oday I ate an apple. I feel it in my stomach as the
acid works on its tough skin my teeth had trouble breaking. I want
to lie down, because I feel dizzy, but I have to keep walking.
Otherwise, the apple will just sit there. It will rot inside me
because I don’t have the strength to get rid of it. I’m
so weak I know you will hate me.
Where I am the lights could not be brighter. Last year my mother
installed four sunlight bulbs in my room. They are encased in
thin, but strong Lucite covers I cannot break no matter how hard
I try—I have taken a hammer to one, but it just bounced
back and hit me in the head. It didn’t hurt at all and
I remember laughing as I lay on the bed, nearly knocked out,
I guess. I remember looking at a moth that had somehow gotten
into my room, and watching it beat its frail wings against the
plastic. Better wings than a hammer. At least you can get away.
It was only yesterday I was sure I could make it. Seventeen
days fasting. Just like Jesus or the men who lived in the desert
and waited for God to talk to them. Waited until their ears,
their eyes, their mouths, their stomachs, their hearts were empty.
They looked at the sun like I look at these lights. They are
as blinded as I am, but we are not so dark together. I have told
you before, but I’ll say it again now. I am hoping to disappear.
Ronnie looked at me and said, “Girl, you got to eat something.” I
try to imagine what it would be like to actually be a girl, but
come up with nothing more than a color. Orange. I don’t
know why. I could barely hear the words coming out of Ronnie’s
mouth. I watched her lips move like the mouth of a fish and I
could see the air she sucked in and how dirty it was when she
exhaled. She had a Diet Coke in one hand and a bag of Fat Free
Doritos in the other. I could see her teeth crack through the
brittle chips and I could hear that noise more clearly than the
words she said to me.
“I don’t need anything,” I said. “I
feel fine. Fine like sugar candy spun out so thin you couldn’t
see me if you looked all week.”
“I am looking and I don’t see much, that’s
right. Whyn’t you have a Dorito, sweetie? You look terrible.” Ronnie
and I have this game we play where we pretend we’re lovers.
She’s concerned and I’m indifferent. Or I’m
all over her and she keeps backing away. We spend too much time
together to be in love.
Ronnie knows I’m fasting, but she doesn’t know
why. Sometimes she runs her hands over my back to feel my bones.
She says I have such beautiful bones and so I try to look at
myself in the mirror, but I can’t stand it. My feet turn
inward, my knees buckle like a girl’s, my stomach bulges
like I’ve eaten a dozen cheeseburgers and fries. I cover
my face, peek through my fingers, and pretend this body belongs
to somebody else. I laugh at how imperfect he is, how wrong.
I am a silly bird and I know it.
The apple was lying on the counter by the microwave when I
got home. I think my mom left it there for my sister Amy, and
I don’t know why I took it, but I did after making sure
no one was watching. I ran up the stairs as fast as I could and
locked the door to my room. I’d like to say I was crazy
or that I lost control, but I knew exactly what I was doing and
I went through that apple in less than a minute. The first bites
were the hardest, but my mouth remembered soon enough. Ronnie
says I’ve got to be careful or I’ll completely forget
how to eat, but she’s never understood.
I can see her now with her hoop earrings and her long legs.
She’s a full pack of cigarettes, I tell her, and I’m
just the butt someone left on the window ledge when they went
into a store even though they knew they weren’t going to
buy anything. I am someone who can hide anywhere, I tell her,
and she only smiles. She used to say that she could find me,
but now she’s not so sure.
I took some laxies to get rid of the apple—my lucky number
15—and now I’m just waiting for them to work. I’m
standing on one leg for a minute and then the other and I’m
looking out the window at the tree that separates my yard from
yours. You told me once what kind of tree it was, but those kind
of things don’t stick in my head. As my mom says, I don’t
have a head for facts. I’m more a feelings kind of girl
even though I’m not a girl at all, of course. Not a boy
either, though. I’m becoming the smallest thing that could
ever be a person and still believe in God. If I can stop my stupid
hands from picking up anything else, I’ll be a cloud. You’ll
think I’m solid, but you’ll go right through me if
you try.
