Zoe Letting Go (20 page)

I hated thinking about this.

“The library is the only thing on the third floor, and no one ever uses that bathroom during lunch. It was my last-resort oasis. I went into the largest stall, closed the door, and sat with my
apple, revolving it in my hands but not eating it. Eating it would have made noise, and if somebody came in to use the bathroom and heard me eating? Ugh, no.”

Alexandra stayed statue-still as she listened to me.

“By seventh period I still had no idea where Elise was, and my stomach was grumbling loud enough in class to provoke stares from the people sitting next to me. To get through it, I chewed gum and concentrated with all of my might on the stockpile of coffee yogurts awaiting me at home. I pictured the smooth, plastic containers stacked in the fridge. I reviewed the nutrition stats in my head: 150 calories per yogurt, with 2.5 grams of fat, 7 grams of protein, 25 grams of carbs, and 25 grams of sugar. I imagined the resistance that my spoon would meet with when I dipped it into the thick, mocha-colored substance. I repeated it to myself like a mantra,
Don’t worry, Zoe. You’re going to get your lunch. Don’t worry, Zoe, you’re going to get your lunch. Don’t worry. It’s waiting for you, cold and perfect and sweet. As soon as school gets out, you’ll get your lunch.

“I was ecstatic when the bell finally rang. I practically sprinted home, skidding over ice-caked pavements and not caring what people thought of me. I ran up the stairs to my apartment building, unlocked the door, beelined for the kitchen and stopped.”

I hated remembering this part.

“My mom was sitting on the kitchen table,” I said. “Waiting for me.”

I closed my eyes. All feelings faded in memory except for embarrassment. Alexandra waited for me to continue the story.

“My silk pouch was in front of her, empty. Each packet of
Splenda, fourteen, twenty, I don’t know, was lined up on the kitchen table, like forensic evidence. Like contraband. And she just started saying the same thing over and over again. She said, ‘I’m very angry, Zoe. You lied to me again, and I’m very, very angry with you.’”

It was hard to breathe. Air seemed to be entering my body from a narrow tube.

“She made me pour each packet down the garbage disposal in front of her,” I said. “Individually.”

I shut my eyes and watched thin streams of white powder drift into the black rubber hole at the center of the sink. My fingers had grown sticky with fake-sugar; I shook with rage and humiliation as I emptied the packets. My mother stood with her hands clenched, livid at me for lying and disobeying her. My stomach lurched with hunger pains.

“I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything more than I wanted that meal,” I said, opening my eyes again. The room seemed whiter than usual, and I had to steady myself by putting both palms facedown on the sofa. “Not any food, but that exact food. Every cell in my body anticipated that specific meal. The yogurt. The apple. I did not want anything else. I did not want to break my routine. I would rather have not eaten at all.”

“Why?” Alexandra asked.

“Because. It was a certainty, and I liked it that way. I liked my apple and my yogurt at lunch. I liked rewarding myself with low-fat ice cream. I liked knowing that I didn’t have to think about food or wonder what to eat or how much. It was like wearing a uniform to school, something I always secretly wished for. I
didn’t have to devote a single thought to it. There were no questions. Ever.”

None.

“Nothing else in my life,” I went on, “was like that. I woke up and got out of bed every morning with no idea of what the day would bring. As soon as I got to the bathroom to brush my teeth, it started: Was my skin going to be good today, or would it break out? Would I have to spend the whole day angling my face away from people so they wouldn’t have to stare at a boiling patch of acne? Did my breath smell? Would I have to play basketball in PhysEd? Would my deodorant work? Would I get sweat patches in my underarms before lunch? What if I accidentally scratched a zit during Spanish class and it started bleeding, and the boy next to me points to my forehead and hands me a Kleenex? What if Elise was sick again and didn’t come to school? What if I got my period and bled through my pants? What if I have razor burn on my legs?”

I was speaking from experience, not hypothetically.

“These questions,” I told Alexandra, “are shooting through my head every day before I even spit out the toothpaste in my mouth. Do you understand?

She nodded. I was gripping the sofa too tightly.

“It. Does. Not. Stop.”

