—Researchers from the University of Parma, published in the journal Appetite
DOLLARS SPENT ON RED DISHES AND KITCHEN GOODS: Endless.
WEIGHT LOST: Zero.
Daphne dipped an iceberg lettuce leaf into mustard and crunched, hoping against hope that she’d learn to appreciate this horrid stuff. Ivy’s information about this place had been so far off that she feared she’d come to the wrong place or that the entire project was a scam. After exposing her desperate need to lose weight and uncover who the hell she was supposed to be in this world, Ivy did what Ivy always did. She researched and soon arrived at Alchemy waving a brochure. “I found your place.”
The paper on which it was printed, thick and a bit rough but still rich and heavy, imparted a sense of organic money. Good works. Caring. Down comforters with heavy cotton sheets.
The pamphlet made it seem like she’d be going to a Whole Foods version of a Weight Watchers resort-spa, if such a place existed.
Valentina crept up from behind, so quiet that only a wax moth would hear her approaching, and flicked the plate with a square pink nail. “You eat every drop, do you? Perhaps you want more? Toasted muffins to go with the egg? Eh, chazzer? Oink, oink! Is that what you do all day? Go snuffle around like pigs?”
Silent connection fizzed between Daphne and Alice.
The days never changed. They woke at seven, ate breakfast at eight, and hit the gym by eight thirty. Lifting kettlebells, running, swimming laps, cycling—all of it went on until they dropped or vomited or both. After lunch, where they fell on every shred of carrot and slice of turkey breast, they returned to the fetid gym air. Daphne could say it was the worst part of her day, but, in fact, it made up the entire day, as they did little else until after sundown. They exercised more than nine hours daily with brief breaks for food and short rest periods during which most of them slept on their sweat-slickened mats.
Nightly, following a seven o’clock dinner, they slogged back to their rooms and crawled into bed.
After burrowing under the covers, they took turns telling stories of their real lives, as they called the world they’d left behind, and avoided reliving the day, other than assuring themselves no pain, no gain.
“They must know what they’re doing,” they repeated nightly. The payback had to be worth these awful tests of will.
Without fail, Hania would fall asleep first. Afterward, as though they’d tucked in their child, Alice and Daphne whispered truths to each other. The way Alice described her mother, Daphne imagined the woman as an odd opposite of her own. The woman, Bebe, encouraged Alice in all she did, battled for women’s rights, was unapologetic in her undyed gray hair and unmade-up self. What sounded like heaven to Daphne brought confusion to Alice, whose self-worth remained high only when she lived according to the standards of moral perfection that her mother honored, and heeded no white beauty standard—as defined by Bebe.
Daphne tried to understand Alice’s discomfort—so different from her own life. Where Daphne never pleased her mother and fed on the slightest positive-appearing nod as maternal affirmation, Alice choked on mother love. If everything you did was considered perfect, and the only way you could upset your mother was by trying to fit in with the norms, what was the logical solution?
They’d barely muster up enough energy to speak for fifteen minutes before falling asleep—often midsentence. And then it all began again.
• • •
Like now. Another day, another inedible and meager breakfast.
“Come.” Valentina’s harsh order brought Daphne back to reality. “Pick up your dishes and wash them. Enough eating.”
Once the last clean dish rested on the thin white towel, they walked down the hall toward their workouts.
After washing up and being herded into the gym, Daphne thought of the daily choices and prayed to be chosen for laps in the pool, where at least she became invisible and remained cool.
“Dragon walk!” Valentina shouted. Daphne dragged herself to the right side of the gym, where Jennifer and Susannah stood with Coleen.
“Here.” Coleen threw a pair of leather gloves to each of them. “Hurry.”
Mike aimed his camera as they tugged on the stiff fabric. Working out with him filming made it far more difficult; the glass eye turned Daphne’s movement to sludge. Mike wasn’t a hunk, but worse; he resembled someone who could be Daphne’s cousin from her father’s side. Open-faced and warm-looking, with a wrestler’s build. He seemed too familiar, making it difficult for her to dismiss him as background.
