Thin

by Grace Bowman

  Grace lies on the beige carpet and finishes her sit-ups. She wonders what her friends are doing, the people who left her behind and went to university. It would have been her first week at university too, had this thing not got in the way. It would be Freshers’ week: a new, crazy, drunken start; a new room; new people. But instead, she has a sinking sense of reversion; like walking backwards, like a video on slow rewind. Things are all out of time. And so she slinks quietly into the background of her growing-up house.

  ‘I’m still here,’ she feels like saying. ‘Just a little less. A little less of me.’

  But they look blankly straight through her: the pain is too much.

  She wakes up to the sound of the six-thirty milkman. Her sleep is now light and fragile, like her body. It is difficult to shut down the mind at night as a headful of words cascades towards her, thoughts thumping intensely. She re-counts the day of food and drink meticulously through tables, numbers and equations. Everything has to be weighed out, measured exactly, or she feels unable to breathe, seized by an embracing panic around her throat. She feels her chest tighten with each reminder of the day’s food failures, she turns over with the stabbing thought of each ingested item, aching inside with regret. Today, as always, there is no sense of quiet as she rolls over for the fiftieth time, attempting to find a position where her bones don’t rub against the springs of her old mattress, and where she cannot feel every ounce of skin as it moves and slides below her.

  She always wakes up this same way, startled by the light; gripped by the fear that life can possibly exist without her; her own internal and petrifying alarm rising from her stomach through her ribcage and into the base of her throat. It jolts her with its force, pushing up from within, and she is faced with an instant and horrifying reminder of her constant addiction. She simply can’t lie still for long. She tries to force her eyelids shut by pressing them together with her fingers, she tries to fall back into the dream world without physicality and without contact, but she seems to physically ingest each second and choke. Stifled by her own bed she can feel only her heart as it speeds and jumps and bangs inside her, reminding her of her own flesh.

  Sometimes she forgets temporarily where she is and what day it is, and she finds, in that moment – that half-second – a relief from certainty, a real breath and a sense of weightlessness. But then the voice makes its formal entrance, like clockwork. Always a dual dialogue – never any silence:

  So today you are not going to have any breakfast. A banana maybe? But no, after everything you greedily consumed yesterday, it makes you feel sick. Can’t you feel your legs weighing you down? Do some exercise – you can have a banana if you do some exercise.

  She tries to stay in bed as long as possible, away from confronting the kitchen and the thought of breakfast, because the later she has breakfast, then the later she has lunch and then dinner, until it is so late that she won’t want to eat.

  She is reassured only when others eat; she likes to feed them – watching them place every crumb in their mouths, filling with fear if their plates aren’t empty. She wants them to be weighed down, heavy and full, then she can be lighter and she can float above them. She can’t understand the inertia that grips most people, allowing them to lounge about, uncontrolled, eating all day, every day.

  Grace shakes. She gets out of bed. Taking her pyjama top off over her head she examines her body. She can see no difference; it is always the same. She puts on her cycling shorts, T-shirt and trainers, and begins her usual aerobics routine: legs, arms, stomach – a bit of everything, just to refresh her, give her a bit of energy, wake her up. Sometimes her pelvic bone rubs against the top of her thigh; that hurts a bit, but is to be expected. Sometimes the bottom of her back aches, right on the coccyx, as she lies on the floor, pushing it against the hard floor, but it has to be done; this way she will be allowed to feel worthy, worthy enough to eat. She treats herself today: only two sets of sit-ups. She is getting a blinding headache, half the room is black and blurred, a sharp piercing fuzz of the morning. She leaves the bedroom armed with her now cold hot-water bottle. Almost blinded by the pain, she can’t tell anyone. There will be no sympathy – only another reason to make her eat.

  Nineteen: She gets up to a tempered birthday celebration. She unwraps her presents as she shudders in front of the blazing hot fire. She looks at the faces of her family. She has failed them. She convulses with tears. She can only repeat, ‘I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.’

