Skinny (2 page)

"So this guy starts snogging me, right in the middle of the street, yeah!"

Susan's stories of the Edinburgh streets always seemed to be peopled with thieves, beggars, and gorgeous Scottish rapists.

Was that me?

The bar we frequented had a ledge with a mirror next to it to accommodate us standing-room-only types in the ladies' washroom.
Was that me? Breathing in through one white nostril, then looking in the mirror sniffing, sniffing through the acrid drip
of it down the throat. The girls, all laughing, all of us embracing: a group hug, a sort of group snort. Except I was the
only one who felt like touching had just been invented as we all tore away and Susan pulled her gloved hand casually over
the nape of my neck.

"You've got great hair, Giselle, only you should comb it," one of the girls said apologetically as someone began to pound
on the door.

"Keep yer bleeding shorts on! It's open!" Susan yelled.

I stared at myself, noticing that my hair had become matted. How had that happened? I thought of Holly then. How, when we
were kids, I'd make her up in front of Mom's vanity mirror, sprinkle sparkles on her eyes, smear wine-red lipstick on her
cheeks, and she'd sit there patiently trying to hum while I transformed her into a child-whore.

"Greg likes you," head of the black-mini-dress girls whispered to me.

"Who?"

"Greg, the guy who was sitting on your left, next to Susan."

Susan let out another peal of swearing, and when the door banged open there were suddenly girls squealing all around us.

"Omawgawd! I have to pee sooo bad!"

Susan gave me a black look, which I ignored while rolling a twenty to sniff the last of the white powder off the ledge. There
was quite a bit left over in all of our hugging and goofing around.

Then the girls left at once and I was alone. I went to the sink and cupped my hands under the faucet and scrubbed my face
clean, like Holly had so many years ago, careful to get everything off like I told her to before our parents came home.

I looked at my red eyes and nose in the mirror. I considered my body, surely not attractive, surely not thin enough; it seemed
to me all those girls were leaner, slinkier than me.

Suddenly I felt blood rushing to my head. I couldn't block out the thought of the blue innards of the cadaver we had opened
that week, pickled in formaldehyde. Dead organs are a peculiar muted hue, and though I was skilled with the knife, I wasn't
quite used to being inside a dead person, handling pale organs.

I can't remember what happened next except that when I woke up on the floor, my head and back ached.

When Susan found me I was still on the floor.

"Jaysus Christ, Giselle, is this why you don't drink?"

"I'm OK," I said, stepping up to the shaking floor, grinning at Susan.

"They said you had a seizure."

"Don't worry about Greg, Susan. I don't like boys. At least, I don't think I like them." I staggered into the door as it flew
open and hit me square in the head. A golf-ball-sized bump formed almost immediately.

Was that me?

"Ow." I managed to look back once more at the mirror before Susan strong-armed me out.

The next morning I examined my bloodshot eyes and swore it would be my first and last cocaine experience. But when I looked
into the bathroom mirror I saw more than the evidence of a wild night: a change had taken place. Someone else looked back
at me grimly. I knew her skin barely covered the grotesque machinery of her squirming insides. Then she spoke her first sweet
words to me:

—
You think those people like you? You think they're your friends?
They're not your friends, they just feel sorry for you.

She didn't speak much, not like she does now, but she showed me things, images. The next day she forced my legs to walk faster
everywhere I went and she screamed when I reached for another piece of bread.

—
Are you really going to put that in your mouth?

When I gazed at her in the mirror, her judging feline-eyes reminded me that I was not good enough, that everything I had—school,
body, and life—I had to maintain, work twice, three times as hard as everyone else to keep. She terrified me into spasms at
night when her great pumping heart sucked all the excitement from my veins and turned it into criticism.

—
Do you think you're special? because you have a head full of knots
and facts?

In those first quiet moments staring at her reflection I closed my eyes, willing her to disappear. But I could hear the sound
of a knife cutting into her soft pale arms. I imagined her slicing us apart, just to show me our blood. That morning she was
just a shell, still forming over my skin. But minutes later, when I looked back in the mirror, she had begun to take over;
her deep wet eyes blinked back at me, alive.

