Hope and Other Luxuries: A Mother's Life With a Daughter's Anorexia

by Clare B. Dunkle

  Could he actually put Elena into the hospital, even without our permission? I wasn’t sure. Our status in Germany, connected to a military base overseas, did put us into a somewhat vulnerable position. Overseas military doctors have greater latitude than civilian doctors do back home. It could be that Dr. Petras was within his rights to do this, and he certainly acted as if he was.

  But in one way at least, this hospitalization wouldn’t be a bad thing. It would give us the chance to bring other doctors into the picture very quickly. Putting Elena into the pediatric ward automatically meant having her care overseen by the ward pediatrician, and that pediatrician was bound to order the important medical tests I was thinking of, tests that could take weeks to order in this busy wartime hospital if Elena weren’t an inpatient there.

  Eight pounds of weight loss in one month might mean a very serious medical condition: lupus, hepatitis, a metabolic disorder, or even leukemia. The sooner we knew if one of these conditions was present, the better.

  So Joe and I exchanged glances, and we wordlessly agreed: we wouldn’t fight Dr. Petras on this. A couple of days in the hospital might bring us important answers. But I looked at the expressionless expression that shouldn’t be on my daughter’s face, and I felt torn and deeply distressed.

  For another adolescent, this might not be an issue at all. A few days of pampering in the hospital might seem like a spa vacation. But not for Elena. She hated bullies. And this was the girl Dr. Petras was forcing into care, against her will and over her parents’ authority.

  He had bullied her entire family at a single blow.

  When Elena was barely old enough to stand up, I took one of Valerie’s toys away from her. Little Elena didn’t cry. She picked up a wooden block and toddled after me. She followed me around the coffee table, clutching its edge for support. I stopped to pick up another toy, and Elena managed to catch up—and she whomped me in the back of the knee with her block.

  When Elena was in grade school, she had a teacher who bullied a little boy in her class. The boy wouldn’t answer back, but his ears would turn bright red from humiliation. And whenever Elena saw those bright-red ears, she would see red herself, and she would launch into a verbal attack on the teacher. For a grade-schooler, she came up with some truly insightful insults.

  “Mrs. Dunkle,” the teacher would tell me, “you need to talk to your daughter!”

  I did talk to Elena. I asked her if she wanted me to tell the teacher what I thought of an adult who took out his own unhappiness on small children.

  “No,” Elena said. “That would make it worse. Last week, he lectured us for fifteen minutes about not carrying tales to our parents.”

  “But if he knows I know what this is about,” I said, “then at least he won’t punish you anymore.”

  “Punish me!” Elena laughed. “He sends me to the library! I get to sit and read books while everybody else is outside in the cold.”

  Bullies didn’t just make Elena angry. They awakened in her an idealistic drive to rebalance the universe. I knew that if she saw this as a bullying situation, she would fight it with everything she had.

  Joe and I went down to the food court to order Elena her favorite pizza. By the time we brought it back to the pediatric ward, she was sitting on a hospital bed, wearing a pair of green nurse’s scrubs as pajamas. She hadn’t pulled the covers up. It was as if she would be on that bed only for a few minutes. She set the pizza aside, smoking hot and deliciously cheesy, without so much as a glance.

  “I’ll be fine, Mom,” she said firmly as I hugged her good-bye.

  I was afraid I knew what Elena meant when she said this. She meant that she would show not one speck of weakness. Worries rose up and buzzed around me like a cloud of gnats. How could a child psychiatrist understand so little of this child’s nature?

  “Please eat,” I told her. “It’s for us, not for him. I’ll miss you! We want you home.”

  Elena sat like a statue. The blank mask was still on her face—that expressionless expression that had no business being on her face at all.

  “I’ll be fine,” she said again in that same firm, even tone.

  Which wasn’t the same thing as happy.

  Or well.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Joe and I walked out to the hospital parking lot together. He was worried, too, but he was more practical than I was.

