“Well … um. That’s not exactly what I meant ...” replied Nurse Bowley, her face flushing in embarrassment.
“Then I will see her right now.”
Without waiting for a response, Emily Romaniuk strode down the hospital corridor. She pushed open the door to her daughter’s room.
She was shocked at the sight that confronted her. When Paula was still at home, she had seemed thin, but now she was truly skeletal. “My God, Paula, what have they done to you?”
“Mom, I’ve got to get out of this place,” said Paula. “I don’t want to spend Christmas all by myself,” she began. “And besides, if I stay here, I’m going to lose my whole year of school.”
Emily looked into her daughter’s eyes. “If you came home, you would have to promise to eat properly, dear. You’re going to do permanent damage to yourself, the way you’re carrying on.”
Paula nodded in agreement. “I realize that Mom, and I would have eaten more, but the food is awful here.”
Paula knew it was the right thing to say. Emily had never been able to stomach the hospital food in the cafeteria. She could imagine the revulsion her daughter would have towards what they passed off as food in this place. “Let me talk to Doctor Tavish,” said Mrs. Romaniuk.
Doctor Tavish was adamant that Paula stay in the hospital. “I’m sure a bed will be opening up soon at Homewood,” he pleaded.
“Then she’d be even further away from us at Christmas,” replied Mrs. Romaniuk. “We’ll see how she does over Christmas at home. If she doesn’t gain some weight, we’ll reconsider.”
Doctor Tavish agreed, however reluctantly.
An hour later, Paula was packed and ready to go. As her mother led her down the hallway and out to the elevators, Paula smiled at the two women who were standing side by side in the nurses’ station, pained expressions on their faces.
Paula celebrated her arrival home by eating a generous serving of Christmas cake and a glass of eggnog—in front of her mother—who sipped a diet cola. When she was finished, Paula put down her fork and said, “I’m really tired, Mom. I think I’ll lie down.”
She grabbed her overnight bag and headed up the stairs. Before she got to her own bedroom, she tapped on Erik’s door. “Come in,” he called.
She found him at his usual place in front of the computer, Civilization II loaded and ready to play. “Do you want to play for a bit, Paula?” he asked, a look of eager expectation on his face.
Paula felt a twinge of guilt. She couldn’t play right now, because she had to take some laxatives immediately, or the Christmas cake and eggnog would be there to stay. “Maybe later,” she said. “I just wanted to give you your Game Gear back.” She handed him the worn lunch bag which was wrapped around his prized possession. “And thanks for being such a great brother.”
As he reached up and grabbed the bag, Paula tried to ignore the look of hurt in his eyes. She turned around towards the door. “I tried to stop them, sis, but they wouldn’t listen.”
Paula frowned at his comment, not understanding what he was referring to. She walked down the hallway to her own bedroom and opened the door.
What a shock!
The beloved oil by Gramma Pauline was gone. And Paula’s collection of posters had been removed from the walls and the wallpaper that had brought her joy since childhood had been stripped away. In its place were pale pink walls bordered with English cabbage roses. Her bed and dresser, which had once been dark-stained oak, were now painted a high-gloss white. Paula ran to her dresser and opened the top drawer. The underwear that she had casually tossed in as it was laundered was now folded neatly and stacked in rows. In alarm, she groped with her hand to the back of the drawer. Her laxatives were gone.
“Do you like how we did your room?” Paula’s mother was standing in the doorway regarding her daughter. “Merry Christmas!”
Was her mother crazy? Paula felt defiled. Invaded. Did her mother not realize that this was her room, and that nobody else had the right to be in it, let alone destroy it?
“It’s nice, Mom,” she said in a flat voice. What was the use after all?
A more immediate concern was that she had capitulated and eaten the food her mother had served her. And here she was without laxatives.
“Mom, would you mind if I went on a walk?”
“But I thought you were tired,” said her mother, looking at her suspiciously.
