Depending on what the body you’re born into looks like, you get put in a box marked either Boy or Girl. That box is packed with expectations and requirements, demands and obligations. The box says you can like This, but not That. The box says you can wear This, but not That. The box might fit you perfectly. In that case, everything will be wonderful. Alternately, the box might be so cramped and tight and full of horrible things that you’d rather be dead than spend another minute in it.
There will always be something. Some horrible thing to stress you out, make you miserable, remind you how little control you have. Once you have begun to practice the Art of Starving, there will be a thousand reasons to continue.
DAY: 28
TOTAL CALORIES, APPROX.: 1000
Tariq is a communist.
He told me this nonchalantly, the way you do with a deep dark secret you want someone to believe is no big deal. We were in his room, his broad and spacious room, with the wide windows and clean lines and dark cherry wood. His well-ordered room full of books and technology and a closet almost as big as my whole bedroom, his room that brought home to me in a whole new way how different we were, how much money he had, and how much something like money changes who you are. Tariq was never ashamed to bring someone home; Tariq never had to wear the same sweater more than once a week. Tariq’s mom, who I met when I arrived, who was sweet and thin and quiet and seemingly as in awe of her son as I was, did not have to go to work. Did not have to heave a hammer, murder hogs, drench her forearms in blood every day.
But Tariq was very concerned about injustice, about poverty, about rich corporations and greed, about the exploitation of poor countries by rich ones. He gave me a copy of The Communist Manifesto, and something called What Uncle Sam Really Wants. We sat on giant beanbag chairs on the floor behind his bed, talking politics and gossip and our hopes and dreams and nightmares, listening to punk rock music, looking up at the gruesome and obscene album covers he’d stuck to his ceiling, kissing and cuddling clandestinely. Every few minutes he’d stop and tilt his head and listen for his mother’s footsteps.
I wanted to tell him not to worry. I wanted to tell him she was watching television in the living room, and I’d hear her if she so much as stood up. I wanted desperately to tell him that I had very good hearing—because I was starving myself—because it gave me superpowers.
I didn’t tell him any of that. In all honesty I didn’t say much of anything. I listened to him. I nodded, agreed or expressed anger when appropriate. I tried to concentrate. I put my hand out to rest on his shirt, pressed tight to feel the muscled stomach beneath. But I couldn’t stop thinking about my mom—and my sister—and my father—and my own repulsiveness, especially when compared to Tariq.
“Your hands are so cold,” he whispered, holding one up.
“Poor circulation,” I said, and did not say Poor circulation is a symptom of many eating disorders. Because as I have discussed . . . not my problem.
“And I hate to say it, but your fingernails look gross.”
I shrugged. Fingernail deterioration is a symptom of many eating disorders.
“Huh.”
Tariq was a paradox. He made me feel better and worse, all at once. His interest in me, his desire for me, made me feel almost human for the first time ever. But when I looked at him, when I touched him, I felt my inadequacy more sharply than ever before. Here is a man, I thought. Strong and beautiful and perfect. Here is what you’ll never be.
Tariq smelled like pine sap. December, by then: the busiest time of year for Christmas tree merchants, and his father was working eighteen-hour days, and Tariq himself was spending every available hour hauling and sawing and being an all-around brutish burly sexy person.
This was homework time, my visit technically a study session. His father believed in education, in bettering oneself, and had Tariq’s whole educational career and rise to staggering success in business and industry planned out.
His father believed in the opposite of everything Tariq believed. The rich were rich because they were better. The poor were poor because they were bad, broken, lazy. Men should behave like This, and never like That. Women should simply behave.
“Your mom’s coming,” I said, scooting my beanbag chair away from his.
He cocked his head and listened. “No, she’s not.”
“Trust me.”
It took her five whole minutes, but she came. Bearing a plate where two strange pastries nestled intimately together.
“Wow, Mom, thanks,” he said, and snatched one up. “These are called ma’amoul,” he told me. “They’re stuffed with dates. My mom’s an amazing baker.”
“Thank you,” I said, sincerely, touched and moved and terrified all at the same time. They practically sparkled with butter, with empty carbohydrates, with demonic sugar.
“What are you two studying?” she asked, standing in the doorway, almost certainly waiting for me to take a bite and express astonishment, happiness, gratitude. I took the pastry off the plate. My stomach screamed with wanting it.
“History,” Tariq said. “American for me. European for Matt.”
“You’re not in the same class?”
“I’m a senior, he’s a junior,” Tariq said. “But we’ve both got tests this week. We’re quizzing each other.”
“Ah,” she said.
Tariq’s cookie was almost gone already. His mother waited an extra five seconds, ten, fifteen. Waiting for a response. Expecting me to take a big bite, and tell her how wonderful her pastries were. When none of that happened, she said, “Well, I won’t distract you any further.”
“Thanks for the pastry, Mrs. Murat!”
She smiled, bowed her head slightly. When the door had shut behind her, Tariq said: “After World War Two, the rise of the labor movement had made manufacturing and other industries too expensive for American corporations to continue making the same obscene profits.”