  “A week, max,” he said, half hoping and half predicting. “It can’t take her long to gain weight.”

  Then he kissed me and drove back to his stressful workday.

  I got into my car and took the familiar turns on autopilot. Part of my mind was watching the sparse traffic on the German autobahn, but the rest of it was a chaos of emotion.

  I’m a storyteller. I have to have a story to tell. That means I have to have some sense of where things have come from and where they’re going. But at that moment, I had absolutely no story to tell about the events of our lives.

  The family’s going through a rough patch right now . . . My girls—well, they’re brilliant, but they do have their moments . . . Oh, sure, we have issues like everyone else, but we’re all right, really . . .

  No, none of those. All I had were worries and questions.

  The more I thought about the meeting we’d just been through, the more confused and upset I felt. I went back through it, trying to find the moment where we had miscommunicated, the moment where we had gone from consulting to arguing. I couldn’t find that moment, so I went back through the phone call. I couldn’t find the moment there, either.

  From the very beginning, Dr. Petras had been hostile. He had maneuvered from the first as if he were facing enemies, people he didn’t respect. But why? When he had consulted with us about Valerie, he had been warm and sympathetic. Why had he changed?

  My heart whispered the answer:

  Because one child might have problems, sure. But what can it mean if both do?

  And I remembered Dr. Petras’s unfriendly eyes:

  What did you do to them? You bad mother!

  I am tremendously proud of my mother. In the years before career women were common, she became a professor at quite a young age. And later, when the head of her department pointed out that professors ought to have a PhD, my mother went out and earned her PhD. She’s a scholar from the tips of her typewriter-key-blunted fingers to the depths of her vertical file cabinets. To this day, she proofreads manuscripts for publication. She’s spending her retirement straightening out footnotes and block quotations.

  My mother is an extraordinary person. But when I was young, I was determined to outdo her. I was going to become an extraordinary mother.

  Long before I brought my babies home from the hospital, I had already decided that I would be an amazing mother. My children would be read to and sung to; they would hear nursery rhymes and attend story hour; they would go to the scientifically best preschool and have the scientifically best backyard play set. They would have the right kinds of toys and the right kinds of friends. They would learn and grow and blossom in ways I had only dreamed of.

  My children, I vowed, would never once enter the doors of a huge public school, to be bullied and bored the way I was. They would have early education, small class sizes, and homework help, and they would grow up confident and loved.

  From the moment I found out I was pregnant, I began reading the right books about education. On the backs of Joe’s and my dedicated frugality, we sent our girls to the best preschool in town. We bought them gender-neutral toys and games. We let them watch only age-appropriate shows. I read books on nutrition and, with my limited culinary skills, I worked to prepare nutritionally dense meals.

  No sodas in my house! Sugar was a drug. No cable TV for us! We were building neurons. It would have been hard work if watching my girls grow up hadn’t been such a joy.

  But now . . .

  What did she do to them—that mother? What did she do to those girls?

  The morning after Valerie’s overdose,
Joe and Elena and I couldn’t just hide at home and lick our wounds. Joe’s squadron had prepared a picnic, and as its deputy, he needed to attend. As an officer’s wife, I had helped with the preparations, and there were things I had agreed to bring. All the people who were important in our social life were there: colleagues, associates, subordinates, bosses, babysitting charges, and friends.

  So we showed up just long enough to do what we had to do. And we said it. We faced the world, and we said it:

  “We were up all night with Valerie in the ER. No, Valerie wasn’t in an accident. She overdosed. She took a bottle of pills.”

  Somehow, the hard, grinding reality of hearing those words out loud under the sunshine and blue sky felt more real to me than the long hours we had spent the night before by Valerie’s bedside. Is that because I’m a storyteller, so focused on telling stories that telling my own story felt more real than living it?

  “No, Valerie hasn’t been released. She signed herself into the psych ward.”

