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

by Clare B. Dunkle

  By the time I had driven home and brewed a cup of coffee, the horror of the predawn ordeal was starting to fade. I told Joe about the drug interactions while he was getting ready for work.

  “And you know she just moved in there,” I said. “That makes night frights so much worse. Remember the first night we spent in Germany, and you and Elena both had night frights? You yelled, and she screamed! I was a nervous wreck—I thought surely someone in the hotel would call the police.”

  “Dad told me he was napping once,” Joe said, “and this hideous face grinned at him through the window. It was peeking in at the bottom, where the shade wasn’t pulled all the way down. He figured he had just had a bad dream, so he got up and walked over to the window. He bent down to look outside, and there it was, still there—nose to nose with him.”

  “Oh, my God! Then did he wake up?”

  “Nope,” Joe said. “I told you, he was awake. He was on his feet, standing by the window.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He yelled, and it vanished.”

  With this vision in my head and adrenaline still coursing through my system, I gave a jump when my phone rang. Worry fluttered up at me when I saw that it was Elena again. But I calmed down when I heard her hello. She sounded normal. Her voice was measured and even.

  Then I registered what she was saying:

  “I have to move out of the dorms. I just got fired.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Joe took the morning off, and we met Elena at a pancake place to talk it over. I felt so stressed and jittery that I almost wanted to wring my hands and cry, “What do we do? What do we do?” like a mother in a Victorian melodrama. But Elena, in spite of her horrible morning, was matter-of-fact. Her good sense calmed me down.

  “Your manager fired you?” Joe asked. “The same one who just hired you?”

  “No, it was the dorm managers who hired me, but it’s their new boss who did the firing,” Elena said. “She just got here on the first day of RA Orientation.”

  “Did she give you a reason?”

  “No. She said that by law, she didn’t have to give a reason.”

  I couldn’t help thinking back to the hysterical call we’d received. “Maybe somebody saw you having your night fright after all.”

  “No, that didn’t happen,” Elena said. “I didn’t see anybody. And even if somebody heard me, they’d ask first what was wrong.”

  We ordered pancakes, and Elena filled us in on her theory. The boss was new, so she didn’t know Elena personally, and Elena had reported yesterday evening that another RA had been planning a suicide attempt.

  “That RA’s got a vindictive streak,” Elena said. “None of the other RAs will have anything to do with him. I’ve only been nice to him because I’ve felt sorry for him, so he’s got to know it’s me who told. If the boss talked to him, I’ll bet he told her a bunch of lies.”

  “Wouldn’t she talk to the dorm managers and learn the truth?” Joe asked.

  “I don’t know about that,” Elena said. “This woman looks pretty insecure to me. She might not have wanted to ask for anyone’s opinion. I’m not sure she’s into the whole power-sharing thing.”

  While I drank my coffee, I tried to take heart from Joe and Elena. They were both being reasonable. But my nerves were shot. They were just shot. I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “The weird thing,” Elena said, “is that the boss didn’t just fire me, she also threw me out of the dorms. Ordered out of the dorms—that never happens! Even students who break laws are given a second chance. I’ve known underage RAs who were caught with alcohol in their rooms, and they got a second chance. I’ve seen RAs falling-down drunk, right in front of their manager, and they got counseled, but they kept their job. I don’t know of a single RA who got denied permission to live on campus. That’s really strange.”

  The coffee and calm conversation worked on my shattered nerves. A plan. We needed a plan.

  “Is there an appeals process?” I asked.

  “I’m way ahead of you, Mom,” Elena said. “I’ve already looked it up.”

  So Joe went to work while Elena and I went to the library, and I helped Elena write an appeal letter. It was sober and tactful, and it apologized for any offense Elena might have caused inadvertently.

  “That’s in case you’re right about the insecurity problem,” I said. “Maybe you hit one of her trip wires.”

  “And will you come with me to the appeal meeting?” Elena asked. “It might be a good idea for me to have a witness.”

  The appeal meeting took place a couple of days later with the head of Housing. He was a grandfatherly gentleman. He seemed very nice, and I couldn’t imagine, after Elena’s excellent work for them, that he wouldn’t give her another chance.

  But that isn’t what happened. “Elena, we’re denying your appeal,” he said sadly.

  I felt stunned.

  What could Elena have done? Granted, she had gotten run-down and been sick, and granted, she had had that night fright. But no one had even known about it. And RAs were student employees. They were given second chances. The idea was that this was part of their education, learning how to prepare for the business world.

  Elena wasn’t a risk taker. She prided herself on obeying rules, and she had worked hard to get this job for three solid months. Right before this, the managers had loved her. What could have happened?

  If my daughter felt as stunned as I did, she didn’t show it. She simply said in a courteous tone, “I’d like to know what this is all about.” And then, just as she had done for Joe and me, she went on to relate all the different examples she knew of RAs who had gotten second chances.

  But the head of Housing wouldn’t elaborate. He didn’t say, “It’s because you were caught with alcohol in your room,” or some other concrete rule violation. Instead, he launched into vague advice. Elena should take time to smell the roses. Losing this RA position would give her a chance to relax. She shouldn’t be working so hard.

