Shout Her Lovely Name

by Natalie Serber

  For some reason, driving suddenly frightens you. When you must change lanes, your heart thunks like a dropped pair of boots, your hands clutch the steering wheel. You shrink down in your seat, prepared for a sixteen-wheeler to ram into you. You can hear it and see it coming at you in your rearview mirror. Nearly close your eyes but don’t; instead, pull over. Every time you get into your car, remind yourself to focus, to drive while you’re driving, to breathe. Fine, fine, fine, you will be fine, chant this as you start your engine. Be amazed and frightened by the false stability you’ve been living with your entire life. If this can happen to you, anything can happen to anyone.

  When your husband leaves town for business, worry about being alone with your daughter. Try not to upset her. When she tells you she got a 104 percent on her French test, smile. When she tells you she is getting an A+ in algebra, say, Wow! Don’t let her know that you think super-achievement is part of her disease. Don’t let on that you wish she would eat mousse au chocolat, read Simone de Beauvoir’s Le deuxième sexe, and earn a D in French. Begin to think that maybe you are always looking for trouble, Munchausen by proxy. Be happy when she has a ramekin of dry cereal before bed.

  © Stephen Vanhorn | Dreamstime.com

  Hug her before you remember she won’t let you, and don’t answer when she says, “Bitch, get off me.”

  In the middle of the night wake her and tell her that you’ve had a bad dream. Ask her to come and sleep in your bed. When she does, hug her. Comfort her. Comfort yourself. Remember how she smelled as a toddler, like sweat and graham crackers. Remember how manageable her tantrums used to be. Whisper over and over in her perfect ear that you miss her. That you love her. That she will get better. Know that she needs to hear your words, believe that somewhere inside she feels this moment. In the morning, look away while she stands purple-lipped before the toaster.

  When your husband dedicates every Saturday afternoon to your daughter, taking her to lunch, shoe shopping, a movie, use the time to take care of you. Kiss them both goodbye and say with a forced lilt, “Wish I could come too.” Quickly shut the front door. Try not to register their expressions, the doomed shake of your husband’s head, your daughter’s eyes flat as empty skillets.

  “Take some me time,” your childless friend urges. “Get a facial . . . a massage . . . a pedicure. Take a nap, you’re exhausted. Read O magazine.” The magazine counsels:

  What to Do When Life Seems Unfair

  Do you ask, “Why me?”

  Or do you look at what your life is trying to tell you?

  How you choose to respond to the difficult

  things that happen to you

  can mean the difference between a life of anger

  . . . or joy.

  Instead, take a long bath. Light aromatherapy candles and incense. Pour in soothing-retreat bath oil. Even though it is only eleven o’clock in the morning, mix a pitcher of Manhattans.

  Play world music and pretend you are somewhere else. Except of course you aren’t. You know you aren’t somewhere else because as you were filling the tub you noticed raggedy bits of food in the drain.

  Wouldn’t she vomit in the toilet? Your daughter must be terrified for herself to leave behind these Technicolor clues. Get in tub. Continue adding hot water. Drain the water heater. Notice as the water level climbs, covering first your knees, then your thighs, and then your chest, that your stomach is nearly the last thing to go under. Weeks of role-model eating have changed your body. Try to love your new abundance.

  When your husband and daughter return, you are still in the tub. She slams her bedroom door. Your husband comes in and slumps on the toilet, his head in his hands.

  Quietly listen.

  “She pretended not to know where the shoe store was. We walked for forty-five minutes. Really, it was more of a forced march.”

  Say nothing, though you feel more than a dash of bitters; you feel angry and tired of being angry. Stare at your wrinkled toes. You are each alone: your daughter in her room, your husband on the toilet, you in the tub. You’re each in your private little suffering-bubble.

  “Exercise is verboten,” you say. The doctor has given you both this directive.

  “I know.” When his voice breaks and his hands shudder, get out of the lukewarm tub. Climb into his lap, and put your arms around him. Cling together.

  November

  Hooray! Your daughter has added whole-wheat pasta to her approved-food list. At the doctor’s office, her blood pressure is amazing! She’s gained five pounds! You people are all smiling. This time in the elevator, your daughter stands right beside you. For days you are happy.

  Until you find her in the kitchen blotting oil out of the fish fajitas. When you confront her, tell her that is anorexic behavior, she throws the spatula across the room.

  Persons with anorexia nervosa develop strange eating habits such as cutting their food into tiny pieces, refusing to eat in front of others, or fixing elaborate meals for others that they themselves don’t eat. Food and weight become obsessions as people with this disorder constantly think about their next encounter with food.

  Your daughter claims oil gives her indigestion, the food in the drain is because of acid reflux, you are the one obsessed, you are the one who is sick, she is fine.

  You say, “Bullshit.”

  “Shh,” your husband says. “Can we please have peace?” Like a middle-school principal, he calls you into his home office to tell you that she doesn’t need to be told every single moment that something isn’t right. “Stop reminding her,” he says. “Leave her alone. It’s hard enough for her without having to faceherproblemeverysingleminute.”

