Reasons to Be Happy

Reasons to Be Happy:

None.

My dad got arrested.

Again.

He’s all over the news and Internet, even here in Ohio. I’d been here for one week already. Things were actually going well. Aunt Izzy was awesome. She was letting me log videotape on her Africa documentary. We were having a blast.

Well, except for the fact that for four days, Dad hadn’t answered my emails or calls. I just thought he was tired of pretending he cared enough to talk to me. Tired of listening to me blather on about canoeing on the Little Miami, climbing at the Urban Krag, taking Latin Dance class at El Meson, or having a picnic on the lawn of the Dayton Art Institute.

Then came the morning when Aunt Izzy came into my room while it was still dark. She sat on the edge of my bed in a T-shirt and yoga pants, her hair still all messed up. “Hannah Banana,” she whispered, “I have some bad news, sweetie.”

Dad had been drunk. He’d been drunk for days, apparently, and hadn’t shown up for work on the vampire movie. He’d crashed our Land Rover into a rental car of tourists from Indianapolis. One of them had to go to the hospital with a broken arm, but the rest were okay except for needing some stitches. Both cars were trashed. The pictures in the paper made me feel sick.

They’d been on the Pacific Coast Highway.

All the times we’d driven that highway, all the times I’d thought just one wrong move and we’d end up in the ocean. He could’ve fallen over the cliff, been trapped in his car, and drowned.

He could’ve killed that whole family from Indiana.

His mug shot was hideous.

I bet Brooke wouldn’t say he was hot when she saw that picture of him. He looked like he actually was a vampire—so pale with black circles around his eyes, cheeks all gaunt, eyes bloodshot. It hurt me to look at him so ashamed and small.

He’d spent the night in jail. Who wants to picture their dad in a jail? In an ugly blue jumpsuit? With maybe a scary cell mate? I couldn’t sleep I was so terrified for him.

His publicist had called Aunt Izzy. So had Sean and Laila. Dad hadn’t talked to either one of us yet. As much as I wanted him to call, I had no idea what I’d say to him. What could you say after something like that?

What was everyone else saying?

Oh my God, how could I go to school and face Brooke and the B-Squad? Dad was the only thing I had going for me.

The confusion made me feel sick; I wanted to kick Dad at the same time I wanted to hide him away somewhere and protect him.

Aunt Izzy understood how freaked I was. “What do you need to do?” she asked.

I knew what I needed, but I couldn’t tell her that. With my SR, I wouldn’t have to feel anything. It would take away all this panic.

My SR wasn’t so secret. Aunt Izzy talked about it all the time. She called it what it was.

I couldn’t stand to be in my hot, itchy skin, but I held it together most of that first day.

Aunt Izzy took me to Sugarcreek, this great nature preserve. We’d gone there with my mom once years ago. They’d taken me to see the Three Sisters, these enormous oak trees that were over six hundred years old. Me, Mom, and Aunt Izzy together couldn’t wrap our arms around one of the trunks, that’s how big they were.

That day, when we climbed up to them, my eyes filled with tears and my back started shaking. Aunt Izzy put her arm around me, but I shrugged it off, hard.

“Don’t touch me,” I said.

She nodded. She didn’t seem mad.

“I can’t stand to be in my own body,” I whispered. “I want—”

“What?”

“I wish I could zip it off, my own skin. I want to run. I want to run really hard.”

“So run. You know where the car is. I won’t leave without you.”

I left her standing there at the Three Sisters and I ran as fast as I could, more like fleeing. Like I was running from something. But, the problem is, you can’t run away from yourself. It felt good anyway, to sweat and breathe hard. Made the panicky swirl in my chest spin less.

The muscles in my thighs and fat butt warmed up, then burned, as I kept running running running on the muddy trails.

When I’d been on the track team, I almost always won.

I missed track. I missed losing myself in the laps. It would’ve been a comfort. It was a comfort as I ran all the way down to the big wide creek—the actual Sugar Creek the place was named for—before I slowed to a walk, panting. I’d run almost three miles without stopping. Not bad for not having trained for over a year. I clutched my side and gasped for air.

