The dumbest thing happened that afternoon. I was sitting in English class, listening to Mr. Timmons babble on about verbs or something equally enchanting. I started kind of daydreaming about more interesting things and all of a sudden I could feel someone shaking me and I could hear everyone laughing. The stupid teacher was calling me Sleeping Beauty and telling me to wake up. It took me almost a full minute to realize that I had actually fallen asleep in class ⦠really asleep, as in REM state and dreams and probably snoring!
I didn't know why I was so tired. I wasn't really going to bed that late but I wasn't sleeping all that well, I guess. My
stomach hurt sometimes. I couldn't tell my mother because I didn't want her to send me back to Dr. Doom again. He'd likely tell me I needed brain surgery or something because I was turning stupid along with turning fat. Stupid, fat, and ugly ⦠sounds like a band name.
April 15
I was sitting and trying to write my so-called memoirs, which is what I am expected to do during my “personal goal” time, when I heard a voice from the door of my room.
“Hi.” That's what the voice said. It was this really nice voice, all smooth like hot chocolate with whipped cream, but it scared me so much that my laptop slipped off my lap and dropped right onto the floor. I looked at it like an idiot for a minute, as if I couldn't figure out how it got down there. The owner of the voice ran across the room and picked it up. He turned it around a few times, examining it, I guess, to see if I had actually smashed it out of commission or not.
“It looks OK,” he said, smiling and handing it back to me. He was probably laughing at me more than smiling and thinking that I was a total dweeb. Which was, of course, accurate. As usual, I lost my ability to speak and I stared at him with what I am sure was a completely brain-dead expression on my face. He kept smiling, or likely silently snickering, and sat down beside me on the bed.
“I'm Pieter,” he said, his voice dripping chocolate. I do love chocolate, even though I only eat it in my dreams where it has no calories.
“Oh, I thought you were Wolf,” I said, simultaneously
surprised that I had managed to speak and mortified by what I had said. Now he would know I'd been talking about him!
“Most people call me that. Some people call me other things. My real name is Pieter, though.”
“I like Wolf,” I stammered back, trying to smile sweetly but probably looking like a demented clown. I tried to surreptitiously check my chin for drool.
“Thanks. Me too.” He stood looking at me, his eyebrows raised up in a kind of question. He was obviously waiting for me to say something. Oh. Right. My name. What was it again? I couldn't remember it at all in that instant. I thought hard and came up with it a second later.
“Maddie.” It kind of flew out of my mouth. I tried to sneak a look at his cheek to check for spit.
“Suits you.” Was that a compliment? I wasn't sure but it kind of sounded like one! Now what was I supposed to say? Was I supposed to compliment him too? Should I tell him Wolf suits him? No, that would be stupid. Man, I wish I knew what to say to people â I mean, male people.
“You settling in OK?” he asked, saving me from certain embarrassment.
“Um, yeah, well, sort of, I guess.” He didn't seem put off by my total lack of social skills but nodded as if I had actually said something intelligent.
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” he said, which startled me because I didn't think I meant anything at all. “This place can take some getting used to.”
“Yes, it can. I don't think I'm used to it at all yet.” Wow, a whole sentence. Go, Maddie!
“Maybe they don't want us to get too used to it. They don't want us here long enough to feel comfortable or anything. They would rather have us as outpatients than guests.” The last sentence was said in a perfect imitation of the head counselor babe. I laughed. That is what they called us. Guests. Like we wanted to be there because it was so lovely to visit. As if we hadn't been dragged here kicking and screaming by our parents.
“Really? I kind of thought they got us in here and kept us here for life. Have you been a
guest
long?” I put the same twist on the word as he had. He laughed a little too.
“Long enough,” was his rather vague answer. Long enough would have been about five minutes for me.
“Oh, are you leaving soon?” I asked, as if it was any of my business.
“I don't know for sure yet. They don't want you here forever but they don't want to let you out before you're ready either. It's not so bad if you have people to hang around with.” He stood up. I looked up at him, wondering what to do now. Did he want to hang around with me?
