Farewell Navigator

by Leni Zumas

  The lunch rush is over and Sarah is reading the newspaper. The line cook sits smoking. Davey isn’t around.

  Can you make me a couple of sandwiches?

  You going on a picnic? she asks.

  It’s for me and the guy doing witch research.

  I thought he left town.

  Nope, he remains. Turkey club, no lettuce, and a ham and swiss.

  She gives the order to the line cook, who nods but stays where he is, smoking.

  You be home for supper tonight? I ask. They’re showing vampire-bite survival stories on the sci-fi channel.

  I don’t think so, she says. I have to meet up—

  —With him after his shift. I know. What, are you guys engaged or something? He tortures squirrels.

  He does not.

  Oh yes he damn does. I saw him. And he shot that dog in the leg.

  Which was an accident. Look, baby bear, we’ll watch a movie tomorrow night. We can rent if there’s nothing good on. And I’m not engaged. Most definitely not engaged.

  But I see them on the sheets, his huge body pressing the air out of her small one, sauce and dirt from under his fingernails smeared across her stomach. I hear him making fast high grunts like the gigantically hung actors on Davey’s videos. Lunging, stabbing, shoveling, so rough she starts to cry. She is crying and then it’s not Kasko on her, it’s John, skinnier and frecklier, but he holds her wrists against the wall so she can’t leave. Let me go, my sister whispers. I am late for supper.

  She asks do I want any chips. I shake my head and Sarah goes back to reading the paper. It’s a long time before the line cook gets up to make the sandwiches. In the wait, I try to clean the pictures out. I want my head empty of bodies on beds, of stabbing bodies, of Kasko’s voice telling my sister he’s going to lick his fingers and slide them up her gash until she begs.

  Back at Egg Boy’s, the husbands are drinking from plastic cups illustrated with the planet Jupiter and their faces have gotten redder. A record is playing of a guy singing sadly in French. I lay the wrapped sandwiches in the middle of the floor.

  Think of how, says John, she dumped her nonpareils into her popcorn at the movies, because chocolate and corn are delicious together.

  We never went to the movies, says Egg Boy, but think of how she threw you up against the sink in the BK men’s room and took off your belt and wrapped it around your neck and put the buckle in her mouth before she—

  Think of how ticklish she was at the backs of her knees.

  How sweet she looked in crotchless panties.

  John helps himself from the bottle of brown liquor on the floor. No, how sweet she looked in her sunsuit, standing in our backyard. It was my job to mow the grass.

  Hit me up, says Egg Boy, holding out his cup. John pours. Egg Boy turns to me, blinks his sagging eyes. Love is a joke, he announces.

  Indeed, says John. A farce. A folly.

  Yeah? I say.

  Show him the thing, suggests John.

  Egg Boy reaches under the bed and takes out a postcard with an aerial view of adobe houses clustered on red sand. It’s postmarked Proctor, Arizona. One sentence only. Travel keeps me from falling down.

  She just goes along her merry way, shouts John. His voice knocks against the walls of the tiny room.

  When I pulled up in front of the train station, the witch asked for one more cigarette. We smoked softly in the dark. I did try, you know, she said. I looked it up in my book. I spoke the incantations. I put water and fire in every corner of the room.

  Maybe your book is fake?

  She scratched her cheek and said, It was written by an expert practitioner.

  Which train are you taking? I asked.

  The first one that comes, said Morrigan. It was the kind of thing the characters would say in the 1950s road-trip novel we read last spring for English. All the kids in my class loved that book. A few of them even said they were going to quit school and hop trains. But nobody did.

  Good luck, I told her.

  Thanks. And by the way—don’t worry. Your sister will make it out of here soon enough.

  John is waving the bottle at me. Giles, partake with us!

  Yeah man, says Egg Boy, you need some practice. Want a cup?

  No thank you, I say.

  Straight from the jug, then!

  No thank you.

  My bike is still chained to the bench. I want to be riding. These boys have clamped their hands at a girl’s waist, felt her heels on their spines. But they are just sitting here now. The girl has gone. Until today I felt guilty for helping her go, angry her spell didn’t work. Now I’m looking at the boys she left and seeing the boy my sister will leave. I am wanting her away from the green square and pink uniform and scabby sheets under wriggling skin. I am wanting her on trains, with me.

