Thin Girls

by Diana Clarke

  When I started starving myself, I loved to look in mirrors. Not because I wanted to see my body, but because I wanted to see what wasn’t there anymore. I wanted to see how much of me had been erased. I wanted to see how little of me remained.

  Mim is sitting on the edge of the bathtub, reading the back of a shampoo bottle, when I get to the bathroom. She has one hand dangling in the water, testing the temperature, and, when I arrive, she turns the faucet off.

  “Let me know if it’s too hot,” she says. I could have cried at it. When someone cares about you, really cares about you, they don’t even want your big toe to be uncomfortable, not even for a glimpse.

  I drop my towel, so accustomed to Mim seeing my body by now, even liking how carefully she watches me, and step into the tub, wincing at the warmth. It is too hot, but sometimes it’s okay to be uncomfortable. Sometimes it reminds you how to be human.

  I get used to the temperature and the water accommodates me, swarms around me, laps at my sore skin like a lover. I lower myself, sinking, until only my face is above the surface, and my submerged ears hear the sea.

  Too hot? Mim mouths from up in the world. I shake my head at her and smile. She looks like something famous up there. Something divine.

  She squirts a pool of body wash into her palm and rubs the soap into a lather. Then she lifts one of my legs and begins to wash me, feet first, her hands moving in quick, persistent circles, from my heels, ankles, calves, knees, she works her way up my leg and then back down the other. She washes between my legs, too, with such soft hands, while my blush spreads like something spilled. Mim doesn’t stop until she has explored my whole body with her soapy fingers. Until I have been seen all over, she has seen me, and she is still here.

  I reach for her T-shirt, wanting, and she pulls away.

  “Oh, come on,” I say. “That’s not fair.”

  “Life isn’t fair, babe,” says Mim.

  I watch her eyes as I tug the drawstring of her sweatpants, pull the knot undone, finger the string free. She smirks. I run my thumb around the elasticated waistband and dip a finger beneath the horizon of her underwear, where her pubis is rough with new hair sprouting. She swallows audibly. I smile, raise my eyebrows, asking for permission. She lifts the hem of her T-shirt over her head, holds it there, covering her face like an opaque veil. “Don’t look at me,” she says.

  “Too late,” I whisper, as she undresses herself, trying, and failing, to shield as much of her body as possible as she does so.

  “Close your eyes,” she says.

  “No.”

  “Don’t,” she says, “please, just don’t, just don’t.” And I don’t think either of us knows what she means. She stands, one arm diagonally across her stomach, the other covering her thighs, crouched into a little fetal pose. Only a former thin girl would choose to cover such areas instead of what we are taught to be ashamed of: the vagina, the breasts. But Mim is beautiful. She still looks like a model. She is tall, lean, but now she looks like a living person, someone who isn’t hurting all the time, hurting herself all the time.

  “I don’t look the same anymore,” she says.

  “Of course you don’t.” I reach for her hand, but she steps away. “You’ve changed. You’ve changed in so many ways, but they’re all good ways. You’ve become kind and caring and loving. And look at you, you’re healthy.”

  She wipes tears from her cheeks.

  “You have changed,” I say. “In such good ways. I’m trying to change, too. To be more like you. The new you.”

  She looks at me. Vulnerable.

  “You are so beautiful, Mim,” I tell her. “Look at your arms. They’re strong. And your hips look like a movie star’s. You are so fucking beautiful standing there right now. I swear.” There is an anger to my honesty. I’d love every part of her she couldn’t.

  Mim snorts in the way she does, and then she slowly unfurls, like some afraid stray animal being offered food by a stranger, her eyes are on mine as she uncovers each part of herself, bares her flesh and exposes her body to me, only me.

  I reach for her, find her hips with my hands, and pull her toward me. I kiss a belt across her pelvis, then down her hip, her thigh, her calf, and lift her leg into the tub. She lifts the other in herself. When she lowers her body next to mine, our limbs find each other, wind around and around, tie themselves into knots that feel permanent. I start to clean her, and I don’t stop until my palms know all of her parts.