There is a knock on the door. Sometimes I feel like I’m
in a sit-com that’s stuck at minute twenty-three—just
after the last commercial break, but while everything’s
still all fucked up. I’m constantly teetering on the edge
of this comedic cliff and the laughs are just about to start
coming in bushels, but they haven’t yet. And so I get up
to open the door. That’s the arrangement we have—I
get to lock my door, but I’ve got about thirty seconds
to come answer it before the yelling starts. I usually make it
except when I’m in the bathroom.
“Hi, Mom,” I say. She looks tired as she always
does between jobs.
“Do you want some dinner, honey?” Strange, because
I don’t think we’ve eaten together for five years
now.
“No, Mom. I’m gonna go out with Ronnie later. We’ll
get something. You going to work?”
“Yeah. I should be home at 11, but it might be later,
because Glenn’s on this organization tear. Last night was
the stockroom, so tonight may be the floor.”
Glenn was the asshole manager of the stupid Gap my Mom worked
at for her second job. He was always after her to close, because
she threatened him or something. I saw him once in the mall,
but didn’t say anything. He looked right through me like
he didn’t know me, but he did.
“OK. I’ll clean up here and make sure Amy’s
all right.” I say this, but she already knows I will. There
are a lot of things we say when we don’t have to just so
we don’t have to say what we should. “Hope you don’t
have to be there too late tonight.” Ronnie taught me how
to smile like everybody else, to show my teeth and curl my lips
just a bit, but not too much. She said I looked like a grinning
skull before, but I’m better now.
“Me too, honey. Be good. Sweet dreams.”
“’Night.” She touches me on the head and
pulls the door shut until it clicks. I wait until I hear her
start down the stairs to lock the deadbolt. Its sound is like
a kiss to me. I am in love with doors. I am in love with locks.
You are not yet at your window and so I will keep talking to
you in the hope that words travel farther than we think they
do, in the hope that faith is ecumenical and that soon we may
all be empty enough to be saved.
I go online because there’s still time before I’m
supposed to meet Ronnie. Amy’s downstairs and I can hear
the first chords of “Gimme Shelter.” She’s
been into the Stones lately and who am I to say that’s
wrong. For a 14-year-old she sure does live in the past, though,
and that’s something I don’t understand. The chat
room is packed because it’s dinner time. We all meet here
whenever we need support and just for the hell of it sometimes.
It helps when you’re some kid in Texas and your family
sits down to T-bones and baked potatoes with butter and sour
cream and all you’ve had for days are sugar-free candies
and cigarettes. It helps to be able to talk to us and hear about
the crazy shit everyone is trying and how we’re all disappearing
much more slowly than we’d like.
At first it was hard to fit in because most people think only
girls care about this, but it’s not about looking like
some model or fitting into size 0 jeans. It’s about taking
control of your life and when we started talking all the girls
saw I felt the same way they did. Raven was my first friend here.
I knew we’d get along just fine when I saw the first post
she wrote. She was talking about some crazy chocolate diet, but
she ended with this: “CW: 87. GW: Invisibility.” I
wrote to her right away and after a while she saw I was serious
and not some stalker who comes online to pick up thin girls.
“whattup, hermit,” she writes now.
“nothing. just staring at the lights.” My fingers
fly across the keyboard as though they weren’t connected
to my body. You see, I told you I was losing parts of myself.
Soon I will be able to slip through the crack in your window
you told me about. You would be able to sleep with ten of me.
“today: 1 diet coke, 3 cigs, 1 coffee w/xtra s&l.”
“gym?” I ask. Raven goes to the gym every day after
school and works out for at least two hours. She says she usually
runs for an hour, swims for half an hour, and then does sit-ups
and push-ups for the rest of the time. No gym for me, though.
I think it’s a mistake to make the body stronger when your
ultimate goal is to get rid of it altogether. I don’t want
to give myself anything to hold onto.
“had trouble running 2day. I think they’re getting
suspicious—wanted my phone number, asked if I was alright.”
“i’m surprised they care, you know?”
“yeah. good day?”
“all right. i’m going out with R tonight.”
“u still like her?”
“no. not anymore. someone else.” You, I think,
not meaning Raven. Your window is dark, but I imagine you there
just behind the curtains lying awake in bed. You are thinking
about how you would like to save me. I say goodbye to Raven,
because I need to lie down. My heart beats wildly, faint and
then strong, as I’m thinking of you. I run my hands over
my stomach and trace the too-thick bones of my ribs. This day
is going on forever.