  He can’t even say the word anorexic.

  Properly censured, return to the kitchen. Your daughter eyes you with smug satisfaction and eats barely one half of a whole-wheat tortilla—no cheese, no avocado—with her fish. A vise of resentment tightens around you. Anorexia has rearranged your family.

  di·vorce [di-vawrs, -vohrs]—noun, verb -vorced, -vorc·ing

  noun

  1. a judicial declaration dissolving a marriage in whole or in part, especially one that releases the husband and wife from all matrimonial obligations.

  2. any formal separation of man and wife according to established custom.

  3. total separation; disunion: a divorce between thought and action.

  verb (used with object)

  4. to separate by divorce: The judge divorced the couple.

  5. to break the marriage contract between oneself and (one’s spouse) by divorce: She divorced her husband.

  6. to separate, cut off: Life and art cannot be divorced.

  Fantasize about how you will decorate your living room when you live alone, when you disjoin, dissociate, divide, disconnect. Imagine your new white bookcases lined with self-help books:

  Wishing Well

  The Best Year of Your Life

  The Power of Now

  When Am I Going to Be Happy?

  Flourish

  A Course in Miracles

  Get Out of Your Own Way

  The Upward Spiral

  Forgive to Win!

  Super Immunity

  The Essential Laws of Fearless Living

  Feel Welcome Now

  100 Simple Secrets Why Dogs Make Us Happy

  You’re filled with a thrilling flutter of shame. When did this become about you?

  Snoop. Look through your daughter’s laundry basket for vomity towels. Stand outside the bathroom door and listen. Look in the trash for uneaten food. Though you want to call her school to see if she is eating the lunch she packs with extreme care every day (nonfat Greek yogurt, dry-roasted almonds, one apricot), don’t. When you find her journal, don’t read it. Her therapist has told her she should record her feelings, her fears. You are desperate to know what it says. The journal screams and whispers your name all day long. Later, when you are folding laundry and can no longer resist, go back upstairs to her room and find that she hasn’t written
a single thing. Despair.

  Visiting your parents at Thanksgiving, you realize that the difference between your father’s overdrinking and your daughter’s undereating is slim. Deny, deny, deny. The rest of the family is acutely aware, and between watching alcohol consumed and food left on the plate, your gaze ping-pongs between your daughter and your father. Both start out charming enough. Your daughter sets a beautiful table: plump little pumpkins carved out, their tummies filled with mums and roses, thyme and lavender, slender white tapers rising up from the center and flickering light over the groaning table. But as the afternoon progresses and Grandpa’s wineglass is filled and emptied again, the turkey carcass is removed and pies emerge, your daughter’s mood fades to black.

  “Junk in the trunk,” Grandpa slurs, patting your abundant rear as he walks behind you. “Next year, we should all fast.” You want to kill him.

  Your starving daughter pushes away her plate, her face pinched, disappointed, angry. You can see her mantra scroll across her eyes like the CNN news crawl: loser . . . failure . . . pathetic . . . chubby . . . What she calls herself is neither worse nor better than what she calls you. It’s a revelation, and you repeat your Cs: calm, consistent, compassion, communication, calamitous, collapse, cursed, condemned.

  At the hotel, your daughter insists on taking a long walk, stretching her stomach, she calls it. You and your husband say no. She throws a tantrum and you are all trapped in the hotel room, staring at a feel-good family movie involving a twelve-step program, cups of hot coffee, and redemption.

  God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change,

  courage to change the things we can,

  and wisdom to know the difference.

  By the next doctor visit she’s lost six pounds and she cries and cries. Your body goes cold. You feel like a fool, slumped on the pediatrician’s toddler bench, staring at the wallpaper: Mother Goose and her fluffy outstretched wings hovers above you with bemused tolerance and extreme capability. An infant cries in the next room and you yearn for the days of uncomplicated care and comfort.

  “I am so angry.” Your voice is not angry, it is depleted. You are not as competent as Mother Goose, you are the woman trapped in a shoe with only one child and still you don’t know what to do.

  Your daughter agrees to go on antidepressants, to help her adjust to her changing body, the doctor says. When you leave the office you drive straight to the pharmacy and then to a bakery and watch her consume a Prozac and a chocolate chip cookie. Her eyes, her giant, chocolate-pudding eyes, drip tears into her hot milk; her hand shakes.

  Antidepressants increased the risk compared to placebo of suicidal thinking and behavior (suicidality) in children, adolescents, and young adults in short-term studies of major depressive disorder (MDD) and other psychiatric disorders. Anyone considering the use of [Insert established name] or any other antidepressant in a child, adolescent, or young adult must balance this risk with the clinical need.

  “It’s not my fault,” she sobs.

  “Oh, Lovely.” You shake your head, review the many theories that Google dredged up: genetic predisposition, a virus, lack of self-concept, struggle for control, posttraumatic stress disorder.

  “I didn’t want this,” she says.

  “Of course you didn’t.”

