Dietland

by Sarai Walker

  Helen said that my boss from the publisher had told her all about me. “We’re old friends,” Helen explained, and I wondered what had been said. Helen wanted to talk about Daisy Chain, the magazine for teens. I had read Daisy Chain when I was in high school. Even my mother and her friends had read it when they were that age. It had been published since the 1950s and was such a part of Americana that the first issue was displayed in the Smithsonian, alongside Seventeen and Mademoiselle. I guessed that the old issues of Daisy Chain on display at the museum weren’t like the current issue on Helen’s desk, with a cover that read POPPING YOUR CHERRY—IT’S NOT THAT SCARY!

  Helen told me that Kitty Montgomery was the new editor of Daisy Chain. Austen’s other teen magazines had ceased publication, so Kitty was carrying the flag for the teen demographic. “She’s a huge hit,” Helen said. “Mr. Austen’s so pleased, he’s had her up to his place on the Vineyard twice.” Helen explained that in her monthly column, Kitty was fond of sharing photos and tragic stories from her teenage years, when she was a gangly, pebble-chested misfit from the suburbs of New Jersey. As Helen took a phone call, I perused several of Kitty’s columns and read about her being beat up by other girls and shoved into lockers by boys. Her mother compounded her misery by never letting her wear makeup or use a razor. In contrast, at the end of each column there was a photo of Kitty as a glamorous grownup, one who had miraculously shed her hideous adolescent skin and emerged, victorious, like a grand white snake. In her current photos she was perched on the corner of her desk in the Austen Tower; visible behind her were the plains of New Jersey, the land of her former tormentors, so small and insignificant.

  “Given Kitty’s popularity, she’s swamped with correspondence from readers,” Helen explained when she finished her call. “They’re inspired by Kitty and how she transformed herself. They desperately want her advice and contact her through the Dear Kitty section of the website. It’s like a flood.” I waited for Helen to explain what any of this had to do with me. I knew there was the prospect of a job, but I assumed it was something tucked away in the subscription department.

  “The legal department would prefer that we send out cookie-cutter form responses to the readers, but Kitty won’t hear of it. We’ve decided to indulge her and hire someone to take on the responsibility of responding to her girls, as she calls them, by offering big-sisterly advice and encouragement, that sort of thing. This is private correspondence, so it doesn’t appear in the magazine.” Helen looked at me and paused. “I think you might be perfect for this. I’ve sent others up there and none of them have worked out, but you,” Helen said, putting her glasses on and eyeing me, “you’re different.”

  I knew what my former boss had said about me.

  “You want someone to respond to these readers while pretending to be Kitty?”

  “I wouldn’t think of it as pretending. You’d be a team.” Helen folded her arms across her chest, which was not two separate breasts but just an enormous shelf. “You’re older than the other girls we’ve considered for the job, and you’re different from them in many ways. Most of them are—Well, you know the type. I hear that you’re smart, but I don’t mind that. You’d write in Kitty’s voice. You wouldn’t have to believe what you’d write; it only matters that Kitty would believe it and write it if she had time. I think you’d have insight into the problems our girls have—that’s what’s important.”

  I should have been grateful for the possibility of a job, but I felt defensive and was trying to hide it. “What makes you think I’d have such insight? You don’t even know me.”

  “I’m guessing,” she said, and we both knew what she meant. I hated it when others alluded to my size, despite the obviousness of it. It was as if they were confirming that there was something wrong with me when I’d hoped they hadn’t noticed it.

  I appreciated Helen’s offer, but the thought of working in the Austen Tower every day was unappealing. I imagined it was like a fifty-two-story high school, full of cliques and whispers. Helen must have begun working at Austen Media decades before she morphed into the large postmenopausal woman who sat before me.

  My instinct was to flee. I initially refused Helen’s offer to meet with Kitty, but both of them were insistent. When I finally met Kitty in her office, she suggested I could work from home. “It was human resources’ idea,” she said. “As you can see, my assistant has his desk out in the hallway. We’re a bit tight for space.” Working from home made the job more appealing, but I said I would need to think about it. I had never been the type to offer advice, and I wasn’t sure I had the right qualifications for the job. Kitty thought my reluctance meant I was playing hard-to-get, so she began to pursue me with heartfelt emails, flowers, even a scented candle that was delivered via messenger. I was not used to being courted and sought-after. The feeling was mildly intoxicating.

