“I guess you’re right,” I sighed.
“Of course I’m right. You should listen to me more often.”
“I listen to you all the time!”
“Good girl. Now go work on your personal eating disorder history thingymabob.”
“Oh crud. My essay. Do you think treatment planning will give me an extension? Without limiting my passes?”
“Have you even started it?”
“Yeah. But there’s so much to write about. And I want to do a good job.”
“Well, get back to it. Just show the team you’re working hard.”
“Okey-dokey, artichokey,” I said, heading into my room. I looked back at him. “See Jen. See Jen listening to Chuck. See Jen doing exactly what Chuck says.”
“See Chuck saying ‘Good job, Jen.’”
I went to my room, got out my notebook, and tried to concentrate, despite Heather tunelessly singing along to her new Whitesnake tape. And despite constantly rechecking my legs and thighs for evidence of Sprite fat.
Monday, December 5, 1988
“Jennifer, we need to have a check-in,” Ratched said, like she was doing me a huge favor.
I plastered a big smile on my face. “Oh, okay. I’m happy to check in with you, but I checked in with Chuck last night, and not much has happened since then. It’s all in the notes, I’m sure.”
She sucked air through her teeth. “Well, I’m your primary.”
I kept smiling. “Yes, but I know you’re busy, because you’re so many people’s primary. Chuck only has one secondary. He has a lot more time. Plus, he needs the practice, so that’s why sometimes I talk to him instead.”
I hoped my explanation appealed to her need to feel superior to Chuck and everyone else in the universe, while omitting the significant facts that (1) Chuck was a pleasant, decent person and a good listener, and I vastly preferred his company, and (2) Ratched was a foul, power-hungry troll.
It seemed to work.
Later, I was about to knock on Bronwyn’s door-frame, but I froze when I saw Ratched in there. Her head was bent toward Bronwyn’s like they were having a serious heart-to-heart. Apparently they had made up since the Great Butter Incident.
They didn’t even notice me or look up. My insides twisted with jealousy. Was Bronwyn telling Ratched stuff she didn’t tell me? Was I less of a confidant to her?
Ugh. I could almost hear Dr. Prakash admonishing me: Friendship is not a competition, Jennifer. And a nurse-patient relationship wasn’t the same as a friendship.
I knew I shouldn’t make everything a competition, just like I shouldn’t try to stand on the head of a pin. I knew I shouldn’t. I just didn’t know how not to.
But. The more time Ratched spent with Bronwyn, the less time Ratched had for me. And the unlikelier it was that Bronwyn would follow up on the 72-hour letter she had mentioned in OA. And both of those were good things, no matter what.
Today was my last lunch tray on 1800s, and it was a doozy. A warm sandwich of corned beef, Swiss cheese, sauerkraut, and Russian dressing on rye bread. I’d never had corned beef or sauerkraut or rye bread before, and I hated them already.
“It’s called a Reuben,” Monica said.
“It’s called revolting,” I said.
Bronwyn and I finished around the same time, and Bosom took our trays, moving the napkins and straw wrappers around, shaking the milk cartons to be sure they were empty. The normal routine.
Bronwyn crossed her eyes and blew out her cheeks like a puffer fish. “I’m going to explode.”
Amanda groaned and put her head on the table. There were some bread crusts on her tray she needed to finish. She was still on 3000s.
“Well. I’ll get the mail from downstairs,” Ratched said.
“Thank you so very much, Sheryl,” Bosom said, sounding overtly, extremely courteous—as if she was one step away from eye-rolling.
Hm. Did Bosom find Ratched annoying? Was there dissension in the ranks? Interesting.
“How about we drown our sorrows with a game of clever deception?” Bronwyn asked.
“Bullshit,” Monica said.
“You know it.” Bronwyn smiled.
I didn’t follow.
Bronwyn leaned her chair so far back I thought she’d tip over, but she deftly steadied herself with a foot under the table while she opened a drawer in the cabinet behind her. She rocked back to the table, a deck of cards in her hands. The cards were tattered, their edges frayed.
