The Stone Girl

by Alyssa B. Sheinmel

She says it like a regular bratty teenager, she says it like she really is concerned about her last day to sleep late and stay in bed all day. But the truth is that, having barely left the house for two weeks, Sethie doesn’t quite remember the steps to getting up, getting ready, getting dressed, and she wants to give herself some extra time to remember them. Her hair is so greasy, she thinks, she will have to shampoo it at least three times. But then she remembers that Janey’s hairdresser says you should let your hair get greasy in between shampoos anyway.

  Sethie swings her legs over her bed and plants her bare feet on the floor. This part, she thinks, is easy. I’ve gotten out of bed plenty of times since Janey left: to go to the bathroom, to walk into the kitchen, to search for the remote control when it fell under the bed. But she hasn’t changed her clothes since New Year’s Eve. She shivers when she lifts her T-shirt over her head. Not because she’s cold, but because she is not used to her own bare skin. Being naked feels strange, after so many days in the same clothes.

  In the shower, Sethie wraps her arms around herself, folding one so that it lies across her stomach and the other so that it lies across her back. She is thin enough that she can grab her opposite elbows. She pulls her fingers across her belly, pressing against her skin. She can barely even grab her belly fat. Her fingers stop at the scab on her hip. She picks at it so that it bleeds again, and then she rubs soap into it so that it hurts. It begins at her hip bone and snakes onto her belly. It’s beginning to scar.

  The cut would not have left a scar, Sethie thinks, if she’d only let it alone. It wasn’t such a deep cut, though she did press the knife deeper as she moved down toward her belly, down to the fatter place. But as it began to heal, Sethie couldn’t stop picking at it, pressing on it. There’s a name for it, she thinks: to worry a wound. That’s what she did. She didn’t let it heal; she made it bleed again instead. But she likes knowing that she will have a scar; like how some people get tattoos to remember the important moments in their lives.

  She doesn’t bother blow-drying her hair; she doesn’t put on makeup. She chooses sweatpants, and she pulls the drawstring waist tight so that it rubs against her scabs, opening them again as she walks, sits down, stands up. Her mother suggests a nice restaurant about eight blocks from their house, and Sethie wonders how many calories she can burn off in the walk to and from the restaurant. She wonders why her mother is choosing such a nice place when Sethie’s dressed the way she is. She winds a scarf tightly around her neck and shoves a hat over her wet hair. She doesn’t mind that she’ll be cold on the walk to the restaurant, though; shivering burns calories, too.

  Her mother’s coat is black and fitted. Sethie feels like a little girl next to her; her coat is baggy, and she knows that without makeup, she probably looks even younger than she is. The doormen on Park Avenue tip their hats at Rebecca; a man in a tie doesn’t even pretend not to stare at her as he walks past. Rebecca takes it all in stride. Sethie looks at her feet as they walk. None of them are looking at her, not the way she looks now. But she can remember, only a year or two ago, when the men began looking at her more than they did her mother. She can remember feeling both triumphant and guilty.

  When they sit down, the waiter places a large basket of bread in front of them. Her mother reaches for a piece of baguette and rubs butter all over it. Sethie reaches for the cinnamon raisin bread with walnuts. It used to be her favorite; she used to ask her mother to take her to this restaurant just for this bread. Maybe that’s why her mother suggested this place; maybe she remembered that it used to be Sethie’s favorite. She can’t possibly know that now Sethie would never choose a place with bread like this.

  But she can’t seem to stop her fingers from placing the bread on her plate, from ripping it into smaller pieces, from wrapping around the butter knife, and spreading the butter across the bread. She can’t stop her hands from bringing the bread into her mouth, her jaw from chewing it, her throat from swallowing it, her stomach from accepting it.

  It’s okay, she thinks, I can throw it up later. She looks down at her hands, and her stomach, and says silently, “Eat all you want, kids.”

  “Are you excited to go back to school?” Sethie’s mother asks.

  “Huh?” Sethie had almost forgotten her mother was there, forgotten anyone was there, other than the bread.

  “Are you excited to go back to school?” Rebecca repeats.