Maybe if I wasn’t so fat, Dad wouldn’t drink so much. Maybe if I wasn’t so gross and had to shoplift and do my disgusting habit, I’d still be in my own home and Dad would be fine and working and we’d be sad without Mom but okay.

What was going to happen to me now?

I limped my way back to the car where Aunt Izzy sat on the hood, cross-legged, leaning back, looking at the sky. She looked all content, like she would’ve waited all day for me.

• • •

We went to dinner at the greatest restaurant, The Winds, which we could walk to from Izzy’s cool purple house. Later that night, while she and her assistant Pearl discussed something in her office, I loaded my gym bag full of food from her cupboards and fridge. She’d stocked the house with all my favorite things which I shoved into the bag: a loaf of rye bread, a roll of sugar cookie dough, slices of provolone cheese, sliced turkey, the leftover chicken enchiladas we’d made last night, the leftover guacamole, the pasta salad, the tapioca pudding.

I hid the bag in my room. After Pearl left, we went to bed. I lay awake until I was certain Aunt Izzy was asleep.

It took over me again. It had been so long. Well, long for me anyway. I almost wept with relief, it felt so good, so comforting.

The trance took over.

I stopped feeling.

No shame. No worries.

Nothing. Lovely, wonderful nothing.

• • •

But the nothing didn’t last. When I came back to myself, my stomach strained with all I’d forced into it. Sharp pains stabbed me as I crawled to my feet, clutching my belly, and snuck to the hallway bathroom. Aunt Izzy had her own bathroom in her bedroom. Since her bedroom door was shut, I thought I was pretty safe.

I quietly closed the bathroom door and turned on the light. I looked repulsive in the mirror, my face so bloated, a smear of something dark on my chin. I turned away.

I rubbed my bloated gut. Revolting. Vile.

I lifted the lid on her toilet and went through my ritual.

Once.

Twice.

Then flushed.

Ah, there it was.

Relief.

Twice more.

The tingles began. The floating. Numbness tickling my fingers and toes.

Now. Now, maybe I could sleep.

But the sliding sensation began deep inside my face. Red splatters fell on the toilet seat, startling against the white porcelain. I snatched up a handful of toilet paper to plug up my nose, then used my other hand to try to clean up the mess.

I sat on the floor, leaning my head back against the tub.

The helium-light floatiness faded away. Queasy shakiness took over. The nosebleeds ruined everything and they were happening every time! My limbs trembled. This sucked.

By the time I got the bleeding to stop, my head throbbed like someone played a drum inside it. My arms and legs had a heavy flu-like stiffness.

I avoided the mirror, ducking my head as I passed it to open the door.

Aunt Izzy sat on the floor in the hall.

She sat there in flannel pajama bottoms and a tattered sweatshirt. She had the same I-could-wait-forever air about her, just like when I had gone running that day—was that just earlier that same day? Was my life really crawling along so painfully slowly? A spray bottle of disinfectant cleaner and a rag sat near her left hand.

“Feel better?” she asked, squinting up at me in the light.

Was this a trap? But she asked it kindly, no judgment in her voice.

“I know it was a hard day,” she said, her voice even and calm. “I know that the bingeing and purging is an old standby in tough times. I have to be on the lookout for my own self-destructive habits when I’m having a rough time.”

My jaw dropped. “You…you knew what I was doing?”

She shrugged, her expression one of hello, of course I knew what you were doing.

“Why didn’t you try to stop me?” I wanted to kick her. “You should’ve tried to stop me!”

Izzy shook her head. “You have to stop it. Not me.”

Unsteady, I stared down at her.

She gestured to the cleaning supplies beside her. “I understand you’re going to do this. You know we all want you to stop, but sometimes it’s going to happen. When it does you’ll need to clean up after yourself, okay? You have to take responsibility for your habits.”

I stood there with my mouth open like a cartoon of a girl in shock.

“It’s okay,” Aunt Izzy said. “You can get over this. I’ve been there, sweetie, I know.”

“You were…bulimic?” The word was bug spray in my mouth.

She shook her head. “Nope. That wasn’t my thing.”

I leaned against the wall, then slid down it across from her. “I wish I were anorexic! How did you do it? I wish I could do it!”