—
Introduce me,
she yawned.
I want to meet your friends.

A good surgeon knows biochemical pathways and anatomical landmarks intimately

I measured and weighed her when they brought her home, counted her fingers and toes, and tested her reflexes. Unlike me, Holly
was born long and skinny: nine pounds, nine ounces. She would not tolerate swaddling—her legs kicked at blankets, toys, and
anyone who found themselves in her direct line of fire. Anyone except Dad. She wouldn't kick at him. She was considered slow
because she wouldn't talk, although she learned to walk quickly. She moved drunkenly, falling a lot, but she was determined.

Holly had a funny habit of lying down on the ground and putting the right side of her head on the floor when she was sad or
upset or tired. She'd suction her little pink ear to the wooden floor of our house, stick her thumb in her mouth, and stare
at the dust beneath the furniture, meditating on whatever injustice or punishment she had just endured.

You couldn't touch her when she was on the floor; she'd thrash about and punch if you tried to pick her up. It was best just
to leave her, to wait for Dad to cajole her out of her black mood.

Holly was born deaf in her left ear.

"I go 'way now" was Holly's first complete sentence. She said it to me, on the floor, squeezing out hot tears. Her shaky voice,
her attempt at language, betrayed how very hard she was trying to be good. We were trying to get her to communicate, in those
days, with monosyllables. We'd cheer and dance around the kitchen, and sign back at her gleefully when she grunted an "uh-uh"
or "na-huh." We were trying to break her of the habit of being silent for days and then waking up screaming.

"Holly good girl! Holly, you're talking!" Instinctively I reached down to touch her but she moaned and clenched the floor.
She balled her fists into her face and wept bitterly. I withdrew my arm. Mom was cooking dinner, the pressure cooker was whistling,
Dad was reciting poetry in the front room. It was altogether too much noise.

Born into a world of half words and blaring radios, of singing Hungarians and ongoing dramas, Holly went underground when
our ever goddamn dynamic family got to be too much. Holly learned early on how to get us to disappear, or at least shut up,
for a little while.

Me? I was born between the old world and the new, five months after my parents came to this country, and it's taken me twenty-two
years to figure out how to get some control, some peace and quiet, and even now it's not so quiet.

chapter 2

When Giselle came home for Christmas holidays last year I saw it happening. I saw her eyes dance across the food at dinner,
calculating, making plans about how she could get rid of it. She had several tricks. One of her favourites was to take a couple
of bites of her meal and then scrape the rest of her dinner into the garbage when she thought no one was looking. But she
couldn't do this for too long, because I caught on early and told Mom.

When I heard it wras a sickness, I went to the library to do some research.
The Perfectionists' Disorder. The Girl Who Thought
She Had No Stomach.
I sat there, very still, with those books spread out on the clean, shiny table. I sat there in that quiet library with the
tick of the clock in my ear, looking at those girls with big heads and awful long bones that looked like they hurt poking
through the skin.

In late April, when Susan, Giselle's roommate, called us with news that Giselle was in bad shape, I chewed all the nails off
one of my hands.

"She finished her year," Susan told me before I passed the phone to Mom.

"She's in the top ten and she wants to stay and do some summer courses but I think she needs help."

I wasn't surprised. Mom and Giselle's doctor arranged for her to go to the best clinic in the city straightaway, even though
there was a mile-long waiting list. I'm not sure if Mom used Dad's title as a doctor to pull some strings, or if Giselle was
so sick she needed immediate attention. Whatever the case, Giselle went to the clinic after a certain "episode" at school.
Susan was never clear about what this "episode" was. Maybe Giselle passed out somewhere, or maybe she lost it completely and
started chucking food at the other students one day in anatomy class. Anyway, school had had enough of her and she, it seems,
had had enough, too. But I don't mean she was cooperative, because she wasn't.

