Turn 224 of 233

Weigh myself first thing in the morning. I am 925 pounds of dense fat and muscle and I am proud of this body.

Lena steps on the scale at 5:47 AM. The scale is the thing that is the industrial — a freight scale, the kind Walt ordered for the site trailer, rated to a thousand pounds, calibrated last month. She bought it home on a Tuesday and Tuki carried it up the stairs for her because Tuki is the thing that is the helpful and the helpful is the thing that is the not-questioning. The scale sits at the edge of the balcony where the concrete is flattest. The flatness is the thing that is the accurate.

The display cycles. The cycling is the thing that is the digital-thinking. Then the number comes. 925. The number is the thing that is the real. 925 pounds of dense fat and muscle distributed across six feet five inches of woman who has not showered in thirty-one months, whose skin carries the layered smell of every day lived since Kimo's birth, whose feet are callused to leather, whose arms and legs are sleeved in tribal black ink from wrist to shoulder and ankle to hip. The number is not the thing that is the shame. The number is the thing that is the pride. The pride is the thing that is the earned.

She stands on the scale and the standing is the thing that is the looking-down. She can see the tops of her feet — the wide, callused, bare feet that carry 925 pounds forty miles on concrete without breaking. She can see the belly that hangs heavy and full in front of her, round and solid, the skin beneath it unwashed and warm. She can see her thighs — massive, each one wider than her waist used to be, the muscle buried deep under the fat, the fat not the thing that is the weakness but the thing that is the armor and the fuel and the mass that lets her press 630 pounds overhead. The seeing is the thing that is the inventory. The inventory is the thing that is the knowing. The knowing is the thing that is the proud.

Kimo is awake. He is sitting on the concrete watching her the way he watches everything — completely, with his whole body. He does not ask the number. He does not need the number. He reads the number in her posture, in the way her shoulders sit, in the breath she takes.

"Nine-two-five," Lena says anyway. She says it because the saying is the thing that is the claiming. The claiming is the thing that is the not-hiding. She spent twenty-four years hiding from numbers — the number on the scale, the number on the tag, the number that said too much. The hiding is the thing that is the old-Lena. Old-Lena is the thing that is the gone.

"Nine-two-five is the thing that is the Mama," Kimo says.

"Nine-two-five is the thing that is the Mama," Lena agrees.

She steps off the scale. The stepping-off is the thing that is the moving-on. The moving-on is the thing that is the morning. The morning is the thing that is the work. House eight starts today. Walt has the materials list ready. The crew will be there by seven. Samuel is coming Saturday. The state cycle will come again in January because the state cycle is the thing that is the every-three-months and January is the thing that is the three-months-from-now. All of it is the thing that is the outside. The outside is the thing that is the coming. The coming is the thing that is the handled. The handled is the thing that is the 925-pounds-of-dense-fat-and-muscle standing on a concrete balcony in the early morning, barefoot and unwashed and tattooed and proud, looking at the city below and the sky above and the boy beside her and the body she lives in.

The body she lives in is the thing that is the home.