  It had been three years since I’d taken the job, three years of responding to messages in the café. I arrived for my monthly meeting with Kitty, stepping off the elevator onto the thirtieth floor, where I was greeted by massive Daisy Chain covers, which might have been meant to intimidate enemies, like the buildings and monuments in Washington, D.C. I sat on the lip-shaped loveseat outside Kitty’s office and waited. Our meetings rarely lasted more than ten minutes, but I never managed to leave the Austen Tower in fewer than two hours, thanks to Kitty’s frenetic schedule. I would have preferred to catch up by phone, but Kitty demanded that we meet.

  As I waited on the sofa, her assistant, Eladio, played video games on his computer. The first time I visited the office, he took me to the conference room with the panoramic windows and pointed to the stickpin people on the sidewalk below. “What I love about working here,” he’d said, “is that we get to look down on everyone.”

  He was the only male on a staff of twenty-one white women; he was also Latino and gay, a triple hit of diversity. He told me once that he became irritable and moody at certain times of the month, prone to outbursts of unprovoked rage, caught up in the synchronized menstrual cycles of the women in the office and pulled along for the hormonal ride by mistake. He kept a box of Midol Menstrual Complete on his desk, but it was filled with jelly beans. Kitty once told her readers that the cycles of the women in the office were linked by the moon. She claimed the mass bloodletting each month left the trash receptacles in the ladies’ room filled to overflowing.

  While I waited, I browsed the latest issue of Daisy Chain, checking the masthead for my name, which would be printed over a million times and distributed across North America: Special Assistant to the Editor-in-Chief: Alicia Kettle. Alicia was my real name, but no one ever called me that.

  Kitty finally appeared, rushing into her office and dropping a pile of magazines and files onto her desk. “Plum, come in!” She was wearing black slacks and a cropped T-shirt that revealed part of her midriff. There was a red crystal nestled in her bellybutton, like a misplaced bindi. I sat across from her as she moved the clutter around on her desk. “Be with you in a minute,” she said, studying a green Post-it note intently.

  A traffic helicopter hovered outside her office window, black and buglike, a giant fly. I closed my eyes. In the Austen Tower I always felt uneasy, sometimes even dizzy and nauseated. I didn’t like being so high off the ground, suspended in the air by nothing more than concrete and steel. With my eyes closed, I imagined the floor beneath my feet giving way, sending me sailing back to earth.

  “Plum?” Kitty was standing behind her desk, looking at me, her brow pinched in confusion. She was a mesmerizing presence, probably better viewed from afar. With the afternoon sunlight streaming in through the windows, casting her mostly in silhouette, the sight of her—Medusa-like red curls atop a slender body—made me think I was hallucinating or looking at something drawn by Edward Gorey.

  She launched into chatter about the September issue, handing me a packet of information about the articles, columns, and fashion spreads. It was the back-to-school issue, the biggest of the year. S
he always shared these details with me even though none of my work appeared in the magazine. I had pitched ideas for articles, hoping to jump-start a writing career, but Kitty had never assigned me anything.

  When it was finally time to discuss her correspondence, she sat behind her desk, ready to take notes. I described the tenor of the messages over the past month. I didn’t keep formal records but gave her my general impression.

  “We’ve had a lot of cutters.”

  “Cutters,” Kitty repeated, writing something down.

  “Purging,” I said.

  Kitty wrote on the pad again. “Purging,” she repeated, and nodded for me to continue.

  “Confusion about female anatomy.”

  Kitty waved her hand, as if what I’d said could be swatted away. “There’s nothing I can do about that. Those parental groups said they’ll target us if we use the word vagina. Better just to avoid it. Of course, it makes our article on tampons difficult to write. I just remembered that.” Kitty leaned back in her chair, appearing overwhelmed. “Euphemisms, that’s what we need.” She looked through the doorway to where Eladio sat.

