Short Stories

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Somehow it’s never enough. I’m lying flat on my blue and magenta futon, tracing the swirls and squares on the fabric. It’s contemporary chic, certainly the trendiest piece of furniture in my small, cluttered apartment. It doesn’t match the mint green of the loveseat, but when you’re a college student with a part time job, church bazaars and thrift store merchandise are better alternatives than Doritos and Biology 101 on the floor.
My throat is raw. I imagine that it’s red and puffy; I know it’s burning and dry as a bone. I ignore the unpleasantness and stare at the ceiling, partly because I’m in a stupor , but mainly because the huge, yawning emptiness inside me wrecks any motivation to get up and do something, even closing my eyes in an effort to sleep. I just lie and stare blankly.
What did I eat? It started with the spaghetti. I didn’t really want it in the first place, before my ever thoughtful aunt insisted on sending it home with me after supper at her house the night before. I’m surprised it made it in the fridge as long as it did. But with little else besides a jar of chipotle mustard and two wrinkled lemons on the bottom shelf to keep it company, that spaghetti began screaming my name from the moment I got up this morning. I felt guilty after eating it; too many carbs. Look at me I’m ingesting fat and its going straight to my already thickening waist. Yet I feel empty, yearning, craving. I can’t get to the store fast enough so I can load up on cake, ice cream, peanut butter and jelly.
And now it’s over. But I feel empty, empty, empty.
I was a needy child. Bright yellow pigtails and snappy brown eyes, I was lively and energetic, flouncing here and there like I had the world to save and six minutes to do it. But at night I was whimpering, fearful, clinging. My head would start drooping about dinnertime, wispy curls brushing into my plate of cornbread with peanut butter sauce, or mashed potatoes and red beets, or whatever combination my ever curious mother was producing in her little suburban kitchen. My family enjoyed food; trying new dishes, experiment with raising their own purple sprouting broccoli, celery, rape, leeks. The garden took up the entire yard which isn’t saying a lot.
My little tummy would close up and I couldn’t get in another bite, because outside the shadows were lengthening and birds stilling their songs as night time came, bringing restlessness and terrors to my nervous heart. How many mass murderers were outside lurking in the bushes, maybe peering through the glass and watching the happy little family of four eating their dinner all together, never dreaming that in a matter of hours they’d be laid out on their beds like sardines enrobed in their own blood. My parents discounted my fears with sighs, rolling their eyes, occasionally ordering me to just stop my silliness. My brother laughed outright.
Morphing into a teenager I was stubborn, independent, had my own ideas about the way life ran, and finally my father told me to shut up or get out. So I got out. I was seventeen.
What my parents never dreamed was that the strong-willed, shouting daughter who now spoke to them in short, biting sentences over the phone was crying herself to sleep every night, curled up in a narrow rollaway bed in my friend Allison’s living room. I was lonely, I was empty even then.
I went dancing and drinking with Allison and her friends, and I met boys. Lots of boys. I stuffed the black hole inside with fragments of relationships, casual sex, and cold beer. I stopped crying at night, mainly because I was either drunk or keeping company with the man of the week.
This lasted a year. One morning I awoke, puffy eyed from another night of hitting the bottle, and looked at the tousle headed youth snoring in my bed. It was 7:50, I had ten minutes until it was time to leave for work, and this kid wasn’t close to rousing. I opened my mouth to holler at him, and for one long, blank moment, I didn’t know his name. I trembled. There was a stranger in my bed, and all I could do was stand and stare at him. I had invited him in, and I didn’t know who he was, he could be a thief, a bakery boy, Swedish. The possibilities were endless. My endurance was not.
I quit men altogether. I got my own apartment and kept to myself. By this time I no longer spoke to my parents. My friends were out doing their own thing. I went to work, occasionally to the gym, sometimes out for a coffee and pumpkin muffins at the shop on the corner. The nights became long. Too long, and empty. One can only stare at a flickering, blaring, dancing television screen for so long before falling into a trance.
When I thought about what I was living for, moving towards, or dreaming of, I came up blank.
The internal starving manifested itself fully. I became ravenously hungry. Cookies, chicken soup, the little round sugary donuts on the Chinese buffet--couldn’t get enough. I don’t remember when it started exactly, but suddenly I was consumed with raw physical hunger. I started gaining weight, and the waistband of my dark wash jeans soon wouldn’t reach. My pretty sweaters and cute t-shirts became snug in the chest and sleeves. I heard subtle comments at work. I ached inside, angry at myself for lacking restraint, yet helpless to stop the monster within. What could I do? I racked my mind. I read an article on eating disorders in college age young women, and how it affected their grades, their bodies, their futures in terrible, negative ways. It was a moving article, very sobering. Young girls gave their personal testimonies, what they did to themselves, and how.
I started to purge. For the first several weeks I was on a high, patting myself on the back for my creativity. Look at me world, I’m enjoying my cake and not wearing it, too. Bulimia kills other girls because they’re stupid, but me--I’ve got it under control.
Until I found myself three years later, sprawled on the futon, aching, burning, dizzy, and wondering if I had control, then why was I subjecting myself to such pain? Why couldn’t I fill myself up?
I had tried the routine methods of finding relief if not satisfaction: drinking, partying, boyfriends. Now the food. How many more cheap, easy methods would I try until I finally destructed?
Tears came. They were warm and stinging, melting my eyes. I was tired and heartbroken and screaming inside because the worst pain is to be empty of life, to have to wonder about love, and to have dreams no larger than a package of molasses cookies.
I arose and went to the window. It was dusk, and the planets were making pinpricks on the darkening sky. The street was quiet. A lone figure moved by slowly. I stared, imagining it was an image of me, silent and alone in the shadows of my world. The silhouette began moving in the direction of my apartment, much to my consternation. I pulled back from the window, letting the gossamer drapes fall back. The knock at my door brought a frown and an impatient set to my mouth. “What?”
“I’m sorry to bother you so late, but I’m Blanche, from the Church of Christ,” came a young, girlish voice.
I opened the door and assessed the slight, freckled young woman with dark red hair in two plaits. She looked abashed, but kept her little chin up and her green eyes direct on mine. “I’m sorry,” she babbled, “ but I’m doing a soul-winning project with my youth group, and I have one more tract left, and I saw you standing at the window.”
I laughed outright. Subtlety was not her strong point. I stared at the paper she handed me. It was light blue, and looked religious. God… This was not thought in a prayerful attitude. Automatically I thought of tossing it in the trash, because religion was just something I had never done. Like squash or volleyball or homemade greeting cards.
I looked up again at my visitor, and suddenly, I paused in my thoughts. The years of silent torment, the shallowness of my existence, the fear of my desolate future, rushing together into one black, clarifying stream.
I nodded at Pippi. “Okay you did your job,” I said, half seriously, half laughing. I went inside and shut the door.
Instead of crumpling the tract, I turned it over in my hand and sat down.

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