Faerie (7 page)

14
. A Measure of Secrets and Loathing

The diet of solid meals created more than just constipation; it created an unsolvable riddle. Unlike liquid nutrition, the solids couldn't be expelled from the bowels or thrown away as easily. I had accumulated a stock of soggy sandwiches and mouldy muffins whose odour led staff to believe it might be coming from exhaust fumes blowing from the main kitchen. I used the new diet to justify my more frequent bathroom trips so that I could dispose of the stockpiled rotting food.

After breakfast, I waited for the morning staff meeting to ask the new nurse's aide, Harry, an easy one to trick, if I could shower. He shrugged and carried on with his crossword puzzle. Thank you, Harry, very much. With hands trembling, I stuffed as much food as I could into two large towels and cradled them like overfed babies in my arms. I crossed the sitting area past Harry and saw, through the office window, the staff collected for their meeting. Just then, Nurse Patricia turned her head, and her eyes landed on me. I lost my hold of one of the towels, and a few crumbled soda crackers fell out. I shut the door behind me, not daring to see whether my secret had been discovered.

I wrapped the food in paper towels and tucked it deep into the trash can, then scattered crumpled paper towels on top. As I performed this ritual, my memory curled back to a routine
that my hands and gestures were way too familiar with. What I was doing with the unwanted food reminded me of the way Mother had taught me to dispose of used sanitary napkins. The procedure was carried out with the same measure of secrecy and loathing. I would tightly roll up the napkin and wrap it in a long strip of toilet paper (the length of paper was directly proportional to the amount of shame the hidden object provoked). Once the coast was clear, I would slip out of the bathroom, silently and secretly make my way to the main garbage bin in the kitchen, and tuck it under all the “clean” and “proper” garbage, making sure it was totally hidden. I would leave feeling absolved, until my body produced another unsightly discharge that needed sanitizing and disposing of.

“Are you done? I need to pee real bad.” Nancy, the fortysomething patient, was scratching at the bathroom door.

“Can't you wait? I'm about to shower—”

“No! I can't!”

I quickly topped up the trash with more crumpled paper towels.

“Now!”

I opened the door and Nancy barged in, dropped her drawers, then plopped herself on the toilet and began to pee. I stepped back in shock. Harry came to my rescue, nudging me out, then shutting the door to let Nancy have some privacy. Just then, the nurses emerged from their station, holding their trays like cocktail waitresses about to serve their customers. I quickly scattered the cracker crumbs on the floor with my foot.

After lunch, the pasta and tomato sauce bulked up in my
belly (this was a meal I could not hide in paper towels), so I writhed and counted calories in my familiar state of boredom and guilt. Boredom was not merely a feeling of discomfort brought on by the lack of stimulation. It was the sister of depression. My thoughts looped continually over numbers, calories, weight, and unstoppable guilt. I worried about being forced into consuming even more calories or being medicated to the hilt like Nancy. I wrangled with the crazy, chattering monkey in my brain, telling me how fat I was, how worthless I was, what a failure I was to myself and to my family, and even to my malady.

I could obediently submit—eat, gain the weight—compliantly follow the program, and get it all over with. I could surrender to the doctors, to womanhood, to my future. To life. And for what? To be “normal”? I couldn't relinquish my joy over my emaciated limbs, the exalted emptiness of my belly, and the rush of power that came from defying the dreadful gravity of adulthood. The faerie held on.

After 200 leg lifts and 500 sit-ups, my abdomen was hard and my composure restored. What had I been going on about? Submitting, surrendering? Never.

I heard voices from the other room and footsteps scuttling back and forth. I slipped off my bed and shuffled to the door. Nurse Patricia emerged from the bathroom wearing yellow rubber gloves. In her right fist was a garbage bag. Then she disappeared behind a wall.

I walked backward and crawled onto my bed, replaying in my mind what I had just witnessed in those brief seconds.
My attention zeroed in on the plastic garbage bag. Was the evidence of my deceit bouncing inside? Or was it merely an innocent sack of laundry heading for the cellar?

It was past four p.m., and the cleaning staff hadn't yet scoured through my room, emptied the garbage, changed my sheets. Voices became louder, and then I heard Dr Messer's leathery drawl break through the monopoly of female voices. Outside my window, the van was fed another corpse before heading to the mortuary. Why hadn't my body given up when I'd called upon it to do so? My eyes scanned the room, hungrily searching for a sharp object, a weapon—a way out. But all I had was a shrunken bar of hospital soap, a toothbrush, a bottle of shampoo, a jug of water, and a plastic cup. Even my prison wouldn't allow me to punish myself. I was so angry that I'd let myself get caught.