  BLOTILLA TAKES THE CAKE

  At our morning session, Linda says I have to tell about the birthday party. I can’t keep putting it off. You’ve been here for weeks, she reminds me. It’s time to unload your shame.

  It was just a dumb thing that happened a long time ago.

  And where did it ultimately lead? she asks. Where did you end up as a result?

  St. Petersburg, Florida . . . ?

  I want to give the right answer. I wait for a hint. She just stares back. Her gold bangle earrings faintly sway. Finally she checks her watch. And why did you come here to St. Petersburg?

  I got sick.

  You were bleeding from your rectum, she corrects. And that is not a normal state of affairs.

  At Palm Terrace, a bloody ass isn’t really such a big deal. They’ve seen worse: women too big to get onto the toilet by themselves—women wearing diapers because they’ve permanently lost control of their bowels—nineteen-year-old girls falling over cold from heart attacks.

  I’m not so bad, you see.

  Take my roommate, Viv. She got her stomach stapled a year ago but the operation didn’t do any good. Though her stomach is the size of a bean, she remains a hundred pounds overweight. Milkshakes, she explains, and whatever else you feel like mashing up in a blender.

  Viv has lost hope. All this, she’ll say, with a sweep of her hand across our neatly made beds and flower vase on the dresser, is it going to change anything? In group, she sits shaking her head—she doesn’t think it will work, the talking, the crying, the hugs and affection. Back in Cincinnati, where her equally skeptical husband is waiting, this place will seem like a goopy dream.

  We don’t have to keep eating like that anymore, I remind her sternly.

  Yeah, she says, but we’re probably going to anyway.

  After my session with Linda, it is time for lunch. Our group slouches toward the battlefield: skeletons in wheelchairs, circus fat ladies, green-skinned girls. Bringing up the rear is Linda, festive in her lavender sari.

  One of the skeletons says, My stomach hurts. I should be resting.

  Linda shushes her and we continue, at glacial speed.

  The dining room has pink walls, blue carpet, and plastic palm fronds in every corner. The rehab patients are still in line, running behind schedule. They eat twenty minutes earlier because they get different food from ours, regular things like fried chicken and macaroni. After they go through, the cooks clear away all the good stuff and bring out our specialty items. The turkey loaf, the flax seed.

  The junkies are taking their good sweet time today, says Murphy at my shoulder, though not maliciously. She is just hungry. I understand. I am hungry too, but I remember what my mother used to tell me: Hunger is only a state of mind. A feeling, not a fact.

  More goddamn potatoes, please! yells Jerome. I know his name because his group often sings it when he gets up to clear his tray at the end of a meal: Jerome, Jerome, baby Jerome, time to clean up, get your ass home. Maybe singing is part of their therapy. On our unit, we do not sing.

  The head cook dumps another scoop onto Jerome’s plate and frowns down the line at the mesmerized overeaters, whose eyes are locked on the hamburger
buns.

  It’s not fair that we have to see that, whispers Sandra. It’s really rather sadistic.

  When the warming dishes are replaced, we groan at the roughy with lemon, brown rice, rubbery stems of broccoli. One by one we hand the cook our meal cards. Each of us gets a different amount of food, depending on weight and preferred crime.

  How goes it, Rachel? says the cook. Glad to be getting out soon?

  I smile dutifully. The cook is a busy man; I don’t need to bother him with the news that leaving Palm Terrace makes me sick to think about. Why would a person want to stay in a place where you’re not allowed a single drop of coffee, where you’re forced to put on a bathing suit for water aerobics? But I could stay forever.

  At the end of the counter are little baskets of salt, pepper, and Sweet ’N Low. Linda watches to make sure we don’t take more than one packet of each. Sweet ’N Low is a prized commodity, hoarded by anorexics to trade with overeaters for cigarettes or favors. Sandra, who’s got a violent sweet tooth, has been known to pay cash. Charlotte, who is a bitch, charges a dollar per packet. Murphy, who has a heart of gold, gives Sandra her Sweet ’N Lows for free.