“Take positions.” Coleen swirled her finger in the air.
Jennifer dropped down first, grunting as she fell to her hands and toes. Daphne carefully lowered herself next. Caution meant everything with this exercise, which Jeremiah had extra-poisoned by having them do it on a stretch of sand-gritted cement.
Finally, Susannah worked her way down. Balancing on hands and feet was especially difficult for her, being so bottom heavy.
Jeremiah ambled over, motioning Mike to follow. “Get this one. This is the top challenge. Heck, even military men have a hard time doing this more than a short time. Let’s go, ladies. Let’s walk like reptiles. Assume push-up positions. Do everything like me, in sync. Move one arm and opposite leg forward. Bend the knee to touch the elbow. Same movement for the other side. We’ll count one repetition per step.”
He dropped down and made the exercise—which they barely man aged for two minutes—appear easy. They dragged themselves onward.
“Keep your backs straight!” Coleen shouted.
Daphne’s forearms burned. Pain increased in her hands with each step. After ten reps, breathlessness threatened to bring her down. The gritty floor waited to rip her knees apart just as it did a day ago. Dragon-walk agony once again tormented her.
“Face forward.” Jeremiah squatted over her, pushing her shoulders into position. “Elbow completely to knee. Move.”
Susannah flopped down. Even knowing that shards of concrete pressed into her, Daphne envied the momentary break dropping brought.
“Up. Up now!” Coleen plucked at Susannah’s sweaty jumpsuit.
Jennifer turned her head and caught Daphne’s eye for a moment. Fuck her, Jennifer mouthed. Fuck her twice, Daphne responded.
They continued for twenty minutes—which in dragon-walk time equaled an hour of straight-out running—and were then sent to the following station. Cycling. Her thighs burned each time she pedaled down, but as in the kingdom of the blind, cycling compared to dragon walking was like ambling versus sprints.
For hours, they continued. Lauretta vomited while walking on a sharply inclined speedy treadmill. Valentina allowed her a moment’s recuperation and a trip to the bathroom before handing her rags and a bucket to clean it.
Seung lay motionless next to a pair of twenty-pound barbells. Daphne noticed everyone sneaking worried glances. How long would she have to lie there before someone checked her pulse? Finally, she groaned and rolled over.
Daphne struggled, her arms shaking as she worked on the bicep curl machine.
“Control the weight!” Jeremiah yelled from yards away. Like Big Brother, he was everywhere.
Coleen blew a shrill whistle. “Cool down. Five minutes. Then line up.”
The trainer stood before the giant scale, along with Dr. Ash. He held a gleaming black clipboard and silver pen, and his face looked all pinked up—maybe from whiskey or perhaps a recent facial.
They straggled to the scale and formed the line they always made. “Suits off, ladies,” said Valentina.
Daphne wished she wore glasses so she could remove them and follow this next bit blindly, groping her way toward the weigh-in, letting everyone blur before her. Instead, she pulled her hair as fully in front of her eyes as possible. The daily weigh-ins were the nadir or highlight of their days, depending on how many pounds they were down.
Each of them had a different way of undressing. Hania shimmied the jumpsuit down quickly, getting over the pain fast. A
lice stared straight ahead with her cold “Who cares? Eff you,” expression, yanked off the muddy-orange fabric, and left it in a heap at her feet.
Daphne’s disrobing felt like déjà vu, shocking her back in time to the horrors of high school locker rooms. Wiggle out one arm and then the other. Bend over while pulling off the damn thing, as though somehow she could hide her body by coiling it into a snake.
“Today we do things differently. More thoroughly.” Coleen drew an imaginary circle. “Everything comes off before climbing up. Everything.”
The heat from holding back screams flamed on Daphne’s cheeks.
“We use this method to provide complete assurance that we award for the absolute most weight lost,” Valentina said. “Otherwise how do we know which team is leading in weight loss?”
Bullshit.
Daphne looked around for confirmation that the others shared her disbelief. Did these people think someone might have sneaked in gossamer-thin panties and a bra whose weight would not show up, while some wore lead-lace-edged underwear?