“I am,” replied Paula. “But I need some fresh air.”
“I see nothing wrong with that, honey. Just don’t overdo it.
Paula bundled herself in layers of clothes against the snowy cold, then dashed down the stairs and ran out the door. She jogged through the snow to the old public library. The now vacant century-old building was graced with an austere front and a bank of steps on either side.
“That cake and nog probably contained six hundred calories minimum,” considered Paula. “It takes running up and down once to burn ten calories … so I’ll have to run up and down these steps sixty times.”
Paula raced up one side of the steps and ran down the other again and again. She could feel her heart beating and she became light-headed. That probably came from the days of enforced rest at the hospital, she rationalized. Ignoring her fluttering heart, she continued her frenzied pace. All at once, she became unutterably tired. Her breath became so laboured that it was like trying to breathe under water. She stumbled to a sitting position on the bottom step and held her head in her hands.
She began to feel a tingling in her left hand and all the way up her arm. She shook her hand to try to get the numbness to go away, but it had no effect. She was aware of a sharp pain in her chest. Where her breathing was once laboured, it was now impossible. Paula was gripped with fear. What had she done to herself? She was so weak that she didn’t even have the strength to sit up. Her body lurched forward and she fell off the step. Gasping for breath, Paula became aware of an even more intense pain radiating throughout her chest.
Paula could feel herself slump into a heap, but she was powerless to recover. Like water draining out of a sieve, her sight slowly began to fade until she could see nothing. With her ability to move gone, and her sight gone, her hearing became more acute. She could hear the muffled thump of a woman in winter boots run toward her, screaming, “Call an ambulance.” And then … nothing. Her hearing was gone. Then the pain left.
Marta
She had the sensation of floating, and she suddenly could see, hear, and feel again, but with an intense, inhuman clarity. She looked down, and observed a heap of clothing lying on the steps, a crowd of strangers gathering around her. She felt nothing but a sense of peace. Where before she had gasped for breath, now she realized that breathing was not necessary.
She was surprised to realize how thin her body had become. It was barely detectable beneath the winter clothes. Maybe what everyone had been telling her was true after all. Her lifeless limbs seemed to have no more substance than the skeleton of the Armenian in the road on that Internet site. What have I done to myself?
As she felt herself rise further, she observed someone administering artificial resuscitation. It amazed her how much she didn’t care whether they revived her or not. Down below was the body that had betrayed her. Now she was pure essence.
Then she was engulfed in blackness. Paula groped through the darkness. She was suspended in a miasma of nothingness.
And then the space around her changed. The blackness emitted a metallic glitter, and as Paula watched, it enveloped her in a snaking vertical tunnel. Paula felt trapped. Is this what hell was like?
Then she abruptly became aware of a noxious gush pushing at the soles of her feet and propelling her upwards. She wrinkled her nose as the substance reached her knees and then cried out in horror as it rapidly enveloped her, pushing her up with increasing velocity. And then, the glittering tunnel opened before her to a bright blinding whiteness. She reached toward the light, hoping desperately that there was something solid within it that she could
hang onto and pull herself out with. She needn’t have bothered. The vile fluid spat her out of the tunnel and splattered around her.
Paula looked around her and saw that she was sitting on what appeared to be the white sand bank of a river. The light she had seen was the reflection of a brilliant sun on glass-still water. She turned to look at the lip of the tunnel which had brought her to this place, but she was just in time to see its glittering blackness close and disappear below the white sand.
Paula wrinkled her nose as she was suddenly aware of a familiar acrid smell. She looked down at her own body and realized with disgust that she was sitting in a pool of vile green curdled fluid. That’s what had propelled her to this place! She stood up and tried to brush it from her skin, but to no avail. It was rapidly baking onto her, becoming a part of her skin.
She looked around and noted the barrenness of the place she had come to. There wasn’t a stick of vegetation, no ants in the sand, and the water was so still that she knew it held no life.
