The Girl Who Ate Kalamazoo (16 page)

Muscle Dysmorphic Disorder (known as Bigorexia)

It’s a messy name, nonsensical. A Latin-English mutt. Nineteen ninety-seven, coincidentally, is the first year it was coined. But people, some of them very specifc people, have exhibited symptoms of this disorder since the early 1980s.

Think of it as reverse anorexia. Anorexia strikes the women, bigorexia is for the fellas. Anorexics can never be skinny enough; bigorexics can never be big enough.

Not fat, mind you. Muscle. This is a stud’s disease. These guys scope themselves every time they pass a reflective surface. Mirrors and windows, obviously. Also car bumpers. Mud puddles. Dead television screens. Black patent leather shoes and tinted sunglasses. Fifty, sixty times a day, they gawk at their maleness. Always scoping their sizes. Flexing as they appraise. A calf here. A tricep there. Gluteals. Pecs. Always mentally measuring themselves against other dudes, and yes, even other women—and always coming up short.

Bigorexics are trapped in a world of incurable puniness. Their own. (Despite what they insist to the contrary.)

Like anorexics, every day is a quest for the perfect body. They’ll do anything and everything to reach the unattainable goal of looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger in the opening scene of
Commando
(except
better,
dude!). They’ll skip their sister’s choir per -formance. They’ll bully their sister into doing their chores and homework. They’ll feign illness and stay home from school so they can eat raw eggs and squat a couple hundred thrusts. On the job, they’ll call in sick or late, trying to squeeze in one more workout. Or else they’ll get to the job on time but be written up for bench-pressing bags of kitty litter in aisle eleven.

They’ll monitor every meal. They’ll never eat at a friend’s house. Eating at a restaurant by choice is rare. They’ll dine at home only. That’s where they can control what goes into the food. They’ll want to see it being prepared. They’ll count the calories. They’ll get furious, red in the face and spraying flecks of spittle, when a sufficient carbohydrate isn’t represented on the dinner table. They’ll order Mom to micro wave a plate of frozen Ore-Ida’s.
RIGHT NOW.

They’ll step on a scale eight times a day. They’ll put a moratorium on masturbation because it expends energy that might be saved for “feeling the burn.” They’ll eliminate excess sleep, surviving on five or six hours to allow more time for free weights. They’ll jump out of bed in the middle of the night to do pushups and jumping jacks. They won’t care if it wakes up the girl on the other side of the curtain.

The exercise will be an end unto itself. It will be about the Way rather than the Goal. But they won’t know this; they’ll still believe in the Goal.

The Goal, in fact, doesn’t exist.

And because they’re doomed to feel inadequate, they’ll be inadequate.

With every blink, every gulp of milk, every lathering of shaving foam, they’ll know the crush of emptiness, the misery of unfulfillment.

And you’ll try your best not to laugh.

Rumination Syndrome

From the Latin word
ruminare
: to chew the cud.

One bite can last hours. Ruminators swallow food, then regurgitate it back into the mouth. Sometimes it’s conscious, sometimes not. No invasive methods are required. No fingers down the throat. No gagging, no heaving. There’s no unpleasant taste, no sourness, no bitterness. A gentle burp is all the ruminator needs to re-visit the morsel. It’s virtually effortless. So easy, so natural.

But how do they do it? How do they swallow food and barf it back into their mouths?

No one knows for sure. Some research suggests that the lower esophageal sphincter must be relaxed—through learned, voluntary methods or otherwise—and that the abdomen must be compressed in order for stomach contents to be returned into the mouth. Others speculate that ruminators have altered their belching reflex to such a degree that it creates enough gastric distention to relax the lower esophageal sphincter.

So a few mysteries remain. While graduate students with no social lives will continue to investigate how and why the ruminator does her ruminating, the most important point is this:

The ruminator doesn’t bother anyone.

