by Diana Clarke
“Lil?” I said, standing at the door to the kitchen, too afraid to enter.
She sniffed. Her T-shirt was too short for her, the hem bunched around her navel. Her mole was visible above the waistband of her pants, bigger, stretched to twice its size, like a tree’s rings growing as its trunk does.
“Lil,” I tried again, but she kept stirring, lifted a wooden spoon to her lips, and lowered it back into the pot.
I held my breath as I approached, vision perennially blurred by now. There were two of her. I reached for one and my fingers fell through bare air.
On the next reach, I found the real Lily. Ran my fingers through her hair, which was different from mine by now—hers still healthy and full. I braided the familiar strands carefully, mourning what I had lost.
“Lil, I’m sorry,” I said as I plaited, my fingers cold, clumsy. “I should’ve said something to Jemima. I’m sorry.”
She lifted the spoon to her lips again, inhaled at the heat. It was macaroni and cheese. Smell the boiling fat.
“You know, Rosie,” she said, her voice suede, “I would forgive almost anything if only you’d just eat something.” I dropped her hair and stepped away. Went to bed hungry. Lay there, stomach twisting, looking up at my poster of young Kat Mitchells. Compared my wrist to her wrist. My ankle to her ankle.
She’s without Diamond, this time, and when she walks through my door I think, for a tiny moment, that she’s a nurse. She’s thinner. Her frame too lean, her breasts too small, her arms too linear. I inhale and hold the air in my mouth, like a pet, a possession, I keep it safe.
It is so strange to see change. It is so much easier to see something stay the same. Like those long summers when the sky is so persistently blue it seems stuck that way. Like parents, stagnant characters in their roles as caregivers. Like the family house, with worn couches and an old television and photos on the walls. These things, comforting until they shift. Like when the summer sky applauds with unexpected thunder, or overhearing your parents at war, or returning home from a vacation and everything seems just slightly askew.
Lily is always the same, reliably herself, until she isn’t.
Like when she started eating and her body ballooned. Like when Mum left, and she became the mother. Like how she’s started dieting and, all of a sudden, she seems like me.
She’s wearing sunglasses and she doesn’t take them off, even when she’s in my room, sitting beside me.
“Why are you wearing those sunglasses?”
“What?”
“Sunglasses.” I point.
She reaches for them, takes them by the frame, hesitant. “Don’t freak out,” she says.
“What?”
Beneath her disguise, Lily’s face is bruised. Her left eye is at the center of a purple ring. Her cheek is cut. And now that I’m inspecting her appearance, I notice that her lip, too, is swollen and split like a sausage overcooked.
I swallow. “What happened?”
“Listen,” she says, “I don’t want you to panic, okay?”
I say nothing.
“Phil and I, we, well, our relationship is . . . It’s not . . . I mean . . .”
I wait.
“I mean he’s, well, we, we’re into BDSM.”
“Like bondage?”
“Sure.” Lily laughs a little, then winces, reaches for her torn lip. “I guess.”
“You’re hurt. Really hurt.” I can only think of my phone call with Phil. How I told him about Lily’s illicit visits.
“No!” she says. “I know, that’s not what I was saying. I mean, we were having sex and he was using a, well, a riding crop, and I moved when I wasn’t meant to, and he wasn’t expecting it and he accidentally, well . . .” She gestures to her mauled face. “This is a onetime thing. We’re usually more careful.”
“He whipped you?”
“I agreed to it! It was all consensual. This was just an accident. Please don’t freak out.” Her cheeks, red, her eyes, awash. My jaw aches with the sour aftertaste of a lie.
What I want to say: This was no accident.
What I say: “Are you sure it was an accident?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, baby sister. Of course it was. Phil would never.”
I reach for Lily’s eye, brush the bruise with my thumb.
“I’m worried about you,” I say.
“Don’t be.” She smiles. “I’m happy! But I do have to go. I’m seeing Phil tonight. His wife’s out of town.” She winks and then gasps. Her eye.