I covered my face with my hands. Between my fingers, I could see shadows and reflections of people intruding on my private retreat. Then the commotion stilled, and there was silence. I slowly lowered my hands, looked up, and saw the floor staff assembled at my doorway; they were all staring at me.

Dr Messer took three solemn steps in my direction. He cleared his throat before speaking and in a stern voice said, “You have disappointed me again. You know what I'm talking about. You broke your end of the bargain. What do you expect will happen now, Lila?”

“I don't know,” I whimpered.

“There are two things that can happen. We can discharge you now and let you die, because you will soon, anyway, or we can get tougher on you. And you'll live. Those are your two options.”

“I promise I won't do that again. I'll be good.” I started to sob.

“I don't give a damn about what you
say
you will or won't do. I don't trust you. I don't trust what comes out of that mouth of yours.” He stood erect, and seemed to grow a foot taller. “You're eighteen, legally an adult. You can sign the papers and leave whenever you want. There are plenty of patients who would gladly take your place and welcome our help.”

I shook my head and continued to cry.

“What? You like it here? What do you want?”

“I'm sorry. I'll be good. I'll be good.”

He turned back and signalled for Nurse Patricia to step forward. She hesitated, then came to the side of my bed and dropped the bag to the floor. A putrid stench filled the air; in sync, the nurses cringed, covering their faces.

Dr Messer pointed to the bag and said, “
That
is time.” I looked at him quizzically.

“Five, six weeks, in my estimate. You would've been half way out the door of this place, had you eaten what you were supposed to.”

Did he not understand that this was no simple equation for me? How could I explain the fear and repulsion, the self-hatred that a serving of carrot and raisin salad produced in me? A slice of cheese was as catastrophic as cancer. Did he not understand that food was a grenade, detonating an onslaught of anxiety, guilt, and self-loathing inside me? He must know this; he was the professional.

“I feel very bad when I eat,” I said.

“What do you feel bad about?”

“The calories. The weight. Losing control.”

“I am sorry to tell you this, Lila, but you lost control a long time ago.”

I buried my head in my knees. All I wanted now was his approval.
He will forget my blunder and give me another chance
, I prayed.
And love me. Love me like a daughter
.

“Do you want to get better, Lila?” he said softly.

“Yes. Of course I do.”

Dr Messer looked at the floor and nodded. “I was naïve. I should have known better.” After a moment, he said, “Lila, I cannot discharge you. You know that. Your weight is dangerously low. From now on, you are going to be tube fed.” He turned and headed for the door.

I leapt off my bed and ran up to him, begging him to give me another chance.

“No more free rides.” His eyes darted to the foul-smelling bag, and he left the room.

The day after the discovery of my hoarded food, a group of interns entered with the specialist and his rubber hose. “How're you doin' today, miss?” the specialist said as he rolled the tray table over and set up his supplies. He was a smiley, moon-faced man, plump and middle-aged.

“So, what's a gal like you doin' in a place like this?”

I gave him a silent and grim glare.

“Looks like somebody slept on the wrong side of the hospital bed!”

I wanted to punch his dough face but forced a smile instead.

He picked up a stretchy tube, less than a quarter-inch in diameter and extending to … it looked like eternity. I imagined the journey it was about to take inside me. The tip was fastened with a capsule-sized piece of something silver.

“C'mon, feel it. It's soft,” he said. He held the tube out to me as though he were getting me acquainted with his pet snake. I squeezed it between my fingers; it felt wet and slippery and softer than I had expected. Placing the tube on the tray table next to a plastic cup of water, the specialist handed me the cup and instructed me to drink.

“Will it hurt?” I asked, feeling a dryness build in my throat.

“Nah. Nothing a young lady can't handle. Just like getting your ears pierced.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and gulped the water as he poked the rubber up my nostril while lullabying, “Nice and easy, nice and easy.” I sneezed and coughed, and the tube tumbled out. He told me to relax my facial muscles and swallow more slowly. I swallowed the water and felt the tube slithering down the back of my throat. The sensation was unlike anything I had ever felt, and its weight seemed to pull my sinuses out of my head. Once the ordeal was over, I opened my moist eyes and noticed the end of the tube dangling like a massive Rajasthani nose ornament from my nostril.