Aunt Izzy’s face pinched up like she’d smelled rotting garbage. “What? Why would you say something so stupid?” Her mean, harsh tone slapped my face. She’d never called me stupid.

Tears scalded my eyes. “I-I just meant that…”

But Aunt Izzy’s eyes were bright, like she had a fever. “You just meant what?”

“I want to be thin. I-I just want to be pretty. A-and anorexia is better. It’s not so disgusting. If I could only pull it off, I—”

Aunt Izzy was on her feet so fast, it scared me. She yanked me up by the arm and pulled me down the hall, her nails digging into my skin.

She opened the attic door and turned on the light. She didn’t release my arm until we were at the top of the stairs. The rough wooden floor chilled my bare feet. She dug around in a couple of boxes, muttering under her breath. When she found the one she wanted, she hefted it up from behind some tubs of Christmas decorations. She dropped it into the dust at our feet, where it hit with a heavy whump. “Sit.”

I did.

She opened the box and handed me a manila envelope. “Open it. Take a look.”

I undid the envelope’s clasp. A pile of 5x7 black-and-white photographs slid into my lap. I frowned, then brought the top photo closer to my face in the weird light. It was Aunt Izzy, as a girl, standing naked except for a pair of panties. She looked like someone in a concentration camp, like those documentaries we’d watched before we started reading Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. My nose wrinkled. She was a skeleton; every single rib stood out in stark relief, her hip bones protruded like shovels, her elbows and knees were grapefruit-sized knots, wider than her stick thighs and arms.

“That’s not disgusting?” Aunt Izzy asked.

The next photo was a back view. Her shoulder blades were alien wings. Every vertebrae in her spine bumped out like a pop-bead necklace embedded under her skin. At the end of that spine…I peered closer.

“Looks like a tail, doesn’t it?” Her voice cut me with its iciness. “Look at how scabbed and gross my tailbone is. I got bruises just from sitting in a chair.”

My post-purge headache throbbed behind my left eye.

She took the stack of photos from me and shuffled them, handing me another, a close-up of the empty bowl of her stomach and another of her face. “You don’t think that’s disgusting? You’d actually wish for that? I look like some circus freak! I couldn’t create internal heat anymore. Your body tries to protect you, so it grows fur.” There it was on her belly and cheeks, white fur like a cat’s pelt. “Yeah, that’s really pretty, isn’t it?”

In the photo, the skull under her transparent, mummy-like skin was clearly defined, her eyes sunk in their cavernous sockets. The grain of her facial muscles was visible, like an anatomical model for science class. The intersection of cartilage turning to bone in her nose was as sharp as two pieces set together in a puzzle.

Most of her crown was bald, and other bald patches showed through her thin hair.

“You look like Mom,” I whispered. “After chemo.”

Aunt Izzy’s voice lost that nasty, hard edge. “Just think, your mom lost her hair fighting to save her life, and I lost mine basically trying to kill myself.”

I looked up at her, not sure I understood.

“My body started to cannibalize itself,” she said. “My heart. My brain. I’ve got an irregular heartbeat because of those years, did you know that? I stopped having periods because I was so malnourished. I didn’t produce enough estrogen for my bones, so now I have these brittle, old-lady bones. I can’t run anymore because I get stress fractures. But, hey, I was thin, right?”

I’d thought Mom was too thin at the end, but she’d looked downright hearty, even in her last days, compared to these pictures.

“I couldn’t see myself at all,” Izzy said, flipping through the photos in her hand. “I would do anything to lose weight. Anything. Once, my therapist even asked me if I’d cut off an arm or leg to weigh less and I said yes. That’s…that’s just obscene to me now.”

I thought about that Sierra Leone video and what I’d wished.

Aunt Izzy shuffled through the photos some more. She stopped at one picture, putting her hand over her mouth.

I took the photo from her. Her face looked like she’d gone through a windshield. Her left eye was dark where it should be white, and the bruised lid stretched huge and puffy. The entire left side of her face was swollen to twice its size, and along her shaved hairline a row of stitches looked like barbed wire against her white scalp.

