Gemini Sisters

FICTION Gemini Sisters Jeanne Bryner HARRIETTE AND I ARE BUSY setting up folding chairs for the meeting when Darcey St. Clair walks in with a tupperware full of carrot curls and celery sticks. She's out of wind after climbing sixteen stairs. Her face is flushed as a Big Boy tomato, and she's wearing a new lipstick called "Sassy Strawberry." Darcey St. Clair is the president of our local chapter of the Gemini Sisters, which is a group for women who eat too much. Darcey lost forty-two pounds last year, edging out Fanny Lewis by eight pounds. Darcey went from a size twenty-six to a size twenty-two, and she's now able to wear elasticwaist trousers. She's aiming for a see-through nightgown, but that's about eighty pounds down the road. Our district leader's speaking tonight: Goldie Everly from Cheyenne, West Virginia. Goldie lost one hundred thirty-six pounds. We've all seen her before and after photos and how her old flowered dress seems like a tent in which she's lost. They say she's never had any plastic work on her face, but she looks so much younger without the weight. She says in the ad, "It's like I lost a whole person, like someone else was inside me eating, and now she's gone." That's how Goldie came up with the name Gemini Sisters, two people in one body. What Harriette and I like most about the Gemini Sisters are the stories: abortions, funny uncles, preachers' sons, wife beaters, drunks, crazy aunts. Every new member tells about sneaking ice cream and sodas when the kids are in bed. They tell about saving their old hiphuggers and how it felt to buy plus sizes the first time. They have to bring in their prom pictures and wedding albums. We all have a good cry looking at our mamas and at those young bodies in their floaty, pastel dresses. The saddest member is Crystal McClure. She was a cheerleader every year since sixth grade, a little blonde doll of a girl who could throw herself into jump splits and flip over backwards for a touchdown in a half-second. Now Crystal weighs two-twenty-two, and she hasn't worn shoes for five years. She has six pairs of flip-flops, every color in the rainbow. It gets cold in the winter, but nobody can fit her in shoes. Harriette and I drove her clear to Pittsburgh, where the lady in the shoe store kept bringing out shoes and shaking her head. Crystal had us stop at the Spaghetti Warehouse on the way back. She 50 had the Tour of Italy for dinner and a thick slice of chocolate-caramel delight pie for dessert. If Harriette and I had known Crystal gets carsick, we would have traveled the Freeway coming home. The Gemini Sisters have been in Brier County for eighteen months. We meet at the Grange Hall on Wednesday nights. We have weigh-in, roll call, recipe sharing, and group. Harvey O'Dell says it's a lot like Alcoholics Anonymous, except none ofus has the shakes and only Bess Westfall smokes. Harriette and I are secretary and treasurer. I'm too interested in listening to keep writing everything down, so I said I'd keep track of the money (there's not that much anyway). The dues are eight dollars a month. That works out to two dollars a meeting, which everybody can afford. Clementine Hood is supposed to bring a bouquet of flowers for Goldie. I hope she remembers. We spent most of the meeting last time arguing about what to buy her. Some of the girls wanted to buy a Thank Youfor Saving Us plaque, until I reminded them of the ten rules of the Gemini Sisters. The first rule says we have to save ourselves. We have to say "No" to the other person inside us who is really not hungry for food, but for something else. The second rule is we must find out what the other person is starving for. To look at this group, it's hard to believe we're...