“Well, I guess I'll head off,” he said. It was weird actually. He didn't seem a whole lot better at carrying on a conversation than I was. Maybe we needed Marina here to run interference and keep the talking going.
“Actually, I wouldn't mind hanging out some time. This place can be kind of quiet,” I said quickly before I could chicken out.
“Cool.” He walked out the door, leaving me clutching my laptop and feeling like I had just climbed a mountain. I had
actually, factually, made a real effort to socialize with someone ⦠and I didn't feel totally stupid about it.
I wished I could tell the girls about it. They all would have told me congrats and “go girl” and “you're all that” and all kinds of supportive things. But I don't have them any more. They're gone just as much as Annie is gone. They're gone just like Devon and Alyssa and Ruth and everyone else I've ever actually thought liked me at all.
I don't really have anyone. Five-minute conversations with strangers don't really cut it.
It was a couple of weeks after the party disaster when I finally realized that my mom literally understood nothing about me. I mean, I had known for a long time that she didn't understand much, but this was the day when I knew she didn't understand anything. It was first thing on a Saturday morning and I made the mistake of wandering into the kitchen just as she was cooking breakfast.
“Would you like some breakfast?” Mom asked. She was cracking eggs in butter that was bubbling grossly in a pan on the stove. My stomach started to heave at the thought of letting any of those fat cell feeders anywhere near my mouth.
“No thanks, I'm not very hungry this morning,” I said. I wasn't lying either. I really didn't feel hungry. I never feel hungry.
“No, you're never hungry, are you?” Mom said, turning down the stove and looking at me. Her eyes looked kind of wet and she seemed royally ticked off with me. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what her problem was.
“That isn't true,” I lied.
“Oh, yes it is. You eat almost nothing and spend every spare minute you have exercising. You're wasting away to nothing, Madison!”
“Oh my God, Mother, stop being so dramatic! I'm hardly wasting away. Look at me!” I could feel my stupid tears coming again and I willed them away. I was good and pissed now. “What is your problem anyway? You sit by all of these years and don't even tell me what a fat pig I'm turning into, then you have a big conspiracy going with Dr. Idiot to have him tell me, and then when I finally manage to lose a few pounds, you get on my case!” I only stopped yelling because I was out of breath. I couldn't believe her!
“A few pounds! Maddie, there is almost nothing left of you. You've lost an enormous amount of weight and you were never a âfat pig' to begin with. I don't know what you mean about Dr. Fitzroy. I never conspired with him.”
“Yes you did! You sent me to that stupid checkup before high school so that he could tell me how disgusting I was!” I wiped a tear that managed to escape and turned away from her.
“No, Madison, that's not it at all. I never thought any such thing! You have always been beautiful and had a lovely figure. Now you're becoming skin and bones.”
“Nice, Mom. First I'm wasting away and now I'm skin and bones. Sounds like you're writing a book or something. Some BS teenage help book. Look around you, Mom. The beautiful people in this world are all thin. Turn the TV on, check out the Internet or read a magazine or two. Welcome to the new millennium.
Good bodies are thin bodies. Thin is beautiful. Why don't you want me to be beautiful?”
“Madison, you have always, always been beautiful!” Mom was crying for real now, but I was too revved up to care.
“Yeah, well, that's what you have to say, isn't it? All moms lie to their kids and tell them how gorgeous they are. This is where you do the whole soap commercial thing, and tell me that everyone is beautiful in their own way, right?”
“No, but that is what I believe. I do live in the world, Madison. I know that young girls are pressured to be slim. I do watch television and read the occasional magazine. But this isn't television, this is real life.”
“Yeah, well, my real life is fat and ugly and I just want to be thin and beautiful.”
“You have never been fat or ugly â never!” Mom yelled. That got my attention. No matter how much we fought, Mom almost never actually yelled. She believed in the power of the quiet voice, which, let me tell you, can be pretty scary at times. Right then, though, the loud voice was so unnatural that it shut me up. Mom must have thought I was giving in because her voice got quiet again.
