Part One - 6 "You're Different"

You’re Different

Fontainebleau, France

Christmas, 1994

This month, the teacher has shaped the desks in the classroom into a U so all of us can see each other during the lesson. I sit on the left side of the curved shape. It’s cold in the classroom now, and the draft from under the door bites through the thinning fabric of my pink classroom slippers. We have to take off our shoes and change into slippers before going into the classroom, and in the winter, it makes my toes freeze until I can’t feel them anymore. This year, I have pink ones with little dancers on them. Mami picked out the color; I just like the fact that they’re fuzzy inside.

My teacher is waiting for the rest of the class to file in. She sits at her desk in the front of the classroom and plays with a strand of her milk chocolate hair as she looks over our papers. Yesterday, we had une dictée, and I’m anxious to get mine back because I think that I spelled all of the words wrong. My friends aren’t even here yet.  I’m fidgeting because my left leg is asleep, and when I try to move it, it sends armies of fire ants through my nerves. I like the quiet time before school starts, because none of the wild boys are here yet and I can just sit and color.

As the class starts filing in, my friend Christophe sits down next to me at his desk and starts pulling out his pencils and notebooks. He has hair that is the same color as the pencil I use to fill in the sun in my picture and his skin is really pale. He’s quiet, like me, and he’s really smart. The teacher really likes him. I pull on my hair and feel how soft it is against my cheek. It’s almost vacation, so that means we are going to talk about the school-wide Christmas party. Last year we had to sing songs about trees and Santa Claus and Mami explained to me that we don’t celebrate Christmas, but that it’s nice to respect what others celebrate. I knew that already when she told me; I like the candles and songs and scrumptious food of Hanukah better anyway.

“Attention, Classe, let’s start off the day with our calendar!”

For every day in the month of December, we have been opening a little window in a calendar that the teacher put up on the wall. In each of these windows, there’ a chocolate and almost all of the kids in the class have already had their turn. We are getting close to the end of the alphabet, so it must be almost my name. After me, there are only three other kids, and there are only four pictures left in the month.

I glance across the room to one of my good friends, Sara, who has already had her turn. She loves chocolate almost as much as she loves horses, so she’s excited anyway. She stretches her lips in a hungry grin and her eyes are wide and happy. We both watch the teacher anxiously as she strides over to the calendar in slow, deliberate steps. She’s carrying the class grade book in her arms, and her finger is stuck between the green cardboard covers at the page where all of our names are. The calendar is hung up next to the blackboard at the front of the room, next to the part where today’s date is written; Le 21 décembre, 1994.  She steps up to the calendar and props the book open in her arms. I feel tight in my shoulders and my right foot is tapping against the floor; I know that she’s about to call my name and I’ll get to walk up to the front of the class and get my chocolate. In my mind everyone is smiling at me, and some of the kids are even clapping. The teacher opens her mouth and calls out,

“Verdier, Alexis!”

I’m already half way out of my seat, but I manage to catch myself and make it look like I was just re-adjusting. The tears are creeping up my throat and lining up behind my eyes, but I have to be strong and fair. I’m sure there’s a reason for why he went before me, maybe he won’t be here tomorrow when it’s his turn. I try to calm myself down by looking down at the desk, but a tear falls on the drawing I was working on and stains the roof of the little house under the bright yellow sun.

Alexis, a small brown-haired boy with a pinched nose and a fuzzy green sweater bounds from his seat and skips over to the calendar. He has to say today’s date and how many days are left until Christmas.

“Aujourd’hui c’est le 21 décembre, et il manque 4 jours jusqu’a Noël”

Yes, yes you’re a smart boy, it’s the 21^st and there are 4 days left. Oh yay for you, now you get a chocolate. MY chocolate!

