by Kit Reed
But she wouldn’t be around to see!
She wouldn’t be around to look into a mirror and feel good about herself, and Annie has dedicated her life to the job of getting thin enough to back off and feel good about herself.
It would help if she could talk to Kelly, but she doesn’t know where Kelly is. Big as she is, Kelly tried to run. Her fat friend was sobbing so bitterly when they brought her down that Annie barely heard Sister Darva berating her, and she didn’t feel Dedicated Eulalia’s fingernails cutting into her wrist; she didn’t know until they stripped her and she saw the marks. The sound Kelly made—warm, solid flesh smacking cement—was terrible. When they took her down, poor Kelly just sobbed and sobbed. It’s my fault, Annie thought as they rolled Kelly onto the pallet and the forklift took her away. I should have known she was too fat to run. She feels guilty even now.
Poor Kelly is trapped and hurting out there in the Wellmont building, that she knows, but where? Like, is she staked in the middle of the Dedicateds’ dining room, drooling while the Sisters scarf up macaroni dinners and Nesselrode pies? What if they threw her in the hole or something, and left her to starve to death? What if she got desperate and started gnawing on her own arm? She could be anywhere, lashed to a pallet in the next room with nothing but a dextrose IV to keep her alive or she could be stuck in a cauldron, simmering with herbs and potatoes so they can serve her up at the next meal. For all Annie knows, those are little slices of Kelly under the hollandaise on the mess trays grinning Dedicated Sister Eulalia brings. The suspicion keeps Annie from toppling when the delirious aroma of filet mignon and melted chocolate fills her cell. Awful to think about but in a way she’s glad it’s on her mind, because in the arena of complete control, perfection is being able to turn your back on everything you want. When her mouth waters and her will falters she tells herself, That could be Kelly lying there.
YOU CANT TEMPT ME
God, if it isn’t Kelly there on the platter, where is Kelly, anyway? She asks Dedicated Eulalia about her every time she comes in with another beautiful, disgusting meal, but Eulalia isn’t speaking to her.
It’s not that Annie doesn’t try. “Looks good,” she says sometimes. Or, “It must be a drag, working with the prisoners. By the way, am I the only prisoner?”
The gaunt, grinning Dedicated never answers. Sometimes she stares coldly. Other times she busies herself with the Windex, scrubbing down the steel toilet seat.
Sometimes Annie leads with a question. “It must be hard, staying dedicated. What are you dedicated to, anyway?”
Eulalia won’t answer. She never does.
Once she tried, “Like, is this a religion with you, or what?”
Eulalia raked her with the blank look of the intentionally deaf.
Eulalia isn’t talking. It’s part of the deal. Nobody talks to her until she cleans her plate and licks the tray. Eulalia isn’t speaking to her and Kelly’s gone and she is so lonely that she could die of it and the hell of it is, if she did die, they still wouldn’t talk to her. She knows there are other Dedicated Sisters working this corridor, she can hear their sandals flopping down the halls, but she never gets to see them and they don’t talk, at least not in the halls. There’s no conversation here and there are no overheard conversations to feed on, and visitors? She can forget about visitors. There will be no visitors here. This is not the kind of place where families come. This is what Solitary really means. On the ANO floor, the electronic barrier kept her in the room but at least she could stand in the doorway and look out, sometimes a great, ungainly Ded would come by shepherding a girl patient and they would exchange waves; sometimes they lingered and talked to her. Her first day the dietitian came and every time she yanked the IV the IV Dedicated came and once the doctor and another time the Dedicated Counselor, a homely tank of a woman who asked her if there was anything in particular that she wanted to talk about, like was there anything she was scared or ashamed of that was bothering her. There were comings and goings, but in this new room with no windows, she is worse than alone. Except for Dedicated Eulalia, who is in charge of her care and ostensible feeding, nobody comes into Annie Abercrombie’s cubicle and except for Eulalia, nobody goes.
In fact, Eulalia has made it clear that nobody’s talking to Annie Abercrombie ever again, until or unless she eats, which had better be soon, or else.
