Day 16 / 14:44
Vuyo travels with a cushion, which she positions carefully before she sits down to eat or join group. Once she’s seated, she reaches into her pocket and pulls out a notebook. It contains column after column of neat figures – just like Noah’s, Juliet thinks, only hers records the steps she’s tried to take, the time spent sneaking in exercise, all weighed against how many calories she’s consumed. She’s not allowed to come to morning exercises, but Juliet’s seen her lying on her bed, scissoring her legs, cycling in the air. She lifts herself onto the balls of her feet, then relaxes as she waits in line for food, circles her feet under the table while she slices her food into minute mouse-sized pieces. Like Noah, she takes her notebook wherever she goes. She writes in it before meals, and after, stares at the figures written there after her twice-daily weigh-ins.
Vuyo’s eyes are drooping, but she sits up straight when Ms Turner asks if anyone else would like to share.
‘Me, I suppose.’ Her voice is light and breathy. ‘More weigh-ins. More phone calls from my mother, wanting to know if ‘it’ has arrived yet, because, don’t you know, the most important thing in her life is whether her daughter will be able to give her grandchildren.’ Her hands twist as she speaks; their knuckles deceptively large, their skin dry and flaking. ‘“Not yet,” I tell her. She’s not worried about the school work I’m missing, how I don’t stand a chance of getting into medicine if my grades aren’t right up there. No. It’s the babies I might not ever have that are giving her sleepless nights. That’s what she said on the phone. I’m giving her sleepless nights.’
She shivers and huddles deeper into her denim jacket. It’s lined with sheepskin and Juliet feels sweaty just looking at her.
‘But hey,’ Vuyo grins, her teeth large in her stretched mouth, ‘it’s not like I can do much studying anyway. I try, but I’m not remembering much. I used to be able to scan a page and memorise it all. Who knew? Anorexia, the scourge of the photographic memory. Seems food is useful for something after all.’
She shifts in her seat and Juliet wonders what it must be like, having bones so close to your skin that it hurts to sit on them.
Vuyo’s pen slips from her fingers and Noah bends to retrieve it. She takes it from him, her grip loose.
‘I’m writing a lot in my journal.’ Now her voice carries an angry edge. ‘I have to, there’s nowhere else to talk. I’m so worried about my forum friends. I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to them. They’re going to wonder where I am, how I’m doing. And I can’t let them know because I don’t have any Internet privileges.’
Even if you did, you’d be blocked from those sites, Juliet wants to say, but Vuyo’s pinched face stops her. Juliet’s heard of them, the pro-ana and pro-mia websites, the bloggers and vloggers who post regularly about their progress, the tens of thousands of anorexics and bulimics who belong to them.
Anyway, Vuyo wouldn’t have been able to say goodbye to them, when she arrived at Greenhills. She was in a wheelchair, too weak to walk, at risk of being intubated unless she started to eat, started to slowly but steadily put on weight. And she must be. Juliet’s heard her weeping after weigh-in, betrayed by the upward-creeping needle on the scale.