Good Enough

by Jen Petro-Roy

  All the bathrooms are locked. Even the ones in our rooms. The nurses and counselors have keys and we have to ask them to go to the bathroom, like we’re in preschool and need someone to wipe our butts. I wonder what happens when someone really has to go. Like emergency pee alert. What if they can’t find a staff member in time? Ew.

  They make us count while we’re peeing, too. Out loud. They say it’s so they know we’re not throwing up. So our “vocal cords are occupied.” Yesterday I stopped counting for a second to concentrate and Jean yelled at me. Is it my fault I have a shy bladder? I didn’t end up going at all, and she looked at me like I was breaking the rules on purpose.

  I’m not. I think Ali is, though.

  I almost feel like I was dreaming this, but I think I heard Ali doing crunches last night. In her bed. At an eating disorder treatment center. The night counselor had just left after checking that we were “safe.” I was trying (and failing) to fall asleep.

  Then Ali’s bed started creaking. I rolled over, then squeezed my eyes closed again. I didn’t want Ali to know I was awake. Some light streamed in from the hallway, and the shadow in Ali’s bed moved up and down. She gasped for breath a few times.

  I tried not to move so she wouldn’t realize I’d heard her. So the night nurse wouldn’t hear me. We might both get in trouble then.

  I wonder if they make us eat more food if we get in trouble. If they bring us to some secret room where there’s a banquet table full of food: turkey and gravy and lasagna and five different kinds of cake. Soft, buttery crescent rolls and apple pies fresh out of the oven. Gingerbread men like Mom makes at Christmas and Grandma Archibald’s famous mashed potatoes.

  I think about food way too much. I don’t want to like food. I can’t help it, though. I tell myself I don’t want the food they give us. I tell myself it’s disgusting.

  I still want it, though. I’m glad they’re making me eat.

  That banquet table would be my nightmare and my dream come true at the same time.

  * * *

  At least they’re not weighing me today. They do that on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. “If we weighed you every day, you’d start obsessing over it,” Jean explained yesterday. I couldn’t tell if she was making a joke. I’m going to obsess over my weight no matter how often they weigh me. It’s what I do. It’s why I’m here.

  Jean woke me and Ali up this morning. She poked her head in the door and flipped the light switch on and off three times. I was already awake, but it was still the most annoying thing ever. “Rise and shine, campers!” she exclaimed. “It’s time to start another day!”

  I’m surprised she wasn’t wearing a Camp Eat-a-Lot shirt or a lanyard around her neck. I wonder if they make lanyards here. Ali says we do lots of arts and crafts. I’m kind of excited about that. Okay, not excited excited, but there’s a bubbly feeling in my stomach at the thought of picking up markers and pencils again.

  I think I might miss drawing. It’s hard to write that, but I do. I used to draw a lot, but I haven’t for a long time. I miss how fun coloring books were when I was a kid, when I was allowed to go outside the lines. I miss papier-mâché day in art class—getting my hands all glue-sticky and wiggling them in the air while Emerson and Josie shrieked and ran away. I miss sitting outside and creating on paper what I see with my eyes.

  I shouldn’t miss drawing, though, because I’m not good at it. And if I’m not good at it, I shouldn’t do it. I don’t do real art, not like the people Mom works with. I don’t do modern art, with its bold colors and swirls that are supposed to mean something all deep and symbolic. I don’t make fancy mobiles, like that famous guy who says they symbolize “the way society is forever spinning around.” I tried to do landscapes and vases and ladies in fancy dresses, but something always looked wrong.

  My trees aren’t “regal” enough.

  My shadowing is somehow off.

  My noses are too pointy.

  I’ll never be able to do paintings like Mom shows in her gallery. And when I draw what I like, when I doodle faces and penguins and frogs with magic wands, they’re childish. Boring. Normal.

  I could be good at running, though, as long as I stay skinny. I could make regionals. Maybe I could even get a ribbon, too: a blue one, a red one, a yellow one … whatever. I just want something of my own. Something I’m good at. Running has to be it. I’m getting better every day.

