The Stone Girl by Alyssa B. Sheinmel Page A

matter since she’s going to throw it
all up later. Her mother asks her more about going back
to school, but Sethie’s too distracted to answer more than
monosyllabically; she’s thinking about getting back to the
apartment in time to throw up. After brunch, Sethie’s
mother offers to take Sethie shopping, but Sethie turns her
down. So they head off in opposite directions; Sethie’s
mother toward Bloomingdale’s and Sethie toward their
apartment. She walks slowly, making as little effort as possible. She doesn’t want her body to begin metabolizing too
much.
Even though she’s home alone, she closes the door
to her bathroom and turns on the sink to drown out the
sounds. She crouches over the toilet and sticks her fingers
in her mouth. She gags, but nothing comes up. She tries
using the opposite hand, she tickles the roof of her mouth,
she reaches for her throat, she covers her fingers in soap so
that the taste alone should be enough to make her gag. She hasn’t had this kind of trouble since the few feeble
and halfhearted attempts she made before Janey taught her
    166 how to do it properly. She settles down, sitting cross-legged in front of the toilet.
    It’s okay, she tells herself, maybe I just need to relax for a minute. She takes a deep breath and tries again; again, she gags, she coughs, she spits, but no food comes up. She closes her eyes and leans against the wall opposite the toilet. Her fingers are still at her mouth, resting against her lips, reminding her to try again. She imagines that her stomach is clenching like a fist around the food she’s eaten; she imagines her intestines snaking around tighter to hold everything in. She imagines that she—her fingers and her throat and her desire to throw up— is pitted against her greedy belly, and she feels outmatched.
    So everything stays down. The bread with the nuts, the butter, the cheese, and the egg yolks. Her body just won’t give it up.
167

20.
    S
    et h i e’s cl assm at es return to school with skin tanned from vacations in exotic places like the Riviera Maya, St. Lucia, and Buenos Aires. Sethie goes back to school with a scar that peeks out of the top of her uniform skirt. Sethie likes her scar; it makes her feel dangerous, like she bought a fake ID over the break and used it to get a tattoo. She likes it even better than a suntan. A suntan isn’t permanent.
    Despite everything she ate on Sunday, she has lost six pounds; she was 110 when winter break began and is 104 now. She wonders if any of the weight lost was bled out of her when she cut herself, or when she picked at the scabs until she bled again. She wonders how much blood weighs and if it really matters because maybe your body just makes more blood to make up for what you lost. But maybe not, because then why would people need blood transfusions?
Sethie thinks she should have paid more attention in
    168 biology; maybe then she’d know better about blood. She remembers one day in biology class they were made to find out their own blood type—this was in ninth grade—and the teacher had a little plastic stick that looked like a pen, except when she clicked the top of it a needle came out of its tip instead of a ballpoint. She remembers that when she was waiting in line for it to be her turn to have her finger pricked, the girls behind her were discussing the merits of regular versus low-fat versus nonfat salad dressing. Sethie had trouble following their talk. They were the popular girls, and Sethie was still skinny then; or, she still thought she was skinny then, or, really, she didn’t yet think she was fat. She remembers that at the time, she’d never even tasted reduced-fat salad dressing, and she hardly even ate salads.
    She remembers that she wondered why they didn’t have the choice to opt out of this particular assignment; weren’t some girls frightened of the sight of blood? Wasn’t there anyone else who was scared about how much it might hurt when the needle pricked her?