to see which ones made me look the most emaciated, the most genuinely anorexic (and therefore the most successfully eating-disordered). I did not want him to see me as bulimic, to picture me at the Skate Place with my fingers down my throat, tickling that little ledge of cartilage, come hither, coaxing my food back up. Rather, I wanted him to picture me as an ascetic, starving in a room that most definitely did not have rust-colored carpet and those little Styrofoam popcorn bits sprayed onto the ceiling.
Everything about him was worldly, starting with the fact that he wasn’t Baptist. There were pictures on his packed bookshelves of him with his wife on a boat in some Italian canal, outside Harrods in London, and on a vibrant green hill in Ireland, and then there were shots of their well-educated children lined up outside colleges made of red brick.
“So, what brings you here?” he asked.
“My doctor made my parents bring me.” I cringed at the admission of having parents. The last thing I wanted to do was spill my teenage guts to this guy with the beard and the little round glasses and the brown tweed jacket with the patches on the elbows—all of which, unfortunately, I found sexy. I tried not to find him sexy. I buried myself in my sweater with no small degree of embarrrassment.
“Do you like school?”
“I hate school.”
“Is there anything about it you like?”
“English,” I said. “But I hate when we have to read Shakespeare out loud and nobody understands that it’s music. It hurts my ears when I have to hear it reeeaallllly sloooow with a hillbilly accent.” My mother would have considered my comments conceited, and Zoe and Lula would have stopped speaking to me for at least a week; I’d referred to my peers as hillbillies, and thus felt that sharp familiar uprising of red behind my eyes, the one that signaled I was doing something I shouldn’t but was going to do it anyway because it felt good. Which was something that sort of scared me. You’d think this would be one of the things I’d mention to a psychiatrist.
“You don’t have much of an accent, do you?” he said.
“I try.”
“Where would you rather be instead of Prairie Grove?”
“England.” Why? Because Sting was from there, and I considered Sting the sexiest man alive.
“England is nice.” He knew from personal experience. I didn’t.
“I don’t have an eating disorder,” I said.
“I didn’t say you did.”
We stared.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” he asked.
“I did.”
“What’s his name?”
“Owen.”
“Did you and Owen make love?” The room exploded. A hole opened up in the floor and the lower half of my body fell through. I pictured the two little naked homunculi from the “Love Is” notebook I had in third grade, the one I used when I played Harriet the Spy. Make love . Any phrase in the history of the known universe would have been better than that one. He suddenly transformed before my eyes into a sensitive seventies guy with a perm who taught people to paint barns and shrubbery, and then he was back and I was hot for him again.
“Yes,” I squeaked. Once counted. One time we made love .
“Are you using any form of birth control?”
“I don’t have periods,” I said.
“Well, you should be menstruating if you’re sixteen.” Menstruating . Menstruating and making love, I thought, that’s me .
“Sometimes I do,” I said.
“How often?”
While everyone else in Prairie Grove was hanging out at the One-Stop Mart after school, sitting on the gates of their parked pickup trucks, drinking Cokes out of little glass bottles and listening to Def Leppard, I was at the Episcopal church answering questions about my period. Later that evening, when my classmates had taken off in their pickups to do donuts in somebody’s cow pasture and spit Skoal juice out the windows, I sat at home shaking my foot seventeen thousand times (it just wouldn’t stop, I just couldn’t make it stop) and
Everything about him was worldly, starting with the fact that he wasn’t Baptist. There were pictures on his packed bookshelves of him with his wife on a boat in some Italian canal, outside Harrods in London, and on a vibrant green hill in Ireland, and then there were shots of their well-educated children lined up outside colleges made of red brick.
“So, what brings you here?” he asked.
“My doctor made my parents bring me.” I cringed at the admission of having parents. The last thing I wanted to do was spill my teenage guts to this guy with the beard and the little round glasses and the brown tweed jacket with the patches on the elbows—all of which, unfortunately, I found sexy. I tried not to find him sexy. I buried myself in my sweater with no small degree of embarrrassment.
“Do you like school?”
“I hate school.”
“Is there anything about it you like?”
“English,” I said. “But I hate when we have to read Shakespeare out loud and nobody understands that it’s music. It hurts my ears when I have to hear it reeeaallllly sloooow with a hillbilly accent.” My mother would have considered my comments conceited, and Zoe and Lula would have stopped speaking to me for at least a week; I’d referred to my peers as hillbillies, and thus felt that sharp familiar uprising of red behind my eyes, the one that signaled I was doing something I shouldn’t but was going to do it anyway because it felt good. Which was something that sort of scared me. You’d think this would be one of the things I’d mention to a psychiatrist.
“You don’t have much of an accent, do you?” he said.
“I try.”
“Where would you rather be instead of Prairie Grove?”
“England.” Why? Because Sting was from there, and I considered Sting the sexiest man alive.
“England is nice.” He knew from personal experience. I didn’t.
“I don’t have an eating disorder,” I said.
“I didn’t say you did.”
We stared.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” he asked.
“I did.”
“What’s his name?”
“Owen.”
“Did you and Owen make love?” The room exploded. A hole opened up in the floor and the lower half of my body fell through. I pictured the two little naked homunculi from the “Love Is” notebook I had in third grade, the one I used when I played Harriet the Spy. Make love . Any phrase in the history of the known universe would have been better than that one. He suddenly transformed before my eyes into a sensitive seventies guy with a perm who taught people to paint barns and shrubbery, and then he was back and I was hot for him again.
“Yes,” I squeaked. Once counted. One time we made love .
“Are you using any form of birth control?”
“I don’t have periods,” I said.
“Well, you should be menstruating if you’re sixteen.” Menstruating . Menstruating and making love, I thought, that’s me .
“Sometimes I do,” I said.
“How often?”
While everyone else in Prairie Grove was hanging out at the One-Stop Mart after school, sitting on the gates of their parked pickup trucks, drinking Cokes out of little glass bottles and listening to Def Leppard, I was at the Episcopal church answering questions about my period. Later that evening, when my classmates had taken off in their pickups to do donuts in somebody’s cow pasture and spit Skoal juice out the windows, I sat at home shaking my foot seventeen thousand times (it just wouldn’t stop, I just couldn’t make it stop) and
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