The Appetites of Girls

by Pamela Moses

  “I can’t move three inches!” Ruth laughed. Malcolm Kingson hadn’t come, but she was flirting with some other boy whose hands kept moving to her shoulders and down her arms.

  “You should be careful,” I said, but the words did not come out clearly or loudly enough for her to hear me. She seemed to be tilting, falling as I watched her. Or was I? “I think I need to lie down for a few minutes,” I told her, though she would not hear that either.

  I pushed through one group and then another. “Where are you going?” Two seniors grabbing my wrists. And then the boy who’d been with Ruth just a moment ago. How had he made it through the crowd to me? “Can I get you another drink, sweetheart?”

  “No. No, nothing!”

  And that was all that stayed with me of the night.

  When I woke, it was not quite morning, only hints of cloud-gray light seeping through the cracks around my window shade. Something seemed to be smoldering in my head, behind my eyes, my stomach still sick from the drinks and the smoke. And from the egg and cheese sandwiches and pizzas someone had ordered at some point, congealing, I imagined, somewhere in the pit of me. But what made me sicker was the discovery of my red dress crumpled at the foot of my bed. It seemed to me it had been on when I first crawled in. Hadn’t it? Now I wasn’t sure. Was it possible I’d allowed someone in? One of the seniors or the boy who’d been talking to Ruth? No. No. But how was it I could not even remember? How unbelievably stupid! This had happened to several of Fran’s friends. And to Cleo and to Noelle. But it was not the kind of thing that happened to me.

  Wrapping myself in my robe, I walked into the common room with the thought that I would begin to clean the mess. It reeked of spilled alcohol. Cheese and cracker crumbs were smeared into our carpet and littered our couch cushions. Cigarette butts floated in half-empty drink glasses. Ruth had left the door to her room ajar and was snoring, her jaw hanging open, her hair matted to the side of her face. I thought I could hear James in Setsu’s room—a sleepy male groan. Always she went to him; this was the first time he’d stayed here. I imagined the slabs of his limbs stretched out across her dainty white sheets, across her. She seemed so helpless with him sometimes, as if he had devoured every bit of her strength. How could she stand it? I needed to get out suddenly. To sort my thoughts. A clearer yellow-pink light was washing through the windows now. I grabbed a sweatshirt, leggings, and sneakers and slipped out as my suitemates slept.

  This was mid-September and I could feel the clean tang of the morning air as it moved down into my chest. I walked north along Hope Street and then turned east toward Blackstone Boulevard, almost empty of cars at this early hour, its manicured houses placid behind their green shade of trees. Here my thoughts no longer seemed to ricochet like so many pellets inside my head. There were only the birds and the branches above me, the whir of the occasional biker passing, and the padding of my own sneakers along Blackstone’s dirt walking path. The pounding behind my eyes had ceased, and I quickened my pace until I was running, any unpleasantness from the night before falling away like the shrinking memory of a dream.

  I decided to run the next morning, too. And then the next and the next—three miles and four, then five—liking the clenched feeling in my hamstrings and calves and the way, as I ran, my mind seemed rinsed and cool as glass.

  “Jesus, Opal, are you training for the Olympics? We all finished breakfast over an hour ago,” my suitemates would say.

  “Was it that long?” But I knew it had been, having wanted to stave off the less settled mood that I knew would creep through me once I stopped.

  I still accompanied Fran and Ruth to the Ratty for meals, but I was more reluctant to share what they ate now, not wanting to lose the light, scrubbed feeling of exercise. “I think I might get a head start on my Ibsen paper,” I told them after one dinner. I emptied my tray in the trash and headed down the steps, onto the grass and out a side gate. It was only six-thirty; the sky still held paling light and the street had not yet quieted. Before beginning my work, I decided to stop into Eastern Garden, the health food store on one of the side streets south of campus, for a raspberry seltzer and maybe some fruit.

  “Hello, Mr. Wu,” I said to the owner, who was behind the counter every time I entered, his wife often out of sight downstairs, their cat—its tattered fur the same black-gray as the few strands of hair on Mr. Wu’s head—curled always on a wooden stool near the register.