"I have a test tomorrow!" she railed, gnashing her teeth at the clinic's receptionist. "I don't have
time
for this!"

"Shh, honey, don't worry about the test. . . you can make it up," Mom said, smoothing Giselle's hair back, massaging warmth
into her arm with her fingers. Mom and I both tried to hold on to her and get her to lie down, and we both stared openly at
the plastic medical band that hung off her tiny wrist, at the scratches and bruises on Giselle's arms and legs. It looked
like she'd fallen off her bike or something.

"What happened?" Mom asked as Giselle plucked at her hair like a madwoman. For someone who was not eating enough, she was
really hyper. She asked the nurse a stream of questions and she even had the nerve to put me in a headlock. I resisted the
temptation to pinch what was left of the flesh on her bones and wriggled out of her hold.

"So long you morons!" she screamed as a male nurse wheeled her down the hall.

"She doesn't mean us, Mom, or anybody, she's just babbling, just talking."

I realized later she was either hyped on caffeine pills or something stronger that went around school, or maybe she was just
delirious. Mom said, "I hope they fix her hair."

Giselle's hair, which had always been neatly combed, long, and a gorgeous treacle colour, had transformed into a yellow nest
of long dreadlocks that were tied back with a large hair elastic and a piece of fabric. I liked Giselle's new hair, although
it was huge, and shrunk her face, and kind of made her look like a scarecrow.

"She seems high-strung, Ms. Vasco," the nurse said. "We're going to administer some sedatives."

"Fine," Mom told the nurse stiffly as she gripped my hand.

Mom had trouble recognizing the healthy-bodied, long haired, upstanding daughter she had dropped off at the university not
ten months ago, and maybe she hated, or at least feared, this wild, loud-mouthed, dread locked, sinewy creature posing as
Giselle.

"Let's go," Mom said, her face darkening. "We'll come back tomorrow to see how she is."

I held up my finger, telling her one minute, one minute, and dashed down the corridor.

Giselle was propped up on the bed in a little hospital gown and the nurse was searching her arm for a vein. She seemed a lot
calmer when she smiled at me.

"This is my sister. She's fourteen," she told the nurse, as if I were famous and she were very proud of me. The nurse nodded
at me and continued to feel around in Giselle's arm, searching for the elusive vein.

"How's Mom?" she asked suddenly, very seriously, dropping her crazy-act.

"You've done a great job of flipping her out."

"Yeah, well. . ." She scratched her head, dislodging some of the neatly arranged dreadlocks from her ponytail, and then looked
at me guiltily. She looked over at the nurse, who still had the needle hovering above her tiny arm.

"Give me that!" And in one swift motion, my sister pulled the tourniquet around her arm tighter, with her teeth, grabbed the
needle from his hand, and injected it into her arm like an expert junkie.

"Don't worry," she said, pulling a silencing finger up to her lips, "I won't tell anyone. Besides, I'm a doctor." She laughed
quietly, then closed her eyes, behaving as if the drug had had immediate effect. The nurse, who looked as if he wanted to
punch Giselle in the face, pulled the needle out of her hand and snapped the tourniquet off. He was muttering something about
spoiled university hotheads as he left the room. Giselle opened her eyes really wide then.

"Do you ever get hungry?" she asked. "Too hungry to eat?"

Six weeks later, after Giselle stopped acting so crazy, the doctors and nutritionists at the clinic were so impressed with
my sister's progress—she seemed eager to "heal herself" and within the month and a half gained back almost half the weight
she had lost—that they said it was OK if she came home early.

But now that she's home and "healing," Giselle seems different. Even though the clinic taught her about nutrition and stuff,
she's gotten really weird about food. I don't know what she picked up in there, but she cuts it up into tiny pieces and eats
really slowly, chewing every little bite about thirty times and moving her plate around in circles to examine it from different
angles. But she has no problem eating crap. And knowing Giselle's weakness for sweets, Mom's stocked the fridge and shelves
with all kinds of cookies, cake, ice cream, and chocolate.