  “Oh, sure. I don’t know. My grades don’t really matter anymore.” Sethie butters another piece of bread, puts it in her mouth, reaches into the bread basket for more.

  “Everything’s already gone off to colleges,” she explains.

  “Right.” Rebecca chews her own piece of bread. “Well, I’m sure you’ll be happy to have your friends back in town.”

  Sethie shrugs. I must have told Rebecca, she thinks, that my friends were all out of town, so that she wouldn’t think it was odd when I barely left the house for two straight weeks. Sethie doesn’t remember, but that sounds right.

  When the waiter takes their orders, Sethie orders an omelet with cheese. She doesn’t even bother specifying egg whites only; it doesn’t matter since she’s going to throw it all up later. Her mother asks her more about going back to school, but Sethie’s too distracted to answer more than monosyllabically; she’s thinking about getting back to the apartment in time to throw up. After brunch, Sethie’s mother offers to take Sethie shopping, but Sethie turns her down. So they head off in opposite directions; Sethie’s mother toward Bloomingdale’s and Sethie toward their apartment. She walks slowly, making as little effort as possible. She doesn’t want her body to begin metabolizing too much.

  Even though she’s home alone, she closes the door to her bathroom and turns on the sink to drown out the sounds. She crouches over the toilet and sticks her fingers in her mouth. She gags, but nothing comes up. She tries using the opposite hand, she tickles the roof of her mouth, she reaches for her throat, she covers her fingers in soap so that the taste alone should be enough to make her gag.

  She hasn’t had this kind of trouble since the few feeble and halfhearted attempts she made before Janey taught her how to do it properly. She settles down, sitting cross-legged in front of the toilet.

  It’s okay, she tells herself, maybe I just need to relax for a minute. She takes a deep breath and tries again; again, she gags, she coughs, she spits, but no food comes up. She closes her eyes and leans against the wall opposite the toilet. Her fingers are still at her mouth, resting against her lips, reminding her to try again. She imagines that her stomach is clenching like a fist around the food she’s eaten; she imagines her intestines snaking around tighter to hold everything in. She imagines that she—her fingers and her throat and her desire to throw up—is pitted against her greedy belly, and she feels outmatched.

  So everything stays down. The bread with the nuts, the butter, the cheese, and the egg yolks. Her body just won’t give it up.

  20.

  SETHIE’S CLASSMATES RETURN to school with skin tanned from vacations in exotic places like the Riviera Maya, St. Lucia, and Buenos Aires. Sethie goes back to school with a scar that peeks out of the top of her uniform skirt. Sethie likes her scar; it makes her feel dangerous, like she bought a fake ID over the break and used it to get a tattoo. She likes it even better than a suntan. A suntan isn’t permanent.

  Despite everything she ate on Sunday, she has lost six pounds; she was 110 when winter break began and is 104 now. She wonders if any of the weight lost was bled out of her when she cut herself, or when she picked at the scabs until she bled again. She wonders how much blood weighs and if it really matters because maybe your body just makes more blood to make up for what you lost. But maybe not, because then why would people need blood transfusions?

  Sethie thinks she should have paid more attention in biology; maybe then she’d know better about blood. She remembers one day in biology class they were made to find out their own blood type—this was in ninth grade—and the teacher had a little plastic s
tick that looked like a pen, except when she clicked the top of it a needle came out of its tip instead of a ballpoint. She remembers that when she was waiting in line for it to be her turn to have her finger pricked, the girls behind her were discussing the merits of regular versus low-fat versus nonfat salad dressing. Sethie had trouble following their talk. They were the popular girls, and Sethie was still skinny then; or, she still thought she was skinny then, or, really, she didn’t yet think she was fat. She remembers that at the time, she’d never even tasted reduced-fat salad dressing, and she hardly even ate salads.

  She remembers that she wondered why they didn’t have the choice to opt out of this particular assignment; weren’t some girls frightened at the sight of blood? Wasn’t there anyone else who was scared about how much it might hurt when the needle pricked her? It’s funny now, to think how scared she was then. She had been surprised at how little the needle hurt, didn’t quite believe it; but now she knows that it hardly hurts at all, to break her own skin.

