by JoAnna Novak
I want my mom to get home so I can tell her I told Elliot off. I want her to buy me a present, hot cocoa, extra whipped cream, even though I hate wanting, and especially wanting from her. I like having. I should’ve told Junior Carlos.
But my mom is nowhere when I want her. Outside, our neighbor Mrs. Scott, in a red poncho and waders, shuffles down the sidewalk with her Scottie. The dog wears its ’70s orange sweater; its nose is a horn, long as my shoe. Across the street, the Malussas haven’t removed their crèche: blue-robed Mary, swarthy Joseph, the shepherds, and the wise men fawning over a baby Jesus stand-in in the manger (this year, Tickle-Me Elmo; last year, a Cabbage Patch Kid).
Elliot is a hazard, says my mom. These days, after appointments with Dr. Ogbaa, she says, “another step away from Hell.” (She means me dying from anorexia.)
I wonder when the finality clicks, or if my grandma is holding out for heaven. Is it that I don’t remember Georgette, or that I don’t want to remember? I don’t want to remember the ward, either: a gang of dying-to-die girls in cotton ball PJs and Dopey slippers, swathed in cloud blankets, clutching Strawberry Shortcake dolls and Care Bears, stuffed seals and tigers. Slumber party purgatory: die or get fat. And all you do is talk: Which restaurant when your mom chucked a dinner roll at you? What were you eating? How many times did you set down your utensils between bites?
My mom’s gray minivan pulls into the driveway. Panic whacks my forehead: idiot, where are your pants? I don’t wait to see her long coat as she opens the car door. I rush to the living room, run the ice from our drinks down the drain, cups in the dishwasher. My feet pound like at a Park pep rally, when we stomp the bleachers to the opening bars of “We Will Rock You.”
I try to lock my bedroom. But the lock is six-months gone. Anyone can barge in.
Junior Carlos is right: I am a baby: I don’t want to know if my mom’s been crying. I’m scared. I want to do what I want. I want to brush my hair three hundred times like my grandma taught me, and never have visitors when you’re not in a clean blouse. Bra, too. (She had an exhibitionist baby sister.) My grandma didn’t have an eating disorder—at least, not a diagnosis. She was picky. Precise. She knew what she wanted, too. Does she still know? Are our wants the last things to go? I remember us, two Christmases ago, at the Signature Room: she put her cold hand over mine and helped me scrape thick red dressing off a wedge of iceberg.
8 ·· ELLIOT
THE WINDY, BUMPY, IMMEDIATELY-AFTER-SCHOOL BUS was Route 107. I sat next to Rocyo.
She’d gelled her cornrows into a whale tail that hung over her shoulder. Inside the translucent Discman she clutched, the “Ghetto Superstar” single spun. Rocyo mouthed the words and bobbed her head: whenever she got to the part where Mýa sang “charms,” her jaw dropped like a marionette’s. I kept noticing the gap between her top incisors. Her grapefruit-pink braces were disarmingly similar in color and texture to her gums, like she was all mouth, one big, gross undone chicken breast, taking up more than her share of seat, making me squish into myself. I wouldn’t have room to think about Lisa now.
I bounced my knee, scanning the writing on the brown leatherette seatback in front of me:
PEN15.
HAVE A K.A.S. (BUT DON’T HAVE A C-O-W).
U CUT W DAWGZ !!!!!!! (AND COWZ).
YO MOMMA DO! (COWZ).
Then, a drawing of a bulbous hand, captioned: TALK TO THE.
Rocyo touched my shoulder. “Aquí.”
I stood as the bus slowed, bracing myself on the top of the seat. Melted snow swamped the floor, and I slopped through slanty puddles. I didn’t make eye contact when I saw Ethan Suva. He probably thought I was a spaz after what I told him in the library. Around boys—and especially this boy, who I like-liked—I wanted to be invisible, a passing shadow. Ethan professed to love Full Metal Jacket. He said he’d tasted acid rain. At least he had shoes on now—black-and-white checkered Vans. Otherwise, he was no hat, no gloves, no scarf, no coat, an open red-gray flannel, whipping his Kurt Cobain hair out of his eyes, chucking a Koosh ball back and forth as I walked by him. The ball flew right into the aisle.
“Sorry, mang.” His hand dipped down and grazed my calf.
My heart somersaulted. Was his touch on purpose? I felt a seedling of joy.
He’s so genius, I’d say, if I were talking to Lisa. I’m like slayed. Dead-dead. He’s so—.
So what El? Tell me what about Ethan Suva makes you wet. Ew. I don’t know.