When everyone had left the room, I sat up on my bed. In the window's reflection was a girl whose life was about to go in a
different direction; her body had been taken over and no longer belonged to her. The numbness I felt that day quickly turned into terror once the lights went out. In my sleep, I wrangled and fought off hands and limbs, boys and men groping me in my dreams. The rage I felt was so terrific that I forced myself awake, shaking off memories that haunted me in my sleep. How could I escape my own memories? The feeding tube would be a trigger; it was a leash, a constant reminder of my submission to my master, the very thing that I despised. It produced a continual twenty-four-hour drip of calories, the equivalent of six 250-calorie cans of Ensure, at the rate of 62.5 calories an hour, and all the while I was on bed rest. I was not even allowed to walk around in my own room except to use the bedpan. And I'd been told that having the drip didn't mean that I could stop eating. I was still required to eat three meals and three snacks every day.

I braced myself for what was about to hit me in a few hours, when the food had entered my stomach and begun to shape into flesh, bone, and fat. How could I keep the faerie creature alive, the precious miserable faerie, who now would be stripped of her wings and sent to earth?

15
. Angel of Death

The morning bustle of staff in the hallway shook me out of my sleep. I was no longer in PACU and had been transferred to the main floor of psychiatry where I'd made my mad escape in February.

The Phase rules were different on the main floor than in PACU, and inevitably, special rules applied to me. I was on Phase One, and “would remain there until the feeding tube was removed,” Dr Messer insisted. If the unwanted calories weren't punishment enough, the feeding tube kept me locked in miserable Phase One. Dr Messer wasn't taking chances. He did say, however, that he would permit me privileges along the way, depending on my behaviour and weight gain.

For seventy-two hours, the plastic pouch had been hanging upside down beside me like a bat in hell's cave, trickling nutritional supplements into my esophagus. In the last seventeen hours, I had consumed more calories than during my greatest binges when I was sixteen and suicidal. My feeding bag had shrunk and collapsed, but the thick, creamy fluid still snaked inside the tube, which looked like a vein under the transparent skin of a cadaver. It starved itself as it fed me.

“How is Lila this morning?”

I didn't bother to turn in the direction of this new voice. I heard the squealing of the plastic bag being squeezed out of its hook and
replaced with a buoyant refill. My wings fluttered then beat like a trapped insect against the window pane, thrashing against the glass.

“It's Monday. That means porridge 'n' raisin toast.”

The nurse cast her broad shadow over me, obscuring the window as she balanced the breakfast tray under my chin. I could tell from her brusque manner that, although she was a seasoned professional, she was likely unaccustomed to dealing with a delinquent creature whose gravest foe was food.

She touched my arm in a way that startled me; it was firm and earnest, and in an alert and tender voice she said, “I know it ain't easy, hon. Just take it one meal at a time.”

I looked up and scanned her face, which was round and full and cocoa-brown. I guessed from her accent that she was West Indian. I watched her robust hips as she swaggered to the door with a heavy gait. She must resent me for being so fierce and rigid. A sad casualty, she must think me, of the great white North American lean dream machine.

“I'm Jean. I'll be your nurse now. You eat or I'll be givin' you a good beatin'!” With a wink and a chuckle, she was gone.

I shoved the tray away and noticed a huge, horrific bulge in my stomach. And if I refused to eat? I would be fed a richer, more fatally caloric supplement through the tube, night and day, asleep or awake. I would grow bigger and heavier, regain all the weight I had worked so hard to lose. The faerie had been captured in the hunter's net, and the enemy would pin her into the collector's casing.

I was sluggish all day and sleepless all night. At two in the morning, I stared unblinking at the shadows on the wall and
lay motionless on my bed, bracing for flesh to form and skin to stretch and inflate my body like a circus balloon. I sank deeper into my mattress. I could detect this from the way each curve and crevice along my spine and thighs settled more completely into the fabric of my bedding. The gaps and funnels shaped by bone against skin, through which wind and air had circulated freely, were closing and incrementally filling up and anchoring me further into the earth. And without more sedation, I was subject to subtle and terrific palpitations as each new layer of flesh formed and eliminated the elegant, gaunt angularity I'd worked so hard to achieve. I kept touching my body, feeling the changes, pinching new tissue around my waist and forearms. My thighs had already become soft, my hips enlarged—after only a few days. I slapped my hips and grabbed my tender new breasts so hard it hurt, for they'd appeared without my permission, invading my body like malignant tumours. I punched my gut and a storm of grief gushed out, but my clumsy, bloated body resisted my pleas. It was now conspiring against me. I was shackled to this feeding apparatus, my wings disintegrating, collapsing against my growing flesh. I had to stop it. I had to burn it. That night, I burned it off by jumping and jogging in place. I exercised throughout the night. The faerie had once again made her escape.

