be•liev•a•rex•ic
J. J. Johnson
For Sam—
We all have monsters.
May yours be a friendly, loyal luck dragon
who will fly you in the direction of your dreams.
— Before —
Thursday, November 17, 1988
It’s 2:04 a.m.
Your eyes are dry and big.
You are in your bed,
burrowed under blankets and quilt.
Spike is curled in a sleeping curve at your feet,
barking quietly, a bad dream.
You stroke his ears until he relaxes, soothed.
You are not soothed.
You are the opposite of soothed.
You are wretchedly hungry.
But you won’t eat
because you are too tired
to make yourself throw up again.
Somehow, for no good reason—
or at least no reason you can figure out—
you have a monster inside you.
It is hunting you from within.
It waits around corners; it stalks.
A horrible beast—
greedy, disgusting, toxic.
The monster tells you,
You are not what you are supposed to be.
You are not good
unless you are sick.
Be the broken one,
it tells you.
Pare yourself down,
do everything just so,
empty your stomach,
scrape lines in your flesh,
throw yourself down stairs,
drop to your bare knees on gravel.
You want it gone, the monster.
There is no safety or comfort while it lives.
You yearn for it to be slain.
You want it dead.
And yet: you need it.
It is what makes you
special.
It sets you apart.
It helps you.
It focuses your whirling vortexes of thoughts
and your frenzied typhoons of feelings
into the exact precision of
hunger.
The meticulous control of
losing weight.
The sparkly glamour, the pride,
of being the
skinniest
person
in
the
room.
But you are sick.
Sick, as in unwell:
shaking, dazed, light-headed.
And you are
sick, as in tired:
sick of wondering why you are so sad,
sick of feeling alone at a crowded party,
sick of thinking happiness is simply
not meant for you.
You are sick of being sick.
There must be a way.
A questing hero finds a weapon
and slays the dragon.
You are no hero.
But you have looked everywhere for
a monster-slaying sword.
Where is it?
Not inside a shrunken stomach,
or on the scale,
or in the tang of bile, vomit.
Not in the pop-fizz of diet soda,
or the melted, muddy pools at the bottom
of a pint of Ben & Jerry’s.
Not in the glinting edge of a razor blade.
Not in the bitter swill of stale beer,
or letting boys inside you.
Not even in the right things:
confiding in your friend,
or trying to tell your mom,
or your guidance counselor,
or your dog, with his sweet brown eyes.
No sword.
No exit.
• • •
There’s one thing you haven’t tried.
One last thing.
Maybe a hospital.
A place for you to heal,
with clean white sheets and
smiling nurses and doctors
and vases filled with flowers
on the table by your bed.
Last week
you saw a TV commercial
for a place like that.
The commercial showed bare feet
stepping on a scale,
but instead of pounds,
the dial on the scale showed a phone number
to call
for information.
Or help.
Specialists
who may know the way out
of this labyrinth
and
how to fight the monster
until you kill it.
Or else maybe it will kill you.
At least then it would be over.
One way or the other,
you’re getting too tired to care.
But then again
of course you care.
You care so much it hurts.
You want
you want
you want
more than anything
for someone
to understand you,
for someone
who will
reach in
and
pull
you
out
of
this
maze
and away from the monster.
The monster howls with laughter.
You are not skinny enough for a hospital.
You are not sick enough.
If you lose twenty more pounds,
then maybe.
Thirty would be better.
But.
There must be something more than this.
There has to be light
somewhere.
And so tonight, you
throw back the quilt and
make your way to your parents’ room.
Spike follows you,
his toenails clicking on the wood floor.
Your mom and dad
are asleep and snoring.
You feel around for the phone.
You tug the cord gently so it will stretch to the bed
and, with shaking voice,
whisper, Mom?
Mom?
With
volume rising in increments,
you make a whisper ladder,
until your words
break through and
your
mom
finally
hears
you.
— Admission, Part One —
Screening Interview
Friday, November 18, 1988
This is it.
