The Food Is Eating Away at My Sisters

By Ashley Hammarth

Staff Writer

he food is eating away at my sisters-- they cannot stand the sight of their perfectly normal bodies in the mirror and so they starve themselves, binge and purge themselves, exercise until the end.
Ann was a joke. For four years. The whole school knew she was anorexic. She talked about her weight very often. She was always insecure, punctuating her language with "like"s and "y 'know"s even worse than the rest of us (startling feat.). We laughed at her, made mean jokes, up to and past graduation. Her sister was anorexic, too. Yeah, but her sister was pretty. (Snicker.) Ann's just so annoying. "I heard she held her breath as long as she could, trying to suffocate herself in front of her parents when they told her to get help and admit she had a problem." Wisdom imparted in government class. "She's so dumb,only a five year-old would do something like that," editorialized my friend during lunch, as I dutifully told her the story. Months and months later I ran into someone at The Gap. "She hates college, Lisa went down and visited her and she talked about how much she hated it and food." Food.
Susie was not a joke. She was everything envious and wonderful. The smartest girl in the school, the best runner in the school, much prettier than most of the girls in the school. And what a body. Breasts, an ass, lots of muscles and curves. She was loud, confident; her laughter often followed me down the halls, into classrooms, interrupted tests. And since she was the second of eight children, she didn't have half the responsibilities of her older sister, Katie. Oh, until Katie went to college. Then it was Susie's turn. And that was her Junior year of high school.
I was in ninth grade, babysitting, when I had my first acknowledged clash with food. There was a marathon of my favorite show on TV that night. After the kids went to bed, I was so happy to sit there and watch and watch. I kept getting hungry, kept thinking that I should have had a bigger dinner. But with each commercial break my mind overpowered my stomach. My aching stomach. I stayed in the lazy chair. You're not hungry, said my mind to my stomach. You can stay here for just one more break, one more show. Three and a half hours went by. Three and a half shows.
Lara was one of my older brother's best friends. I liked her. When Jay died, she of course came to his funeral. She came to our house every so often to talk to us. Lara was not in college because she was sick. Sick with bulimia, my mother told me. I knew about bulimia. I'd read books. The night Jay's old girlfriend came over, we talked about Lara. She said she had always known Lara was bulimic, but couldn't do anything about it. She was so glad when Lara went to the clinic She told me, leaning in, over the middle cushion of the couch that separated us, "It's terrible-- I've had so many friends who have been buIimic. Now I can spot them just like that. It's something about the pallor of their skin. It's not their weight, of course. They don't lose very much." I listened to her with reverence. "It's all in their skin," she said.
Jean used to be my best friend. Many, many years ago. I began to hate her long after we had stopped being close. She became self-righteous and condescending, developed the fakest laugh of anyone I'd ever known. She would be valedictorian in another year. When she gave her oral report in English class I wanted to hiss "anorexxxic" at her. I could see how bony her wrists had gotten as she clutched the index cards at breast level. I had watched her lose weight, trying to hide it in the woolen armor of winter. I mentioned it to a friend. "Jean? Nah... she's too smart for that." Oh, of course.
In Australia they laughed at me when I told them that the weight room was the most popular place on my campus at home between 3:30 and 6:30 pm. I told them I knew girls who were failing out of school, who cut classes to go to the gym. They thought I was exaggerating. In Australia I worked out for a while. With three months left, I got lazy and stopped. When I got home my pants and my scale told me I had gained ten pounds. Shit.
Before the Christmas of her senior year arrived, Susie had lost enough weight to be put in the hospital, glucose IV dripping into her arm, before Christmas arrived. She still graduated on time. Got just healthy enough for that. I saw her after her freshman year. She was in a sleeveless shirt. Bones sticking up from her shoulders. Knees prominent below her shorts. It was awkward to talk to her. A few weeks later, I saw a friend of hers. She said Susie was eating fine now. No more anorexia. "She just exercises a lot." Yeah, a lot.
In college I met the acquaintance of Mercy. She was a big woman, a black woman. I admired her, she carried herself proudly amongst the many white skinnies. I had the opportunity to tell her that once. "Well, now, " she said, "I don't pay much attention to you crazy yankees. Where I come from, I'm a healthy woman, and all bags o' bones wouldn't stand a chance with the men. I don't care what y'all think, I know I look good." She looked me over. "You come down to Tennessee, we'll fatten you up a little. A lot. Good Lord!" We laughed.
I'd been back from Australia two months when my mother called to tell me that Susie was dead. My mother read the obituary over the phone-- it said she'd died at school, of heart failure. I couldn't come home for the funeral. My mom called after the sad event to tell me more details surrounding her death. She said Susie had had a heart attack after her seven mile morning run. No one was sure, but they thought it was the anorexia that killed her. Ate away at her heart. That big muscle we all think will always be there for us. She died on the fifth floor staircase-- she lived on the ninth floor and refused to take the elevators.
I was sorry about Susie. I started to look at the many thin girls at my school not just with suspicion (I had always done that), but with worry. I searched for the certain pallor that Jay's old girlfriend had mentioned. I had a rebellion. Stopped doing sit-ups during work outs. Made sure I only weighed myself once a month. Occasionally in the shower I paused to look down at the small bulge, the half moon of my stomach, to appreciate the extra skin and fat that had been given to me in order to bear children; I patted it. I made sure I let myself eat pudding. Looking at my naked body in the mirror, I remembered Susie's shoulders and smiled at myself, noting the absence of visible bones.
But my sisters, they are everywhere, withering themselves to narrow silhouettes so that they won't be noticed. Tearing up the tissue of their stomachs, making their bones resemble honeycomb, avoiding all but celery and water. ("It's so great that there are things in this world with no calories.") I wish they could all go to Tennessee with Mercy, to eat hush puppies and fried chicken and grits blanketed with creamy butter. I wish that my sisters could look in the mirror and smile.