The light is on in Julia’s room. I pass it on my way to mine.
I wear my pajamas, the gray ones, and go back downstairs for bathroom access. Permission granted, I wash my face and scrub the taste of pizza out of my mouth. I wish I could do the same to the guilt in my head and stomach. Back upstairs, I sit on my bed, waiting for it to subside.
Julia’s music is playing through our wall. I wonder if she is okay. I get off the bed. I want to thank her for recommending the restaurant anyway.
It takes a few knocks on the door of Bedroom 4 for the music to stop and Julia to come out. Her eyes are bloodshot from tears or something else. She is not okay.
She seems happy to see me, though:
Hey! You’re back. How was the pizza?
Delicious. Thank you for the recommendation.
Anytime. They make the best pizza in town. I used to work shifts there; I should know.
She winks.
Did you get the window table?
Yes, we did.
Her face lights up.
Awesome! You were in Megan’s zone. Was she on shift today?
So the waitress was called Megan. The sweet ex-anorexic who had understood.
She was wonderful,
I tell Julia.
She told me she had been a patient here.
Julia knows I have more to say and waits. I search for the appropriate words:
Dinner was … not easy.
No. Second try.
Dinner was extremely difficult. I am still not over it. But I did it.
Yeah you did!
She high-fives me then, still beaming, motions me inside. Amid piles of dirty laundry, books, records, and empty wrappers, we sit down on her floor.
Megan understands. That’s why I wanted you to sit in her zone. I figured pizza would be hard tonight.
She was very patient with me. She really helped. Thank you so much, Julia.
She shrugs and smiles.
It’s what we do.
Emm had said something similar.
It is my turn:
Are you okay?
Julia thinks for a moment.
No. No, I’m not. I haven’t been for a while.
I give her space and time to talk, or not, if she wants.
Megan is the reason I came here, actually.
Really? How so?
She chuckles.
Well, working the same shift at a pizzeria, she and I discovered early on that we lived on opposite sides of the same problem.
Food?
We both wish it were as easy to sum up as that.
When you’re fifteen and you love pizza, you eat pizza five dinners a week. When you move out of your parents’ house and into a crowded dorm, you have it for breakfast the next day too. Pizza, my friend, is a remarkable cure for everything from hangover to heartbreak. Pizza replaces that 2:00 A.M. cramp in your stomach and mind nicely, with warm, salty, gooey lethargy.…
She pauses, presumably, to picture the pizza.
And then it’s time for something sweet.
I can relate to the angst and the appeal of comfort food. I have spent my own share of time torturing myself in front of rows of crisps, crackers, and ice cream in supermarket aisles. The difference between Julia and me is that I cannot bring myself to eat them. The temporary comfort does not, in my mind, validate the guilty, nauseating knot in my stomach that follows. I ask her:
What were you anxious about?
Oh, nothing in particular at first, then everything, then nothing again. Uncertainty, I guess. Unfairness. Boredom, maybe? Pizza, ice cream, milkshakes, fries—they’re reliable friends.
In a way, like hunger. At the other end, as Julia said, of this sad spectrum we are on. You cannot control your life, love, future, past, but you can choose what you put, or not, in your mouth.
College is hard,
she says. I agree. Like moving to a new city.
It wasn’t at first, though,
she reflects,
I was on the coed basketball team. My teammates and coach were the family I sweated, showered, and pigged out with. I wore workout clothes all the time and actually worked out. I never worried about what I ate. I was always relaxed, with myself and the boys.
Nonchalantly, she adds:
Until one of them raped me and, that same night, I discovered I could binge and purge.
There is nothing to say. I put my hand on her knee. She gives me her Julia smile.
Don’t worry about me. It’s fine. I’m fine.
It is not, nor is she. We both know that, but I do not want to interrupt.
Anyway, comfort food was comforting, but purging was a revelation. It solved so many problems, Anna. It drove the feelings out—like constantly hitting restart. Have you ever done it?
I have. Most anorexics do, at that breaking, starving point when the body turns on its brain and sets loose on carbohydrates, sugar, fat. Bread, berries, chips, lettuce, a raw onion or pickles in the fridge. Chocolate, cookies, cake, leftover food in the trash.
Then the tsunami of guilt, paralyzing. The rush to the toilet bowl. Fingers in, food out. Fingers in again. Speed is key, before the body can absorb any more nutrients and calories.
Yes, but rarely. Only when I lose control. The purging is punishment.
Interesting. For me, it’s an addiction. That complete absence of energy and feeling, lying on the bathroom floor. I could stay there all day—and I did. All day every day for days.
She says it so casually.
It took up all my time. I dropped out of the team and out of college; I was too busy having double, triple breakfasts and raiding the supermarket. I was also exhausted and out of breath all the time. I lost my voice, got calluses, an ulcer. The palpitations sucked too, but money was my biggest problem.
Wry smile. Sad smile as she jokes:
Bulimia is an expensive habit. I stole from my mother and got the cleaning lady fired. I went through the dumpsters behind bakeries. I opened boxes of cereal and packs of cookies and ate them right in the store.
She stops to scrutinize me for signs of judgment. She finds none on my face—how could I—and continues:
Then I got a job at the pizzeria and couldn’t believe my luck: Free food! Free pizza! Endless amounts of it that people left on their plates! Yeah baby.
She grins.
And there was Megan. We became really good friends. She would write orders down wrong on purpose so I could eat the pizzas that were sent back, and I would pick up her cleanup shifts so I could eat the leftovers.
She pauses. The thought crossing her mind at the moment does not seem very funny.
Then Megan had a seizure at work. I missed it—I was busy bingeing in the back room.
A week later, I got fired; apparently there’s a fine line between digging into inventory and depleting it.
She chuckles at her own joke, then looks down at her fingernails. She seems quite engrossed by them.
Anyway she was at 17 Swann for a while, and I did not visit her. Now I’m the one who’s here and she’s out.
What made you finally come here?
Hypokalemia, actually. Bitch of a feeling, like a heart attack.
To my confused face, she explains:
It’s when your potassium levels drop. It sucks. I collapsed a few months ago.
The levity in Julia’s voice only makes her story more painful. I want to comfort this not-so-tough girl who is so kind and so brave, but she undercuts my good intentions in her signature light-humored way:
It’s fine, I’m fine. I wound up here, sharing a wall with you, lucky one! Aren’t you glad you live in Bedroom Five?
We both laugh. Very glad.
I stand up, bones crack. I walk toward the door.
She asks casually:
How are you feeling, really?
I answer with the same tone:
Horrible. Fat. Guilty.
Two wry smiles.
But it is all right,
I say.
I am going to sleep.
Sleep helps,
Julia says,
and if you find you can’t, just remind yourself that there’s coffee in the morning. Focus on that.
That’s what Emm said.