Gramma Pauline’s white hair rippled free down her back and her jewelled fingers with their beautifully almond-shaped nails were intertwined with Paula’s weak ones. Paula lifted her grandmother’s hands up to her lips and kissed them, breathing in the heady aroma of turpentine and Dove soap.
Such close sight of the hands gave Paula another jolt. They were more than familiar. She looked up into her grandmother’s face and was startled by a new sense of recognition. “Mariam?” she asked.
Pauline tipped her head to one side and regarded her granddaughter in confusion. “What did you call me?”
Paula flushed. The last thing she wanted to do was to upset her grandmother. How could she possibly explain what had happened to her? “You just reminded me of someone for a minute,” she said evasively.
“My mother’s name was Mariam,” said Pauline.
Paula shook her head as if trying to clear out the cobwebs. “That’s strange,” she said. “I just had a dream that I had a sister named Mariam.”
“Perhaps when you’re feeling better, you can tell me about your dream,” said Gramma Pauline.
“I would like that,” said Paula. “In the meantime, could you buy me a notebook and pen? I want to write down as much of my dream as I can remember.”
Pauline was taken aback by Paula’s request. Her poor delicate grandchild was literally starving herself to death, and she’d just had a cardiac arrest, yet she wanted a notebook? She didn’t argue, though. Whatever made Paula feel better had to be all right. “I’ll get you one today,” she said.
Paula’s internist was a petite dark-skinned woman who would pop in on her at odd times during the day to check on the monitors. She seemed happy with what they told her. “I suspected that you had ventricle arrhythmia,” the doctor said. “It happens in people who binge and purge.”
The cold summation made Paula cringe. It shocked her to realize that her eating habits had caused so much harm to her body. And the irony was that she had always considered her dieting as part of a healthy lifestyle. “Will the damage be permanent?” she asked.
“I can’t say just yet,” the woman replied. “We’ll observe you for forty-eight hours here in C.C.U. If you’re still stable by then, you can go over to the medical ward where we’ll get you walking around. We’ll monitor your heart with a portable unit. If all is well at that point, you can go home.”
The four days she spent in the hospital offered few moments when Paula was not being poked or prodded with needles, or encouraged to walk up and down the hallways with a cardiac monitor hung around her neck, making her feel like a horse with a feedbag. The rare snatches of solitude she could steal were taken up with writing down everything she could remember about her dream. She had a feverish need to get it written down, and even as the hours passed, she could feel the memories slipping away.
On the day she was to be discharged, Paula was sitting in the sun room at the end of the hallway, engrossed with the story she was writing in her notebook. Dr. Tavish walked into the room and quietly sat down beside her. She was so absorbed in her writing that her pen flew out of her hand in surprise when he greeted her.
“It’s nice to see that you’ve found a new obsession,” Dr. Tavish commented dryly as he retrieved the pen from the carpet and handed it to her.
If only it were so simple, thought Paula. It would be wonderful to have the freedom to abandon her problem with food as easily as she could put down her pen. The comment made her realize that people who hadn’t been through an eating disorder really couldn’t understand how powerful it was. She looked up at him and was gratified to see his familiar kind eyes and friendly smile. She placed the pen on top of the page and then closed her notebook.
“Thank you for coming,” she said.
He nodded, “I am so sorry that it had to come to this.”
“So am I.”
Dr. Tavish didn’t say anything for a moment. It was as if he were struggling with the words. Finally, he blurted out, “Paula, there’s an opening at Homewood.”
Paula looked at him, her eyes welling with tears, “I want to go home.”
“But that’s not the question right now. The question right now is, do you want to live?”
“Yes,” she said fiercely. “I want to live.”
“Then you’ll need further treatment.”
December 29, 111 pounds
Paula ultimately agreed with Doctor Tavish that Homewood offered her the best chance of survival, but her parents were reluctant to see her leave town to be treated in another city, especially so soon after almost losing her. After much soul-searching they finally decided that she would leave on January 3, meaning that Paula would still have a few days at home between leaving the Brantford General and her admission date at Homewood.
