Pop Trauma

I should fear my fading body.

I stick my fingers down my throat and continue to cleanse myself.

I unlock the door and leave. Young lust, XO.

********************

I wait at the kitchen table for Mom. She wants to beat the weekend shopping crowd.

“Your dad saw you in the pool this morning,” Mom says. “He thinks you’re losing muscle mass.”

“It was still dark out. The moonlight distort things,” I say. “It helps me wake up. I’m lean from my workouts and diet. I eat enough. You see me eat.”

Mom smiles. “I told him not to worry. I’ll feed you steak all summer. No chicken like the school keeps serving you.”

I grab my keys from the hooks by the fridge, open the front door, and hold it for her.

She looks me over. “Like a freshman negative fifteen, every time you leave you come back smaller. Must be all that walking.”

I laugh. “Yeah, campus is really nice in the fall.”

I couldn’t make the truth come up like dinner.

********************

We cross the grocery store parking lot. Sweat makes Mom’s tight shirt cling to her body. She runs the back of her hand across her forehead. I shove my hands in my hoodie pocket.

“Your sister puts protein powder in her Nurri waters,” Mom says. “Really proteinmaxxing in the morning.

“Mom, your generation doesn’t say -maxxing anything.”

“I’m just trying to keep up with the times.”

“Well, don’t.”

“Why don’t you use the protein powders?” she asks, grabbing a cart outside the Costco entrance.

“I just don’t want to.” Adding a hundred calories to a drink in the morning is ridiculous. I have the right to remain silent.

“You know you need like a hundred and fifty grams of protein a day. I just want to make sure you’re getting enough.”

She scans her digital Costco card and smiles at the greeter. I cling to the cart despite being a college freshman. We walk down the aisles of food no longer labeled by a brand or pleasure of taste.

I pick up a pack of individual nuts and read the ingredients label—cooked in the wrong oils, is high in calories, small in volume. I used to eat trail mix in my high school sophomore world history class while flipping the pages of Code Talker with salty fingers and smiling at the buttery texture of cashews and sweet taste of milk chocolate.

I put the bag down and move on.

We pass through the bakery. A worker stands on the outer edge with samples of garlic bread.

The warm aroma of garlic.

Summer nights. Spaghetti piled on Texas toast. The vintage wooden dining room table. Red stained mouths laughing. When did we stop eating like that?

“Do you want any lettuce? Mushrooms?” Mom ignores the fruit.

“Just squash and zucchini. I’m only here for the weekend.”

She inspects the bags. The soccer mom next to us decides between green or red grapes. In her cart, she has animal crackers, fruit roll ups, and gummies. Grandma used to buy us those gummies, apples chips full sugar, Gatorade, and protein bars. Those kids must feel loved coming off the field.

Mom rubs my arm. “You okay?”

“Just cold.”

We leave the cooler, her arm around my shoulder. “Those children need actual food. Just because you play sports doesn’t mean you can eat all the junk you want,” Mom says.

I push away from her and nod and hope we check out soon.

********************

Mom puts the groceries in the trunk. I start the car and rub my ribs.

Mom laughs while buckling her seat belt. “I look at all those stupid people smiling with that junk in their carts and the junk on the shelves and ask myself how they live like that.” She rolls down her window.

The people with junk in their shopping carts were smiling.

She’d been using the carnivore diet for two years now and only lost ten pounds. Keto before that. Paleo before that. Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers in high school. Each one more superior than the last because the men and women on YouTube said so.

I’ve lost forty. If fat equals happiness I’ll stay sad forever.

I turn on the air conditioner and back out of the parking spot.

Mom presses her foot to the floorboard. Her shoulders stiffen.

I was already breaking and didn’t even get close to the car in front of me. Maybe she should be driving instead since she doesn’t trust me to break in time. Mom puts a hand on my knee, but I brush it off, eyes still on the road. Going up the hill, a red semi straddles the white lines. It moves over into its lane before it passes.

Part of me wishes it didn’t.