Elena Vanishing (26 page)

Ms. Carter comes running up. “Elena!” she says, aghast. “Elena, you did that on purpose!”

I have vomit all down the front of my sweats, and tears are stinging in my eyes.

“I didn't!” I splutter. “I didn't, I swear!”

“You talked!” says Ms. Carter, beside herself. “You
knew
not to talk! Well, you know what?
You
can clean it up!”

I yank the useless tube out of my mouth and throw it into the vomit. “I didn't do it on purpose!” I yell.

Ms. Carter shoves cleaning supplies at me. “Here's a rag. Get to work!”

“Screw you, you bitch!” I yell back.

At this point, Dr. Greene comes out and tells Ms. Carter to leave me alone. But she doesn't say a word to me.

I stalk off to a Foof. When Ms. Carter calls us for supper, I stay
there. To hell with them and their rules! I've done exactly what they've wanted for two whole months, and it's never enough for them.

Each time you meet a goal, they make it harder
, says the voice in my head.
They want to humiliate you. They want you to fail.

Ms. Carter says, “Elena, I'm sorry, but if you don't eat, I'll have to write you up as noncompliant.”

She's not sorry
, says the voice in my head.
She's happy to see you fail. When you succeed, they push you till you break, and when you fail, they yell.

I curl up in the Foof and close my eyes. I'm angry and lonely and every bit as miserable as I was on the day I arrived. If Stella were here, she'd sit down next to me and talk to me until she made me talk to her. But Stella's gone.

You don't have a friend
, says the voice in my head.
These people don't care about you. They haven't helped you get better, and you're not going to get better. This is who you are. Nothing's going to change.

“Okay, girls,” calls Ms. Carter. “Dorm time! Collect your things and wait by the door.”

Screw it! I'm not going anywhere. They can call my parents. They can call an ambulance!

That's right
, says the voice in my head.
Coming here was a mistake. It's a waste of your time. Don't wait for them to throw you out. Make them let you out! Stay put, and you'll be on a plane home in no time.

Behind me, a voice whispers, “Elena!”

It's Sam. But I don't turn around.

The next instant, her hand is in mine. Then she pulls away and hurries off.

I open my hand. Pink Sweet'N Low packets.

Sam's precious stolen store of artificial sweeteners. For me.

I look at the packets and try to sort out my raging emotions. Maybe Emily's right: maybe I am too angry most of the time.

Maybe my recovery is like my face in the mirror—maybe I can't see it, either. Maybe I'm getting better and I just can't tell. Maybe this isn't a waste of my time.

But I do know I have a friend. And I know she's worried about me.

For tonight, that's good enough.

I close my hand around the crumpled squares. I take a deep breath. Then I climb to my feet and head to the van.

Two and a half months have passed. It's July, and I'm still at Clove
House. They've stepped my treatment down to ten hours a day. I get to go home each night now—or I
would
get to go home if home weren't a thousand miles away.

It's morning, and Mom is shaking my shoulder. Mom has had to come out and stay with me because I'm not allowed to live on my own.

“Time to get up,” she says.

I try to open my eyes, but sleep clings to me so tightly that I can't bear the thought of lifting my head from the pillow. I'm always sleepy now. No matter how much I sleep, the sleepiness never goes away.

“You take the first shower,” I groan with my eyes closed.

“I've already showered,” Mom says.

Of course.

I stagger to the small tiled bathroom and shower while Mom makes our beds. There's not much else for her to do. We're staying in a former orphanage that provides lodging to out-of-town visitors who need medical care. This room at the end of the farthest hall has been our home for almost two months. It has three beds, one desk, and three large windows that let in views of lawn and trees and massive black-and-white Canada geese. I thought geese needed ponds and frogs, but these geese spend all their time pecking in the grass.

When I get out of the bathroom, Mom counts out my pills. I'm up to eleven pills a day.