This is the sinister part of the equation. The or else. Never mind, Annie lives by a creed and if she has to, she’ll die by her creed. Gorge in hopes you’ll relent and talk to me? Forget it. I’ll just go ahead and die of loneliness, OK?
YOU CAN’T TRICK ME.
It would be just like the bitches. Wait until a kid is starved for conversation. Open your mouth and, ooops, they shovel in disgusting food.
So, fine. Like, nobody will speak to her until she gulps it down and goes yumyum? Well they can go to hell.
YOU WONT CHANGE ME
But they have their ways.
If life here is a series of transactions, a back-to-back successions of either-ors, she’s run her last mile and hit the wall. The last warning. If she doesn’t eat, they will take measures. She’s known, for God’s sake, ever since Darva first warned her. Either you eat and we let you go out and have fun with the other girls here or you stay in your room until you do. Either you eat and gain weight or …
She is coming down to it now. The line. She’s run out of eithers and she is like a diver, making the last step on a springboard. The next step is going to be into the unspeakable or.
“Shit,” she thinks, looking down at her bare arms, where the tape marks are almost gone. When she and Kelly ran away she ripped off the tape that secured the tube and tore the IV needle out of her hand. Feeling a hundred pounds lighter, she left the IV tree behind. On the back of her hand, the bruise is fading and the hole the needle made has almost healed. “What was I thinking?”
They really have given up on her. In the hours—days?—since they caught her, nobody has bothered to come in and resink the IV.
What’s more, Dedicated Eulalia; the warden in charge of feeding hard-core prisoners, is done feeding her. She comes in without speaking, dumps the tray and leaves. At the end of an hour she comes back, looks at Annie’s untouched tray and turns away without so much as a sigh or an it’s-your-funeral shrug. Without lifting an eyebrow, she makes a tick on her chart marking yet another uneaten meal which for Darva, at least, used to figure as a huge defeat and the occasion for many tears and much pleading. For that Dedicated Sister—in—training, each uneaten bite on Annie’s tray was her little disaster for the day. This one ticks the chart, picks up the metal mess tray and goes. Like she cares what Annie eats. Like she gives a fuck what Annie does.
Darva was no earth mother, but whether it was kindness or a career move, the entry-level Dedicated with the big, square feet and the stupid smile seemed to care what happened to her anorectic charge. She came on to Annie like she had a personal stake in every ounce she ate, whereas Eulalia and whatever Dedicated monster squats at the monitor’s station at the end of the hall? They could care less. Eulalia never sneaks up on her, trying to catch Annie hiding food or yacking into the steel toilet. She takes a long time rattling the latch for advance warning and then barges in with her battery of lavish dishes on the mess tray. And the table knives? They aren’t even plastic. Although they took away her bracelet and shit so she wouldn’t cut herself, Eulalia could care less if Annie cuts her name in her belly with a table knife. They could care less what happens to Annie Abercrombie now.
Without the IV, the first thing the Deds lost interest in, she does sneak-drink a little juice and after she works out, she tanks up on water to keep herself fit. When she lies on her back now, her stomach seems that half inch flatter and her arms are thinner, she’s pretty sure. A few more days like this and she’ll be back where she was before they grabbed her, she thinks, and better than ever. She could even be heading south toward her optimum goal, the double-digit weight, low eighties and she will be b
eautiful. Standing, she rubs her palms down her body, feeling purified. A little dizzy, maybe, but purified. If she does this right, maybe her soul will fly up and she won’t have to mess with the lust—FOOD IS EVIL—any more. There is a buzzing in her ears; like the wingbeats of massed forces approaching.
Unless it’s that mysterious rumble—whatever that is, rolling by out there in the hall. She hears it often, coming closer, getting huge as it approaches her door and getting smaller as it rolls away.
So, what’s going on with her, really? Is she fainting? Having a vision? She can’t tell. All she knows is that some portions of her feel as if they are floating. Brilliant. Annie Abercrombie, en route to escape from her own body. Annie purified, on the verge of entering the zone.
Then Eulalia comes in the door and Annie drops to earth. This planet. This place. This cot in this cell. “Hello, Sister Eulalia.” Eulalia comes at her with the tray and she considers. Digs in her heels.
