Madness

by Marya Hornbacher

  Food

  1984

  God has left. My mind is spinning. I'm out of control, unable to contain myself. I am propelled forward, toward something drastic. I'm going to hurl myself into anything that will stop the thoughts. Suddenly I find a focus. It's incredibly intense. I must, I must fill myself to bursting, then rid myself of that fullness. Food. It's all about food.

  My body disgusts me. I stand naked in my bedroom in front of the mirror. I pinch the flesh, the needy, hungry, horrible flesh, the softness that buries the perfect clean bones. I pinch hard; red welts appear on my skin. The body revolts me, its tricks, its betrayals, its lies. I starve and starve, and then it happens—the black hole in my chest yawns open, and suddenly I'm in the kitchen, standing at the counter, stuffing food into my mouth, anything I can find, anything that will fill me up. Food covers my face, my cheeks bulge with it, but I still can't stop, my hands move back and forth from food to mouth. I hate myself for it. I want to be thin, I want to be bones, I want to eliminate hunger, softness, need.

  Every day I come home from fourth grade and try to avoid the kitchen. I sit in my bedroom, clutching the seat of my chair. The empty house echoes its silence around me. I sit, gritting my teeth, and then the hum of compulsion drives me into the kitchen. I eat. Leftovers, frozen dinners, whatever I can stuff in my mouth.

  I lean over the toilet with my fingers down my throat. I throw up, body heaving, until I'm spitting up blood. I straighten up. I am empty. Clean. I run my hands over the flat of my stomach, play the xylophone of my ribs. Satisfied, absolved, I open the door, walk calmly down the hall to the kitchen, and do it again.

  It's my secret and my savior. It's reliable. It saves me from the unpredictable mind, where the thoughts are a cesspool, swirling, eddying with rip tide. When I starve, the sinking, pressing black sadness lifts off me, and I feel weightless, empty, light. No racing thoughts, no need to move, move, move, no reason to hide in the dark. When I throw up, I purge all the fears, the paranoia, the thoughts. The eating disorder gives me comfort. I couldn't let it go if I tried.

  It is what I need so badly, a homemade replacement for what a psychiatrist would prescribe for me if he knew: a mood stabilizer. My eating disorder is the first thing I've found that works. It becomes indispensable as soon as it begins. I am calm in starvation, all my apprehensions focused. No need to control my mind—I control my body, so my moods level out. I live in single-minded pursuit of something very specific: thinness, death. I act with intention, discipline. I am free.

  My parents wonder where all the food is going. I say I'm a growing girl.

  The Booze under the Stove

  1985

  Nothing is going fast enough. At school, the teachers are talking as if their mouths are full of molasses. Their limbs move in slow motion. Pointing to call on someone, the teacher lifts her arm as if it is filled with wet sand. I swear to God I think I am going insane, it is so slow, while my thoughts whistle past like the wind, so fast I can barely keep up. I turn my mind inward to watch them. They move in electric currents, crackling, spitting, sending out red sparks.

  The other students are slow, stupid, asleep. In the hallways, they move like a herd of slugs, wet and shapeless, inching toward the door. I explode out of school, dancing as fast as I can across the playground, whipping in circles around the tetherball pole, dashing off across the yard, trying to shake off this incredible energy, this amazing energy. I'm ten years old and I might as well be on speed.

  My parents are on their way out the door. Eat dinner! they call, but I am too fast for them, their voices recede in the distance as I race through the house, bouncing off the walls. I've been pleading with them to let me stay home by myself, and so they do, heading off to their meetings or dinners or places unknown. Maybe not a great idea to let a ten-year-old stay home alone, but I've twisted their arms, and they're immersed in work and in their own nightmare marriage, avoiding each other, avoiding the fights, thinking up reasons to be gone. They work compulsively, and when they're not working they see friends, putting on the face of the happy couple. Everything's fine. We're the perfect little family. People tell us that all the time.