“Let's go,” Mom says, and we make the trek down the long hall, past the cafeteria, through the entrance hall, and out the front door of the orphanage.

An orphanage. Our home away from home.

Mom starts the car for the sixteen-mile commute to Clove House. We make this drive seven days a week. Sometimes Mom and I walk outside into rain and mud puddles. Most days we walk outside into sun. But it doesn't matter. Nothing changes the monotony of our routine.

Back home in my room (mine and Valerie's room), Valerie is playing with her baby. Gemma can sit up now and smile and laugh and grab things out of your hand. Back home at the university, my old friends are in summer school. Some of them are nursing students already. Back home on the bathroom counter, Dylan is swimming in and out of his silk plants. He's going around and around in Texas, and I'm going around and around here.

It's the beginning of a new day, but nothing about it feels like a beginning. Every minute that ticks by seems to add a new load to the weight pressing down my shoulders and eyelids. Dull and sleepy, completely fuzzed out, I blink at the scenery flowing past the car window as the miles of city freeway roll by.

“This isn't working,” I say.

Mom keeps her eyes fixed on the road. She has new wrinkles these days. The creases next to her mouth are getting deeper.

“This is bullshit,” I say. “I'm not getting better. I want to go home. I want to—”

But I can't bring myself to say it.

You want to hold Valerie's baby
, says the voice in my head.
Serves you right that you've got no baby to hold.

“You were the one who wanted to come here,” Mom points out. “No one forced you to do this. But now that we're here, I'm not going to leave. Your recovery is important.”

“My recovery is a joke,” I say. “What do you know about my recovery?”

Mom doesn't answer.

That's because recovery is a thing neither one of us knows very much about.

Especially not me.

When I started treatment, I thought the scary thoughts and overwhelming compulsions would go away. I thought eating would become natural and pleasant again. But after six months, it's still as hard as ever. I no longer expect it to change.

My journal is in my lap, taking the ride with me. Last night I brought it home because I thought I might write in it again, but all I did was go to our room and sleep. I flip it open and read my entry from yesterday. It's only one line:

I want to be stable and even if I can't be happy, I
want to at least be somewhat satisfied with myself.

It's pretty sad that even this modest goal is out of reach.

Now we're off the freeway, winding through elegant neighborhoods. The yards are full of roses. Up the hill, past the school, left turn, and there's the parking lot. Mom stops to let me out.

“Elena, you can do this,” she says. “I know you can.”

I scramble out and shut the door.

Did you see the doubt in her eyes?
says the voice in my head.
She doesn't think you can do this, either.

Inside Clove House, I settle into a Foof and close my eyes. It's all I do nowadays. Conversations swirl around me: new patients laughing and chattering. They come and go so fast that it's depressing.

Sam rushes over. “Wake up, Elena, pleeeeze? I want to show Harper your poet tattoo.”

For dear little Sam, I'll sit up and even smile. She's one of the few veterans left. At the moment, she's preaching Rupert Brooke to the newbies. His poetry really speaks to patients with eating disorders.

At Sam's request, I strip off my hoodie so Harper can see Rupert's face. But while they're looking at the poet, I'm running my hand over a tattoo that rings my other arm. A circle of stars, and the letters
V
,
C
, and
E
.

In April, I got to go home for a visit. I got to hold my new niece and sing to her while she fell asleep, and I got to sit with Valerie and really talk with her for the first time in years.

“I think you'll be okay,” she told me then. “Because I'm okay now.”

“What changed?” I asked her. “What made the difference?”

“Hell if I know,” she said. “It just got better. I could feel it getting better, and then it was okay.”

I also got to know my brother-in-law, Clint, better. He felt more like my sibling sometimes than Valerie. He'd kick me under the table. Then I'd elbow him. Then he'd elbow me. Then I'd whack him on the arm.

“Stop it! Just stop it, you two!” Valerie would say. “I swear, it's like I've got three kids!”

“Yeah, Elena, show some maturity!” Clint would say with wide, solemn eyes—meanwhile kicking me under the table again.

