rallying against young girls everywhere. My Mother could have called her followers to arms and staged a coup on the United States government. Her hoard gobbled every vicious word, consumed like a Eucharist. 

Deep down in the blog was an anonymous comment. One that put my next steps into irreversible motion. How do I stop feeling hungry, it said. And I knew this blog had reached beyond mothers, that somewhere far from Des Moines, some girl whose mother didn’t lock up the computer was reading carefully.

I took up typing. Type, type, typing away like my Mother’s learned apprentice. Debbie Giffenlean was a cheat. She didn’t travel the world, she did not make love to her husband, she barely knew her daughter, and while she chewed citrus and smoked like a ham, she strayed as far away from her own advice as possible, knowing damn well it would kill her. The world had to know. 

An hour later and the damage was done. A Splash of Lemon had its salacious expose, posted and ready to be torn apart by incensed readers’ claws. It turned out, Debbie was not one of us. I ran from the room knowing more than I’d ever hoped to know about my Mother. 

The hospital sent her home two days later with clear instructions to rest and recuperate. Luckily for her, she retired from blog writing against her will and knowledge. Now she had all her nights to rest. 

My Father wheeled her into our house where nothing seemed amiss. Mother looked frail but with the unmistakable, superior air of a survivor. There it was, that villainous glimmer in her eye undefined to me until now. I donned my sweetest tone:

“Oh Mother, I’ve missed you! Can I get you anything?”

She twitched the corner of her mouth, her face sinking, fawning gratitude– all pretense.

“I’m fine, Katie. Just need to get to bed…” she replied, shooing me. How sorry she looked. 

“Are you sure I can’t get you a glass of water?” I waited to sink my teeth into her secrecy. I had to time it perfectly. 

“Maybe with A Splash of Lemon?”

She soared from her chair.