“Fascinating,” I said, and set the cookie down as discreetly as I could and scooted my beanbag chair alongside his. Slid my hand under his shirt, watched him flinch from my cold fingers. He giggled, a boyish sound from a body that was so close to being a man’s. He shifted, straightened out, spooned his body behind mine. Kissed the back of my neck.
His heat melted me. His touch triggered terrifying things. I wanted him so bad it physically frightened me. The wanting was different, now, from when I lay alone in my room in the dark and mentally superimposed his head over scraps of dirty movies.
Was this how girls felt all the time? Torn between fear and desire? Wanting, but afraid to show it, because they weren’t supposed to want?
This was beautiful. This moment was perfect.
But what if we could stand in the sun, walk through the halls, hold hands? The knowledge that Tariq and I were together made me stronger. But if everybody knew it—if everyone saw me like that—
“Hey,” I said, and poked him in the pectoral.
“Hey yourself.”
I poked again.
“What’s up?”
“I don’t like keeping this secret,” I said. “Keeping us secret.”
“Me either,” he said.
“Then let’s not.”
Tariq sighed. “Where’s this coming from?”
“Take it from someone who knows. Coming out is never as bad as you think it’s going to be.”
“Just because it wasn’t as bad as you thought it would be for you, doesn’t mean it won’t be worse than I think it’s going to be for me.”
“But you won’t be doing it alone,” I said. “And you know I’ll murder anyone who so much as looks at you cross-eyed.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, but there was a pause before ridiculous, like maybe he’d been going for stupid.
I turned around, scooted down to rest my head against his chest, looked up at the sharp stubbled mountain range of his chin, the smooth sheer slope of his neck.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know. It’s a process. You’re not there.”
“I’m sorry, too.”
We lay like that. Everything was perfect, as long as I focused on the moment. The room. But I couldn’t go ten seconds without my mind starting to wander out of the room or worry about the future or stress out about the past.
And then—as clearly as if it had happened again—I heard the crash from the night before. My mother, falling. In the morning there’d been no evidence, but I knew what had happened. My mom was drinking, and I couldn’t find a thing to do about it.
Why couldn’t I stay in the moment? Why couldn’t my mind remain there, cuddling with my beautiful secret boyfriend? I wanted to choose happiness. I really did.
“You didn’t eat your cookie,” he said, pointing to where it lay on the floor, looking sad.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll take it with me.”
He frowned, upset with me. Something was wrong, and he could see it. My heart hurt harder. My head spun.
“We should get you home pretty soon. My dad’ll be back.”
“So?” I said. “I want to meet him.”
“You two would probably get along great, actually,” Tariq said, laughing. “He’s cool with everyone. Everyone but me.”
I shut my eyes, focused on my abilities, and tried to imagine him, this template of what Tariq might become, this ogre whose expectations were a weight threatening to break Tariq’s back—
And then, as my head spun faster, as the black stars bloomed and swelled all around me, I saw him. Not as he was, but as he appeared to Tariq. A towering monster with massive forearms, all muscle and rage. I saw him lock Tariq out on the back deck no matter how cold or how hot it was, and watch through a window while his son practiced with the soccer ball, banging on the glass if Tariq stopped for a second.
No wonder he could bounce the ball so well, I thought, could spin it on his fingers or on his face. That gorgeous graceful motion ceased to be beautiful and became sad, the tricks of a trained dog.
“Are you crying?” Tariq asked.
I jerked my head away. It broke the spell. “No, just tired,” I said.
We were quiet for a while.
“What do you think my sister’s doing now?” I whispered.
“Conquering the world,” he said.
“Kicking someone’s ass,” I said.
He kissed my forehead. His lips were very warm and I was very cold. “Don’t worry about her,” he said. “Your sister’s strong.”
I shut my eyes, and I could smell her. Maya, just out of reach. I could hear her voice. A strummed acoustic guitar; waves crashing; a seagull shrieking.
I’m so sorry, I thought, reaching out, certain that if I just pushed a little harder I could push my arm through the fabric of space and find her, wherever she was, and seize hold of her, and pull her back to me, and hug her, and everything would be fine—
“You okay?” Tariq said. “You sort of . . . went away. For a second. I was talking, and it was like you weren’t even here.”
“Sorry,” I said, still reaching, still aching for her. In my mind, I went to the beach. The dream place where I last saw her.
“What’ve you got there?” Tariq asked, tapping my hand, which hovered in the air holding tight to something.
I opened my folded hand to find a fistful of sand.
“What the hell?” he said, laughing. “Where’d you get that? Have you been carrying it around with you?”
“Sort of,” I said, shivering now, so badly the sand began to spill out onto the beanbag between us.
Tariq touched the sand with two fingers, and pulled them back fast. “It’s freezing cold. How can that be?”
I said nothing, because what I would have said was Ha-ha, no big deal, I just opened up a tiny wormhole and grabbed it off a frozen beach somewhere near Providence, that’s all.