The phone dialed,
the appointment scheduled:
an admission screening interview
with the director of the
Eating Disorders Unit,
Samuel Tuke Center,
Syracuse, New York.
Mom had been so groggy when Jennifer
woke her last night.
Grunting, she pushed the phone away,
led Jennifer downstairs.
She snapped on the lights, and,
blinking, both rubbing their eyes,
they sat down.
Petting Spike’
s soft ears,
Jennifer begged her mother
to pick up the phone,
punch the buttons,
make the call.
Mom didn’t
—doesn’t—
really believe that Jennifer has a problem.
But she does love her daughter.
And so she called
and made the appointment.
Jennifer knows what Mom thinks
the specialist will say:
Your daughter does not need a hospital.
Your daughter is not sick.
You are a good mother, but for some reason,
your daughter is an attention seeker.
Counseling might be a good idea, but no,
she does not have an eating disorder.
And that will be that.
• • •
They have made the drive,
an hour and a half.
Jennifer reads the directions
through downtown Syracuse,
past the War Memorial,
a left turn, a couple of blocks,
and here it is, on the right,
the Samuel Tuke Center.
The building is not fancy,
like Jennifer had pictured it.
One half looks like a shabby two-floor motel.
The other half is newer,
plain, tan brick, like a high school.
The two buildings are oddly conjoined
by a long corridor in the middle.
Mom tips the blinker, turning their car
into a small parking area,
just a few diagonal spaces
next to the older building.
There is a squalid convenience store
with iron bars on its windows
separated from this parking lot
by a chain-link fence.
Mom shifts the car into park, turns off the engine.
Jennifer reaches for the door handle.
“Better lock it,” Mom says.
Jennifer pushes the lock,
checks the latch after she shuts it.
They never lock things at home.
Mom opens the door of the building
and they step into
a glass vestibule.
Jennifer yanks the interior door,
but it does not give.
They are in a transparent trap.
They are on display,
like an exhibit in a zoo:
human daughter, fifteen years old, scared;
human mother, forty years old, annoyed.
A box on the glass is labeled Press to speak.
An arrow points to a red button.
Press to speak.
Jennifer feels like Alice,
cascaded down the rabbit hole,
on the fringes of Wonderland,
the little bottle that said Drink me.
Will this button shrink Jennifer,
like the potion shrunk Alice?
Or will it be more like the cake,
the one with currants?
Will she expand like Alice did,
so huge she can’t fit through doorways?
Mom presses the button.
A voice squawks,
“You have an appointment?”
They can see the receptionist,
her mouth moving,
but her voice comes through the speaker,
disembodied.
“Yes, with”—Mom flips through a small notepad—
“Dr. Wexler.”
“Name?”
“Dr. Wexler,” Mom repeats.
“No. Patient’s name,” the receptionist says.
Mom’s face whitens,
as if she is stunned.
Patient’s name.
Patient is both
a noun
and
an adjective.
“Jennifer Johnson,” Mom says.
A loud buzz fills the space.
An automatic latch thunks.
Mom opens the door.
“Follow me,” the receptionist says.
She unlocks another door with one key
from a massive keychain.
They climb a flight of stairs.
Light blue carpeting,
buzzing fluorescents,
walls painted to match the carpet.
At the top of the stairs is another locked door.
More key jangling.
Jennifer studies the grimy fingerprints
along the handrail.
This is too foreign a place.
There are too many locks.
Too many strange noises.
Maybe Jennifer has changed her mind.
While the receptionist looks for the right key,
the door swings open from the other side,
held by a man who says,
“Jennifer and Juanita?”
Mom nods.
“I am Dr. Wexler,” he says. “Please, come this way.
Thank you,” he tells the receptionist.
“I’ll call you when we’re done.”
Dr. Wexler shakes their hands,
says, “Nice to meet you.”
He is tall, with gray hair, gray beard, glasses,
and flabby stomach.
He notices Jennifer peering down the hall
and says, “The EDU begins a few doors down.”
