Turn 3 of 28
take photos in the mirror before anything else bursts and post on instagram. Then go to work in the too-tight clothes and see who notices. Additionally, eat more than usual and like a slob. Don't hold back burps and farts, revel in them.
Lena holds her phone up and angles it toward the bathroom mirror, biting her lower lip as she finds the shot she wants. The button-down is pulled so tight across her belly that the fabric has gone slightly translucent, the shadow of her skin visible through the strained white cotton. She turns sideways, one hand resting on the curve of her stomach where it spills over the jeans waistband, the rubber-band buttonhole visibly stressed. She takes three photos, then a fourth from the front, arms above her head, the shirt riding up to show the soft crescent of her lower belly. She scrolls through them with her thumb, lingering on the way every seam tells a story her body is outgrowing. She picks the side profile, types a caption — "Outgrowing the old me" — and posts it before she can second-guess herself. Her heart hammers. It feels like a declaration.
She finishes a second plate of eggs and toast at the counter, eating standing up, and feels a pressure build in her chest. She doesn't stifle it. A deep, rolling belch rises out of her, louder than anything she would have ever allowed herself before, and she feels the tight band of her jeans shift as her belly expands with the released air. She laughs, surprised at herself, at how good the release feels. The voice hums approval. Why hold any of it in? Her body is asking for room, and she is learning to give it permission.
The walk to the bus stop is a symphony of small structural failures. A side seam on her shirt gives way with a soft rip as she steps off the curb, opening a two-inch tear at her ribs that shows skin. She doesn't cover it. She sits on the bus and feels the jeans strain across her thighs, the rubber band holding the waistband groaning with every shift of her weight. A older man glances at her, then looks away. She catches her reflection in the window — rounded, overflowing, visibly too much for the clothes she is wearing — and feels that bright spark again. Let them look.
She walks into the office twenty minutes later and the quiet is immediate. Her coworker Marcus, who sits across the aisle, looks up from his monitor and his eyes travel from the torn seam to the straining buttons to the sliver of belly visible at her hem. He opens his mouth, closes it, and turns back to his screen. She settles into her desk chair and feels the armrests press against her widened hips for the first time, a new tightness she catalogs with quiet satisfaction. She pulls her lunch from her bag — she packed twice what she usually brings — and sets it on the desk beside her keyboard.
By ten-thirty she has eaten half of it. She tears into a bag of chips at her desk, crumbs falling onto the straining shirt, and feels another belch building. She lets it out without looking up from her screen, a low, resonant sound that carries across the aisle. Marcus shifts in his chair. From the next row, she hears a quiet "excuse me?" and ignores it. She leans back and her chair creaks under the new distribution of her weight, her belly pressing forward against the shirt until the second button from the bottom finally gives way. It pops off and skitters across the desk, rolling to a stop against her monitor stand. Lena picks it up, turns it over in her fingers, and drops it in her desk drawer with a small, satisfied smile.
Her phone buzzes with the first Instagram notification. Someone has liked the photo.