Skinny (6 page)
"Hot, eh?" I ventured.
"Yeah. What are you doing?"
"Oh, nothing . . . hanging out."
"I see that. When was the last time you ate, G ? Or slept?"
I took a long drag of my cigarette and stared at it in my hand—how had it gotten there? Had I lit it? How had I managed that?
I suddenly felt dizzy. I fell off the edge and onto the hard radiator, taking a tablecloth and vase down with me. Then, like
some disgraced, unskilled Cirque du Soleil dancer, I covered my semi-naked body with my hands, curled into a ball, and started
crying when Susan came to my side.
"Stop moving," she barked. "You're covered with glass." Indeed, my face, hands, and legs were bleeding. My exoskeleton had
failed me. It didn't matter what I ate or didn't eat, I still wasn't safe from the indignities of the body.
I was terrified suddenly, but not of Susan, who had started picking pieces of glass out of my elbows and hair. Susan could
not know that any insults she hurled at me would pale in comparison to the abuse
she
could levy. I knew then that there was a great purge ahead; admonishments, elaborate systems of torture would be inflicted.
She
was screaming now, steadily, high-pitched.
—
Exhibitionist! Slut!
The fall had cracked her mouth open and dislodged her raspy voice.
Susan unstrapped the wings from my back, took a blanket from the couch, wrapped me up in it, and dragged me to bed.
"You're pretty strung out, eh, kid?"
I looked at her.
"I'm sorry."
"It's OK, G. I forgive you," she said softly, patting my face down with a towel before going back to the living room to make
a long phone call.
Fear rippled through me in waves, my body shook, I was almost incapacitated, almost. I clawed at the covers. I was in trouble,
in deep, deep shit. I hadn't been in so much trouble with
her
since the week before, when I ate almost an entire layer of Pot of Gold chocolates at a wine-and-cheese party for the Humanities
Department and she made me pace my bedroom all night to burn off all the calories. Yet there was a tiny part of me that was
proud that I had defied her. I'd proved that I could chew the head off any man who came looking for me. I was a beast, a force
to be reckoned with. I'd proved something. Random and careless as the incident with Greg was, I'd discovered that I had a
will, something outside of the parameters that she had set. I whispered to myself, giggled maniacally, as I thrashed around
in the covers. I didn't know it then, feeling only the immature joy of a child who discovers the word "no," sensing, for the
first time, the surge of assertion, of ego, despite his mother's quick slap.
My unformed will, not yet a voice, would fail in the short term, my quick hospitalization evidence of this. But it was still
there, like the words uttered in a dream, in the soft sliding sound of Greg's athletic legs twined with mine, in the sound
of the curt wet slice I had made in the frontal lobe of a pickled head in anatomy class earlier that week. My will, my very
own, was gathering strength and speed like the gentle breeze that would eventually break the early-April heat into a wild
tornado wind and slap rain into houses and send people rushing to close their windows.
I slept for days, ruined, starved, empty of all thoughts. I watched the rain pour down the windows, unable to acknowledge
her screams, the fact that I was officially at war with myself.
Areas of incised wounds are inspected daily for warning signs of infection.
—
So, you gonna go back to school?
—Maybe, when I'm ready.
—
How many ways can you say
u
self destruction"?
As I was lying there, in the hospital, with a tube up my nose, and cuts on my face,
she
came to me and pressed her cheek into mine. I tried to explain to the nutritionist, whose slim hands and sad bovine eyes always
put me to sleep instantly; to the other girls in the group, who came around to sulk and complain; to Holly, who didn't even
bother to listen to my wild ravings and instead put on her Walkman and danced around the room doing disco moves. It didn't
matter that they couldn't hear me because nothing ever came out, at least nothing that ever made sense:
Meet me on the corner.
. .
Meet me at the Copa
. . .
Nothing I wanted to say ever came out right, because
she
was still screaming so loud in my head.
—
What an unbelievable mess you've made. What a supreme fuck-up
you are.
I thought if a sound came out and I told them a she-devil had just possessed my soul they'd put me somewhere even worse than
where I was.
Still, I longed for someone to reach inside me and pull her out by her hair, because she took the smallest things from me.
