SUSAN
My mother hovers behind me as I slowly starve myself. She serves me dinner at five, an hour before the rest of my family.
That’s when I get hungry. I am sixteen, a junior in high school, and by five o’clock I have eaten only half of the eight-hundred calories I allot myself daily. Dinner will take care of the other four-hundred, and after that I will return to my bedroom, finish my homework, and go to sleep.
I have been eating like this since late winter, and now it is April; I have lost at least fifteen pounds. Each morning, I step onto the bathroom scale and watch as the numbers in the window between my toes sway beneath the black dial, then settle somewhere just above one hundred. I am delighted that my jeans are baggy; I gather the fabric behind my thigh into my fist.
My mother doesn’t say, “Susan, you must be hungry! Come and have a snack!” She doesn’t tell me I look too thin for my frame, or that there are dark circles under my eyes. She doesn’t say: “In this family, we eat dinner at six and I expect you at the table.”
She is there in the kitchen, turned toward the sink. She is cutting slices from the London broil the rest of my family will eat in an hour, spooning out a serving of simmering peas and a splat of mashed potatoes, arranging them beside each other on my sea-green plate, and bringing them to the table where I sit alone.
From Dinner at Five, Chapter 7
That’s when I get hungry. I am sixteen, a junior in high school, and by five o’clock I have eaten only half of the eight-hundred calories I allot myself daily. Dinner will take care of the other four-hundred, and after that I will return to my bedroom, finish my homework, and go to sleep.
I have been eating like this since late winter, and now it is April; I have lost at least fifteen pounds. Each morning, I step onto the bathroom scale and watch as the numbers in the window between my toes sway beneath the black dial, then settle somewhere just above one hundred. I am delighted that my jeans are baggy; I gather the fabric behind my thigh into my fist.
My mother doesn’t say, “Susan, you must be hungry! Come and have a snack!” She doesn’t tell me I look too thin for my frame, or that there are dark circles under my eyes. She doesn’t say: “In this family, we eat dinner at six and I expect you at the table.”
She is there in the kitchen, turned toward the sink. She is cutting slices from the London broil the rest of my family will eat in an hour, spooning out a serving of simmering peas and a splat of mashed potatoes, arranging them beside each other on my sea-green plate, and bringing them to the table where I sit alone.
From Dinner at Five, Chapter 7