Bronwyn shuffled the cards and set them in front of Monica, who cut the deck. Bronwyn stacked it back together. “Amanda, you playing?”
“Sure.” Amanda stabbed her last crust with her fork, chewing it slowly. She never ate with her fingers, and she was always the last one to finish. Always. Bosom checked her tray and carried it to the cart.
“Jennifer?” Bronwyn smiled. “A game of Bullshit?”
“I’ve never played.”
“Never?”
I shook my head. “What’s Bullshit?”
They looked at each other.
“Oh, girl,” Bronwyn said. “Your life is about to change.” She started dealing. “Okay. So I deal out the whole deck. The object is to get rid of your cards. You add them to the pile and say what they are.”
“But you put them facedown.” Monica gathered her cards. “And you can lie.”
“You can lie about how many you’re putting down, and you can lie about what they are,” Amanda said in her quiet voice, stacking her pile neatly.
“If you think someone’s lying, you call ‘bullshit.’” Bronwyn finished dealing and started organizing her cards. “If you call bullshit and you’re right, then the person who lied has to take all the cards on the table. If you’re wrong, you have to take them. Got it?”
“I think so,” I said.
“Monica, you start,” Bronwyn said. “Oh wait, I forgot to say, you have to go in order. So Monica has to put down aces because she’s starting, then Amanda does twos, I do threes, you do fours, like that. Okay?”
I fanned my cards out, putting them in order. “What if you don’t have the card you’re supposed to put—”
“Then you lie.” Bronwyn wiggled her eyebrows. “Thus the name of the game.”
Monica set a card facedown in the middle of the table. “One ace.”
Was she lying? I had no aces, so I couldn’t tell. I looked at Monica, and Bronwyn, and Amanda, and they looked at me. Monica didn’t seem like she was lying.
But then again, look where we were.
If there was one thing everyone on the EDU was extremely skilled at, it was lying.
“Two twos.” Amanda put down cards.
“Bullshit,” Bronwyn said.
Amanda sheepishly took her cards back, along with the card Monica had put down. “You liar,” she said to Monica. “That was no ace.” She held up the card: a jack of clubs.
Monica laughed and wiggled her fingers. “I’m very very tricky.”
“My turn,” Bronwyn said. “One three.”
“Two fours,” I lied. It was a three and a four.
The other girls narrowed their eyes at me. I adopted the expression I always used after purging, or when I came home drunk, or when I told Mom I’d already had dinner at Kelly’s. I didn’t avoid eye contact, but I didn’t hold anyone’s gaze too long. I willed myself to exude neither innocence nor guilt.
Apparently they bought it, because Monica slapped down her cards. “Two fives.”
“One six.”
“Two sevens.”
“Three eights,” I said.
Bronwyn bugged one eye out at me.
“Uh-oh, she’s giving you the stink eye,” Monica said.
“Hm,” Bronwyn said. “You look so innocent and sweet over there. But I’m going to have to call bullshit.”
“Read ’em and weep.” I flipped my cards over.
“Damn it!” Bronwyn scooped all the cards into her hand. “Fine.” She picked through the cards. “Monica, your turn.”
Monica put down her cards. “Five nines.”
We looked at each other, then broke into hysterics.
“What’s so funny?” Monica looked indignant. “It’s five nines.”
Was she kidding? I couldn’t tell. How could she not know there were only four of each number in a deck of cards?
Bronwyn laughed so hard she farted. It was so long and loud, it vibrated to the rhythm of her laughter. Which made all of us double over.
Wiping tears from laughing, Monica grudgingly took the pile. “Fine. But it could have been five nines.”
“No, it really, really couldn’t,” Brownwyn laughed.
We kept playing. I busted Amanda twice and Monica once.
Bronwyn set down her last card. “One king. And that, my friends, makes me the undefeated Bullshit champion of the EDU. But you guys can keep playing to vie for second place.”