  “My favorite university student. It’s been awhile.” Mr. Wu often helped as I sorted through the bin of kumquats or stack of yellow pears, picking out the choicest. “So, University Student, such a pretty girl. When you coming in with boyfriend, heh?” he would ask.

  “Not yet. No time for boyfriends!” I would answer.

  “You must work too hard. Or maybe you go to school with fools—boys who don’t see a pretty girl right in front of them.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Wu.”

  And he would laugh, dropping a sample bottle of honey shampoo or a few lychee nuts into my bag, his round face, as he looked at me, wrinkling in the kindest smile that always, for some reason, made me sad.

  That evening in Eastern Garden, I noticed a new rack, displaying books and magazines, near the shop’s entry. Tracts on Eastern religions, travel guides—one with photos of an island I thought Mother and I had once, long ago, visited—and a number of health and fitness publications. I picked up a magazine with a cover of a woman swimming. The photo of the woman had been taken under the water, capturing the stream of bubbles from her nose, from the churned water behind her bare feet. “The Many Virtues of Exercise” was the title of the first article. Body, mind, and spirit are subtly and delicately intertwined, stated the opening paragraph. That a regular fitness routine is beneficial to physical health is well proven, but according to many exercise devotees, its virtues go deeper.

  Standing near the entrance to Eastern Garden, I read the article from start to finish. Then after paying for the magazine and wishing Mr. Wu a good night, I read through it again. Discover for yourself how the right exercise program combined with a healthy vegetarian approach to eating will keep your body cleansed of harmful impurities while bringing harmony and balance to your very core. This seemed an exaggerated claim, but I knew the calm I felt when I ran, and I was fascinated by photographs accompanying the article of three vegetarian women—in one picture jogging, another biking, in a third, their legs crossed in the yoga lotus position, their faces serene as sleeping children’s. Be inspired. Take ownership of you! read the caption below the final picture. It made sense to me as I studied the article once again the following morning. Yes! And I wanted what it promised.

  I increased my running route to six miles, some days seven or eight, despite the skin rubbed raw in spots below my anklebones. And I began to miss some meals with Ruth and Fran at the Ratty, electing instead to visit the Ivy Room—the only vegetarian snack bar on campus—though this meant dining alone. (“The Ivy Room? The food looks like plant fertilizer!” Fran and Ruth refused to join me.) I made trips to Eastern Garden and Green Tree Market for fruits and vegetables fresher than what I could find on campus, and for rice cakes and soy crackers and tofu for cutting into cubes and storing in Tupperware on the shelf of our common room refrigerator.

  “Opal! You won’t touch the food at the Ratty, but you’re going to eat that?” Fran and Ruth laughed and pinched their noses when I unloaded packages of dried mushrooms or bean paste from my paper bags, arranging them in neat piles around my room or in my corner of the fridge.

  “It tastes much better than it looks,” I defended, trying not to care because what I was seeking, I told myself, mattered far more than belonging.

  And it was working. After a time, I believed I could feel it—just what the article had predicted—a new calmness, a quiet, as if a constant buzzing in my brain, a jingling of nerves had suddenly been hushed. I wanted, as the article encouraged, to own myself. Because everything was a choice, after all, wasn’t it? What we ate, who we gave t
ime to, even how we dressed. I saw how James fondled Setsu in her tights and small skirts, remembered how Ruth had worked to allure Gavin. For everything there were repercussions. I thought of the red dress my suitemates had convinced me to wear the night of our party. Of the wardrobe of clothes I’d displayed at Paradise Jungle. But plenty of girls dressed far more conservatively. Kimberly and Christie, who lived next door, wore crewneck sweaters and turtlenecks everywhere. In the cold, they wore hooded parkas and knitted scarves.

