she doesn’t want to see her friends and she doesn’t want to go to school. I know a lot of her anxiety is a by-product of both the anorexia and the refeeding process. But I can’t help wonder if on some level she’s always felt anxious about school, and just never told us. Does the illness give voice to feelings that have been hidden to her, or does everything get mixed up in its chop and churn?
Ms. Susan says it’s not helpful to get tangled up in this kind of thinking. She says people in recovery from an eating disorder do best when they limit the stress they’re under, and I believe her. On the other hand, to keep Kitty out of school entirely would create a different level of stress for her. She’d feel like a failure, a freak, a weirdo. And, to be honest, it would be good for all of us—including my relationship with my staff and my boss, who have been immensely patient—to have her out of the house for a few hours a day.
One late August afternoon Kitty sits in front of a milk shake and weeps with anxiety. This is her talking, the real her in her own voice, not the creepy distorted voice of the demon. And yet—and yet she’s irrational. She stares at me, her face full of worry, and says, “I don’t want to go to high school and have everyone look at me and say, ‘Look at Kitty, she got so fat over the summer!’”
“You’re not fat!” I say, but I might as well be speaking in tongues, because she can’t hear or understand.
“I’m so fat, everyone will be talking about me,” she insists.
I don’t want to tell her the truth: that kids will talk, but not about how fat she is. God. They’ll be gossiping and speculating about the fact that she has an eating disorder. They will comment on how she looks, but it will be about how thin she is. And yes, some of them will say and do stupid, insensitive things. Not that teenagers have a corner on the insensitivity market—some of our acquaintances have made some appallingly hurtful comments.
Like the acquaintance I run into at the food co-op, who had us to dinner early last spring, before we realized Kitty was sick. Now she leans across the sweet corn and says, in a voice dripping with concern, “How is Kitty?”
I don’t know why it rubs me the wrong way. She means well, I tell myself. “She’s doing all right,” I say, and then, to shut down the conversation, “Thanks for asking.”
She leans in closer. “You know, I could have told you she had anorexia,” she confides.
What I want to say is “Then why didn’t you?” Instead I grit my teeth and say, “How so?”
She smooths her glossy hair. “I noticed the way she cut all her food into tiny pieces and pushed it around her plate,” she says, her voice low and intimate. She gives me a look of concern and adds, “She didn’t eat a thing. Didn’t you notice?”
Now I feel like slapping her. No, punching her in the mouth. No, garroting her. Anything to make her stop talking. “I have to go,” I say, leaving my basket on the floor. I manage to get out the door and into my car, where my rage quickly evaporates, leaving an acid bath of shame. Of course people know exactly what’s going on. And of course they blame us. Hell, I blame us. We’re Kitty’s parents; we’re supposed to be in charge. We’re supposed to protect her.
What I didn’t realize was that they would blame Kitty, too. That they would see her behavior as willful and manipulative. That they would ascribe to her a kind of devious intention, not just now but always. That they would recast her whole life in the light of anorexia, and judge her harshly for it. So while Kitty’s completely deluded on one level, her emotional radar is working. She’s right to be self-conscious; she’s right to feel judged. Just not for being fat.
Later that night, for the first time in weeks, Kitty will not eat her bedtime snack. Jamie’s reading to Emma downstairs while I sit with Kitty in her room. Her snack tonight is four pieces of toast, with butter and cinnamon sugar on them—a nursery meal, one that both my daughters have loved since they were small. Kitty takes one tiny bite and spits it out, and the