  “The voice scares me.”

  “Voice?”

  “My eating disorder. Tells me I suck and it never shuts up, only if I restrict.”

  Pay attention. This is language that you haven’t heard before. Watch. Listen. Mood swings. Suicidal ideation. Changes in behavior. Be terrified about everything. Ask with nonchalance, “This voice, is it yours?”

  She turns away from you. Her skin is the transparent blue of skim milk.

  Later, when you are alone, call your husband on his cell phone. He is standing in line, waiting to board a plane. Don’t care. Scream into the phone. Imagine your tinny, bitchy voice leaking around his ear while men holding lattes, women with Coach briefcases, students, and grandmas try not to look at his worn face.

  “Say it out loud.”

  “She has an eating disorder,” he mumbles.

  “Not fucking enough,” you shriek, your hands shaking. Until he says it loud, admits it fully to himself, you will not be satisfied. You may have gone crazy.

  “My daughter is anorexic. There.”

  You let it lie.

  “Are you happy now?” he whispers.

  Oddly enough, you are momentarily happier.

  March

  She’s back. Your daughter dances into the kitchen, holding a piece of cinnamon toast. She wants milk, 2 percent. She also wants a cookie and pasta, a banana, a puppy, and a trip to Italy.

  “I want some of those,” your husband whispers, nodding to the prescription bottle on the windowsill.

  You want this to continue. She may not be eating Brie and baguettes, but she’s laughing. Her collarbones are less prominent. She’s. Given. Up. Gum.

  “The voice is leaving, Mom,” she confides. “It polluted everything.” She smiles, hopeful and charming, so wanting to please. Even though it may not completely be true about the voice, she wants it to be and for now desire has to be enough. That she talks about the voice without anger or tears takes a grocery cart of courage.

  “Quit worrying and watching me so much,” she says.

  You nod and smile. You will never quit worrying and watching.

  Weak spring sunlight fills your kitchen. Your daughter, with a hand on her hip, stands before the open refrigerator, singing. You still are not certain keeping her home and in school is the right choice. A clinic may be inevitable. You’ve followed advice, you have your team, yet letting go of watching and worrying would require a grocery cart full of courage that you do not have. Just yesterday you checked her Web history and found she’d visited caloriesperhour.com.

  “I’m hungry,” your daughter says.

  You haven’t heard those words from her for nearly a year. Grab on to them, this is a moment of potential. Look for more. Remember them. String them together. Write Post-it notes for the inside of your medicine cabinet. Almonds! I hear me! Two percent milk! I’m hungry! Dream of the day when your cabinet door will look like a wing, feathered in hopeful little yellow squares.

  Then Gretel, suddenly released from the bars of her cage, spread her arms like wings and rejoiced. “But now I must find my way back,” said Gretel. She walked onward until she came to a vast lake. “I see no way across . . .”

  Picture you people: your husband, the physician, the therapists and nutritionist, family members—all standing across the water, waving, calling; a part of her remains listening on the other side, afraid to lose control, afraid to fail, afraid to drown.

  Open your arms wide. Your daughter is getting nearer. Know that it is up to her. Say her lovely name. Know that it is up to her. Shout her lovely name.

  Ruby Jewel

  When she stepped off the train, her father honked from the Dodge, three sharp blasts, like elbow jabs to her ribs. His thick arm dangled out the window, the sleeve rolled up, exposing sunburned skin. “Ruby-Ruby, the college gal,” he called, a pipe clenched in the center of his grin.

  Black land crabs scuttled across the gravel in front of her. Ruby hurried, stepping carefully to protect the Bergdorf pumps her New York aunt had sent along with the tuition check and a little extra walk-around money. “Hi, Daddy.” Pabst empties littered the passenger-side floor. She wiped the seat with her hand and dropped the rattling bottles, five of them, into the back before setting her suitcase beneath her feet.

  “Cars cleaner up there?”

  She leaned over the seat, brushed her lips against his bristled cheek. “Doesn’t matter.” He hadn’t removed his inked pressman’s apron, and the cab was filled with his familiar smells. Sometimes, though not this afternoon, the father-odors of newsprint, tobacco, and sweat were rounded out with whiskey or the Lava soap he used to scrub at the ink beneath his fingernails.

  H
er father shifted gears and the truck lunged onto Beach Boulevard. Outside her window, the Gulf, flat and black as the bottom of a cast-iron pan, stretched away.

  “How’s Mom?”

  “Your mother . . .” His voice trailed off, as if he had something to decide.

  Ruby waited, watching the ball of his fist on the gear knob, his biceps flexing each time he shifted. “Is she drawing?”

  “No. Nope. She’s rearranging the furniture. She’s got the couch crisscrossing the corner now. Every goddamned morning I have to double-check where the coffee table is. I’m afraid she might move the john and I’ll end up pissing in my chair.” His jaw tensed around his pipe stem as he spoke. Everything about him was tight, ready to spring, like a flea. “And, she’s pasting Green Stamps to get herself a new dryer.”