Did he touch you? Lisa’d say. Elliot. Don’t be modest.
Probably not on purpose.
Probably definitely on purpose! One of his brothers was at the same rehab as me; he could score us some pot. You better believe he taught baby bro the moves. I know he touched those candy-cane calves!
What!?
“Suva, hey! Watch it!” Rocyo’s words sounded diagonal when she talked to boys. She tap-tapped my back, moving me down the aisle. “E-thone! You lost your balls!”
··
I hadn’t been to another person’s house since Christmas. My father had been in Europe, Anna’s grades had been due on the twenty-fifth, and our family’s sole plans had consisted of me making gingerbread cookies with my Uncle Marky and his boyfriend Fernán. (Marky’s arms were tattooed and, with fine-tipped brushes, Fernán and I had been trying to give our gingerbread men ink sleeves of royal icing.) I hadn’t been skipping festivities when Lisa invited me over the night Mrs. Orlowski-Breit would be at the hospital with her grandma. We can do presents or watch something, but it’s fine for a sleepover, if you want. I’d pushed myself on her, sent AOL chats, where are you, it’s been forever, are you there God/Lisa it’s me Margaret/Elliot? It’ll be so amazing to see you!
The truth was the exchange sucked, even with Lisa and I the only people in the house. It hadn’t been the breezy perfect of reunion I imagined: we had been awkward, stagey. Lisa had been mowing chocolate-covered almonds, her eyes radaring me, especially after I gave her a Ziploc bag of the Fen-Phen, the old-school diet pills my mom didn’t know I knew she’d been addicted to. I’d pilfered the pills from her sewing box. Lisa had given me a black mesh top she’d worn last year, back when she got so skinny her voice magically leapt up an octave.
I be fly, I’d rapped to Lisa’s closet mirror. Check-a-check out, my cubital fossae.
Lisa had rolled her eyes. She’d tossed the Fen-Phen in a drawer. Cleared her throat.
El, you’re a nerd. Questions. One: Do you want a club soda? Two: would you be down to smoke pot? And three: have you ever seen a porn? Okay, four: are you interested in watching one—like, now?
··
Rocyo lived in the most fabulous home in Ridgedale, the only subdivision besides mine that wasn’t gated. Kids at school talked about going to birthday parties at mansions with indoor swimming pools and movie theaters with red velvet seats and old-fashioned soda fountains; I’d never been to one of those parties. Everything I knew about these homes I could see from my seat on the bus. Four- and five-car driveways, turrets and balconies, gazebos, and swing sets that made the Park playground look puny. Hedged alcoves. Guest houses. Landscaping with elaborate Stonehengy rock gardens.
In the lawn next to Rocyo’s, I counted three fountains, their bases garlanded in Christmas lights. Still, Rocyo’s house was the stunner. Under a beret of snow, her red roof wore scalloped bangs. White stucco pebbled the walls, the Disney version of a villa Señora Lurke had shown us in Spanish on the day we discussed La Sagrada Família.
Inside, our boots echoed on the biscuit-brown tile. Sun flew down from the skylight, nestled high in the cathedral ceiling. Rocyo’s pet parrotlet flapped on its wooden perch. He was so bright, he looked backlit. His chest was marigold yellow, his tail feathers blue raspberry, his wings Slimer green.
“Putita,” he cawed.
“Ugh, that’s Anthony,” Rocyo said, chucking her fur-choked boots into a closet crammed with shoes. In my experience, messiness and fatness were often good friends.
“Big name for a
little bird.”
“Culo, culo. Lamame el culo! ”
Rocyo smacked the cage. “Shut up, Anthony! You get what he say? Lick asshole? Uck. Gross.”
“Ew.” I squinched up my face. “Pretty sick.”
Rocyo wasn’t crafty enough to highlight my ignorance. My mom, on the other hand, would pause a film to be sure I understood innuendo. Yeah, I’d say, and Anna would be like, okay, El, plainly now, what does he mean, eat out, and I’d fumble the hot mortification potato: they’re not cooking raviolis? Then, Anna: all right, El, let me explain. So culo? I’d taken Spanish since first grade, but my vocab stopped at Bienvenidos! and the palabras extra creditas Señora Lurke wrote on the board in her hieroglyphic print.
I followed Rocyo upstairs. On the walls, Frisbee-sized glazed plates painted with blue and green and orange flowers hung between family portraits. I could see why she needed me. Compared to her mom, a Mexican Heather Locklear with croquembouche hair and a Vaseline smile I recognized from Park awards ceremonies, Rocyo’s five-foot-four-inch, 158-pound body was Ursula from The Little Mermaid.