I can feel the heat building where my eyes meet with my nose, and my eyebrows arch inwards. I don’t care if he has a good reason, it was my chocolate! Alexis walks back to his seat, happily munching on what I imagine is a milky, sugary confection melting in his mouth. The teacher keeps going forward with the lesson, but I’ve stopped paying attention. I don’t even care that I got all the answers right on the spelling test.

Why didn’t I get my turn?

I don’t pay attention to the lesson, and the teacher doesn’t even call on me so it doesn’t matter. I’m going to have to find out why he went before me.

It’s just not fair.

We’re learning how to sing “Oh Christmas Tree” in German, and I mumble some made up words while the rest of the class obediently recites,

“O Tenenbaum, O Tenenbaum…”

At ten o’clock we have a small snack and recess break, and everyone dashes towards the hallway to get their snacks from their backpacks. I’m still looking down at my desk, holding my head up with the palms of my hands and the shuffle of footsteps towards the door sounds like pebbles tumbling down a dirt hill.

“Viens, Yali, let’s go! Let’s go play!”

Sara is pulling on my sleeve, and I shake her off, I don’t want to go out and play.

“I’ll come out in a second”

She taps me on the shoulder and trots off to get her snack. When I’m sure that the classroom is empty, I glance up and I see my teacher shuffling some papers on her desk. I take a deep breath that rattles in my throat; I’m shaking a little bit as I slide off the chair and walk up to the front to talk to her.

Her deep-set dark eyes look upon my tear stained face with mild curiosity. Her lips are puckered together and painted in a shade of red that reminds me of the cherries that grow in the neighbor’s back yard.

“You should go outside now, Yali”

I grip the edge of her wooden desk. It has suffered various cracks throughout the years that it has sat in this classroom and probably other classrooms as well. I’m trying not to shake but my voice betrays me when I try to speak.

“W-hhy wasn’t it m-my turn to get the chocolate today?”

My teacher lets the papers down and pushes up the right sleeve of her navy blue sweater, the kind that looks itchy.

“Well, isn’t it obvious why?”

Maybe I did something wrong…

I sniffle a little bit; I’m looking through my memory to see if I got in trouble this week or if I did something that I should be punished for, but I’m pretty sure that I’ve been behaving, and I know that I’ve been doing all of my work.

“Am I in trouble?”

She taps the desk a couple of times with her fingers, and she scrunches up her face a bit as if she has to really make an effort to give me an answer.

“No, you’re Jewish.”

I feel like I’ve been hit in the chest with something heavy and round. I’m not crying anymore, but now I really feel that it’s not fair, and I’m angry, but I can’t yell at my teacher. I don’t really understand why that makes a difference. I’m still in the class; my name is still on the list. So why shouldn’t I get a chocolate too.

“So? Why can’t I play on the calendar too?”

She breathes out and turns her attention back to the papers on her desk,

“Because you don’t celebrate Christmas, and the other kids do.”

She looks up at me and raises her eyebrows, clearly urging me to join my class outside and play. I don’t’ move, I’m still gripping her desk and my nails are digging into her wood. I feel uncomfortable in my small body; my shirt feels too hot.

“B..ut..”

“Go outside now, Yali. You have to be back on time for the next lesson.”

I let go of the edge of her desk and I notice that my palms are sweating; I feel nervous and a little bit scared, but I force my legs to turn my body around and take me outside. When I get to the hallway where all the bags are, I find mine hanging on the wall along with my coat.  I grip the sides of the red fabric with the green zippers. I pull on the zipper on the little pockets to take out the sugar cookies that Mami put inside in the morning. When I get the zipper open, all I see is an empty plastic bag full of crumbs. Someone took my snack.

My eyes well up with hot, burning tears and I pull the bag off the hook and throw it on the floor. I crouch down next to it, and hide my head in my coat that is hanging on the hook where the bag also was.

