Our Lady of Cibo
Her baby is a little man, thick and self-composed and forward-leaning, as if ready to contribute to the heady conversation. Her size has come into question: some say she’s monumental. She could have been seen as goddess in some faraway time and place, and her son would have been venerated for being her son and for looking sophisticated. But at the moment she faces objections from a score of tiny faceless trolls about the loss of focus on her waistline, and her negligent child-rearing skills.
“What does it matter how big I am and how big I may get?” she argues. “I’m as healthy as the lot of you, and I know how to have a good time.”
They ask about her son. Isn’t he at risk with all his excess adipose and his pronounced florid demeanour?
“He looks like a divorcee!” someone cries.
Touché. There is something to that. The little man now fusses about as though he could use a dry martini to calm his nerves and hone his appetite.
The monumental woman says she will not apologize for being who she is and how she is, nor does she think her son will die before his time.
“Look at him,” she says, “how could you say anything bad about my Freddy. Look at him. Hi Freddy, hi my little angel. How dare you people!”
“Is he driving yet?” someone asks.
“Does he have an ulcer?” asks someone else.
“Are those sideburns?” And so on.
The meeting dissolves shortly thereafter, the level of offense prohibitive. As for religious overtones and allusions, they were never in the program, and since most folks think the mother and son set a terrible example, the question remains moot. “They’ll be punished for this,” one of the tiny ones assures everyone, the hunger and yearning for excess written large on his face.
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