I dragged my hand along the iron railing, taking my time. The metal twisted like cursive. Soon we were on a balcony overlooking the foyer.
I touched my left wrist. Even the memory of pain made me feel like a true sufferer. The abrasion squealed through my coat. If Lisa never wanted to talk to me again, I’d schedule another meeting with Rocyo, come over, climb these stairs, swan dive off the railing and plummet, dropping to my death, a scream and low, rolling moaning slurps of brains pooled like crushed casket velvet behind my skull. Beautiful. And so perfect, with the house fragrant like withered roses. I cringed at the thought of my consciousness rubbed out, bam, an instant. Death: a clap-on, clap-off light.
“You have your own room, Elliot?”
“Huh?”
“This is mine. My sister’s there. My parents—you go the other way. They have their own everything. Bathroom. Cocinita. Todos.”
“Woah.”
“Mine’s biggest, though.”
“Well, as you know. Biggest isn’t always better, right?”
Bruce Willis’s sun-soaked face beamed on an Armageddon poster that covered her door. Inside, the room was predictable, childish: faux fur zebra bedspread; centerfold of Usher shirtless, his nipples like black checkers; blue furry rug, where Rocyo plopped. I leaned against a white desk and crossed my arms.
“What do you like about your sister’s room?” I said.
“Her boom box. It’s louder to break your ears.”
“So, yeah! There you go: size isn’t everything. And, what I want you to know is that numbers aren’t everything. Everyone fixates on numbers,” I said. I was confident, prepared, a bullet whistling toward a temple. “But numbers are fake. I don’t mean like in math with real and non-real … wait, never mind. I mean, numbers are markers, they help you track progress, but you shouldn’t make them your all.”
I paused. The heat was too much. Rocyo’s room felt like ninety humid degrees, a greenhouse. Four indoor fruit trees the size of dollhouses grew out of turquoise pots and hard-looking lemons hung from the feeble branches. My turtleneck stuck to my armpits, the skin striping my spine, but I didn’t want to be rude and ask to hang my coat. I stood, unmoored, suffocated, breathing in air that smelled like Lysol and Surge.
“Why don’t you undress? I’m gonna measure you and take your Before pictures. You’ll have a comparison—who you were before and after—a lot better than weighing.”
“Everything nude?”
“However much you’re comfortable with. Bra and underwear are fine. Seriously. I’ve seen lots of girls. It’s like the same as gym. I’ll turn around. And then I’ll get numbers on your hips, your waist, your thighs, your wrists, your upper arms.”
“Good.”
I unzipped my black, patent leather backpack, and removed my kit, bulging with the Polaroid, Listerine strips, a chain of safety pins, paper packets of salt and mustard—there was all the usual stuff, but not my seafoam-green tape measure.
I glanced at Rocyo’s desk. I sorta wanted all its girly fun, even though I always thought fun was a stupid, dangerous concept. Fun? Fun kept you dumb; fun kept girls from success. I mean, look at her stuff. A pink-and-black lava lamp. A sequined picture cube that showed Rocyo and two cheerleaders holding hands as they sprang off a high dive, floating in sky. A heart-shaped bulletin board with a roll of red tickets from Enchanted Castle, a headshot of Freddie Prinze Jr., an All-4-One stub, a Bart Simpson key chain, a 7-Eleven napkin with a lipstick kiss and a note: “Ur next Mountain Dew Slurpee = me.” Not a book in sight. Not even a pen. What a waste.
“Do you have a tape measure, by any chance?” I turned. Rocyo’s hands fumbled around her back, hunting the flesh folds for a bra clasp. “Need help?”
“Hey, don’t look, Elliot!”
“My bad.”
I snatched the 7-Eleven napkin and crammed it inside my backpack.
“Ready now.”
Rocyo was naked. I tried not to gawk. Her arms hung like sausages at her sides. Her nipples were the menstrual brown we’d learned about in fifth-grade health. She wasn’t really fat but plump and what Anna would call nubile, like Lisa last year before she lost weight: mature, too voluptuous for Park. A good body to mold. Usher and I studied her, a Renoir nude we needed to eye-chisel into a Giacometti or whatever. I smiled. If I helped Rocyo enough, she might be hospital material one day.
“All right, thank you. Let’s chat, babe. You can get dressed.”
Instead, she flung herself on the Grover-blue area rug. She started to sob, banshee yells interrupted by wheezing. I shielded my eyes from her butt. The smooth bronze boulder of flesh wore its crack like a Y-necklace. I wasn’t worried but certain she would feel way better thin, without the bust of a Baywatch babe. I let her wail away the half-pound I always shed from a good bawl.