  Much raucous laughter and spoon-clattering from the rehab tables, but our corner of the dining room is loaded with silence. Eating, for us, is not a happy business. The overeaters struggle not to finish too fast. The anorexics fight to swallow. I mash everything up into one big pudding and my throat keeps closing at the thought of telling them about the birthday party, seeing their disgusted faces.

  Not happening today, says Murphy, just not happening today. She stares at her untouched tray. She’s wearing a sweatshirt so big it practically hides her from view. She is nothing but pink fleece and wet brown deer eyes. At forty-one she looks like a weather-beaten child.

  Come on and hurry it the fuck up, says Charlotte. Her tray is clean, she has obediently shaken out her napkin for Linda’s inspection, but I know her tactics. She drops food on the carpet, morsel by morsel, and grinds it under the heel of her sandal.

  It won’t digest, whispers Murphy. It’s just going to sit there in my stomach, not digesting.

  You’ve got to eat it anyway, says Linda.

  But it’ll just sit there!

  No one can leave until every plate is empty. We all watch Murphy contemplate the sweating mounds of fish and rice.

  Take a tiny bite, urges Sandra. You can do it, honey.

  I can’t I can’t I can’t. I’m sorry—Her big eyes well up, fluttering. I’m letting everyone down.

  Just shove the shit in your mouth so we can get out of here! barks Charlotte. I want to lie out.

  Sandra tells her, Your suntan is not important to us.

  Settle down, says Linda. Murphy, you can do this. I know you think your stomach hurts, but it will actually feel much better once there’s some nourishment inside.

  I’m not making it up, whimpers Murphy. I don’t just think it hurts, it does hurt!

  I guess it’s Ensure for you, then, madam.

  The anorexics live in fear of Ensure. Sometimes they spit it out onto the table or floor, and scream when a second can is brought.

  We’ll get you the strawberry flavor, okay?

  It’s not okay, mumbles Murphy as Linda rolls her chair out from the table. It’s very much not, not at all, okay.

  We huddle around the wheelchair, carefully patting her shoulders. You can feel the bones right there under the skin, no padding whatsoever. It must be painful for skeletons like her to have sex. If they do have sex. Charlotte has it, or claims to, with the welder from her father’s construction company to whom she’s secretly engaged. As for Murphy, I’m pretty sure she does it with girls—or did, before she got so sick. It’s just an instinct; she’s never said anything. Sandra once asked her why she wasn’t married, and Murphy said she didn’t think the right guy was ever going to come along.

  Back on our unit, while they’re fixing up the Ensure, I inform Murphy that group is going to be boring this afternoon.

  But it’s always boring.

  Extra boring. Linda says I have to tell some things.

  Juicy things?

  No.

  There has been no juice in my life, only mistakes and lack of willpower. Murphy, on the other hand, has stories that would fill up weeks of television movies. She stopped eating not to stay thin but because being full reminds her of being pregnant. She has had two abortions, both on account of her father, who had sex with her for five years until she was removed to foster care. She doesn’t mention it in group, but she tells me things out at the smoking table, under the umbrella, on the hot slow afternoons when we sit and smoke and stare at the palm trees. She talks about her father with businesslike eyes. That’s so sad, I always whisper, and she nods, lighting another, It was sad, yeah, as if remembering a film she saw last year.

  No matter what, I promise not to fall asleep, she says, adding shyly, I’m sure it will be good.

  Murphy is a big reason I don’t want to leave Palm Terrace. We smoke together. We make fun of the cook’s hairnet. We stare discreetly at new arrivals on the rehab unit and, if there’s a cute one like Jerome, Murphy will lie through her teeth and say he’s looking at me.

  I’m telling you, she shouts at the head nurse, I can’t drink it. It’s going to clog up my system. You want me to die from blockage?

  Murphy has never shouted before. Everyone stops talking and looks. Linda and the nurse loom over her.

  This can is not going to make you fat, bellows the nurse. Your body needs these nutrients.

  I’ll eat at dinner, begs Murphy. Just give me some time to digest breakfast.

