Bertha's Secret

As I entered, the "Victora's Secret" store at the mall, the eyes of the woman on the window poster looked sideways at me, like some portrait in a haunted mansion.

Inside, images of shapely women in underwear made me feel like maybe I was in the wrong place.  I appear to have the same anatomical parts, but someone stepped on mine and yanked them down like a window shade.  None of the models look very happy.   My daughter once asked, “Why aren’t they smiling?” “They’re hungry, dear.  And cold.”

“Do you have anything that will fit me?”  I asked a skinny clerk.  All I wanted was something new to wear to sleep in instead of baggy shirts and pajama pants. Is there such a store as “Bertha’s Secret”? I wondered, where "weathered" women go?

“You could try the clearance rack,” she offered, stiffly.  The clearance rack is where they send freaks like me, to scrounge around for factory misfits.  

I can hear it now...

“Hey, let’s get all the material together and make a huge one--big enough to fit Ying-Ling the panda they’d joke in some far-eastern sewing room.

I picked up something and held it next to me.  It was so structured, it stood up all by itself on the dressing room chair, challenging me to strap it on like a Roman chest plate.  It was red and ridiculous, but it fit and buying it would mean I could carry that slutty lingerie bag all through the mall.  It wasn't the pajamas I sought, but it would do. It would do.

“I’ll take it,” I beamed, “and wear it home.”  As I left the store, the poster model’s eyes again shifted sideways, but I pulled my shoulders back, my new rack in front of me--where it belonged--for the first time in many years.

I’ve felt alluring.

My self-worth improvement was not without consequence, however, as my new chest-enhancing, molded-foam apparatus made me unbalanced.  My body radar askew, I kept bumping into things like a wind-up toy that runs into walls and changes directions.  With things pushed tightly together, my air supply was being compromised, dizzy, I brushed up against things and I couldn’t see my lap at lunch.

"What's different about you?" my co-worker asked. 

Proud for a moment, taking in what was sure to be compliment, I realized that my red bra had started to weaken, and in awful moment sprang open in the back. 

Bertha, are you out there? It's me Heidi.