“Honey, I just want you to be healthy and strong. You seem so tired these days. I made you an appointment with Dr. Fitzroy.”
“No friggin' way!” I yelled now. “You cannot make me go to him again. I have a newsflash for you. It's my body. Mine! No one can make me eat what I don't want to. Not you, not Annie, not the stupid doctor, not anybody! I decide how I want to look and how I'm going to get there. Understand? It's up
to me. Me!” I ran out of the room, ignoring the look on my mom's face. She deserved it. She was being totally unreasonable and unfair and unsupportive and every other “un” word I could think of.
I ran into my room and slammed the door as hard as I could. I went over to my mirror, breathing like I had just been in some kind of race. I looked at myself, panting and red-faced, tears pouring down my cheeks. I lifted up my shirt and looked at my stomach. Mounds of ugly white flab stared back at me.
I grabbed some of it and pinched down hard. That wasn't enough so I worked my way around my waist, pinching and slapping at my fat as if I was trying to scare it away.
After a couple of minutes, I started to feel what I was doing, and stopped. I couldn't believe it. Big red welts were forming all over my gut. I started to cry harder. Why had Mom acted that way? This was all her fault!
I must have fallen asleep for a while, because when I looked up it was almost lunchtime. I started down the stairs so that I could sneak out the front door before Mom started the whole food-pushing deal again. I couldn't face another fight. I made it down about two steps when I heard voices, so I stopped to eavesdrop. I knew I should just go back to my room and shut the door, but I could tell that they were talking about me so I decided it was my right to listen.
My dad's voice was all gentle and soft. It's the kind of voice that makes you think everything's OK even when it isn't. He was asking my mother what was wrong. She sounded like she might have been crying but I wasn't sure. I hadn't really heard my mother cry too often so I might have been imagining it.
Mom was telling him about the fight we had over breakfast and saying how she was all worried about me and everything. She started babbling on about me being too thin and thinking I was sick and wanting me to humiliate myself at the doctor's again. I wished she would shut up already and not get my dad all upset too. My dad tried to calm her down and then she started yelling at him about how I have an eating disorder and I need counseling. Dad said something I couldn't hear and then mom started talking about all the danger signs and how obvious it was to anyone who was paying attention. They stopped talking all of a sudden and then I heard my brother's voice telling them he was going over to a friend's house for supper. They both started talking to him about school and other boring stuff so I stopped listening and went to my room.
Eating disorder? So that's what my mom was getting all hot and bothered about. Crazy. All I was doing was trying to lose some weight and have a healthy body and my mother freaks out and drags my dad into it as well.
Obviously my mom didn't really understand what these things were really all about. I knew about eating disorders. We talked about them at school and half the celebrities out there were hanging out at clinics looking like they were starving. As if Mom thought I was like any of them! Even so, I decided to do some research online. The more I knew about it, the quicker I could make my mother understand that she was way off base this time. I could also make sure that her buddy the doctor didn't try to persuade her that there was something desperately wrong with me.
Yes, I decided to go to the stupid appointment. I had a
feeling my poor dad was going to offer to come and ask me to go so that he could stop Mom from freaking out again. He was going to have a tough time doing it and I was going to feel sorry for him and end up giving in anyway. So I just decided to give in right away. It was easier than fighting and besides, I didn't have to listen to anything the so-called medical professional had to say. It was my body. No one could make me change it. Nobody but me.
I've always been a pretty good student, all anal and everything when it comes to stuff like research, so I knew I was up to the challenge of getting the straight goods. I started where every good researcher starts ⦠Google. I can't remember when Google turned into a verb. People say stuff like “I'm going to Google that.” People amaze me. They all jump on some word bandwagon and decide that something that used to be a brand name has become an everyday word. The only word stupider than “Google” is “Googling.” Like “I was Googling the other day and I found something awesome.” Googling sounds like something you do just before you choke to death.