  You know the rules.

  Fuck the rules, I know my own stomach, thank you very much!

  It’s strange to hear a vicious voice coming from that wilted little face.

  Linda holds the can to her lips and Murphy smacks it away and off it flies, into the wall, pink rain splattering the linoleum. Murphy closes her eyes. She looks weirdly like the painting of Joan of Arc that hung in the hospital I went to, for evaluation, after the birthday party.

  At one-fifteen we start group with our usual check-in around the circle. Charlotte complains about having to sit in a wheelchair to and from meals when her legs work just fine, and by the way her parents aren’t paying millions of dollars for her to lose all her muscle tone. Viv passes. Sandra has just received a letter from her husband threatening divorce if she doesn’t lose enough weight at Palm Terrace.

  Is he aware that Palm Terrace is not a diet farm? asks Linda.

  Oh, he’s aware, all right.

  Her husband is the Ice Cream King of St. Cloud, Minnesota, with five stores and wholesale distribution to supermarkets. Which I guess makes Sandra the Ice Cream Queen. She loves her husband but he refuses to sleep with her, even touch her, because she is a flappy-cunted heifer.

  My husband would never say such a thing, declares Grace.

  Only because he never talks to you. Sandra pats her gold-and-purple sundress across the twin mountains of her thighs.

  Grace is a cutter. She takes razors to the rinds of her feet and hacks away, hobbling herself. She also gnaws off the tips of her fingers and is obliged to wear mittens. It is funny to see a mittened lady in this ninety-five-degree humidity, but Grace herself has no sense of humor about it. Instead, she is a tragic figure, the victim of a courteous but indifferent husband and a promiscuous daughter. Today she’s obsessed about her daughter catching AIDS. She knows it would kill me, moans Grace, and she’s ornery enough to risk it.

  She’s the one that would die, not you, points out Charlotte.

  I will die first, of dread and humiliation. She is a common slut.

  I’ve seen pictures of her daughter, a round-cheeked teen, smiling (though how could you smile, with a mother like that?), and not slutty-seeming at all.

  Maybe you should pick something else to worry about, suggests Linda. For instance, your own health.

  Grace sucks on her mittens, rolls her eyes.
Somebody, I think, should prescribe her some new medication.

  Linda checks her watch. Karen? Any thoughts?

  Karen, a puker, is spacing out in the corner. Her neck is still swollen, cheeks puffy—she’s only been here a couple of days—and from what I can tell, she’s not the brightest bulb in the chandelier. What? I’m sorry, what?

  How are you doing today?

  I’m good. Pass!

  I’m the only one left, because Murphy is out fighting with the nurse. Linda’s eyebrows shoot up in warning.

  I begin in my book-report voice: When I was twelve there were some girls that lived on my street, and we all sort of hung out together. . . .

  And I was the only chubby one. The others were blonde, but my hair was dark. Those girls played games like Race Down the Block. Amy Danbury always won. I never raced. I didn’t see the point of, number one, losing, and number two, making my heart feel like it was going to split wide open.

  It was Amy who chose my nickname. Your stomach, she said, is as big as my father’s after he eats too much and needs to sit quietly because he’s bloated. You’re bloated all the time. You are . . . Blotilla!

  The others cheered when she said that, Yes, that’s so good—Blotilla! and I thought That’s stupid but my mouth said nothing. My face was too hot for speaking. I was floating above them, above Amy in her size-small sweater, gliding off. I was glad my mother wasn’t around at that moment to feel ashamed. My mother didn’t need the aggravation. It was a very stressful time for her, thanks to my father, who had just moved to Montreal with a flight attendant and by doing so turned, said my mother, into a walking cliché.

  Amy came up with other stupid ideas, like taking our measurements. She had bought a new tape measure and told us to pull up our shirts. Just to check, she said with a knowing smile. We’ll write them down in my notebook.

  I don’t see any point in that, I said.

  Are you scared, Blotilla?

  What would I be scared of?

  That the tape won’t reach around your stomach?

  Everyone laughed, of course, because when Amy said jump they said how high. I walked away before they could measure anything.