  39

  The morning feels new, clean as fresh laundry, and we make coffee in the kitchen, side by side, and it is a scene that feels like forever. Like we could make coffee that way for the rest of our lives, stumbly with sleep, soft with echoes of the unconscious.

  She steps around me for the sweetener and I duck beneath her arm for teaspoons and we brush each other’s limbs, familiar as our own flesh, we each lift our mugs to our lips and breathe across the black surface, inhale the earthy scent, silent, a dance.

  We step outside, so as not to wake Grace with our conversation, and once the screen door is closed, Mim takes a sip of coffee, sighs, the way she always does after the first taste.

  I feel more human than I’ve felt in years. Being awake, really awake, tastes of toothpaste, the way it demands alertness. I am alive and I am here! Squinting into the morning sun, blinking, dazzled, so unabashedly here.

  The Laysan albatross, after mating, often settles down to lay her eggs with a second female albatross. In Hawaii, about 31 percent of the species’ population is in a same-sex relationship. The two mothers raise the offspring together. They stay together for life.

  “Hello?” says Mim. “Hello?”

  “Hello?”

  “Welcome back,” she says. “I’m Mim.”

  I smile.

  “Where do you go when that happens?” she says. “Are you up there?” She runs the pad of her thumb across my forehead, a blessing, a miracle.

  “I’m usually just thinking. Just remembering.”

  “What was it this time?”

  “I was just thinking about something I read once. It’s stupid.”

  “What was it?”

  “Oh.” I shrug. My face warms. “Just this thing about albatrosses. About a third of them are lesbians.”

  “Really?” Jemima laughs, my favorite song in the world. “Lesbian birds? Lesbirds?”

  I nod.

  “That’s fascinating.”

  “Is it?”

  “I could listen to your facts all day, you know. You spend so much time up there in your head; you always have, even when we were kids. You and Lily always seemed to be able to talk without talking. You’d think things and she’d know I was jealous. I’m not a mind reader, Rose, I can’t do what Lily did, but I do want to know everything. I love hearing your brain happen.”

  Hearing my brain happen.

  “I want all of it, Rose. All of you.”

  Have you ever had someone want all of you? Animal and all?

  We’re quiet for a while, looking out over the ocean, watching the whole world happen. Then Mim clears her throat. “So I’ve been thinking.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  “Funny.” She cradles her mug in her palms. “I think you should enroll in art school.”

  I go to take a sip, but Mim’s hand is already there, covering the mouth of my mug. “No,” she whispers. “Too hot.”

  I look at her. She smiles. “What! You’re a baby about heat!” She laughs. “You would have complained about your burned tongue all day.”

  I set my mug on the porch railing and let it cool in the sea breeze.

  “So, art school,” she says, “is where you should be.”

  I nod. “I think I’d like that.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. Why do you seem surprised?”

  She shakes her head. Sips. Then points at my coffee cup. “You can drink it now.” Then, “I thought you’d put up a fight. You don’t usually like new things.”

>   “Yes, I do!” I say.

  “Oh, please,” says Mim. “You hate change.”

  “No,” I say. “I don’t hate it, I think, I just think I’m afraid of change.”

  “So what’s new, then? Why now? Why the change of heart?”

  “I mean . . .” I take a sip. The temperature is perfect. “I need to do something with my life, don’t I?”

  Later, Mim helps me carry my newest painting, the one based on Lily’s first story, to my sister’s apartment, which is only a few blocks from the cottage. We lean it up against the front door, and Mim raises her fist to knock. I catch her hand before it makes contact. I’m not ready yet. I pull Mim away from the door.

  “What?” says Mim. “I thought the whole point of this was to apologize. You can’t apologize if you don’t . . . you know . . . apologize.”

  “I’m not ready,” I say. “I want to show her how much better I am. How I’m healthier now. For her. And I’m not ready yet.”

  Mim takes my head to her chest and strokes my hair. “You’re doing really well,” she says. “You are doing so, so well.” She holds my face at an arm’s length. “And I am so proud of you, Riz.” She smiles.

