by Diana Clarke
“The type of person who picks at their fingernails?”
“The type of person who wears cardigans until they get holes in their elbows!”
“The type of person who embroiders their initials on their handkerchief.”
“The type of person who apologizes after speaking.”
Rachel looked at the table, nodding at each answer.
“Another example,” said the group leader. “Rose is the type of person who wears gray, head to toe.” She gestured to my outfit. A walking raincloud. “Can anyone tell me what type of person wears gray head to toe?”
There was quiet. Then Sarah, who was brand-new, raised her hand. “The type of person who wears gray head to toe is the type of person who plays the victim.”
Diamond and I sit and stare at each other. She picks her nose, youthfully unaware of how inappropriate. What do you do with a child?
“Where are Dad and Miss Winters?” she says, wiping her finger on her pants.
Lily and Phil are going to a sex store. “New toys!” Lily said as she tried on every shirt in her wardrobe. Her body is the weather these days, always changing. Sometimes marred with old gray bruises, other times reddened with a fresh wound.
She showed me each outfit as I watered her plants. I’d taken to watering them each day, knowing they were dead, feeding them anyway. I wasn’t ready to give up on them.
“It’s a way out of town, the store, but we won’t be long. He knows what he wants.”
“Whips and chains.”
“We’re more nuanced than that, Rosie.”
The intricacies of bondage. I’m babysitting Diamond for the afternoon.
“Is there anything to eat?” Diamond looks at the kitchen. “Do you have nuggets?”
“No.”
“Chips?”
“Let’s do something different.”
But she’s hungry. She is so used to being fed. I cannot feed her. Her eyes are fixated on the refrigerator, a predator and its prey. I wonder whether her hunger is a product of her attention. Thought Diversion. “Come with me,” I say, taking her by the hand. Hers is much smaller than mine, the entire thing the length of one of my fingers.
The only room in the apartment, aside from Lily’s room (which I can’t take Diamond into for the obvious reason that her father commits adultery in there with her schoolteacher once a week, a bad porn film premise) is the bathroom.
“Look!” I say, hoping my excitement might mask the fact that I had taken her to the bathroom.
“What?”
“Look!” I gesture around us. Look at it all.
“The toilet,” says Diamond. “What’s so exciting about a toilet?” What is so exciting about a toilet? I tear off a single square of toilet paper and drop it into the shallow well. It turns transparent and begins to dissolve. Diamond is not impressed. I reach for the handle and flush. Ta-da! A disappearing act!
“No offense, but you’re just flushing the toilet.”
“Magic! It disappeared,” I tell her. “See?”
“Into the pipes,” says Diamond. “It didn’t really disappear.”
I give up on the toilet. The truth is, there is nothing exciting about a toilet. “What about this?” I say, opening the medicine cabinet with a flourish.
“Makeup!” says Diamond.
“Exactly,” I tell her. “Makeup.”
“Makeovers?” she says. “I want pink lipstick like Barbie.”
“That’s exactly what I’m going to do,” I say. “That’s exactly why I brought you in here. Makeup.” A different magic act, a quick change.
She closes the toilet, filled with new, fresh water, and sits on the lid. I take Lily’s makeup bag and crouch before her. “I want to look like you,” she says. I reach for my cheek and she reaches for the other. Two hands on my face, one big, one small.
“Like me?”
“Like you.”
I check my reflection. No one wants to look like this! I look like old roadkill. “I look like old roadkill.”
“Yes,” says Diamond, solemn, a nod.
I take a container of powder from the bag. It’s too pale for Diamond. Perfect. I dust a layer onto her complexion, then another, then another. She looks very ill. I take a palette of eye shadow, a monochromatic spectrum. Every color between black and white is here, every shade of gray displayed in a neat row. I roll the brush in charcoal and color Diamond’s cheeks until the pink convex curves contour into hollows of themselves. The result: death.
“Where’s Dad?” says Diamond.
“Shopping,” I say.
“I hate shopping,” says Diamond.
“That’s why you’re here with me.” I use a black pencil to color around her eyes and then smear the lines into bruises.
“Dad hates shopping, too. He tells Mum that.”
“He likes this kind of shopping.”
“Dad puts me on his shoulders.”
“What?”
“He puts me on his shoulders. He calls me his scarf.”
“His scarf?”
“Because I put my legs around his neck to hold on.”
His scarf. To be someone’s scarf.
“That’s nice. I’m all done.”
Diamond climbs off her toilet throne and looks in the mirror, frowns, then starts to laugh. “It’s so ugly!” Our reflections, mine next to hers, mother and daughter. For a twinge of a moment, I might feel maternal.
Diamond soon tires of the novelty and rubs at her face, complains about the itch of cosmetics. She paws at her eyes until she looks punched. I use a makeup wipe to clean the rest while she sits still, glad to return to normal, to health. I wouldn’t know how to raise a girl like me.
When Lily and Phil arrive home, Diamond is asleep, her face so clean it’s glowing.
“How was she?” says Phil, running his fingers through his daughter’s hair. I wince, imagining the pain that hand could inflict on something so small.
“Fine,” I say.