“Are you sure you’re okay, Lil?”
Lily nods, smiles. There are tears like weather in her eyes. “He’s my forever,” she says.
“I’m here,” I say. “I’m forever.”
And so the time has come. I need to get out of here. To protect Lily from Phil, from herself. If I ever want to complete my list, my catalogue of reasons to live, then she must be happy, healthy, well. And, while she is with Phil, she can’t be any of those things. He is a bad man!
It’s the first time Lily has ever really needed me to keep her safe, and I can only do that from the outside. But to be released means gaining weight, and the thought makes my breath quicken, shallow and rapid as fast running footsteps. I close my eyes, hold my breath, count, and release.
Of course, there’s the other thing, too. The letters. I’m not ready to stop receiving them. I like to be the recipient of love letters, the way I could read them with a tear welling in the corner of my eye, the way I could press the page to my chest like an Elizabethan girl, overwhelmed with the romance of her suitor’s cursive. I swallow the selfish thought deep. They have no calories, thoughts, ideas, memories, and you can store them in your stomach!
Thought Diversion is what our group leader would say.
I turn on my bedside light. Jram’s room is dark, so I flicker my light, on and off, on and off. Eventually, his room winks awake. I’m already topless. This time, he strokes himself until he paints his window white, and the reward rolls down the glass like bird shit. I smile myself to sleep, feeling woman again.
2006 (17 years old—Lily: 180 lbs, Rose: 77 lbs)
I lied to Lily. To everyone. Dieting is acceptable until it isn’t, and then people start to fear for you and fear you, which is when the lying begins.
I always said: I already ate.
I always said: I’m not hungry.
I always said: I’m not feeling well.
I always said: I’m a celiac.
I always said: Herbal tea is fine, no milk.
I always said: I don’t actually like cake.
I always said: I’m on a cleanse.
I always said: I have a stomachache.
I always said: I’m vegan now.
I always said: I’m allergic to nuts.
I always said: I’m about to work out.
I always said: I ate earlier.
I always said: Just a coffee for me.
I always said: I had a huge breakfast.
I always said: I’m on the Atkins.
I always said: I’m saving myself for dinner.
I always said: I’m full!
Lies are so much lighter than the truth. The truth paces, grounded, heavy. Lies? Helium filled! Watch as they float away! Lily didn’t believe me, of course. Not even once. To us, lies taste like gin, bitter and citric, and as I explained my way out of eating she would pucker her lips and close her eyes and sigh and sigh and sigh.
Termites don’t sleep. They are so hungry that they forgo rest in order to keep chewing, keep swallowing, keep feeding and feeding and feeding. Termites have a life span of two years, and they do not sleep during their lives. They’d rather eat those 730 days away.
18
I hand the group leader my journal.
“Here,” I say. “I’m done.”
“What do you mean you’re done?”
“I wrote about it. The start of the diet, the losing weight, the bingeing and purging. It’s all in here.”
She flips through the pages,
not reading, barely glancing at all my hard work.
“So,” she says. “What was it?”
“What was it?”
“That made you this way? Why are you here, Rose.”
“Because I started dieting and I couldn’t stop. It really was a helpful exercise, thank you.”
“Why couldn’t you stop?”
“I just couldn’t.”
The nurse hands the journal page to me. It’s heavy. Have my words made it heavier?
“You’re not done,” she says. “Keep writing.”
“I’ve run out of stuff to write. It’s getting boring. I’m just writing about dieting and dieting and dieting.”
“People don’t just diet, Rose. They diet for a reason. Here’s what I want you to do. Stop writing about your eating. Just write about you. Anything that comes to mind.”
2007 (18 years old—Lily: 187 lbs, Rose: 75 lbs)
Our father lost his job. He told us it was because his department was cut, but he told us with his flammable breath and Lily and I exchanged a look. He had not stopped drinking since our mother left. He hadn’t smiled in just as long. It confused me to see him so upset. I had always thought that the root of his sadness was Mum, the way she accused him of infidelity, shouted, screamed, the way she rolled her eyes at his very existence. But now he was small and sad, and it was clear he had loved her. Or, if not love, then something else. Family.
