by Grace Bowman
There is a knock on the door. Grace takes a look around the bathroom, frantically checking for signs.
‘I’m in the bathroom, I won’t be a minute.’
She runs to the door with her freshly brushed teeth, smiles and welcomes her friends inside. Her heart is racing and pumping. She feels full of a delicious energy.
‘Do you want something to drink?’ Grace enquires.
They haven’t got a clue, she thinks to herself. They have still got their dinner inside them. Grace chatters on, rapidly, full of energy, buzzing and pulsing with excitement. See how I do this, she thinks to herself – see how good I am at this! At last.
Grace turns the light off and gets into bed. She thinks about what she will eat in the morning. Because she has been sick, and has got rid of all the bad foods from the evening (the wine and the chocolate), she can have a really nice morning. Things are peaceful for once as she closes her eyes. She feels a bit bad for doing it, because she knows it is not good behaviour. She knows that people would be shocked and angry, and would make her talk to whitecoats about it, but it is the only way (apart from not-eating, or exercising) that she can get some real space in her mind. She would not define herself as a bulimic. Bulimics are sick more often than she is, she thinks. Plus she doesn’t binge, no; everything is very restricted and controlled. It is just on the odd occasion, maybe once a month, or sometimes, when things are really bad, then once a week (but that is rare) and she knows it mustn’t get out of hand. It is only because she has drunk too much and eaten too much, and it is easy to sort things out in that respect.
Grace doesn’t tell anyone this secret. They would think that she was ill again, and that wouldn’t be true, would it? Grace smiles to herself, thinking about the extra muesli she might eat as a treat for being such a good girl. The relief she will feel in the morning will be so good in comparison to the aching guilt which attacks her on a normal day. She can even have a big lunch – a really big sandwich – and relax, and just for a minute it won’t matter.
She knows she is not alone. Other girls do it, too. They get drunk and they feel ill, and they know how to make it come back up. They even talk about it, but Grace never will. It will sit inside, a secret story of hers, for ever.
Grace lines up at the college canteen. She doesn’t often eat there because it means seeing all the cliques of people at their tables, and she feels left out. Grace goes for a jacket potato with tuna mayonnaise. She walks along the queue and pays for it at the till. The girl behind her asks her why she doesn’t come to eat in the dining hall more often.
‘I do. I do come for dinner. It’s just sometimes I prefer to eat on my own.’
‘Yeh,’ the girl replies looking at Grace’s jacket potato, ‘but you don’t eat proper food, anyway.’
Grace doesn’t know what to say. She wants to tell the girl that actually jacket potatoes are ‘proper food’ where she comes from, but instead she smiles nervously. Grace decides that the girl must have guessed or heard about her anorexia, so she makes sure that she avoids her, because she obviously isn’t very nice if she says things like that, which are insensitive.
Grace walks over to the leisure centre with two girls from college. They are going to a heaving Sunday evening aerobics session. Grace hates aerobics because there are so many other girls there, and they are all looking at each other, and trying to outdo one another in the intensity of their ‘Heel, toe, knee and change!’
They sit on the floor at the beginning of the class. Everyone is stretching out in their tight lycra leggings and gym tops. Grace is biting her nails. She finds the aerobics session too hard and tiring but she doesn’t want to tell her friends. The teacher wears a microphone round her head and she shouts at people. Grace tries to stay at the back of the class so that she doesn’t get spotted. She doesn’t like shouting. The teacher moves the class around so all of a sudden Grace is near the front. She gets the dance moves wrong because she is too busy comparing the size of her hips with the girls in the front row.
Do they know? Can anyone tell? Grace looks at the panting bodies lying on the floor trying to break through the pain of the sit-ups. Most people, she thinks – most girls – are on a diet or have funny eating habits or go to aerobics three times a week even when they hate it and it hurts, and sometimes it isn’t the best thing to do. Sometimes, feeling fat is about guilt and being upset, not about the body at all. So she is not so different after all. They must feel the same as her – better (momentarily) when they are smaller, better (briefly) when they are lighter; when they are less.
Grace prefers doing exercise on her own in the morning, when it is pitch-black and she can feel every muscle in her body. She does not let a week go by without some exercise. That would be impossible. People often tell her, ‘You are so good! What willpower!’
This annoys her because it draws unnecessary attention to her body. She would rather people didn’t know that she tries to be thin, just in case they guess the real reasons. So she says, ‘Oh, no, I don’t really do much. I haven’t been to the gym for weeks.’
Grace prefers the daytime. In the day she is in control and things run to time. She doesn’t like evenings when she is in a club, and she has to drink vodka and Diet Coke in order to feel confident. She keeps drinking and then she makes mistakes. Grace has learned her lesson. She hates dirty, drunken bars, and she hates drunken college boys, and things that happen after too much vodka (they have to be numbed and erased). She hates the way she feels for days after she has had too much alcohol, and the way she can’t get the shape of her hips out of her mind. When she gets drunk, things go out of shape. She starts to let go. Everything slips from where she needs it to be. Then she has to block it out and scream inside.
