gives me the look, the one he’s been giving me for the eighteen years we’ve been married: kind, steady, reassuring. Usually it calms me down. But not today.
We’ve told a few close friends what’s going on, but we haven’t broadcast the news of Kitty’s anorexia. For one thing, it’s her life, her illness, and she’s made it clear that she wants as few people to know as possible. For another thing, both Jamie and I also feel a sense of stigma and shame. People judge you when your child has an eating disorder, rightly or wrongly. Which is why I react so strongly to this bit of gossip.
I know I’m being defensive. But I can’t let myself feel anger toward the demon, because right now the demon inhabits Kitty, and that would mean getting mad at her. And I’m not mad at her, not really. Sometimes I feel angry—when she’s been sitting in front of a plate of chicken stir-fry for forty-five minutes, for example, picking out all the cashews. But it’s not her flinging the nuts off her plate in disgust. I have to remember: that’s not Kitty.
That night, we eat a late dinner; the temperature has been in the nineties for days now, but eat we must. Kitty uses a baby spoon to scoop up tiny bites of mashed squash (into which I’ve mixed butter and honey). One minute she’s fine, or what passes for fine these days: she’s not crying and she’s eating. Then she looks up from her plate and I can literally see her flip from Kitty to Not-Kitty. I feel a jolt of adrenaline. And sure enough, when she opens her mouth, the demon’s voice emerges, spewing its usual litany of self-loathing and rage.
“Why don’t you take your plate onto the porch?” Jamie asks Emma. We’ve been trying to protect her from the worst of the poison. Emma gets up from the table, but before she can make it out the door, Not-Kitty says, “I just want to go to sleep and never wake up.”
Emma freezes. Jamie and I look at each other. My heart turns over in my chest—literally, that’s what it feels like, a heaviness revolving under my breastbone.
Not-Kitty says it again, louder this time: “I want to go to sleep and never wake up! I don’t want to be alive anymore!”
Emma drops her plate and bolts from the kitchen as Not-Kitty begins to shout. I grab a bottle of Propel from the refrigerator, put a straw in it, and plunk it in front of my daughter. “Drink,” I hiss, and run after Emma.
I find her downstairs, crying hysterically at the bottom of the laundry chute. When the tornado sirens sound and we head for the basement, this is where Emma goes to feel safe. I put my hand on her back and she rears up out of the pile of dirty clothes, furious. “Don’t touch me!” she shouts. “I hate you! It’s your fault Kitty is sick!”
Her words smack the breath out of me. I try to suck in a lungful of air, but something inside me is paralyzed. Maybe I’m having a heart attack. Maybe the stress is killing me, right here in a pile of rumpled underwear. Don’t air your dirty laundry, my mother used to say. Don’t be so quick to tell everyone your business. This, then, will be my punishment for failing both my daughters.
Emma cries, her face contorted in grief and pain, and then I’m crying too, because I don’t know what else to do. We kneel side by side and howl ourselves hoarse.
Eventually Emma blows her nose and says, “I don’t want to go to my sister’s funeral.”
I put my arms around her, and this time she doesn’t pull away. “I don’t either,” I tell her, and hope my intention can magically keep the worst from happening.
{ chapter four }
The Country of Mental Illness
If you’re going through hell, keep going.
—WINSTON CHURCHILL
Anorexia is possibly the most misunderstood illness in America today. It’s the punch line of a mean joke, a throwaway plot device in TV shows and movies about spoiled rich girls. Or else it’s a fantasy weight-loss strategy; how many times have you heard (or said yourself) “Gee, I wouldn’t mind a little anorexia”?
The symptoms of anorexia nervosa are detailed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, known familiarly as DSM-IV, the so-called bible of psychiatric illnesses. And the first item on the list of diagnostic symptoms is “a refusal to maintain body