The Girl Who Ate Kalamazoo (10 page)

The Mapeses picnicked in Bronson Park, downtown Kalamazoo. They spread blankets between two poplars near a poop-spattered cannon honoring the local Civil War dead. Afternoon was becoming evening. The ominous clouds had migrated east, making way for clean, cottony ones. A smattering of college kids, families, and senior citizens strolled around the central fountain, which rushed with watery life. Roast beef sandwiches and pickle spears wrapped in wax paper were served by Misty. Cans of Mister Pibb (Dr Pepper conjured bad memories) were distributed by Murray. Audrey unpacked her own special dinner: a Ziploc bag of buttons; two unopened packs of Topps NHL cards; a ball of twine; a fistful of superballs.

Out of habit, Audrey used her forearm to shield her meal from passersby, bringing her food out into the open only long enough to load it into her mouth. The family members also positioned themselves so that they formed a solid but inconspicuous barrier between Audrey and the sidewalks that traversed the park.

Every move was designed to hide Audrey’s eating. They’d been hiding her for years. It was second nature now. Grandma Pencil was disgusted by any public display of sin. At home, the “bad eating” was relegated to Audrey’s bedroom. At the dinner table, Audrey was forced (read: shamed) into consuming a token portion of “real food” as a way of keeping Grandma Pencil at bay.

Not that Grandma was a total Scrooge. She worked hard to be pleasant; this was obvious in the amount and degree that her face contorted. She had cultivated a rigid tolerance toward Audrey’s gustatory preferences, although she couldn’t help uttering the occasional jab. Such as reminding Audrey that the ultimate consequence of her “unnatural habit” was an eternity of slow-roasting in the pits of Hell.

But Audrey was approaching twelve, approaching teenhood, and Grandma’s jabs had begun to bounce off. Audrey was an avid reader of science fiction, mystery, and World War II history. She shunned the Judy Blume books. Her favorite author was Edgar Allan Poe. McKenna was proud of this. She’d read classics to Audrey for years—London, Poe, Kafka, Gilman. If they hadn’t been library books, McKenna would have fed them to Audrey one page at a time after they’d been read.

Audrey didn’t just read books. She could go almost anywhere, do almost anything, on her crutches. She took walks around the neighborhood, going as far as the Grand River a mile away. She rode the bus to the mall with girlfriends. She inked the names of her crushes in balloon letters on her arms. Mötley Crüe, Ratt, and Poison posters covered the walls of her room. She and her friends toilet-papered houses on Halloween. Her independence was a source of pride but also a source of anxiety for the family. She had cultivated her own tastes, her own personality, her own mind. The years of sneaking, of being called a “devil child” by her own grandmother, had made Audrey numb, even callous, toward other peoples’ opinions. If she’d ever possessed a sweet nature, she was now losing it. She’d been ignored with regularity, maligned with impunity. She’d come to know her boundaries. She’d also learned that Grandma Pencil’s—or anyone’s—judgments couldn’t hurt her any more than a bee sting. She might carry the welt for a few days, but in the end, it was little more than a nuisance.

To McKenna’s dismay, Audrey was becoming a smaller, girlier version of Toby. A smarter, better-looking Toby, but still—the meanness was blooming inside her.

After Audrey’s secret had come out eight years ago, Toby had gradually hijacked the role of her supplier. On grocery day, Toby was in charge of the “Audrey Bud get.” While Misty shopped for the family food, he and Audrey jetted off to various departments of the Meijer Thrifty Acres to gather her nourishment for the week.

McKenna was wrecked by this development. Toby was more forceful, his personality “bigger” than McKenna’s. During the last few years, McKenna had been pushed aside because she didn’t know how to assert herself. There was a charm to Toby’s brutish-ness that Audrey latched onto in the same way so many girls at St. Monica’s had done.

Girls liked to be pursued. They liked to be bullied into love. This fact made McKenna ashamed to be a girl.

As the family picnicked on two ratty blankets, Audrey popped a superball into her mouth. She sat crossed-legged, gazing into the branches above her head. What was she thinking? Her eyes twinkled, suggesting that a fire blazed behind them. But a fire can be used for good or for evil. The fire itself is neutral. We shouldn’t forget this important point. As Audrey’s head tilted back, the superball appeared under the skin of her neck, a round protuberance like an Adam’s apple. For a split second, she was a boy.