Removing my hands from the leather upholstery, I transferred them to my thighs, which I proceeded to squeeze as tightly as a stress ball.

“But that’s not all,” I went on. “There’s also the fact that my best friend is perfect. Literally perfect. My best friend is a
tall, lanky, beautiful girl that everyone falls in love with on first sight.”

I felt a sharp pain. My nails were carving half-moons into my thighs. I’d been clutching my legs so tightly that my fingernails had broken through the fabric of the leggings and were pushing against my skin. Almost as soon as I registered the pain in my legs, it disappeared.

“When I finally figured out that there was something within my ability to control, I controlled it.”

I collapsed back into the sofa, winded. The light in the room seemed to be growing brighter and brighter. What time was it?

“I see,” Alexandra said.

There were tears in my eyes, but they did not feel like tears. They felt like hot water or Tabasco sauce. They scorched my skin and dribbled onto my leggings. Hot and sour tears. I trained my eyes on Alexandra’s shoes in order to avoid making eye contact, but the sight of the bright yellow material was beginning to make me feel off-kilter in a different way. I put my head in my hands and squeezed my eyes shut. Velvet blackness swept around me like a curtain, but Alexandra’s yellow Mary Janes were imprinted in my mind. I could feel the sticky paste of damp Splenda on my fingers and hear the sound of the garbage disposal churning. It was a terrifying sound. Back in the kitchen at home, doubled over with panic and stomach cramps, I saw my mother’s face, taut with anger, as she plucked the kitchen scissors from the butcher block and snipped my silk pouch in half, then into quarters. A cloud of white powder floated to the counter as the last bits of Splenda evaporated into thin air.

“No more of this, Zoe,” my mom said.

Of what?
I wanted to scream. My mother had never understood what I was doing, or why I was doing it. She had never asked. She had never known.

“Do you hear what I am saying to you?” she whispered, her voice thick with fury. But I couldn’t speak. She grabbed my wrists and pinned them, forcing me to look into her eyes.

“You will not,” she said, and then dropped my hands, trembling. “You will not lie to me again, Zoe.”

The scene spun out like a broken reel, and midnight poured itself around me. Blackness again. A high buzzing sound filled my head, and I was aware of a cold, twinkly feeling radiating from the place right behind my ears. Like a TV set unplugged from the wall, everything went quiet.

I wasn’t sure what was happening, so I lay still, breathing fast but no longer crying. Something soft and warm covered my body. My feet felt different; wiggling my toes, I realized that I was not wearing shoes. When had that happened? The darkness around me looked different, not too black anymore but more like the color of a storm cloud. Was it safe to open my eyes? I tried, with great caution, to do so, but nothing happened. I tried again and couldn’t do it.

My eyes were already open. A shape materialized above me. A voice was connected with the shape. But the sensations didn’t fully overlap, and I couldn’t tell whether it was Angela or Alexandra who hovered nearby. The voice sounded like Angela, but the face looked like Alexandra. Black hair. Skinny limbs. Someone brought another blanket and gently unfolded it on my body. But
it wasn’t the white afghan I was holding before, and I couldn’t
feel
the blanket even though I could
see
that it was on top of me. I heard people talking. Not sentences, just words.

Then the words disintegrated into sounds, and the effort of decoding became too great. Either Angela or Alexandra put a hand on my forehead. I closed my eyes again and surrendered to viscous sleep.

Breakfast

Chicken broth (2 cups)

White toast with butter (2 pieces)

Orange juice (8 oz.)

Lunch

Chicken broth (2 cups)

White toast with butter (2 pieces)

Hot lemon water (8 oz.)

Dinner

Chicken broth (2 cups)

White toast with butter (3 pieces)

Hot lemon water (8 oz.)

Ever wondered what
it feels like to fall into a volcano? If so, allow me to recommend a panic attack. A panic attack is what happened to me yesterday afternoon in the middle of therapy. I was telling Alexandra about a fight I’d had with Mom when I began, quite suddenly, to feel dizzy and hot, as though I’d plummeted through the office floor into a pit of lava. I seemed to be falling for a long time, and just as I approached the molten flames at the bottom of the pit, everything went dark.