The first term at Cambridge feels like a lifetime. Eight weeks have passed so slowly. Secretly, Grace can’t wait to get home. The only part she has enjoyed has been the studying, the hard, eye-squinting, back-aching studying of really difficult books, something that actually challenges her and makes her think, unlike school where it was unacceptable to express this. But on the whole she is pleased that it is the end of term, and that she can stop eating things for show and take back the control. Then she will feel good again. People will be amazed when she comes back next term and looks thin and pretty again. Hopefully they will say, ‘Grace looks thin.’
And that will make her feel good.
‘Why do you need a hot-water bottle all the time?’
‘Grace is always cold.’
‘Grace doesn’t eat that. Don’t put it on her plate.’
‘Are you eating properly?’
‘You look thin to me.’
Grace goes home for the Christmas holidays. She spends most of the days sitting at a desk studying medieval texts and trying to write essays about things she doesn’t really understand. She sits with a hot-water bottle at her tummy. She tells Mum that she has stomach ache. She doesn’t want her to think that she needs it. She is cold, because then Mum will think that it is due to her being too thin. Actually, she has put on weight, and some of the old anorexia clothes don’t fit any more.
Mum, Dad and family still think that Grace has funny habits. Mum watches Grace sit in front of the fire, knees bent up to her chest, eating her apple. Grace is pleased that she can have a measured-out tomato soup for her lunch rather than big brown-bread tuna mayonnaise sandwiches from the college bar.
Grace feels constantly watched at home, which she finds annoying because now she has her own life, and goes about her days at Cambridge with no one to keep an eye on her and she is, ‘Absolutely fine, so there is no need to watch me, OK?’
Grace goes for an early-morning run on the snowy Durham hills. She likes the way it is fresh and freezing. It makes her hands go stiff and her heart beat fast. It is a good feeling, she thinks. If everyone else tried it they might like it too, but they don’t. They sit on the sofa and watch TV, and look at her strangely from their warm dressing gowns, eating their toast with marmalade for bre
akfast.
‘I’m back.’
‘You must be freezing,’ Mum says.
‘No, I’m fine. It’s really nice out there actually. Anyway, back to work.’
On Christmas Day everything is back to normal. Not like last Christmas when Grace was six stone and dropping, and people were not in any mood to celebrate. This year, things are better, and Grace is at Cambridge University, and mostly the issue is passed over because it is easier that way. Except this year Grace doesn’t get any chocolates or sweets in her stocking, and she isn’t offered a selection box (so she is given no chance to de-select it). Instead, she gets a bag of dried apricots and some dates. Grace smiles because it is obvious that everyone is trying not to offend her or make her feel awkward. So there are just (correct) assumptions made and things unsaid, unspoken and unopened, which she is happy about because she does not want things to be difficult and awkward (although they are inside).
Grace and family sit around the dinner table. Grace puts two roast potatoes on to her full Christmas dinner plate to show that she is fine, and she sips her Diet Coke quietly, as if its dietness has no meaning. Nobody talks about last Christmas, or last year much at all, or the last version of Grace that went with it. They just pull crackers and wear hats and read out silly jokes, and eat their Christmas dinner in the usual quick way, so that people can get back to what they really want to do – watching TV, reading books, not-eating things. Grace doesn’t have any Christmas pudding, instead she has a yoghurt and then spends the afternoon sneaking into the kitchen and picking at the icing on the Christmas cake, but no one says anything. They simply mop up the remnants of the anorexia (the strange food requests, the slightly slim daughter, the order and routine of her). They conceal the spill over, because it is too painful and confusing to do anything else.
PLAY ON
[We see Grace standing outside an audition room. She is shaking with nerves. She grips her bag with both hands. Two girls appear and join her. They open the door to the room and all three go inside. The girls prepare the room, while Grace stands to one side. She kneels down and she pulls some bits of paper out of her bag.]
GIRL 1: Are you ready?
GRACE (OUTSIDE VOICE): Yes, yes I am.
GRACE (INSIDE VOICE): Get this right, or you will look a fool.
GIRL 2: OK then, Grace, go ahead.
[Grace looks at the piece of paper and prepares to sing. The lights fade down. As they come back up Grace is sitting in a dressing room, in front of a mirror. She is looking in the mirror and taking off her make-up. She stops and looks at the audience. The audience and the mirror are both facing her.]
GRACE (INSIDE VOICE): I need to sing and to act. It’s the only time I feel good, when I have been on the stage, and people recognize me and make me feel like I am a success. I get space in my head where all I can think about are words and music and everything else is blocked out. I can’t hear any other voices. It’s an amazing freedom. I’m playing a whole other character and I am allowed to do so. Sometimes it can be an hour or two of being on stage and it is the longest, best hour of my life because I’m not bashing myself about at all, not in any way. Things feel like they are better. I am better.
GIRL 1: [Spotlight up on a parallel chair to Grace’s – spoken straight to the front] Are you coming for a drink, Grace? We’re going to the pub.
GRACE (OUTSIDE VOICE): No, no thanks. I’m tired.
GRACE (INSIDE VOICE): I don’t feel confident, you see. Sometimes I just want to be on my own. It’s better on my own. I don’t want to go out and be sociable because I need to get my head down and work hard and be the best. Of course there are some good days. I got this main part in the university production of Fame. It’s the biggest thing I have ever done.