  Our embrace is broken by a stomping on the stairs. We turn to inspect our intruder, and I swallow when I recognize his face. He is sweating from climbing the three floors to Lily’s apartment, his T-shirt patched with perspiration, hair slicked down on his forehead like an anime character.

  “Rosie!” says Phil. “How nice to see you again!” His jaw glitches. His Adam’s apple gulps, rises and falls.

  “Phil.” I clear my throat.

  Mim reaches for my hand.

  “What’re you doing here?” I say.

  “Oh,” he says, laughing, “I live here now. I moved in as soon as you left.”

  “Lara kicked you out?” I say.

  “Oh, Rose,” he says, scratching his skin, static. “You’re funny.” He smiles. “And you’re looking well!” he says. “Much healthier!” And he means fatter. And he knows exactly what he’s doing. When I say nothing, he reaches a hand, sets it on my shoulder. “We miss you, Rose,” he says. “I hope you girls can work it out one day soon.”

  I shake his hand off. His knuckles are bruised, and I don’t want to know why.

  “Would you like me to bring this inside for Lily?” he asks, pointing at my painting.

  “No,” I say, and start off down the stairs. “Don’t touch it,” I say, towing Mim behind me.

  On our way home, we pass our old coffee shop, where we once sat, the four of us, stooped over a table, chugging peppermint tea and sharing dieting tips, fasting and exercising, laxatives and diet pills. Mim storms past in her usual battling-a-headwind style. I slow, peer into the window, and then stop in front of it.

  “No,” says Mim. “Oh no, no, no.”

  “Don’t you wonder about Flee?” I say. “Whether she’s still going?”

  Mim shakes her head and then says, “Of course I do. Every single day.”

  “Why don’t we try to help?” I say. “Call her.”

  “She can only help herself.”

  Mim pulls on my hand, but I’m stuck fast.

  “Rose,” says Mim, using my full name for the first time in a long time. I turn to her, and she repeats my own words back to me. “I’m not ready yet,” she whispers.

  The next morning, I wake to a clenched stomach and slick skin. I reach between my legs and find a wetness there. My fingertips are painted red. I smile as I start to cry.

  Mim hears my weeping and comes running. “What’s wrong?” But before I can swallow the latest sob, she sees the stained sheets, speckled a deep and beautiful red, and sighs. “I’m so proud of you,” she whispers. And I want to be happy with her, but a period means a healthy body, and health means an existence I don’t feel ready for.

  “This is so normal,” says Mim. “You’re learning to be human again.” She leaves and returns with a tampon. I take it from her, and the gesture is doused with nostalgia.

  40

  Some days I still want to cry and stitch my lips closed. Some days I still can’t get out of bed. One morning, maybe my fifth or sixth or seventh day at Grace’s—time bleeds—the phone beside my bed rang. It rang and rang and rang, and no one picked it up. No one picked it up because it was right there, beside my bed, mine to pick up. I ran through the motions a hundred times in my head. Roll over, take phone from cradle, lift to ear, speak. But I couldn’t. Answering the phone, a herculean task, and so I watched it bleat, helpless, until finally it quieted.

  Most days, though, most days I can get out of bed. Most days, these days, I can answer the phone.

  It’s Christmas Day. I wake early. I plan to leave the house before Mim or Grace are up, but Mim hears me pass her room in the hall.

  “Leaving?” she whispers, careful not to wake her grandmother. I nod. She holds up a finger, a wait right here finger, a finger that means I’m coming with you. Imagine someone wanting to come with you without knowing where. Without caring where.

  A note: Be back soon.

  We walk for forty minutes, hand in hand, then grow tired and take the bus the rest of the way. The house, my childhood home, looks older. The grass in the front yard has grown wild, the paint on the outside, browned. The path leading up to the front door is potholed.

  “You okay?” says Mim, when I hesitate, my fist raised to knock. Lily answers before I make contact with the door. She looks bad. Her skin is pale and gray, her eyes sunken deep in her face, shy or afraid. She’s holding her arms across herself, holding herself together. Her body, unrecognizable.