Every epiglottal teasing is private. Every ride up the pipes, every re-mastication, goes unnoticed. Ruminators aren’t out for attention. They aren’t vain. They don’t need to check the mirror or step onto the scale for an affirmation of their human value. They aren’t haunted by a fantasy image that they can never become. They aren’t jealous of waif-like magazine models, or even of their own more feminine, curvaceous sisters.

Ruminators want nothing. Except to savor. Again and again. In this way, they are exemplary human beings; they crave
enjoyment
of the world they inhabit.

Sure, their ranks have been infiltrated by anorexics and bulimics who use the method for ill-advised, egocentric purposes. But these are a minority, and they normally don’t remain ruminators for long. The pure ruminator has a healthy self-esteem. She is an equal-opportunity regurgitator. She’ll ruminate a meal she hates just as often—and for just as long—as a meal she loves. It’s not the taste of the food that she cares about. It’s the dwelling, the oral loitering.

It’s the flex of the throat muscle that the ruminator enjoys, the ability to bring it all back into play. Encore, encore!

It’s the tickle she feels as the remnant returns, altered.

It’s the reshaping. It’s the melding of her saliva with the food.

Her body wants to break down this food, make it disappear, but her mind won’t allow it, not without a fight.

The ruminator hates saying good-bye. The ruminator hates to lose things forever. The ruminator can’t even imagine forever. Forever is not a palatable concept. Forever cannot be pondered.

There are drawbacks. There’s the halitosis. Even though it doesn’t taste bad to the ruminator, the vomit leaves a distinct odor that has been described by boys as “like a sewer” and “like a dog’s ass.” The ruminator may develop a complex about this, may stop kissing boys altogether, may have to reprioritize. The rumi-nator suffers chronically raw, chapped lips. Indigestion raises its gassy, burny head. The ruminator’s tooth enamel may erode, to a degree. The ruminator will lose weight. She will question her arms and legs, question their ability to perform basic functions. She will wonder when and if her thinness will be noticed by her friends, her family. She will stare in fascination at her sunken eyes, puffy skin, angular body. She will draw in her stomach just to gasp at the teeth of her ribs. Her breasts will stop growing. Now and then, vomitus will appear on her lips, chin, and shirt. She will be teased by her classmates but will be too tired to respond. She will find it difficult to concentrate on things like schoolwork, dating, and personal relationships.

The ruminator expects each upchuck, each fresh tango with that bite, whether it’s the fourth or the fortieth, to yield something new and surprising. Another layer. Something she missed the first thirty-nine times. The ruminator believes that the “true” flavor has eluded her. That if she can just give it one more try, one more swish around the mouth, then she’ll
know
it, know this thing, really
know
what she is about to swallow.

The ruminator may want to believe in God. The ruminator may try to pray.

My City was Swallowed and all

I got was this Lousy Shirt

There was no grand announcement of her return to Mall City. No trumpets hailed her arrival. No palms tickled the hooves of her donkey. No brass band
thrump
ed as a welcoming committee adorned her neck with wreathes. No sash-wearing public official led a boisterous crowd in a prayer of thanks.

Not yet.

Audrey wouldn’t have wanted that sort of attention, anyway. Of course she wouldn’t. Everyone knows how humble, how unselfish she was—“the accidental Messiah,” I’ve actually seen written. Standing out from the crowd was never something she sought, even though her unabashed footlessness, her cultivated movie star good looks, her decision to hit the road with Lollapalooza, her coy flirtations, her Porsche, her romance with an international eatist older than her father, her unrelenting drive to remain, above all else,
mysterious
—these might
seem
like attempts to push herself into the spotlight.

But don’t be fooled by the facts. When Audrey drove that lonely, flat stretch of US 131, she didn’t know where she was going. She was guided by an impulse she didn’t understand. When she saw the exit signs for Kalamazoo, she followed them. When she arrived, she simply parked her bright red Porsche in an abandoned lot near the railroad tracks, then walked five blocks west to the downtown Radisson, pulling a suitcase much like McKenna had done through the Kalamazoo streets nine years earlier (with wheels, minus the harness).

