Elena Vanishing (31 page)

So many of us have had to live through pain and trauma. Why can't the staff see how hard this is for us?

There's the girl who begged her mother to take her and her friend out to a movie. Along the way, a car careened into them and took off her friend's face. There's the woman whose parents belonged to a satanic cult and tortured her as part of their rituals. And over and over, there are the rapes: child abuse, gang rape, date rape. The happy, excited almost-a-woman chooses her outfit, checks her makeup, and goes dancing out into the world. What happens there is brutal, demeaning violence.

Like my friend, the beautiful, shy honors student who was brutally raped by classmates on the way home from school. Now her attackers come up and laugh at her in the school hallways, and she can't bear to tell her family what's wrong. She doesn't want to get better anymore. All she wants is to die.

And then there's Evey—dear, dear Evey. She didn't want to die, but she couldn't change.

Dr. Leben appears in the doorway. “Elena, can we see you for a minute?” she says.

I told you!
gloats the voice in my head.

Fear and defiance dominate my chaotic feelings as I follow Dr. Leben down a tiny hallway of the sort that might grace a mobile home. Dr. Leben's treatment center has outgrown its shabby office space, and at the end of the week, we're all moving to the new center.

Or at least,
they're
all moving. I'll probably be gone.

Shit!

I'm proud of the hard work I'm doing at Sandalwood. This time, I can honestly say I'm trying. Or at least—I
was
trying. And now this!

It's Sam all over again
, says the voice in my head.
It's another treatment center that wants you gone. You're a bad influence—a bad influence on the other patients.

Interfering in Trevor's mealtime isn't the only strike against me today. This morning I ended up yelling at my therapist, Jen, and I told her I wouldn't work with her anymore. I know I was loud, but each time the psychiatrist takes me off another medication, I go through mood swings, sleepless nights, and bursts of anger.

You'd think Jen would understand that. She's supposed to be a professional. But I never did trust her—not from the start.

You're too much trouble
, says the voice in my head.
They can't wait to kick you out.

Sure enough, when I get to Dr. Leben's messy, colorful office, Jen is already there. She's an older woman with a smart, chic look, and I thought nothing could rattle her. She knows I don't like her, but I thought that at least she liked me.

Nobody likes you here
, says the voice in my head.

Connie comes in next: Dr. Leben's co-director. I halfway kind of like Dr. Leben, and I sort of don't like Jen, but I really don't like Connie at all. So they've called in the whole crew. This
is
bad. Shit, shit, shit!

I sink down into Dr. Leben's ultra-soft sofa. Connie sits in the armchair where Dad sits for family therapy. Jen pulls up an office chair, and Dr. Leben sits down by her desk.

“We wanted to talk to you,” says Dr. Leben.

Ready? Fight or flight!
says the voice in my head.
Here it comes!

I try to sit up, but the comfy sofa caves in and pitches me back into a slouch. Damn this thing, with its fuzzy afghan and stacks of cheerful little pillows! I want to tell them to go ahead and kick me out
if they think I'm such a bad influence on the other patients, but I can't even manage to sit up straight.

Go ahead!
says the voice in my head.
Tell them you're done. Tell them they're not getting rid of you; you're leaving
them
!

But the fact is, I don't want to leave. This is really scary! I've still got a long way to go.

“Elena,” says Dr. Leben, “we've noticed a pattern in your responses to the other people here. You form supportive friendships with the patients, particularly when you can take on a big-sister role. You bond readily with the younger therapists, although you don't tend to recognize their authority. But with the women in charge, you exhibit suspicion and anger.”

I stare at her. What does this have to do with kicking me out?

“Let me put it this way,” Dr. Leben says. “Can you think of any older woman in a position of authority with whom you
haven't
had a rocky relationship?”

“Um . . . Hold on.”

