Dietland

by Sarai Walker

  Rubí was the first to fill her plate. I had admitted to her that I’d ruined the poplin shirtdress she’d made for me during Marlowe’s makeover, but she said she still had the pattern and some of the fabric, if I decided I wanted another one. Sana was next in the breakfast line. When we first met, I didn’t know how to look at her, but I no longer saw a scarred face, just a face. This allowed me to notice her beauty, especially her eyes. They’d been spared any damage and were deep brown with a touch of gold, like two polished stones.

  As the women took their places around the table, Marlowe arrived with baby Huck. “Ooh, is Plum cooking again?” She rubbed her hands together in delight.

  “Plum is always cooking,” I said, sliding a platter of bacon onto the table and catching sight of her tattoo: women don’t want to be me, men don’t want to fuck me. I finally understood what it meant.

  “You all look tired,” Marlowe said. “Let me guess—bomb threat?”

  The answer was confirmed by groans, and I put on another pot of coffee. We ate and talked about the bomb threat, then moved on to the far more interesting topic: Jennifer. We talked about Jennifer every day. The morning papers were scattered around the kitchen. The television in the corner was switched on. Leeta remained missing, which heightened suspicion that what she’d told her roommate was true: She knew who Jennifer was and had done something wrong. The news of the day was that Leeta had been spotted in Alaska. The day before she’d been sighted in El Salvador, and before that it was Kentucky. Whenever I saw her face, flattened in newsprint or flashing on the television screen, I felt a jolt. It didn’t seem possible—and yet it was true.

  “These people seem convinced they’ve spotted her,” Sana said, digging into the quiche. “It’s a mass delusion.”

  “She gets into your head and she haunts you,” I said. She had done that to me, and now she was doing it to everybody. The women at Calliope House knew about my history with Leeta, but I had never shown them the red spiral-bound notebook. Only Verena and Julia had seen that.

  “I tried to call Julia again last night,” I said, buttering a waffle. Since leaving the underground apartment, I’d been trying to contact her. “She’s incommunicado.”

  “Not surprising,” Rubí said. “Look at this.” She held up one of the newspapers, smeared with greasy bacon fingerprints. The headline read: DOES JULIA COLE KNOW LEETA’S SECRETS? Julia’s job working for Austen Media made her an irresistible target for the New York tabloids, which were already obsessed with Stanley Austen and his editors.

  “Julia’s feeling the heat,” said Marlowe. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she and her loony sisters do know something.”

  Verena drank her coffee, her normal brightness dimmed by lack of sleep. “If she does have more information, I don’t want to know about it. I don’t want to risk a connection to this tawdry business, no matter how tenuous.” Verena motioned in the direction of the television, where footage of some of Jennifer’s greatest hits was playing: the Harbor Freeway interchange, the bodies in the Nevada desert, Stella Cross and her husband. “It’s not Julia’s fault that her former intern got mixed up in this, but I’m not upset that she’s avoiding us. I’d prefer that she keep away. Is that awful?”

  Murmurs of agreement spread around the table. Everyone assured Verena that they agreed with her point of view, that they all worked so hard on their various projects at Calliope House and it wouldn’t be fair for Julia’s connection to Leeta to taint their good work. Julia wasn’t part of Calliope House anyway, only an occasional visitor.

  “I can see the headlines,” Verena said. “BAPTIST HEIRESS CONNECTED TO JULIA COLE, LEETA ALBRIDGE’S FORMER BOSS. You can imagine the kinds of stories they’d make up about me.”

  “And me,” said Marlowe.

  I listened to the women try to distance themselves from Julia, and I didn’t blame them. With her paranoia and secret projects, and her inability to be forthcoming about anything, it wasn’t surprising that Julia hadn’t endeared herself to the women of Calliope House. She irritated me as well, but I wasn’t so willing to throw her aside. She and I shared a connection to Leeta, which is something the other women couldn’t appreciate. They’d never even met Leeta.