  Her bra feels loose, but it’s only six pounds she’s lost, hardly enough to make a difference in how her bra fits.

  On the first day back after break, Sethie’s school has Health Day, when they sit you down and talk to you about self-awareness and stress levels, drugs and sex. Sethie thinks Health Day would be more useful if it were before finals, before everyone has studied their fingers to the bone, snorting their friends’ Ritalin and Adderall to pull all-nighters. At least, she thinks, don’t put Health Day on the first day back from Christmas break, when every other commercial on every other TV show is offering lessons on how to lose those stubborn holiday pounds.

  In the morning, a victim of date rape gives a lecture. The entire upper school (at other schools it’s called high school, but here at the White School, it’s called upper school), grades nine through twelve, is packed into the assembly room. Sethie is the only senior who still sits on the floor rather than the faculty chairs. She knows she doesn’t belong on the floor, but she wants to compare the feel of the hardwood to the way it felt before she lost six pounds. (Seniors are also allowed to take the elevators in second semester, but Sethie has vowed she won’t do it. The stairs are such a great way to burn calories.) Sethie listens to the victim telling her story. It should be really moving, but Lifetime made a TV movie out of this particular victim’s story, which nearly everyone in the senior class has already seen and from which the girl shows scenes as visual aids. When she’s finished, the headmistress takes the podium to thank the girl for sharing her story. Sethie feels sorry for the girl, but in her mood, she also can’t help thinking that this girl has parlayed her story into a fairly lucrative career, between the TV movie and the lectures. And the headmistress manages to turn her story into nothing more than a warning about why girls shouldn’t drink at frat parties. Proper young ladies, she seems to imply, don’t drink beer from a keg, and they certainly don’t get date-raped.

  Just before lunch, a nutritionist comes in to meet with the senior class. She is short—maybe 5′1″—and fit, and the shoulder pads on her suit make her look even smaller. Sethie recognizes the shoulder pads for what they are: an old, if unfashionable, trick to look thinner. She immediately hates the nutritionist for her hypocrisy: Don’t worry about your bodies, girls, you’re beautiful just the way you are—but it’s okay for me to worry about how I look. After all, Sethie thinks, this nutritionist has her own lucrative career to worry about; this particular nutritionist appears regularly on the Today show, and everyone knows how important looks are in show business.

  The nutritionist stands in front of the class and asks a question: “How many of you girls have ever said ‘I feel fat’?”

  Every single girl raises her hand.

  “And how many of you girls actually believe that fat is a feeling?”

  Not a single girl, not one, raises her hand. They’re smart girls, good students; they know what’s expected of them. But Sethie knows that most, or in any case many, of them would be perfectly capable of engaging in a debate about why fat is most definitely a feeling. Sethie shoots a look across the room at a girl named Alice. Alice is the class anorexic. Sure, there are plenty of girls in the class who’ve toyed with the disease, and with bulimia too. But Alice is the only one who really, Sethie thinks, deserves the title. She was even sent to a rehab-type treatment center over the summer; she had to stay there, everyone knows, for three weeks. Sethie thinks maybe you’re not a real anorexic until you need in-patient treatment. Alice is wearing a tank top, even though it’s December and 32 degrees outside. Alice, Sethie knows, is proud of her thinness. Sethie stares at her in every class they have together.

  Sethie decides to go to the bathroom, and then the nurse’s office. She doesn’t want to listen to the nutritionist; she made the same speech last year. Even the same opening question. Sethie bumps into Alice in the hallway.

  “You needed out of there too, huh?” Alice asks.

  “Can’t stand that woman,” Sethie says as they walk in step toward the nurse’s office.

  “Me either. She just repeats every single line in her book.”

  “You’ve read her book?” Sethie asks.

  “Are you kidding? My parents shoved it in my face the minute it was published. Required reading, you know.”

  Sethie nods; there’s no need to explain why Alice’s parents were force-feeding her a book. It’s probably the only luck they’ve ever had force-feeding her anything. Sethie’s too intimidated by Alice to say anything more.

  When they reach the nurse’s office, Alice pulls a cigarette out of her jeans pocket.

