But the good news was I no longer wanted to earn the anorexic title. I didn’t feel sick anymore. I didn’t get angry after I spent money on food that I felt like I shouldn’t be eating in the first place. I still couldn’t bring myself to ask for food, though, from the hired help at the cafeterias to ordering food over the phone for take-out or speaking into a drive-thru intercom. When I went out to restaurants I always ordered the same thing: a cheeseburger. It became a joke among family. It was the only thing I didn’t feel embarrassed about ordering. Cheeseburgers were okay. They were comforting and delicious, even if what I really wanted was the T-bone, medium-rare, with a loaded baked potato. Some day, I kept promising myself. That day will come. I dreamed of that day the way a little girl will dream of her wedding day.
I tried to find clothes that fit. I went shopping with a friend to the mall, the only mall within a 50-mile radius of my country-bumpkin college. We were lucky enough to have The Limited in our mall.
I grabbed a few pairs of jeans and headed toward the dressing rooms. I tried them on, one at a time, turning around in front of the mirror. I finally decided on a pair. I stuck my head out the door.
“Ruth,” I called to my friend, “what do you think of these?”
In calling out to my friend I had attracted a sales woman. They both came over to me, one for assistance, the other, assistance and a commission.
“I don’t like them,” Ruth, my dear, cruelly honest friend, stated immediately. “They make you look flat.”
“I think they are too large,” the sales woman tried, kindly. “Maybe you should try the size zero?”
“These are the size zero,” I responded crankily. The sales woman walked away, looking for someone who weighed enough to make a purchase in a woman’s clothing store.
I left the store, a ridiculous-looking figure in wrinkled, baggy clothing, a moving rag pile. At that point, I weighed 98 pounds.
That next summer, I stayed at school to take a few classes. With my regular friends home for the summer I was pretty much on my own, taking care of myself without anyone supervising. I had made new friends, friends who did not know my history, just that I was too skinny. I spent most of my mornings by the pond, located in the center of campus, surrounded by weeping willow trees. I sat on a bench and read “Slaughterhouse-Five.”