Elena Vanishing (10 page)

No matter what hateful, horrible thing her parents did to each other or to her, Mona never cried. But in the middle of the night, she wouldn't be able to sleep, and then she'd wake me up. And we would go up to the attic together and eat.

Binging after lights-out in a boarding school is as risky as it sounds. The nuns did bed checks. Also, the kitchen was at the far end of the big, rambling building. Mona and I would have to sneak on tiptoe through the cold and the dark and then snatch our food out of icy metal cabinets.

But Mona needed me. She needed her ally. So I always went along.

One night, Mona took more food than I had imagined anyone could carry. Pickles, bread, meat, cheese, chocolate, carrots, even more. We slipped up to the attic and huddled on the stacks of old mattresses there, and underneath a moonlit window, Mona laid out all the things she had stolen.

My stomach churned, but she pleaded with me. “You have to help me eat it!”

We didn't talk. We didn't joke. We just got down to the serious business of eating.

Then, when every last scrap of food was somehow crammed inside us, Mona tiptoed downstairs to the bathroom and threw up in the sink.

Without saying a word, she wiped her mouth and left.

I knew I couldn't leave that mess in the sink. There would be a fuss about it in the morning. And when up to five girls sleep in each room, you never know who has seen what. So I grabbed a handful of paper towels and scooped it into the toilet.

My aching stomach lurched. The smell was unbearable. Tears stinging my eyes, I bent over the toilet and retched.

The nicest of the housemothers heard me and came to check on me. She guided me to her room, made a hot water bottle for my poor sick stomach, and made me a cup of hot tea. Then she tucked me back into bed.

“Sorry,” Mona whispered after the housemother left. “Are you okay?”

I didn't answer. I could hear her rubbing her hand against the side of my bed.

“Leni, could you maybe scoot over and let me listen to you breathe?”

I scooted over, and she curled up next to me with her head tucked under my chin. Soon her breathing was slow and even. But I stayed awake, knowing I was disturbed by something, unable to place what it was.

Then it came to me.

When I had thrown up, a housemother had come running. When other girls threw up, the noise of the retching came right through the thin walls. But when Mona had thrown up, she hadn't made a sound.

“So she was practiced at it,” Dr. Harris comments. “She must have made a habit of purging. And you purged that time, too, or at least you vomited.”

I nod.

“Did you make a habit of purging, too?”

I look into Dr. Harris's gentle eyes. He looks like the White Knight from Alice's looking-glass world. He looks like he could never be mean on purpose. I think about the limp little mustache back in Germany, the doctor who yelled at me right in front of my parents, and I wish Dr. Harris had been my first psychiatrist instead of him.

“What?” I ask.

“I was wondering, did you purge, too?” Dr. Harris says. “When you and Ramona binged?”

“Oh. No, you can tell I don't purge. Just look at my teeth.”

I show my teeth in a big flashy grin. Dad used to criticize me because my teeth looked yellow, so I worked hard to make them nice and white. I'm very proud of my teeth now.

Dr. Harris looks, nods, and makes a note in his chart.

I wish he'd been my first psychiatrist. But it's too late. I don't trust any psychiatrist now.

That afternoon, Dr. Harris meets with Mom and Dad and me. He tells them he isn't sure I have anorexia, but I do have an
eating disorder. This doesn't sound like much of a problem to me.
Disorder
—it's one of those terms that downplays what it is, like
irregularity
or
discomfort
.

I have an eating disorder. My eating isn't in perfect order. Does that sound so bad?

“The Germans have done excellent work in the area of eating disorders,” he tells us. “I would advise you to start work with a local psychologist when you get back to Germany. The brain MRI is normal, and the report from the neurologist is good. My guess is that the blackouts will disappear when Elena's back in her own home again. It was the stress of the forced hospitalization that brought them on.”

Dr. Harris adds that I should follow up with an endocrinologist and a cardiologist to make sure my heart is continuing to improve. “I'll be happy to put together a report or to consult with anyone you work with,” he adds. “Just let me know what you need.”

That's it. After four hospitals and more than a month of my life stolen from me, that's it. We get back into our rental car and drive back across the country to catch our flights home.

We could take an extra day or two in Texas to see old friends, but we don't. We creep out of the state like burglars. We pass within twenty minutes of my uncle's house. We could go see him and the family. But we don't. We don't even call him up.

Your parents are ashamed of you
, says the voice in my head.
They don't want their friends and relatives to talk.

I try to distract myself from thinking about this. A plan. I need a plan. Plans always make me feel better. I pull out my journal to write out a to-do list. My senior year starts a week from now. That's not much time.

And now you're fat
, says the voice in my head.

It's true. Thanks to Dr. Harris's office staff, I know my number again, and it's not good. If I don't lose weight before school starts, the other students will think I'm losing my edge.

At the thought of facing all those pairs of eyes, the black hole inside me spins a little faster. Do they know about the hospitals? What do they know? What are they saying about me? Will the scratches on my face heal up before the first day of school?

We're in Tennessee. Signs for the Ripley's Believe It or Not museum flash by, mile after mile. All three of us love museums. Valerie's the only one who doesn't care much for them, and Valerie isn't here.

When Valerie moved away to college, she started working with Dr. Harris. He called up my parents to say that she needed to go back into the hospital. Mom and Dad started looking for places to send her and arranging for a loan, but Valerie ran away. Now I think:
what was it like for Valerie in the hospital? Did she tell me it was fun because she was too proud to tell the truth?

I would run away, too, before I'd go back into the hospital. How different are Valerie and I, really?

You're both losers
, says the voice in my head.
You both disappointed your parents. They thought they could count on you to be the perfect daughter, but you've let them down, too.

That's not right, though. Valerie was a complete screw-up. She made the whole world see how sick she was. I'm not sick. I didn't start any of this. I'm going to go right back to school and go right on being perfect.