At first, just trying to get up on my elbows was a monumental production, never mind eating or talking. And until I learned
how to back-talk, how to wheedle the tiny incision blade from her hands in order to get my way, she threatened and swore at
me. And while my peers wondered if they should go to Kenya, or assist in a city lab, I lay in a dark corner of their hospital,
sweating about how she might kill me in my sleep.
I dream of racing the way some people dream of showing up to school in their underwear. A week or so before a race, I'll wake
with the sheets sweat-soaked and knotted around my knees and Mom clucking her tongue as she tries to untangle me.
The dream changes. Sometimes I'm on the inside lane on the track, behind all the other runners, and no matter how hard or
fast I run, the distance never gets shorter. Instead, I fall farther and farther back with each pumping stride. Or, I'm on
the outside track, ahead of the other runners, believing in my false lead till the gun cracks and I can't move fast enough;
my ankles buckle under, my bruised and scratched legs collapse into the other runner's lane. Once I dreamt a bird shat on
me right as the starter called: " One . . . Two!" That time I woke up laughing.
Mr. Saleri and I agree that I am no sprinter, that it takes me too long to warm up. My forte, as he puts it, is endurance,
not sudden speed. But I'd had the best time at our school for one lap around the track and so I was racing for St. Sebastian
in the four hundred today.
Mom and Giselle showed up to the race. Because she's skinny, Giselle looked like all the fourteen-year-olds around her, but
somehow like an old woman, too. She was wearing a funny green tennis visor with a pair of big movie-star sunglasses (none
of her old clothes fit her anymore so she's wearing my old stuff).
But I was too nervous to really care about how crazy Giselle looked, even with Bobbie Carpi, a pimply, stocky shot putter,
making stupid comments about how "hot" my sister was, like a model or something.
When the blank went off in the starter's gun, I had a perfect lead. I didn't jump the line, I didn't collapse into the adjacent
lane, I didn't make any of the mistakes I'd dreamt of. Instead, my back leg shot out from under me and propelled me into a
series of perfect long strides and I passed five girls in the first hundred metres. Then I glided into place, behind a dark
ponytail, just as Mr. Saleri had told me to, and held tight until the last hundred-metre stretch. In the last thirty metres,
I passed the dark-ponytailed girl and saw Lucy's back. Always ahead of me, Lucy's muscled back.
The strange thing is, I don't even mind that she won. I shook Lucy's wet hand and blew the sweat off my dripping nose and
felt OK. There was still a lot of work to do on my body, on my time. Lucy was my marker: if she could do it I could do it,
and I would continue to do it, despite the constant ache in my knees and back.
Maybe the reason I didn't care about losing was that, as I was running the last stretch, something distracted me from the
finish line: I saw my father. He looked a little older than he was when he died and he was wearing shorts, flip-flops, and
a backwards baseball hat. It was Dad, or Dad's ghost, I guess, a little paler, a little more bloated, but Thomas all the same.
He had his hands cupped around his mouth and was yelling: "Go! Go!"
He appeared again as I approached the bleachers where Giselle and Mom were. He was standing behind them eating an ice cream
sandwich, looking as if he was eavesdropping on their conversation. Of course, he disappeared by the time I got to Mom and
Giselle.
The last time our paths crossed today we spoke. I was in the locker room packing my gym bag when he poked my arm in the annoying
way he used to when he was alive.
"Holly." He still had his accent, saying my name like "holy."
"Hi, Daddy."
"Why's your sister wearing that goofy sun visor? Why she is so small? I'm thinking it's you at first."
"She's sick, Daddy."
"Sick?" He looked alarmed.
"Sick, like, you know, mentally." I twirled my finger around my head, thinking maybe ghosts couldn't hear so well, that they
needed sign language.
"Oh." He looked really confused and I wondered if I should explain the last nine years of our lives. I also wondered, if he
was dead, when did he get a beer gut?
"Great race, Holly."
"Thanks, Dad."
"No really, you hear me shouting?"
"I did."
He didn't hug me or touch me, which kind of surprised me—he was an affectionate man, after all, that much I remembered (plus,
I was his favourite). He just shuffled away slowly, his flip-flops clapping against the soles of his feet as he righted his
baseball cap.
It makes sense to me now that he didn't touch me, because I know how difficult it was for him to even come and talk to me.