The ball worked its way down her throat at a leisurely pace. It reached the base of her neck and paused between her collar bones. Then it began to rise. At the top of her neck, it stopped. Paused. The ball descended once again, to the same point. Then it climbed her neck a second time, like an elevator.

McKenna had witnessed Audrey’s incredible esophageal control many times. She understood the message Audrey was sending to her now: “I know about your eating disorder.”

Perhaps it had been apparent all along, to everyone. Perhaps McKenna’s throat bulged, too. Presently, in fact, a masticated clump of roast beef was riding her esophageal highway. Perhaps it was obvious. More likely, though, Toby had told her. What ever the reason, Audrey knew. And she was mocking McKenna.

An elderly man, whom no one had seen approaching from across the grass, pointed. He said in an urgent voice, “That girl is choking!”

“She’s okay,” Murray answered coolly, reclined on one elbow, picking his teeth with a fork. He didn’t even bother detaching his gaze from the
Gazette
article he was reading.

“I don’t think so!” the stranger persisted. The man wore a rumpled, oversized brown suit. His mouth showed more gaps than teeth. His white hair was parted in a meticulous, gentlemanly fashion upon his head. He was either a homeless pervert or a wealthy pharmaceuticals baron; flip a coin, you might get it right.

What was undeniable about the man was his concern for Audrey’s safety. “I watched her eat buttons from that bag! She ate buttons! Craziest thing I ever saw! Now she’s got a rubber ball in her throat!” His finger, trembling—from terror, from drink?—led the way as he approached Audrey.

Toby sprang to his feet. “Mind your own goddamn business,” he warned.

“Sit down, Tubby,” Murray said. Then, to the man (though without looking up): “You saw it wrong, mister. No one’s eating buttons. It’s candy. She’s fine. We’re all fine. Run along. Have a great evening.” He made a shoo-ing gesture with his hand.

“When will this family admit that YOU ARE NOT FINE?!”

This lion’s roar was Grandma Pencil, who for additional emphasis had hurled her half-full Mr. Pibb at a nearby tree.

“This girl is sick! She needs help, do you hear me?! She cannot live on pencils and Matchbox cars and Barbie Dolls! She CANNOT! You laugh, you smirk. What is wrong with all of you? This is trouble! Demonic possession! You cannot deny it any more!”

“Mom. Now’s not the time—”

“Now isn’t the time! Now isn’t the time! The time is NOW!”

Grandma Pencil struggled to stand. She took two mighty steps across the blanket and began walloping Audrey’s back and shoulder blades with the heel of her hand.

This old dog had indeed learned some new tricks, courtesy of the penguins: Punishment, retribution.

To the brown-suited observer, however, and to the civilian onlookers who were now crowding the sidewalks, it likely appeared that Grandma Pencil was attempting to save Audrey’s life by dislodging the object from her throat. The man stiffened in his tracks and drew in a nervous breath.

Grandma Pencil herself probably believed she was saving Audrey. After all, this is what the nuns did to every child who flirted with damnation.

Audrey wasn’t like those children, though. She hadn’t been cowed into submission. She wasn’t going to grin and bear it. She wasn’t in a classroom. Her bravado wasn’t being measured by the number of spine-tinglers she could bear. And this lady had no authority over her, no uniform to show God’s sanction for this corporal punishment. Grandma Pencil’s arm moved so quickly that she managed to land three strikes before Audrey even knew what was happening.

Once Audrey knew, though, she didn’t hesitate.

“She’s beating me!” she yelled. “Help! Oh god, it hurts!”

“Yelled” is too flimsy to describe it. Audrey shredded her throat. She startled squirrels out of trees; they crashed like writhing fruit onto the grass. She shattered windshields on nearby cars. Flight patterns were disrupted. Planets were knocked out of orbit. Her voice was sonic boom, dog whistle, and exploding dishwasher all in one. And in addition to raw volume, her voice contained genuine panic. Even McKenna, who knew that it was an act, felt a surge of pity as Audrey burst into tears.

But Grandma Pencil was a boulder thundering down a hill. She had momentum. She had gravity. Her hand rose and fell another half-dozen times. The deep, fleshy
thumps
resounded, all witnessed by the gathering crowd.

Their judgment was swift and unanimous.

Boo! Roar! Outrage! Someone’s got to help that innocent little fragile gumdrop marshmallow of a girl! She’s on crutches, no less! Poor thing!

