Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia (27 page)

I didn't know, yet, just what a liar I would become.

We drive down a narrow rural road, turn into the gravel lot at school. On the right, fields, creek, tangled clusters of thin trees. We walk up a sloping hill and approach a little school, separate one-level buildings

scattered in a semiarc across a wide grass field. Kindergarten through grade twelve. I go to the eleventh-grade classroom, set back among a small prickly woods, a picnic table in a tiny yard.

It is sunny and cool. A girl with a scarf wrapped about her head comes around the building, sees me, says, You must be Marya. I nod. She is Rebecca. Thin silver threads in the purple of her scarf catch light. We go inside, sit down. Eleven students in the class. The teacher is a beautiful older woman, fast talking, energetic. Sometimes, when the room is quiet, you can hear a rooster crow from a nearby farm.

Two weeks later, I will be sitting in my chair at the back of the class. I will get a funny prickly feeling in my feet. I will be looking at the back of a boy's neck. An odd boy. Julian. Julian Daniel Beard.

I made him tell me his whole name one day, sitting on the grass at lunch. Gangly, awkward, wears a pressed white T-shirt every day.

I have listened to his laugh. I have made jokes to hear him laugh.

He's laughed, glanced at me quickly, sharply, shyly, then looked away. He is the kind of boy you want to make blush by telling him terrible bawdy jokes. You want to tease him, watch his funny bow mouth crook in a smile. You have ducked your head to follow his skipping glance. His eyes are the color of very old army coats, that worn green.

In class that day, I thought to myself, with no small amount of alarm: I'm going to marry that boy. I'm going to marry that geeky boy! He sat up, turned around hurriedly, stared at me as if I'd said the words out loud. I stared back at him. He swung back to his paper, curled himself over the desk like a fist, stuck his tongue out to the left side, scribbled madly away at a paper on the Industrial Revolu-tion, as if he were slowing up America's progress, as if he had a railroad empire to build, right then, in the little wood-paneled schoolroom with fall winds ambling in through the open door.

the steps behind Copperfield's Bookstore

& Cafe, and grungy long-haired barefoot baby-hippy boys with pierced nipples played guitar. We smoked hand-rolled cigarettes and drank coffee. I rode in the back of a trundley blue pickup truck from somewhere to somewhere else, watching narrow dirt roads roll by beneath the wheels. Life was good, and I was giddy with freedom. That fall, without noticing, I had stopped planning my life. I became bohemian because I had nothing better to do. I was in limbo, and limbo is nice because no one asks you any questions, and no one wonders where you're going or where you've been, and life is one big dancing bear Grateful Dead sticker on the window of an old Volvo. People speak of karma, and it is very easy, very very easy, to believe all is inevitable, and all you have to do is lean back and watch your life go by.

It's just life, after all.

But a person like me, a person who needs a project at all times, a cause, cannot go for very long without one. This was, ostensibly, a year for me to kick back a little, loosen my grip on the need to race through my life and get everything done all at once and faster than anyone else, a year for me to “explore” my “psyche,” “reconnect”

with my “body,” take “things” a little “slower,” “ease up” on my

“self.” This was, I told my parents over the phone and in letters, a time of great “growth” for me, a time of simply “being,” of “health.”

Bullshit. This was, as I perfectly well knew, a stroke of sheer luck, a stellar opportunity for me to ease away from the real world, move deeper and deeper into the eerie childish singsong land in my head.

It started in earnest, I think, in October. I simply did not eat. I was tenacious this time. It was definitively not about “losing weight.”

That particular moniker for what I was doing seemed absurd, even to me. That term is external. What I was doing was purely internal.

I was trying to starve. I was exploring the extent of hunger. The hunger was the thing, the heady rush. I ate cereal at breakfast and drank water all day. I carried a two-liter bottle around with me everywhere, filling it every hour. Sometimes I drank a little juice at lunch. I remember reading the label on a bottle of carrot juice, drinking one-third of the neon orange contents.

Rebecca and I went to the grocery store together one day in late fall. I was wearing a blue dress. We bought Oreos and dried apples.