There were pitifully few personal possessions for Paula to take home with her from the Brantford General when she was discharged. Her mother had brought her an old pair of sweats and a T-shirt to change into, so aside from the clothing she arrived in, her duffel bag held nothing but her journal and pen.
Paula stepped into her living room. Her heart ached with homesickness. It would be so wonderful to be able to stay here amidst the familiar things and with her loving family, but she knew that the old routines would quickly set in and she would be no further ahead.
Her mother had prepared a homecoming meal for her, careful to incorporate things that she thought her daughter might want to eat. Instead of the old ploy of serving fattening foods, Emily was trying a different strategy. There was a tray of fresh-cut vegetables in the centre of the table, and another bowl of fruit salad.
Paula and Erik and their father all sat down at the kitchen table, and Emily placed bowls in front of each. “Home made chicken noodle soup,” she said with satisfaction. “Eat as much or as little as you like.”
Paula looked down at the steaming liquid in her bowl and watched as the globules of liquefied fat formed in circles on the top. She knew that they were trying hard not to pressure her to eat, but all the same, she could feel three sets of eyes anxiously watching.
She took a sip and repressed the urge to gag. As she swallowed it, she repeated the chant in her head, “This is medicine, medicine, medicine.”
“It’s good, Mom,” she forced herself to say, and then was relieved when she saw the anxiety leave all three pairs of eyes.
Surprisingly, they didn’t object when she asked go to her room once she had finished half a bowl of soup.
Paula was anxious not so much for the rest, but for the opportunity to continue writing as much of her dream as she could remember.
Opening the door to her room was a shock. She had completely forgotten that her parents had redecorated it during her initial stay at the hospital. Someone must have realized how upsetting this was to her, because her beloved posters had been retrieved. They now hung in close proximity to their original positions on the wall. But the offending cabbage rose wallpaper was still there, and the
burnished wood of her dresser was still hidden under glossy white paint.
There was a light tap at her door and she turned around. There stood Erik. “I wish I could have fixed it better,” he said.
“You did a great job.”
“I have something else for you,” he said. And then he gave her the framed oil that Gramma Pauline had painted so many lifetimes ago.
“Where did you find this?” she asked, holding it to her chest.
“It was stuck in the basement on a shelf,” replied Erik. “I don’t even know why they took it. Maybe they thought it didn’t match or something.”
He shifted back and forth from one foot to the other and then said, “I have something else for you.” He took a small white pharmacy bag from his pocket and handed it to her.
She took it, and looked in, and was surprised to find a package of laxatives. “What’s this for?”
“They shouldn’t have gone through your drawers like that,” he said. “I know you’re not going to use them anymore, but that’s not the point. They’re yours and they shouldn’t have taken them.”
Tears welled up in Paula’s throat. She hugged her brother. It embarrassed her to think that not too long ago she had gone through his things to get at his money to buy food. She was no better than
her parents when it came right down to it.
“Thanks,” she said.
“After you lie down for a bit, maybe we can play some
Civilization II
together?”
“Sure thing,” she said.
And they did.
January 2, 111 pounds
Gramma Pauline came to visit on the day before she left for Homewood. There were so many things Paula wanted to ask her, but she didn’t quite know where to start. Finally, she asked, “Gramma, where are your parents buried?”
Gramma Pauline hesitated before answering cryptically. “My parents who brought me to Canada are buried in Mount Hope Cemetery.”
“Can you take me to see their graves?”
“I can take you now, if you’d like.”
Mount Hope Cemetery was only a few minutes’ drive from the house. When they got out of the car, Paula gripped her coat close to her and followed her grandmother through the rows of headstones. Pauline stopped in front of two matching small ones and bent her head in silent prayer.
Paula stood beside her, closing her eyes and
saying a prayer of her own. She was almost afraid to open her eyes and look down at what must be inscribed on the stones.
When she finally did look, she gave a small gasp of surprise.