Maybe he was afraid that he'd scared me. Maybe he thought he'd make his other daughter mentally sick too if he kept visiting
me and having little heart-to-hearts. Maybe he thought his family had enough problems without him wandering around in summer
clothes and giving out hugs. I don't know.
I stuffed my hoody sweater and my sweaty clothes into my bag and ran out to the parking lot, where Mom and Giselle were waiting.
I glanced in front of me and saw him, walking away from us. I looked at Mom and Giselle, who were giggling and waving, and
I moved towards them, holding back the urge to run after him. Suddenly a funny thought jumped into my head:
I had called him and he'd come,
I thought, watching him dissolve into the green field and dandelion fluffs. Something told me if I did run after him, want
him too much, he wouldn't
come back again. Not a second time.
Cardiovascular activity increases serotonin levels as well as the rate of blood pumped to muscles.
Holly runs twice a day in preparation for her next big race on Friday, and the rest of the time she's locked in her room,
with Jen, laughing her head off. Holly complains that I am becoming more like Mom since I started working at the hospital.
"How?" I ask, disturbed.
"I don't know, you give me that look and use her voice sometimes."
Agnes has also been difficult lately. Today she started in about my hair. It seems, among the many things she hates about
me, she hates my dreadlocks most.
"What are you? Black or something?" she quipped when she first saw me. "Can't you wash yer fuckin' hair?"
"I'm blond, Agnes. I'm white. It's just a hairstyle. They're clean, clean as they can be," I explained pointlessly
"Nobody's white! Not when girls are boys and boys are girls and blond girls make their hair up like darkies. Nobody's nothin'
then!"
I took her to a coffee shop. She was wearing two heavy men's . watches and had pink lipstick smeared all over her teeth. When
she told me that they put dope in the doughnuts, I laughed and said I hoped so. Nobody told me that you don't joke with Agnes.
She swallowed a lit cigarette and fell off her chair. It's not getting-to-know-you time, Mom explained to me later.
After my shift with Agnes is over, I pick up Sol from the newspaper. He climbs into the car, his long lashes drooping, his
eyes tired and sad. Sol's a journalist, like his dad, but has, like, an intern position or something. He works at the
Sun
and does research. He spends all day in his father's shadow, chasing other people's words and stories and then comes to me
with his hands coated in newspaper ink, black streaks on his face, clutching three newspapers and bitching about ad space.
When he climbs into the car he kisses me. It's the first time he's done this and the soft flesh of his lips sends a shock
wave through my system. Automatically, I put my knuckle on the motor that lies beneath his rib cage, in the pit before his
stomach, to feel his energy course through the rest of him. He's warm and I want to feel him close to me, feed off his warmth.
As soon as I start thinking about it too much, I pull my hand away from his stomach, which gets him breathing faster, and
when our mouths get hot he turns away. He fixes his eyes on the road and wipes his mouth, as if he's just said something wrong,
and ends up smearing more black ink across his lips.
We get to the track and enter the stadium. He grabs my hand and holds it, tracing the bones in my fingers. I see Holly stretching
and doing jumping jacks in her running tights and sweatshirt—she's decided against the sassy red shorts. If she places in
this race, she goes to track-and-field camp. On the other hand, if her team wins next week, she gets to go to basketball camp.
Sol buys one of those huge red, white, and blue rocket Pop-sicles. "Want something?" he asks, pulling a ten out of his jeans.
I shake my head.
"Two Pogo-Sticks, please."
"Sol!"
"What?" He smiles, his delicate eyebrows piqued. "Come on, you're Eastern European . . . What've you got against breaded stick-meat?
Eat one, Giselle, I'll have the other." A little teenage girl with about eleven ear piercings hands him the food.
—
This is a test. You are being tested.
—By a Pogo-Stick?
I pluck at my hair, desperate not to show Sol that the idea of eating a goddamn Pogo-Stick is enough to set me off. I feel
ridiculous about the panicky state I'm in, then I remember when I was in the clinic how the nutritionist took us to a doughnut
shop and made us eat doughnuts to show us that it was OK to eat food frivolously. That it was OK to eat when you weren't hungry
sometimes, that that's what normal people did and it didn't mean you were going to get as big as a house.
I chew at the top of the Pogo, the acrid oil coat seeping into my mouth, and then I can't stop myself, I wolf it down quickly,
before'we even find a seat in one of the back rows of the bleachers. What difference could one little piece of deep-fried
meat make?