  “I’m gonna go out,” she says. “Want to come?” Alice can get away with a lot, even brandishing a cigarette in a school hallway. If she ever gets caught, she just blames it on the stress of her disease, and the teachers feel bad for her.

  Sethie shakes her head. “No thanks. Just gonna crash in here for a while.” Sethie begins to turn, and she hits something hard: Alice’s elbow.

  “Sorry,” Sethie says. Alice has dropped her cigarette; both she and Sethie bend down to retrieve it. Or in any case, Sethie intends to help pick the cigarette up for her, but instead she just watches Alice’s right hand reach out for it. It seems impossible that Alice’s fingers will be able to wrap around the cigarette. They’re an odd shade of bluish white, and it doesn’t seem that they could bend, let alone withstand the weight of anything at all, even a cigarette. Alice’s fingers are so far apart that Sethie thinks a cigarette would just fall right through them anyway. They are lifeless fingers; for a moment, Sethie wishes that Alice would keep her hand still, reaching out, so that Sethie can hold hers up next to it and watch their hands side by side: Sethie’s, pink with life; Alice’s, blue and dead. But Alice moves, and her fingers wrap their way around the cigarette, and lift it off the ground.

  Sethie smiles in apology; both girls stand up. Sethie hesitates by the nurse’s door, watching Alice walk toward the exit. There is nothing delicate about Alice’s thinness, nothing lithe and lovely, like Sethie wants to be. Alice’s thinness reveals the effort behind it, in the way her bones battle her skin for room. Sethie can make out the ridges of her spine underneath her shirt. Sethie has always wanted defined shoulder blades; she has spent hours looking at pictures of actresses in backless dresses, trying to decide whose shoulder blades were the best. Alice’s jut out like wings on her back. Sethie wonders whether it hurts, where the bones stick through the skin like that.

  Alice will be cold, Sethie thinks, as she turns to walk into the nurse’s office. She didn’t stop to get a coat before heading outside. But then, Alice tends to smoke her cigarettes quickly—hungrily, Sethie thinks, cocking her head to the side—so she won’t be outside for very long.

  21.

  THE NURSE SMILES at Sethie when she walks in; she’s used to Sethie stopping by. Sometimes Sethie spends her lunch periods in here, chatting. The nurse’s answer no matter what is wrong with you is that it must be because you haven’t eaten breakfast. Sethie’s
often wondered why the nurse doesn’t seem to mind that Sethie’s constantly missing lunch.

  The nurse doesn’t question Sethie when she says she’d like to take a break from Health Day. Guess I didn’t rest enough over break, Sethie explains, and the nurse nods sympathetically.

  There are three beds in the nurse’s office; one set of bunk beds and another plain twin bed. Sethie climbs into the upper bunk. The nurse reserves this bunk for the older girls only. It’s up against a wall that’s plastered with articles the nurse thinks will be useful to teen girls: safe sex and gynecology, peer pressure and menstrual cycles. Diagrams of how to put on a condom, insert a tampon, do a breast exam. And, of course, everywhere, there are articles about eating disorders. Articles that blame anorexia on Kate Moss and articles that blame bulimia on bad parenting. Articles that blame bad self-image on the fashion industry and a healthy self-image on any fashion models who actually look fit and healthy.

  Sethie’s read every single article over the years, and she can’t find one to diagnose herself. They don’t say whether you’re anorexic if you only starve yourself some of the time. They don’t say whether you’re bulimic if you’ve only thrown up a handful of times. And they certainly don’t allow for the fact that maybe, just maybe, a girl could be anorexic or bulimic simply because she hates being and feeling fat, rather than because of bad parents and trashy magazines. The only thing Sethie has ever gotten from these articles is tips on how to be better at dieting: one of them quotes a girl saying that she never ate a meal without drinking a cup of coffee first, to make her feel full. One of them tells the story of a bulimic who began eating with brightly colored foods, so she would know she could stop vomiting when she saw the colors come up. One of them quotes a girl who said celery speeds up your metabolism, because your body has to work harder to digest it. Sethie always wanted a more specific explanation for that one: how many more calories does celery burn, exactly; how much celery would she have to eat to make up for, say, a pint of frozen yogurt.