“No! I call bullshit,” Monica said.
“Nope, not bullshit.” Bronwyn bulldozed the huge card pile over to Monica. “They’re all yours.”
Monica picked them up slowly, one at a time. “You know, I quite enjoy having practically the entire deck,” she said, affecting a British accent. “It makes it a titch easier to tell when you lasses are lying your little knickers off.”
“Unless you think there are five of every number,” I said.
Which set us all laughing again, even Monica.
It was the best after-meal half hour to date.
Until Ratched came back with the mail. She saw the cards, her eyes went wide, and she slammed down the envelopes, which scattered all over the table. “Girls! No games after meals! That is avoidance! You are distracting yourselves from your feelings! That is diseased behavior!”
“Seriously? Are you kidding?” I asked, not able to hide my irritation. But it was a stupid question. She was not kidding. She didn’t even seem capable of kidding.
Monica threw down her cards in annoyance.
Why was it against the rules to have fun in this place? Why couldn’t Ratched grant us one tiny sliver of silly happiness?
But if a nurse said no, it was no. Especially when it was the head nurse. No fun allowed.
Tuesday, December 6, 1988
I had been plugging away on my essay. My Life With My Eating Disorder. But it was adding up to a ton of pages and I still had a lot more to include. It was the most intimidating, most important assignment I’d ever been given. Somehow, I needed to cover:
When and how my bulimarexia started.
How it affected me—emotionally, physically, mentally.
How it affected my relationships.
Plus, significant things that had contributed to me getting sick—or, after I was already bulimarexic—sicker.
That meant writing about my drinking and all the bad stuff that had happened when I was drunk.
It meant talking about Dad’s anger and Mom’s issues, and what our family dynamics were actually like.
It meant talking about my depression and loneliness and cutting my wrists.
It meant going into my first love—or what I’d thought was love, but turned out to be a boyfriend who talked me into having sex before he dumped me.
And not only did I have to write down all the hard stuff, the worst stuff, but then I had to share it. Read it out loud, to staff and patients.
I had one chance to get it right. I knew it wouldn’t be graded, but I wanted to do A+ work. I wanted to be honest with myself. Writing my entire story—the good, the bad, and the ugly—meant confronting my disease and my history. And maybe confronting it would bring me one step closer to accepting it. And maybe acceptance would bring me one step closer to recovery. Maybe.
Chuck and I confabbed about my treatment-planning requests. I asked for an extension on my essay deadline when I made my next requests for treatment planning. I also asked for one six-hour divided pass (two hours before lunch, four hours after) for Saturday, and one four-hour pass for Sunday. Both would be with Mom, because Dad was on a business trip.
Nurse Chuck initialed my requests with a big flourish, drew a big star, and wrote, “Patient is talking about her feelings and working hard!!!”
I didn’t say anything. I was proud, but even with Chuck’s three exclamation points, I felt depressed and mopey. I missed Spike. I missed home. I had the blues, like that old Carpenters song we sang in chorus, “Rainy Days and Mondays.”
Thinking about the Carpenters in an EDU. How fitting.
I left the lounge and headed to my bedroom, trailing my finger along the wall, ruminating.
Back in fifth grade, we were discussing current events in social studies. Mrs. Clark mentioned a singer who had died from anorexia.
I leaned over to Kelly and whispered, “Anorectia? What’s that?”
“Anorexia,” she whispered back. “It’s what Karen Carpenter died of. Because of the ten-pound rule.”
“The ten-pound rule?”
Kelly rolled her eyes. “Haven’t you heard the saying ‘The camera adds ten pounds’?”
I shook my head.
Exasperated best friend look. “You at least know who Karen Carpenter is, right?”
I didn’t, but I nodded. “Duh.”
“Karen Carpenter wanted to look good on TV. So she went on a diet, but then she didn’t stop, and she got way too skinny and died. That’s anorexia.”