In Audrey’s head, there lived no dreams of glory. There lived no plan.

There was anger. There was resentment. There was sickness, the need to be filled, the sick to be a vessel for something larger than her own insignificant self.

In Audrey’s head, there was probably no Toby. Probably no Murray. Maybe some McKenna? She must have had room in there for big sis, right?

The Radisson’s rate was $140 a night. When the hotel clerk asked, “How many nights?” she answered, “What ever this can get me,” and dropped three thousand in cash on the counter. She registered under Grandma Pencil’s real name. She spelled it, “Pen-cilochski.” Make of this what you will. When she entered Room 1022, she tipped the bellhop handsomely. She unpacked her suitcase, arranged her toiletries neatly on the bathroom counter, hung her dresses in the closet (she always was a girly-girl, more Misty than Grandma Pencil), put her unmentionables, socks, jeans, and other informal wear into the bureau drawers, and settled in for a long stay.

Her lip had stopped bleeding somewhere around D Avenue, twenty minutes outside of Kalamazoo. The balled handkerchief in her purse bore a dozen red splotches. She tossed it in the trash can beneath the desk. She cracked the plastic lock on the refrigerator and drank two whiskey sours while watching
Headline News
. She removed her new feet, which, when viewed without legs attached, looked nothing like human feet. They were thin bands of a space-age fiberglass; imagine a yardstick bent into thirds. In profile, they resembled the letter “Z.”

Audrey was nervous and didn’t know why. Her stomach felt bubbly and uncomfortable. She lay on the bed, thinking that her whole life had been a series of unrelated events that had nevertheless worked in concert to bring her to this precise moment. Her indigestion felt like the tip of an iceberg, hiding an immense, heavy shadow that had been inside her, unnoticed, for years. She was on the cusp of something spectacular. She knew she was going to eat something in Kalamazoo, but she didn’t know what. She tried to sleep. She couldn’t. Her arms tingled. She wondered if she was having a heart attack. She resisted the temptation to call Johann. No one should know where she was. Not yet. They would know soon—this was unavoidable—but not yet.

It was 2:30 a.m. when she sat up in bed. Why wait until morning? she thought. Why not start right now?

She dressed in the dark. She folded her hair into a bun and put on the 1996 World Series baseball cap that Johann had bought her. Opting for the crutches, she donned her stump covers and headed downstairs, via the elevator, into the night. The streets were empty of pedestrians, and a cool wind bore down upon her. Traffic lights swayed.

She looked about her, momentarily overwhelmed. All of this, she thought, could be hers. Could be inside her. She salivated.

But it was too much. It was impossible. No one would understand. A streetlamp here and there, sure, but
everything
? They would arrest her. They would toss her in prison. If she was lucky. More likely, somebody would shoot her dead.

Now and then a car purred down Main Street. A teenager in baggy jeans and a sideways Detroit Tigers cap approached, sauntering by, flashing a gold smile, looking Audrey up and down with glassy eyes.

After he passed, Audrey felt a brief and terrifying urge to chase him, leap upon him, and devour him. What would he taste like? What would he do? Would he scream? Would he have time to grasp what was happening as he slid down her throat? Would he appreciate, even for an instant, the historic gullet he was entering?

Would he fill her?

Wasn’t this, after all, what her horrible gift was building toward?

Had she been put upon the earth not to consume concrete, glass, and steel, but flesh, bone, and blood? Was she evil, like Grandma said?

No. Eating this kid would give no satisfaction. She thought of McKenna’s hand halfway down her throat. She could have inhaled her sister like a spaghetti noodle. But the taste was wrong. It was the flavor of alive, and it had made her queasy.

She crutched along Rose Street. Two blocks ahead, she could see the intersection of a main road, and beyond that, the Amtrak station where her family had disembarked the train nine years ago.

She tried to recall that visit but could only envision a great, tangled ball of barbed wire, ten feet high, hundreds of pounds, thundering down the sidewalk, rolling on top of her, pinning her, puncturing her, a thousand tiny holes, a thousand streams of red.

