Warning
This is a very short story about a girl with anorexia. It's worse than a coming of age story. But it's very short, and the mother makes it less tedious.
Story
Claire likes to eat peas for breakfast, one at a time, round and green.
She likes to hop, skip, jump! before lunch. No, her mother says, you'll
hurt yourself. She's fragile, a bird skeleton. Her mother clips wings
to Claire's shoulders. But you must stay in the nest, she says. Caw.
Caw. For lunch, Claire eats worms. She opens her beak and closes her
eyes. Her mother dispenses strands of spaghetti, calculating calories.
Would you like more? she asks, hopeful, but it's time for a bird nap.
Claire folds her wings and drifts to sleep. Eating takes energy.
For dinner, she gnaws carrots, scampers across the carpet, twitches
her nose. You're not fooling anyone, her mother says, weary. Where's
your fur? Your roundness? Claire pets the fine hair that covers her
body, a second coat for lack of fat. She's a giraffe nibbling leaves
on all fours, but her front legs are too short. She bats her arms
rapid speed, flitting tongue in and out of fake flowers. Transformation
to a bee. You're leaving me, her mother says. Unloved, she thinks,
and absorbs herself in chores.
Claire steals a foil-packed snack from the cupboard. She slips into
the bathroom, running water to drown the sound. Two cream-filled cookies.
The first is broken into pieces, plop, plop, plop, and flushed; the
second chewed, slowly, swallowed. The wrapper is covered with tissue
and crumpled into a paper cup that Claire plants in the middle of
the waste basket. Her tongue and teeth are happy. Her stomach, raw.
Claire slowly rolls toward her bed, across the floor, a tumbleweed
collecting dust. Inanimate, her mother says. Useless.
We Told You So
We hate to have to say this, but we told you so. Still, if you didn't
eat the price of the ticket, we'll reimburse you at the door.
Angela Jane Fountas writes, reads, and runs WriteHabit.org in Seattle. Her work has recently appeared in The Bitter Oleander, Pindeldyboz, and Syntax. She is the editor of Waking Up American (Seal Press, 2005).