I decide to pray, which is what I do whenever I am scared or
tired or bored or hungry. Whenever there’s a choice to
eat, I am strong enough to resist. I roll off my bed and get
down on my knees. I don’t say words, but think in pictures.
Sheer, opaque mirrors, steel walls, a room without light. I know
you can’t rush toward enlightenment—there is no road,
there is no body, no pilgrim, no desire. Instead I concentrate
on breathing in and out, counting the seconds I hold in my lungs,
imagining what it would be like to just stop. I am never disappointed
when I pray, although I do not get any answers. I had a dream
that on the 24th day I would understand everything, but I think
I blew it with the apple. Now I have to start again, but where
do I start anyway? Any day could be the 24th day—I’ve
got to be vigilant.
Amy’s calling me from the foot of the stairs so I unlock
the door and go see what she wants.
“Did Mom leave dinner?”
“I don’t know. Have you checked in the fridge?”
It’s clear I’m the idiot here. “No. She never
puts it in the fridge. Did she leave money is what I mean.” She
shakes her head.
“If she didn’t, I have some. What do you want?
Pizza?”
She laughs. “How did you guess? You want some?”
“No, I’m good. I’m going out with Ronnie
later.”
“Oh. OK. Well I’ll call them.” Sometimes
I wonder if she has an idea of what I’m doing. I never
tell anyone really, not all of it at least. My mom thinks I’m
too thin. Amy’s always worried I’ll get sick. People
online think I’m ana, but they don’t know my real
reasons. Everyone says the same things until they stop meaning
anything, but no one ever says anything about God. They say that
no food tastes as good as being thin feels, but what they’re
really saying is something they don’t have words for. Being
thin feels like nothing. You are the nothing you’ve always
dreamed about and the world is nothing around you. We are all
breathing the same air, but only some of us will ever know what
it’s like to be the hollow between breaths, to be suspended,
weightless, and temporary. When I think about it, I can’t
stop from laughing I am so happy. I shiver in the warm house
and slip on my shoes.
The light fades as I try to balance on one side of the railroad tracks that
run behind our house. I keep falling off, though, when the wind blows and
I tell myself I’m so light that I should be careful or I’ll get
carried away. Soon I can see the bright sun of the train in the distance
and I prepare myself for what has become an almost nightly ritual. I strand
straight up against the concrete wall that abuts the track, close my eyes,
and suck my stomach in as far as I possibly can. I worry for a moment about
the apple, but remember it’s long gone. I can feel the train in my
shoes and my knees begin to shake. The rumble runs through my body and I
almost collapse when the horn sounds so close it feels as though it’s
inside me. The wind burns my nostrils as I take short, gasping breaths and
then the train is upon me, invisible in the shadows. It is a fury and then
it is gone. I arrange my hair and scramble up the embankment to the abandoned
parking lot where Ronnie’s waiting for me.
I always forget how tall she is. She’s standing under
one of the lightpoles that stretch up into the dark clouds of
the sky. Her shadow lies on the ground like some dead animal,
its shape distorted by the speeding car of the light. She smokes
a cigarette furiously and pretends to be angry that I’m
late.
“7, motherfucker. We said 7.” Now she’s the
spurned housewife and I’m the workaholic husband.
I throw my arms around her and look at my watch over her shoulder. “It’s
only 7:25.”
“Yeah, well that’s 25 minutes I’ve been standing
here. Seven smokes, one beer, and about 15 creepy cars cruising
my skinny ass.”
“You’re not that skinny, baby.”
“What the hell do you know about skinny, you Suzanne-Somers
starving Ethiopian? Looks like you ate a volleyball.”
I look down. She’s right. Something in the apple must
have triggered something else. My stomach’s bloated—it
makes me think of the pictures of drowned people I look at sometimes
for encouragement. They suck in so much water when they go under
for the last time. A car alarm starts screaming and I follow
its agonies, trying to focus my mind on something else.
“Girl? You all right?”
Ronnie’s looking at me and I wonder how long I’ve
been silent. The alarm clicks off, but the night is full of sound. “Um,
yeah,” I say, like an idiot. “What are we doing tonight?”