  Not today, though. I definitely can’t run in here. I bet they’ll barely let me walk in here. I’ll sleep all night and sit all day, like a sloth. Like the slothiest sloth that’s ever slothed.

  Not running feels wrong. It makes my body feel wrong. My legs feel heavy, like they’re weighed down. Like if I jumped into a pool, I’d sink to the very bottom.

  I’d drown.

  * * *

  I’m scared. I shouldn’t be scared, but I am.

  “It’s just food.” That’s what Dad says when he makes pancakes for breakfast and ends up screaming at me because I won’t eat them. He doesn’t get it, though. It’s not just food. It’s …

  I can’t explain it to Dad. I can’t even explain it to myself. All I know is that the thought of eating a stack of puffy pancakes slathered with butter and syrup makes my entire body clench up. It makes my shoulders stiffen. It makes my stomach churn into a stormy ocean of water and Diet Coke.

  Emerson doesn’t get it, either. When I told her where I was going, her forehead got all wrinkly. “How can you not like food? Pizza is the best thing ever. It’s heaven in circular form.” That’s Emerson, though. Emerson the “naturally skinny.” Emerson the “doesn’t have to run extra to stay in the right size pants.”

  I think my friend Josie kind of gets it. Well, she did, before she stopped talking to me. Talia used to make fun of Josie, too, for having so many pimples. Josie’s cried about how she looks, too.

  I’ve already cried three times today. I miss my friends. I miss home. I miss how things used to be.

  I talked with one of the counselors before breakfast. Her name is Heather. She’s always smiling and has this sickly sweet voice that makes me want to give her something sour to eat, just to balance things out. Heather told me their goal is for me to eat “normally” again.

  There’s that word again. Normal. Everyone’s obsessed with it. Apparently I’m not normal because I don’t like to eat breakfast. But neither does Mom. And no one’s calling her sick and locking her up. Mom eats diet food, too. She weighs herself every day. No one sends her to treatment.

  Julia doesn’t snack much, either. That’s because gymnasts have to be skinny and thin and willowy and every other possible synonym for beautiful. Julia’s underweight, too. But people call her a superstar.

  So why am I “abnormal”? What if not eating breakfast is normal for me? Didn’t Mrs. Cashman tell us in kindergarten that we’re all special, unique snowflakes? That we all have different talents and blah-de-blah-de-blah?

  What if I eat like a special snowflake, too? But nope. No one considers my opinion. They tell me I’m starving myself. They say they’re doing this to make me “healthy.”

  Healthy (adj.) Definition: Fat.

  Heather said that fat isn’t bad. That fat in food gives my hair shine and my body cushion. She says that it’s not bad to be fat, either. That my body doesn’t define me, and I can live a great life no matter what I look like.

  I know that. I know that bodies come in all shapes and sizes. I don’t care about my friends’ weights. I know there’s nothing wrong with eating a lot. Or being fat.

  I just don’t want to be fat. I don’t want to be normal, either.

  Normal will turn me back into Roly-Poly Riley. Back the way I was before. It’ll be like the Fairy Godmother scene in Cinderella, except instead of turning into a princess, things will be the other way around: bibbidi-bobbidi-BLOB.

  I want to go home. I want to go to track practice before Coach Jackson kicks me off the team. He might anyway. He already yells that I’m “slow as molasses!” I can
hear his raspy shout in my head right now.

  If I get kicked off the team, I don’t know what I’ll do.

  No. That won’t happen. I’ll get out, lose this weight, and be better than ever. I’ll run more than usual to make up for the time I lost in here. I’ll run all day long if I have to. I’ll be good. Better. Best.

  * * *

  Ali keeps staring at me. She’s acting like I’m a frog under a microscope and she’s examining all my parts. I bet she knows I heard her last night. I bet she thinks I’m going to tell on her. I’d never do that, though. I’m not a tattletale.

  What I am is jealous.

