The Appetites of Girls (16 page)

I wondered if such anxiety ever plagued Opal or Setsu or Fran. But they all appeared perfectly adjusted as they strode in and out of our suite, their canvas bags slung carelessly over their backs. At night, I stuffed a towel into the crack beneath my bedroom door, afraid my suitemates might hear my sniffles of homesickness. I had lied our first evening
together, claiming I’d spent part of the last summer on an Outward Bound trip with high school friends, not wanting to be the only one away from home for the first time. (Opal had traveled everywhere and had passed the month before school began at a youth art program in San Diego. Francesca’s parents had sent her on teen tours throughout Europe, and Setsu had spent her Augusts at camps.) I could never let them know that, when I closed my eyes at night, I pretended I was in the bedroom beside Mama and Poppy’s, with the rosebud wallpaper and faded pink curtains—this the only way I could drift into sleep.

•   •   •

A
t Mama’s insistence, I had enrolled in Survey of European History and a political science course entitled American Constitutional Law—courses she declared would give me a solid foundation for a host of more advanced classes in the future. Then, just days later, I had met with my student adviser, Dean Salkin, in her office among its countless stacks of books. The far section of the floor seemed a haphazard arrangement of paperbacks and faded, fabric-bound books and new hardcovers with glossy jackets; but in the area nearer the entrance, there seemed an order to the spacing of the stacks, like columns from some ancient temple ruins.

“Perhaps I should employ this as an intelligence test for my students,” Dean Salkin had joked, running a hand through the fringed ends of her cropped, gray-blond hair, as I’d carefully wended my way through the maze of books to a leather chair across from hers. After a long discussion involving many questions about my interests, I had added Psychology 10 and Beginning Fiction Writing, which, she’d advised, would round out my course load nicely.

“Fiction writing? That was the dean’s suggestion?” Mama was surprised.

“I think she’s been teaching for a while, Ma. You could practically circle the campus with the books she’s collected!”

Still, wasn’t it the dean’s job to help me make the most of my opportunity? Storytelling seemed something I could do during free time. Did I know how saturated the world was with authors whose names would never be heard? Too many to count. She hoped for the following term I would consider some economics or even engineering classes, subjects more practical, subjects that opened doors.

•   •   •

H
ow’s my scholar?” Mama would ask when she called each Sunday and Wednesday evening. “Great, Ma.” I didn’t say that I sometimes wished I still had Mrs. Lieberman’s assistance, that the pep talks I tried to give myself now seemed far less effective. Or that almost daily my hand cramped as I scribbled down as many of my professors’ words as I could catch, but when I pored over my notes later, hunched with a bag of Starburst candies at my dorm room desk, occasional portions of what I’d written made little sense at all. I never told that when I’d asked Opal and Setsu, who took European History with me, to review a rough draft of my paper on humanism, they had found two sections they thought needed strengthening.

I spent a week on the humanism essay—“Humanism and the Art of Leonardo da Vinci”—but received only a “Pass.”
Next time use fewer quotations. Rely more on your own arguments
, Professor Stone had scrawled in black ink across my cover sheet.

“A ‘Pass’? What does that mean?” Mama asked. “Are any other marks given?” I thought I could hear the click-click-click of her nails against the Formica kitchen counter.

“I don’t know, Ma,” I said, though this wasn’t true. I had seen the large A on Opal’s essay. And later, after Opal was asleep, I had read through what she’d written, her paper having been left on the low, rectangular table of our common room beside some sketches for her art class.
Sartrean thought asserts that “Existentialism is Humanism
,
”
her first line read, a reference I was not sure I entirely understood.

Then before I reached the end of her essay, I felt what came when I least wanted it to: that unsettled sensation in my stomach that always turned to bottomless hunger. Mama’s second care package was stashed under my bed, out of sight to decrease temptation. Her friend Arlene, she’d heard, sent only junky chips and candy bars to Albert at Bates. But Mama packed stuffed dates, rosemary crackers, an expensive cinnamon swirl loaf from Zimmerman’s Gourmet wrapped in fancy royal blue tissue.
How many of your classmates get
this
from home!
she’d printed on the attached Broadway Paperie card cut in the shape of a heart—the closest resemblance to a love note I ever seemed to receive! I had noticed that my new jeans had begun to strain at the waist and across the seat. And that a few red pimples had sprung up at the sides of my nose—from too many fatty foods, I was sure. Still, I couldn’t help myself. And reaching behind the suitcases and extra shampoo bottles and my L.L. Bean duck boots, I pulled out the box Mama had sent. And I ate and ate and ate until I ached.