“What do you say?” Dad asks. “You want to stop at Gatlinburg? It's the closest thing to a vacation we'll get this summer.”

“I vote yes!” I tell him and put my journal away.

I've been in the Louvre in Paris, the British Museum in London, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Picasso Museum in Barcelona, the Uffizi museum in Florence, and the Vatican Museum in Rome.
Now I'm standing in the foyer of the Ripley's Believe It or Not museum in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. They have wild exhibits, including a fake mermaid skeleton. “World's largest tire,” muses Mom, reading a sign. Dad's snapping photos. After weeks of boring hospitals, it feels good to be in a museum again.

Afterward, we stop at a pancake house. I order French toast because I used to like their French toast when I was little. But it isn't very good.

People are watching you
, says the voice in my head.
Eating French toast is worse than eating a lump of sugar. And there's margarine on it, pure fat, the highest-calorie food you can eat. People are actually watching you get fatter.

Anxiety pricks me, and I remember the students who'll be watching me in a week. There's no room for fear in a high school, and no room for pity, either. I put down my fork and push the plate away.

“Aren't you going to finish that?” Mom wants to know. I can't stand the way she keeps track of everything I eat now. It's not her business, and it's stressing me out. She should leave me alone.

“I'm fine,” I say. “We had that huge breakfast. It's still filling me up.”

“I'll take your sausages,” offers Dad.

Dad hardly ever argues these days. He's flown over here to spend hour after hour driving me across the country, and he only has two days left before he gets back to twelve-hour workdays again. He hasn't had a real vacation in months.

I think about how Valerie and the Drew Center staff wanted me to blame all my problems on him, and that makes my stomach hurt even more.

“Maybe we could get a box for the toast,” Mom says. “You could eat it later in the car.”

“Stop it!” I say. “Just chill out!”

But all afternoon, Mom keeps bringing up things I don't want to talk about: food diaries, menus, mealtimes, and appointments we need to set up.

“This is my problem,” I tell her. “I'll handle it my way.”

Dad says nothing. He's focusing on his driving. We're in Virginia now: hill after hill covered with scrubby pine trees.

The sun is going down, but we can't stop yet. I'm beginning to hate being in a rental car with Mom. We've been crammed into the same room now for weeks. There's nowhere to go to get away from her.

Your parents made you sick
, says the voice in my head, and I flash to the memory of me crying and begging not to go back to school.
You think she loves you? What loving mother ships her youngest child off to boarding school?

I push away the thought and flip open my journal again. It's traveled the whole way with me, but I've hardly written a thing. Just one line about Drew Center:

The whole ward here has more locks than a federal prison.

What else is there to say?

I want to write something cheerful and touristy about the Ripley's Believe It or Not museum. When I get home, I'll paste my ticket to the page, and maybe a photograph or two. Mom and me posing in front of the world's largest tire. Dad sitting in the big chair.

But right now, I find myself reading a page from last November. A page I wrote about Ramona, my roommate in boarding school.

Girl, if you were standing in front of me and were hearing this, I would say: You were always the one to do the crazy stuff first. Let's do this, let's do that.

Come on, Lani, don't be so boring. And now, looking at everything, see how we both turned out?

You, overeating–me, not eating.

You, too quick to love–me, too scared to love.

You, blaming others too much–me, blaming myself too much.

You, not caring about school–me, overcaring about it.

You, moving on.

Me, staying behind.

And I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Got to go exercise away this God-awful me.

Maybe I'll forget the God-awful you.

Miss you, Mona.

I'll love you forever.

The tears on my cheeks surprise me. I close the journal and think about Ramona. What's she doing now? Has her life turned out any better than mine?

Mom starts up again. She just won't let it go. “Every meal, you struggle,” she says. “You can't finish anything.”

“We're eating fast food,” I say. “It's awful.”

Saturated fat
, says the voice in my head.
Food additives. Dyes. Flavor enhancers. You ate chicken nuggets this morning, forty-eight calories per nugget. That's not going to get you ready for school.

“We eat anywhere you want to eat,” Mom says. “We eat anything you say you'll eat.”

Chicken nuggets
, continues the voice in my head.
Three grams of fat apiece! You can see the fat ooze out of them. It's disgusting!

“I don't think you can deal with this problem by yourself,” Mom says. “I think they're right. You do need help.”

She thinks you're a failure
, says the voice in my head.
Your own mother looks at you and sees a failure. This summer has made you lose your edge. You don't look like a girl with a great future anymore.

“I can't believe you think I'm a failure!” I say. “I make top grades, but you think I'm losing my edge. You criticize me all the time!”

“I don't mean you're a failure,” Mom says. “You do a great job in school. But you pick at your food. This is too hard for you to handle.”

She shipped you off and made you sick
, says the voice in my head.
She kicked you out of the house. You do everything right and one little thing wrong, and the one thing wrong is all she sees.

“Dad! Mom thinks I can't do anything right. She thinks I'm screwing everything up. You believe in me, don't you, Dad?”

“Of course I believe in you, honey.”

“That's NOT what I'm saying!” shouts Mom. Which means, of course, that she's lost the argument.

But the fight gets worse from there. Pretty soon all three of us are shouting. Finally, Dad zooms down an exit lane, turns into an empty parking lot, stops the car, and bursts into tears.

Mom and I are stunned into silence.

We decide to find a hotel and stop for the night. But it isn't five minutes before Mom's talking about dinner. It's like she's doing this on purpose!

Still, I act like I don't mind—for Dad's sake, not hers.

We go to Subway, and I order first. I load my sandwich up with pickles, sit down, and tuck right in. Before long, the whole sandwich is gone. Then I start in on the chips—crispy, salty, and delicious.