  I’m also “medically compromised.” That’s the technical term the admission guy used yesterday. His name was Bob. A boring name for a boring guy. He had brown hair in a buzz cut and boring brown glasses. Every time he asked me a question or said something to Mom, he spoke in a low, monotone voice. Like nothing exciting has ever happened to him and nothing ever will.

  “Do you think you’re sick?”

  “What do you see when you look in the mirror?”

  “What have you eaten so far today?”

  I glared at Mom, then told Bob everything she’d made me eat that morning. Mom had cooked my breakfast, then stood over me while I ate. Watched while I took bite after endless bite and stared until my glass was empty. I’d hated her the whole time.

  But right then, with Bob staring at me, I was a teensy bit glad Mom had made me eat. Because I could answer Bob honestly. He’d realize I wasn’t sick and he’d send me home!

  (He didn’t send me home.)

  Bob acted like he didn’t believe a word coming out of my mouth. I wonder if my parents called ahead to tell him about the Treadmill Incident. The Treadmill Incident definitely needs capital letters. Mom’s eyes still shoot laser beams whenever she mentions it. Dad gets that hurt look on his face, where he bites his lip so hard there’s a line but he still doesn’t tell me why he’s upset.

  Bob made tons of notes in my chart. Then a nurse came in. Her scrubs had squirrels all over them. Or maybe they were chipmunks. I always mix those two up. They’re like alligators and crocodiles that way. Or stalagmites and stalactites. Who can remember the difference?

  The nurse made me change into one of those faded hospital gowns, the ones five million people have already bled and sweated on. (They say they wash them, but who really knows? Maybe there’s no laundry detergent budget here and they just dunk them in water.) The gown covered most of me, but I felt like it was see-through, like the nurse was staring at every inch of my skin. Like she was checking to see if I was skinny enough to be in here.

  She weighed me with my back to the scale so I couldn’t see the number.

  She didn’t tell me the number, either.

  I wonder what she thought about the number. I wonder if the doctors and nurses are talking about it right now, laughing about my weight in some back room somewhere. Like Talia London did after my BMI test last year.

  I hate Talia London.

  Talia’s at school right now. Talia’s going to track practice today, getting ready for the meet on Friday and for regionals next month. Talia’s not in a hospital, eating food a bazillion times a day. Talia would never get sent to a hospital for anything. Talia’s too perfect, with her perfect brown hair and her perfect rosy cheeks and her perfect fingernails that she never, ever bites.

  I hate Talia London.

  The nurse took my temperature and my blood pressure. Then she made me stand up so she could do it all over again. I pretended the cuff was a snake wrapping around my arm, cutting off my circulation.

  Death by snake would have been better than going through an entire “intake interview,” where Mom told Boring Bob every awful thing I’ve done for the past year and every way I’ve disappointed her or scared her or made her feel like the WORST. MOM. EVER. She even brought up how she’s afraid this is all her fault. (With tears in her eyes, of course.)

  Which meant I had to comfort Mom so I wouldn’t look like an even worse daughter in front of Bob. I hate guilt trips like that. And the second I said, “Mom, it’s not your fault,” Mom’s tears cleared up and a relieved smile washed across her face. She didn’t consider the possibility that even if this isn’t all her fault, she might still have done something wrong.

  Apparently I’m the only criminal around here.

  Mom and Dad say that I should be in control of my brain. I should be able to “turn this craziness off.” I should be a lot of things:

  Skinny.

  Artistic.

  Smart.

  Athletic.

  Julia.

  But now I’m stuck here. Bob sent us back to the waiting room with a packet of graham crackers and a juice box, while Squirrel Nurse and whatever evil committee lives up here on the third floor determined that I’m “medically compromised.” Not medically compromised enough to have an IV like Ali, but enough to be stuck inside this prison.

  (But how sick is Ali really if she’s doing crunches in the middle of the night? Because she was doing crunches. There’s no other explanation for what I saw.)

  “We don’t trust you to do this on your own anymore. You need more support than we can give.” Mom sounded like she was reading from a script. She definitely wasn’t saying the real truth: You’re in here so they can fix you. So I don’t have to deal with the less-than-perfect daughter in front of me.