  “Hi, Lily,” says Mim.

  “Jemima,” says Lily. Even her voice is the pith of itself.

  “Lil,” I say. But she turns away.

  “Why are you here?” she asks, leading us down the hall, toward the living room.

  “I didn’t think Dad should spend Christmas alone.”

  “He spends every day alone,” says Lily. “He is alone.”

  Dad is sitting in his usual corner of the couch. If he were to stand, there would be a fossil there. Archaeologists could determine his exact size and weight from that imprint in the cushion. He looks so old. He doesn’t look up when we enter. There are beer cans at his feet, loyal little pets. There are cigarettes on the couch next to him, companions.

  “Dad?”

  “G’day, kiddo,” he says. I don’t think he knows which twin I am. It’s probably harder to tell these days.

  “Merry Christmas?” I say.

  “Is it?” He smiles. I don’t know whether he means Christmas or merry.

  “Hi, Mr. Winters,” says Mim. “I’m Jemima Gates. I’m not sure if you remember me. I knew your daughters growing up.”

  Dad says nothing.

  “How are you doing, Dad?”

  “Just watching the game,” he says. There’s no game playing. There are newscasters on the television, talking about some game past. The volume is too low to hear what they’re saying. Still, he’s fixated.

  “Is there anything I can get you?” I say.

  He lifts his beer into the air and shakes the can to indicate empty.

  “I’ll get it,” says Mim. “You three should talk.”

  When she leaves, the air does, too. The room dehydrates, grape turned raisin. I grab my throat, hold my neck, breathe. We have nothing to say to each other, my family. I wish we had a dog or something, anything at all, in common.

  “Merry Christmas,” I say, for the second time.

  “Merry Christmas,” says Lily.

  “Is it?” He smiles again. It’s a joke. He doesn’t laugh. No one laughs. He’s missing a tooth, and the rest aren’t in good shape. I wish he’d close his mouth.

  “Rose was discharged from the facility, Dad,” Lily says, but she won’t look at me. “They let her out.”

  “S’great. You look good.” He’s looking at Lily.

  “She’s painting now,” says Lily. “You should see her work.
She’s good.”

  “Lil,” I say. But still, she looks only at him.

  “I’m in a relationship,” she says. “His name is Phil.”

  “Phil,” Dad says.

  “You’ll meet him soon. He couldn’t make it today.”

  “On Christmas?” Dad says.

  “Right,” Lily says. “On Christmas.” Her voice is flattened as roadkill. There’s nothing left to her. No life.

  “Here’s your beer, Mr. Winters,” says Mim, handing over a condensation-coated can. He pulls the tab and smiles his terrible new smile.

  “Cheers,” he says, raising the can into our bad circle.

  “We should get going,” I say. “We’ve got plans.”

  “Plans,” says Dad.

  “Plans?” says Lily.

  “Places to be,” I say. “Don’t we, Mim?”

  “Yes,” she says. “Places.”

  “I’ll walk you out,” says Lily.

  Dad says nothing. Lily leaves and Mim follows her. I take one last look at my father, sitting alone in the dark, in the dust, a throne of trash and grime.

  He clears his throat. “That your girlfriend?” he says.

  I swallow.

  He turns away from the television and looks at me. His eyes, yellowed.

  “Yeah,” I say. “It is. She is.”

  He nods and turns back to the set. “Good.”

  “Bye, Dad,” I say. “I’ll come back sometime. I’ll visit.” I stop at the door, and, without turning around, without facing him, I say, “Dad, why didn’t you ever talk to me about it?”

  “About what, girlie?”

  “I had to figure it all out myself, Dad,” I told the door. “I had to go through all of it alone, and you were right there, right in the next room, feeling the exact same way. All you had to do was talk to me.”

  He sighs. I hear the clatter of his empty can being crushed in his grip. “I still can’t talk about it, Rosie,” he says. I turn, but he’s not looking at me, either. He’s confessing to the silent television. He looks so small, sitting there. “You’re stronger than me, girlie. Always have been.”