“Oh.” Inside my brain, wheels turned. I didn’t wonder why someone would do it. I wondered how someone would do it. And what it would feel like, to starve on purpose.
I was thin, normal at the time. But I wondered—what would it be like to be super skinny?
A year later, Kelly and I were watching Fame (our favorite TV show), and I got some new information. The character Holly ate a big lunch and then went in the girls’ room and threw it up. Interesting. Filed that tidbit away for later.
In seventh grade, Mom and I watched Kate’s Secret together, eating Milk Duds and learning all about bulimia.
Not long after, I rented The Best Little Girl in the World at the video store. While I was watching it, alone, on the VCR in my parents’ room, my brother’s girlfriend came in. “Ew!” she said. “That girl looks disgusting. She’s too skinny.”
Too skinny? I thought she looked gloriously, powerfully, inspirationally thin. Plus! All the attention she got when she went in the hospital. And tried to escape from the hospital. And then went back into the hospital.
I started haunting the 616.85 section of the library. Memoirs about anorexia, information about bulimia. For me, they were instruction manuals: diet tips, weight loss ideas, how to protect your teeth from the acid in vomit.
Kelly got so sick of my eating. That’s what she called it: Your eating. I didn’t blame her. I was sick of it, too. For her birthday last summer, we took a bus to Darien Lake and I promised to eat whatever she ate and not talk about food the entire day.
But even for her birthday I couldn’t do it.
By the end of my first full day on 2500 calories, I felt AWFUL.
I hadn’t kept this much food in my stomach in a long, long, long, long time. Maybe never.
I couldn’t get comfortable, my stomach was so full.
When calories came from so-called “healthy” food—although it was debatable how healthy this food was—instead of junk food, it took up insane amounts of stomach volume. And it stayed there, in my stomach, moving around, pushing on my insides.
It was horrible.
And it meant I was gaining weight. Truly, undeniably gaining weight.
Wednesday, December 7, 1988
Treatment-planning Objectives for Jennifer
Patient is granted extension on personal history essay. Patient should plan to share it this week.
Patient request for weekend passes—approved.
Notes: Patient should work on feelings of individuation/separation from family.
Bronwyn and I went to our first Chemical Dependency meeting on Adolescent today.
“Which of the stages of alcoholism would you say you’re in, Jennifer?” the social worker asked as she escorted us downstairs.
We’d only met CD Lady yesterday. She was straightforward and no-nonsense; brusque, but not mean. She had handed us thick packets of reading and worksheets to do on a weekly basis, in preparation for CD meetings. And she made it clear that she had read our case notes and met with our therapists. She told us she was “fully informed” about our chemical use.
“I think stage one,” I said.
“I agree. Tell me why.”
“Because I drink to escape. And I look forward to it all week. But I don’t think I’m physically dependent. And I haven’t developed much of a tolerance.”
“Good. And you, Bronwyn?”
“Probably early stage two,” Bronwyn said.
“Yes. Why?”
“Because I’ve started blacking out more.”
“Very good. I think both of you girls are right on target. And you did your homework.” She leafed through our worksheets, not really looking at them. She sounded pleased and surprised. Probably the kids on Adolescent were uncooperative. Adolescent was where parents sent kids who were defiant, suicidal, addicted, and alcoholic.
My heart was in my throat. I’d had visions of the Adolescent Unit as a prison, with inmates reaching through cell bars trying to grab me. Hard-core punkers with safety pins in their faces, and überweird goths. Also with safety pins in their faces.
We turned the corner from the elevator and walked down a non-prison-cell hall, into a big room filled with Adolescent patients.
It was totally silent. No tin cups banging on cell bars.
Everyone stared at us when we came in. The freaks from the EDU. They’d probably heard as many stories about us as we had about them. How messed up everyone on the EDU was, and how we had to eat everything on our trays, and our bathrooms were locked, and we couldn’t flush our own toilets, and we had to measure our urine, and get our vital signs taken and be weighed every day. Maybe they were glad they were on Adolescent and not the EDU.
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