Stupid, stupid, stupid

I don’t want anyone to see me cry. I swallow my tears before they can fall under my chin and breathe in forcefully, clogging my sinuses. I cough and my throat hurts because it’s dry and the tears are stinging it. I wipe my eyes and my nose and make myself stand up, and walk outside. When I leave the classroom, I start down the hill to the playground. I run as fast as my 9-year old legs can take me and when it starts to hurt, I run even faster until I get to the big tree where my friends are playing. The wind from running has dried the tears on my face, and when I get there, I jump right into the game.

***

This  morning, I’m awake before my family is and I go downstairs to where Mami keeps the snacks in the kitchen. I climb up on the stove so that I can open the cupboard above it. I’m looking for the chocolates that we brought back from Israel in the summer. I find a bag of the small, rectangle ones with the black wrappers and the gold elephants on them. I reach into the back of the cupboard and pull the bag out. I stuff it in my backpack. If I can’t play with the chocolates in the calendar, I’m going to keep my own bag in my desk, and no one can have any.

When I get to the classroom, I stuff the bag inside my desk, behind the spelling notebook, the art notebook, and the pencil case. I sit and color like I do every morning as I wait for the other kids to get to the class. Christophe sits down next to me and leans over to look at my drawing. I put my elbow over it to hide it, and push it to the other side of my desk. I’m sitting with my legs under me, so I’m a little taller than usual; that means I can cover the whole thing if I want to.

When my teacher gets up to call the next student to for the calendar, I have the familiar feeling like some animal is trying to scratch its way out of my chest. I reach my hand inside my desk and pull a chocolate out from the bag. I get the wrapper off with one hand inside the desk and when everyone’s attention is on the freckly girl with the long dirt colored hair in braids, I stuff the little square into my mouth. It melts over my teeth in a delicious mixture and my tongue feels happy with the blanket of chocolate I’ve wrapped it in.

I continue to sneak chocolates from the bag as the lesson continues; even as we’re still practicing O Tenenbaum. By the end of the lesson, I have a desk full of empty wrappers, and my stomach hurts a little bit. I have a hard time standing up to go outside, but I don’t want to be left in the classroom with my teacher. I swallow a couple of times and run outside after my friends. I feel like there’s a rock bouncing around where my stomach used to be, but I ignore it. I run around, supercharged from the mixture of the sugar from the chocolates and the surge of energy from the knowledge that they are my secret, and mine alone. 

Part One - 4 "Slipping"

Slipping

Wynnewood, USA

November 27, 2008

10:00am.

The morning hits my eyes with forceful brutality, pushing my eyelids inwards so that they stick to my eyeballs. I can feel the heat of Chiqui’s body still curled up at the bottom of the bed, but I cannot open my eyes to her today. I want to stay with my eyes closed for the rest of the day, for the rest of the weekend. I cannot face the possibility that I will have to cook today, that I will have to be with food, and specifically with a recipe whose inception causes me so much pain.

My face is burning; I can feel the stinging tears still clinging to the debris in my sinuses, in my throat. I feel as though I have set fire to my insides, that my body has shriveled up onto itself and is now nesting in the shame of what I did last night.

I feel empty. I’m hungry, I want food.

NO! NO I DON’T!

I know that I cannot wake up today. Just the thought of dragging my exhausted body down the stairs boils the anxiety now living in the hollow cavity where my heart used to be. 

If I eat anything, I’ll throw it up. I know I will.

The breakfast food that I know is in the cupboard dances in front of my still closed eyelids. I push on them with the palms of my hands, as if to banish the image to the back of my brain. I pull my hands down over my face, and scratch the outside of my eyelids with my nails. I am possessed by a fury at myself that twitches in my fingernails and reverberates throughout my muscles.

You got through the entire day, the entire FUCKING day, and you couldn’t even last!

Worthless.

…nooo…

The angry voice booms inside my head and I am squatting, crawling around, looking for a place to hide from it. The judgment dripping from its vicious fangs lands on my face, sticks to my eyes. It slips into my throat and forces me to gag It eradicates any attempt I could make to strengthen myself up, to make it through to day.