He decided not to look for a new job for a while—he deserved a break—so our eighteenth birthday was a stingy affair with a banner that had once read: it’s a girl! And now read: it’s 2 girl!s birthdays!
Jemima Gates asked if I wanted to pick a dress from her mother’s closet. I did. We went back to her place after school on the night of the party, just the two of us, the first time we’d ever really been alone together without the rest of the popular pack. Her attention made me feel royal.
She took her T-shirt over her head, her breasts were bigger than mine, which were flat as they had always been. Then she wriggled out of her jeans. Her underwear was made of an intricate lace. It was like watching an adult undress. I gawked.
“Jeez,” said Jemima. “Stare much?”
“Ego much?” I said, barely missing a beat. I had learned how to please Jemima. The best path to her approval was a tightrope between compliment and critique, tribute and tease. I never dropped a step.
We twirled in dresses two sizes too big but so glamorous we’d forgive the extra fabric.
“So, your sister will be there?”
“Of course she will be,” I said, cinching a white gown around my waist with my fingers. “She’s my twin. It’s her birthday, too.”
“I don’t get people who use family as an excuse to have to be close to someone,” said Jemima, whose parents mostly ignored her. “Especially you. You don’t like your parents, so you don’t hang out with them. Your mum got it. She left, see? You know you can ditch Lily, too, right?”
“No,” I said, “I can’t.”
And when I said it, Jemima’s expression fell, and I realized what she wanted. She wanted me. She wanted family.
“Did you know,” I started, “that mother cuckoo birds lay their eggs in the nests of other birds? They don’t care for their young. They just ditch them and go. They let the other mother bird raise their chicks.”
Jemima frowned. “How do you know all the stuff you know?”
“I read.”
“Well, I think you’re brilliant,” she said, and I felt it. She smiled as she took a silver necklace from a jewelry stand and draped it over my neck as if I were being crowned queen of somewhere wonderful. “You can keep this,” she said.
“My parents are one thing. But it’s different for me and Lily,” I said, fingering the necklace. “Lily is, like, it’s like, we’re the same, so it’s different.”
“Not really,” said Jemima, fixing my gown’s strap and stepping back, smiling. “Have you looked at yourself lately? You’re not anything like her anymore.”
The remark made me recoil, a jab to the gut, but, looking in the mirror, bones in a ball gown, I smiled.
“Whatever,” Jemima continued. “Isn’t she dating that Tyler Marks guy now? Will he be there? He got kind of hot over summer.”
The dress surrounded me like a lampshade. I didn’t look pretty, but I did look so, so thin.
The party was a disaster. Defrosted hors d’oeuvres circled the room like flies over a bloody carcass, and the crowd was a bag of odds and ends: old neighbors, acquaintances, some of Lily’s exes, the popular girls, our father.
Lily wore a flash of red lipstick and a matching dress that licked her body, thigh to breast. She stood in the kitchen with her latest boyfriend, Tyler, and two of Tyler’s friends. She didn’t tend to have girlfriends, but Lily knew how to exist at the center of a ring of boys.
“Lil,” I shouted from the door of the kitchen. I was tipsy on vodka and ice water. Jemima suggested a lime wedge to take the edge off, but those five citrus calories would put me over my day’s quota. I beckoned and Lily excused herself from the boys, who were already chugging bourbon, a masculinity show.
“Hey.” She smiled. “What’s up? You okay?” She inspected my eyes, and I knew she knew I’d been drinking. And she knew I knew she knew, too. This had always been the way.
“Let me get you a drink,” I said.
“No, that’s okay, but thank you. How are you?” she said. “You look beautiful. I like that necklace.”
“Thanks. It’s Jemima’s. I’m okay. How are you?”
“I’m okay.”
We watched each other. Wary. Like looking in a fun house mirror and not knowing where, exactly, the self stopped and the reflection began.
