Page 110 - 2023-bfw-FLL-2e

to wear a raincoat in the house so she could deal Visiting hours consisted of filling in my mom
5
with “all of the flying s***.” Everything was a pro- about our lives, attending group therapy, taking
jectile, an indoor hailstorm. walks through the hallways, and participating
in activities like ceramics, where we’d glaze clay
The first time we visited my mother in the eat- dinosaurs and mugs to take home with us later.
Narrative
ing disorder unit of the hospital, the thing she Souvenirs. It was hard not to stare at the shapes
thought to warn us about was not her own condi- that surrounded us; a girl whose body was so
tion but that some of the other patients shopped emaciated that she was covered in a layer of fine
at thrift stores and that we shouldn’t judge. Her hair, walking near another woman whose skin
upwardly mobile sense of middle-class decorum had stretched and stretched to contain some
was still intact, despite the fact that her clothing bottomless need, a self-hugging device, a house.
drooped, almost slithered, off her body as if it The bulimics scared me the least so I focused my
were seeking elsewhere to perch, looking hardly attention on them; they looked relatively healthy
different on her than it would on a wire hanger. on the outside, as long as you didn’t look too
In her concern and preoccupation over how closely at their vomit-stained teeth.
we might handle the class and lifestyle differ- Puberty was a confusing time to be around 25
ences in the EDU, she neglected to mention that so many women whose bodies had become a
her roommate in the hospital was my exact age. sort of battleground. My own relationship to
Breanna was a goth, a cool city kid with black food was healthy. I was lean and athletic with a
hair, blunt bangs, and a knack for liquid eyeliner. high metabolism. I could eat half a pizza with a
She might have been the exact kind of girl I’d be side of breadsticks and wash it down with soda.
friends with, or who I’d want to actually be, but I never dieted or denied myself food. But there
right now she was my mom’s friend and confi- were ways in which I started to disconnect from
dante. While I had discussed my mom’s illness my body during this time; that’s where the sad-
with my friends’ parents, I had never thought ness was, not just mine but these other women’s
to talk about it with my own mother. And now as well. I lodged myself firmly in my head. It was
there was a surrogate me. Breanna could share the only way to process all that I witnessed at the
and understand the one thing about my mother EDU, those halls of hungry ghosts.
that I never could, her disease. Later, after they In my vast experience of visiting hospitals,
were both released, they’d hang out and watch I’ve noticed that part of the job of being a vis-
movies together, grown-up movies, like the film itor is to make a show of looking healthy and
adaptation of Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeep- able: running around, skipping, laughing really
ing, that I had no interest in. I felt sophomoric loud, having a big appetite, illustrating athletic
and callow, but I was only fourteen. Plus, I didn’t prowess. Otherwise it’s as if a doctor or nurse
want a friend, I wanted a mom. or psychiatrist might look at you and decide
Like any part of a hospital, an eating disor- that you have to check in and stay. Or that the
der unit has a smell. The smell is like a color that vulnerability, heartache, and fear will leave you
doesn’t have a recognizable hue, an Easter egg open to illness — you’ll enter healthy and leave
dipped into every kind of dye until it possesses enervated, or not leave at all. A visitor can’t show
an unnamed ugliness. It is beige, it is skin, it is weakness. Thus, my sister and I played very
bile. The EDU smelled like protein-rich powder competitive Ping-Pong in the common room
supplements and chemical cleaners, like a hot, for everyone to see, and to hear. LOOK. AT. US.
stinging exhale of despair. NOTHING. WRONG. AT ALL. It was almost like

208
Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample.
Copyright © Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.

06_SheaFLL2e_40926_ch05_130_243_6PP.indd 208 28/06/22 8:57 AM