Older women. It's a crazy question, but let's see. Nope, all my favorite teachers were men. Then there was the high school counselor, whom I liked a lot—but not when she tried to tell me what to do. Before that, boarding school. The housemothers really were bitches there, and that wasn't my fault—all except one, and come to think of it, she was the youngest. No, I didn't dislike
every
one of my female teachers. Still, I can see Dr. Leben's point.

“We think it may go all the way back to your birth,” Dr. Leben says. “You told us your mother almost died when you were born, and then she was sick for a long time. By the time she could take care of you, you may have already decided, more or less, that you didn't need her.”

That's stupid! Of course I need Mom in my life. And yet—and yet—do I trust her?

Or do I view her efforts to help me as meddling?

Connie, the co-director, asks, “What's the first emotion you can remember?”

I stifle my dislike for her and concentrate on the question.

“I was angry,” I say. “No—wait. I wasn't angry. A person I didn't know was talking to me, so I wasn't saying anything back.”

“You were suspicious and distrustful,” confirms Dr. Leben. “Was that an isolated incident?”

Of course it wasn't isolated! When I was little, I was suspicious of everybody. Mom used to tell me that I would point to strangers from my booster seat and announce, “That man in the car next to us is a murderer.”

Dr. Leben appears to be reading my mind. “It's a long-standing pattern,” she says, nodding.

This makes me angry. She's prying into my business!

And she's an older woman, so of
course
I'm angry.

Damn!

“By the time your mother was ready to participate in your life, it could be that you'd learned to do without her,” suggests Jen. “Your critical voice, which is so forceful and perfectionistic, may have filled your mother's place. We all have a critical voice. But your critical voice—your eating disorder voice—is unusually harsh.”

That's bullshit! How could my critical voice substitute for a parent when I was only three or four? But then I catch myself thinking of the times when I was little and Mom told me, “There's nothing to be afraid of.” And then the voice in my head told me all the things to be afraid of. And which one of them did I believe?

“It's not so simple, of course,” says Dr. Leben. “But you do have a pattern of distrust for a certain type of authority figure, and you have a habit of fighting when no one's fighting you back. We'd like you to think about that. I know you told Jen you didn't want to work with her anymore, but we'd like you to revisit your decision. Recognizing that Jen is exactly the type you have trouble with, do you think you can push past your pattern of distrust and give her another try?”

I can't help shaking my head in confusion. “I thought you were going to kick me out!”

Dr. Leben laughs. I'm glad Dr. Leben doesn't try to hide her feelings.

“That's exactly what we
would
do if we were people you couldn't trust,” she says. “But Elena, you can trust us. Can you please try to trust us a
little
bit? Remember, we're not the jailors here.”

As we take turns sidestepping our way out of the office into the tiny hall, I think about my jailor. A friend of mine at Clove House had a dream once that she was trapped with an ugly old woman inside a stone jail cell. A guard stood outside the door. He would throw a mirror over his shoulder into the cell, and the wrinkled old crone would grab it. She would show my friend her face in the mirror and then smash the mirror on the ground. My friend screamed and tried to protect herself from the flying glass, but she couldn't get away. The guard didn't seem to hear her, and the ugly old crone just laughed.

That's how I see my eating disorder. It's twenty-four-hour confinement with a witch. I'm obsessed with jail shows because their hopeless, restricted, rule-defined lives are the closest approximation to my own.

The very first day I put myself back into treatment, I told Dr. Leben, “I cheat. I'm like those prisoners who can make a knife out of their toothbrush. You'll have to watch me at weigh-in, or I'll hide weights in my bra and socks. You'll have to watch me at mealtimes. I can water down my Boosts with a pinhole prick in the bottom, and you'll never know anything's wrong with them. I've put horse-radish into a mayonnaise jar before, and I ate it on my sandwiches for weeks, just to get out of eating the extra calories. If you let me, I can tuck food into boots, pockets, you name it. So don't let me cheat. I'll fail.”

It makes me feel good now to remember that even if I don't trust Dr. Leben, at least I made sure she knew not to trust me, either.