After a few minutes, I rested my hand on her shoulder. Her skin was soaked.
“Don’t touch me. I’m disgusting. Get your hand off me!”
“I’m sorry! C’mon. Girl. Get dressed. Or don’t. Either way. Let’s do this. Hey, hey. You made the move of setting up an appointment, so we’ll get down to business. Rocyo? Okay? Let’s play nice and have a little talk … a little real talk.”
“Elliot, I’m fat.”
“No, you’re not. You’re working on becoming thin. That’s awesome. You should feel like the best person in the world. You’re making progress!”
“Am?”
“Yes, you am … you are.”
Rocyo sat up. She wrapped the edges of the rug around her, like flower petals.
“So tell me what you eat,” I said, pen to a sheet of loose-leaf. “On an average day. Yesterday. Was that normal?”
“I eat the bread with jam. That’s breakfast. Lunch—”
“Hold up—what kind and how much?”
“Strawberry, a butt-load.”
“Okay. Good. Be as specific as possible so I get to know what you like, what you crave, all that jazz. So lunch …”
“Lunchable, ham, cheese. Afterschool, Fruit Gusher. Great White. That fruit?”
“Barely. Sugar. Dinner?”
I pressed harder into my paper. My clients’ food diaries disgusted me: I might never eat anything but apples and lemon water ever again. Rocyo rolled over and stared at the ceiling, one hand cupping her head, the other resting on her pooch. Her pubic hair whorled like the hard sugar nests my Uncle Marky made.
I felt something, alert and sensitive between my legs, zingy. I was aroused, even though I was also legit grossed out. Ever since Lisa and I had seen Pleasantville last summer, I’d been trying to masturbate. I hated that word. Why did something that supposedly felt good enough to change black and white to Technicolor sound so much like a LEGO kit? I called it avocado. The next time I tried to avocado, I decided, I would finger all my energy into weirding myself out.
“Dinner,” I repeated.
“Is the worst. I eat
with my mom and dad, and eat again with my sister.”
Unless you were me, and Anna couldn’t down a demitasse of espresso without laying one palm on her stomach and another on her forehead, dinner was a slog. Mom or dad masterminding the whole shebang: if someone decided the fam was slumming it with Arby’s for dinner, you’d better buck up for a Beef & Cheddar, extra Horsy Sauce. In this sense, my parents were complicit in my emaciation: Anna would rather tweeze hair off her toes than cook, and my father ate steakily in Europe on business or spartanly in his office at his desk when he corralled a menagerie of animal crackers on a sheet of graph paper.
“So what was dinner?” I said. “No judgment.”
Without making eye contact, Rocyo said, “Different stuff.”
Girls were so vague. If nothing else, skinniness would hone Rocyo’s thoughts.
“Okaaaaaay …”
“Okay, rice with, rice with salsa and shrimps.”
“That’s not bad! Protein is really important. Especially for your brain.”
“But twice? And when I also like dessert?”
I tried not to sound demoralized. “Ice cream?”
With both hands, Rocyo drew a circle in the air above her body, her ring fingers and thumbs touching. I imagined sticking my head through and crashing into her lap.
“But sugar-free. Sugar-free, fat-free, cookie and cream.”
I’d heard enough. “I have one last question—it’s going to seem random. But bear with me. What do your parents do?”
“They own a restaurant.”
“Perfect! What’s it called?”
“Guadalajara.”
“Okay, so you go to Guadalajara and you want real dessert: what do you get?”
“Flan. It’s like tan rico.”
“Mmm, I bet. That sounds good.”
I was such a creep! I was like our science teacher Mr. Reid, who’d ask Kristina Parsell to remind him how to distinguish pupal from larval stage insects when he obviously had the correct answer tucked in his pleated chinos along with his yam-ish boner. I knew Rocyo’s family owned Guadalajara. We’d gone there on a third grade field trip to the car tower, that spindle of junked jalopies that cameo in Wayne’s World; I’d handed a hostess the slip with my entrée choice (enchiladas con queso y cebollas) and, after la almuerza, I’d eaten the vanilla flan. I remembered the eggy, caramelly burn, remembered putting a finger on the custard’s surface and considering my blurry print. My existence revolted me. Between flan and Anthony’s culo, I was lying about what I knew or what I didn’t know: it was like trying to hop on one foot and carry a glass of Hawaiian Punch across the Atlantic Ocean.
