We had food issues, Mother and I. There always seemed to be an over-abundance of food in the house, but no one was supposed to eat it. I guess we had to at least appear to be a functional and normal family. I remember vividly one day after school. I was thirteen and in the seventh grade. My mother thought I was too fat and had decreed that I be forbidden food until I lost what she deemed was a reasonable amount of weight, which was twenty pounds. The thing was, though, I had started my period that year and my body was actively having growth spurts. My breasts were growing and I was getting taller (although I would only ever make it to five feet two). I know now from being a mother that when major bodily changes happen to children, their appetite increases to deal with these changes. The caloric needs increase, because they simply need more to function and grow. Also, I was never "fat". I looked like a normal thirteen year old should look. I wasn't thin, but I wasn't overweight either. If I had lost twenty pounds, as my mother wanted me to (because I was never just myself but a reflection of her), I would have been in the hospital on a feeding tube.
On this day, I had walked home from school after not having any food for the previous three days. My mother was effectively starving me. To say that I was hungry is a vast understatement. At that point, I would have eaten almost anything. The mere thought of food made me salivate and actually drool. Mother was not home from work yet, so I went to the kitchen and stood in front of the refrigerator longing for some deus ex machina to swoop in and give me permission to eat or to fly me away from that house and Mother so that I could eat and be content. I was so much longing for food and yet, at the same time, afraid to eat. I had no idea what new and inventive punishments Mother might inflict on me if she caught me eating. I opened the freezer and there on the shelf in a prominent front placement was a half gallon of ice cream unopened, of course. I stared at it while the minutes stretched out and it seemed that time slowed to a creep. An eternity later, as I was dissociated from my body, I watched myself get the ice cream out of the freezer, scoop out three balls, put the container back in the freezer, walk to the dining room table and start to eat. As I ate, I snapped back into my body and suddenly became present to all of its pain and hunger. I don't remember tasting the ice cream. I don't even remember what kind it was. I just remember the feeling of the iciness of it going down my throat and hitting my stomach. I could feel the coldness from inside my body.
Exactly four bites later, Mother strode in through the door. I could smell her perfume the minute she stepped inside the house. I heard her bracelets jangle as she dropped her purse on the sofa right inside the front door. I felt the clack-clack of her heels on the wood floor through my bare feet on the wood floor as she walked toward the dining room. She saw me once she entered the dining room. An ugly, self-satisfied sneer slowly spread across her beautiful mouth and I could see the hate coming from her eyes as if it were a physical thing. I couldn't move. A predator and prey situation. I could feel my heart in my chest beating so hard that I thought very briefly that I would have a heart attack. My body was involuntarily frozen to the chair. As she continued to slowly walk towards me, I could see her fists clenching and releasing. I braced mentally for one of those fists to land anywhere on my body. Instead of punching me, she began this weird chant in an off key child-like singsong, "Fatty, fatty, fatty! Little piggy wants ice cream!" While she was doing this odd singsong, she began to pinch me anywhere on my body that she could reach. At this point, I had gotten out of my chair, although I don't remember when I did it, and was actively trying to get away from her pinching fingers which seemed to somehow have elongated. From my panicked perspective, her fingers had grown to be about two feet long. She had rings on every finger and I saw them flashing as she reached for me with her bracelets jingling. She pinched my stomach, my breasts, my bottom, my thighs-anywhere she could reach. She continued this punishment mercilessly until I miraculously slipped her grasp and managed to get into the bathroom. I slammed the door on her and locked it (We lived in one of those houses that was so old that every door had a different key, but we didn't have any of the keys since they had long since been lost or destroyed).
Once in the bathroom, I forced three fingers down my throat and vomited what little ice cream I had eaten. I was so panicked and upset that after the initial purge, my body continued to dry heave and expel stomach bile for good while. I was left a sweaty, crying lump in the corner of the bathroom floor and all the while, I could hear Mother laughing manically outside the door. She was celebrating her victory. I don't know how long I stayed in the bathroom. I felt safe there, but at the same time, every time I looked at the toilet, I remembered what had happened and I hated being in there. I hated being in that house and most of all: I hated Mother. Recovered somewhat, I pulled myself off the bathroom floor and shuffled to the sink. It was one of those porcelain pedestal sinks that are usually in old houses and accompanying it, there was an old medicine cabinet hanging on the wall above the sink with an equally old mirror which was in need of re-silvering. I braced myself by placing my hands on either side of the sink and slowly raised my head to see my reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror. I had light blonde, curly hair (Mother hated the curls.), sky blue eyes, full pinkish lips, very pale skin and prominent dark circles under my eyes. I hated that reflection because I didn't look like Mother who had long, straight raven black hair, eyes so dark that you couldn't see the irises, beautiful and smooth olive skin, always had a blush to her skin as if her fire was just there pulsing underneath and lips the color of dark red roses. I had always wanted to look like her, because from the time I was a small child, I had thought she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. I was so pale and colorless that I felt I could never compare to her. I felt that I had not the fire that she did.
As I washed my face and rinsed my mouth, I felt my anger rise up and rest in my throat. I wanted to scream. There were no words. I just wanted to scream at her like some primal being. However, I could not scream. My punishment would only have been worse had I done it. So, I swallowed and my anger went down my throat and came to rest in my belly and stayed there. I turned to the mirror once again to see that I indeed had some fire within me only it came out from my eyes. It burned me from the inside. It was at that point, and for the first time in my life, that I thought: She will not ever break me.
(Taken from a handwritten journal entry 8/30/2002)