Right after snack is spirituality group in the crowded conference room. There's barely space for us patients to squeeze our chairs around the table. I can't wait till we move out of this place. Only four more days.

Connie leads spirituality, and I usually hate it. The whole thing smells of hypocrisy to me. But now I do my best to push my skepticism aside. It's definitely part of that distrust thing they were talking about.

This time, I listen as Connie talks to us about surfing our feelings—observing our emotions and reactions instead of getting swept away by them. She tells us to hold our arms out straight for a few minutes and watch how we respond to the fatigue. I hold my arms out and close my eyes, and she's right: the urge to drop my arms comes and goes. I'll think I can't hold them up any longer, but a few seconds later, I'm fine.

“You can use this to battle your negative behaviors,” Connie tells us. “You may feel like you can't hold out any longer, but if you just wait, that feeling will fade.”

Then Connie reads us a poem so beautiful that it makes me cry. After spirituality, I stop her to ask if I can copy it down. She doesn't act surprised, although in the last ten weeks, I've never talked to her if I could help it.

“I'm so glad you liked it,” she says. “It's beautiful, isn't it? I'll make you a copy right after my session with Trish.”

She'll forget
, says the voice in my head as she walks away.

But Connie doesn't forget. Before she leaves, she brings me the copy.

At seven in the evening, my fellow patients and I finish dinner, pack our backpacks, and trundle downstairs into the chilly darkness. As always, Mom's waiting in the parking lot. When they started cutting back on my meds, I would get worked up so quickly that I'd bolt out the door and be halfway home before I could think of a better way to handle things. So now Mom drops me off and picks me up every day to keep me from having a getaway vehicle.

I pop open the car door and climb in.

“So, did you have a good day?” Mom asks, as if she's picking me up from grade school. I want to laugh, but considering the fact that I was making flowers out of tissue paper today, grade school sounds about right.

As Mom navigates the dark streets, with their flowing currents of red taillights and white headlights, I think about the hours she's spent with me in doctors' offices over the years. I remember the weeks she spent by my hospital bed during that first horrible summer. I think of the months she spent in our orphanage room so I could stay at Clove House.

Then there were the hours Mom has spent on the phone, patiently unsnarling insurance problems. Mom is the only parent I know who has gotten insurance to pay for all but three days of my
months of treatment. She's been at it so long, she actually has friends now at our insurance company.

All that work. All that love. To help me get well.

I flip on the dome light and unfold Connie's photocopy.

“We read a poem today,” I say. “It made me think of you.”

Mom is the perfect audience for this. She inherited a love of poetry from my grandmother and passed it along to me. We've been known to sit for an hour with our favorite poetry books by us, taking turns reading snippets of verse to each other.

“Who's it by?” Mom asks.

“Daniel Ladinsky,” I say. Then I read it out loud:

“There is a Beautiful Creature
Living in a hole you have dug,

So at night
I set fruit and grains
And little pots of wine and milk
Beside your soft earthen mounds,

And I often sing.

But still, my dear,
You do not come out.

I have fallen in love with Someone
Who hides inside you.

We should talk about this problem—

Otherwise,
I will never leave you alone.”

By the time I finish it, I'm crying. This poem is Mom's voice to me. The voice of the poem is love and patience and hope and forgiveness, and that's what Mom has always given me. Deep down I've
always known that, even when the bitch of a critical voice inside me tried to drown her out.

“I understand,” I say. “I understand how you and Dad feel—how hard it's been on you two to try to save me.”

And now Mom and I are crying together.

Mom pulls up to our house. We park on the street because a U-Haul trailer is taking up the driveway. After almost a year of living with us, Valerie and Gemma are getting ready to leave. She and Clint will finally get to be together. He's in Mississippi, finishing up tech school. Tomorrow, at four o'clock in the morning, Mom and Valerie will caravan out of Texas to meet him. Valerie's driving her car with Gemma in the baby seat, and Mom is towing the trailer.