We ate the Oreos and drank wine in her kitchen that afternoon. She said: I'd never have guessed you used to be anorexic. I replied: Oh, well that's all over now. I tossed my hair. I ate the Oreos slowly, licked the cream from the middle. I walked home, said hello to the family, to the boyfriend who had

come for dinner. I have to clean up, I said. I went into the bathroom and threw up for the first time since I was hospitalized. Stood up, looked at my face in the mirror. No puffiness, no marks like there used to be. A little watery around the eyes. I laughed, a terrible glee welling up in my chest. All of the Oreos had come up, all of the wine.

I washed my face, my hands, I put on perfume. I was an expert. I could do as I pleased. Nothing could stop me. This was completely my own. I went down to dinner, picked and pushed the food around on my plate. Batting my eyes, making them laugh. The poor boy in love with me held my hand.

In my file at TAMS there are letters. There are notes, a packet of correspondence from Kathi and the doctor to the “team” of “professionals” who were “watching” me in California. There were specific instructions, things to watch for: Weigh her in a gown,
not in street
clothes
. Please be aware that she has had an eating disorder for many years and will require close monitoring. She should see a medical doctor every two weeks, psychiatrist monthly, a nutritionist and a psychologist weekly, check for the following things. They had taken every precaution. The bases were covered, the team in California assured them that they were professionals, they would do as they were told.

I think I saw the psychiatrist once. I did, at first, show up for therapy weekly. Stood on the scale in street clothes. I sat and told her how I was doing so well, how this move had been good for me, I was definitively (I leaned forward in my seat, wide-eyed, long-haired young girl, gesturing rapidly, pulling up tears and scattering them on her carpeted floor) on the road to health. I brought her poems about my health. My connection to the earth, my relearning of the rhythms of the blood and breath. Blah blah blah. I laughed as I wrote them. I was and am bored to tears by such schlock. Goddesses and wombs and the feel of new dirt in my hand, yah-da-yah-da-yah-da. She was deeply touched. “Have you been throwing up at all?”

she'd ask. “Oh, heavens no,” I'd say and laugh at the very idea.

After school, I'd come home. The stepmother and brother gone, house silent, save for the shuffling step of her husband in his office.

Open the cupboard, get out a bowl. Pour cereal, sugar, raisins in the bowl, put two pieces of bread with cheese in the microwave, shovel the cereal into the mouth while the cheese melts, eat the bread and cheese with one hand while but

tering graham crackers, eat the graham crackers while pouring more cereal, more cheese and bread, go to the freezer, get out the ice cream, shovel in ice cream while buttering bread, eat the bread while climbing up to get the cookies, eat the cookies while dumping cold rice in a bowl.

If the husband comes in while your cheeks are bulged, swallow quickly, smile, talk about school. Babble. Say: I'm just starving, we played soccer today. Make a show of shoving the bowl aside, picking up the paper while he makes his coffee. You will not be able to stop thinking about the cereal, so don't even try. You will begin to think about what else you can eat. Don't panic. He'll leave soon, you'll be able to keep going. If he asks: What, have you got a wooden leg?

just laugh. Say: I guess I do. When he disappears into his office, grab a few pieces of bread, a few diet sodas, run up to your room, shut the door, stuff the rest of the food in your mouth, swallow, run into the bathroom, turn on the fans, the shower, the tap in the sink, click up the toilet seat, swig both sodas, vomit. And vomit some more, until your knees are too weak. When you stand up, they'll buckle, and you'll swing to the edge of the sink, holding on for dear life.

Dear life my ass. By November, you wish you were dead. You want nothing more. Every day, every fucking day, you run up the steps of the house, breathing hard, swing open the cupboards, thinking: You pitiful little bitch. Fucking cow. Greedy pig. All day, your stomach pinches and spits up its bile. You sway when you walk. You begin to get cold again.

You fall in with a boy a few years older than yourself. One night, after sex, you are standing in the kitchen, naked. He is getting you a drink, you are leaning on the counter. He comes to hold you. He pinches the skin of your upper arm and says, My God. You have, like, literally no fat on your body. You smile and ask, Does that bother you? He smiles, says, No. I like it.

You will not know until years later that he was saying that so as not to hurt your feelings. You will, years later, show up at his house—he's right where you left him, stoned on the couch—you will wind up fucking around, he will tell you how much more sexy you are now, with an ass to hang on to. He will smile. You will almost be proud of your health. But you, at sixteen, don't know this.

