Elena Vanishing (21 page)

My baby! My baby—baby—baby!
(Whump-whump-whump.)
I watch her (I am sure that the shapeless little blip is a her) as she dances her way around the screen. She is almost not there at all, she's so tiny, but she is heroically, astoundingly present, an image of exuberant, boundless life. And me—I am holding that tiny, tiny precious little life safe in the love of both of us, God and me.

But the doctor is frowning at the ultrasound monitor. White
X
s crisscross the screen. And then he says, “We have a problem.”

It's the anorexia. The doctor doesn't call it that. He talks about atrophied uterine walls and insufficient hormones. But I've taken the medical classes. I know what he means. I know what he's too kind to say.

“You did this to yourself,”
his eyes tell me as he talks. So I don't look him in the eye anymore. I stare at the printout he gives me of the shapeless little blip that is my daughter while he tells me she can't possibly survive.

I keep my head down and hear myself answer him in high, clear, expressionless statements. “Yes, I understand. Yes. Thank you.”

“Frankly, I'm surprised that it hasn't terminated already,” he says.

Terminated. As in, dead.

Kevin comes into town that afternoon. He's so glad to be home and so glad to see me that I don't tell him the bad news yet. Instead, I tell him I'm pregnant.

That's not the bad news. That's the good news. Right?

Maybe it's not Kevin's fault that he looks less than enthusiastic. He didn't get to hear the heartbeat. He didn't see the beautiful dance I saw. I struggle to understand things from his point of view, but that point of view doesn't make sense to me. It isn't like I've asked
for his money or his help. He should know me well enough to know that I don't want those things from anybody. I just want to share this knowledge with him—this amazing love.

We sit on the steps of his mom's house, and he frowns at the passing cars as he drinks his beer. He says, “I'm kinda not ready for this right now.”

Like it's a thunderstorm or an IRS audit. Like it's something he had nothing to do with. Like it's something I'm doing to him.

I light up a cigarette and poison myself and my little girl with its soothing smoke. After all, it doesn't matter, does it? Because she can't—she isn't going to live.

But Kevin doesn't know that. And he doesn't stop me.

“To tell you the truth—it's a really bad time,” he says, and he doesn't look at me.

What's wrong with Kevin today? Doesn't he want to tell me I'm beautiful? Doesn't he know I'm out of his league?

I take his beer from him, tip it up, and drink it down. It doesn't matter. My baby and I are doomed. But Kevin doesn't know that. He watches me drinking my baby to death, and he doesn't do a thing to try to stop me.

“You know,” he says, “what I think you should do. What you really need to do—is get an abortion.”

Ha, ha, ha!
jeers the voice in my head.
You really know how to pick them! You've shared the most amazing event of your life with a selfish, moronic asshole piece of shit!

And from that second, I hate Kevin almost as much as I hate myself.

I escape Kevin somehow. I don't even know how. I'm too unbalanced to think clearly. The afternoon rolls by like a train I've missed, all noise and crowded impressions and stress. I have a vague idea that
I've been shouting at my parents, but I can't remember why. I just remember how they look: the same shocked, still expression people get on their faces when they see broken bones.

Now I'm by myself, at my computer. The Google search screen feels solid and real—a friend in need. I type in
minimum weeks early birth viable pregnancy
and hold my breath while I wait for the answer.

Twenty-four weeks. Twenty-four weeks—what is that in months? Six months.

It's too long! She'll never make it!

And I huddle in bed, whispering over and over, “Please . . . please . . . please . . .”

But in the middle of the night, the pains begin.

At first, they feel like menstrual cramps. I stumble into the bathroom. But no! I shouldn't be up, should I? I should be lying down as much as possible. Bed rest, right? That stops contractions. That's why hospitals put expectant mothers in bed.

So I lie on my back on the cold vinyl floor, with the sallow fluorescent lights shining into my eyes.

I want you! I want you! Please don't go! Please . . . please . . . please . . .