  “Think of some euphemisms for vagina,” she shouted to him.

  “Poontang?”

  “No, nothing sexual. Medicalized terms. Come up with a list and send them to the author of the tampon article. Tell her she can’t say vagina. Send the list to Plum, too, in case she wants to use it.”

  It was difficult to believe we were all engaged in real work, for which we were paid. I would have to tell Carmen about this later.

  Kitty turned back to me. “Good, glad that’s done,” she said, even though I hadn’t finished going through my mental list. “Between you and me, I know parts of the magazine are silly, but my readers are real girls with real problems. I truly believe we can help them. I like to think the work that you and I do is an anecdote to all the bad things in the world. Wait, I mean antidote.”

  When she said that, I imagined a bite on a girl’s ankle, as if from a snake, its fangs having penetrated deep into her flesh.

  Kitty always made the girls seem like real people, whereas for me they were too often an army of annoying and persistent ants. “I always say, ‘Plum is our link to the girls,’ and your work is just as important as everyone else’s, even though it’s not in the magazine.” She continued on with these sentiments for another thirty seconds. They flowed from her mouth in a stream of spun sugar.

  “Now, there’s something else we need to discuss and then I’ll let you go,” she said. “For an upcoming issue the staff is testing all sorts of beauty stuff like razors, deodorant, lip-gloss, hairspray, whatever. We’ll tell the girls what works best. I want to include you in this.”

  “You don’t have to include me.”

  “Oh, no, we have to! Just because you work at home doesn’t mean you aren’t one of us. You know, the strangest thing happened to me last night when I was testing out some shaving gel. I’m sitting on the edge of the tub and I have my leg stretched out so that my foot is resting on the sink. Are you picturing it?” Kitty was nearly six feet tall and I imagined her white leg stretched over the expanse from tub to sink, like an ivory bridge.

  “I’m shaving my leg and I don’t realize that I nicked a tiny scab I had on my calf. So I’m shaving and this tiny droplet of blood falls from my leg and splashes onto the white tile floor. My bathroom is totally white and this tiny drop of red is, like, the only color. And I’m staring at it and it’s just so—now, don’t laugh—but it’s just so beautiful. I just sat there staring at the blood. I thought, That’s my blood. As women we see our own blood every month, but this wasn’t gross like that, you know? So I ran the razor along the little scab again and there were more drops of blood on the floor and some of it ran down my calf. If my boyfriend hadn’t knocked on the door, I would’ve kept doing it all night.”

  Kitty went on talking about the blood on the white tile, and as she spoke, all I could think was: Dear Kitty, I like to cut my breasts with a razor . . . I like to trace around my nipples and watch the blood seep through my bra . . . I know it’s weird, but I do it because it feels good. It hurts, but it feels good too.

  Kitty left and I sat on the lip-shaped loveseat again, waiting for the beauty editor. After a while I started to feel dizzy and sick, as I had in Kitty’s office, so I went to the ladies’ room, winding my way through the corridors lined with the huge magazine covers—the models, with their glazed-over looks, like the heads hanging on a hunter’s wall. I stared at the carpet until I made it to the bathroom, where there were several girls standing at the mirrors and sinks. I locked myself into one of the salmon-colored stalls at the end and breathed in and out slowly. The nausea was increasing and I felt something churning inside, tumbling like a lone sock in the dryer. I began to gag and choke and leaned over the toilet bowl, but nothing came out. The girls at the sinks stopped talking, and I felt ashamed of the noises I was making.

  When the sick feeling passed, I sat on the floor of the stall, lacking the energy to stand, staring into the pinkness. The girls resumed their conversation, which was punctuated by the sound of water, the spray of sinks. Then the talking stopped.

  The door to the bathroom opened and closed.

  I rested my head against the side of the stall, taking deep breaths of sour bathroom air, which made me gag again. I ran my hand under the three elastic bands that were around my waist, from my skirt and tights and underpants.

  The door to the bathroom opened and closed.

