by Sarah Mussi
‘An early memory?’
I nod my head.
‘Bad?’
I nod again. I make a sign with my hand in the air as if I’m turning a wheel.
‘Worse than bad?’
I nod.
‘Somebody beat you?’
I shake.
‘Somebody touched you up?’
Shake.
‘Somebody abused you full on?’
Shake.
‘Were you in pain?’
Shake.
‘I’m running out of ideas,’ says Fletcher. ‘Give me a clue.’
I get out my phone. I open up the notes. My fingers are shaking. I think I’m going to drop the phone. My hands. My palms. I’m sweating. I try to breathe. I type into the notes: BODY.
‘There was a body?’ says Fletcher. ‘As in dead?’
I nod my head. I keep nodding. I drag my sleeve across my eyes again. My throat won’t come unstuck. The Alien suddenly materializes, takes one look at me, shakes a dozen heads and spreads superglue across my lips. It blasts me with: ‘We Must Not Tell Our Secrets.’ It puts one of its tentacles under my chin and presses my lips firmly shut.
‘You killed someone?’ says Fletcher.
I shake my head.
‘You watched while somebody killed someone?’
I shake my head. I don’t think I did. I can’t be sure. Maybe that’s behind another locked door.
‘So there’s a random body somewhere in your past?’
The Alien is trying to superglue my eyes shut as well. I think I’m going to vomit. I don’t know how I’ll vomit if I can’t open my mouth. I hope Fletcher gets to the truth soon. I’m so tired. I’ll drown soon. I just want to roll into a small ball.
‘Whose body was it?’
That’s the thing. I don’t know.
I don’t know what I was doing in that room.
And I can’t make it go away and it’s freaking me out. IT’S FREAKING ME OUT.
‘OK, OK,’ says Fletcher. ‘Breathe. Just breathe.’
I try, but I’m deep underwater.
‘So you don’t know what happened and you don’t know who it was?’ says Fletcher.
I nod.
‘Well, I’m your recovery buddy,’ says Fletcher, ‘so I’ll help you find out.’
The thought of going back into that room to find anything out is too much. I’m going to faint. I hold up my hand. I flap it. I rock on the bed.
Fletcher sits down beside me. He puts his lovely shoulders next to mine. He takes my hand in his, stops it flapping.
‘It’ll be a murder mystery, a whodunnit, a body in a locked room,’ he says. ‘It won’t be scary at all. We’ll be in it together the whole time. We’ll be detectives. Don’t worry. We’ll find out everything. Maybe Judith’s right even if she is a dickhead. Maybe we can undo all that shit. It will be OK.’
I don’t say anything. The Alien has succeeded in supergluing my eyelids together. He’s pressing on one of them with a tentacle. I help him. I press the knuckles of my left fist into the other eye socket.
Fletcher catches my fist, guides it down to my lap and holds it with my flapping hand.
‘Hey, Dani, I’m here,’ he says. ‘I’m going to be here for you.’
And even though I can’t see him, I know it’s the real Fletcher sitting beside me now – not that goddamn awesome Detective Fletcher.
He puts his arm around my shoulders and hugs my Thinness to him.
I can’t nod or shake my head or flap my hand or do anything any more.
‘I’m just going to sit here,’ he says. ‘I’m just going to sit here, Dani, and hold you until you feel OK.’
14
Everybody runs strategies. Don’t lie. Not to yourself. You’re running a strategy right now. You probably repackage it and give it a nice name – like Kindness or Being Helpful – but you are running a shitty strategy and you know it.
Every strategy is about feeling good. Kindness and Being Helpful are just the same. The payoff is that you get to feel good about yourself. Your reward is doing Inner Talk that says: I was kind to that person. I’m a good person. Because I’m a good person I’m allowed to feel good.
I’m the Queen Of Strategies. I have a strategy for every second of every minute of every hour of every day. And I have back-up strategies should the original strategies fail.
Don’t knock strategies. They’re there when everybody else is not.
Right now I need my main strategy.