“I passed out in the shower,” she said. “Your mother found me lying there bleeding.”

I burst into tears picturing my mother young, frightened…still alive.

Izzy scooted closer to me on that splintery attic floor, wrapping her arms around me.

“I want to stop,” I cried. “I really do. I don’t know how. She won’t leave me alone!”

Aunt Izzy leaned back so she could look in my face. “Who won’t leave you alone?”

My stomach fluttered. “I didn’t mean a person, I just—I don’t know how…I don’t want to…do that”—I’d never said the words “binge” or “purge”; they made it seem too real—“but then, it’s like it tells me that nothing will make me feel as good as it can.”

Aunt Izzy’s eyes were bright. “So the bulimia? You referred to the bulimia as a person. You said, ‘She won’t leave me alone.’ Do you think of her as a person?”

I hesitated. Would she think I was certifiably insane?

Before I could answer, she said, “I did that. I still kind of do. I started thinking of anorexia as a person. That was her name, you know, like she was this girl I actually knew called Anorexia.”

My heart lifted. I nodded.

“It’s like I could…picture her.” Aunt Izzy drew her knees up to her chest. “I used to think she was beautiful, so tall and willowy, with this pearly white skin and big eyes, but now…now I see her for who she truly is. Some kind of monster. She’s got fangs and these long limbs that are too bendy to be a real person’s.”

Wow.

“So,” she asked me, “what does Bulimia look like?”

“I-I used to think she was pretty too, but now…she’s short. And pudgy. She has bloodshot eyes and rotten teeth. And really frizzy, fried hair.”

Aunt Izzy laughed. “That’s good. That’s great. It’s not crazy, you know, to picture them. Especially to picture them as monsters. They are not our friends. They want to kill us.”

Tears surprised me—for real, I didn’t know I was going to cry again. “But…”

“There are no buts in this, Hannah! Bulimia could rupture your esophagus and you could bleed to death out of your mouth. That’d be a pretty way to go, huh? Or she could stop your heart. She could be making your bones brittle too. When was the last time you had a period?”

I shrugged. I couldn’t remember. “I can’t be malnourished,” I said. “I’m fat.”

“You are not fat.”

“I am too! My face is all pudgy, and I’m gaining—”

“You know who made your face pudgy? Bulimia. All of this”—she cupped my ridiculous giant cheeks in her hands—“is your salivary glands. They’re swollen. They’re desperate. They’re working overtime to absorb any bit of nutrition from you at all before you puke it up.”

I flinched. It sounded so ugly, so harsh. And wasn’t it?

She touched her fingers to my face. “Your eyes, your beautiful eyes, look like you’ve been in a fight. No amount of makeup can hide those dark circles. It’s from the pressure when you vomit. Eventually, you start busting those blood vessels. And your teeth, they’re so dark. She’s rotting your teeth with all that stomach acid.”

“Shut up!” I said. “Stop it, just stop. Are you trying to make me hate myself?”

Aunt Izzy stroked my hair. “No, sweetie, I’m not. I think you’re doing just fine at that on your own.”





Reasons to Be Happy:

Nope, still can’t think of any.

I wanted to hate Aunt Izzy, but I couldn’t. She told the truth.

I hadn’t told the truth in a long time.

Neither had my mom. Or my dad.

Certainly not any of my “friends.”

Please. The only friends I had were a completely made up rotten-toothed demon and a bunch of backstabbing gossips.

What about Jasper? I’d been mean to him just to please the B-Squad. And then I’d grossed him out. He may have been my friend once, but I’d put a big fat stop to that.

• • •

I didn’t get to talk to my dad for three more days, and when I did, it was an excruciating phone call. His misery seemed like a stream of black spray paint hissing on the phone line between us, so strong and real I thought I could catch it in my hand. I imagined it would burn me, leaving charred spots on my palms. I didn’t blame him for the shame, but it’s painful to hear your own dad like that. What was I supposed to say? My father, my only parent left alive, was as big a loser as I was.

“Hannah, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay, Dad.”

Why did I say that? It wasn’t okay, but I didn’t know any other answer.

“I’ve been so sad,” he said, “and I haven’t dealt with my grief. That’s not an excuse, but…”

But that’s your excuse.

