The Woman from a Botero Painting
by J. B. Polk
As soon as she entered the building, Harriet made a beeline for the dance hall on the seventh floor. The class was in full swing, with three couples dancing, in complete control of their movements, guessing each other’s every step with precision and grace.
Across the room, she spotted a group of men gathered around a slender woman wearing a dress split on one side right up to the hip. She was most likely Jenny Green, the dance academy’s owner and principal instructor. They spoke and chuckled softly as the strains of the “Scent of a Woman” theme played in the background.
Cuántos desengaños por una cabeza
Yo juré mil veces, no vuelvo a insistir
“Many deceptions, losing by a head. I swore a thousand times not to insist again,” Harriet hummed the song’s English version, aware of her constant promises not to insist, knowing full well that she’d never keep her word.
She adored the movie to bits and was glued to her seat by the way the story developed and the director packed it with powerful characters. But the best was the moment when Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade asked Donna to dance! Harriet had seen it dozens of times and imagined herself at the restaurant table, Al Pacino leading her to the dance floor by hand:
“Would you like to learn to tango, darling?” he’d ask.
“Right now?” Here, Harriet would flutter her eyelashes.
“I offer you my services-free of charge,” he’d reply, extending his hand toward her.
“Let’s dance like there’s no tomorrow.”
“Well, I suppose I could give it a try.”
So she signed up for lessons because the Lieutenant told her that tango dancing, unlike life, was simple. So unlike her life.
“If you make a mistake, get all tangled up, you just tango on...” he promised.
And presto, as if by magic, here she was, dressed for the occasion in a purple skirt with a darker hem, a white blouse, a black belt around her waist, a pair of beige high-heeled sandals, a tiny leather handbag in her hand for her keys, phone, and some spare coins for the train. She wore purple lipstick, mascara, and a dab of Fleur de Rocaille, just like Miss Downes in the movie.
She felt pretty and confident, which showed in her step as she traversed the hall to the group of people. Her heels clicked on the floor, signaling her arrival. They raised their heads.
“Hi... I was wondering if... I mean, are you new? New... stu... dents?” She stammered on the last word, her initial courage ebbing away. “What I mean is, does anyone need a dancing partner?”
Nobody replied. They glanced at her, assessing the cheap DXL Stores skirt, the beige peep-toe shoes, the purple lipstick smudge on her teeth, and the sweat on her brow like a pearled bandana.
“She looks like a jam-filled doughnut. Or two doughnuts stacked on top of each other. Strawberry jam might leak out of her mouth if the belt squeezed her waist a little tighter,” one of the men joked. “So, which of you guys wants to dance with the doughnut lady?” he asked.
“She’d squash my toes, and I have no health insurance, so it’s a pass,” one of his friends quipped.
“You’ve got it wrong, Vince,” smiled the third man, tall and thin with wire-rimmed spectacles that only executives and intellectuals wear. “She’s not a doughnut lady but a woman from a painting. You know, by the artist who portrays monstrously obese people with triple chins and flesh cushions on their legs and arms. He calls them ‘voluptuous’. I call them just plain fat,” he said with the conviction of a judge delivering a verdict.
“Rubens!” Vince chipped in.
“Not Rubens. Rubens is dead. A Colombian guy fascinated by obesity. Whassiname? Give me a second. Got it! Botero! Yes, she looks like a Botero woman,” he exclaimed, clapping. He felt important and clever, utterly disregarding Harriet’s feelings.
Throughout the exchange, the woman in the split dress, smug in her awareness of her slender physique, expressed neither judgment nor sisterly solidarity. She didn’t intervene, because she had never been, and would never be, referred to as a Botero woman.
Harriet’s cheeks turned pink, then crimson, then fire engine red. She slowly returned to her skin, her awkward, bloated skin packed with unsaturated, polyunsaturated, and monounsaturated fat. Sweat began to pour into every nook and cranny of her body, bathing every roll of flesh, staining her blouse in the armpits, and dripping down her legs where flesh cushions hung above her calves, just as the guy had described.
She wanted to run but couldn’t, not because of her weight but because of the high heels she’d chosen to wear tonight. She peered down, seeing blood-filled sausages rather than toes.
Gross, she thought. I look gross. She picked up a crumb of courage, turned around, shoulders hunched against the rhythm of yet another tango, then strolled towards the door as if wading across a swamp, trying not to sink under the burden of humiliation.