This is how it goes. It’s quite simple. It runs on a point system. If I can get up to ten points in one day, then I’m allowed to feel good. But it’s very tricky to get points. Here are some of the ways I can earn them.
First of all, I have to eat less than everybody else in the room. That means I must watch exactly how much everybody puts on their plate. I must watch every time anyone goes for a refill. I must decide who has the smallest plate of food in the room and I must make sure my portion is smaller.
If there’s anyone in the room who eats nothing then I can’t get the point. There’s a strategy for that too – I’ll tell you about it in a minute.
If I manage to eat less than everyone else at a set mealtime, I earn one point. But I automatically lose my point if someone leaves the room within ten minutes of eating because I can’t rule out that they’re bulimic. But I have a strategy for that as well.
All this means that I have to be present at every meal. I have to get there first and leave last. If I’m late to a mealtime then the best plan is not to eat at all.
Sometimes this strategy really works. Everybody arrives on time and everyone eats a lot of food. Then I can have something to eat and I can get the point too. That’s ideal. But it’s scary to commit to the food because if someone comes in late and decides not to eat anything, then I lose my point – in fact, I’m penalized for being too quick to stuff my face.
I can’t regain the point even if I go to the toilet and puke everything up. In fact, I lose a point if I don’t do that.
If I don’t earn even one point in a day, it’s just awful. I go around feeling that I’m the worst person in the world and totally unworthy of love.
I’ve never scored ten points in one day even though I’ve tried really hard. Before I came into recovery, I used to go into cafes and sit there for as long as possible, just to become a bit more lovable.
This Not Eating strategy comes with a health warning though.
Tony repeatedly advises me of the hazards of Not Eating. He calls them Dani’s Toxic Problems Of The Heart.
He says because anorexics lose muscle mass, they lose heart muscle at a preferential rate. The heart becomes smaller and weaker so it gets worse at increasing circulation in response to exercise. Blood pressure drops and the pulse slows down.
This leads to chronic cardiac arrhythmia and delirium.
Otherwise known as heartbreak and madness.
Tony says both conditions can be fatal.
15
Fletcher is really serious about helping me. I’ve only ever seen his eyes light up like they’re shining right now when he talks about crack. He says crack is awesome. It’s the rest of the world that’s shit. I guess that’s part of his strategy. I don’t disagree with him. I’ve never tried crack. I have tried the world.
‘You’re going to have to remember,’ says Fletcher.
I shake my head. I’m not going back into that room.
‘All the clues are there.’ He leans forward and taps my forehead.
But he’s right. Even Judith might be right. Though she must be running some kind of strategy too. Because it makes sense. Doesn’t it? If you can unlock the past, find the thing that’s damaged, yank it out and fix it, then you can recover.
‘I know this is scary,’ says Fletcher, ‘but I’m here.’
How’s that helpful? I roll my eyes at him.
Fletcher sighs. ‘Being on the street teaches you things; the worst is that you’re alone.’
It
was the smell that was the worst.
‘Being alone. Knowing that nobody will stop and help you. Nobody gives a shit. You’re invisible. Unless you do something criminal. And that’s a double bind. You get noticed, but in a bad way. It confirms the truth that you’re not worth a goddamn thing.’
Oh God! Have I got to listen to his sob story now?
‘So I’ll give a shit,’ says Fletcher. ‘Here’s the deal. I’ll go first. I’ll tell you the scariest thing I can remember about my past. Then you tell me the scariest thing about yours. Then it’s my turn again. We’ll keep going like that until we find something out.’
Yippee. I get his shit as well.
‘That means you won’t be alone. I’ll be in the room with you and just as shit scared. Believe me, it helps if someone else is around. Plus this is Carmen’s room, so she’s here too. Sort of.’
My tongue is still stuck to the roof of my mouth. There’s a hollow that runs from the back of my throat to the centre of my stomach. But what he’s suggesting is a kind of strategy. Plus, I can lie.