A take-charge middle-aged man dressed entirely in denim ventured into the shaded area where the Mapeses were picnicking. His ponytail wagged as he gently but insistently gripped Grandma Pencil by the shoulders and pulled her out of reach of Audrey, who cowered with conviction.

At the same moment, Toby lunged forward, either to get the ponytailed man off of Grandma or to get Grandma off of Audrey. He was foiled when his bare foot stepped into McKenna’s uneaten roast beef sandwich. He lost his balance and tripped over the cooler.

McKenna sat, frozen, not knowing what to do—laugh silently, or laugh out loud?

Misty and Murray sat, well, frozen.

Audrey began with the building she loved most. That was her way. She would never let emotion stand between her and her mouth. (At age eight, she’d swallowed four of McKenna’s favorite
Star Wars
figures.) The normal rules of empathy never applied to Audrey. Not that she was a sociopath, no more than a landslide is a sociopath. She was obeying some primitive, nameless drive that we couldn’t understand. An instinct. Or, if you prefer, a law of nature that the rest of us have either evolved past or haven’t yet evolved to—it’s not clear which, but the difference is purely semantic since it’s in the eye of the beholder. And anyway, emotions had nothing to do with it.

Still, Audrey did love. She was capable of love. She did “feel.” In her early years, and perhaps even throughout her life, she undoubtedly favored McKenna, and yet she hugged every one of her family members on occasion. She cried a box of Kleenex into paste when Mister T the hamster ate his last pellet (1986, when Audrey was nine). Contrary to some opinions, she wasn’t dead inside—not at all. Remember, life appears in all forms on this big blue marble. Even cancer is alive.

Audrey loved a tiny restaurant called The Caboose, a one-room dive on the corner of East Main and Rambling Road, if not a stone’s throw then certainly a skilled disk-golfer’s throw from the Kalamazoo River. The Caboose was one of those all-night greasy spoons that served swampy coffee and soggy bacon under lights that made every customer look like a pedophile. It was a favorite spot for truckers and unsigned bands passing through town on their way from Detroit to Chicago or vice versa. The bands, who’d usually just played The Club Soda downtown, propped their combat-booted feet on the tables. Dressed in leather and long hair in even the hottest months, they giggled into their hands, stunk like reefer, and paid with wadded dollar bills. The truckers, meanwhile, chewed toothpicks and stared without expression at the black and white television mounted in the corner above the orange juice dispenser. There were also the solitary old women, necks rubbery, eyes like empty napkin holders. They sat at the bar and craned to sneer at whoever walked through the front door.

(Audrey ate that door fast, I’ll bet. Probably ten bites. That TV, two bites. And the bottles of ketchup—down the throat like M&Ms. Sometimes, in spite of everything, I’m quite proud of her.)

Audrey, along with her friends—a painter and sculptor gang from Western Michigan University—had become affectionate about this dump because spending time at The Caboose gave them credibility. Most of them were children of 150K-a-year parents from Detroit suburbs, but living alone in a college town on the opposite side of the state let them pretend to be starving artists. These artists longed to touch the common man in order to express the dimness of his soul. These artists chain-smoked, downing pot after pot of coffee while splitting an order of fries five ways. These artists suffered physically, hunger being a tried-and-true method of unearthing the worms of their genius. These artists would impale the wrigglers onto hooks that they would then use to pierce a nose, a tongue, or, in the case of Audrey, a labia. A tortured metaphor, to be sure. But lest we forget, these were “creative types.”

None of Audrey’s college freshmen pals knew about her secret diet—the heaping helpings of Corningware, the bowls of hair-clips, the 12-packs of ankle socks, and the doughy slabs of poster putty that got her through each day. Perhaps these bohemians wouldn’t have minded at all. They might have even urged Audrey into performance art or into a Battle Royale against Herr Es-senalles.

Or maybe they would’ve done what her family did. Sought help. And when that failed, maybe they would have hidden her secret, would have internalized the shame Audrey should have felt for her unnerving, freakish tendencies. The burden of this secret, and Audrey’s unwillingness to feel guilt for it, might have led them to resent her. Maybe each of her friends, then, in their most private moments, would have given serious thought to what it was, exactly, that had made them like her in the first place.