She could hear them talking and laughing again. Perhaps not at her, but it didn’t matter. She was no longer Donna, waiting for Lieutenant Coronel Slade to ask her to dance, but obese Harriet McCormack, age 28, a librarian by profession, relationship status: single. Forever single...
Why did it still hurt so much? By now, she should have gotten used to it. Immune even. She had never been a cool kid or, later, an attractive teenager. She, like most women, longed to feel good about herself. But she never did because she was constantly reminded of her weight.
Summers were the worst because everybody posted diet tips and weight-loss stories on social media: “I wrestled with food addiction for over a decade, but now I feel like a new woman. Hell, I feel like HALF the woman I used to be!”
On the subway, she saw thin and beautiful women advertising the latest smartphones on posters. Yes, when you were as thin and beautiful as they were, you could afford that type of smartphone and join dating sites and left-swipe men on Tinder. And when they found someone as thin and beautiful as they were, they right-swiped, fell in love, married, and bought a house in suburbia and a black Buick Lacrosse. Because that was what thin and beautiful people did. And Harriet wished to be like them. She wanted to dance the tango with grace and swipe right at will.
Conscious of her toxic relationship with food, Harriet ate to dispel the oracles of heartbreak. If she didn’t, her soul would shatter into a thousand pieces like confetti, and there would be no one to help her reassemble the pieces. Despite her size, or perhaps because of it, she was fragile, and harsh words could demolish her self-esteem, or whatever remained of it, just as quickly as bulldozers crushed bricks.
And that’s precisely what she was going to do now. She’d devour a box of six doughnuts. No, a box of twelve, all packed with strawberry jam. She would eat so much that, if you pressed her, she would vomit a massive strawberry-colored cascade.
She didn’t cry on Sunday when she couldn’t zip up the dress she had bought barely a month before. Instead, she ate a bag of salt and vinegar potato chips, two Taco Bell steak quesadillas, and a tub of chocolate-and-vanilla ice cream, washed down with two liters of orange juice. She would have also eaten some jellybeans, but none survived in the jar where she had stored them for a rainy day.
When she finally left the hall, the moon was a tiny slit in the sky’s velvet. The alley, deserted at this hour, grumbled at her like an empty stomach. The next day must have been garbage day because black bags stood outside the academy like pious widows praying in a church nave.
Her feet were already killing her, and the nearest Krispy Kreme was at least three streets away. But she would walk because she needed her fix. Her hypothalamus was screaming at her, and the doughnuts were more than just food; they were an emergency supply for her mental health, not just a pick-me-up for attempting something she knew she would fail at. “I swore a thousand times not to insist again,” she whispered.
She was about to cross the street when she sensed, rather than saw, a pair of headlights. Her left shoe got trapped between two cobblestones, causing her to tumble to her knees and drop her handbag. The car was gone as quickly as it appeared while she was down and in pain, with small nibbles biting her ankles like mosquitoes. Her phone, loose coins, and keys were beside her. The bag was by the curb.
A shadow blocked the faint moonbeam, immersing her in darkness as she struggled to get up, gather her belongings, and think of what to do next, all at the same time. It belonged to a tall man, who bowed and smiled at her. She grinned back, even though she was still on her knees, fumbling for her possessions.
He gave off a familiar vibe. She must have seen him before. Perhaps during Uncle Tim’s funeral, because he was dressed in black, from his somewhat wrinkled suit to the strange hat on his head, similar to the ones used by London bankers in the 1950s. His white shirt pierced the lapels like a bleached bone.
He helped her get up, his nose brushing her hair as it fluttered in the breeze. He inhaled deeply and said, “Fleurs de Rocaille, isn’t it?”
She looked up sharply. “How do you know?”
“The scent of a beautiful woman.”
She laughed as she brushed the dirt off her hands and her bruised knees, which were now as purple as the skirt.
“Beautiful? You are either too kind or a liar.”
“But, my child, you are stunning! Perhaps not by conventional standards, but connoisseurs know beauty when they see it. And all I can see is beauty. Perhaps with a hint of sadness, an aura of loneliness that does not detract from but enhances your charm.”
She lowered her head. He had accurately assessed her: she was lonely and miserable. “Again, how do you know?”
“Oh, but I know quite a bit about you! You are a natural brunette. You use anti-aging cream, although you don’t need to, and you have a sensitive soul.”
His answer made her giggle. “All correct! What are you? Some sort of diviner?”
“I can be whatever you want me to be. I could be a diviner or your confessor. I could also be your tango instructor and teach you how to dance.”
