It Was Me All Along: A Memoir

IF YOU WERE NOT ABLE TO ATTEND my twentieth birthday party, you missed a fabulous cake.

And if, by chance, you were able to attend my twentieth birthday party, you, too, missed a fabulous cake.

In fact, everyone did, save for me.

I can remember carving the first slice, taking the first forkful. The rush of whipped sugar speeding through my bloodstream. It felt like teetering on the ledge on the roof of a skyscraper, exhilarating and terrifying. The split-second decision between balance and oblivion.

What I cannot remember, however, is the exact moment I made the decision to eat the whole thing.

Scraping the sides of the mixing bowl, I began to notice just how satiny the fudge batter was. I made swirls and figure eights with my spatula. In transferring heaping spoonfuls of espresso-hued chocolate cream to the cake tins, I reveled in the lightness of texture, the airiness of what I was working with. A scoop in the pan, a scoop in the mouth. I then watched through the oven door as the cakes materialized, rising to fill their nine-inch pans.

Ten minutes into the baking, the air in my apartment was so saturated with the aroma of chocolate that I lost the ability to focus on anything but that cake. Though I had already eaten lunch and cake batter, a new hunger appeared, unexpected and urgent, the kind that forced me to stop whatever I was doing and tend to it. It was the kind I couldn’t ignore, the one that wrestled away my power, every hidden weapon of will, and thrust me into the kitchen, where it always seemed I’d run out of milk and self-control.

While the cake cooled, I bided time by making the frosting, following the same rigorous taste-testing protocol as I had with the cake. Once my mixing bowl was full of glossy stiff peaks, I iced both layers. I carved one perfect slice, dragging my index finger along the flat side of the knife to collect any wayward fudgy crumbs, and brought it to my mouth for a thorough licking. I ate the slice of cake with fervor, as if intently pursuing something. I devoured a second slice, and then a third, trailed hastily by another three. I carved one more, reasoning that would just about do it, but, oh—look at the crooked edge I’d produced with my shoddy knife skills. A sliver more would straighten it. I whittled away at the frosting, and, finally sure that enough was enough, I walked away from the cake and laid my fork and knife in the sink. I turned back to the cake stand and, in one painful glance, saw all that remained. A single slice.

Guilt has a way of resisting digestion. There’s nothing natural about its aggressive spread. It stretches out inside me, doubles its size by uncurling its chubby arms and legs. It kicks and groans every slip of the way down. It reminds me, shames me, at every twist, every turn. And when it plops down at last upon the base of my stomach, it stays for days, unwelcome.

When it finally begins to dissolve in a halfhearted effort to leave me, particles of self-hatred remain. And hatred, like acid, erodes the whole of its environment.

What begins as hating the cake for all its multiple layers of luscious temptation spirals quickly into hating myself and all my fat cells. I let myself down. I lament not having more control. I crave comfort and reassurance, but the shame pushes me to choose punishment instead; it’s all I deserve. And though crying seems a valid option, tears elude me. Instead, I stay stuck internally, bottled and sealed inside my own skin with the acidity of hatred and guilt and shame.

Today, eight years later, I’m standing again at my kitchen counter, tending to the same fudge cake. I’m gently lowering the top layer onto its frosting pillow. I’ve baked this cake enough times that I don’t even have to take a bite to know the rich velvet of its texture. It has always been decadent, always as intense as a square of high-quality dark chocolate. A forkful makes me know that, were I able to suspend hot fudge in air just long enough to hold it and bite into it, just to taste it during the moments before it oozed, thick on my tongue, it’d be the same as this cake.

And then there’s the frosting: a whipped confection with a texture that lies somewhere between the airiness in a cloud of cotton candy and the fluffy marshmallow filling in a 3 Musketeers candy bar.

Swiping a finger through that frosting, I stop. I consider how wildly my feelings about eating this one cake have swung in the last seven years. Since that time, I have lost 135 pounds. The weight has left my body and, with it, the guilt, the shame, and the hatred, too. I think briefly of the days when the very sight of a confection induced a seductive fantasy of eating it all in secret. Maybe it’s knowing that I could get away with it, the acknowledgment that I could eat it all without anyone ever seeing me do it, that gives me pause today.