I loved it. I loved being home with my family.

But I couldn't stay.

Because I couldn't eat.

A couple of days before Mom and I packed the car to bring me back to treatment, Valerie, Clint, and I went out together and got a
tattoo. On each of us, it's the same: three stars and our initials. But on each of us, it looks different.

“We've got your back,” Valerie said when I left. “Whatever happens, we're family.”

Now I rub the circle of stars and think about that.

Eating disorder runs in families. So does depression. So does OCD. Maybe this is just part of how I'm made. If it is, I don't see how it can get any better.

Lunchtime. Another meal that I choke down bite by reluctant bite. And after that, a therapy session with Brenda.

I'm not seeing Emily anymore.

Emily thinks you're a bitch
, says the voice in my head.
She refused to work with you when you came back.

I'm pretty sure that's true.

“So, Elena,” says Brenda. “How are you coming along?”

Brenda is decisive and capable. She's also young and pretty. I actually don't mind her. But it takes a lot these days to bother me. Anger requires too much effort.

“This is all genetic, right?” I ask. She knows I mean the anorexia.

“Not all of it, no,” she says. “But yes, genetics plays a role.”

“If it's genetic, it's not going to get better,” I say. “It's going to stay like this—me thinking one thing and trying to do another. The thinking part isn't going to change.”

“That's not true,” she says. “I have patients who've made a complete recovery.”

I wish I could believe her, but I don't. I feel it in my bones: this is going to be me against myself, fighting for every mouthful every single day for the rest of my life.

You can't do it
, says the voice in my head.
You'll fail. You can't change who you are.

Susan pops her head in the door. “Brenda, can you come here?” The anxiety on her face brings us both to our feet.

Sharp, explosive sobs greet us in the main room, and sober faces turn our way. Ms. Carter and Emily are bending over a patient who is wailing out loud. The other patients are clustered nearby in frightened little knots.

I go over to Sam and her new friend Harper. “What happened?” I ask in a whisper.

“Cynthia's roommate died this morning,” says Sam. “She just got the call.”

Cynthia has anorexia. So does—did—her best friend. They couldn't be separated in high school, and they have—had—a college apartment together. I met Anna a couple of times. She looked the same as the rest of us. But now Anna's different. Now she's dead.

“Heart attack,” Sam murmurs.

Without thinking, I put my hand on my chest—my chest that still aches every day like it's coming apart. My chest that maybe still holds a heart with thin walls.

Anna's heart killed her at the age of twenty-one. Now she's one of the twenty percent, the one out of every five ED patients who gets killed by the disorder. It's horrible, but some days I'm so tired and sleepy, I wish I could be one of them.

“Was she bad? Had she gotten worse?” I whisper to Sam.

“Cyn said she wouldn't go to therapy.”

You're going to therapy
, says the voice in my head.
But it won't matter. You can't change what you are.

An ambulance comes for Cynthia, and Ms. Carter goes with her. Susan sits down with the rest of the patients to process what they've been through. But Brenda takes me back to her office to finish our session.

“Are you all right?” Brenda asks me.

“No,” I say.

“So you're upset.”

“No,” I answer.

That's the awful part: how little I'm feeling these days. It's like my soul is muffled up in straw. I'm dead inside. I'm cut off from life. But Brenda doesn't seem to understand that.

“It's a hard thing to face,” she says, “but this gets back to what we were talking about. Treatment is so important. Never mind full recovery for the moment—statistics show that treatment is vital in helping anorexics survive.”

“I want to stay in treatment,” I say. “I do.”

You do?
says the voice in my head.

“Then you and your mother have a decision to make,” Brenda says. “You can't keep going to day therapy. You need to move to outpatient care. The care team thinks it would be best if you find an apartment nearby so you can continue working with us.”

“Outpatient?” I can't wrap my foggy brain around the idea. “You mean a couple of hours a week?”