GIRL 2: [Spotlight up on a parallel chair to Grace’s – spoken straight to the front] Well done, you were great. Really, you were amazing, the best.
GIRL 3: [Spotlight up on a parallel chair to Grace’s – spoken straight to the front] Fantastic. Brilliant. See, you did it.
GRACE (INSIDE VOICE): Somehow, I am not sure how, I managed to get myself to the audition. I went at nine o’clock on a Sunday morning because I knew nobody else would get up that early and go to an audition, not students, not on a Sunday. I hoped that I wouldn’t have to see any of the other competitors and that things would be easy. It went well. I felt fine somehow, I got this momentary confidence – I felt thin that day, I think. Then the directors invited me to a second audition where I had to hear all the other girls sing, and that was hard because I couldn’t be the best. I was mentally shouting at myself. Bla, bla, bla. I wondered why I had gone along. Then suddenly there was a phone call, and they told me that I had got the part and I was crying and screaming.
[She moves around the stage, gesturing and speaking in exaggerated voices.]
‘This is the best thing that has ever happened to me.’
‘This is all I have ever wanted to do, to be.’
‘This will make things all right’
‘This will change things. It will. A new me.’
I have decided it will be better if I am thinner, because it gives me that edge of confidence. A little push. I have to wear tight black leggings and leg warmers [she looks down at her outfit] and a leotard on the stage in front of a big audience. So I don’t eat my lunch, I just have muesli for breakfast and then bananas and Lucozade in the evenings. This makes things a bit tiring, but it means that I can try and concentrate on my acting, and not the size of my hips. I don’t have my periods any more (not for the last few months anyway) but it doesn’t bother me, things are a bit easier that way. It’s just because I have lost some weight (I think I must have) and they switch off at a certain level.
[Grace sits on the floor.] When I make a mistake in the play, do you know how that feels to me? I have to go home and pull things apart, and then I don’t want to go outside any more, or see anyone’s face. They will have noticed my mistakes. I know they will. I won’t have any muesli the next day because I need to make up for the mistakes by looking the thinnest I can on the stage. It’s OK because it is only for a time, and I’m not starving myself (no way!). I don’t want to lose too much weight because things go off course when that happens, and I could get into real trouble, although a couple of pounds wouldn’t be a bad idea.
[She stands up and walks to the side of the stage where a group of people are chatting.] The other members of the cast get together. They are friends and they get drunk and laugh and swap numbers. I prefer to stay in my own space. I sit in my room and in my costume and in my act. I don’t let them in or reveal myself because they might start to figure me out and ask too many questions. One of the girls asked me to audition for her play at the Edinburgh Festival. I performed well in my American accent at the audition. She called me up and said:
GIRL 1: [holding a phone] Grace, would you like the part?
GRACE (OUTSIDE VOICE): Yes, definitely, certainly, absolutely, I would love it. [Grace puts down the phone and then picks it back up.] No, no, I can’t. I’m sorry. It’s just not possible. Sorry to let you down. I don’t have much money to spend a summer doing acting and er, I need to do some more studying and er, I well … I can’t do it. Thanks for asking, though. Sorry to let you down like this, I’m just … not ready for that. Thanks, anyway. Please still be my friend. [Puts phone back down.]
[Curtain closes.]
Nineteen
Grace sits with her friend on the steps to the entrance of Cambridge University library. Grace is smoking her Marlboro Light. The two girls stand up and turn around to the library door, helping each other to their feet, then they collapse back on the concrete steps laughing hysterically in tandem. There are piles of books in plastic bags by their feet. They sit so tightly together that from a distance it is hard to tell them apart. It is only when somebody else enters the frame that their bodies appear to dissolve and Grace is shown to be hiding behind her friend, under the shape of her shadow, in the strong sunshine.
<
br /> A boy approaches, and Grace’s friend stands up and kisses him hello. Grace sits back, leans on her hands and bites the skin around her inner lip. Her friend continues to talk to the boy, Grace looks up and smiles. The boy nods his head towards Grace and then turns back to her friend. Grace sits silently and checks her watch. The minutes are tick-tocking by and she hasn’t done any work today.
It is hard having a best friend, because it means that you can’t do everything at the exact times you want to, Grace thinks to herself. Grace goes everywhere with her best friend. It is like living a whole different life, away from the one she grew up in. It feels easier that way, to do the things that someone else does. It is good to be able to grasp on to the centre of someone else, to move her forward. But if her friend wasn’t there she would have been in the library hours ago, instead of driving around Cambridge, getting a Starbucks coffee and watching her friend eat breakfast.
Grace eats breakfast in the house before she goes out every morning so that she won’t be tempted by the food in the library café, which is not what she should be eating, and which wastes valuable revision time. But her friend doesn’t feel that way, she isn’t as controlled as Grace; it appears that not many people are. Grace knows that people sometimes find her behaviour annoying, with her difficult eating habits and her topsy-turvy behaviour. But her best friend doesn’t mind too much, she even finds it intriguing; the way Grace is different from everyone else.