•   •   •

M
y suitemates and I began to spend our Saturdays together. Though we didn’t plan it, it became a habit, something we came to expect without advance discussion. With no classes or meetings to attend, we passed the morning over handfuls of Raisin Bran from boxes we’d smuggled from the Sharpe Refectory, reading each other articles from the last week’s
Brown Daily Herald
s or excerpts from the celebrity magazines Setsu occasionally picked up, finding the ones that most amused us. Later, we walked down the hill and across the river to the few downtown shops or, if it was warm, sought out a sunny section of the Green.

Then, eventually, for lunch, we made our way to the Refectory—or “Ratty,” as we soon learned students had nicknamed it. My roommates, I
noticed, seemed unfazed by the sports teams who moved through the cafeteria as a single, solid force, their hair still wet from post-practice showers, or by the fraternity brothers or the older girls in their worn-in Brown sweatshirts who seemed to own the center of the room. Once we had found a table, Opal and Setsu constructed dainty, colorful mounds of lettuce and peppers and sliced cucumber from the salad bar, arranging their dressings on the sides of their trays in coffee cups as so many other girls did, ignoring the more filling choices I piled onto my own plate.

Soon the scale in our hall bathroom reported what I already feared—unless it was off by several pounds, I wondered, scrubbing my face at the row of scratched sinks. It wasn’t a fancy doctor’s scale, after all, just the cheap, unreliable kind you might find at a drugstore. Besides, the square of plastic covering the numbered dial was chipped, so goodness knew how old the thing was. As I mulled over these points, I spied Opal in the mirror. She stepped from the shower, her hair long dripping ropes, a large striped towel in her hands; and before she’d wrapped it tightly around, I glanced at the perfection of her. She glided to the sink beside mine, arranging her soap, a washcloth, toothbrush, and an assortment of tubes and bottles on the narrow shelf below the mirror, attending even to this with a flawlessness that made me wish I hadn’t made such a scattered mess of my own items, and that I wore something other than my old terrycloth robe, which stopped bluntly at my knees, always, somehow, making my calves appear thicker.

“It’s never the same as showering at home, is it?” Opal smiled, squeezing toothpaste onto her brush. She filled a small paper cup with water, then opened a white bottle and shook a brown capsule into her hand. “Vitamins,” she said, tapping the bottle after she’d swallowed the capsule. “A multi. You want one?”

“Okay. What’s it for?” I hadn’t had vitamins since I was a girl, but the thought that they might be part of Opal’s beauty ritual made them seem suddenly exotic.

“Oh, general health, I guess. They have a little of everything. The
label on their container even claims they curb appetite.” Opal turned on the faucet and ran her toothbrush under the water. For a moment, her eyes met mine in the mirror, and I knew what she hinted at. Though I was usually careful to conceal my binges—brushing up every crumb before emerging from my room, spraying the air, to mask any scent, with the Bonne Bell perfume Sarah and Valerie had bought for my birthday two years before—she had caught me once, the door to my room having opened without my knowing. And she had seen everything.

With my hand towel, I blotted the last spots of dampness on my neck and forehead, glad for this brief excuse to hide my face. “Sometimes my mother sends enormous care packages. There’s probably enough in each one to sustain the entire dorm for a week! So—it makes it difficult. You’ve probably never had to think about
your
weight.”

Opal laughed and slowly combed fingers through her wet hair, checking her reflection—her narrow nose, the sweep of her cheekbones, her green-green eyes—as if she might possibly spot some blemish. “I can only imagine what my mother’s idea of a care package would be. Probably nothing legal for eighteen-year-olds! But to answer your question, I guess I’m just very careful, that’s all,” she said, as if it were nothing more than a choice. Did she think I
wanted
to eat as I did.

“You should come shopping with me tomorrow. I discovered this great health store off Wickenden Street, near the river. It’s amazing what you can find there.”