You will, for years to come, pinch the skin on your arm, just to see if you've got any fat on your body yet.

In his bed, you will wither, quickly. Rebecca will begin to worry.

Your

pants are too big, she'll say, you look thin. You'll say: Too thin? She'll look at you—you're standing in front of a mirror—and say, Yeah, a little too thin. You will not be able to hide your smile.

And then one day in early November, you will be standing in the kitchen. Your brothers are home, everyone is home. People are eating. Your stepmother will hand you something, you don't remember what now. She'll say: Try this. You, terrified—when the hell am I going to have a chance to puke, with all these people around?—will try it. You will eat a pretzel, a carrot stick. You will become increasingly, noticeably agitated. Finally you'll leave, take a bus into town on the pretense of going to the library. You will walk, fast and hard, down the street, breaking into a run, it's a brisk day, it's sunny. You rush through the drugstore, thinking: ipecac, ipecac, ipecac. It's a syrup used to induce vomiting, that's all you know. You've never used it before, you don't know how it works, you don't give a flying fuck, you have to find it. You pace the aisles, pulling at the cuffs of your shirt, your hands rough and cold. You can't find it. It's nowhere.

You are wearing overalls. You arch your back and stick your stomach out as far as it will go, put your hand on your faux pregnant belly. You sidle up to the prescription counter, put on your face, smile, and calmly ask the pharmacist if he has some ipecac? You'd like to have some in your first-aid kit at home, you know, in case the kids swallow something awful. You, sixteen, praise God for the time-elapse aging process of your face. You look old enough to have kids and be pregnant. He nods, Oh yes, he says, those kids'll eat anything. You both laugh. As he rings it up, you can't take your eyes off the little brown bottle on the counter. How old are your kids? he asks pleasantly, taking your money. Two and three, you say. It rolls off your tongue, you pat your belly, say, “And zero.” He laughs, congratulates you, and you pocket your change and the ipecac, take your receipt, thank him, he thanks you. You walk, casually, out the door, duck behind the building, and swallow the entire bottle of vile, gag-inducing syrup on an empty stomach.

The label reads: One spoonful, to be followed by eight ounces of water or milk.
Do not administer the entire bottle
. In case of overdose, call your poison control center IMMEDIATELY.

You stroll down the sidewalk, calmer now. You have visions in your

head of stopping at the gas station, leaning over, throwing up like you do every day. This is under control. This is fine. You'll be fine.

You can't stand up. It's sudden. You reach for the wall of a storefront, the sun is spinning horrible crazed circles in the sky. You think: I'm dying. I'm having a heart attack. You try to walk, but you can't.

Passers-by stare at you. You try not to care, you try to breathe. You stagger into a little café, order a bowl of soup, thinking, maybe I didn't have enough in my stomach for this to work. You feel pale, covered in a film of cold sweat, and you can't steady your hands.

You sit with your head on the table. Soup comes, you take a sip.

Shove back from the table, napkin on your mouth, push people aside on your way to the bathroom. You don't even get the stall door shut.

You vomit in insane, ripping heaves, blood spattering the seat. You throw up a carrot stick, a bite of something, a pretzel, quarts of water, blood. When you're done, you pull the door shut and get down on your knees. Your hands will not do as they're told, you have to use both hands to get toilet paper, wipe off the seat, the walls, the floor.

You sit on the floor, shaking, for an hour. Finally, you stand up, wash your face and hands, walk slowly to the library, where your brother will pick you up. You lie down on a bench. When he comes, you say: I don't feel very good. He takes you home. You go to bed in the middle of the afternoon. You sleep fitfully, woken by the sudden lurch of your stomach toward your throat. Sheets soaked in cold sweat.

now. You understand, it just happens.

Crazy isn't always what they say it is. It's not always the old woman wearing sneakers and a skirt and a scarf, wandering around with a shopping cart, hollering at no one, nothing, tumbling through years in her head.

No. Sometimes it is a girl wearing boots and jeans and a sweater, arms crossed in front of her, shivering, wandering through the streets at night, all night, murmuring to no one, nothing, tumbling through the strange unreal dimensions in her head.