  As more women arrived, I replenished the table with fresh slices of toast and pots of jam, which were eagerly received. In Verena’s house there was never any mention of calories, there was no I shouldn’t eat this, I shouldn’t eat that. Plates were scraped clean, ooohs and ahhhs were abundant, women asked for more. No prayers were offered up to the diet gods: I’ll go to the gym later; I didn’t eat dinner last night. There was pleasure that didn’t have to be bargained for.

  “Did I tell you I talked to my dad in Shiraz yesterday?” Sana said. “He told me that what Jennifer is doing reminds him of the American Westerns he likes to watch—the Wild West.”

  “People in Iran are talking about Jennifer?” Rubí said.

  “Everybody is talking about Jennifer. She’s the most famous woman in the world,” Sana said.

  Like everyone else, we spoke about Jennifer as if she were a single person, even though we knew that if Jennifer existed, she had a lot of help. For some she was a hero, for others a bogeywoman.

  “Did you see the column in the New York Daily this morning?” Marlowe asked. “The columnist argued that Jennifer just needs to get laid, and guys in the comments section were writing things like, I bet Jennifer is fat and Jennifer is a ball-busting bitch and Who’d want to fuck her.”

  “I love that their only defense against Jennifer is to label her unfuckable,” Rubí said.

  “That’s how dudes always try to bring us down,” Sana said.

  “Jennifer will give herself up and do a nude spread in Playboy to make amends,” Marlowe said.

  “Maybe she’ll do a Waist Watchers commercial,” I said. “She’ll say, ‘I was on a killing spree until these guys on the Internet called me fat. That was just the wake-up call I needed. Now I’ve taken control of my life by losing thirty pounds!’”

  “Burst!” said Verena.

  Laughter erupted. Sana and Rubí beat their fists on the table. Even Huck was giggling.

  “I don’t think anything is going to stop her,” said Verena. “She’s an avenger, a Fury. She’s in our midst, but at the same time, I think she’s left this world behind.”

  “After I’m finished with the companion volume to Fuckability Theory, I’m going to have to write a whole book about this,” Marlowe said. “Did I tell you that a journalist called me yesterday and asked, off the record, if I’d masterminded the whole thing?”

  “Did you?” asked Verena, eyebrow arched.

  I turned to Marlowe: “Are you Jennifer?”

  “I thought you were Jennifer,” she said to me.

  “Maybe I’m Jennifer and I don’t know it,” said Sana.

  “Jennifer could be anybody,” Rubí said.

  On the television in the corner, a yellow banner appeared at the bottom of the screen: LEETA ALBRIDGE SPOTTED? I scrambled to pick up the remote control and turn up the volume. A news reporter was speaking from the parking lot of a Dairy Queen in El Paso, place of another alleged sighting. A swarm of police officers circled the darkened fast food restaurant, many of them carrying automatic rifles. German shepherds on leashes scoured the area; a helicopter hovered overhead.

  “What are they going to do if they find her?” I said, feeling sick and scared for Leeta.

  “She wouldn’t be stupid enough to flee to Texas,” said Sana. “That’s the last place I’d go if the Man was looking for me.”

  “True. And besides, Leeta wouldn’t do something as prosaic as hide out in a Dairy Queen,” Marlowe said.

  I appreciated that they were trying to make me feel better, but the sight of men with guns hunting Leeta was a reminder that the Jennifer phenomenon wasn’t a joke. Like everyone else, we talked about what was happening as if it were a Western, as Sana had said, or a comic book or a superhero movie, since there were no compariso
ns that could be drawn from real life. But it wasn’t fantasy. Sometimes it was difficult to comprehend that.

  “Such a show of force to find Leeta is ridiculous,” I said. “She was an intern at Austen Media. She’s not an outlaw.”

  “But she is an outlaw now, that’s the problem,” Verena said. “And since there’s no other link to Jennifer, they’re going after her hard.”

