I woke up to my alarm in a great terror. I couldn’t remember exactly what had happened the day before, but I knew it had been bad. As I pieced together what I’d eaten, I could taste some of it in my mouth, in the sour, acidic parts of undigested food that came up: a hint of salsa, a lone SpaghettiO. My stomach hurt from the bottom to the top, like I had to take a massive shit that snaked itself in coils and knots and would never end. But the worst pain was in the middle, where I felt a strange emptiness despite the incalculable food that I had eaten. I had stretched my stomach, made too much space. I felt like I still needed more food, to return to what had hurt me, to soothe all that I had done.
Put something in me, said my stomach. Give me something calming.
But I could not and would not oblige. I no longer kept a scale in my apartment. In my laxative years, I’d weighed myself ten times a day: every time I shit or pissed. If I’d learned anything from that self-torture, it was that if I owned a scale I’d never get off it. But now I felt I had gained at least ten pounds. I made a resolution that for the next three days, I was only going to eat protein bars so I could keep perfect track of my calories. I felt disgusting. I imagined the food I had consumed simmering in my stomach, just beginning to make its way slowly out to different parts of my body: my hips, my stomach, my arms. Was I going to look like Miriam? Was I becoming a frozen yogurt girl: soft, sloppy, melting?
I thought about Dr. Mahjoub and the missing clay figure. I didn’t believe in The Secret or vision boarding or creative visualization or any of that other LA drivel. And yet, I wondered if it was possible that I had somehow The Secret–ed this woman.
That night, I googled voodoo doll. I ended up on someone’s Etsy page, featuring an array of ugly gingerbread-man-looking stuffed dolls—said to be handmade in Brooklyn. I googled Jewish voodoo doll and found an article about anti-Semitism in Turkey. I googled Jewish Frankenstein and read a biography of Mel Brooks. Then I googled Jewish monster.
A golem (/’goʊləm/ GOH-ləm; Hebrew: גולם) is an animated anthropomorphic being found in Jewish folklore that is created magically from inanimate matter—usually clay or mud. The golem possesses infinite meanings, and can function as a metaphor for that which is sought in the life of its creator.
Well, I certainly hadn’t sought out yogurt sundaes, that was for sure. I continued reading:
The most famous golem was said to have been created by Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the late-sixteenth-century rabbi of Prague, who made a golem to defend the Jews from anti-Semitic attacks. Some think the golem is real. Others believe it is symbolic and refers to a spiritual awakening.
In one picture, the golem looked like King Kong. In another, it looked like something of a hulk: the Jolly Green Giant or Andre the Giant. In no picture did the golem look anything like Miriam or me or a young me or the psychedelic woman I’d made or Dr. Mahjoub or even frozen yogurt.
I googled Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel and found a painting of him. He was old and had a beard down to his feet. He was smiling. He looked nice.