I peel my tongue off the roof of my mouth. I try to make myself salivate. Just enough to croak out, ‘Can we get points?’
Fletcher gives me a look.
‘Maybe,’ he says. ‘But you don’t get points for any old rubbish.’
So he knows about point systems.
‘You only get a point if you make me goddamn cry out in horror,’ he says. ‘That’s the deal. You can goddamn take it or goddamn leave it.’
I take it.
I need points badly.
16
‘I’m going to tell you about my mum,’ says Fletcher. ‘But you mustn’t think I didn’t love her. That’s the whole point of it. I did love her, but this is what she was like.’
‘OK,’ I whisper.
‘She never approved of me. She said mean things in a very loving way. When they hurt me, she would deny that she’d said them on purpose. She’d say I was taking things the wrong way. That she only wanted to help me. But she never praised me – never said I’d done anything really well.’
‘Maybe you didn’t,’ I say. God, this is so trivial.
‘If I did achieve something – like I got good marks in a test, or I got chosen for the school team – she’d tell me how the son of a friend of hers had done something much better. Or she wouldn’t say anything.’
Even the Alien yawns.
‘But later on in the day she might say something very cruel, perhaps drag up something from the past that would embarrass the hell out of me, just to let me know I shouldn’t think I was any kind of hot shit.’
At least he had a mum.
‘She’d let me know that I was no good simply by comparison. She would wax on about how wonderful somebody else’s kid was – how much she would have loved to be the mother of that kid. She could tell me what rubbish I was by not even saying a word.’
The Alien actually falls asleep.
‘She could bring me down when I was totally happy just by the tone of her voice. You can’t confront a tone of voice. When you’re a little kid you don’t even know why you’ve suddenly changed from being very happy to very miserable.’
‘OK, my turn,’ I croak out.
‘And when I began to understand it, I couldn’t challenge it because she totally denied it.’
I should learn to be more patient.
‘I learned to be afraid of telling her anything. Afraid of smiling, afraid of being happy. As a result I was always afraid and always in the wrong, and I could never put my finger on it. Sometimes her tone of voice was accompanied by a particular glance, locking her eye on me. When she just glanced in that way, my heartbeat would shoot up and I’d break out in a cold sweat and start to stutter.’
Actually, it sounds horrible.
‘And it meant I was alone. Completely alone. I didn’t have any brothers or sisters. There was nobody I could tell. And even if there was somebody, I didn’t have the language to explain that look in her eye, how it drilled down into me and hollowed me out, until I was all empty inside. So I lived like that. And I loved her. And I accepted that I was to blame. I didn’t dare tell anyone about her drinking. She said it was my fault she had to drink so much. And I said sorry.’
OK, my turn.
‘In public she would always act really concerned. She’d make sure that I could overhear it when she said, “I feel sorry for Fletcher. He’s so sensitive. He doesn’t seem to know who he is. And he has such a bad time. He has absolutely no friends – nobody likes him at all. I’ve tried to tell him he needs to be nicer and less selfish and impatient. He should be more helpful and generous and have fun, for God’s sake! He needs to lighten up! Nobody likes boring, depressing people. I don’t know how I can get that message across to him.” ’
OK, not my turn.
‘She was right about me not knowing who I am. Back then it was worse. I was a total confused mess. Once I did try to talk to someone, a counsellor at school. They called my mum in. It was the worst thing I ever did. At home I was made to suffer for that for a very long time. And at school, the counsellor told me that my mother talked about me in the most caring way, and that perhaps I had got things wrong because I was so sensitive and maybe just a teeny-weeny bit selfish.’
I’ve heard enough.
‘Ana is my best friend,’ I say.
‘Who’s Anna?’ asks Fletcher.
I look at Fletcher. Unbelievable. I’m prepared to share my worst secret and apparently he’s never heard of Ana! I’m not going to discuss her identity. Any anorexic can tell you about Ana. If he’s so unaware, it’s not my job to educate him. So I just carry on.
‘Ana makes the good times better and the hard times easier,’ I say.