“Babe,” slurred Tyler from over Lily’s shoulder. “I did ten seconds!”
“Proud of you, babe,” Lily shouted, but she was still looking at me. We were acting like acquaintances except I could taste the heat from her blush and the rosiness was transferring to my own cheeks.
“Do you want to go talk somewhere?” I said.
Lily turned and checked on Tyler, who had started the drinking contest anew, and then back to me. She nodded. “Okay.”
I took her hand, so like mine, like leading myself to our bedroom. We sat on our old piano stool, side by side. Before they gave up on us, our parents had arranged weekly piano lessons, and we had sat, just like this, sharing the stool and sharing the keys, me on the low notes, Lily on the high.
I pressed a key, a low blurt rang through the room and ricocheted off the walls and then seeped like a leak into the floors.
“What’s up?” said Lily.
“How are you?” I tried again.
“Good,” said Lily. “How are you?”
I pressed another key, frustrated. It was like talking to a distant relative. A stranger. Someone who barely knew the language.
“You’re dressed up,” I said.
“Thanks.”
“Red,” I said, but I had wanted to tell her she looked beautiful.
“What?”
“You’re wearing red.”
She nodded. “Oh. Yeah. I am. Yeah.”
“How’s Tyler?” I tried.
Lily shrugged. “I don’t think he’s the one.”
I laughed. She laughed.
“That’s probably good,” I said, and Lily pressed a high note. I waited until it bled into silence. “Jemima said something earlier, something about how he’s cute, about how she’s going to make a move tonight.”
Lily chuckled. “I’m not worried. He’s not into skinny—I mean, well, he’s not into Jemima.”
I swallowed. “Lily,” I said.
She turned to face me, and I her.
“I don’t know,” I finally said.
“I don’t know, either.”
I nodded. She nodded.
“Sometimes it seems like the only thing we can talk about anymore is my dieting,” I whispered. I could hear my words tilting, italicized with alcohol. I ha
dn’t even finished a single drink, but my body felt made of liquor.
“Sometimes it seems like that’s all you are anymore, Rosie,” said Lily. “But you could be so much more than that.”
“You mean I could be you.”
Lily shrugged. “You couldn’t keep being me forever.”
I downed the rest of my drink. Stood, let the vertigo cyclone through me, and left Lily sitting alone. She shifted into the center of the stool before I even left the room.
I’ve never known how to be me, but I’ve always known how not to be. The best way to not be yourself is to be someone else. I could be Lily, I could be Jemima, I could be Kat Mitchells. I’ve always morphed to fit my container, like a liquid. Look at all the forms I can take! Like the Celaenia excavata, a spider that uses camouflage as a defense mechanism. The spider is mainly hunted by birds; its back looks like a pile of bird droppings, and all it has to do to deter its predators is keep still. No bird wants to eat its own shit.
The night traipsed on and I got drunker. Tyler had long since blacked out and so Lily shook her body against a number of men who held their erections tight against her ass. Everyone was Lily’s orbit, and she was the sun, crucial and bright. I stumbled toward her.
“Jason,” Lily said, pushing a man’s body away from her and toward me. “This is my twin, Rose.”
“Twin?” said Jason. “Man, I must be fucked up.”
“You guys should dance,” said Lily. “Dance,” she said again.
I did, jolting my body, flailing my arms wide. I felt good. I felt better than I had in a long time. I smiled up at the swirling ceiling and twirled.
“You want another drink, babe?” Jason whispered in my ear and his breath was hot and smoky. I nodded. I did. I wanted so many more drinks.
He came back with a can, some premixed cocktail. I squinted at the nutrition information on the back, but my eyes were doing acrobatics and the can was kaleidoscoping.
“Just drink,” Lily shouted, reaching over to crack the can open. I nodded, tipped the drink to my lips, and swallowed. I finished the whole can before I realized what I’d done. I reached for my stomach and felt the swell of it, convex against my palm.