Apparitions and fantasies and paper-thin skin.
I remember when I was fourteen and I’d tried so hard to disappear. I had many pockets in my trousers for shoving pieces of food into. I’d stretch up in front of the mirror in the evenings, reach for the ceiling and watch the holes appear in the middle of my ribs. I was a box with a bird inside that got quieter and quieter. I’d crack my knuckles and my knees and give my packed lunch to the homeless man who always sat outside of Tesco.
It was like walking on stilts.
In the summer, with the heat, sometimes I could hear voices. The medieval starving nuns said they were hungry for God. Hungry, starving. They had to stop because the Queen called it heretic. She burned them at the stake, flames licking at their skin. Blessed. I wonder if people starved themselves in the name of religion before the Middle Ages. I wonder if this is it.
Mary’s eyes are staring out of the painting onto the floor.
Why are Gabriel’s feet on fire?
The bed is hard, in fact it is a rock. Mary saw them cover it with a sheet before she came in. The women in here are not the same as she is. They are starving so that God will visit them in their sleep. Hannah sleeps next door. She told Mary this morning, over a breakfast they didn’t eat, that last night Satan had sat on top of her wardrobe. She said he told her to eat a biscuit.
‘And guess what,’ she whispered. ‘I didn’t eat a biscuit.’
On the wall in her room, Mary has cut a series of boxes into the rubble with a stone. There is a cross in each box marking every day before Joseph returns. He made her a boat out of wood, which sits on her bedside table. She is here because he says she has issues. She doesn’t eat. He asks her if it is because of God. She has said no – because it’s not – she does not know why.
She sits and examines the contours of her wrists. The sun is at its hottest, beating in through the window behind her, and all the nurses are taking their mid-afternoon nap.
Outside, the birds are talking to her.
There is a flash of light.
She jumps.
She is no longer alone.
‘Mary,’ the angel smiles. ‘My name is Gabriel. I am a guardian angel; I bring you news of great joy.’
Mary can’t help but notice that the angel’s feet are on fire. No wonder it’s hot in here. ‘Pardon?’
‘You shall have a child, Mary! A boy. You are to give him the name Jesus. He will be the son of God.’
‘… I don’t understand.’
The angel smiles, a dove perched on his shoulder. ‘You are to have a child; God has chosen you.’
Mary decides that her brain doesn’t seem to be working properly. ‘This all seems very impossible,’ she says. ‘I mean, I’m flattered, but I didn’t ask to get pregnant.’
‘God knows this.’
‘And what’s my boyfriend going to say?’
‘This is the work of God, Mary,’ the angel smiles. ‘And you must nourish this baby that belongs to him. You must eat, and get well.’
‘But I don’t—’ She begins to think of Hannah, next door, who has talked non-stop about wanting a baby. How none of them can have a baby. All Mary can think of is her stomach swelling. She feels sick. ‘But, this is … How will I look after the son of God?’
‘As you would your own child.’
Mary thinks this should be simple but it isn’t. She wonders how many people will believe her: that this angel came into her room and said she was pregnant with the son of God. A baby: a baby growing inside her that belongs to God.
For one ridiculous moment she imagines a baby with a beard.
‘This is a very important task, Mary. Very important. You should be thrilled that God has chosen you.’
Mary nods but she feels suddenly empty.
‘This is a blessed event,’ Gabriel smiles.
The dove lands on Mary’s shoulder, and suddenly she feels as though she is Noah’s ark.
It turned out that my mother was right; you could decide not to grow.
When I first stopped eating, she thought it was pious; that I’d started listening to her talk of aid and starving children in Africa; she said that everything I didn’t eat she’d bundle up and send to someone who needed it more.
‘Spread the fat around,’ she said, patting my back. ‘That’s my girl.’
I pinned my hair up in front of the mirror and sucked in my cheeks. Balloon head. My choices were eating me. I was sure if you shone a light on my head you’d be able to see the bones in my skull.
Sometimes, if I skipped several meals, my head swam so much I could hear the birds talking. A dove sat on the windowsill. I smiled at the dinner table and tried to pretend my stomach wasn’t trying to gnaw its way through my skin to get to the food on my plate.
‘Amazing,’ my mother said, and packaged the food away.
Flora introduced me to whisky on a Wednesday night when we were supposed to be at Girl Guides. Her parents were away for the week. We drank a whole bottle. We were so wasted that we ripped up her bed sheets and wound them around ourselves like dead Egyptians.
‘You’re so skinny, Margaret.’ She picked up one of my arms but I couldn’t feel her fingers. I enjoyed these out-of-body experiences. I enjoyed trying on other people. We danced to terrible music, wrapped up in white.
Eventually, we collapsed on the living-room carpet, staring up at the ceiling.
‘Have you ever, you know?’ she asked.
There were rumours she’d done it with Liam McGee.
‘No,’ I said, like I didn’t have the time.
She picked my arm up again. ‘Probably for the best; you’d snap in two.’
We giggled into our glasses. Me: the shrinking tree.
I got home just after midnight. My mother was up and waiting, sitting on the doorstep, smoking a cigarette and trying to look calm.
‘What the hell do you think you look like?’
I looked down at myself and shrugged, trying not to laugh.
‘Behold,’ I said. ‘I am the Holy Spirit. On spirits.’
I spun in circles, allowing the white sheets to billow out around me. My mother simply sat, watching me, blowing smoke into the night air.
I stopped and vomited violently into the gutter.
‘Right.’ She stubbed out her cigarette on the white-washed walls. ‘That’s quite enough of that.’
I was dragged to the Reverend’s house first thing next morning, dazed and hungover, where she told him she was scared I was turning into a demon. She said I wouldn’t eat, that she’d thought it was for the common good, but that now she wasn’t so sure. She used phrases she’d heard on TV that she’d never said out loud in her life, like ‘going over the edge’ and ‘problem child’ and ‘completely self-absorbed’.
Her mouth seemed to move at a different speed to the rest of her body.
I was only half listening. I was imagining the white cliffs of Dover. The white doves. Falling over the side.
‘I think you’d best come in, Margaret,’ the Reverend winked at me. ‘Don’t worry, Angela. I’ll sort all this out.’
He shut the door in my mother’s face.