  As they pass her the presents she struggles to gather the strength to open them. Why would anyone want to give gifts to her? She is damaging them, she is the guilty one, she deserves nothing. No-thing for her, inside or out.

  They try to comfort her, throwing her a gesture, a smile or a hug, but she resents their intervention into her own mess. Their faces are stunned with pain and exasperation. The tears are welling up as she tries to breathe. She takes in air but has no room to hold it inside her. They sit and watch her, unable to move or speak, constrained by their own embarrassment and forcibly detached from her anguish. Suddenly, their strong and beautiful child, friend and sister no longer exists, all that remains is a fragile shell, held together only by her own determination. They begin to shout and scream at her because it seems to be the only thing that allows them to vent their helpless frustration, but she pushes them away, as she has always done, intent on succeeding in whatever she is trying to do, although she isn’t sure what that is.

  After they leave the house (for school, for work, for normal life) she fights her way through an exercise video, gasping for air as she moves up and down through her press-ups. She takes a hot bath – the hotter the better – it makes her feel as though she is cleansing out her insides. The steam and the tears redden her body. She stands up and looks in the mirror at the sinking holes in her cheeks and the blue veins jutting out of her bony arms, her dark hair layering and covering her starved skin. Until this day there has been no pain, no real pain anyway, only numbed sensations, but now there is red. Real red pain. Her body is raw and fragile and see-through. You can see the insides – the bones and the veins. The pain reaches her mouth. She coughs and shakes through the in-breaths. There is no space to breathe out.

  Boyfriend arrives with a birthday present. They drive to a pub. Grace has a Diet Tango. She tells him her own diagnosis. She has given in to their decisions about her, because she hasn’t got any energy left to make her own.

  ‘I’ve only eaten an apple today,’ she tells him. Without knowing why she suddenly feels the need to confess.

  He edges a smile. ‘You’ll get better.’

  ‘No, I can’t. I’m not going anywhere, they’re going to make me stay here.’ She is crying. He is confused. He doesn’t want to touch her; he doesn’t know what to say. He drives her home.

  They were the best couple. She liked to tell people about their ‘two years together’. Because two years was a really long time, and most people only had boyfriends for two weeks, or maybe two months. He wasn’t going to go to university. She liked that – their difference. She liked the way they looked together, or maybe just the look of him? She didn’t really care so much how he acted, because he was hers and he was special. It was good to have a boyfriend like that, someone who everyone liked, someone a bit older, someone who didn’t care about exams and university and achievement. It took the edge off her stable, reliable image. It made her seem acceptable. But when the food thoughts got in the way, things stopped being fun. He got right in the way. She didn’t want him to touch her. He said things all wrong, all backwards. He obviously just didn’t understand. She decided it should end and then she decided that it shouldn’t. It depended on the day, on the mood, on the food. One moment he was too close, too near, too stupid, too irritating and everything seemed claustrophobic and out of control, and the next he was holding her up and she was terrified of doing anything without him. She didn’t want him to go away, though. Not really, not like he did when he drove her home and then drove away, no
t looking back at her little body standing, staring at him through the big bay window.

  Six

  ‘How are you today?’ Crossed legs, head craning towards her, the psychiatrist intrudes.

  ‘Fine, I’m fine.’

  ‘How has it been going this week?’

  ‘Fine, great, a lot better.’

  The psychiatrist shifts in his seat and raises his eyebrows. Grace pauses. She hates these frozen silences, when the masks come down and each one attempts to out-manipulate the other. She likes to think that she unnerves him, that she holds a secret control that is infallible; he can’t touch her. She spills out her lies in his face, one by one, only small lies, but enough to make him feel that there is some improvement. She talks about herself as if she were a third person. Her ‘I’ is detached from her thoughts. Her ‘I’ is the ‘I’ that he wants to explore; her stomach, her insides, her guts.

  She lists yesterday’s food intake for him but the words get stuck in her chest. He congratulates her on the baked beans. She absorbs the words and throws them around in her head. BAKED BEANS. Beans that are baked. Beans in a metal tin. Banal baked beans. His condescension chokes her.