“I must wash,” she decided, and stood up on wobbly legs, taking a step in the direction of the water, but then Paula felt a white-hot light envelop her. She became acutely aware of key incidents in her life. The sensation was like watching a movie while being in the movie.
She saw herself as a baby in her mother’s arms and remembered the joy of unconditional love. Family celebrations flashed past, and she re-experienced the thrill of seeing her newborn baby brother for the first time. Images of friends flickered by. And her beloved Gramma Pauline. She had so much to live for.
As quickly as the home movie had started, it was over. Paula took her hands from her eyes and was surprised to see that the pool of vomit had vanished. She held her hands in front of her and noted that they were fresh-scrubbed clean. As was the rest of her body. And then with a gasp, she realized that she was naked.
She heard a rustling behind her, so she crossed her arms in front of her chest in a feeble attempt to hide her nakedness, then turned. Where once there was nothing but sand, now there was a rock. And sitting on the rock was a mirror image of herself. The young woman was dressed in a worn shirt and a pair of baggy pants held up with a leather belt tied tight around her waist. Her feet were bare, except for a few tattered rags, wrapped round and round like bandages.
Like Paula, the vision had long black hair and an angular profile. There was a difference in the eyes, though. This woman’s exuded love. She smiled shyly at Paula and extended her hand. Paula took it and was amazed at its warmth and its callused roughness. This was no vision, but a flesh and blood human being. Paula turned the hand knuckle up and noticed another difference between this woman and herself—this woman did not bear the scars of bulimia.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Marta.”
Marta stood up and gestured for Paula to approach. And as Paula stepped towards her, she felt a tingling throughout her limbs and a prickly cold feeling at the back of her scalp. Even though they were only inches apart, Marta beckoned her to come closer, and opened her arms as if to embrace. Paula stepped into the mirror image of herself and felt a loving warmth envelop her. “Paula” no longer existed. She had just stepped inside of Marta.
The woman held the back of her hands up to her face and with a shiver of joy, she realized that all the signs of her latest battle had disappeared. Where once there were bruises and needle marks from the nurses’ poking and prodding, now there was unblemished, tanned skin. Her hands were callused and dirty with honest hard work, but the knuckles were remarkably smooth. She ran her fingertips lightly over her chest and hips and recognized the contours of her old body.
An overwhelming sense of peace and satisfaction enveloped her. She curled up, hugging her knees with her arms, and fell into a vast, delicious sleep.
April 23, 1915
“Marta, you lazy girl. Wake up!” Marta ignored the voice, content in savouring the satisfying dream. Suddenly, her face and shoulders were covered with a splash of cold water.
“What did you do that for?” she screamed, opening her eyes for the first time, expecting to see her brother, Erik, standing at the foot of her bed. Instead, there was a teenaged girl not much older than herself, holding a dripping earthen jug. Something in the brown eyes and furrowed brow seemed familiar, but Paula couldn’t quite place it. The girl was beautiful, however, with finely chiselled features and a birdlike fragility. Her hands seemed familiar, with their long elegant fingers and almond shaped nails.
“You cannot sleep any longer, Marta. The soldiers will be here in an hour and anyone who isn’t ready will be shot.”
What was this girl talking about? Marta looked around her in dismay. Gone was the white sand and the river. In its place was a dormitory-style room that must have been built for a dozen or more girls. All of the other cots in the room had been stripped of their bedding. A neat stack of rolled bedclothes sat just outside the entranceway of the room.
Marta recognized the gravity of the situation, and while she still didn’t quite know what was going on, she remembered this scene with forboding from a dream of the past. Deja vu.
Marta shook the droplets of water from her hair and rolled out of bed. And then, as if she’d done it a thousand times before, she deftly folded up her bedclothes and rolled them into a neat bundle like the other girls in the room must have done.
“When did you change into Kevork’s clothing?” asked the older girl.
“What?” Marta asked.