She stopped abruptly. On her left was a parking garage, un-tended and dark. On her right, a row of parking meters. She approached the nearest one. She opened wide.

She became a vampire, staving off sunlight with the heavy Radis-son drapes, sleeping until 4 p.m., the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign a permanent presence on the door handle. Nights, she allowed herself one or two parking meters, but never two on the same block.

A week passed. She didn’t hear from anyone—her family, her agent, her ex-fiancé. This was both a comfort and a source of anxiety. Even if they wanted to, how would they contact her? She hadn’t told anyone where she was going. She was a big girl now, a grown woman. She’d told Johann she was going to America, to Moriarty Street, for a few days, maybe a few weeks. He was under strict orders not to telephone her. She knew that even if she hadn’t made this clear, Johann wouldn’t call. He wanted his space.

Only an hour into her visit, she’d stormed out of her childhood home with a bloody lip.

When she had arrived and opened the front door, she’d expected noise—a big shout from Toby, a bear-hug, maybe even some tears. Instead, McKenna and Murray stood in front of the staircase, arms crossed, frowning at her new feet. Two years and not even a smile. They said, “Hi, Audrey.” They acted nervous. Murray’s beard was entirely white, and he wore a hearing aid.

Stiff embraces were offered. McKenna suggested they “catch up” in the living room. Toby, she said, was in Detroit for a bodybuilding competition. Audrey collapsed onto the recliner, exhausted from the trip. McKenna, employing a volume that suggested someone was sleeping in the next room, asked about the flight and the weather in Germany. Audrey answered the questions politely. Murray blinked. Audrey recognized her surroundings in a detached way, like she’d entered a museum exhibit. The furniture, the paint, the carpet—it all looked exactly as it had seventeen months ago. Her sister and father were slightly more wilted, but otherwise the same. Kenny sported her trademark braids and bad complexion. Dad fidgeted with his bootlaces and didn’t make eye contact. But as familiar as they appeared, they were strangers now. They communicated to each other with gestures and facial expressions that Audrey didn’t want to understand.

Audrey’s mouth was dry; no drinks were offered. She didn’t even feel she had the authority to walk to the kitchen for a glass of water.

Then Kenny pointed at Audrey’s hand and asked, “Where’s the ring?”

After that, a blur. What started as an inquisition about the breakup with Johann turned quickly to other things—dead people who acted alive, alive people who acted dead, unhealed wounds, journal entries, betrayal, cradle-robbing, and so on. Voices rose into shouts, heads heated.

Then Murray said, “I don’t hate you. I hate the idea of you.”

More shouting. Audrey spat out cruel words about her sister and father. She called them “pointless air breathers.” She said she couldn’t wait until this rotten house was bulldozed. And when she saw that her bullets were bouncing off or missing their targets altogether, Audrey aimed the big gun: “No wonder Mom didn’t want to live with you losers.”

Audrey felt a punch in the face. So she left. In a hurry.

Some families would be concerned by such an exit. It was possible that Murray, in a few days, might contemplate picking up a phone. Might contemplate calling Johann and, after learning that Audrey hadn’t flown back to Germany, alert the police. Without a doubt, Murray might contemplate such actions. Might contemplate them into paste. The worker bee (the streaked gray hair made Audrey think of him this way) was a master contemplator. He’d contemplated himself a nice little life—a shabby house, a dysfunctional family, a job that crushed his spirit, an abandoned passion, and a wife driven to madness, despair, and suicide.

After she thinks this, Audrey says it aloud, as a fact, to Room 1022: “Mom committed suicide.”

The phrase is sickening on her lips. Vulgar, like saying “cunt.” Still, she takes a deep breath and repeats it: “Mom committed suicide.” She pauses. “Mom killed herself.”