YOU DON’T CHANGE ME
Next comes the event that Darva tried to warn her about. Life in this place spells itself out in a series of transactions: either you do this or we will make you suffer. IV needles. Forced feeding. This cell. Either you knuckle and eat or … So far in spite of her mishaps, she’s avoided the ultimate or.
So far.
It falls into place with an audible click.
What comes next.
She hears it coming in the dread Eulalia’s contemptuous sniff as she sets down the tray. The food is fresh, it’s been days since she’s eaten. Maybe she should nibble a bite for Eulalia’s sake. Eat a little something for show.
Fuck, I’d better make an effort. She picks up the fork.
Eulalia turns to leave.
“Aren’t you going to watch me eat?”
Eulalia beetles her brows with such skill that they actually look like beetles crawling across her forehead nose to tail to nose to tail to nose to tail all the way to the perfunctory wimple that holds back the veil. ,
“Belgian waffles. Yum yum.” She spears the wedge she has just cut.
The insect trail across Eulalia’s forehead doesn’t change. It is a dead, flat line of disapproving brow.
“My favorite.” The hell of it is, before she stopped eating anything that gives pleasure, Belgian waffles were Annie’s favorite food. If she starts eating now, she may not be able to stop; she could lose everything she’s worked for in one dizzyingly wonderful orgy. It’s a risk, but she has to do something to get this woman off her case. Holding the fork, she studies Eulalia. “Really. I can’t wait.” Of course, she is waiting. One flicker of interest and she’ll put it in the mouth.
Eulalia shrugs and turns.
Bait her, Annie thinks desperately. Try baiting her. “So. Are all the other Deds as ugly as you?”
It is a rhetorical question designed to shake some words out of her dour keeper, but Eulalia doesn’t tumble. She barely changes her stance. Her eyes flick across the laden tray and back to Annie’s face. She tightens her mouth another notch.
“I mean, you’re all so dedicated, you know? How. Ah, how did you get into this?”
Annie has thought about this since she got here, what makes a bunch of ugly women give their lives to torturing a bunch of kids? She thinks she knows, but she doesn’t really know. Making thin girls fat and fat girls thin may be something these homely, unlovable creeps get off on. You may think Annie is lovely, but Annie thinks she’s fat and hideous, so she has no idea that women who look like Eulalia can get jealous of people like her. She doesn’t guess that in spite of all the Deds’ high-blown prose about building the perfect mind-set to enable the perfect body, the Dedicated Sisters are dedicated to bringing down all the pretty girls.
“Like, do you hate us or what?”
There is another one of those dreadful, empty pauses.
“You’re not gonna tell me, are you?”
In a petty move straight off some grade-school playground, ugly Eulalia zips her lip and turns and goes.
When the surly Ded comes back she takes no note of the fact that Annie has actually messed with the food on the tray. She could care less that her charge has forced herself to take a bite—strawberries and syrup, butter, whipped cream, delirious!—and managed to stop at one. If footsteps can sound joyful, Eulalia’s do. She picks up the tray and bounds down the hall on a joyful note. As an afterthought, she doubles back to close the door.
Chilled, Annie goes rigid. They have just turned a corner here.
Either, remember, is the term of engagement here. Either you do as we tell you, or.
Now they are here. At the or.
From the far end of the hall, she can hear Eulalia whistling.
The next sound she hears will be the trundle of a gurney being pushed by the monster hall monitor, complete with restraints in case she panics and a chloroform cone in case she hurts herself trying to get away. No high-tech measures down in the dungeons here. In another minute the Deds will come into her cell with the gurney and roll her out of solitary and directly into the terrible or.
Crouched in the cranny between the steel toilet and the wall, Annie skims the room for possibilities, any exits she might have missed, but the only opening in this room is the door through which Eulalia and the gurney will certainly come.
I NEVER GIVE UP.
She knows from early conversations with Dedicated Darva what comes next. If she can’t find some way out of here, they will, as Darva warned her, Take Measures. Once they strap her to the gurney they will roll her into some back room and she has to wonder—will they bother with anesthesia before they put in the stomach tube?