I am a lifetime practitioner of secretive eating, after all. As a kid who entered an empty house after school each day, I felt a desperation to eat. I knew no way other than eating to alleviate the loneliness, to fill in the spaces where comfort and security could have been. Food poured over the millions of cracks in the foundation of my family; it seeped into the fissures; it narrowed the chasms. But even then I knew that the amount of food I was consuming was something to be ashamed of. So I learned to hide it well. I stuffed twin packs of Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls deep inside my stomach, tightly tucking them away. I plunged their cellophane wrappers even deeper inside the trash can, where they couldn’t be seen without digging.

Until the year of my twentieth birthday, I lugged around the heavy shame of my eating. I’d devour a steak-and-cheese sandwich on the way home to eat dinner with my family. I’d find myself two days into a new diet, alone in my car, pulling through the drive-through window of the Burger King two towns over—the one where I was certain no one would recognize me. I’d griddle three stacks of pancakes in the mornings after Mom had left for work, stab my fork into the thick, cakey center of each one, and then slosh the bite through puddles of maple syrup and melted butter.

But today, eating ceaselessly in private doesn’t lure me the way it once did. It doesn’t seduce me in the same sexy way. In fact, there were years after having lost one-hundred-plus pounds when the sight of this fudge cake didn’t conjure up fantasy, but fear—a few birthdays when I spent the hours and days leading up to the cake searching my mind desperately for ways to escape eating it. I thought of excuses. I thought of ways to chew the cake in front of friends and family and spit it out in my napkin in the privacy of the next room. Three birthdays came and went without my so much as licking the frosting that touched my fingers while icing the layers.

The thinness I’d achieved came with its own brand of indignity. It was the fear of gaining back each pound, of proving myself a failure, that plagued me. It was the fatness of my shadow that followed me into the dark alley of an eating disorder. And just as I always had, I stuffed the shame so far down that no one could see it but me. For the first time, I appeared healthy on the outside. I wanted badly to conceal the fact that, despite a radical transformation, I remained as screwed up as I had ever been.

I lied about just having eaten to eschew offers of food at the dinner table with my family. I drove in circles in my neighborhood, unsure of how to fill the hours on an empty stomach. I bought snacks I had no intention of eating when I went to the movie theater with friends. I doggie-bagged the leftovers at restaurants, only to plunge them into the trash can the moment I arrived home. Even after rekindling my passion for baking, I restricted myself to the smallest of portions and gave the rest away.

Making this cake now, a few years later, I see how starkly black and white my beliefs had been. I see the tragedy in living an all-or-nothing existence, in teetering on top of that skyscraper and feeling forced to choose between standing paralyzed in fear or hurling myself over the edge in ecstasy. I recognize the pain of white-knuckling my way through life. I recognize the internal chaos of barreling through life in bouts of mania and depression. The alternative, the middle ground, is balance. It’s not wishing to stay or to fall; it’s remaining upright, respecting the boundary of the rooftop and admiring the exhilaration, the strength, of standing so high.

By now I’ve changed dramatically. I can, I want to, I choose to eat a full slice of this cake and love deeply all the many bites I take. I linger on the cocoa flavor, the suede texture, and, when one piece has reached its clean-plate end, I don’t look for another to replace it. I share this cake. I eat it out in the open, in a loud and proud manner. I take pride in having baked something so rich, so true and divine. I won’t eat until I can no longer feel anything but the stretching of my stomach, the growing of my guilt.

Every year since losing all the weight, I’ve baked this sour cream fudge cake. And every year, I’ve felt different about the finished product. How has one innocent cake transformed from abusive lover to healthy companion, while I’ve continued to bake it just the same?

Has the taste changed, or, perhaps, have I?

SHE ALWAYS LET ME LICK THE BEATERS FIRST.

I grasped the spindly handle of the beater, top-heavy with slick sand-colored dough, and brought it to my mouth as I might an ice cream cone. I grinned into each lick, the corners of my mouth widening into a smile and my tongue extending around each curved silver wire. Gritty brown sugar dissolving; the velvetiness of feather-light flour beaten into softened butter. Of all the tastes I’ve stashed in my memory, that of my mother’s chocolate chip cookies may linger longest. Like her, the flavor is assertive and distinct. As definitive as her Boston accent.

I continued licking, noting her signature doubling of chocolate chips. She looked down and ran her fingers—rough as sandpaper from years of cleaning the homes of others—through the chaos of black curls sprouting on my head. And with her touch I was somehow bothered, mostly by the disruption of such happy licking. I returned her gaze, just in case she was considering taking that precious beater from my pudgy right palm, and I saw her own hair, wet and as ebony as mine, sneaking out from under a towel. Moments out of a nearly sterilizing hot shower, she was always trying to get four things done at once.