Images flit through my mind of every baby I've ever held, every gurgle and wail, every scent of powder, every touch of marshmallow-soft skin. Every memory of holding a warm, sleepy, lumpy little bundle in my arms, till my arms ache with longing and I want to scream from desperation:

I want you! I want you! Please don't go!

But minute by minute, the cramps intensify, until they become a grotesque parody of labor. Or maybe birth is always this hideous and cruel—an expulsion, a rejection:
I'm through putting up with you! Now get out into the real world and see how you like it!

My baby isn't ready for the real world.

Dylan flits about his aquarium in quick, agitated bursts of blue as I gasp and the blood flows bright, bright red. Is she struggling like I am? Is it already over? Has the swift little hummingbird heartbeat stopped?

My guts are emptying out—disgusting, dark, wet, and sloppy. And then, in the middle of the bloody mess, an infinitesimally tiny pale form.

She shines like a pearl, as pure as a bubble of light. I hold her in a cradle of Kleenex: my daughter.

Hands shaking, I lift her to the sink and start the faucet dripping. In danger of death, Father taught us.

“I baptize you in the name of the Father . . .”

My voice sounds like the croak of a frog.

“. . . and of the Son . . .”

The tiny form is almost swept away.

“. . . and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

Then tears blind me, and the water and blood and light run together before my eyes.

Miscarriage. I carried her wrong. I carried my baby wrong.

I sit on the bathroom floor and bawl, soundlessly bawl, mouth open, eyes tight shut, rocking myself back and forth. They were right, all of them—those hateful, yelling doctors. They were mean, and they were right.

This isn't a lifestyle. It's suicide. I'm killing myself. And I just killed my baby.

If I could, I'd cry forever, but the tears dry up. I open my eyes, and the sight of the bloody mess in the bathroom fills me with horror, as if I've just walked in on the work of a serial killer.

I can't leave the bathroom like this. But I have to be quiet. Mom has a way of popping out of bed if she hears a noise. I couldn't bear it if she and Dad knew.

So, while my parents sleep, I clean up the bathroom with bleach and paper towels in the kind of silent frenzy that only murderers know. I tiptoe through the quiet house with my plastic bag of waste, thinking about forensics, thinking about clues.

How is what I've done not a crime?

I throw out the trash bag, totter to my room, and crawl, groaning and sore, into bed. Once I'm there, I realize: this is it. This is as far as I go.

I can't imagine a life that will take me out of bed again.

I am waking up. No, no, no, don't let me wake up! I curl tightly into
myself and try to burrow back under blankets and dreams. Nothing will change now. I will lie here and sleep forever.

I've been lying here for almost three weeks.

The semester started last week, and it started without me. Classes are hurtling by and flinging themselves into yesterday. Homework, pop quizzes, study sessions—I turned off my phone because people kept calling me about them, thinking I would care.

Somewhere in my distant memories, I used to be so busy that I longed for a pause button for my life. To freeze the whole world for an hour, or an afternoon: that was my favorite daydream. To stroll across green grass, admire the butterflies stopped in midair, stroke the soft feathers of birds at the feeder. To maybe lie down and take a nap in the sunshine and know that absolutely nothing needed to get done. No deadlines ticking closer. No obligations crowding in.

But deadlines don't worry me anymore. Neither do aches and pains. Minor problems like that can't begin to touch the agony I'm in. I lie as still as I can to keep the thoughts and memories from finding me, but sick misery clings to me anyway, as close as a second skin.

Mom and Dad keep coming in to check on me. Once, I would have wanted them to fuss over me, and later, I would have wanted
them to leave me alone. Now it doesn't matter. They can do whatever they want. They're as powerless to change this as I am.

First, Mom and Dad thought I was hibernating through the rest of my winter vacation, lying in bed and watching cartoons. Now they think I'm sick, so they talk to me about doctors and bring me medicine and chicken noodle soup.

I'm playing along. With what strength I have left, I try to reassure them that the rest I'm getting is healing me. But what I really am is finished, and there's no cure for that. I've collapsed like a pile of bones.