22
Dave and the Abercrombie twins are in the one patch of shade available in the parched desert landscape south of Monument Valley. They are sitting under a tree. The tree is planted in a tub. The ornamental planter marks the entrance to the Crossed Triceps, a high-end body shop where buff converts and flabby penitents come to ward off sin. They are here on a tip from the Carmelite nuns at Mexican Hat. This is the last stop on the underground railroad Brother Theophane put them on in Snowmass, Colorado—how long ago? After days on the road, they are too played out to know.
It’s the last thing they expected to find.
“I wonder if that nun steered us right,” Danny says. “This sure as hell doesn’t look like a monastery.”
Dave says, “Or an ashram.”
Betz finishes, “Or a church.”
Dave squints up at the peaked roof, the twirling sign with the logo glittering in the white sun. “It doesn’t, but it does.”
Odd how they started out looking for poor Annie in that Gothic heap in Kentucky and came through the Rockies and followed canyons and gorges and crossed Monument Valley only to find a high-end fitness center, but here they are. Odd too that there are body shops like the Crossed Triceps in the territory at all.
Until you stop and think. Face it, they’re everywhere. Where winding roads used to connect uncolonized stretches of red sand and sandstone crags and buttes, the landscape has been tamed and strictly organized. There are spas and gyms even on the reservations now, and health aids and spandex workout suits and terry-cloth headbands for sale at every trading post, some beaded and some stamped with Navajo devices in case you forget this was the Wild West. Where this part of the country used to be the location for every Hollywood Western ever made, it’s been flattened and blasted and cemented over to make room for nationally franchised shrines to feeding and fitness, the twin engines that make this great country roll.
In olden times, tourists drove to these parts to scope the red sandstone formations and visit pueblos and worship at corn dances or in mission churches like the one at Acoma, but everything is different.
The cathedral is the body now.
“So,” Danny says. “What?”
“I don’t know. Dave?”
He grimaces.
It took them a long time to reach this place, and now? They don’t know.
The body shop is
an oversized adobe hangar surrounded by lavish plantings and marked by a red flag: crossed gold triceps over the logo they’ve learned to recognize, which is giving Betz the creeps. Above the building, a rotating tetrahedron glints in blinding sunlight because it took them longer than they expected to get from the dismal motel in the hills outside Mexican Hat to here. The doors to the Crossed Triceps swing open and shut with frightening regularity, releasing bursts of frigid air as suppliants go in and, rosy with the glow of atonement, the sanctimonious buff, the holy fit come out.
Sitting on the rim of the stone planter, Betz and the others squint into the fine spray of the 24/7 sprinkling systems and wait. Now what? This is the question that has them stalled outside the fitness center, watching the worshipers come and go. She doesn’t know.
“So,” Danny says crossly, “are we waiting to go in or are we waiting for somebody to come out?”
Dave—her Dave!—says, “Good question. The nun didn’t say.”
“The nun didn’t say a whole lot. What do you think Theophane would do?”
“Chill, Danny. He said we’d know what to do when we got here.”
“Yeah, right.”
Betz adds, “He said you have to think of your life as a series of next steps.”
Dave’s grin is a nice surprise. “He did!”
“That’s OK for you,” Danny says, “but I’m fucking starved.”
Betz touches her brother’s arm; he grimaces and the twins exchange funny faces—his Halloween special, her ghoulish leer. She says, “It won’t be long. I don’t know what we’re doing here, but I don’t think it will be long.”
In fact, they are here on faith. Brother Theophane kept guard on the hillside above the Deds’ monolith in Snowmass while the three of them slept. When Betz and the boys woke they talked quietly about where they’d been and what they were trying to do. Nodding, the old monk laid out possible stops on what turns out to be an underground railroad: they could start at the hidden Orthodox shtetl, he said, or with the Muslims or the Carmelites, any one of the religious communities who have taken refuge in canyons and along the rivers, although, he said, the Buddhists are harder to find. There are plenty of fugitives in these parts, he said, they can be found in foothills and arroyos and perched on the sides of gorges throughout Colorado, where there are hundreds of places for people who set stock in a life after this one to thrive unnoticed, even now.