“I was watching this thing, you know. On TV.”
“Survivor?”
“No, not fucking Survivor. Something real. I think it
was on PBS. Anyway, it was this guy talking about how he stole
cars, how easy it was to break into cars. He said there was this
kit you could buy at tool shows or hardware stores or some shit
which let you break into almost any car.”
“And?” The moon edges out like a knife from behind
a cloud. Ronnie watches too much television.
“And nothing. I say we do it. Fuck the kit, though. He
said you got to listen to the engine, feel how warm it is, because
a warm car is easier to hotwire than a cold one. So I think we
go and find a warm car—something nice, something without
an alarm—and we take it. Just drive it around a little
bit and then bring it back.”
“Just to show we can.”
“Of course just to show we can. What’d you think,
we’re gonna sell it to some chop shop on 2nd? Yeah, right.
Sometimes. Anyway, you down?”
I looked around. The empty parking lot buzzed under the lights.
To the west, a line of trees prevented me from seeing the top
of your house where your dad, a very long time ago, put up that
weathervane. I remember us in your front yard watching him and
me praying that he would slip and tumble down from the roof through
the sky to the ground. And then we would be sitting together
and I would be all you had. How old were we? Eleven? Twelve?
When he came down, he took us out for pizza and I spent the whole
meal trapping Coke in my straw, raising it to my lips, and sucking
it down.
“OK,” I said. “What the fuck. As long as
I’m home by ten.”
“Whatever you say, lover,” Ronnie cooed and planted
her violent red lips square on my cheek.
I had a feeling that tonight was going to be the night. The end of our long
separation. Your father was a pilot, you told me when we first met. I offered
you half of my Butterfinger, because I sensed you liked generosity. I said, “I
enjoy it more if I share it. To know someone else takes pleasure from something
makes it better,” and watched your eyes spark. You took the candy bar,
broke it in half like it was a sacrament, and granzed my palm with the tips
of your fingers as you gave the half you blessed back to me.
“Thanks,” you said, and I kept that one word locked
up inside of me for weeks after that, as I hid behind corners,
backed into empty classrooms, and peered up the thundering stairwell
for a secret glimpse of you. You told me later you had gone on
vacation to Hawaii. When you came back you were tan and as thin
as the skinniest of models. I told you I could see the bones
through your skin. I said I could read them like letters scratched
on parchment and you just laughed as you should have. I was a
real asshole then, thinking everyone thought the same way I did.
Now I keep to myself and wait for you to raise the shade on the
oval window that opens into your bedrooom. That will be the sign
that you’ve decided that I’m ready. At eleven each
night, I’m on my knees and watching your window. Sometimes
I get this confused with praying. I wonder whether seeing you
again will ruin everything, will make this disappearance faith
I have seem like just another desperate, artificial heresy. This
is what I do: I become empty with waiting. I look at the lights.
Ronnie’s listening to the hoods of cars as though she were a doctor and
I’m following five feet behind, walking backwards and looking for anyone
who might see us and call the cops. I watch the windows, waiting for flashes
of light and shadowy rustlings that give away the lonely people inside, but
nothing moves. Ronnie whistles. She’s stopped in front of a Chevy Cavalier,
maybe a few years old. It’s got a dent in the plastic bumper and one
of those purple and gold crowns on the ledge above the back seat. Somebody
told me once those signified affiliation with the Latin Kings, but I don’t
believe it. I think it’s a way for the new Christians of the modern world
to communicate with each other. It’s all a club now, complete with dues
and regular coffee hours. Fucking pathetic if you ask me, which nobody has
lately. And yep, it’s got the Jesus fish on the trunk, too. Goddamn Christians.
I try to rip that fish off, but I can’t get it. Ronnie’s already
in the driver’s seat, don’t ask me how, and is popping the hood.
“What are you doing that for?” I whisper.
“Shhh. That’s where you hotwire it. All the TV
shows are bullshit. You got to go under the hood.”
“But isn’t the starter right near the ignition?”
Ronnie comes out of the car like a comet. Shit. As she begins
to whisper-scream at me about how I don’t know anything
about hotwiring cars and did I watch the show and what do I think
I’m doing trying to take this night over like it’s
mine and I’m the goddamn king or something, I feel a little
faint and lean against the rear door to hold me up. It’s
then I see there’s someone asleep in the back seat. A woman,
not too old. Looks like a mom of some sort.