  I felt even more stunned. Yes, Elena was tired, but what did that have to do with being competent at her job?

  Elena just smiled and pointed out that she liked the work and was good at it. While she appreciated his concern, she felt—with no disrespect—that she should be the judge of what she could handle.

  At this, the head of Housing put on a grave face. And then he said something so incredible that I could hardly believe I was hearing it:

  “Resident assistants have to be role models to the students under their care. That’s an unwritten contract I have with their parents. And in good conscience, Elena, I cannot put you forward as a role model for new students.”

  A high-GPA dean’s list member for two semesters running.

  An involved and outgoing volunteer on campus.

  The winner of a rare departmental award.

  And this girl wasn’t a good role model?!

  I fought down my fury. Excess emotion is a weakness. Logic and reason. Logic and reason!

  What did I know that told badly against my daughter? Yes, she could be prickly to family, and yes, she tried to do too much. She was looking a little thin and stressed, but she wasn’t excessively thin—not as thin as she’d been during the Summer from Hell, for instance. Yes, she saw a hallucination the other morning, but the mix of medicines almost certainly brought that on, and besides, who would have known, and why would anyone hold that against her? And I handled her finances, so I knew she hadn’t had tickets or fines for bad behavior. Her paychecks were getting deposited straight into her account. There weren’t odd withdrawals that might be drugs or alcohol.

  Meanwhile, Elena kept her composure. She smiled and pointed out her dean’s list status, her long record of volunteering, and her complete lack of disciplinary issues.

  “I was the first RA chosen for this year’s batch of fall hires,” she said. “The managers watched my work all summer, and then the senior dorm manager said, ‘We aren’t sure about everybody
we’re keeping yet, but we knew we wanted you.’ The university ambassadors asked me to join their group. They represent the best this school has to offer. But you’re telling me that I’m not a good role model. Can you tell me why?”

  The head of Housing looked distinctly uncomfortable. He also looked surprised. I got the feeling that this wasn’t the result he had expected. I got the feeling that here again was a man who had hoped for tears and drama. They certainly would have strengthened his case.

  “I’m sorry, Elena,” he said. “But I’m not going to discuss this any further.”

  And that was the end of the meeting.

  We left the office without speaking, got into my car, and started to drive. Elena still looked unruffled, but I knew she was seething. As for me, I felt as if I’d been punched in the gut.

  “I don’t get this!” I said. “I just don’t get it!”

  “I think I do,” Elena said.

  It had happened during their RA Orientation. “It was a sensitivity session,” she said. “We were supposed to share our experiences with disabilities, and even share our own disabilities. So I stood up and told them about the people I’d met at Drew Center. It was to raise their awareness about eating disorders.”

  “That can’t be all there is to it,” I said. “Not to get you fired.”

  “When I was leaving the session, I walked by that new boss,” Elena said, “the one who fired me but told me she didn’t have to state a reason. She’s a personal friend of the head of Housing, and he brought her in here to run the dorms over all his managers who applied for the job. She’s never even worked at a university before, so she’s got to be feeling insecure. She’s a little pudgy, and she was wearing this short tight skirt, like she wants to project that no-nonsense businesswoman persona—I can tell that body image matters to her. And she was glaring at me. Just glaring.”

  No—it was incredible! It couldn’t be true that a woman would fire another woman just for having an eating disorder—just for being thin! Besides, anorexia nervosa was a disability, wasn’t it? And weren’t we in the days of ADA now, where everyone on a college campus was supposed to help disabled students meet their potential?

  Disabilities weren’t supposed to matter anymore. They weren’t supposed to hold anyone back.

  “That boss is a new hire,” I said. “Maybe she was just trying to look tough. I can’t imagine that she was deliberately holding your eating disorder against you.”

  But on the other hand, the unimaginable had happened. My mind was still reeling, trying to take it all in.

  I cannot put you forward as a role model. For God’s sake! What did that even mean?

  “Yeah, but that doesn’t explain what she did next,” Elena said. “She had my manager call me up that evening and ask me to come to the Counseling Center before Orientation the next morning. I thought it was to help that RA who was suicidal, but it wasn’t. It was just me! That same new boss was there to walk me to the Counseling Center, and when I got out of the session they’d set up, the boss was still there, waiting around for me to get out of the session, like she had nothing else to do. And then she made me take the day off. She made me go back to my dorm room and miss a day of Orientation.”

  “I thought you said Orientation is mandatory.”

  “It is!” Elena said. “That’s what I told her! But she wouldn’t listen. And then, halfway through the day, two of the RA managers came by my door to ‘check on me.’ I was bitchy, sure. I told them they knew perfectly well I was off duty and that they had no business knocking on my door. They left after a couple of minutes. But right after they left, the police came.”

  “The police!”

  “Yeah. They said they’d gotten a wellness-check call. And it came from one of the managers who’d just been there.”

  “Wellness check?”

  “Suicide or drugs,” Elena explained. “It’s supposed to be when your life’s in danger. If you don’t open the door, they unlock it.”