I’m sore. My body is aching and cracking. My knees are screaming from the pressure I put on them yesterday by leaning my overfilled stomach on them as I threw up everything I could. I try to shift my head over so I’m not facing the window. The heaviness of the sadness pressing on my eyes pushes me further under my blanket, which I am holding tightly over my head, as I lay curled up, hugging my knees.

“Yuuhuuu, are you awake up there??”

Chiqui bounds off the bed at the beckoning tone of Mami’s voice, and I groan some sort of acknowledgement. Mami hops up the stairs and I pull my covers tighter around my head.

Where is the evidence from yesterday??

Panic heats the space behind my ears for a second until I remember that I took the necessary precautions to hide it before the morning. The evidence typically consists of wrappers, peels, crumbs, or anything left uneaten shoved into a plastic bag.

“Come on, wake up, let’s go downstairs”

I don’t want to move. I’m not ready to go downstairs. I can’t face food right now.

Ohhh, but it will make you calm down…

The emptiness inside of me, where I used to have organs, makes me want to fill myself with food, and then throw it up. It is my mind’s way to grieve over what it has lost; it is my way to punish myself for everything that I deserve to be punished for. It’s the easiest way to suffer without feeling. I am so angry with myself; I wrap the blanket around my throat, cutting off my breath for a few seconds. When colors begin to flash behind my eyelids, I let go and breathe. I swing my legs off the bed, the momentum of which forces me up right. The room takes a few seconds to right itself, all of the walls settling back into the positions into which they have been built.

The blood rushes to my feet and settles in my soles. The carpet prickles, as if the nerves in the bottoms of my feet don’t know how to process it, rendering into static snow in my mind. I pick up my book and shuffle down the stairs, rubbing my sore, swollen eyes into some type of normalcy before I reach the kitchen. Danielle is already sitting there, lazily eating her cereal and browsing through a comic book. I grab a bowl, fill it up to a portion bigger than one I know I can eat, drown it in milk, and begin to absentmindedly add almonds, and banana pieces into the mix. My breakfast bowl of cereal is nearly overflowing, but I don’t really notice. I perch myself atop of the counter and begin to shovel it in, barely pausing to breathe. My mind is focused on the book in front of me, and I am not conscious of what I am eating.

I finish before Danielle does, and I immediately feel the rush of sadness, guilt, and disappointment at the fact that the cereal is done.

I need more…

The monster in my head is rubbing its slimy dirt-colored belly greedily, dragging my eyes to all corners of the kitchen, showing me what the next thing is that I could eat. I settle on more cereal, it’s the easiest since it is what I have already started on. Mami is still outside with Chiqui, so she wont’ know how much I’ve eaten anyway.

When she comes back in, I have already finished my second bowl, and Danielle has already gone to some other part of the house to occupy herself. I pour myself some coffee as an excuse to remain in the kitchen, and grab a handful of nuts. I hide them under the flap of my book to munch on unencumbered. My stomach is hurting; its shriveled up walls are being forced to stretch now beyond what they can hold after the trauma of throwing up. Normally, I don’t let my stomach rest between binges, so it remains flaccid, and I can refill it; but because I slept, it means that it has had some chance to heal.

The way I am treating it now is as if I were to rip out the stitching from a recently sutured surgery. I don’t care. I sneak in as many morsels as I can, pushing all consciousness away from the moment along with them. I don’t even notice the words that are supposedly rising from the page and into my mind.

I’ve slipped. I know I have, and I am continuing to roll down the jagged hill, barely even trying to grasp at roots and rocks in order to stop the slide. The thought that I now have to create a social circle out of no one, a life out of nothing pushes me further down, makes it much easier for me to ignore my feelings and just stay with the cycle of my illness.

“How about you go do something else?”

