We watch the parade end in silence, then Direct Care turns it off. The girls trickle off to their rooms. We had forgotten, for a while, that we lived here.
I remain, as does Emm, her mind still in 2012. She seems smaller in her seat, or perhaps the walls of the living room seem narrower in indirect light. I understand why she had wanted us to watch the parade with her. I understand why she watches Friends again and again in between Olympic years.
I understand her anorexia more than she knows, wings banging on the inside of a cage. But I say nothing; she does not want my understanding. She wants quiet and to grieve.
I should leave her alone. I try, but I made a terrible mistake: I sat on the floor, and now my old lady’s bones are locked painfully in this position. She notices me try to pull myself up. The cracking sound of my bones says, Fail.
She jumps off the couch and reaches down for my arm. We both pull me up, wincing.
Osteoporosis?
Almost, osteopenia. And you?
Me too.
Of course.
She and I half laugh, half cry. Then we fall quiet, both of us wanting to speak, neither of us knowing how.
I am sorry about the trials and anorexia,
I say.
I used to dance. I hurt myself too. It was not too serious, but I guess I was gone too long. They could not wait; they replaced me.
She nods, then looks at the now black television screen:
I thought I would be competing this year. I spent four years convincing myself I would. That I would be in the parade this August, or at least try out again. Instead I’m still here. Four years, Anna. I’ll watch the games on this screen.
The games are not till August, though. You could still be discharged before then.
My sentence is voiced, unintentionally, as a question, to which she answers with a wry smile. The Emm smile. The sad one that broke my heart on my first night here.
I could, but who would prepare the jumbles and lead the morning walk then?
A sad and old lady has replaced the girl whose eyes were sparkling at the screen, just minutes before, proudly boasting about her encounter with the athlete of her dreams. The jumble and the morning walks; she is not joking. Friends, the Olympics, and animal crackers. And cottage cheese on Tuesdays.
Emm needs those, and to be the leader of our group, to survive. De facto director of this house. There is nothing for her outside it.
You cannot give up, Emm.
I haven’t,
she replies,
I haven’t killed myself yet. The jumbles and walks help.
Said in a soft voice. Then,
I’m tired. Good night, Anna.
She expects no empathy from me. Or comfort. She has the Olympics.
And the jumbles, and the walks, and Gerald the Saint Bernard. I head toward the stairs.
Good night, Emm.
47
Mother and daughters on a ladies’ night out: Anna and Sophie’s first ballet. It was still quite chilly for a June evening. Maman was wearing her salmon coat. Over their new dresses, the girls had matching white princess coats that covered their joyous fidgeting.
Maman’s fingers had coaxed the knots out of Anna’s thick blond hair and pinned it into her first bun. It was the most magical night of her life: Swan Lake. Anna had fallen in love.
The stage, the lights, the audience blackened out of sight. The violins flooding the hall, the music filling her lungs. Pas de bourré, pirouette, glissade, grand jeté. The closest anyone could come to flight.
She left thinking ballerinas existed only in that enchanted, chandelier-lit world of red velvet seats and carved wood painted gold, undulled by grimy city light. That place, and the swans’ delicate white feathers, filled the daydreaming six-year-old’s head. So Maman took her to ballet lessons once a week, then twice a week, then every day. To rehearsals and auditions, and she and Papa applauded proudly at every curtain call.
Anna became a ballerina like the ones she had dreamed of, and she found out they were real. Up close and offstage, they were competitively, painfully thin as well. They sweated and stretched for eight hours a day, went to bed aching and starved, but when the curtain went up at 8:00 P.M. every night, they turned into swans.
She also found out that she did not have the body of a perfect ballerina. She was just a little too short and her feet were a little too flat. And she could stand to lose a little weight, she was constantly reminded. But she was good and disciplined enough that she could entertain the dream that if she pushed a little harder, stretched a little further, spun a little faster, she could change.
She did her pliés, put more fire in her jumps. Glissade, glissade, grand jeté. Back straight, shoulders back, ankles crossed. Always. The lighter she was, the easier it would be to flutter off the ground. So the less the other girls ate, the less she did too. Dancer see, dancer do.
Anna neither flew nor grew taller; she got shorter as her spine collapsed. Her knees buckled one afternoon in rehearsal. Surgery at twenty-three, then bed rest.
48
Wednesday begins stickily humid and disconcertingly hot. Disconcertingly, because I have anorexia, and anorexics never feel hot. Today I am, uncharacteristically, sweating, though my hands and feet remain cold. They are always cold; poor peripheral circulation. Acrocyanosis, the doctor had called it.
Otherwise known as the inability to hold a chilled glass of champagne, or Matthias’s hand, because I cannot afford to lose what little heat I have. Or wearing two pairs of socks under layers of blankets in the summer, shaking for hours, unable to sleep. Acral coldness. As lonely as it sounds.
The day does not improve as it progresses; I am served half a bagel and a mound of cream cheese for breakfast. Consequently, the morning walk is miserable. I am short with Papa on the phone.
I change into clean and dry clothes when we return. My irritation is harder to shed. However, just then I hear the door and the mailman. My first smile of the day.
I wonder if V. wrote to me.
She did!
Dear A., I think I like having a pen pal. Last night was fun with all the girls. It was actually my first time watching the Olympics, but don’t tell Emm!
I saw you struggle with the bagel and cream cheese at breakfast this morning. It’s a difficult one for me too. But we did it. They say it gets easier with time.…
Across from me, Valerie is in her spot, of course, reading a letter of her own. Her hair is in a tiny bun at the top of her head, like mine. It looks even smaller, and so does she, compared with the sweater she is wearing; two sizes too big at least, I guess, and obviously a man’s. Boyfriend? Father? Brother? Too early in our friendship to ask. Perhaps in a few letters, I tell myself as I reach for a sheet of paper from the communal stack, when— A shriek.
We all look up and around. Valerie, holding her hand up: paper cut. The letter she had been reading and its envelope are on the floor. Her index finger is red and bleeding abundantly all over the place.
Asteatotis: dry and scaly skin. Another symptom of anorexia.
The condition can lead to profuse and prolonged bleeding from superficial cuts. I know this from experience; a pair of scissors, a knife, a sweater that is a bit too rough, air that is even slightly dry or cold, the edge of a letter or envelope …
And blood is flowing everywhere: on her hands, down her sleeves, on the sweatshirt. Emm is the first to react. She runs to the nurse’s station for supplies and help.
Sarah withdraws, feeling faint. Julia is staring curiously. I take Valerie’s hand and with a wad of tissue paper try to blot the blood.
Her hands.
Pellagra. Hyperpigmented and scaly plaques. Vitamin or protein deficiency.
Lanugo. Downy fine hair, to preserve body heat, covering the entire body.
I would not notice either, normally; Valerie always wears long sleeves. The nurse and Direct Care arrive and take over. My red tissues and I step aside.
Valerie is swept out of community space before any of the other girls faint. Emm, of course, is right behind Direct Care. The rest of us wait.
Just a cut, dear, but we must clean it.