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Sherry

“This has nothing to to with him,” Sherry insists.

“Your body plainly disagrees. I think you’re still dealing with the emotional fallout from your divorce,” says her therapist.

“Do you know what you’re saying, when you say that?” snaps Sherry. “Fallout isn’t what happens when you play Jenga. It’s radioactive shit that falls from the sky over hundreds of miles, and you can’t avoid it, and you go sterile and get cancer and everybody dies.”

“Point taken,” says her therapist calmly. “But you’re attacking my metaphors in order to avoid–”

“You don’t deal with fallout,” mutters Sherry. “It deals with you.”

Sherry

Chubby girls don’t get promoted, so Sherry eats yogurt, when she eats. She wears tight shirts (her abs are still good!). She wears loose pants (her thighs).

Pretty girls don’t ride the subway, so Sherry spends lunch money on taxi rides. Sometimes she’ll take a taxi two or three blocks. They’re so easy to catch.

Nice girls don’t put that there, so Sherry keeps her hands under her pillow, even when it’s lonely and dark and he is so, so far away.

When she stops needing tampons, a couple months later, she’s glad. Her body understands, finally. It wants to help.