The news footage is quite famous now. If one is to believe what bank tellers say in breakrooms, it has become a ubiquitous presence in Psychology, English, Sociology, Media Studies, and Communication courses in universities across the country. An amazing phenomenon when you consider that neither Audrey, nor her feat, actually appear on screen. Still, it’s worth recounting here. For grins. I know it makes me grin.

WKZO Channel Three, the local CBS affiliate, broke the story on October 19, 1995. The medium shot is of Judy Holland, a woman heavy with mascara and rouge and crowned by an impressive dome of blond hair. She stands in front of The Caboose at approximately twenty yards’ distance. The sky is grayish-white, showing no sign of the sun. The day is blustery, evidenced by Judy’s occasional wince as the wind assaults her face. Judy holds a slender (the girth of a hot dog) microphone in her right hand, positioned so its tip is just below her chin. Her left hand is pressed against the side of her head, presumably to put a finger into her ear. She is broadcasting a live feed to desk anchor James Riley. James is a round-faced man in his early fifties, with square, rimless glasses and thinning hair. He looks relaxed and moderately handsome in his conservative blue suit and yellow tie. His right forearm rests on the desk. A confident, almost cocky gleam lights his turquoise eyes. The screen is split—left half James, right half Judy.

“What’s going on there, Judy?”

“James, I’m here at The Caboose, a diner that has been a fixture in Kalamazoo for over twenty years. As you can see, there’s a crowd gathered behind me. According to the owners, these folks were in the middle of eating their breakfasts about four hours ago when a young woman walked inside the restaurant, and without even waiting to be seated, started to eat one of the chairs.”

“Judy, I need to check my earpiece. Did you say
eat
one of the chairs?”

“Yes, Jim. I talked to one gentleman who was enjoying a pancake stack with no butter at a nearby table, and he described hearing a loud breaking sound. He looked to his right to see this young woman with the wooden chair leg
protruding from her mouth
. He said it took
less than five seconds
for her to swallow it. ‘Like she was eating a carrot,’ he said. Jim, I’ve talked with a few other people who confirm that the woman consumed the entire chair.”

“What kind of chair are we talking about, Judy? A toy chair, like a doll house thing?”

“No, James. A regulation-sized chair, like you have at your dinner table. Solid wood, most likely some kind of tree-based wood. Put it this way, The Caboose has never replaced their original chairs, so we’re talking about an actual adult table chair. The young woman went on to eat the napkin holders, the carafes, the upholstered booths . . .”

“Judy, is this some kind of college prank? Fake props, that sort of thing?”

“Jim, that’s what the owners originally thought, but to hear the eyewitness testimony, this would’ve had to be a very professional, very well-funded hoax. People we talked to described ‘ferocious teeth,’ ‘mouthfuls of glass and metal,’ and a ‘blankness in her eyes that chilled the blood.’ Until proven otherwise, the authorities are operating under the assumption that the woman is literally
eating
The Caboose. As a precaution, the building has been evacuated, and police have cordoned off the perimeter to keep new patrons away. Now, we can’t tell you exactly what is going on inside, but if you listen—I don’t know if you can hear this—there is a defi-nite sound that I would describe as gnawing or chewing. If you can imagine someone munching a bowl of Grape Nuts or stale potato chips right beside your ear. It’s sort of like that. I don’t know if that’s coming through or not . . .”

“There
is
a grinding in the background, Judy . . .”

“We can definitely hear it out here in the parking lot. It’s been a constant background noise since our crew arrived. So again, without visual confirmation, police are operating under the assumption that the woman is still inside and is genuinely eating the restaurant.”

“Well, at least she’s being genuine.”

“What’s that, Jim?”

“Judy, what are the police doing? Do they have a plan?”

“Jim, they’ve decided to wait it out. I spoke with their captain, and his rationale is that the woman isn’t hurting anyone, except possibly herself by ingesting some sharp or corroded metals, but that if she is bound and determined to eat a few chairs and salt shakers, then they’ll go ahead and let her do what she needs to do until she gets full and incapacitated, at which time they will arrest her for destruction of private property.”

“Judy, are the owners okay with that strategy? They can’t be happy that their restaurant is being eaten, can they?”

“Surprisingly, Jim, they’re fine with it. I spoke with Claire and Bart Cooper, and they told me that this was the most attention their restaurant has gotten in twenty-three years. Bart told me, in fact, that they were already considering using this incident in future promotions—something along the lines of ‘The restaurant so good, you’ll want to eat the furniture.’ ”