  And I am home alone with a raw steak on the counter, hopping up and down, my mind jetting about. Time for homework! I reach into my bag and throw my books and papers up in the air, ha ha! Watch this, ladies and gentlemen, the amazing Marya! Look at her go! Can you believe the incredible speed? My homework covers the kitchen floor, and I crawl around picking it up, talking to myself: Hip-hop, my friends, never liked rabbits, must get a tiger, it will sleep in my bed, take it for walks, I need new shoes, fabulous shoes, I will show all of them, hark the herald angels sing! Christmas is smashing! Love it, people, just love it—I hop up, slap my hand to my chest, salute the refrigerator, click my heels, make a sharp turn, and walk stiffly over to the kitchen table, where I whip through the papers, laying them out perfectly in a complex system, the most efficient system, each corner of each page touching the corner, exactly, of the next. Having arranged the papers, I gallop up and down the hallway, slide into the kitchen as if I'm sliding into third, yank open the refrigerator, pull out some mushrooms, chop them up, my knife a blur, toss them into the frying pan, sauté them—but they need a little something. A little zing. I pull open the cupboard beneath the sink, pull out the brandy, splash it in the pan. But now that I think of it, what are all those bottles?

  I turn off the burner, bouncing up and down, and open the cupboard again.

  Booze.

  I pull out a jug of Gallo, stagger underneath its weight. A little wine with dinner, the very thing, don't you think? I pour it into a giant plastic Minnesota Twins cup and collapse with my mushrooms and tankard of wine at the dining room table.

  I get absolutely shitfaced. I am shitfaced and hyper and ten years old. I am having the time of my life.

  I lope up and down the hallway, singing Simon and Garfunkel songs, juggling oranges. I do my homework in a flurry of brilliance, total efficiency, the electric grid of my mind snapping and flashing with light. I am in the zone, the perfect balance between manic and drunk, I am mellow, I'm cool, cool as cats. I've found the answer, the thing that takes the edge off, smoothes out the madness, sends me sailing, lifts me up and lets me fly.

  It's alchemy, the booze and my brain, another homemade mood stabilizer, and it stabilizes me in a heavenly mood. I am in love with the world, gregarious, full of joy and generosity toward my fellow man. My thoughts fly, but not up and down—they soar forward in a thrilling flight of ideas, heightened sensations, a creative rush, each thought tumbling into the next. It's even more perfect than eating and throwing up.

  My future with alcohol is long and disastrous. But at first, it works wonders for me. No longer low, not yet too high. Just on a roll, energetic, inspired. I truly believe the booze is helping. I'll believe this, despite all evidence, for years.

  Eventually I stagger into bed and, for once, fall asleep.

  Meltdown

  1988

  My moods start to swing up and down almost minute to minute. I take uppers to get even higher and downers to bring myself down. Cocaine, white crosses, Valium, Percocet—I get them from the boys who skulk around the suburban malls hunting jailbait. I'm an easy target, in the market for their drugs and willing to do what they want to get them for free. The boys themselves are a high. They have something I want. They are to be used and discarded. The trick is to catch them and make them want the girl I am pretending to be. Then twist them up with wanting me, watch them squirm like worms on a hook, and throw them away.

  I find myself on piles of pillows in their basements, pressed down under their bodies, their lurching breath in my ear. They are heavy, damp, hurried, young, still mostly dressed. I don't know how I've wound up here, and I want it to end, and I repeat to the rhythm of their bodies, You're a slut, you're a whore, and I want a bath, want to scrub them off, why does this keep happening? Why don't I ever say no? There's a rush when they want me, and th
ey always do, they're boys, that's what they want, and once they've got me half lying on the couch, each basement, each boy, each time, my brain shuts off, the rush is over, I'm numb, I want to go home. The impulsive tumble into the corner, the racing pressure in my head always ends like this: I hate them, and I hate myself, and I swear I won't do it again. But I do. And I do. And I do.

  And then I am home in my bedroom, blue-flowered wallpaper and stuffed animals on the bed, stashing my baggies of powders and pills. If I hit the perfect balance of drugs, I can trigger the energy that keeps me up all night writing and lets me stay marginally afloat in junior high, accentuating the persona I've created as a wild child, a melodramatic rebel—black eyeliner and dyed black hair, torn clothes, a clown and a delinquent, sulking, talking back. In class, I fool everyone into thinking I'm real.