"Guess you were hungry after all," Sol says, sitting straight up and staring ahead at the field, like an eager young boy.
"I'm always hungry," I say, trying to find what he is looking at.
"Listen, Giselle, I like hanging out in the park with you and everything and coming to Holly's meets and stuff but I was thinking,
I'd like to take you out, you know, for a date, a real date. Indoors."
" I . . ."
—
No, absolutely not.
"You what? You eat dinner, right?" He turns to me, making a loud sucking noise while sticky red, sugary ice trickles down
his hand.
—
Are you actually considering going on a date?
"Sometimes, yeah, I like Italian."
"Good, Italian it is." Sol shakes my hand formally, the deal sealed.
"OK then."
"OK then, how's Thursday?"
"Thursday's fine, no wait. . . Well, Thursday's OK, I guess."
"I'll pick you up around seven-thirty."
"Sol?" I tug at his jacket. He's turned his face into the wind, away from me.
"Yeah?"
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing. I was nervous to ask you out, I guess. I thought you'd say no. It's crazy, trying to figure you girls out." Girl.
He thinks of me as a girl. For once the thought of this doesn't terrify me; that I could be someone's girl, his girl. He looks
straight ahead again, blinking his long lashes. He is down to the middle of the Popsicle, where it is pure white. He wipes
his hand on the bleacher and ends up with dirt on his hand.
"Why would I say no?"
He looks at me as if I am the stupidest person in the world and tries to wipe his hand on me. I laugh.
"Don't look at me like that, Solomon. And for God's sake, are you an infant? Don't wipe that on me." I push his hand away
from me and deposit it on his lap.
"Sorry, something about being at a junior-high track meet brings out the idiot in me."
I take his sticky hand into mine and wrap my other arm around his shoulders. I see Saleri eyeing us from the bottom bleachers
and I try to untangle myself from Sol as he approaches. I can see Saleri is nervous for Holly, like me. He smiles at me weakly
and coughs into his hand.
"How's she lookin'?" I ask, gazing up at Saleri through half-closed eyes.
"Good, good. Although I'm a little worried. She was complaining about her knee yesterday. We put a tensor on it. She'll be
OK I think."
"Good."
"I hear you're in med school, Gizzy. Congratulations. You always were good at science."
"Yeah, well, I just finished first year... I'm taking some time off. . . we'll see how it goes."
The boys' sprints and four hundred are first. Then they announce the girls' fifteen hundred. I see Holly at the side of the
field stretching her legs and jumping up and down. How she hates the gun. She's the queen of false starts. Always hearing
it in her head a second too soon and jumping into the air like a wild rabbit. She gives the stands a worried squint and places
her white shoe on the white line.
And right before the gun goes off, she sticks her hand in her left ear to turn up the volume on her hearing aid. The gun makes
a crisp snapping sound, like sticks breaking, and she falls behind Lucy, her nemesis.
Lucy's wearing a green mesh tank top with faded lettering: OLPS—Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow. Holly stays right behind Lucy,
moving with utter detachment, holding her arms stiffly, with her thumbs and fingers circled, as if she is holding acorns.
Holly is an orthodox runner and she refuses to take any risks, to expend any excess energy. One of her racing rules is to
let the girl in front of her "break up all the air molecules," and so Lucy does all the work for three long laps around until
Holly cuts in front of her in the last stretch. I close my eyes, feeling the greasy food settle in my contracted stomach.
I hear Sol's breathing as if it were in my head.
Oh,
he says, and,
Holly.
I open my eyes. The white lines of the track have exploded and Holly is straddled out on the grass. Her elbows are bloody
and covered with gravel, her ankle bent under her body. She gets up without looking anywhere, skilfully, automatically, as
if being pulled up by some invisible cord. She leaps back onto the track. It seems I've spent my whole life watching Holly
steal bases and careen into asphalt.
Oh Holly.
Lucy sidesteps her cleanly, coming in first. Holly comes in second and keeps running, her hands on her hips. Saleri is at
her side instantly, wiping her soaking head with a towel, pulling her arm to look at where she fell. She unravels herself
from him and walks to the fence, where she finally sits down and drops her head to her knees.
Oh.