  “Can I ask where you bought that?” I asked Kimberly one afternoon, indicating her pink button-down as I passed her in the hall. So with money I had saved from waiting tables at Paradise Jungle, I bought two collared shirts from B. Clark’s, the women’s shop downtown Kimberly had mentioned. Where Practicality and Style Meet, promised the words printed across its front window as well as on its Christmasy plaid shopping bags. Some weeks later I ordered canvas slip-on shoes and pleated khakis and two cotton cardigans—not shapeless, fogy sweaters but ones with ruffles at the sleeves and collar—from the catalogs featuring laughing, outdoorsy-looking families I received in my mailbox.

  “That’s a different look for you. Is that yours?” Setsu asked the first time I slipped into one of my new sweaters. She and I were in the laundry room waiting for our wash loads to finish. Setsu smiled, lifting her brows, as though she meant only to be friendly, but she fingered her own gauzy blouse in a way I knew meant she disliked it.

  “Oh, I needed a few new fall things,” was all I told her. It seemed pointless to explain what Setsu could not understand.

  It was true, of course. The new clothes were less feminine. There were times my reflection would surprise me—as I caught it in a glass door or a mirrored window—the very crispness of it. But in these clothes I felt smart and freshly sealed—a girl who kept her life ordered, who knew how to move unscathed through the world in which she lived.

  “What are you doing?” Ruth and Francesca and Setsu returned from a piano concert in Alumnae Hall one night and found me piling some of my older garments in a small white plastic trash bag I had found in a box in the basement laundry room. “You’re not throwing those out, are you? They’re beautiful.”

  “They aren’t really my style anymore,” I said, pleased with the stack of clothes. I pushed up the sleeves of my J.Crew oxford. “You’re welcome to whatever you like.” I stepped away from the bag at the center of the floor, inviting them to search through it.

  “Are you sure you want to give these up?” Setsu took my seashell-print miniskirt and my orange strapless sundress. She held the dress against her, checking to see how it would lie across her small breasts and waist, wanting the lines of her body to show, I guessed, as they did now in the clingy black leotard top she wore beneath her jean jacket. “Will you tell me if you change your mind? You can have them back anytime.”

  “Sure, Setsu.” But she did not need to sound so apologetic or blink in that way as if she pitied me. What reason would I have to reconsider? I was learning things I imagined Setsu never would.

  Ruth would not fit into my clothes, but she liked my white patent leather pumps, my starfish sandals, my gold lamé purse. “What’s wrong with these, anyway?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with them. It’s just . . . it seems so easy to give men ideas . . .”

  Ruth paused for a moment, the gold purse’s strap in her fingers, but Fran squinted at me as if observing something she had never before noticed. “Good for you, Opal! This campus is so full of sheep. Despite what everyone says. Full of conformists and man-pleasers. Good for you for choosing what makes you happy.”

  Setsu pushed back her thin shoulders and drew her lower lip behind her front teeth until the skin whitened. We had offended her, I knew. Still, I liked being complimented by Fran. Fran was not blown around by circumstances, by winds of fortune; she determined her own life.

  • • •

  Setsu’s twentieth birthday fell at the end of the month. Fran and Ruth and I would take her to Maria Mexicana off Brook Street to celebrate. James had arranged a dinner for just the two of them the weekend before, but when he heard of our plans, he said he wanted to join us later in the evening after a meeting with his study group. He recommended the bar at the Biltmore Hotel and mentioned he might bring a friend. For that reason—I could imagine no other—Ruth spent a good part of the afternoon peeling outfits on and off, experimenting with various hairstyles, trotting between her room and the hall bath to check herself in two different mirrors. During the course of this activity she stopped to weigh herself, and then once again an hour later, as if hoping the scale might have changed its mind upon further consideration.

  “Are you going to be ready in time?” Ruth looked slightly alarmed as she noticed I had not yet changed after the run I had taken later than usual, my shirt and leggings wet with perspiration.

  “I’ll be fine! I don’t need a whole day to get ready,” I laughed. Though as soon as I said it, I wished I hadn’t. I caught Ruth’s eyes drop to the floor, her arms fold across her middle in her black sweater dress—the chubbiness she could not hide no matter what she wore.