  But then I come home after school to the empty, hollow house, wrap into a ball in the corner of the couch, a horrible, clutching, sinking feeling in my chest. Nothing matters, and nothing will ever be all right again. I go into rages at the slightest thing, pitching things around the house, running away in the middle of the night, my feet crunching across the frozen lake. I cling to the cold chainlink fence of the bridge across the freeway and watch the late-night cars flash by, my breath billowing out into the dark in white gusts.

  Day yawns open like a cavern in my chest. I lie in the dimness of my room, the blinds shut tight and blankets draped over them. I weigh a million pounds. I can feel my body, its heavy bones, its excess flesh, pressing into the mattress. I'm certain that it sags beneath me, nearly touching the floor. My father bangs on the door again. Breakfast! he calls.

  I crawl out of bed and slide out the drawer from the bed stand, turn it over, and untape the baggie of cocaine underneath. Kneeling, I tap lines out onto the stand, lean over, and snort them up with the piece of straw I keep in the bag. I sit back on my knees and close my eyes. There it is: the feeling of glass shards in the brain. I picture the drug shattering, slicing the gray matter into neat chunks. My heart leaps to life as if I've been shocked. I open my eyes, lick my fingers and the straw, and put the baggie away, replacing the drawer. I lift off, the roller coaster swinging up, clattering on its tracks, me flying upside down.

  Humming, I take a shower and dance into my clothes—a ridiculously short skirt with a hole that exposes even more thigh, black tights, a ripped-up shirt. I pack up my book bag, pull out another baggie, pills this time, from the far corner of the desk drawer. I select a few and put them in my pockets, then spring into the day, a gorgeous day, a good day to be alive. Good morning! I call, sitting down at the table, bouncing my knee at the speed of light.

  You're in a good mood this morning.

  I am! I am indeed. I watch my father scramble eggs, and then panic: what am I thinking? I can't eat that. I leap to my feet. Gotta go! Can't stay to eat! I punch my father on the arm as I run out the door.

  But you need to eat! he calls after me. Get back here! You can't leave dressed like that!

  Bye, I call, setting off down the street, my book bag banging against my leg. The trees are in bloom. The sun is pulsing. I can feel it touching my skin. My skin is alive, crawling. Suddenly I stop. My skin is on fire. I drop my book bag, start rubbing my skin. Get it off! I am dancing around in the middle of the road. There are bugs on my arms, crawling up my neck, crawling on my face and into my hair, Get them off me! Where the hell are they coming from? I fall onto the grass at the side of the road, rolling, trying to get them off. My hair tangles and dirt grinds into my clothes. Finally the bugs are gone. I stand up, smooth my hair, and, much better now, skip down the road to school. It's so annoying when that happens. But I'm not about to give up the cocaine.

  No one knows about the powders, the pills, the water bottle filled with vodka that I keep in my bag. My friends are good girls. I am a tramp. I don't know why they bother with me. I slouch in my seat in the back of the room, my arms folded, hiding behind my hair. The teachers are idiots. I hate their clothes, their thick, whining Minnesota accents, the small-town smell that clings to them: dust and tuna casserole. This whole town is a bunch of suburban clones, blond, blue-eyed, dressed in tidy matching clothes. Everyone looks the same. Everyone will wind up married, living in a mini-mansion with a sprawling, manicured lawn. There'll be cute little identical children, and the men will golf and drink and slap each other on the back, old chum, and the women will lunch at the country club and listen to lectures about the deserving poor, the homeless children downtown. They'll shake their heads with concern and volunteer for the PTA and at the Lutheran church, collect bad art and vote Republican, and hate people like me.

  I have to get out of this town.

  After lunch, I lean over the toilet in the bathroom stall and throw up. I wipe my mouth, scrub my hands, sniffing them to make sure they don't smell, wash them again, wipe them dry, look in the mirror, reapply my lipstick, study my face. I brighten my eyes, paste on a smile, and go back out, where the kids teem down the hall.

  These are supposed to be the best years of my life.

  I fail home economics. I refuse to sew the stuffed flamingo. I question the necessity of learning to make a Jell-O parfait. I blow up an oven—I forget to put the nutmeg in a baked pancake, and when it's already in the oven, I toss in a handful as an afterthought, setting the entire thing on fire.