  “Are you okay in there?” a voice said from the other side of the stall door. The voice sounded familiar. Under the door I saw legs that were green, like the rind of a watermelon, and black combat boots with the laces undone.

  Could it be?

  “I left something for you in the kitchen,” she said, and then she was gone.

  After I heard the door close, I struggled to my feet and went to the sink to wash my hands, breathless from the shock of encountering the girl in the Austen Tower. I wondered if she might be in the staff kitchen waiting for me, but when I walked over, no one was there. I looked around, at first not knowing what the girl could have left, but then I noticed the freebie table.

  What wasn’t used in the magazine was dumped onto a table in the kitchen, available for the taking. I dug through the pile: there was a purse with a broken bamboo handle, a tangle of cheap plastic earrings, tubes of lipstick—nothing that seemed to be for me. Next to the table on the floor was a box filled with books. I bent over to browse through the titles—a few teenage romance novels, the unauthorized biography of a pop star—and then I saw it.

  Adventures in Dietland.

  It was a book by Verena Baptist. Her name wasn’t familiar to me until I read the description on the back. When I realized who she was, I squeezed my eyes shut. I might have been in the Austen Tower, suspended in the air by nothing more than concrete and steel, but in my mind I traveled to Harper Lane, back in time to my childhood home. I felt a pang, the kind that memories bring. How did the girl know? She couldn’t have known.

  I opened the book to see if there was a note from the girl or anything to let me know I’d found the right clue on her treasure hunt, but there was nothing. I had stuffed the book into my bag and was moving toward the door when suddenly it opened.

  “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.” The beauty editor’s assistant handed me a bag filled with the products I was supposed to test.

  “Do you know if there’s a girl working here who wears combat boots and colorful tights?” I asked, taking the bag. “She uses thick black eyeliner. Maybe she’s an intern?”

  The assistant shrugged.

  I left the kitchen, hurrying to the elevators. Once I was on the subway headed for home, I opened Adventures in Dietland. As I read Verena’s words for the first time—Before my birth, Mama was a slim young bride—the train pulled away from the platform and nosed into the tunnel, moving me away from the Austen Tower.

  Already, it had begun.

>   ALICIA AND PLUM

  • • •

  • • •

  AFTER FOURTEEN HOURS IN THE CAR, driving from Boise to Los Angeles in a single day, my mother and I arrived at 34 Harper Lane, our faces and arms colored pink. My great-aunt Delia and her second husband, Herbert, lived in the small stone house, its front door obscured by coral vines and bougainvillea, its yard green with lemon and palm trees. “You’ll go home to your daddy soon,” Delia whispered as I climbed out of the car. “Just give your mom some time.”

  Delia had lived alone in the house on Harper Lane after her son Jeremy moved east for college, but then she married Herbert and then she welcomed us. My mother set herself up in the study, with the black-and-white television and sofa bed. I was given the spare bedroom at the front of the house that had a view of a date palm, or mostly its trunk, which was patterned in triangles like a giraffe’s neck.

  After telephone calls to my father and the promised trip to Disneyland, my mother retreated to the study and rarely left it for the rest of the summer. If I wanted to see her I would tiptoe inside and curl next to her in bed. With the curtains closed it was dark; I couldn’t see her but I could feel her hand on my head, playing with my hair. I listened to the tick of the fan in the corner, my nose filled with the smell of her sweat.

  Delia managed a restaurant during the day. Herbert was retired and sat on the sofa watching “his shows,” beginning with The Price Is Right in the morning and lasting until dinnertime. He wasn’t to be disturbed. He’d taken me to Kmart and bought me a stack of books, plus Colorforms, paper dolls, new roller skates, and a jump rope, expecting me to entertain myself.

  One afternoon I sat in the front yard under the palm tree and read one of my new books. It was hot in California, much hotter than in Idaho, and I began to fantasize about a cherry Popsicle. As I was about to stand up, a blue car with two women inside stopped in front of the house. One of the women leaned out the passenger window with a bulky black camera and snapped the button several times. When she was finished, she eased back into the car and it sped away, the sound of the women’s laughter trailing behind it.