Julia's Chocolates. Cathy Lamb

burying her face in her hands, the cross dangling between her knees until she reached up and broke it right off the chain.

      3

      Sometimes life is better when you’re woozy. Very woozy. My shirt and bra were still off, discarded somewhere behind the couch, the candles flickering between me and the four other women.

      We were still examining our boobs, trying to understand their psychology. Well, all of us except for Lara, who was on her sixth brownie and fourth glass of wine and laughing hysterically on the couch as she mimicked the voices of various people in her church’s congregation.

      At one point she stopped, yanked her boobs up so she could see them well, and said to me, “Still young. Still happy-looking. What happened to me?” She kept laughing, the sound getting more high-pitched as the evening went on.

      I glanced down at the Mammoth Melons. I had always felt completely detached from my breasts, as if they were another appendage, an appendage that I didn’t need and didn’t want. 35 DD. And they had been that big and bouncy since eighth grade. I almost needed a harness to rein the things in.

      The women in our family line for as far back as we could remember had all had huge boobs. Huge, protruding breasts. We’d all tried to hide them. Even in old family portraits the women are sitting ever so slightly hunched, their shoulders pulled inward, as if they couldn’t stand for future generations to know what lived on their chests.

      Yes, we all tried to hide our top halves, except for my mother, who wore them like a giant come-and-get-me banner.

      And it had worked. Many husbands. Many boyfriends.

      My whole childhood was filled with Creeps Who Liked Large Breasts. Even on children. I groaned as an avalanche of memories started to cave in on me, black and dirty and horrifying, and I fought them off, knowing how they bended what little sanity I felt I had left.

      Robert had liked my breasts, but really nothing else. He had played with them, squeezing them until I’d cried out, pushing them together, then back out. Massaging them as one might massage bread.

      “Come on, baby,” he would whisper, “arch your back for me.” He’d push me onto his king-sized bed in his bachelor pad, insist I strip, then make me pose in various positions.

      At first I had liked it. “You look hot, baby. Open your mouth. Oh, yeah.” I thought it was kind of sexy. I had only been with one man before Robert, a hurried and somewhat drunken affair, and that a man like Robert wanted to be with me at all, that he was willing to risk seeing me naked, well, that in itself was sexy.

      He’d straddle me and play with my boobs with his hands, his mouth, then he’d flip me over and do the same thing. It was as if my breasts were the only thing about me he really liked. He rarely kissed me at all, even less so on the lips, and the second after we’d finished having sex—and he’d never noticed that I’d never orgasmed—we were out of bed, and he would start in on his complaints and demands…

      “We’re going to my mother’s tomorrow night…. I know your cooking class is then. You’re going to have to skip it. I already told her and my father we would be there. My mother wants to talk to you about your clothes. It’s about time, too.”

      Or, “Those pants, well”—a mean laugh—“they don’t quite look right, do they? On someone who was built thinner than you, they might, but Cannonball, these aren’t made for you.”

      And the worst, “Would it kill you to show a little enthusiasm in bed? What is wrong with you? I think it would be easier to have sex with an icicle.”

      And still I stayed. I tried to please him. That didn’t work. I tried walking away. He came after me. I tried to fight back, but he squashed all my efforts. By the time I took off on our wedding day, I realized I hated him for making me hate myself.

      “There is power in your breasts!” Lydia boomed. “Sit up straighter, Katie! Look for your power!”

      I watched Katie struggle to sit up straight, her eyes at half-mast. Her face was more relaxed now than it had been, the wine having worked its wonders, her red hair only loosely held back by a rubber band, but even in the candlelight I could see her exhaustion, and I sensed her profound unhappiness, as if black charcoals had settled on her soul.

      “I think my power was lost the first day I gave birth,” she said with a groan. She picked up the mirror that Lydia handed to her and held it up to her large, tired-looking breasts. Her bra, I had noted, was tattered and frayed, a dull beige. Her bra and her sweatshirt were folded neatly behind her.

      “I have nursed four children. One still reaches for me as soon as I walk in the door. Sometimes I think it’s like having a pet leech. Oh, God. Did I just call my child a pet leech?” She groaned again, dropping the mirror.

      “He’s not a leech,” she muttered, tears pooling in those dark eyes. “He’s so adorable, I could cry. Yesterday he climbed on my lap and kissed me on the cheek and said, ‘I love you better than the cat, Momma.’ Better than the cat! And he loves that cat.”

      “You must regain yourself through your breasts, Katie!” Lydia admonished although I noticed that her voice was softer. “You have to make some choices.”

      “I’ve made a choice to sit in this house, on this floor, and drink a lot of vine. I mean wine. It’s the perfect choice.” Katie lay back down and giggled, balancing a mirror on her breast. “There are no children to take care of. I am doing no housework in my home right now, or anyone else’s. I am not dealing with Mrs. Nunley, who told me today I wasn’t a good grout cleaner.”

      “You’re not a good grout cleaner!” Lara laughed, taking a break from her drunken mimicking. “Horrors. I am sure you will be going to hell for that! I will pray for you.”

      “That would be helpful, Lara,” Katie said. “Pray also that I don’t try to grout Mrs. Nunley’s face.”

      “How many houses did you clean this week?” Aunt Lydia asked.

      “Fifteen so far. Fifteen houses in Golden are bright and spanking-clean because of my vacuum cleaner and dust rag. See?” she declared, sitting up again and wobbling just a bit. “I have become what I wanted to become. A business owner! Whooo hooo! Katie’s Cleaning.”

      But the whooo hooo came out weak, tired.

      I knew something was up with Katie, and I knew the other women knew, too, by the way they looked at her, but no one said a thing.

      “Mrs. Nunley said she is not going to recommend me to any of her friends unless I whiten the grout. ‘Make it as white as my teeth’ she told me. ‘As white as my teeth.’ Then she pulled back her lips with those wrinkled hands of hers and showed me her teeth, sticking out her tongue so I could see right down her throat.”

      Katie started to laugh. I noticed the slight pitch of hysteria. “They weren’t white! She had rows of those silver fillings, and her front teeth were yellow. And there she is, with a sick grin on her face, her fingers pulling her lips back to her ears and telling me to make her grout as white as her teeth. At least I have my won-der-ful husband to support me.”

      I did not miss the looks that Caroline, Lydia, and Lara exchanged.

      “Oh, gag me,” Lara said. “Just ggaaaagggg me.”

      Katie’s laughter filled the room, but none of the other women seemed to think this was the slightest bit amusing.

      The lights were still low, the candles burning, but the Breast Power Psychic Night group had broken up a bit. Lara had passed out on the couch after declaring that she could hear the state of New York calling her name through aliens. Lydia had pulled a sweater over her head and sat embroidering a pillow that read, “Sex is good for the skin. Men aren’t.”

      Katie had wrapped an afghan around herself and was in a rocking chair by the window, staring straight out, not moving, not reading, just staring.

      And Caroline and I were