Jeff’s Auto
The sagging steel door scrapes across concrete as you and Momma step into Jeff’s Auto Shop. The ever-present gallery of girlie posters are suspended in a haze of cigarette smoke and engine fumes. Women lounge on motorcycles, cars, beaches. Several pose in string bikinis, cradling power tools. None of them are smiling, exactly, and a few look rather surprised, as if they might be wondering how they came to have so little clothing on.
Jeff rolls out from under his banged-up race car and rises, searching for a clean patch of pants to wipe his greasy hands on. Not finding one, he settles for the area with the thinnest coating thus far.
“Karen! What can I do for you ladies?”
“The Volkswagen runs great; I’m still glad you suggested buying it, but I’m having trouble reaching the pedals. I don’t know if they’re set extra far back or if it’s because I keep shrinking.”
Jeff is not in possession of what anyone would call refined manners, but he tactfully refrains from noting that Momma is getting fatter, not shorter.
“Well, why don’t we take a look at that.”
Outside, you and Jeff watch Momma squeeze behind the steering wheel. After this is accomplished with some grunting and adjustment of her girth, Jeff attempts to find a space to peer down to the pedals. He finally kneels and looks past her massive thighs from below, seeing that her feet hang two inches shy of their goal. There is no hope that her average-length legs will make up for the seat being pushed all the way back to accommodate her not-so-average stomach.
Though Momma has known Jeff for years, this is humiliating. Why does she have to make a spectacle of herself everywhere she goes? And why do you always have to come with? She needs your help to go out, she says. There are always unexpected steps or high curbs, and carrying more than her purse throws her off balance while walking with her cane. All you know is that every outing increases the chances that someone from school will see you with her.
Jeff invites you and Momma to wait in the office tucked into one corner of the garage while he works on the pedals. Momma perches uneasily on a folding chair of questionable stability; you lounge on the sagging leather couch. You never have to share comfortable seats because Momma can’t lower herself down or get herself up from soft furniture. You tap a rhythm on the linoleum with your toes until Momma snaps.
“How many times do I have to tell you to stop that goddamn fidgeting?”
You examine your surroundings. Sheaves of paper drift over the desk, filing cabinet, and floor. They look as random as fallen leaves, but you try to memorize the pattern. You think about asking Momma to move something while your eyes are closed to test you, but she’d just tell you to knock off your smart-ass games.
The ceiling fan rotates above, rustling the corners of the centerfolds. The models in this room are decidedly less dressed than those in the work area. Some of them don’t have anything on at all, but there’s always something blocking the view of their nipples or privates. How many of them would fit into Momma? Four? She probably has more fat hanging off her stomach than they have in their whole bodies.
Were these women born beautiful, receiving genetic admission to an elite club? Did they always know how to pose and dress just so, copping the perfect pouty look? Or is there a chance that even a scruffy tomboy like you will develop a body, a style that drives men wild? You cannot fathom such a transformation. You cannot imagine trading your high-tops for high heels, comfortable cotton underwear for thongs that look like a painful wedgie.
You wonder if Momma was ever pretty. She says that men just see women as objects, so women shouldn’t make themselves look nice to impress men. But how did she get husbands and boyfriends if she didn’t look good when she was younger? Her personality sure as shit isn’t charming. When you asked Dad why he married her, he said she didn’t used to be so bad, but that’s hard for you to believe. She’s been the same your whole life.
After a while, Jeff returns.
“Well, I rigged something up, Karen. Why don’t you try it and tell me if you can reach now.”
She heaves herself up and heads for the bay where the green station wagon awaits. Jeff doesn’t say anything for a moment, and you think he’s forgotten. Then he winks, asking,
“So, can I offer you a cigarette?”
“No, I don’t smoke,” you reply.
“Hmm. Now that’s a problem. I don’t know what else I have to give someone who waited so patiently.”
He rummages through his desk drawers.
“Are you allowed to smoke a chocolate cigar? Or perhaps your mother wouldn’t like that?”
“She doesn’t care.”
Of course Momma minds; she was pissed as hell the first time he gave you one. Said he was corrupting you, that your shaggy hair and baggy clothes are trashy enough without a cigarette hanging out of your mouth. Said Jeff’s going to die of lung cancer. Said men smoke cigars because they’re obsessed with their penises. But she doesn’t have to know.
He holds the candy out, handing you a whole way of life, a world where women flaunt their bodies and dangerous addictions are a joke. You go over and take it from him. You unwrap the cellophane, stick the cigar in your mouth, and pretend to smoke it like the Godfather, cracking Jeff up. Finally you sink your teeth in, take a bite.
Aria Dominguez (she/they) is a writer whose poetry and creative nonfiction navigate the terrain between beauty and pain. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize, and she was the winner of the 2021 Porch Prize in Creative Nonfiction, a Fall 2021 Brooklyn Poets Fellowship, the 2022 Sunlight Press Essay Contest, a 2023 Money for Women Nonfiction Award, and a Minnesota State Arts Board grant. Aria works with a nonprofit focused on food justice and lives in Saint Paul with her son.