Today she sat down next to me at the table with a tub of ice cream, which she scooped out with an Oreo cookie and licked off.

"You shouldn't eat that shit," I told her. It's so annoying that she acts like a baby, doing anything she wants because she's
"sick." Her hair is only getting bigger and rattier-looking and she hangs out in her pyjamas all day. Plus, her skin is looking
bad from all that sugar.

"I," she said, pausing for effect, and to grind the cookie with her teeth, "I can eat whatever I want. Doctor's orders." She
grinned at me with black cookie stuck between her teeth. As I got up to take my plate to the sink, she started scooping out
the ice cream with her finger.

"Besides," she added, scratching her back, "I don't eat it, it eats me. Want some?" She held out her spindly little finger
and giggled. I slammed my plate in the sink.

I hate watching her sit around all day on the couch, too tired from her sugar highs to do anything except stare at the TV.
She talks about going back to school, but it's hard to imagine her pulling herself together to even leave the house. How is
she going to be a normal person and go back to school while she still looks like a scarecrow and eats crap? So I decided to
do something about it: I got a garbage bag from under the sink and started throwing all her junk food into it. Then I walked
over to her and snatched the tub of ice cream from her hand.

"Hey!" she whined, tripping out of her chair. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Until you eat and act like a normal person I am absconding with your food."

"Absconding?"

"Yes, absconding."

"That's a mighty big word, Holly. I didn't know they taught those kinds of words in grade six."

"If you cared about anyone other than yourself, you'd know I was in grade eight."

"Snot."

"Bitch."

"You can't talk to me like that!" she shrieked. Giselle was standing up now, swaying like a paper-ghost in her thin pyjamas.

"Why? Because you're sick? Because you act like a spoiled brat? Well, guess what, Giselle, I'm not your therapist and I'm
not your doctor. I'm not Mom and I'm sick of your whining and I
can
talk to you however I want. I'm your sister and I know you and don't care if they tell you that you can eat whatever you want.
You can't. You want to act like a baby? Then I'll treat you like one. You can do whatever you want in front of Mom or the
doctors but not me. Understand?"

All of this shot out of my mouth in tears and spit as I stood there shaking my twenty-two-year-old pimply sister, who looked
younger than me, who, I, at fourteen, could've thrown across the room like a rag. I couldn't help myself. Dear God I'm sorry,
but I couldn't help it: I wanted to hurt her.

"You don't understand," she whispered.

I'm bigger than Giselle, bigger arms, stronger legs, wider torso, but I was still afraid of her until that moment, until I
felt my thumb hit the soft inner bone of her arm.

Then, instead of hitting her, I put my mouth up beside her ear.

"You are so goddamn right I don't understand. But then you are the smart one and I am the stupid one. What do you want, Giselle?
More food? More ice cream? I want to give you your wish, Giselle . . ."

"Shut up!"

I gripped her arm, till it felt like it might snap, till she cried out in pain, till she somehow managed to wrangle herself
from my hold and crumple down on the floor. She covered her face as if I had hit her and, as I looked down at my shaking hand,
which still held the garbage bag, I saw the trail of black cookie saliva smeared up the side of my arm, and the red mark where
Giselle had bit me and freed herself.

. . .

Tonight the house is a tense hot place with Giselle fuming in her room and slamming doors, and so I go for a run. Mom and
Giselle don't know that I sneak through the back door and run through the park. At night I can't see the crooked paths, so
they don't trouble me. When I reach my stride, when I am warm and a single flame burns inside my gut, when something in me
feels like stopping, that's when the lines of trees blur quicker and I push on harder. I see nothing but my legs. The pounding
of blood in my ears reminds me that my heart is always with me, like breathing or dying. Then my legs disappear and I forget
about Giselle's scratchy hair and ugly frowns, forget that we're bound together in bone and blood in this big messy life.
When I kick against spring-wet trees, leap gutters in time, I find my own heart, alone.