When my eyes caught hers, she puckered her lips and leaned down to kiss me. She pulled back, lingering a moment to remind me, Francie, I love you ever ever over, even under dirty filthy water.

I never knew exactly what that phrase meant. Not the name she called me, certainly not the rest. But I understood that this was her way of telling my brother and me we were her lifeblood. It was her unique way of saying I love you more than anything in this world.

I smiled and returned my focus to that battered beater.

What else do we need for the party? she asked earnestly.

She twirled around, assessing the platters, plates, and trays covering every last centimeter of tiled counter space. The table unable to be set with linens or silverware because the food couldn’t spare the space. The chairs, each with a sweet on its seat. Stacks of plates, cloth napkins rolled and ringed with gold, coolers of cubed ice studded with cans of soda and beer.

Just cake! I said, and squealed with delight.

She always made birthdays a grand affair, with balloons and big, boisterous decorations. Never one without an eighteen-inch triple-layer cake from Daniel’s Bakery, our then-favorite cake shop, an hour away. This year’s party was no different, Mom reminded me. Of course we’ve got cake, baby.

The very thought of more sweets sweetened me. Still working my tongue through sugar-meets-butter pre-cookie, I looked around at the spread she’d prepared with me at her side. Deli platters sat coupled with their fluffy bakery rolls, meatballs stewed in marinara with links of spicy sausage bulging like panty hose around an overflowing thigh, trays of lasagna so piping hot, the cheese blistered and the sauce bubbled beyond each pan’s border. Freshly baked bread with seven sticks of butter softening alongside. Bowls heaping with grated Parmesan cheese set beside soupspoons for sprinkling. The hors d’oeuvres—the homemade crackers cut into precise squares, chicken pâté, a dip to plunge every chip in—were kept quarantined in the breezeway. And then, the dessert. No fewer than three fruit pies, each a deep blue, mauve, or red staining her homemade all-butter pastry; two dozen of her thick-like-fudge brownies; custard-filled mini éclairs from the New Paris Bakery in Brookline; those relentlessly chewy chocolate chip cookies; and that special layer cake.

It seemed a reasonable buffet to serve thirty of our family members.

Ever the beloved party-thrower, Mom stayed true to her three trusted modes of catering: massive, more massive, and most massive.

But we’re a family of eaters, all of us, and eaters eat well. We like multiple options. We take comfort in knowing we can always cleanse our palates with deep-dish apple pie before moving on to birthday cake. We think about parties first in terms of menu, followed closely by dessert buffets. I trace this obsession with abundance back to Mom’s mom—a collector. She held on to used wrapping paper as tightly as she did grudges. She saved food, possessions, and incidentals. Her tendency to keep a well-stocked fridge and freezer packed with wartime-like rations years after all her nine babies had left the nest was likely the result of a gene trickled down from an ever-starving Irish family. And my mother, the second oldest of nine, is forever scared of scarcity. It’s knitted into the fiber of her warm woolen soul to gather and provide for anyone who needs providing.

To this day, Mom serves food in the manner she loves: in heaps and sloppy gobs and spilling surplus. She pays no mind to amount or frequency or even what slight portion she may be able to save for herself; she just gives. Unconditional and fierce, she works optimally with excess. She hugs tightly, presses a kiss on your lips like a heavily inked red stamp, buys bulk in bulk, speaks and acts with Broadway-stage gusto, smears butter on her bread generously, and, if you ask her for anything—anything at all—she’ll make it so.

My fifth birthday party was a classic example of her aim to please. She’d made every dish that I—a food fanatic at five—knew existed. The scale of platters alone minimized all the buffets we’d ever seen. I truly could not think of an item she hadn’t already prepared and plated.

And still, she bit the side of her lip, unsure. You think this is enough? Her hands clamped at her waist as she swiveled once more to assess the food.

Yep, I replied.

Have a cupcake while you wait.

Without hesitation I marched to the table, three giddy breaths away. Tippy-toeing so that my eyes just surfaced over the table’s wooden ledge, I looked lovingly at the plate she had carefully assembled that morning: pale pink parchment cups polka-dotted with lavender, each puffed with dainty coconut cake. I scanned the dozen, determined to find the one with the fullest frosting cloud.