Seung shuffled to the scale, hunching with an air of defeat.
“Move along,” Coleen said. “We’re all waiting.”
The young woman inched off her green bra one strap at a time. Her hair hung lank across her shoulders as though it just didn’t care anymore. Then, hooking her fingers into purple lace panties, she pulled them down in one defiant tug.
“Step on and turn, please.” Ash held his hand out, gesturing to the scale.
The number 193 flashed on the screen. Beneath, it read 201, Seung’s beginning weight.
“Just eight pounds altogether,” Jeremiah announced. “How does that make you feel?”
Seung shrugged as she stood there, her short muscled arms stretched down to cover as much of her stomach as she could manage.
“Are you proud of that?”
Seung moved her chin in a vague circle, swinging her hair, as though hoping if she showed the right attitude, Jeremiah would move on. But he wouldn’t. He liked transforming them into squirming bugs, pinned in the spotlight.
“Yes?” she asked and answered simultaneously.
“Doctor?” Jeremiah asked.
“Eight pounds.” Dr. Ash cocked his head. “One ninety-three. At five foot four, she is moderately obese. She entered severely obese. Her target weight, to be normal, is between one hundred ten and one forty-four. To be merely overweight, the target is a hundred forty-five to one seventy-five. What number do you want to see, Seung?”
“One twenty?” she asked and answered again.
“One hundred and twenty?” Ash repeated.
“One ten,” Jeremiah interjected. “You aim for the best when you’re here. Understood?” He swiveled his head. “Understood? Let me hear you!”
They shouted back as instructed, chanting “the best” in unison.
Jeremiah nodded.
Seung pulled on her underwear. Daphne envied her.
Twenty pounds a week? Daphne tried to imagine Seung dropping eighty-three pounds, losing almost half of herself in the remaining weeks. The plan sounded insane. A punishment. Impossible.
Still, the thought that they could drop the worst of themselves in one punishing month drew them like proverbial moths. Why not stew in the revulsion, pounding away the prison of their bodies? Jeremiah called out the truth about the women when calling them prisoners of their own creations.
They needed—wanted—to believe that the goal lived in the realm of possibility and that these people possessed genius, despite the Waisted approach going against every so-called sensible diet on earth.
Daphne’s misshapen thighs resembled bloated Parker House rolls. Doughy and white. The brown freckles spotting her skin might well have been overbaked dimples of cellulite flesh. Her thighs held years of English muffins, craters filled with melted butter; her stomach layered with crispy chocolate cookies, pot roast, and noodles; her arms plumped up with bowls of whipped mousse, light as air until it hit her body where it transmogrified into sleeves tightened by her expansion.
Daphne watched and waited. At yesterday’s weigh-in, the scale registered 173 pounds. Ten pounds lost in five days. Despite hating this procedure, that morning her first emotion had been excitement at seeing what today brought; now, with forced nudity, she approached the scale as though facing the crucifix.
Daphne averted her eyes, hoping to offer some privacy. But even half blind, a sense of fleshy rolls, the other women’s thatches of pubic hair barely visible through their overhanging stomachs, swam through her half-closed lids.
Fat women looked more naked than normal-weighted women.
Clothes made the woman. Naked made the shame.
Daphne silently recited a virtual rosary, ticking off things she’d never have to face again if she went through with this: from her mother’s shame, to dreading Sam’s touch—concentrating on avoiding his hand on her stomach, her thighs, as they made love; guiding him to her breasts and then to finishing the act so she could return to the state of being bodyless.
Her daughter’s sadness. Her son’s jolly avoidance.
The scale trilled up, hummed up and down, as though Lauretta had broken the code when she stepped on and showed her weight moving in a week from 175 to 160. What scale wouldn’t have sung with such a miraculous one-week, fifteen-pound loss? The programmed music resonated as the inner workings of the machine moved from the upper height of moderately obese to the lower end, closing in on being merely overweight.