I’m being so very fake. I’m almost sorry for him. No wonder his mum gave him the runaround for so long. I know I have to do better. I know I’m supposed to share my most feared memory right now. Instead I share some thinspirational tips.
‘Ana helps me to distract myself from food,’ I say. ‘She tells me to keep myself busy all day with things to stop me thinking about eating. She told me not to eat my sadness. If I’m feeling sad or crap I must listen to music or do some activity. I must never eat when I’m unhappy.’
‘You never eat at all,’ points out Fletcher.
‘She told me to write words like “bovine” and “deformed” with a Sharpie on my stomach to remind me that Fat Is Ugly. She told me never to eat when I’m distracted or doing something else. She taught me never to eat after seven p.m. or before seven a.m. She told me if you drink water in between each bite of food it fills you up quicker. Iced water, obviously. She told me never to eat alone. And to do thinspo.’
‘Thinspo?’ asks Fletcher.
‘It’s just a collection of inspirations, like pictures,’ I say. ‘I keep mine on my phone. Any time I feel my resolve weaken, I look at my thinspo collection.’
‘What are they pictures of?’ asks Fletcher.
‘Of thin people, obviously,’ I say.
‘How is this a bad memory?’ says Fletcher.
For one horrible minute I think he’s going to ask me if I’ll show him my collection of thinspo. And he has noticed I’m not sharing. The moment passes. My Thinness is safe. I shouldn’t have taken this route. Now I’m stuck.
‘You can use a reward system too. Every time you want to eat something and you overcome the desire, you can reward yourself with a one-pound coin in your special Thinness piggy bank.’
‘Dani, we’re supposed to be working on our recovery, not boasting about our addictions.’
‘And there are rubber bands and aphorisms to overcome cravings. I can give myself three smart pings on the wrist, so that it really hurts, and say to myself sixty times, “I don’t want to eat. I don’t want to eat. I don’t want to eat.” That usually works.’
‘That sounds messed up,’ says Fletcher.
I shrug.
‘And you haven’t actually told me anything about your wors
t experience,’ says Fletcher.
‘I’ve told you about my problem,’ I say. ‘That is my worst experience.’ I put on my Circle Time voice. ‘My name is Dani, and I am an anorexic.’
‘I know, Dani,’ says Fletcher, ‘but you’ve got to do better. This hasn’t given me anything to go on. We’re trying to solve a whodunnit. Tell me about your first foster placement – anything you remember.’
‘My first foster placement was with a family that lived in a big house,’ I say. ‘They fostered loads of kids. That was their job – their income. That’s how they kept themselves going, fostering kids like me. There were up to five of us fostered kids plus their three real kids. It wasn’t very nice. We always had to catch the 171 bus to get anywhere and we could never sit together. There just wasn’t enough space – I remember that. At mealtimes there was a two-sitting system because the dining room had been converted into an extra bedroom, and the kitchen was too small for everyone to fit in. Their kids sat down first. We had to wait in the front room until we were called in for the leftovers. Sometimes they’d scrape the remains off their plates on to ours.’
Fletcher looks sad. ‘How old were you?’
‘I was seven.’
I was quite old enough to know what was going on.
17
Three loud bangs on my door. I wake up. It’s dark.
‘Open up,’ says a voice.
It’s the middle of the night.
For a minute I think it’s Fletcher. He’s come to put his arms around me. He’s going to hold me. He’s going to let me rest my head on his lovely shoulders. I’m surprised at how much I’d like that.
‘Open up,’ says the voice again. It’s Tony.
I open up.
‘Surprise search,’ says Tony. ‘Just sit on the chair by the window.’
I sit down on the chair by the window. I’ve only got a T-shirt on and boy boxers. I shiver. An irrational fear that Tony is going to touch me pops into my head.
Tony wedges the door open. Two of the care workers come in. They turn on all the lights.
Why did I think that? About being molested? Something deep inside my memory goes click.
It’s so cold with the door open.
They systematically search my room.