I knew what kind of standards one should uphold with baked goods: frosting on cupcakes should sit no less than two finger-widths high; cookies should be crackled across their tops to reveal gooey, barely baked centers; the best piece of sheet cake is always the corner and, of course, sporting a frosting rose. I had a discerning sweet tooth—several of them, I imagine.

At this age, I was sweetly appled, cute, and roly-poly, standing three-and-a-half feet tall and weighing sixty pounds. I remember my fondness for that appropriately garnet-hued January birthday dress. The stiff collar of ruffled velvet, the empire waist and poufed hoop skirt. A twirl and a polite curtsy every few minutes emphasized how regal, how happily fancy-schmancy I felt at the time. I pirouetted in front of the hall mirror and saw my brother at my back, heading toward his room.

At eleven years old, Anthony was constantly running around. From sunup to sundown, he was outside, playing sports with his friends, while I was inside, mostly sitting and often alone. People told him he took after Mom’s side of the family. So tall and skinny! they’d say. And then they’d look at me—big and round—and note my resemblance to Dad.

I picked up my coconut cupcake—the one heaviest in buttercream love—and made my way to the next room. There on our navy floral couch, still pajamaed and groggy, sat Dad. I surveyed him carefully, knowing how sour his moods usually were in the morning and early afternoon.

Hi, baby. He smiled, motioning for me to sit beside him. I was relieved and surprised that he was so upbeat so early in the day. He must be making today special because of my party, I thought as I took a seat.

Happy birthday. He bent toward me to press a big smooch on my temple. He squeezed me in his bearish way, and I smiled a closed-mouth smile, leaning into him. I peeled the oily paper lining from my cupcake and set about savoring it.

He had just gotten up, half an hour before the party guests were due to arrive. Twelve thirty in the afternoon wasn’t an unusual wake-up time for him. Nights spent drinking beer can after beer can after beer can after beer can, can, can, can, can don’t lend well to early rising the following day. I didn’t know that all dads weren’t consistent in buying two six-packs of those red-and-white cans at the liquor store up the street and coming home to drink and chain-smoke in front of M*A*S*H until the sun came up. It was normal for us. Still, I wondered why he was so thirsty all the time. I wondered if it was just so delicious, he didn’t want to stop. One time, when he left the room and I saw his beer can open on the counter unattended, I rushed up and took a swig to see if it tasted as good as Nesquik. It didn’t.

Weeks before, Mom had told me that Dad had lost his job. Understandably, he was crushed. He moped around the house even worse than he’d done regularly. For years, he’d held a meaningful, well-paying position as a technical illustrator at Wang Laboratories, a computer company close to where we lived in Methuen, Massachusetts. Always an artist, creative and dramatic, he was brilliant. I remember going to work with him on days before school started and sitting at his desk, coloring in the black-and-white illustrations of the many small parts inside a computer. Even as an adult, reading instruction manuals whenever I get a new camera, computer, or phone and seeing those precise pictures of the inner technology and parts, I’m reminded of the contentment I felt in his office with a box of crayons, working away at what you’d think must have been the driest of coloring-book material.

Almost party time, Dad reminded me.

Uh-huh, I mumbled through my cupcake, dropping crumbs in my lap.

He ashed his cigarette and turned forward.

As I neared the end of the cupcake, I thought of the big cake in the dining room. I felt relieved that my birthday cake sat still intact and safe. Just six months earlier, Dad had eaten Anthony’s the night before the party, drunk and with his bare hands. I thought of how devastated I’d be if that cake were mine.

From the kitchen, Mom hollered, Rob, you should get dressed, honey. People are going to start showing up any minute.

Dad exhaled a cloud of smoke. He stubbed his cigarette into the translucent green glass bottom of one of the four heavy ashtrays we kept around the house. He rocked back and then forth, rising on the upswing to heave his 350 pounds to standing. The weight proved to be all he gained after losing his job.

Whooo boy! he exclaimed emphatically. Let’s get ready, baby. He smiled at me.

I stuffed the last of the cupcake into my mouth before I repaid his exuberance by getting up myself. As I rose, I watched him—a solid five-foot-ten frame stretching outward in an all-encompassing yawn. He had silky jet-black hair, golden skin, and almond eyes that cracked open as he smiled. He barely had a top lip. The pronounced structure of his face—high cheekbones, deep-set eyes—was so handsome, it proved striking, unforgettable.

He bent to kiss my forehead, hard and purposeful, once more. I trailed him as he headed into the kitchen.

Coming up from behind Mom, he wrapped his arms tightly around her waist, pressing his nose to her hair, breathing her