How’s that for a waking nightmare?

I woke up several hours later in a lamp-lit room, covered in blankets, with a nurse helicoptering over me. Alexandra was there, too—or it might have been Angela. In that state, I couldn’t have distinguished a pineapple from a kiwi.

A few hours later I was allowed to go back to my room and rest. With Caroline otherwise occupied, I had almost a full day of
privacy. In theory. I say “in theory” because I have not, in truth, had a
second
of privacy in my bedroom. At all times there are ten faces staring at me from atop Caroline’s dresser. Ten faces gazing upon every banal activity I embark upon. When I put on my striped socks, I feel their eyes. When I untangle a knot in my hair, I feel them, too. When I undress for a shower—you get the idea. It sounds funny, but a photograph has a distinct presence, and ten photographs are almost unbearably intrusive. Even if the photographs are of a child.

Still, I would never ask her to remove the pictures. I would never be that brave. Shuddering under their surveillance, I felt the limits of my existence vividly, almost physically, as though I were handcuffed.

At dinner time, Angela brought me a tray loaded with plain white toast, soup, and hot water, which I picked at in bed, like an invalid. I hadn’t eaten white toast in years, and I was surprised at how sweet it tasted; almost like angel-food cake. The other girls were at dinner, and my room was silent as a crypt except for the crunch and slurp of my eating.

Toast reminds me of midnight snacks and hotel breakfasts. Many years ago, I sat in the kitchen of our house watching my older brother make toast in the broiler. The square footage of our kitchen was so dinky that my mother refused to buy an actual toaster. (“Not enough counter space,” she said, confirming my theory that
all
moms
everywhere
are obsessed with counter space.) I developed a scientific interest, that morning, in observing Harry prepare his toast. I must have been eight years old. He was crouched by the stove, bouncing on his heels and waiting for
the bread to hit that perfect shade of golden-brown doneness. “Remember to flip it,” I told him. People always forget that a toaster does all the work, but a broiler only does half of it.

“That’s what I hate about toasting in a broiler,” he said, tapping the oven glass. “Touching the soft side of the bread that doesn’t face the flames. It feels creepy.”

When the smell of toast was in the air, Harry yanked the broiler door open and pulled out the tray. One side of the toast was done. As he reached for the bread and flipped it over, a look of disgust crossed his face. It only lasted a second, but I remember being pleased, because it meant that he had been telling the truth about his aversion.

“Yech, it’s like touching mold,” he said.

I miss Harry, too.

Angela asked, this morning, if I would like to talk with my mother on the phone after the panic attack. A special exception to the rule, she said. I declined—not to be vengeful, but because I have nothing to say. It happened and it’s over. Done. Finished. I’d like to forget about it—to smooth it over like a cowlick. I don’t want to talk about the memory that triggered it, and the rest of the time I was unconscious. So there you have it.

I was late to breakfast.
When I arrived, Devon had taken the vacant seat at Victoria and Haley’s table. The only chair left stood between Jane and Caroline, and directly across from Brooke.

Splendid.

Victoria gave me a helpless glance as I entered and sat down.
Are you okay?
she mouthed. I nodded. Caroline stood to pour ice water for Brooke, Jane, and herself, conspicuously skipping my glass. I poured my own ice water and waited quietly for Devon to call us up for food as they talked amongst themselves. When it was our table’s turn, I trudged over to the sideboard, steeling myself for what awaited. Devon, with an apron tied around her waist, happily accepted my plate and dug a spoon into the serving tray. Although we are still allowed to serve ourselves, nobody does so anymore because no matter what size portion you take, Devon always adds more. If I take one slice of toast, she ups the ante
with another slice. If I serve myself a dollop of almond butter, she triples the dollop. Now I just hand over my plate and let her do it. It’s easier that way.

“Southwestern omelet,” Devon announced, depositing a floppy oval of egg onto my plate. I detected red peppers, onions, chives, and cheddar cheese from the steaming, pillow-shaped object. A cube of cornbread was added to the plate, and immediately commenced soaking up excess egg juice like a sponge. I prodded the bread away from the omelet with my finger.