Opal used her walks to Wickenden as part of her exercise routine, wearing running sneakers and white spandex pants. As we crossed the campus, two older-looking boys in crew jackets turned, their eyes on Opal’s waist, her hips, her arms as she raised them to adjust the long-toothed clip in her hair. She hadn’t even caught them staring, but I saw in their faces a wanting no one had ever focused on me. Even other girls—a group of blondes with frosted lipstick—the California girls, everyone called them, though we knew they probably just looked it—studied Opal as they emerged from Chapin House. And I saw how their eyes contracted
as if they were memorizing her—her shape and the rhythm of her walk, and how her shoulders swayed slightly, with a confidence even greater than what they exuded.

When we reached Hope Street, passing the French bistro where I’d heard couples on campus went for dates, Opal quickened her pace, her arms swinging energetically at her side. “Is this okay? I try to fit in aerobics when I can.”

“Oh, sure! This is great!” I said, though by the time we could make out the Seekonk River, I was gasping like a caught fish.

Opal’s route, which zigzagged along side streets to maximize the walk, took us past two Portuguese bakeries, a darkened tobacco shop, and a secondhand store displaying Mexican-printed ponchos and African masks, a sickly-sweet incense wafting from its half-opened door. We were now on a street almost empty but for a sallow-skinned man crouched near the narrow entry of Angel’s Sweet Shop, who spat noisily just after we passed. I turned, looking up the hill, no longer sure of the way back.

“Don’t worry. Almost there.” I thought I saw the beginnings of a smile at the corners of Opal’s lips. I wondered if my skittishness tickled her. Embarrassingly, I had reached for her arm like a frightened child when a group of men and women dressed in coal-dark jeans and boots rushed up behind us, only later identifying them as Brown students, residents of Machado House, one of whom Opal recognized, waving, exchanging words in Spanish.

Opal had brought a long shopping list with her to Eastern Garden. I watched as she scanned the shelves, checking off each item, then exchanged “hellos” with Lena, the pixie-nosed tennis player from our dorm who Fran declared had had implants:
Either that or she’s packing tennis balls in her bra. They’re way too round and perky, and no one that bony-assed has a chest that size
.

I trailed Opal through aisles of dried mushrooms and soy cheeses and turnip chips.

“May I make some suggestions?” she asked. Watercress soup cleansed
the system, cranberries were a natural diuretic. And if it was weight loss I was hoping for, she said, nothing worked better than bran for breakfast and lunch, steamed veggie wraps for dinner. She had tried this, herself, and had immediately dropped three pounds.

For two weeks, I tried to follow Opal’s diet. But the needle of our bathroom scale refused to budge. The bran muffins and cereals stuck in my throat, dry and rough as wood; and by each afternoon, the veggie wraps, when removed from their plastic covering, smelled of something rotting. By the end of the third day, I had polished off an entire coffee cake, a box of Golden Grahams cereal, and a bag of toffees from the convenience store on Thayer Street. I sat on my bed, my stomach bloated, knees tucked to my chest. I had promised myself that here, in college, my old weaknesses would not get the better of me. I blamed Opal for touting a diet that had made me hungrier than ever. Where did she find the discipline to stick with it? Was there some trick she hadn’t shared with me? That night I dreamed I disassembled our dormitory scale—spreading its springs and nuts across the floor until I discovered how they should have been arranged all along. Then, in nothing but my size large Bloomie’s panties and bra, I stepped on—Opal and Setsu, and Winnie and Kay, the two southern girls who lived across the hall, surrounding me as we waited for a number to appear.

•   •   •

I
n Providence, the cool of autumn seemed to turn cold more quickly than in New York. My roommates and I, in Fran’s parents’ convertible (which she was keeping in a garage near campus), drove to a pumpkin farm in Cumberland. We rode in a hay-filled wagon to the pumpkin fields and trudged up and down the planted rows, until we found an enormous though somewhat lopsided pumpkin, which we all agreed had character. Back in our suite that afternoon, we carved it with triangular eyes and a jagged grin.

“Our fifth roommate,” Fran said, arranging a baseball cap on its head, inserting a cigarette in the gap between two of its crooked teeth.