Her heart skipped a bit. She was now a little scared. The brunette thing and the sensitive soul were merely lucky guesses, but the tango...
“So, what do you say? I’d like to offer you my services. There is no charge.”
And now she knew where she’d seen the man! It was Lieutenant Colonel Slade. Not Al Pacino, the actor, but the man she’d been waiting for her entire life!
She took his hand and followed him out of the dark alley to the dazzling lights of Madison, then 5th Avenue. They stopped in the middle of West 53rd Street in front of the Museum of Modern Art, which she knew was closed. She had never been there before and expected it to be large and dark inside, with heavy bars in the windows to keep criminals and other unwanted visitors out.
Trustingly, she followed him, and to her surprise, she found the place open, with all the chandeliers lit and soft music playing from hidden speakers. There was not a single bar in any of the windows!
“They must have installed an alarm system,” she reasoned, worried they would set it off and be caught. She could see tomorrow’s headlines:
Librarian and partner caught red-handed during break-in at the MoMA. Warhol’s iconic Campbell’s Soup Cans mysteriously disappear. Reward offered in exchange for information.
They both burst out laughing as they walked in. At something. At absolutely nothing. Or maybe the man guessed her thoughts and found them funny, just like he’d guessed her desire to learn the tango.
She followed him to the second floor, her feet no longer pinched in the tight shoes as she practically floated up the two flights of stairs. They walked into a brightly lit room filled with paintings. She wasn’t an expert, but she recognized a somber-colored Dali, a Frida Kahlo with cropped hair, a Picasso nude, and... a framed canvas with no trace of paint on it. She had no idea what it meant. The blank canvas stood out among the surrounding vibrant pieces, leaving her puzzled and intrigued. Modern art was so full of surprises!
Her partner placed his left hand on her shoulder and his right on her waist, in the depression created by the belt biting into the rolls of flesh she used to loathe but now completely ignored. As she prepared to glide, she felt as light as a helium-filled balloon and full of wild freedom. Then the music started.
They began to soar like a colorful butterfly emerging from a drab chrysalis. They were no longer two persons with separate thoughts and bodies but one two-winged entity moving, breathing, and feeling in tandem. His hands knew the topography of her curves as if they had danced a thousand times before. They zig-zagged across the wooden floor, passionate and precise, their heads tilted, communicating through their gaze.
Harriet knew how melting chocolate, her favorite snack, must feel, since that’s exactly how she felt. The internal heat dissolved all previous pain, eliminating all taunts and sneers. It seeped from her head to her heart, eventually solidifying like hot chocolate on a cold plate.
They had the entire floor to themselves. She thought she heard clapping, but it may have just been the pulse in her temples. As the last accords faded, they glided past the blank canvas. Her partner drew her in closer. They both rose above the floor, drifted for a few seconds, and levitated. He walked in as if the canvas were made of mist and motioned for her to follow. She paused, glanced at the hall and the other paintings, then shrugged and stepped in.
The music suddenly stopped. She could hear the gentle click of the door locking. The lights gradually dimmed and ultimately went out, leaving just the tiny lamps above the paintings. The Picasso nude stretched and massaged her tense shoulders. Dali’s melting clocks started ticking. Frida Kahlo jumped up from her chair, her hair shorn, sobbing loudly: “If he loved me, it was because of my hair. Now that I have none, he doesn’t love me anymore.” Harriet knew she was referring to Diego Rivera, her wayward lover.
She glanced once more around the room before taking her place on the canvas. She wished she could say goodbye to her mother and send her a Robert Rauschenberg postcard from the museum shop. She’d tell her not to cry since her daughter was finally in perfect body-and-soul harmony, forever framed in a Botero painting.
* * *
The garbage truck passing through the alley to collect the constellation of bags stopped at the curb the following day. The new guy, whom the driver called Jean-Claude due to his striking similarity to Van Damme, jumped out, grabbed a leather handbag from the pavement, and opened it. It was empty.
“Hey, look what I’ve found!” He yelled to the driver, who yawned disinterestedly. “It looks like someone got mugged here last night.”
“Neither the first nor the last. It’s New York, man.” The driver shrugged. “Hurry up. We still have plenty of work to do.”
Jean-Claude threw the handbag onto the back of the truck. They drove off.
The MoMA’s doors opened at 10:30 a.m. A rush of tourists with discounted tickets raced to the second floor for the opening of a new exhibition and to see “The Tango,” an oil on canvas by Fernando Botero with a retail price of $2 million.
Copyright © 2024 by J. B. Polk