  Because lies don’t help. Lies create vulnerability. The truth carries its own severe, Spartan pride.

  Did I see it in their eyes that day—that stern, hostile look? There she is, that mother—that bad mother!

  No.

  I heard, “Look after yourself, Clare. Get help if you need it.”

  It’s the only thing I remember.

  The wife of our group commander was at our squadron picnic. Her husband oversaw our squadron as well as another one, and as the full colonel who commanded us, he ranked as royalty in our small world. Among the officers’ spouses, so did his wife.

  I knew her, of course, but we weren’t friends. One didn’t befriend royalty.

  Petite, slim, and pretty, with bright black eyes and hands that fluttered in the air as she spoke, she had always reminded me of a songbird. Her daughter was beautiful and talented, earning top grades at the university. But her son had disabilities so severe that he couldn’t speak.

  That fresh July morning after Valerie’s overdose, she came to stand with me, very close. She looked me in the eye, as if the two of us were the only people there.

  “Don’t be afraid to get help,” she said. “I had to get help myself for a while.”

  When I think back on that precious gift of kindness, it still brings tears to my eyes.

  So, no, I didn’t see that look in the eyes of our friends and colleagues—that harsh, judging look. I didn’t hear that cruel whispered voice. But that didn’t mean I had escaped it. I couldn’t escape it.

  That voice came from me.

  A cutter? Do you know what kind of pain it takes to become a cutter? What kind of mother would put her child through so much pain?

  An overdose? Has anyone helped that girl? Does her family even notice she’s there? How could her family let her live with such desperation?

  And now, as I drove away from Dr. Petras’s stern presence, I heard that voice again. It was my own voice, from four or five years ago.

  It was the voice of that extraordinary mother.

  Two children in the hospital? What sort of home is she running? Thank God that’s never going to happen to me! My girls know that they’re loved.

  The me of four years ago had daughters who were at home on two continents. They laughed and sang and prattled all day long in fluent English and fluent German. They led prayers. They helped others. They didn’t have a single cavity. They were beautiful. They read Shakespeare for fun.

  Good girls have good mothers. Extraordinary girls have extraordinary mothers. But deeply troubled girls? Oh, the old me knew all about them.

  Too much violence on the television. (Sad head shake.) Too much sugar. (Wise nod.) Too much pressure to leave childhood behind. Not enough laughter. Not enough fun.

  The old me had read the parenting books. The old me had an answer for everything. Dropping out of college?

  Not enough involvement in the early years. Not enough help with goals.

  A runaway?

  Too strict. Too judgmental. Teenagers need respect. You can’t just lecture them and sock them with punishments. You have to listen. You have to be ready to let them do the teaching.

  And anorexia nervosa? The old me had the answer for that, too.

  Unrealistic, hyperperfect Barbie dolls. Photoshopped models in magazines. Overly sexualized clothing and gender-stereotyping toys. I wonder if that poor girl was wearing nail polish in preschool. I wonder if she had a cell phone in grade school.

  Oh, yes, the old me had all the answers.

  But during the last few years, what had happened to these brilliant, beautiful girls? What had happened to their laughter and creativity?

  What had happened to their mother—that extraordinary mother?

  She let them down, that’s what she did. She must have been too strict.

  But I wasn’t! I didn’t dictate. I loved to hear their ideas. They read to me more than I read to them. “Hey, Mom, guess what!” How many times did I hear that? I learned so much from my girls . . .

  Two daughters in the hospital—she must have never let them breathe! I’ll bet she ran their lives and gave them no room to grow. I’ll bet she had no life of her own, so she lived through her children. That’s what she did—she dominated those poor girls.

  No, that’s not right! I had my own goals, my happy marriage . . . I had my imagination, my book career . . .

  But I couldn’t shut it off. I heard that stern, unrelenting voice echo in my mind all the way home, and I found no comfort against the dull shame that ached inside. But did the shame I felt come from knowing what I was now? Or from knowing what I used to be?