  She sits, week in, week out, in the fusty-smelling waiting room, surrounded by old armchairs from the seventies. She reads two-year-old copies of Woman’s Own and picks up some more diet tips: ‘How I went from a size sixteen to a size ten in three months,’ a beaming reader gloats, her tight perm and black leggings spruced up by the gloss of bright pink lipstick.

  ‘I’m much better,’ Grace snarls.

  ‘Why?’ he enquires

  ‘I just am.’

  Gum-chewing.

  The conversation always goes this way. She, arms crossed, head bowed, lips pursed in defiance, resilient to any suggestion, blocking his interference, his constant poking into her prison.

  ‘This is getting serious. How do you feel about coming to stay here? You do know that we can section you under the Mental Health Act, and then you will have to? It would be easier if you did it yourself. What do you think?’ the psychiatrist coaxes.

  She wonders how she suddenly ended up in this place with this person who doesn’t know her, now wanting to get right inside her head, wanting to lock her away in the old hospital on the hill. She used to pass it on the bus on her way into town. She would conjure up images of the mad people who lived there – rocking in corners of the room, shouting out random words, on the edge. And now she is there – only a temporary visitor, but a potential future resident. It just doesn’t make sense.

  Her weight is dropping, not much, maybe a pound a week, but enough. Enough for him to threaten her with being drip-fed, enough to make him and his people force her to eat from their prescribed menus, like other anorexic patients. She isn’t like that, no way. She doesn’t want his diet plans and gold stars and public exposure. Hers is a personal and private ‘illness’, one the other bony girls really can’t be a part of. It just won’t be allowed.

  ‘Time up.’

  She is forced to make an appointment for next week. She walks up to the hatch – to the bland glance of the receptionist. It reminds her of a school canteen. She politely asks for more, please.

  She walks home up the steep hill away from the hospital. The rain filters through her hood as she paces the street, moving without hesitation towards her destination. Her hair is drenched and pinned to her forehead through the heat and the moisture. The cars run alongside her, splashing up at her soles and reminding her of her presence. It is the power she gains from the control of her own footsteps and the movement of her limbs which satisfies her at times such as these. She holds her breath as fuming lorries sweep by, bellowing horns and screeching brakes sounding out. She is determined not to be slow, because she never is; the thought of minutes ticking by without her is terrifying. She feels and senses every second.

  There is a feeling of momentum in every part of her body. Her fingers pulse and ache with cold, as she furrows them under the sleeves of her thin coat. Mascara is caked under her eyes, giving the impression that early that morning she stumbled out of bed without care.

  The outside world now seems only a passing blur. Facedown, the pavements look the same and an unenviable greyness permeates each sightline. She is planning in detail every second of the next hour. All worked out – nothing will sway it.

  She arrives home, throws off her coat, removes her shoes and goes to the fridge to get her Diet Coke. The bubbles fill her up. She likes the way it is called a diuretic, the very sound of the word makes her feel as though the inches are already falling off.

  She sits on the sofa in front of Richard and Judy, the lunchtime news, the regional news, Home and Away, Neighbours; the minutes are counted one by one. No soup before 1 p.m., nothing before 1 p.m. At 1 p.m. she is allowed a treat. She prepares her WeightWatchers’ soup (two varieties to choose from) and diet yoghurt (four flavours – what choice) – 150 calories altogether; she can manage 160 if she is feeling brave. At four o’clock she is allowed an apple, only a small one, weighed on the kitchen scales. She feels heavy. She wishes she had the will to be sick: throw it all up, but she can’t. She tried it once; there was a splutter in the toilet, nails jammed down her throat. She could taste the soap as her fingers pushed down upon her tongue and, just at the moment of the cough, she pulled them out, her eyes red and streaming, her knuckles tooth-marked and pink, saliva dribbling from the side of her mouth. She failed. Failure wasn’t acceptable.

  Her mum asks her, ‘You’re not making yourself sick, are you?’

  Teeth jam together. I wish. I wish. I wish …

  ‘No, Mum, of course not.’

  Mum looks at her disbelievingly.