Now that the truth has emerged in its entirety, Mami is not as aggressive as she used to be when she suspects that my behavior isn’t up to par. I shrug my shoulders; I can’t move anyway because my book is concealing the nuts that I still have to eat.

Mami shuffles out of the kitchen, and goes to the living room to watch football. It is after all, Thanksgiving day. I slide up to the door of the sitting room, to see that she’s concentrating. She looks almost sad, and she’s been unusually quiet.

“Hey, Mami, what’s the matter?”

She looks at me with a searching gaze, and definitely forces a smile. I should know, I’m the queen of forced emotion.

“Oh, nothing, I just miss your dad. What’s up with you?”

“oh, nothing…”

She turns her attention back to the game and I take this opportunity to sneak down to the basement bathroom. When I walk into it, I notice that I have successfully erased the smell of half digested food from the night before, and I turn on the shower water, as if I am going to step into it. Instead, I raise the toilet lid, and heave the contents of my extended breakfast inside. It only takes a few minutes, since most of it has become liquid.

I step into the shower, dizzy, and already exhausted. I don’t wash my hair because, really, what’s the point? The heater in the house is broken, and the water is quickly growing cold as it flows over my body. I stare down and hug my wet, sore stomach. I crumple to the floor, and sob into my dripping, and now freezing knees.

I step out of the shower and wipe the steam away from the mirror with my forearm. My eyes are red, swollen, and show traces of blood vessels about to burst. My face has broken out in some angry red lesions, from the acid that has splashed on to it.

Well, there’s always tomorrow…

I slap myself on the forehead, hard.

 You idiot, how many tomorrows do you think you’re going to have left like this?

The admonition hurts more than the heavy emptiness that is again settling inside of me, I walk out into the newly renovated basement and collapse on mattress that is currently this room’s single item of furniture. I don’t think anyone has even noticed that I’ve gone anywhere. I can hear Danielle playing with Chiqui upstairs.

I put the same clothes that I was wearing back on; I didn’t wash my hair so it doesn’t even look like I showered. I can do this same thing again if I want. I go upstairs, look in on Mami in the sitting room, and call out to Danielle,

“Let’s go, I want to dye my hair!”

Someone once said to me that when you change your hair, it means that your life is going to change. I can’t remember who said this, not even after I shake my head a few times to try and jar my memory. It must be someone important because the thought is laced with heaviness in my heart, one that sinks into the already heavy vacuum I feel inside.

We ride to the pharmacy; the only place open on Thanksgiving, and I blast techno music and supportive songs by angry female vocalists into the still suburban neighborhood. We take the long way there, driving around and passing all of the houses that my friends from high school used to call home. Most of them are there now; we do have our reunion tomorrow.

I wonder if I’ll see anyone?

My hair is a dry, multicolored mutt of all the colors I’ve dyed it in the past two years and I’m craving some naturalness to it. I want it to be brown again. I want to be me, not the some fake version that I pour over myself. I pick something that looks the closest to my natural color and we head home,

“Can we take the long way again!?!”

My head is pounding from the music and the seesaw my stomach has been riding on in the past twenty-four hours.

“No. I want to do this before we make dinner.”

Danielle looks disappointed; I think she has something to tell me, so I concede to take the back roads back to the house.

“I’m worried, Yali.”

Shit.

“What are you worried about?”

Danielle picks at the door handle absentmindedly lifting it up, and letting it drop,

“I’m worried about Mami and Papi. Mami is really mad at Papi.”

Phiew…it’s not about me. Another bullet dodged.

“Why is she mad at him?”

“Well, ‘cause she feels alone. I think she really misses him. She’s mad that he’s not here.”

Oh.

“Well, don’t worry, there’s nothing that we can do about it, you know that. Just…whatever, don’t take it personally.”

That’s why Mami has been so tense. That’s why she seems to be in a constant state of disappointment. Damnit. Now what do I do? How am I supposed to fix this!

“Oh...well, I guess you’re right, Yali.”