  Sana took the remote control from me and switched off the TV. “That’s enough for now,” she said, patting me on the head. “You Americans are supposed to start the day with Cheerios, right? Or is it Wheaties? Whatever it is, Sugar Plum, it’s not footage of men with guns.”

  She was right. I picked up my plate and carried it to the sink. It was time to begin the day.

  In my new routine, I spent the most time with Sana. We’d forged a connection in the underground apartment that had only grown stronger in the light of day. She knew about Alicia, the thin woman who had lived inside of me, the New Baptist Plan, and Y—— withdrawal. I knew that her face had been burned in a house fire when she was thirteen, a fire that had killed her mother. She’d come to New York to study for her master’s degree in social work ten years ago and had been here ever since, having lived at Calliope House for a year. She had recently turned thirty-three and called this her “Jesus year.” She and Verena were working together to create a clinic for at-risk adolescent girls. They hoped to open within six months, with Sana as the director.

  Sana’s project was one of many ongoing at Calliope House. A lawyer was working on a class-action lawsuit against an American cosmetics company that had poisoned people with skin-lightening creams in Africa and Asia; there was a justice fund for immigrant women and children from Mexico and Central America; there was a whole team of women, in New York and in Washington, who were focused on reproductive rights, at home and abroad. Then there were the projects I was more familiar with. Marlowe was busy writing. Verena spent some of her time working with former Baptists and helping them heal, but the New Baptist Plan was the deluxe service, she’d said, and just for me. She also worked closely with Rubí on other projects related to the weight-loss industry, the campaign against Dabsitaf their current focus. I wondered if Dabsitaf would have worked on me now. My appetite seemed impossible to suppress or control. I was hungry for everything, for food and for life. It was odd to think that a pill could take that away, or that I had ever wanted it to.

  Besides cooking, I didn’t have a project like Sana and the other women, but Verena didn’t mind. She gave me space. “The Plum project needs tending to,” she said, and she even gave me a salary, double what Kitty had paid me, drawn from her vast supply of dieting dollars.

  In the afternoons, after the lunch rush but before afternoon snacks and dinner, I spent time in my red-walled bedroom. It was on the second floor and overlooked the street. There was a glossy white mantel framing a sealed-up fireplace and a selection of tattered flea market furniture: a wrought-iron day bed, a red wing-back chair, a desk, a chest of drawers. From the chandelier a severed Barbie head dangled—a “welcome” present from Rubí and Sana.

  During my first visit to Calliope House, Verena had told me about the Catholic charity that had owned the house. In my bedroom closet, one of the teenage mothers had scratched a message into the paint: calliope was born in this room / january 1973.

  Calliope House. Verena thought it was a fitting name, in honor of the young woman and the daughter she would never see again. I was glad Calliope’s room had become my room.

  Most afternoons, at my desk in front of the window, I wrote in the red spiral-bound notebook. Sometimes I called my mother to talk about my new life. I had sent her a copy of Verena’s book and she was in the middle of reading it. I’d look online for news about Leeta and send emails to Carmen, to let her know how I was doing. I enjoyed this quiet time. While I loved the activity in the house, and the companionship after so many years alone, I also needed some moments to myself.

  After the discussion of Julia at breakfast, I decided to email her. To my surprise, a response appeared several minutes later:

  From: JuliaCole

  To: PlumK

  Subject: Re: Where are you???

  Dear Plum,

  I did not know that you called. I threw my phone in the garbage and with any luck it is in a landfill by now. Good riddance. I am sick of reporters bothering me about Leeta and so I am living “off the grid” as much as possible. I will tell you what I have told everyone else: When Leeta and I worked together, I never knew much about her personal life. I do not know where she is now.

  For what it’s worth, I do not believe she is involved in criminal activity. You might not know that Leeta is quite flighty. I don’t like to speak ill of her, but this facet of her personality always exasperated me. I do not know any terrorists myself, but I imagine being a terrorist requires discipline and focus.

  I am afraid I have nothing more to say about the matter. Must dash. These lipsticks will not sort themselves.

  J.