Just like it’s mine.

“It’s okay,” I repeated.

“I’m…what I’ve done is unforgivable. I can’t…I can’t go on like this. I need help.”

Hello? Just call him Sherlock.

“I’m going to go into a rehab program.”

“Oh. Okay. Are you still in the movie?”

“I…um, I don’t think so, no.”

Kevin’s hateful voice floated into my brain. Your drunk dad better not wreck my movie.

There was a long, tortured pause.

“So,” I said, determined to make this call I’d wished for last longer than two minutes, “are you okay? Were you hurt…in the wreck?”

“I’m okay. I…have some stitches in my chin…thank God nobody was seriously hurt.”

I’d read in the newspaper that he was paying all the medical bills for the Indianapolis tourists.

“I’m glad too, Dad. What…um, what will you do in rehab?”

I could almost see him squirming. We were out of practice at being so honest. It was hard. “I’ll mostly have therapy, I guess. I need to learn to deal with, you know, my feelings, without covering them up with drinking.”

My heart banged so loud in my skull it reminded me of the pounding from my horrible nosebleeds. I took a deep breath. “Daddy?” I hadn’t called him that for years. It just floated out of my mouth, sounding too high and girly. “I-I think I need rehab too.”

A long silence.

“Not for drinking,” I said. “But for my…bulimia.” I had to brace myself to say it out loud, and I swear, I could feel him brace, even with a thousand miles between us. “I need help.”

“Have you been talking to your aunt about this?” His words were clipped, skeptical.

“Yes, but…Dad, this is for real. I don’t want to do this anymore. I need help too.”

“Honey, if you don’t want to do that anymore, why don’t you just stop?”

The cruelty of it took my breath away.

“I can’t just stop, Dad. I’ve tried. I don’t know how.”

“It’s a question of willpower, Hannah.”

“Is that your problem too?” I asked. “No willpower?”

“Hannah, that’s not fair. Addiction is a serious illness.”

“So is bulimia!”

His sigh was so loaded with irritation it made me want to smash this phone down on his head. So he got to need help, but I didn’t?

“Hannah, think about it: it’s a choice. Why don’t you just stop bingeing?”

“Why don’t you just stop drinking?” I said.

Then I hung up.

• • •

I hated feeling mad at my dad. How did that happen? All I had wanted for a whole week was for him to call me! Then he did and what did I do? I had to get all nasty and mean. Of course, all I wanted to do after that call was binge. The anger buzzed like hornets trapped under my skin. I couldn’t sit still. I paced the hallway. I started picturing it: how I could go fill up my gym bag with food from the cupboards while Aunt Izzy worked in her office.

My phone vibrated. It was Dad. I let it go to voice mail.

I went to the kitchen and made myself a cup of licorice tea. I stood at the sink and drank it.

Dad called again.

Then a third time. I still didn’t answer.

The buzzing under my skin got worse. I circled the kitchen five times. I looked in the cupboards. There was plenty I could scrounge up for a binge. I reached for a box of Life cereal.

I put it back.

Come on. You know it will feel good. You’re under so much stress.

I took the box back down. I opened it.

Think of it. Peace and quiet. Relief. Just something to release the pressure.

With trembling hands, I poured one bowl of cereal, then put the box back in the cupboard.

That’s it? That’s all? You expect that to help?

I poured milk over the cereal, got a spoon, and walked into the living room. I heard Aunt Izzy and Pearl talking in her office.

I sat on the couch and ate a bite of cereal.

You’re not going to really just eat this, are you? What’s the point? You could eat the whole box and feel better. And not have any of the calories. I thought you wanted to be skinny.

I picked up the remote and turned on the TV. Just to drown out the voice. I found a stupid Where Are They Now? program, publicly humiliating toppled celebrities. How long before my dad ended up on one of these shows?

Dad called back a fourth time. I ignored the phone, upped the volume on the TV, and ate my cereal, not even tasting it.

Then Aunt Izzy came out of her office, shutting the door behind her, on her cell phone. It didn’t take me long to figure out through her one-sided conversation that she was talking to my dad. Guilt rushed through me for not taking his calls. What kind of daughter was I?

