His hands to his face. After a while he runs them back into his brown hair. I used to do that. His breath escapes, jagged. He calms down and finally looks up.
His voice is quiet now:
I’m sorry, it doesn’t matter. I’m glad you listened to Emm. This is a big step for you, but I think you can do it. You will have good support next week. It’s just …
He looks out the window again. I want him to finish his thought. I reach for his hand:
Hey, you can say it.
He looks back without seeing me.
Just … why was I not enough?
I do not know.
Why Emm and not me, Anna? Why did we have to end up here? Why did it have to get to this for you to start to eat?
I do not know why I never touched his fries or why I threw out the food. I do not know why I lied every time he asked me about lunch. I do not know why I tried to starve myself and why I am eating now.
I have no choice here but to eat; they took my freedom away. You loved me too much to do that— I nearly killed you,
Matthias interrupts.
His jawline is taut and a vessel is pulsing madly at the base of his neck. His hands are in fists. I hesitate before touching them lightly:
Hey …
Sobs. His and mine. In Patient Bedroom 5 of a horrible place called 17 Swann Street.
You brought me here. You saved my life,
I tell Matthias, still crying. I am sorry,
I am so sorry. I do not know why or how it got to this.
I don’t know why either,
he whispers,
but I’m here.
I am here too,
I promise. And to keep fighting this.
We hear Direct Care’s heavy footsteps and panting come up the stairs. Visiting hours are almost over. Matthias stands up.
Noses blown, eyes dry now, he asks:
When all this is over, Chez Paul?
I swallow my saliva and fear:
Pains au chocolat and coffee.
He leaves me at 17 Swann Street with my evening snack and myself. And a week’s worth of food to swallow that I have not tasted in years. I do not have to remember or like them, I just have to try. I just have to chew and swallow, chew and swallow, one cotton bite at a time.
37
Sunday. I have been here a week, and to my surprise, am not dead. I lie in bed, relishing the first few minutes and rays of the morning.
I reflect on my first week at 17 Swann Street. The psychiatrist had said that I was depressed and my brain was hungry and irrational. Hungry Brain Syndrome: the reason I was constantly cold, sad, tired, paranoid, angry.
The nutritionist had said that I was undernourished and that I had to eat. Dairy, and oil and grains and beans and tofu and nuts and granola and eggs. She had even suggested junk food. She was mad.
The therapist had said I repressed my feelings. I had explained I have none. Unless she counted feeling cold, and tired, and empty, and sad. I had explained I have no energy for superfluous things like feelings. What little food I ate I used to survive; no leftovers for hormones or tear glands.
Are you happy?
she had asked.
I had shrugged.
Angry?
Shrug.
Are you sad?
Shrug.
What do you feel like doing?
When?
Today, tomorrow, with your life?
Her questions had felt tiresome and irrelevant.
Do you feel hopeless?
I had cried.
My diagnosis was anorexia nervosa. My insurance had agreed and had authorized my stay here till I was restored to a healthy weight. The primary care physician had examined my test results, and was concerned with my heart, brain, stomach, kidney, pancreas, liver, bones. Just those. But she had not addressed my dormant ovaries, so I had brought them up.
I had told her I could not remember the last time I had a period. A few months, perhaps years ago. But I did want a baby, so could she please tell me:
When will my periods return?
She had not replied.
I had completed three meals and three snacks every day of this week. None had been popcorn or fruit. I roll onto my stomach in my one-person bed and breathe into the pillow. Hello Sunday.
I am not particularly religious, but I had asked for a church pass. My treatment team had promptly endorsed this spiritual supplement to my nourishment. All I had to do, I was informed, was get through breakfast and a snack, and Direct Care would drive me to mass at 10:30 A.M. I could do that.
So, after the midmorning snack, Direct Care hands me my phone. Then she, I, and one of the other girls step out into the parking lot.
The girl’s name is Sarah. She had come in on Friday. Exceptionally; patients usually come in on Mondays but, as Emm had explained,
The weekender’s bed was free.
On the day she had arrived at 17 Swann Street, her hair was the first thing I had noticed. Fiery, and it matched her lipstick, I had noted with envy. I own three tubes of red lipstick myself, but I am too vanilla to wear them. I watch Sarah wear hers, her hair, and her Southern drawl with showstopping confidence.
Today she is also wearing a long flower-print dress and a pair of Marilyn sunglasses. She sways toward the service van sensually. My blue jeans and hair in a bun follow. We climb in the back. Door shut.
Direct Care starts the engine and we drive off to church. I do not anticipate the rush of emotion that follows.
It fills my lungs suddenly as the van backs out then turns right on the street. From my bedroom window on the east side of the house where I have been for a week, I could only see as far as the curb. Now it is behind us. Now I watch the houses and gardens roll by, not realizing just how trapped I had felt until a tightness in my throat disappears.
The drive is short. The church is an unremarkable building five minutes away. There is a wide parking lot on its right, a green field on its left, so green against the spotless blue sky, I want to lie in it. We are dropped off and told we will be picked up in an hour, at this precise spot. Then the service van leaves us, stunned and free, and slightly disconcerted on the sidewalk.
For a moment Sarah and I just look at each other. We do not know what to do with ourselves. We have an hour to blend in as normal churchgoers, but how does one do that? Surely someone is going to recognize us: runaways from that house. The one where they keep the girls who cannot eat. We walk to the entrance hesitantly.
So far so good, until … we are stopped, by a well-meaning matron and a heaping tray of hot coffee and doughnuts. Sarah and I freeze, but only for a second. We then politely refuse and walk on, smiling at each other furtively. Blending in, blending in.
The big hall is lined with stained-glass windows, colored light pouring in. The ceiling high enough that from it could easily hang a trapeze. We slip quietly into the last pew just as the choir begins to sing. It is glorious. Music. It drowns out everything: the psychiatrist, the nutritionist, the therapist, Direct Care, my family, Matthias, the sadness, the anxiety, the fear. Every muscle in my body feels like it is unclenching. I can breathe. I do. I could be in a mosque, a synagogue, a temple. I could be on a mountaintop.
I do not know if anyone hears prayers. I decide to pray anyway. I let my shoulders slouch, my back bend, my ankles uncross, and myself be completely honest.
I am not depressed. I am sad, because I am away from those I love and every day without them is a day lost. Because I lost a brother and a mother and know what a day lost means.
I am not undernourished. I am starved for a meal I would not have to eat alone. For someone to love me and tell me that I am more than enough, as I am.
I am not anorexic. I am out of control. I know it but I cannot stop. I am a child in a body that grew up too soon, found adulthood and real life a scam, and now is trying to lose enough weight to lift off the ground, fly away.
As for my body, I think it is fine. It and the world just disagree. If only my ovaries …