One said:
Kevork Adomian b. 1900 d. 1967
The other said:
Marta Adomian b. 1902 d. 1968
So they did exist! They had both survived, found each other again, got married … Her dream was a dream, but also reality. What she had lived through had actually happened.
Then another thought struck her. Pauline’s mother wasn’t Marta.
Paula turned to her grandmother in confusion. “I thought your mother’s name was Mariam.”
Pauline breathed a deep sigh. “My birth mother. Yes.”
In silence they drove home.
Sunday January 3, 111 pounds
They presented her with a contract at Homewood. It stated that she agreed to stay for a minimum of six months, and that she agreed to participate in a “collaborative weight normalization treatment program consisting of ten phases.” That meant that she would eat the food they gave her, and participate in the counselling sessions, the weighing sessions, the leisure sessions, and everything else that they suggested. She signed it.
There were seventeen other patients on the ward when Paula got there—sixteen young women and one teenaged male, and the first thing she noticed was that they were all thinner than she was. It made her feel huge.
Her room was small and L-shaped, and she shared it with Linda, who had been there for two weeks. A full-length mirror was attached to the wardrobe that separated the two halves of the room. Paula avoided gazing in as she walked past it to get to her bed. One good thing was that she had the window on her side of the room. Paula gazed out at the snow-covered trees and hoped and prayed that she would be able to leave by the time the blooms were full.
Paula had brought an overnight bag with her. It contained a few toiletries, some clothing, her journal, and the oil painting from Gramma Pauline. They
had also asked her to bring either a bathing suit or short shorts and a crop top, so she had brought with her the shorts and top that she used for jogging. That first night, she slept with her hands on the painting under her pillow and cried herself to sleep. She dreamed that her hands were capable and strong and no longer scarred by her own teeth.
Monday, January 4y Phase 1
A small tap on the door roused both her and Linda early the next morning.
“Time for weigh-ins,” sighed Linda, as she rolled onto her side and fell back asleep.
Paula sat up groggily on the side of the bed and watched as the door opened and a woman in a flowered smock and black stretch pants entered. Her name tag identified her as Candy. How ironic, thought Paula.
“Why don’t you go first?” she suggested to Paula, gazing at her over the top of her glasses as she made a note in her clipboard.
She asked Paula to go to the bathroom, but left the door open a crack to make sure that she didn’t have water—not even a sip—before the weigh-in. She handed Paula a hospital gown through the bathroom door, “You wear that, and nothing else,” she called through the crack.
Paula walked down the hallway to the weigh-in room, feeling like a prisoner on the way to an execution. She hated being weighed by someone else. It was such a humiliating experience! It was the same kind of weigh scale that Dr. Tavish had a the clinic, and Paula stepped up onto it and automatically began to slide the weights to where they should be.
“We do it differently here, Paula,” said Candy. “You’ve got to turn around so you can’t see your weight.”
Paula looked incredulously and the nurse. “Why should you know something about me that I don’t know?”
“It’s the rules, Paula. You signed the contract.”
Humiliated, Paula turned around and listened as the weights slid into place. “How will I know if the program is working if you won’t let me see what I weigh?”
“Focus on making yourself well, Paula. Leave the numbers to us.”
After the weigh-in, Paula was allowed to go back to her room to get dressed for breakfast. She walked back down the corridor to the dining area and pulled up a chair next to Linda. She looked at all the girls sitting in their places and an image of the dining hall at the orphanage flashed through her mind.
Paula heard a screeching, rumbling sound coming from somewhere down the hallway. “It’s the food
truck,” said Linda, a small shudder coursing through her body. It was an awful sound.
When it arrived, the food lady handed out carefully prepared individual trays, checking off names as she did so. The tray that she handed Paula contained two slices of toast with pats of butter, a boiled egg, a carton of milk, and a half grapefruit. “You don’t expect me to eat all that, do you?” she asked.
“You must eat it all,” said the food lady. “It’s in your contract that you’ve agreed to follow the program here precisely.”