The rumble and squeal of rubber tires broke through the brief bubble of sleep I'd managed to get after exercising. Under my door, a rapid flicker of shadows glided across the floor like a train steaming past a forgotten station. I crawled out of bed and scrambled toward the door, only to be jerked back by my feeding tube. I grabbed the pole, wheeled it to the door, and peered out.
At the far end of the corridor, orderlies rolled an empty stretcher into the elevator. I realized that the room next to mine was occupied again. I couldn't recall a patient being admitted at such an hour before.

The rules said I was not permitted out of my room. My curiosity did not respect those rules, I said to myself. I slipped out with the feeding pole and made my way to the next room, where there were four beds walled off by grey curtains. I noticed an enchanting draft billowing out from the nearest curtain, luring me in. I moved toward it and parted the gap in the drapery. The high bed at first seemed empty, but under the flattened bedding lay a wafer-thin body. I moved closer and saw a tangle of brittle unruly hair of an old man or woman, and the side of a gaunt face. Just as I moved away to leave, the head slowly turned toward me. Hazel eyes bulged out of a skull-like head. I realized at once that this was no old woman but a girl about my age. Reddish-blue gashes railroaded along her sunken cheeks, and from under the bedcovers, a bony arm bandaged up to the elbow dangled out.

I parted my lips to utter a “Hi” or “Sorry,” but nothing came out. The girl lay there with hardly enough strength to speak a word, let alone see. She shut her eyes and rolled her head away from me, tucking her naked arm under her like a shameful secret, as though I'd stolen something from her with my gaze.

I retreated to my room and thought about the girl, wondering what had led her to this madhouse. Was she a faerie cousin like me? My initial concern turned quickly from empathy to envy, however, because my frail neighbour had outdone me in emaciation,
had made my meek dietary restrictions look like child's play. I had to do more to weigh less.

For days, after seeing my new rival, I was fired up. I paced back and forth from one wall to the opposite, dragging my feeding pole, unwilling to yield to the bed, unwilling to bow to the will of calories, except when the enemy was heard coming. Then one afternoon, a strange scratching noise caught my attention. A corner of yellow paper poked underneath the door. I walked over and with my big toe dragged it toward me and picked it up. I read the badly spelled writing: “I know your jumping. If you don't stop, I'll tell. Sorry but just saying coz I don't want you to get hert. Alyssa.”

I put down the paper and threw open the door. Who the hell was Alyssa? Then it hit me that this might be the name of the new girl next door.

I slammed the door shut. “It's y-o-u-apostrophe-r-e, you dumb girl, and h-u-r-t, you witch, you skinny, conniving b-i-t-c-h.” Who the hell did she think she was? How could she possibly know about my night-time exercises? All I could hear when I pressed my ear against the wall were the low hum of voices, the rumbling of furniture, and the clanging of pipes, which could very well have been from the hallway or from my intestines digesting breakfast. Not only did she discover my secret when no one else had, but she had the nerve to poke her nose into my business and threaten to call me out.

Her sly intrusiveness seemed to suggest what I most feared—to be revealed for who I really was: a fraud. My “illness” was no illness at all, but as the patient in group therapy had pointed out, a grab for attention. To my fragile inner self this girl was saying: “I
know you better than anyone. I know your next move, your tricks and manipulations, and you cannot deceive me. I will reveal your true face.” In a matter of minutes, she had exposed me like a raw nerve. I resolved to be more vigilant and quiet when I exercised at night.

For the rest of the day, I bounced and burned off dinner with lunges and leg lifts and did a springy cardio routine memorised from a workout video. I made sure to do the jumping at the opposite end of the room from my rival. After my ninety-minute cardio routine, I opened the door for air, and there she was, standing before me, this spooky child, like the angel of death. “Hi.” The edges of her pencil-thin lips curved upward strangely; her wide, unblinking eyes remained as lifeless as a mannequin's. “I'm Alyssa.” She leaned forward slightly. What did she expect—to be invited in for tea?

I saw that she was as skinny as I was, but her calves were thick and muscular. Instantly I was relieved. I was still the winner in my mad contest of emaciated Olympics. Yet her frame was identical to mine; she and I were the same height, and she was endowed with a frailty like mine. In her hazel eyes, I thought I could detect secrets. She was a creature of great power and melancholy, I knew it.

