Merit Coba

“Do you think I am fat?” She asked, looking at his reflected image.

John cringed inwardly.

The mirror revealed her as pear shaped with a pale skin stained with grey-blue imperfections. She was naked but for worn out undies of an undefined gray-white color. Her grey hair hung listless over her shoulders. Her eyes were the only part of her that showed color: they were blue.

The underwear used to be lace before she had delivered her second child. Those lace undies had hugged her figure. It might even have given shape to her figure, but mow everything sagged. After the pregnancies she had rapidly gained weight and the laced underwear did not fit anymore and she never bought new.

When she noticed him looking at her, she swayed her hips and gave him a mock seductive look.

“I think my hips are my best part.” She went on.

The mirror had allies. Their two daughters, merciless in their judgments, had told her she was fat. It was one of the main sins, next to wearing the wrong clothes and listening to the wrong kind of music.

But those allies did not aid him now.

“And my breasts are still reasonably shaped.” She massaged them, then propped them up with their hands. They rested their like two white shaped half deflated bags, the gray nipples run through with crevices.

He thought of the wide range of ways he had learned overtime to avoid giving a straight answer without lying. It was not a skill he admired, although it amused him at times to amuse other people with it.

She looked at him. Her eyes demanding an answer.

“You are okay.” He said..

“Okay? Just okay?”  She was not letting him get away with it. Not today.

“You are pretty to me.” Which as far as he was willing to go to bend the truth.

“Can’t you just say ‘yes’ or ‘no’?”

“I just gave you an answer.”

“Yes or no?”

“No.”

“No? What no?”

“No, you are not fat.”

“Liar.” She said, “The children say I am fat. I know I am fat; I am 30 kilos overweight. Can’t you tell the truth for once?”

“Not today.” He shook his head, “Not on mothers day.”