Where does thin become fat? Where does success become failure? Where does a great future become a horrible past full of heartache and regret?

Light flickers faintly against my eyelids, but it can't break in on my isolation. Between the changeable glow of the silent television and the tightly closed shades, day and night look the same in my room. The only way to know day from night would be to look at my phone. And my phone has been off now for a week.

Eyes shut, I lie absolutely motionless. I'll be ready when sleep returns. It's only in sleep now that I can forget and feel nothing.

There's a knock at my door. Mom walks in and hands me her phone, then walks away before I can hand it back to her. Valerie is talking in my ear, crisp, practical, and sardonic, just like she was in the old days. That's the only nice thing about being a failure now: there's a comfort again in listening to my sister's voice. Valerie knew about the pregnancy, so she's the only one who knows about what I lost.

The phone lies next to my head, and Valerie's tiny, tinny voice is filling up the empty airspace with snippets of news. She's learned not to wait for me to talk.

“I'm so ready for these Braxton-Hicks thingies to stop,” she says. “I swear, this kid thinks I'm an exercise wheel.”

I close my eyes and picture the Facebook photos of her round belly and glowing skin. I think about her happy life now, her gorgeous husband, her ultrasounds of a healthy baby.

Where does success become failure? And where does failure become success? Because there doesn't seem to be anything in between.

I hang up the phone without telling her good-bye.

Sleep comes for a little while, teasing me with fragments of dreams. Then it slinks back out of the room. I long for it immediately. Sleep is the only thing I still want.

I sigh and roll over. Something crunches under my hand. A folded piece of paper.

Dear Elena, I'm so sorry for how you're feeling these days. . . .

It's from Mom.

Food doesn't help us be
, she has written.
It helps us do. It enables us to volunteer, to see the world, to accomplish our goals. It gives us the power to change lives. Your future patients need you. Little children who haven't been born yet need you. . . .

Not anymore
, sneers the voice in my head.

Loss overwhelms me, and I burst into tears.

Mom is standing at my door. I prop myself up on one elbow and start to talk. Words pour out of me—not about the pregnancy, but about the not eating and about how it's too late to fight it. I cry and cry, and I talk and talk about what anorexia has done to me and how I'll never be able to change it.

“I wish I'd done what Dr. Leben told me to,” I sob. “I wish I'd gone into treatment last year.”

“How about now?” says Mom.

Now is too late. The rest of my life will be too late. But Mom starts putting together plans. The semester's just started. I can withdraw. We can get a refund. I'm not working three jobs anymore.

Mom goes into high gear. From my bed, I hear her talking to insurance people and doctors—one call after another. Then she's handing the phone to me, and I'm talking to an intake specialist at Clove House, a residential eating disorder treatment center.

I've never been to Clove House. It's several states away. But I know all the answers to all the questions the person is going to ask.

“How often do you think about food?”

“All the time.”

“How often do you let yourself enjoy food?”

“Never.”

Now I'm up and dressed, in the car with Mom. She's driving me to get medical tests. Now she's got me by the arm, and she's towing me across campus, and I'm signing myself out of school. She tows me back to the car, and as we drive, she makes lists out loud of things I'll need to take. Now we're in the drugstore, and she's helping me think through makeup and toiletry choices.

Nothing has changed. It's still too late. If it were up to me, I'd still be in bed. But I can tell this is important to Mom, and her determination overwhelms my apathy. Going into treatment is a penance I accept to make up for the damage I've done. It's a way to say “I was wrong and you were right.”

I still can't imagine that it will help. I can't picture any kind of life ahead of me, much less a life without anorexia.

I'm part of you
, whispers the voice in my head.
I know what you've done. You'll never get rid of me now.

Mom and I are out all afternoon in the sunlight. We bring home Greek food for dinner, and Dad and Mom talk while I actually nibble a little of the gyro meat. Then I'm pulling outfits off the floor of my closet, and Mom's running loads of wash. I find myself packing and scribbling things onto lists.