  * * *

  Mom called me selfish last week, when we had that big fight about her putting butter on the green beans behind my back. I thought she was going to throw her plate at me. Either that or stuff the beans down my throat.

  “I don’t want butter,” I said through gritted teeth. I never knew that was an actual thing you could do, but my jaw ached from clenching them so hard.

  “You need butter. You’re too skinny.”

  A thrill went through me when Mom said that. A thrill still shoots through me every time anyone says that. It’s the same way I feel when I step on the scale and see a lower number. It’s the thrill of success, the kind I imagine Julia feels when she sticks a landing. The kind I felt last year, when I tried out for the Bay State Blazes and made the team.

  “Stop being so selfish,” Mom hissed. She turned it into this big thing about how I’m starving for attention (she actually said starving) and making myself sick to get back at her for never being around.

  (I think Mom’s been reading too many articles about eating disorders. And I think Starving for Attention was the movie they showed us in health class last year.)

  Mom doesn’t know what she’s talking about. I’m not doing this for revenge and I’m not jealous of her job. I know she needs to make money. I know she likes working and it keeps her “personally fulfilled” or whatever. I’m not even jealous of Julia. I just want to be skinny. Is that so wrong? Mom wants to be skinny, too. I’ve heard her complain about her thighs and her stomach.

  So why is she yelling at me for wanting the same thing?

  When Bob came back and told us I was staying, Mom got my suitcase out of the trunk. It used to be Dad’s suitcase, actually. The leather is cracked and it’s this weird faded shade of brown. There are two buckles on it, and an old luggage tag is tied to the handle: ORLANDO, FLORIDA. I’d way rather be in Orlando right now. I’d way rather be in Siberia right now.

  I’d rather be in Siberia naked.

  Mom had packed the suitcase like I was going on a trip. Everything was folded neatly, and she added one of those sachet things so my clothes would smell good. The rose scent made me gag when I opened the suitcase. There are three pairs of sweatpants, two hoodies, three T-shirts, five pairs of underwear, and four pairs of socks. Comfy stuff. Cozy stuff. Baggy stuff. Good. They’ll hide the hideousness my body is about to become.

  Mom helped me unpack. She put everything into the scratched dresser against the wall. I wonder how clean those drawers are. I bet there are mouse droppings or dead ants in there. Not that it matters. Those clothes are going right back in my s
uitcase as soon as I convince the therapist or whoever’s in charge that I’m not sick.

  Mom gave me this journal before she left. It was wrapped in shiny pink paper with a sparkly bow. She beamed as I opened it. “This will be great!” she exclaimed. “You can write about your feelings! It’ll help you get better.”

  I bet that was in one of Mom’s articles: HOW JOURNALING CAN CURE YOUR SICK CHILD. I saw her search history the other day when I checked my e-mail on her laptop:

  Twelve-year-old daughter + anorexia

  Daughter hates me

  Ways to add more calories to food

  How can parents help + eating disorder

  I deleted Mom’s search history after I saw it. I wish I’d been able to delete her memory, too. Then she’d believe nothing’s wrong.

  That I’m “naturally” skinny.

  That I’m not really sick.

  She believed that once, before it got too hard to hide everything. Maybe I can convince everyone else to believe it, too.

  * * *

  The girls talk a lot at meals here. They play games, too. They ask one another questions: “What color would you want to dye your hair?” “Have you ever kissed anyone?” Then they giggle until the counselor tells them to concentrate on their food.

  Heather’s in charge of meals today. She tries to be nice, but I know she’s judging me for all the food I had to eat.

  I bet she thinks I eat too much.

  She’d be right. I’m so full. So disgusting.

  I tried to tell Heather I was full, but she didn’t believe me.

  I bet they won’t believe anything I say here. I bet everyone thinks I’m a liar. Mom said that exact thing after the Treadmill Incident.

  “I can’t believe anything you say anymore. It’s like you’re a different person.”