Lily is carrying a black shopping bag. Weapons. She looks different. I squint at her. “What’s different?”
“I got a tan!” She reaches an arm to show me her new shade. “I was looking so pale!”
“We’ve been this color our whole lives.”
“But don’t I look better?” She lifts a leg for me to inspect, uses Phil’s shoulder for balance. “A good tan can take off ten pounds, right, babe?”
“That’s right.” Phil nods. “That’s right, hon.” But he’s not looking at Lily. He crouches beside Diamond, eyes only for her. “Did she eat?” he asks, a whisper, afraid to wake her. Is it possible that someone so violent with one can be so gentle with another? The type of person who can hit their beloved during intercourse is not the type of person who can be a good father.
“There’s no food here. All Lily has in the house is your wife’s diet stuff.”
“Diamond loves that stuff. She eats it all the time.”
“You’re teaching her to diet?” I say.
“Just to be mindful. YourWeigh is all about mindfulness.”
Lily smiles up at him. As if what he’s saying is true. As if what he’s saying is brilliant. The type of person who will starve herself for a man is the type of person who will let that same man beat her bloody in the bedroom.
In a half moment, I imagine stealing Diamond. Running away to a home in the woods. Letting her eat what she hungered for. Never making a comment about her body. Never criticizing my own. It’s a fantasy. So far from possible. I would make a terrible mother, but I would know how to be a good one.
I only received one call at the CHIC offices that was meant for me. It was Dad. He sounded old, tired, his voice dusty from neglect.
“Yes?” I said.
“It’s your father.”
“I know.”
“Did Lily call?” he said, his voice quiet, as if he were far away from the phone.
“Lil?”
“Did she call?” He cleared his throat, trying to cough up the co
bwebs.
“Did she call me?” I frowned. “No?”
“Oh, I see.” He cleared his throat again. “She said she would. I guess she hasn’t yet. I thought she might want to be the one to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“Your mother.”
“Mum?”
“She had an accident.”
“What?”
“She didn’t make it.”
“Through what?” My world, it eddied.
“The accident.”
“What happened?”
“Drunk driver,” he said. “Drunk. Drunk driver.”
“A car crash?”
“He hit her.”
“He hit her?”
“The drunk driver.”
“Who was it?” I was having trouble understanding him. He was speaking in a strange font.
“The driver?”
“Yes.”
“I’d better go, Lil.”
“Rose,” I said.
“Right. I’d better. I’ll get your sister to call.”
“Dad?”
“Mm?”
“Are you okay?”
“Righto. I’ll see you.”
The driver had been Dad’s age, Dad’s build, had the same number of prior DUIs as he did, but it wasn’t him. He didn’t do it. Still, he kept saying sorry. Sorry, he rasped, a wheeze, a last breath. Sorry, sorry, sorry.
You didn’t do it. Lily shushed him as he sobbed at the funeral, scrunched into himself, like he wanted to ball himself so small he might vanish.
He opened his eyes and I understood him, maybe for the first time. He didn’t kill her, but he didn’t let her live, either.
We sat at the back, wearing black, trying to blend in. Mum’s newer family, Ted and his kids, were front and center; after all, they’d organized the event, paid for the coffin, the cremation, the ceremony. We let them cry louder. We watched as they mourned the mother we’d lost long before they had. They each stood up, walked slowly, weighed down by the sodden heft of grief, to the podium, where they clasped their hands and choked out their final memories of their mother. Ours. Don’t snooze on the wontons.
When the funeral was over, we slipped out the back like the last of the night’s stars.
28
Lily is spending the evening with Phil. I imagine them playing with their new paraphernalia. Lily choking on some terrible gag. I clutch my own throat and relearn how to breathe. My hunger is humming. Every organ aches, my mind is a blur, and I’ve started to separate from myself. I’m my own shadow now, hovering just outside of my body. This is a late stage of starvation, and it frightens me, but I won’t eat until Lily learns. This is the only way I can help her.
“Look at this,” says Lily. She steps out of her room, shrouded in the night’s shadow, and her silhouette is that of an hourglass. I frown at the unfamiliar shape.
“It’s called a Waist Tamer,” she says, running her hands over the corset, which cinches her body into a bow tie. Her new figure. “It’s a new Lara Bax product. It’s not even for sale yet. Phil gave it to me. Look, Rose.”
I am looking.
She looks a little ill. Her skin has yellowed; her eyes sag like they’ve lost their elastic.
“Don’t I look thin?”
“Can you breathe?” I imagine her organs beneath that rubber tube, clutched into a bouquet of themselves.
“Kind of,” she says. “Mostly,” she says. When she leaves, the house is so silent I can hear my blood, can hear the way it crawls through my veins.
I water the plants. They are dead. They keep being dead.
Hi YourWeigh woman!
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Happily,
Lara Bax xoxo
2010 (21 years old—Lily: 215 lbs, Rose: 67 lbs)
Even Lance wasn’t as bad as the next guy Lily dated. It was like she was hooked on assholes. Addicted to the hurt they brought.