Lauretta appeared wreathed in holiness, surrounded by angelic spirals of curls, ready to ascend to the heavens of acceptability, even as she shook and twitched, like all of them, from hunger and exhaustion.
Perhaps each of them prayed for the others to have lost less than she did. Or maybe only Daphne contained such smallness, such schadenfreude.
Not for her team, though, or at least not as much. The team concept had been left vague, with Susannah sent back and forth to balance events. Daily, small punishments boiled up. Treats were given to the winning team—winning a series of athletic competitions, from the five-mile hike (won by Coleen’s team), to a swimathon (also won by Coleen’s team), and on and on. They finally broke the Coleen winning streak in the tug of war, and then only because Susannah, assigned to Valentina’s team, anchored the contest with the competitive ferocity of a starving Olympian trying to win her family’s freedom. Grim-faced Jennifer’s gutting her way through any challenge offered might have beaten Susannah but for the grounding provided by Susannah’s low and wide center of gravity.
When they learned that Susannah worked as a nursery school teacher, Daphne imagined toddlers climbing up onto her giant lap as though scaling the Matterhorn. Jennifer as a professor fit perfectly once you saw her control any room she entered.
Coleen’s women led in treats that on the outside would have been laughable but here were akin to golden tickets. Oversized zero calorie Popsicles with flavors such as watermelon and coffee. The women’s personalities played out as they either crunched the delicacies in moments or licked them for what seemed like hours. Lauretta was the queen of slowly mouthing the frozen sticks, drawing them in and out of her lips as though giving a frozen blow job, while they all licked along with her, coveting the chemical ice.
Next, Hania stepped up to the plate and stripped from her lacy underthings with such panache that one would think her a supermodel offering the world her beauty. Even Jeremiah appeared chastened by her haughty display.
Hania was the one-eyed queen in their kingdom of the blind. Her magnificence elevated everyone. Even without rimming her eyes in black and gilt, her deep sable irises against her gold skin reminded Daphne of the treasures in her family’s Illuminate jewelry stores.
And, of course, Hania had entered Waisted the thinnest. Being the only one who began as overweight rather than obese, even if it was the highest end of overweight, made her the upper crust. Daphne, like all the women, studied the charts posted everywhere as though reading tarot cards. Hania
had to travel through only one category to reach the promised land of normalcy.
The young woman carried herself as though she were the queen bee of the Waisted cast. Daphne and Alice treated her like their deluded daughter, a lesbian couple who kept their surprising sorority girl in check. Hania complained about everything—including not being able to wear her bright-yellow gold bangles and diamond studs—but the girl accepted anything to stay on the top of the heap.
Hania stepped up, presenting her nakedness as though offering something grand. With youth and luck, her fat was distributed throughout her body so that she appeared more adorably padded and plump than disturbingly lumpy like the rest of them.
Numbers blinked. Everyone waited as the pet of the group, their great hope, registered her success or failure. Digits flew up and down, flashing red until it settled into a fiery 163. Down from 170. A mere 7 pounds.
Jeremiah sighed. He tried to hide it, but Hania was his favorite.
“Not a great showing, Hania.”
Hania pulled her clothes on as though standing alone in the room. Tears trickled down her golden cheeks. “But I have less to lose,” she said when she got back in line. “I can’t lose as much as them. Right?”
“You have less to lose? You think you will lose slower? You eat less, little girl.” Valentina tapped Hania’s chest. “Adjust.”
“Daphne!” Jeremiah called. “Your turn.”
Her legs were stone. She should have been lying on a shrink’s couch. Walking into a psych ward. Why had she left a loving man to face this psychopath?
The scale loomed.
Daphne glimpsed the exit sign. Would they stop her if she walked out?
CHAPTER 14
* * *
ALICE
Daphne looked like someone who’d been punched in the gut. Alice understood. Her turn came next.
She prayed for Daphne’s collapse. Nothing life threatening, just awful enough to create chaos and save both Daphne and Alice from the horror of disrobing. Alice could only imagine her mother seeing this bullshit. Bebe would drag her out of there with the sudden strength of Wonder Woman.
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