on herself and begins a kind of moaning chant: I’m a fat pig, I’m gross and disgusting and lazy. Look what you’re doing to me, you’re making me fat. I should never have listened to you.
She lifts her head. Mascara streaks her sunken cheeks. “I’m never eating again,” she hisses, and now it’s the demon talking. “I won’t let you make me fat.”
I’m shocked to see the demon out in public. I can’t think of what to do. So I don’t think. I take Kitty’s sharp chin in my hand and look into her dark eyes, which blaze with rage and, yes, fear. “I won’t let you die,” I say, slowly and loudly. “Do you hear me? I won’t let you starve. I will keep you safe.”
Tears squirt from Kitty’s eyes; her mouth is open in a silent scream. But she’s not really fighting me. I have to believe that somewhere inside, she can hear me.
I let go of her chin. She tucks her head down into the bony scaffolding of her arms and begins to cry, softly this time. The demon has receded. For now.
And that’s how I come to understand the true nature of my daughter’s prison. What we have to do to set her free.
We are walking a delicate line between truth and delusion, between confrontation and collusion, because our daughter is trapped between us and the demon. There are times when we have to face it down, in words and actions, take a public stand against anorexia. There are times when Kitty needs to hear us do that. But there are other times when the pain the demon inflicts on her will be too great to bear. I imagine the terror and agony she lives with and I want to scream. So sometimes we’ll have to appease the demon with words, to spare Kitty.
Weighing in, for example. Kitty gets weighed in a hospital gown, standing backward on the scale, so she doesn’t know the number. Now I ask the nurses who weigh her to refrain from any comment at all, explaining that if they tell her she’s done a good job, she feels so guilty that it’s hard for her to keep going. Best not to say anything at all, or show any emotion. We’ll all try to be matter-of-fact, downplay the number on the scale, at least outwardly.
Yeah, right. I’m the least matter-of-fact person I know. Which is why it’s all the more important to create a bland, superficial persona—The Mother—and stick with it. The Mother, I hope, will block the empathetic connection Kitty and I share. Kitty has to believe that I am calm and in control. She has to believe I can keep her safe. The Mother will speak in platitudes and generalizations, telling Kitty, for instance, “Everything will be all right. I promise.” That’s not a promise I would normally make, even before anorexia; and even if I did, Kitty would never buy it. But she has to buy it now. She has to trust me and Jamie to override the demon in her head. She has to trust us to be stronger than the demon, which hates every quarter pound she gains because it’s one tiny step toward freedom. And somewhere inside, Kitty wants to be free. She’s relying on Jamie and me to let her out of the prison she inhabits. I believe this, deeply, passionately, truly.
We will make many mistakes. The trick will be to keep going.
On our last eighteen-hundred-calorie day, I get a call from an acquaintance, Mary, who has a daughter Kitty’s age; they took dance classes together for a couple of years. She’s calling to say that she spotted us the week before in a store and was shocked at Kitty’s appearance. “I didn’t recognize her,” she says. She didn’t want to approach us, so she called one of our neighbors, Delia, whom she also knows, and Delia told her that Kitty has anorexia.
And what am I supposed to say? “Yes, I know my daughter looks like a walking skeleton”? I haven’t even talked to Delia about it. Anything she knows comes secondhand at best. How dare she spread this kind of news?
I hang up as soon as I can and go out on the porch to glare at Delia’s house. I’m ready to storm across the street and tell her off, but Jamie stops me. “She cares about Kitty,” he says.
“Well, it doesn’t feel that way to me,” I snap. “It’s none of her business.”
Jamie