  I persecute the art teacher. I sit in detention until dark, day after day. When I'm not in detention, I'm running around the newspaper room, putting together what I'm sure is an incendiary tract that's designed to infuriate everyone who reads it. I am ducking under my desk every half-hour, sucking up the vodka in the water bottle. I am in the library, snorting cocaine off Dante, back in the stacks.

  I gallop down the hall at school in a state of absolute glee, dodging in and out between the other kids, shouting, "Hi!" to the people I know as I pass. They laugh. I am hilarious! "You're crazy!" they call. I am crazy! I'm marvelous! I'm fantastic! The day is fantastic, the world!

  "Slow down!" a teacher shouts after me. "No running in the halls!"

  I turn and gallop back to him. "Not running!" I shout joyfully. "Galloping, as you can plainly see!" I gallop off.

  At the end of the hall, I crash into the wall and bounce back into the circle of my friends who are clustered around my locker. "Isn't it wonderful?" I cry, flinging my arms wide, picking them up in the air.

  "Now what?" Sarah laughs.

  "Everything! Absolutely everything! You, today, all of it, wonderful! Amazing! Isn't it grand to be alive?"

  "Weren't you, like, all freaky and twitchy this morning?" asks Sandra. I pound down the stairs, my legs are faster than speed itself! Tremendous! Spectacular speed, splendid speed, splendiferous speed! I reach the bottom of the stairs and go skidding across the hall. My friends are laughing. I make them happy. I make them forget their horrible homes. I love them, I love them hugely, they are absolutely essential, I would absolutely die without them.

  "No!" I shout, "I wasn't freaky! Well, if I was, I'm certainly not anymore, obviously!" I skip backward ahead of them as we go to lunch. I grab an ice cream sandwich and a greasy mini-pizza. I will be throwing these things up after lunch, obviously, wonderful! I laugh with delight, pleased with myself. "Aha!" I shout, and the people in the line ahead of me crane their necks to look. "Hello, all of you!" I shout, waving, "it's a beautiful day!" Someone mutters, "She's crazy," and I don't even care, everyone's entitled to his opinion! That's the way of the world! We are a world of many opinions, many beliefs! To each his own!

  My friends and I move in an amoeba-like cluster over to an open table near the windows and sit down. We munch away on our lunches, chatting, and I chatter like a ventriloquist's dummy, and all of us laugh, and then I start crying, but right myself quickly. "Enough of that!" I say, wiping my nose, making a grand gesture, "all's well!" And everyone is relieved, and I have a brilliant idea! I pick up my personal pizza and whip it across the room like a Frisbee! And it lands perfectly in front of Leah P
ederson, whom I hate! "Yes!" I shout, triumphant, and the entire lunchroom is laughing, and it's time to go back to class. I gather my books and my friends and walk calmly down the hall and fling myself into my chair with an enormous sigh.

  This time I will be good, I promise myself. This time I won't make a scene. My heart pounds and I feel another round of hysterical laughter welling up in my chest. I press my face between my hands. I will hold it in. I won't get detention. I won't get kicked out of class. I won't punch Jeff Carver. I won't turn over any desks, or throw any chairs. I sit up in my chair, open my notebook, click my pen. I stare straight ahead at the teacher who is shuffling papers and handing them out. I will be good. I will, I will, I will.

  I sit in the office of my mother's shrink. The air circulates slowly in the room. I turn in circles in my swivel chair. To my right, through the window, two floors down, is the parking lot and the sunny, empty afternoon. A small man with square black glasses and gray hair sits kicked back in his leather office chair, watching me.

  "What would you like to talk about today?" he asks.

  I keep turning in circles. I shrug. "What do you want me to say?"

  "What would you like to say?"

  I look out the window, count the red cars in the parking lot, then the blue. "I don't have anything to say."

  We sit in silence. The minutes tick by.

  "What are you thinking right now?" he asks.

  "Nothing particular." I turn to face him. He scribbles something on his yellow notepad.

  "What are you writing?" I ask.

  He gazes at me. "What do you think I'm writing?" he asks.