The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance: A Memoir by Elna Baker Page A

Watchers commercials—you know, people holding their old jeans, indicating how much weight they lost. All jeans look huge if you hold them a few feet away from your body, weight loss or not.)
    The next morning I took a train to Philadelphia. Michelle, a friend of my mother, picked me up at the station. It was embarrassing. In order to go on the diet, I had to tell everyone—my parents because I needed help paying for it, my friends because I needed their support, and near strangers like Michelle, because I needed a ride.
    She dropped me off in front of the clinic. As I climbed the steps I repeated my father’s advice: “You’re either going out of your way to fail, or you’re going out of your way to succeed. Either way, we still love you.”
    When I opened the front door and saw the Polaroid-covered walls, relief swept over me. Sometimes when you let an opportunity pass you by, you worry that you’ve closed that door forever. But here it was, a second chance. I took a deep breath and walked up to the front desk where a blond girl sat reading People magazine.
    “Just sign your name on the clipboard,” she said. I wrote down my name.
    An older nurse with dyed-brown hair and cat’s-eye glasses poked her head out from a doorway down the hall. “Ms. Baker? Right this way,” she said.
    I took an even deeper breath. There’s no turning back; it’s now or never.
    “You’re the patient coming in from New York, right?” the older nurse asked as I approached.
    “Yes.”
    “Doctor Levin doesn’t take out-of-state patients, so you’ll have to talk to him before we authorize anything.”
    “They mentioned that over the phone.” I tried smiling, in hopes that’d help my cause.
    “Step up onto this scale,” a nurse said abruptly.
    I looked at the high-tech scale in between us. It had a diagram identifying height on one side, weight on the other. In different shades of red were the words underweight , normal , overweight , and obese . Obese was written in the darkest color, almost a blood red.
    “I should take my shoes off,” I said, kicking off my flats, “and my belt.”
    The nurse tapped her chart with a pencil and let out an impatient sigh. Apparently she’d been through this post-9/11-airport-security-ritual before.
    I stepped onto the scale. Two horizontal red lines flashed in a quick sequence. And then the numbers 2-3-5 appeared. I hadn’t weighed myself in years. It was better than I thought—at one point I weighed 260 pounds. I matched my weight and height (5’ 10”) with the chart and I fell into the bloodred category. Obese , I read. Okay, so it’s still not great.
    The nurse scribbled, closed the file with a neat slap, and then opened the door.
    “You’re just in time for the New Patient Orientation.” She gestured to a room at the end of the hall. I walked forward tentatively and peeked through the door. Seven overweight women were sitting on folding chairs in a plain room.
    When I didn’t immediately enter, the nurse nudged me. “Go on,” she said. “They won’t bite.”
    A different nurse—thin, young, dark hair—was conducting the orientation. She handed me a laminated packet.
    “Take a seat,” she said.
    I looked at the circle. The chairs were set up without consideration for the incoming guests—they were set so tightly I noticed one woman’s leg was practically glued to her neighbor’s. I squeezed into an opening.
    “Welcome,” the nurse began cheerfully. None of us looked that cheerful.
    “Before each of you meets with Doctor Levin, I’m going to explain the diet.”
    She reviewed the laminated packet, a list of all the foods we could eat: veggies, protein, and more veggies. Then she stressed the importance of drinking water, and of exercise. As she spoke, my mind wandered; I found myself looking at the bodies of the other women in the circle. Next to me, across from me, diagonally: the pouches, the elastic-band jeans, watery full faces, somehow softer, somehow kind. I