“Ronnie!” I point to the backseat. She stops. Then
grabs my hand and we start running back the way we came. I’m
tired almost instantly. When will I be able to forget this body,
to change into something else, something that doesn’t even
have a name yet? My feet weigh like bricks and my spine crunches
with each step, vertebrae grating on each other, splintering
with the friction. We don’t stop until we are back by the
tracks. No trains now, just the barely audible thrum of the power
lines. We’re both breathing hard and I’m leaning
on Ronnie like she’s a tree. I can feel her grow with each
breath.
“What the fuck was that?” she gasps.
“Your mom?”
Ronnie catches the laugh before it gets out and glares at me. “Funny,
asshole. I mean what the fuck was she doing there? And don’t
say sleeping.”
“I don’t know,” I say, because I don’t.
My sweat-soaked shirt clings to every ungodly ripple of fat in
my stomach and I feel like cutting myself open and just ripping
everything out. All the mess that has clouded who I am, that
has caused you to pull down your shades, that infests the elm
outside my window, that is pulling us all down. I look at Ronnie
and she’s crying. Her eyeliner runs, scrawling strange
characters on her cheeks. I should do something to make her better,
but all I want to do is get out of here.
“How does that happen to somebody?” she says. “To
end up like that. It’s like she’s all alone and that
car is the only place she can sleep. And what do we do? We break
in like a couple of assholes and she doesn’t even wake
up. That’s the worst part, you know. She doesn’t
even know we’re there. We could have driven off and she’d
still be asleep right now.”
“Maybe she’s dead,” I say, even though I
know it’s probably not the best comment to make under the
circumstances. “Maybe that’s why she didn’t
wake up.”
“Oh Jesus.” Ronnie wipes her eyes. “I’m
going back. I’m going to make sure she’s OK. You
coming?”
I look at my watch. It’s nearly ten and I need time to
get ready. Ronnie shifts from one foot to another, but everything
else seems to have come to a stop. I close my ears to the outside
and listen to the slowing rush of my breathing. It’s like
a waterfall, how if you focus your eyes on just one piece—there’s
no motion anymore. Until you look away and everything flows—trees,
rocks, your own arm. Everything has become the waterfall. I begin
to hyperventilate. Each breath is a prayer. Each breath is a
calorie. Ronnie’s already walking away.
“See you tomorrow,” I say, but she only raises
a hand in response. She’s flowing faster and faster now,
rushing to the edge of the parking lot, the edge of the light.
When she’s gone, everything starts again. I don’t
think too much about her or about anything. I just go home.
Amy’s asleep, a half-eaten pepperoni pizza congeals at
the foot of her bed. I put the box on the floor, pull the summer
quilt she made with my mom last year up to her chest, and turn
off the light. Pizza gets wrapped in plastic and put on the bottom
shelf of the fridge. Kitchen lights off. I write a quick note
to mom, but then crumple it up and throw it away.
In my room, I turn out the lights and lie on my bed. I usually
weigh myself now, but don’t tonight because of all that’s
happened. Too much stress skews any measurement. The red numbers
of my digital clock change. 10:55. It’s almost time for
me to look for you. Before I do, I put my pillow down on the
floor and kneel on it. There are no words, but I see your face.
I am trying not to confuse you with the God I pray to, but it
is sometimes difficult. I am sometimes more absurd than I want
to be.
I get up and everything has a very formal character to it.
The sharp slant of light from our porchlight across the backyard.
The shadows of the elm cast by the moon. The one bright “yes” of
your window. I look again to make sure it’s true, that
I’m not mistaken. Perhaps it was the apple, though it is
long gone. Perhaps it was the giving in. I slip my shoes back
on and splash some water on my face to bring some color to my
skin. The ladder next to our tool shed is exactly long enough
for me to reach you after all these years.
As I walk across the yard, the grass gives way beneath my feet
and the night opens up in front of me. You will be waiting up
there for me, I’m sure. I am coming, my love, and we will
be nothing together.
[END]
© 2004 Christopher McCann - Contributor's
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