  Well, that poor mother! But that’s what happens when parents are selfish and uninspired. That’s what happens when they just react to things and don’t take time to think. No, thank God! This isn’t my problem. It has nothing to do with me.

  It hurt me to hear what kind of person I’d been back when I was an extraordinary mother.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The following morning, I drove back to the hospital and met the pediatrician in charge of Elena’s care. He was a young, well-educated doctor straight from the States, and unlike Dr. Petras, he seemed neither stern nor disapproving.

  “I’m trying to understand this anorexia diagnosis,” I told him. “My husband and I spent a couple of hours last night looking up data about it, and the official diagnostic criteria clearly states that the anorexic must be at or below eighty-five percent of normal weight. But Elena’s always been above that level, even last school year when we were under so much stress. I know because the school counselor and I kept checking her weight.”

  The pediatrician frowned. “I know,” he said. “I don’t think your daughter has anorexia nervosa at all. If it had been up to me, she wouldn’t be in the hospital, but I’m not the doctor who admitted her.”

  This made me feel simultaneously more hopeful and more worried.

  “If she’s not anorexic, then what do you think caused her weight loss?”

  “I’m ordering blood work,” he said. “It’ll help us rule out a whole host of things.”

  After the appointment, I stayed behind to visit with Elena. The pediatric ward was almost empty, and she had already made friends with the nurses and techs. She greeted each one by name as they dropped in to check on her and, one by one, she introduced them to me. Then, after they left, she filled me in on their gossip. It took twenty minutes of lively chatter to summarize all the interesting things she had learned.

  Reassured by the sparkle in her eyes, I relaxed. Elena wasn’t taking this so hard. Yes, as a child, she had resisted bullies to Quixotic lengths, but she was older and more mature now. She wasn’t that same idealistic crusader. She could be practical, too.

  But then I lifted the lid off the lunch tray by her bed and discovered that she hadn’t even touched it.

  “Hey! When are you going to get to this?” I asked.

  “Never mind that,” Elena said. “It’s a mistake. That’s the stan
dard tray. Dr. Petras says I’m supposed to get a special diet, so I’m waiting till it gets here.”

  “But Elena, if you don’t eat,” I pointed out, “you’re not going to put that weight on.”

  She curled her lip. “Well, I’m certainly not eating two lunches!”

  Worried that Elena was missing her meal, I went out to check with the nurses sitting at the station. No, they hadn’t heard about a special tray, but they promised to call and check on it for me.

  I stayed there for another hour. No special tray showed up.

  “I think you ought to go ahead and eat this one,” I said. “It looks as if the special diet might not start till tonight.”

  “Nah, I’m not hungry right now anyway,” Elena told me. “I’ve been snacking on pudding. You should grab one, too; they’re free. They’re in the fridge next to the nurses’ station.”

  I was starting to get hungry. A pudding sounded good. “But I shouldn’t be eating the hospital’s food,” I pointed out.

  “Mom!” Elena said. “You wouldn’t even be here if the doctor they hired hadn’t been a maniac. Eat a pudding, for God’s sake!”

  Okay, she had a point. And besides, maybe she would split it with me.

  I went out to the refrigerator by the nurses’ station. The whole thing was packed with soft drinks and pudding cups. It did look as if they could spare one. I chose a vanilla and closed the fridge door.

  “For Elena,” I explained a little sheepishly to the nurse sitting nearby. “She’s been loading up on the puddings, I guess.”

  “Not that I’ve seen,” the nurse said. “Why, are we running low? What’s missing?”

  I opened the door again.

  The fridge was full. No puddings were missing except for the one I was holding in my hand. And those prickles of worry started up again.

  When exactly had Elena been snacking on pudding?

  The next day, when I came to visit Elena, she was too tired or too bored to tell me stories. But that was okay. She had found something else for us to do. The pediatric nurses had brought her a VHS player and a stack of Disney tapes.