At 8:38 a.m. on the morning of her sixth day eating Kalama-zoo, alone on the bed, beneath the covers, buoyed by a half-dozen pillows, Audrey accepted—Audrey
knew
—for the first time that her mother had intentionally swallowed too many Fluvoxamine tablets. Misty had washed them down with three glasses of gin. It was, quite suddenly, a fact. Nothing frightening. This was Real. This was Truth, stripped of its garment of mystery. And after saying it ten times, the phrase tasted like sugar.

The hotel room—bedcovers, desk lamp, drapes, striped wallpaper, bureau—shone with sharp, blinding detail. Clarity and precision surrounded Audrey, and she saw a message written not in words but in
furniture
, in objects. This message was Misty. Misty was speaking to her. She was infusing her life force into every square foot of carpet, every reflective inch of mirror, every glowing cathode ray, and every plastic component of the Mister Coffee.

Her mother was everywhere, and Audrey felt warmed. All of the anger caused by not-knowing, the confusion of wondering
why
her mother might—even in theory—do such a thing . . . all of these feelings drained from Audrey’s body in a pleasant rush.

The questions no longer mattered. What mattered was the answer. And the answer was to swallow. The answer was to
be
the machine she was born to be—the monstrous, wondrous, evil, beautiful, freakish, glamour-girl machine. Mother had withdrawn herself from this life not to punish anyone, not because she was sad about something her family had done, not because she felt unloved. She’d done it to show Grandma Pencil what a Mapes girl could do when she put her mind to it. To show Grandma that you didn’t need a book, a ridiculous book written by white men pretending to speak for God. You didn’t need ten rules carved in a rock to know how to live forever. Religion was a safety net for the indecisive. It was the coward’s way of facing eternity. Even dopey atheists like Murray and Toby were more courageous than McKenna and Grandma Pencil.

Misty had known the secret. This was why she’d always worn that beguiling smile. She knew that men had invented religion because they are weak. They are incomplete. They bear a
lack
. Misty understood that a woman carries eternity with her every day, that a woman bleeds eternity fifty days a year, that a woman is a small link on grand chain, a chain connecting her to her mother, her mother’s mother, her mother’s mother’s mother, to every other woman in her family, womb to womb to womb.

Men. Men like Murray and Toby. Above all else, they needed to prove that they could
create
. As grown adults, they still needed mommy to clap for them, to squeal her approval. Make a bell that rings throughout the house! Make wings out of Sporks! Make an arm that’s thick as a fire hydrant! A neck that can crack walnuts!

Even Johann. He worked so goddamn hard just to get a coffin down his throat. He worked and worked. For the glory. For the
craft
, as he called it.

Men are watchmakers; women are forces of nature.

That’s why the nuns were the true freaks. They’d forsaken their place in the chain to live as sexless beings in service of an all-powerful Father. They were dead. McKenna, too, from the look of things, was heading down that path.

Yet Audrey herself had broken from the chain. Not by choice. Her womb was a desert. She’d learned about her infertility two weeks before flying to Grand Rapids. She and Johann had been trying to get pregnant for two years. Now their relationship was over, and it was his fault. His gift, his Chlamydia, had made her this way. His past haunting her, ruining her. She wasn’t average anymore.

Audrey climbed from the bed. She balanced awkwardly on her stumps, steadying herself by holding the mattress. She moved from the nightstand, to the table, to the easy chair. At the window, she pulled the cord, and with a dramatic rushing sound, the curtains parted. Daylight flooded the room. From the tenth floor—the hotel’s highest—she saw Kalamazoo stretching to the horizon. Truthfully, it didn’t look like much. A dozen low-lying buildings spilled together like toy blocks. To the north, street after street of two-story houses as grim and worn as the graduate students and blue-collar workers who lived there. The northwest showed part of Western Michigan University’s campus, where Audrey had taken, or tried to take, classes. Bronco Stadium, the recreation center, the running track. She could see West Main snaking up the hill, past the spot where trees had been cleared—Mountain Home cemetery. She remembered that cemetery. She remembered Grandma kneeling on the grass, oblivious to the heat, the wind, the world.