  P.S. I am coming to Calliope House soon. I need to ask you for a favor . . .

  Those three dots at the end might as well have been written in flashing neon. The email was typical of Julia, focused as usual on what I could do for her, leaving out the most important details. Verena wouldn’t be happy to see her at Calliope House, but I was curious to know what she wanted. The last time she’d asked for a favor I’d given her 50,000 email addresses, and I still didn’t know what she’d done with them. I would resist agreeing to another favor unless she offered up more information about Leeta, which I thought she probably had. Julia owed me more. She was the one who’d dropped Leeta into my life.

  I returned to writing in my red notebook, Leeta’s notebook. I had clipped a photo of her from the newspaper and pinned it to my wall. She was watching me as I wrote. Where did you go, Leeta? I scribbled in the margin. What have you done? I filled several pages with notes about my days of cooking and eating in Calliope House. When I was finished, I put the notebook in the bottom drawer of my dresser.

  There was an oval mirror above the dresser. After I had been without mirrors underground, my reflection was still a novelty. I noticed the weight loss I’d experienced during the New Baptist Plan, but at the rate I was eating, the weight wouldn’t be lost for long. It would find me again, as it had always done. Despite everything I had been through, I looked about the same as I had before, but I was different in a way that couldn’t be seen. Made over.

  • • •

  . . . you can lick my nuts, bitch, and then get the fuck out . . .

  Rise and shine.

  In Calliope House, from Monday through Friday, no one slept in. At 7:30 a.m., misogynist music blasted throughout the house. The music played for exactly one minute. Verena said it was intended to remind us of our purpose at the beginning of each day.

  My stomach rumbled, so I showered and dressed quickly, then went downstairs to the kitchen, intending to make French toast. I tied my apron around my waist and flicked on the television to keep me company while I worked. As I turned on the coffeepot and removed the eggs and milk from the refrigerator, I was only barely cognizant of the news report. I should have known this wasn’t an ordinary day, given that Cheryl Crane-Murphy was working the early shift.

  “At least now we have a clear connection between Leeta Albridge and one of Jennifer’s crimes.”

  I dropped the carton of eggs on the counter and hurried to the television. Cheryl was discussing the twelve-year-old girl, Luz, who’d been raped and then jumped in front of the train. I saw the familiar photos of the Dirty Dozen, including two of Luz’s rapists, and the crime scene in the desert. Then there was Luz’s mother, Soledad, and her subsequent press conference: “When will the violence end, Jennifer?” she asked before the world.

  With all the drama her voice could muster, Cheryl announced the big news again: As a college student in Los Angeles, Leeta had known Soledad and Luz. She had traveled to L.A. at the time of Luz’s f
uneral and was there when two of the rapists, Lamar Wilson and Chris Martinez, were kidnapped.

  I sat in a chair, deflated. I’d been holding on to hope that Leeta had been mixed up in this by mistake. Now that seemed unlikely.

  Sana walked into the kitchen, her hair damp from the shower. “No breakfast?”

  “There’s big news. Leeta knew Luz and her mother.” Sana joined me in front of the television. After all the violence and bloodshed linked to Jennifer, we had returned to one of the saddest stories: the little girl who’d been raped.

  “I’m wondering if the answer to the Jennifer mystery lies here,” Cheryl said, “but maybe we’re just not seeing it yet.”

  Cheryl turned to the Los Angeles correspondent, who explained further that while Leeta was a student at the University of Southern California, she’d volunteered at a local women’s clinic as a rape crisis counselor. Luz’s mother, Soledad, worked there part-time as a trainer.

  “And this is just coming to light now?” said Cheryl.

  “Apparently, the clinic didn’t keep records of volunteers from more than two years ago,” said the correspondent. “A witness now recalls that Leeta and Soledad not only worked there at the same time, but might have spent time together outside the clinic.”

  Cheryl Crane-Murphy was irritated. I had seen her face so many times in recent weeks that I could read her expressions. “This revelation is certainly important, but what exactly does it mean for the investigation?”