  Stupid girl, don’t eat that tomato.

  She eats it anyway. She used to be stronger than this. People remarked at her willpower before this happened. They marvelled at her resistance and jealously admired her strength. Now they retract that envy with a breath of relief at their own normality.

  ‘So how are you today, Grace, really?’ Friends tend to qualify their questions with a ‘really’ or an ‘honestly’. She gives them what she thinks they ‘really’ want to hear.

  ‘Really, I’m much better.’

  She takes a sip of her Diet Coke and sucks on her Marlboro Light.

  It is the first Christmas since the announcement of Grace’s anorexic status. Six o’clock with stockings in Mum and Dad’s bedroom; stockings full of presents: make-up items, chocolates, sweets and oranges. Grace still gets the chocolates in her stocking, packed in with the hope that Christmas might change her, or that for one day only she will let go, drop the fierce willpower, change the rules, stop the game or at least pause it. But she doesn’t. Instead, she sits with her hot-water bottle and layers of thick jumpers, with her hands alternating their hold on the bedroom bay-window radiator. She carefully places all the chocolates, dried fruit and clementines to one side. She decides that she will give them out to others later on – ‘Happy Christmas’, she will say – (just because she doesn’t eat, it doesn’t mean that others can’t!).

  Grace’s Christmas lunch is a salad with chopped-up tomatoes and a bit of cottage cheese and a couple of rice cakes. She also eats a bit of mashed potato (because she can feel the fire of the opposition in the deadly silence around the table). She knows that there will be much guilt later for this out-of-character mashed potato eating. Then she watches television and counts the hours until the end of the day. She can’t get her exercises done because the house is full of people. She goes for a walk with Mum and Dad. She asks them if she can buy herself an exercise bike because she is sure that if she is more formally allowed to exercise, then she might find eating a bit easier. And they sigh.

  PLAY ON

  [A group of school friends sit around a collection of pub tables, talking and laughing, sharing stories of university and new experiences. Grace walks in. She is dressed in a bright outfit. Too bright, too present. She should be dressed in black, a symbol that she is
defeated and unwell. But the bright outfit and a new haircut make a statement. The faces around her smile at her entrance. There is no outward sign of their shock. It is only when they begin to speak that there is an obvious sign of hesitancy in their voices.]

  FRIEND 1: How are you?

  FRIEND 2: Really like the hair.

  FRIEND 3: Isn’t it cold outside!

  [Grace sits quietly, nibbling the straw of her diet drink. She nuzzles under the collar of her thick coat as she jitters. She is visibly shivering, although she is wearing several layers: thermal vest, tucked deep into two pairs of tights, two pairs of socks, thick velvet trousers, three jumpers and a coat. She is freezing. We see her hug the radiator, feeling her hand around it for the warmest part. The coldness produces a feeling of hollowness. She is shaking inside but she doesn’t say anything. The suffering is as secret as the inside voice, which plays out over the tableau.]

  GRACE (INSIDE VOICE): So when you get home you’ll go straight to bed, OK? No cereal, not one mouthful. Go in the door and up the stairs and get into bed. But I’m quite hungry, I think. Maybe an apple then? But that would mean fifty extra calories, maybe even seventy-five if it’s a big one and that means one less apple tomorrow. I want cereal, perhaps? No. One bowl leads to another. No, that’s it – nothing.

  [Grace is seen to join in the conversation from time to time, but everything is far-removed from her own thoughts. There are stories of drunken nights out, kebabs and sick in the street. Friend 1 pulls her aside.]

  FRIEND 1: You don’t look good. God … I hate saying that, but you were so beautiful … before … [Friend 1 stutters over appropriate wording.] Can’t you see the difference? I mean, you’re different now. Can you remember how you were before you were …? [Friend tails off.]

  [Grace nuzzles further into her coat. She looks as if she might try to finish the sentence for the friend, but even she struggles to utter the four syllables AN-OR-EX-IC which label and mark her. Her teeth are gritted, and through a plastered smile she tries to show that she appreciates the interference.]