What I Lost
Alexandra Ballard
For Chris, Callie, and Eliza
1
No one told me that when I got skinny I’d grow fur. Tiny, translucent hairs, fine like white mink, appeared on my arms, my legs, and even, to my horror, my face, giving me downy blond sideburns no girl should have. When I looked it up, the fur had a name—lanugo. Babies are born with it. Anorexics grow it.
My first thought? What a pain in the butt.
My second thought? So far, so good.
After all, you had to suffer to be beautiful. Of all the things Mom ever said to me, I knew this one was true. If you wanted people to notice you, want you, admire you, envy you, want to be you, you had to sacrifice. Easy? No. But that’s why people call it suffering.
And even when it seemed like it was getting me nowhere—well, nowhere except the Wallingfield Psychiatric Facility’s Residential Treatment Center—I tried to remember this: There is always success hidden in failure. I might have been locked away, but I was still a size 0.
*
It was just past ten on a cloudy morning when my parents and I first pulled up to Wallingfield. The treatment center was only fifteen minutes from my house, but might as well have been in another country. It sat atop a rolling hill in the old-money part of Esterfall, where houses overlooked the Atlantic and the families who lived in them had ancestors who came over on the Mayflower. “Elite and Discreet Mental Health Care, tucked away in a scenic part of Massachusetts.” That’s what the tiny box ad in the back of my parents’ New Yorker magazine promised.
Dad parked in front of a large brick building. A burnished brass sign read Wallingfield Psychiatric Facility Residential Treatment Center. Building Two. The other buildings, I’d learned online the night before, were for the patients with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other psychiatric illnesses.
I opened my door and willed my legs to move, but they felt like cement.
“Brush your hair before you go in.” Mom passed me her purple travel brush from the front seat and touched up her lipstick.
In the rearview mirror I caught Dad’s eye by accident. The skin around his eyes was the color of a bruise, like he hadn’t slept in weeks.
“You okay, Elizabeth?”
I glared at him. “I’m great.” I knew I sounded like a jerk, but the moment I walked through those big wooden doors, I’d forever be known at Esterfall High as the girl who’d gone nuts. So no, I was definitely not okay.
Inside the waiting room, a man in a gray suit sat on a green couch, bent over a laptop. Next to him, a dark-haired girl with a messy ponytail and a hospital ID bracelet scrunched in her chair, scowling. Her purple hoodie and black leggings hung off her like clothes on a hanger, and her legs, folded beneath her, were so thin they made her feet look too big for her body.
My cheeks burned. I felt inferior. She was so much skinnier than me. I held out my hand and tried to look friendly. “Hi. I’m Elizabeth.”
“Lexi.” Her fingers were cold and her handshake weak, but her eyes were angry. I shivered and pulled away as fast as I could. She didn’t seem to notice, though.
Dad cleared his throat as he approached the front desk. “We are here to admit…” He couldn’t finish.
Mom spoke up, her voice strong and all business. “Our daughter, Elizabeth, is here to be admitted to the eating disorder unit. Are we in the right place?”
I wanted the receptionist to say no, to say, I’m sorry, but we don’t have an Elizabeth on the list. You must have made a mistake.
But she didn’t even have to look me up. “Yes, here you are,” she said, glancing at her computer. “Please sit down. Someone will be with you shortly.”
When Lexi spoke, it startled me. “Where are you from?”
“Here,” I said. “Esterfall. You?”
“Long Island. Massapequa. But I go to Smith in Massachusetts now.”
I’d never been to Long Island, but Smith was at the top of my list of colleges to apply to next year. It was supposed to have a great psychology department, and I wanted to be a psychologist someday. “Oh, that’s cool,” I said.
“Yeah, I guess.” She turned away, picking at the chipped red polish on her fingernails. We sat in silence until, a few minutes later, an older, crunchy-looking woman about Mom’s age entered the room through double doors. She wore a gray top draped over her shoulders, flowy black pants, and black clogs. Vaguely gold-colored bracelets clinked on her arm. Mom looked her up and down, a slight frown on her face. She wasn’t impressed.
The woman walked over and stuck out her hand. “Elizabeth? Hi, I’m Mary, your therapist.” I hoped she didn’t notice my clammy skin. “I’m going to help you get settled. Follow me.” I looked back at Lexi and waved, but she was gazing out the only window, staring at the parking lot, and didn’t see me.
Walking through the wooden double doors, I expected to see 70-pound girls in hospital gowns hobbling through cold, linoleum-lined hallways. Instead, Mary led us into a cozy space that smelled like cinnamon, not medicine, and was full of sofas, slouchy chairs, and soft carpeting. Windows looked out onto a lawn, which stretched down to the woods, the trees in full October reds, oranges, and yellows. Across from them was a line of bedroom doors, each decorated with photos, drawings, dry-erase boards, and letters fashioned from construction paper. It looked like the Boston College dorm I saw with my parents last summer.
On the closest couch, a little girl who couldn’t have been older than ten sat hunched over her journal, one ear pierced all the way to the top, her arms covered with soft pink scars I assumed were self-inflicted. A pair of taller girls sat across from her, quietly talking, their jaws sharp and distinct. They giggled. I couldn’t imagine ever giggling in a place like this. They all looked thin, but not life-threateningly so.
“It’ll be snack time soon,” Mary said, sniffing the air. “Smells like Chef Frank’s famous coffee cake muffins.” We all inhaled. The room smelled like the Cinnabon stall at the mall. I looked at the girls on the couches. They were going to eat muffins?
“Well,” said Mom, her voice full of relief, “isn’t this cheery!” I wondered if she’d pictured a hospital, too. The girl with the scars looked up and watched us, her face blank.
Mary turned to me. “Elizabeth, if you’d like to eat the snack with your parents, they can join you in the guest dining room.”
Eat? Already?
“Thanks, but I’m not hungry,” I said.
Mary smiled like she’d heard this excuse a hundred times. She probably had. “I understand, but we eat all our meals here, hungry or not.”