Once back at home, I find myself in the bathroom again, this time to dye my hair. I mix the ingredients together in the bottle; shaking it vigorously, far longer than the required 30 seconds. The forceful back and forth movement cramps my arm and I like this feeling of tension, and the way it releases when I put the bottle down, and stretch out my fingers.

The instruction sheet always has some convoluted way to arrange your hair so you get an even dye, but I just dump the whole bottle on my head and rub it in like shampoo. The color gets there anyway. It splashes as I scratch my scalp with the force of my action, and hits the walls like the splatter of blood from a shooting victim, like the splatter of vomit when I throw up.

I’m anxious and excited at the change, and the effort I have to muster to sit with it for the time it needs to settle in is more draining than I would expect it to be. I have my book in front of me; I know that it will take about 50 pages for the dye to be ready. When I get there, I wash out my hair, reveling in the dye pouring out with the water, reminding me of the blood in the dentist’s office. I run upstairs to dry it, and when I look in the mirror, my eyes shine brightly against a dark curtain, my hair. It’s still dry, but at least now it’s dark, at least now I feel like I’m a step closer to being whole.

“Heyyy, wow, it looks so good!”

Danielle is standing behind me while I am still competing in a stare-down with my reflection in the mirror in Mami’s room.

“Wow, it really brings out your eyes!”

I pull at my hair, and hide my eyes with it.

“Eh it’s still dry and ugly and too short.”

I pull it back in a ponytail and see that I have spots of dye on my ears and some of my neck.

Whatever

“Let’s go make Thanksgiving dinner.”

Danielle follows me down the stairs, still telling me that my hair looks good, trying to make me happy with it. I call out to Mami to put the chicken into the oven while I prepare my ingredients.

“Now? Right now?”

She calls out from her riveted position in front of the television screen; the Eagles must be winning. Or losing.

“Yeah, Americans have their Thanksgiving dinner at 4pm, we might as well do it like that too.”

We ready the ingredients, and while I’m mashing the spices into the goat cheese, I picture the last time that I did this. The smell of borscht cooking nearby wafts into my nostrils, but the borsht is from more than three weeks ago. Here, in this kitchen, there is only a chicken in the oven and raw pumpkins waiting to be stuffed.

My fingers are covered in the goat cheese, I have given up using a fork and have decided that this is the better way. When I deign the mixture done, I pull them out and examine them; they look as coral does when it has absorbed too much carbon dioxide: white and brittle, with large chunks coming off of it.

Come on, eat it…

I can’t. I wash it off in the sink instead, and wait around for the chicken to be cooked long enough so I can put my pumpkins in. When the dinner is prepared, we set up a makeshift buffet on the kitchen bar.

I don’t like the way the pumpkins look; they’re lopsided, they’re not stuffed all the way, they’re ugly. The ones I made before were better looking. I feel like I want to cry, but it would be strange to do so here. We pile our makeshift Thanksgiving meal onto our plates. Mami and Danielle exclaim at my recipe,

“Wow…it’s so yummy! Great job!”

I don’t believe them. I think that they are just saying it to make me feel better. When I eat what is on my plate, I can’t taste anything. Maybe I should just eat more, then I will taste. Soon enough, I find that I have eaten more than what I am comfortable with and I search for a way to go into the bathroom again. I mentally search the three bathrooms in my house. There’s the bathtub upstairs, I can pretend to be taking a bath. I wait around with Mami and Danielle for a few more minutes, helping them clean up the plates, and when they are both sufficiently occupied, I go upstairs, and run the water.

Relief…

This time, I am no longer ashamed, I am furious, I am absolutely seething at the thought of how I am wasting this weekend. These rare opportunities that I have to bond with Mami and Danielle, and I’m blowing them all away, wasting them like the food I consume, like every minute of my life that has been flushed down the toilet.

When will I stop?? When will I stop??

I heave out into the toilet again. This time, it isn’t on purpose.