Aunt Izzy talked in the kitchen. When I heard my mother’s name mentioned, I lowered the volume on the TV and strained my ears. I couldn’t turn the volume off; it would be too obvious I was eavesdropping. I flipped through some channels, found something quieter, and tried to hear what Aunt Izzy said.

“Well, Annabeth can’t be used as a real judge, though, because she never entirely understood it. It was always an issue between us.”

What was she talking about?

“Yeah…right, right…she said that to me often…but, Caleb, there’s nothing simple about eating reasonably to someone with an eating disorder. Just like there’s nothing simple about drinking reasonably to an alcoholic.”

She was quiet a long time. I froze, cereal spoon in my hand.

“It stops being about being thin. That’s not the issue any more than the point of your drinking is to get drunk, am I right?”

Aunt Izzy wandered into the living room, noticed me there, and walked back into the kitchen. When she spoke again, I realized she’d gone up the stairs. I couldn’t make out what she was saying anymore.

I looked down. My cereal bowl was empty. I didn’t remember eating it. I got up and poured myself another. I flipped through channels until I returned to the Where Are They Now? show.

Pretty soon, Aunt Izzy’s voice became audible again. “Of course. What about school?”

Was he asking for me to stay here? I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. I didn’t want to go home and face the train wreck of our lives, but I wanted Dad to want me there.

School. That meant Brooke and Brittany and Bebe. And Kevin. My skin itched. The hornets buzzed. You’d feel better. Just do it.

“I leave for Ghana again next Wednesday,” she said.

I’d forgotten about that. How long was Dad in rehab? If Aunt Izzy was out of the country and Dad was in rehab, where was I supposed to stay?

Suddenly, a blast of loud drum music blared from the office. Really loud drum music, with people singing in the background. When it stopped, I heard just a few syllables of Aunt Izzy in the kitchen before the exact same drum sequence played again.

Then a third time. Then a fourth.

“Perfect!” Pearl yelled from the office.

But by that point, Aunt Izzy was off the phone. She sat beside me on the couch.

“Didn’t Dad want to talk to me?” I asked, sounding offended.

She pursed her lips into sort of a smile. “Oh, I think you made it pretty clear you didn’t want to talk to him.”

“Is he mad?”

“No. You made him listen. Good for you.”

Before I could say anything else, though, she reached for the remote and shut off the TV. She gestured to my cereal bowl and said, “I’ll let you in on the only eating tip you’ll ever need. It’s not a dieting tip. It’s a life tip. When you eat something, just eat.”

What? I cocked my head and raised my eyebrows, expecting more.

“When you’re eating, only eat,” she repeated. “Don’t watch TV, don’t read, don’t drive. Just eat with your entire awareness. Taste every bite. Pay attention. Learn to listen to your body.”

I wanted to say that was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard, but then I thought about that first bowl of cereal.

I looked down at the second bowl, half-eaten.

I wasn’t hungry anymore, not really, but it was comforting to crunch the cereal. I liked how it felt in my mouth.

“I’m telling you,” she said, “it’s the simplest thing in the world. No one would be fat or anorexic or bulimic if we’d just learn to do that one thing. But, as you well know, simple and easy are two very different things.”

I nodded. “How long will he be in rehab?”

She didn’t seem bothered by my change in subject. “Twenty-eight days. At least.”

“Does he have to live there, or does he go during the day?”

“He has to stay there. He’s actually not allowed to leave. It was this or jail, Hannah.”

Oh. I hadn’t known that part.

“Did he say where I’m supposed to stay if you’re leaving the country?”

“He has no idea, but how would you like to go to Africa?”

I froze. He has no idea? That terrified me. Was he no longer capable of the most basic things a father was supposed to do?

“He’ll never let me go to Africa,” I said, in a voice I hardly recognized. I said that instead of shouting, “I can’t go to Africa! My dad needs me at home!”

Because he was supposed to need me, right?

Because he was supposed to want me to come home, right?

I didn’t want to go to Africa.

I was scared of Africa.

How would I binge? How would I purge?

My dad would never let me go so far away from him, right?

Wrong.