Free Training in Love by Manuela Pigna

“Or
do you want to remain alone for the rest of your days?” She pauses again. “What
will you do at, I don’t know, say forty…? Will you read books alone until late
at night?”
    Certainly
it’s hard to get a pizza after a conversation like that, but I want to change,
and you don’t change if you continue to do the same things and always react in
the same way. “Better a book than bad company,” I reply after having swallowed.
“And that’s as true today as it will be in twenty years.”
    She’s
angry, maybe also because I’ve never dared to answer back before now. “You
can’t know what you’ll want in twenty years! You can’t know!” She cries
bitterly. “You’ll be sorry, you’ll be sorry about all this time wasted!” She
predicts, her mouth twisted horribly.
    I
could say a lot of things in this moment, I could really hurt her if I wanted
to. But for today I’ve done enough. One step at a time.
    I
take the number of the pizzeria here on the corner and I phone. I do it so
often when she’s not here, but this evening I feel as though it’s the first
time. I feel as though I’m being spied upon while I do something… dirty .
My mother observes me in silence for the whole time. She doesn’t even eat, she
just stares at me. When I finish phoning, I sit at the table and meet her gaze
on purpose, displaying an external calm, while inside a storm is raging.
    She
continues to stare at me and we stay like that for a few painful seconds, after
which she sighs and picks up her fork. Her voice seems tired when she says, “Well,
ok… do what you want. I give up. Enough. I’ve had enough of trying to help you.
It’s like tilting at windmills.”
    I
take a deep breath without being noticed as soon as she bends her head towards
her plate. At the end of this sort of battle I realize something – I really
don’t feel like pizza now – and Andrea’s book says that you can eat anything
you like, as long as you are hungry and stop when you’re full. It says to
listen to your stomach. My poor stomach… I’ve always overloaded him. I used him
in the worst ways, I’ve never thought about him, never taken care of him. But
starting today, starting now, I want to listen to him and take care of him, and
he’s telling me that he doesn’t feel like having pizza anymore. He doesn’t feel
like having anything, to tell the truth. I hope, however, that when it arrives
my mother is already in her room. I have to make it disappear somehow, but she
mustn’t find out otherwise she’ll think she’s won, in spite of everything.
    ***
    The
following Saturday morning I meet Linda to have breakfast together at a cafè downtown.
I haven’t crossed paths with my mother since Thursday evening and already I’m
anxious about tomorrow. I may just invent something to stay out of the house
the whole day.
    In
these two trial days I’ve continued to listen to my stomach and am slowly
becoming aware that he hardly ever feels like anything, unfortunately. It’s
really difficult – not so much listening to him as obeying what he says. I
never realized it – it’s crazy.
    Yesterday
afternoon, for example, Elenina had some of her classmates over to play after
homework, as often happens on Friday. And usually, when we have her friends
over, we eat bread with Nutella as a snack because it’s as though it were a
sort of party. Usually I participate actively without even thinking, but
yesterday, before preparing my part, I asked myself if I really felt like it.
Right away I realized that no, I was not at all hungry, but spreading their
slices of bread… Smelling the perfume of the Nutella in my nostrils… Anyway, in
the end I ate a sandwich too even though I didn’t really want it. It’s really
difficult.
    Then
yesterday evening, I stayed up late looking at the photos of when I was a
little girl. The exercises at the end of the first chapter are about childhood.
You should ask your parents about your eating habits when you