The EDU.
Eating Disorders Unit.
Where are the patients?
How skinny are they?
“Come in, Jennifer.”
She follows Mom.
His office is dim,
lit with lamps,
slatted blinds drawn.
The furniture smells of mold and cigarettes.
Framed diplomas cover the wall.
Bookshelves sag under the weight of heavy books.
Mom settles onto the small couch.
Jennifer sits, slumping away from her.
Dr. Wexler sits in a big leather desk chair
and crosses one knee over the other.
“Well. Let’s get started.”
He opens a manila file folder,
rests it on his lap,
straightens papers inside the file,
and the questions begin.
“Can you tell me why you’re here today?”
He directs the question at Mom.
Jennifer’s skin prickles;
her stomach rises into her throat.
Finally this is going to happen.
“Jennifer says she has an eating disorder,”
Mom tells Dr. Wexler.
Jennifer says.
Not: Jennifer has an eating disorder.
Jennifer did her research.
She watched the movies
and the “very special episodes,”
she read all the library books.
This is not the way it’s supposed to happen.
What Is Supposed to Happen
Jennifer’s parents see she is sick. They are worried about her, bordering on panic. They rush her to the hospital. Nurses lay her on a gurney, fly her through halls.
The doctors stabilize Jennifer. She settles into her sunlit hospital room. Her whole family cries at her bedside, asking for her forgiveness, pleading with Jennifer to please, please, our baby girl, please get better.
Of course, at first Jennifer is stubborn; she resists treatment. But then another patient in the hospital dies—probably, but not necessarily, her roommate—and Jennifer has an epiphany. She becomes open to recovery. She cover
s her walls with magazine collages and vision boards. Slowly she gets better, with the help of sympathetic nurses and a near-retirement doctor who is gruff but obviously loves her very, very much (more than any other patient, although he would never say so).
After a few weeks Jennifer emerges from the hospital, walking between her parents’ arms, holding a bouquet of balloons leftover from her room. She is still skinny, but she will be okay.
She makes a triumphant return to school, most likely at her prom. Her best friend Kelly is named prom queen, but Kelly sets the crown on Jennifer’s head instead, in front of everyone. Kelly makes an impromptu speech about how Jennifer deserves it more, because of how brave Jennifer has been, and how proud she is—how proud they all are—of Jennifer’s courage. The whole school cheers.
Fade to black, roll credits.
“Her father and I…,” Mom says,
“we don’t think…
well, er…she’s not failing school,
she’s not collapsing.”
Unfortunately true.
But not for lack of effort.
She’s not collapsing.
She’s not failing school.
She’s failing this.
(But also: success.
She is so good at hiding her obsession
and pain,
her compulsions, her vomiting,
her hidden bottles of wine and boxes of diet pills,
that Mom and Dad do not have a clue.)
Still, the biggest strike against Jennifer
is that she wants to be here in this room.
Because if you ask for help with your problem, then, by definition,
you do not have much of a problem.
Dr. Wexler writes notes in the file.
He looks at Jennifer.
“Do you ever feel dizzy or light-headed?”
Jennifer nods.
She picks at the hem of her pants,
her favorite pair of ankle-zip Guess jeans.
Dr. Wexler asks, “When?”
“When I stand up,” she says.
“Do you get leg cramps?”
“Yes, my calves, in bed at night.”
“What did you eat yesterday?”
“One slice of toast and a glass of
orange juice for breakfast,
skim milk for lunch,
mashed potatoes and green beans at dinner,
a bowl of cereal later.”
“Do you purge by making yourself throw up?”
“Um…”
Mom is here. What will she think?
Will Mom even believe her?
“Um, yes,” Jennifer says.
“How often?”
“Er, it depends. One or two or three times a day.”
“And did you purge yesterday?”
Again, Jennifer nods.
“When, yesterday? At what time?”
So many secrets spilling out in front of Mom.
“Last night,” Jennifers says quietly.
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