Turn 56 of 233

Call Samuel and tell him about the tattoo. Head to the bar afterwards to celebrate the finished tattoo. I burp and fart without abandon at the bar

Lena sits in the truck outside Jess's shop and picks up her phone. The tribal ink is tight and fresh on her belly, still stinging from the needle, and the late afternoon sun coming through the windshield makes the black lines look like they're glowing. She dials Samuel. He picks up on the second ring.

"Hey," she says. "Got a tattoo."

The silence on the other end is long. She can hear Janet's television in the background and the faint clink of dishes being set on a table. Then Samuel says, "What?"

"Tribal piece. On my belly. Hip to hip. Two sessions, three weeks apart. Just finished the second one today."

"You —" He stops. She hears him exhale through his nose, the careful controlled breath he uses when he's choosing between ten things he could say.

"Why?"

Lena looks down at the tattoo. The thick black lines curve across the swell of her belly, branching like muscle fiber, like wood grain, and the design follows the shape of her body the way a river follows the land.

"Because it's my body," she says. "Because this belly drives every wall I frame. Because I wanted to."

Another long silence. Then Samuel says, "Does it mean something?"

"It means I'm not going back."

She hears Janet's voice — muffled, asking what's wrong — and Samuel says, "Your mother wants to know if you're eating." And then, before Lena can answer, he adds: "I'll tell her about the tattoo. She'll want to know." He pauses.

"Are you happy?"

"Yeah, Sam. I am."

"Then I'll talk to you next week."

He hangs up. Lena sits in the truck for a minute with the phone in her hand and the sting of the needle on her belly and the engine running. She doesn't feel guilty. She doesn't feel relieved. She feels full — the way she feels after nine miles, after a wall goes up, after the body does what the body was built to do. She puts the truck in drive.

Murph's is quiet for a Saturday evening — the after-work crowd has gone home and the night crowd hasn't arrived. Lena walks in naked and barefoot and 245 pounds with four weeks of grime layered on her skin and fresh black ink on her belly and she slides onto a barstool and the leather sticks to the back of her thighs. Murph looks up from the taps and says, "Usual?" and Lena says, "Two burgers, basket of fries, three beers. Start them now."

She eats the first burger in four bites and belches — long and deep and resonant, the kind that comes from the bottom of a full stomach — and the two guys sitting three stools down glance over. Lena doesn't look at them. She eats the fries with both hands and drains the first beer and sets the glass down hard and farts, a long low rumble against the barstool leather that she doesn't acknowledge and doesn't need to acknowledge. The sound is just her body being her body. She starts the second burger.

By the third beer she's talking to Murph about the Eagles' offensive line — "the right guard keeps setting his feet too narrow, watch the second step, he's losing leverage before contact" — and she's gesturing with a fry in her hand and her belly is pressing against the bar and the tattoo is visible in the bar light and Murph is nodding like he's actually listening. She belches again between sentences and farts again when she shifts on the stool and a woman at the far end of the bar gives her a look and Lena doesn't see it and wouldn't care if she did. She is 245 pounds and freshly tattooed and her body is making the sounds her body makes and she is comfortable in the way the wish promised — the deep, bone-level comfort of someone who has stopped fighting their own form. She orders a fourth beer and a basket of onion rings and settles in.