The girl pointed at Marta’s shirt and pants. “I knew you were going to try dressing up as a boy, but I didn’t think Kevork had given you the clothing yet.”
Marta looked down and realized that she was wearing the same shirt and pants that she had worn in her … dream? Only now, the shirt was clean and white and smelled faintly of soap. Her pants were slightly wrinkled from having been slept in, but they were in good condition, and were held up with a leather belt. She looked up at the girl and noted that she was wearing an old-fashioned long skirt and a white blouse.
“Get your boots on, grab your bedroll, and let’s go find Kevork,” the girl said, impatience tingeing her voice.
Marta poked her head underneath her cot and grabbed the pair of boots that she found, suppressing a giggle at the absurdity of it all. She quickly slipped them on and laced them up, then followed the other girl out of the room to meet this Kevork fellow.
Marta looked at her surroundings with dawning familiarity. The dormitory room from which she had exited was part of a huge enclosed city: row upon row of institutional buildings, with a sturdy stone fence built around the whole complex. This was an orphanage, she knew instantly. And she also felt a vague sense of security emanating from the fortress-like walls. This was a place that she wished she never had to leave.
In a flash of insight, she realized that the older girl she was following was her sister, Mariam. She also remembered a brother. She knew that this brother wasn’t named Erik.
Mariam led her through the dusty courtyard in the centre of the orphanage complex and then disappeared through the heavy double doors of a one-story oblong building. Without pausing to see whether Marta was following her, Mariam continued down the central corridor, then pulled open the door of one of the rooms at the end.
There sat a a boy... a young man, really … on a cot much like the one from which Marta had recently been so unceremoniously awakened. As he looked up and met her eyes, Marta’s heart lurched with sorrow, and with love. Like a phrase on the tip of her tongue, she knew he was the love of her life, but for the life of her, she couldn’t remember why or how.
He was powerfully built, and over six feet tall, although he still had the eyes of a child. He was dressed in a shirt and pants like Marta’s own, and on his feet were heavy boots. He was holding a well-thumbed sheaf of papers in one hand, and nine Turkish gold pounds in the other. His shoulders were hunched over in sadness. Before they had disturbed him, he must have been reading through the letter one last time.
He
set the letter down beside him, and Marta craned her neck to read the script. It was not in English, but miraculously, she could read bits and snatches of it—enough to know that his father had died and bequeathed him these coins. She could also read the date on the top sheet—02/03/1915! Her heart pounded. Nineteen-fifteen was a horrible year. If only she could remember why.
Kevork placed the gold coins on top of the letter. “There are still a few things that we have to do before the Turks return,” he said.
Turks?! Fragments of memory flashed before her eyes. She remembered that the last time she saw her parents alive was six years ago. They were in the barley fields. She and Mariam were just little girls then. Her brother … he had been just two or three. They had left the fields together to play in the city. It was then that the killings had begun. She and Mariam and … Onnig! Her brother’s name was Onnig! They had escaped by laying hidden in silenced horror on the roof of a mosque and watched while the killings happened all around them. Marta could still remember Onnig trying to bite through her fingers as he tried to scream, but she clamped her hand over his mouth to keep him silent.
Others had somehow survived too. Kevork’s mother had managed to hide him, but not herself or his baby sister. Where his father was, no one knew.
It was the day of the Adana massacre that Marta met Kevork. He was crazed with grief. And then there was Anna—Kevork’s albino aunt. The Turks neither killed nor molested her, so superstitious were they of her appearance.
Anna gathered the children together and they travelled on foot to Marash. Away from the horrors. Away from the memories. Their grandmother took in young Onnig, but she was too poor to keep them all, so Marta and Mariam lived at the orphanage. As did Kevork. Aunt Anna had been hired on as a cook.
“Where’s Onnig?” Marta asked.
Mariam and Kevork looked at each other and then at Marta with a pained expression in their eyes. “If only we knew,” Mariam replied sadly.
The Hunger Page 7