  After showering I combed straight my hair, working through any tangles. I lathered my face with Noxzema lotion until it tingled. In the flickering fluorescent bathroom light, as I rinsed the lotion away, it struck me that my complexion appeared cleaner without blush or lipstick. Missy from across the hall was using the sink beside mine, running pencil across her hooded eyelids, sponging foundation onto her rough skin, concealer on the crop of small pimples dotting her forehead. And it irritated me somehow, her eagerness for what she hoped would make her more appealing. That evening, rather than styling my hair with a blow-dryer and curling iron as Mother had taught me, I pulled it into a ponytail at the base of my neck.

  Ruth could have saved herself the afternoon’s effort: just before we left James called to say his study group was meeting later than anticipated; he and his friend would not be joining us after all.

  At Maria Mexicana our waitress brought us rounds of margaritas, but I abstained. “Not even a sip?” my roommates asked.

  “Did you know your body actually responds to alcohol like a toxin?” I told them, quoting the magazine article I’d saved from Eastern Garden.

  “And what does your body do when it’s fed nothing but gerbil food?” Fran cackled, and pointed to the vegetables I’d separated from the meat of my taco.

  I smiled and stabbed a small chunk of tomato with my fork but didn’t answer. Fran could tease all she wanted. Maybe certain things had to be endured to be true to what I needed.

  • • •

  Alternate Sundays I phoned Mother. During one call I described to her the changes I had begun to make. But she just laughed at my “puritanical ways.”

  “Everyone else goes to college to do the forbidden. You leave home to become more prudish!” Sometimes she would tell of a beach bash or restaurant opening she and Antonio had attended earlier in the week, then joke that she lived a life more corrupt than her undergrad daughter’s.

  My suitemates were still intrigued by the snatches they caught of my conversations with Mother, as they had been since our first year together. On the nights we stayed up talking for long hours, putting off studies, neglecting sleep, always the topic arose: “She sounds so fascinating,” they would say. “God, she enjoys the most interesting life.”

  “If you grew up as I did, you might have had your fill of fascinating.”

  “Oh, Opal! How bad could it have been?” Setsu thought I did not recognize the benefits of my unusual upbringing. “Traveling to exotic cities with your ultra-chic mother!”

  “Don’t you miss any of it?” Ruth tried to be sympathetic whenever I spoke of my past, but I could see how her eyes glowed like little moons when I told of the many places I’d called home, the number of men who had come and gone from Mother’s world, the drama of her relationships.

  “No, not the slightest bit.”

  “Really? Not at all?�
�� I heard their disappointment, or perhaps it was disbelief. And I began to see that because they had not lived what I’d lived, they could never understand my relief at finally having found some serenity, as if I had reached shelter from a long-raging storm.

  • • •

  In November, Setsu invited me to a party at the Liberty Gallery, an art gallery just blocks from the RISD campus, overlooking the river. James knew the owner, and for the next two weeks, several of his drawings, along with the works of some other unknown artists, would be on display. “You’re an art history major. Will you come, for a little while at least?” she said. “I know you don’t love big parties, but this will be a subdued group. And it should be interesting.”

  The gallery was an L-shaped room with white walls and bleached-wood floors and two enormous skylights, through which I could make out a few faint stars between filmy clouds. Setsu stood with James among a circle of guests. She delicately balanced a glass of white wine between two fingers. She was in a sleeveless black cocktail dress that showed every willowy curve, a sheer, silvery-black scarf with tiny scattered spangles, which had once been mine, winding her neck. She had pulled her hair into a tight twist, pinning it in place with two long gold crossed sticks. Her back was to me as I approached. Otherwise, perhaps, she would have stopped James’s hand, which slid down the center of her back along the zipper of her dress, until it rested on the soft of her backside. She did not flinch, so accustomed was she to his touch, I imagined. I thought of the party we’d thrown in our suite and then, for a moment, of the men at Paradise Jungle, at how their nearness had made me jumpy. Setsu’s only movement was a slight shift toward James so that the bare skin of her shoulder brushed his arm.

  “Hi, hi!” she called, leaving James’s side when she spotted me. “I’m so glad you’re here! You won’t want wine. Can I get you a Perrier? I’ll show you around.”