“So what's with the note?” I said.

Her eyes grew even wider. “Well, I was worried you'd faint or something.”

I tried not to cringe. I would not bow to her fake concern.

“Look, maybe you should just worry about yourself and mind your own business.” I shut the door just as I noticed her lips
parting to produce words. But I shook her off like a bad dream. Then, a few moments later, I felt bad. What if she was being sincere? What did I know about her life, the suffering she may have endured in her seventeen or eighteen years? Maybe she needed a friend. For the rest of the day I was preoccupied by her. Was she friend or foe?

However, I continued with my secret exercise regime. Defiantly I jumped and ran in place at night and burned, over the course of three hours, approximately 450 calories. After a rest, I took it up again a few hours before breakfast. On our weekly weight day, I'd get to see how my efforts would stand up against the calories forced on me. But how much longer could I keep it up? My ankles were starting to feel sore from hitting the floor so hard in my ratty slippers. I was tired, I was achy, and wanted badly to sleep at night. But I continued, simply because I had no choice.

On weight day, nurse Jean nudged me awake at seven and led me to the scale. I couldn't bear facing it, so I stepped on it backward, looked upward, and prayed.

“If you keep goin' like this, sugar, you'll be out in no time,” said Nurse Jean.

According to the scale, “sugar” had put on 3.23 pounds. I was still on Phase One, but Dr Messer said I was now permitted out of my room to stroll in the great corridor of the sanatorium in the faithful company of my feeding pole. But this hardly made up for the fury that ran through my bones. I would take solitary seclusion and weight loss over all the privileges in the world rather than be burdened with three greasy new pounds.
My heart sank like an anchor in a sea of disappointment.

That evening I got so weak and tired I could hardly move. I felt my body sink slowly and completely, and I fell into a deep, paralyzing trance. My eyes were open and I could see, but I had left my body and drifted away from time and reality. Then I swelled up with a crushing loneliness. This sparked the image of Alyssa's hazel eyes, a void into which I sank, eternal and boundless; it left no opening, no light. The following morning I awoke on the floor, feeling as though I had died in the night. I believed this incident was a sign, a warning to me that something terrible was about to happen.

That evening, I passed Alyssa's room again and heard a low sobbing and the rustle of papers. I walked in and nudged through the curtains. A waft of pungent antiseptic assaulted my senses. Alyssa sat with her back toward me. On her bed was a mountain of newspapers, and her arms were working at something I could not make out.

“Alyssa,” I said quietly, but she didn't hear. “Alyssa.”

She stopped and twisted around to look at me. Her eyes were bloodshot and her face both gaunt and flush from what seemed like a marathon of crying. I saw that she had been ripping up the newspapers.

“It hurts,” she whimpered.

“What the heck are you doing?” I walked in closer.

She shook her head and cried some more.

“I can't. It hurts too much. But they say I gotta get stuff out.”

I shook my head. “I don't understand.”

“I have twenty-two left,” she said, weakly continuing to tear the
papers.

I noticed that her fingers were black from ink and bloated like mini-sausage rolls.

“It's supposed to help me with my urges.” She raised one bandaged arm and looked at me, rolling her eyes. Her arm dropped again like falling timber.

“I can think of a million other things they could make you do, other than this stupid thing!” I said, outraged on her behalf. There was a photo on her bedside table showing a young girl with rosy cheeks and thick, shiny hair, wearing shorts and hiking boots and standing on a cliff.

“That you?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said, stopping in mid-tear and looking at the photo. “I was thirteen. I scaled Mount Washington with my dad.” She turned to me. “I was so different back then. I didn't have these … urges.” But one day, she said, she just snapped.

“So here I am. And I have to tear fifty newspapers a day.” She kept ripping.

“And what if you don't?”

“What do you think? I'll have fifty more.”

I dragged my feeding pole over to the bed and sat down next to her. I began to rip one paper at a time, which, I figured, might burn a few calories.

“Thanks,” she said, looking directly into my eyes.

“So why are you here?”

Her eyes darted away. “They said I was a danger to myself.”

“So am I.”

“Yeah, I know,” she said without missing a beat.

The question I was dying to ask her—how she knew I was jumping in my room—now seemed stupid. She told me that when she turned fourteen, her personality changed like a light switch had been thrown. She became severely depressed and attempted suicide twice before grade nine. Her diagnosis? It changed as frequently as the dress size of a pre-teen girl. During each hospitalization, the specialists came up with different diagnoses, and neither she nor her family knew what in the world was the matter with her.