Lance was an idiot, but the next guy, Tony, was scary. Lily didn’t want him to meet our father, but she did want to introduce him to me, so we went to a coffee shop a little way from our house, and I ordered a black coffee because it was the only thing keeping me on my feet at that point.
Coffee was discovered by a goat, tells a popular legend. An Abyssinian goatherd, Kaldi, found his goats frolicking and dancing around, more energetic than ever before. Upon investigation, Kaldi found them to be eating the red berries and shiny leaves from a specific tree in their pasture. Kaldi tried the berries for himself and found that he, too, became energized and excited. They had discovered coffee, an incredible plant, one that creates energy in the consumer without any calories. One could, theoretically, live off black coffee, and be energized enough to exist as she whittles away into nothing at all.
Lily ordered a hot chocolate, and Tony ordered a latte, to which he immediately added the contents of a number of mini whiskey bottles. He stirred them in with his finger.
“Babe,” said Lily.
“What?” he said. “Hair of the dog. Want some?” He held out a mini, but Lily gave him a look. “Oh yeah.” He snorted. “That’s right. No booze for you.”
“What?” I said.
“Nothing,” said Lily.
“So,” he said as he swirled his pinkie around and around. “You’re twins, right?”
Lily nodded. “I know we don’t look much alike nowadays,” she said. “But we’re actually identical.”
“Looks like you got the good deal in the womb.” Tony winked at Lily, and I watched her cheeks darken. “Didn’t leave much for your sister.”
“Looks like you got a good deal in the womb, too,” I said to Tony, eyeing up the pregnant beer gut he was hiding beneath a stupid slogan T-shirt that said: if found, please return to the nearest pub.
“Rose, don’t,” said Lily, but Tony set a hand on her shoulder, and she flinched, only a tiny tic of a motion, but I saw it, and I didn’t like how his knuckles whitened, how it looked as if he were attempting to wring Lily’s bones of something. Tony raised an eyebrow at me, and I glared.
“So your sister’s got a mouth, does she, Lilypad?” he said. “Interesting.”
“She just gets nervous,” said Lily, and I could taste her fear, cold and watery.
“I’m not nervous,” I said. “Lilypad.”
Tony laughed. “So,” he said, taking a sip of his spiked drink. I could smell the whiskey from across the table, and it smelled like poison. “You’re Rose,” he said. “Anorexia, huh?”
I snorted at his lack of anything. “You sure know how to pick them, Lil.”
“Tony, baby, come on,” said Lily. “Leave her. She’s having a hard time right now.”
“Hey.” Tony’s knuckles, which had faded back to their dull peach shade, tensed on Lily’s arm again. “Rose and I are having a conversation,” he said. “Don’t be rude.”
I stared at him, drinking liquor at eight a.m., grabbing my sister until she winced, and I stood. “Actually, I think we’re done here,” I said. I turned to Lily. “I hate him.” And then I left, but not before Lily’s frightened gaze begged me to stay.
Lara Bax’s house is large and eerie. It’s painted in pastel co
lors like an oversized dollhouse, its yard is a suspicious green, its fence an unnerving white. This suburbia looks pretend. A dollhouse. I knock on the door and my knuckles clap against the wood and the sound seems to echo around the silent perfect cul-de-sac. I check over my shoulder, half expecting to see Lily, furious at my disobedience. “I can only control my own joy,” I tell the closed door. “I am learning to love myself.”
“Rose Winters,” Lara Bax says when she opens the door. “You came!”
A small, furry dog, who I assume is Jingles, yaps at me until Lara Bax picks it up, strokes between its ears, and then releases it back into the house. “Sorry about Jingles,” she says. Lara Bax wears a skirt that plays around her ankles and a tiny bra that shows almost all of her torso, including a scar the shape of a smile that stretches from hip to navel. She has a tattoo, an elephant wearing a top hat, his trunk standing up, separating her breasts. She is too cool for this dollhouse in the suburbs!
“I like it,” I say.
“What’s that, hon?” says Lara Bax. And I realize that I haven’t told her what it is I like. It seems so glaringly obvious to me, that what I am commenting on is the elephant tattoo that covers half of her stomach in its thick black detail.
“Oh, nothing. Your tattoo, I meant.”
“Lilian,” says Lara Bax. “I call her Lilian.”
“My sister’s called Lily,” I say.
“Yes, Miss Winters.” Lara Bax’s tone chills, darkens. “Diamond’s teacher.”
I wonder how much she knows about the affair.
“Come inside, Rose.” Lara Bax rests her hand on my back—it’s warm—and she guides me into the house. “Can I get you anything?”
“Anything?”
“Water, juice, tea, kombucha—”
Afraid she is going to go on listing and insisting on calories, I say, “Water is fine, thank you.”
2010 (21 years old—Lily: 221 lbs, Rose: 66 lbs)
Reception at the CHIC offices was always slow on Fridays, and, one Friday, just an hour before I could clock out and go home to continue my eternal nap, there was a rap on my desk. I startled out of my sleep and looked up to find Jemima Gates, thin as ever, hair dyed dark and cut into a terrible helmet around her sunken face. She was smiling down at me, her teeth browned, her eyes yellowed, discolored as an old photograph.