  My brain was reeling even more now. I could barely drive. I focused for a few seconds on the street, the cars around me, the stores we were passing. There was the office-plants rental place that held a sale on used palms and bromeliads every couple of months. I’d always meant to stop by . . .

  It didn’t help. My brain kept on reeling. “Wellness check?” I said.

  “That’s what I said!” Elena told me. “And the police were pretty confused about it, too. They kept looking around, like they thought I was hiding the person they were supposed to check on.”

  “Were you maybe confused or disoriented when you talked to the managers?” I asked. “You were on that antibiotic medication by then, and sometimes you can have trouble waking up.”

  “Nope, I remember exactly what I said. I wasn’t friendly about it, and I let them know that it was bullshit—they can’t check up on off-duty RAs like that. But I didn’t give them any reason to call the police.”

  “So . . . ,” I said. “A Counseling Center visit, a special rest day, a room check, and then the police get called. It all adds up to you being unable to do your job—because you have a mental illness.”

  “It was a setup,” Elena agreed. “That crap with the head of Housing about being a good role model—they don’t want to turn me loose with students because I’m anorexic. And everybody knows that anorexics recruit other anorexics, right? People say that about us, that we get newbies hooked on our diets, we teach them our tricks . . . A lot of idiots treat anorexics like we’ve got a contagious disease.”

  That tone of voice, grandfatherly and sorrowful: I cannot put you forward as a role model.

  “No—that’s crazy!” I said. “I can hardly believe it.”

  But then again, the whole morning had been crazy. Overnight, our world had become crazy.

  Again!

  The plan. I clung to the plan. I didn’t think beyond it. We had a deadline of midnight to move Elena’s belongings out of her room. She was coming back home to live with us. The head of Housing had graciously removed the restriction against her living in the dorms, but Elena wouldn’t do it.

  We scrounged boxes and packed up Elena’s pretty dorm room that she had just finished unpacking. My nerves were jangling like so many plucked guitar strings, and I just wanted to stand on Elena’s balcony and scream. But she was strong and calm through it all. She had such dignity.

  The Little Princess would have understood Elena that day. So would Heathcliff. So would a certain fiercely proud little freak in Goodwill clothes, sitting and reading next to the fence at the far corner of the playground.

  It matters how you hold up your head in retreat. It matters how they look away when you look them in the eye.

  We drove home and dismantled my tidy guest room, and Elena piled her boxes in the middle of its floor. She put Dylan’s bowl on the counter of the hall bathroom. He was a bright blue spark of defiance in the red haze of the day.

  The plan. I needed a plan. We had come to the end of this plan, so I started working on another one. “You can fight this,” I told Elena as we sat down with cups of tea. “I’ll help you if you want.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Elena said. “Let’s do this.”

  First, we went to the Counseling Center to check up on that odd morning appointment. The counselor who had spoken to Elena that day turned out to be surprisingly candid. Yes, she said, the new dorm boss had come in to speak to her as soon as Elena had left.

  “She wanted to know if, in my opinion, you were competent to do your job,” the counselor said. “I told her we don’t make those sorts of judgments.”

  Competent to do her job! I felt the shock of that run through me. This girl who had assisted at surgeries, who had smiled and helped soldiers with bloodstained bandages on, with chunks of shrapnel still sticking out of them . . .

  I felt the shock, and I felt fury. But I smiled, just as Elena was smiling. The plan. Stick to the plan.

  “Would you be willing to write a letter to that effect,” I asked
, “to help us in a wrongful-termination case?”

  “Oh, absolutely,” the counselor said. “I’ll be happy to do that. And to state this to a board of inquiry as well, if that comes up.”

  There: That was some good news for a change.

  Then we went to the campus police station and talked to the police chief. We needed a copy of the police report filed after the wellness check. The police chief invited us into his office. He heard Elena out without interrupting, and he was thoughtful and sympathetic.

  “That man who runs Housing is an idiot!” he said. “But they train us to keep an eye out for self-harm when we talk to our students. And I have to say,” he said, taking Elena gently by the wrist, “that this looks like it might be self-harm to me.”

  He pointed to a pink scar that spiraled down Elena’s forearm. And he didn’t ask the question, but his eyes did.

  I leaned forward in my chair. I knew when the cut had occurred: it dated from the day last October when Elena had ended up in the ER with her blackout. I knew what Elena had told me about it afterward: it was an accident that had occurred while she was unconscious. I had seen how her arms circled during her dissociation blackouts, so I had assumed that that’s how it had happened.

  But what did I know about this scar—really?

  Elena smiled at the police chief. She seemed completely at ease. “That,” she said, pointing at the scar, “was an accident. But I’ll be honest: I was pretty drunk at the time.”

  The police chief checked his department’s records and discovered that his officers didn’t even write up a report after the wellness check because they hadn’t seen anything worth reporting. In fact, they could see no reason why they had been called to Elena’s room. So the police chief supplied us with evidence of the nonreport, as well as a statement that Elena had a completely clean record at the school.

  “It certainly looks suspicious to me,” he told us.

  That was more good news. The plan was going well.