what the hell is water

gutting houses

today i drove with michael to mimi's house. not the one in st. bernard. the new one, off oneal lane, way on the other side of baton rouge. i looked over at michael: this is weird. we're going to mimi's. this is how we get to mimi's house now.

when we got there, claire ran up to me and threw her arms around my waist and wrapped her legs around my leg and clung there, hanging, hello.

kaylen, kelsey, kevin, cullen: how is it? how are you?
great! we're great!
i fixed myself a plate of beans and rice and sat down and asked them again. how's school?
we hate it. it's horrible.

they're all ready to go home. except their parents bought houses in baton rouge, and they're enrolled in schools here, schools they hate, kids who don't want them. kelsey explained: at st. michael's, where the male/female ratio is like 1:3, the new orleans boys are welcomed and the new orleans girls are 'intruders.'

(aunt shannon and uncle tim went in together on a house and it's spacious, room enough for uncle tim, aunt elly, aunt shannon, leigh, kurt, cully, erin. there's a pond in the backyard, a fake one with a plug-in fountain. i told uncle tim, this is nice, weird but nice, and he said, you know, yeah, it's nicer than my old house--but it's in baton rouge.)

the party was at bethy's house, the whole extended family, mimi and her two sisters and the kids and grandkids. seeing everyone there was bizarre; it was my family but not our house.  still: bethy lives five houses down from uncle tim and aunt shannon. mimi lives two streets over, and aunt kay lives right behind mimi. it's not st. bernard but it's exactly like it was in st. bernard.

i was so happy to see everyone. mimi was so excited i thought she would bust. i hadn't even talked to her since the week after the hurricane. i miss them all, and i've been wanting to visit, but the traffic is so bad that i've stopped driving during the day unless it's within five minutes of my house and i can take a back way to get there.

aunt kay and i were talking while she snuck a cigarette and mimi came over, fussing. aunt kay was like, "mama, not in front of ann," and i thought mimi was trying to take her cigarette away. but then she took a drag and told me: kay's teaching me how to smoke. it took me a minute to realize she was kidding. she smoked in college. i said mim, what are you doing? and she said, completely serious, well, ann, you know, i didn't really want to take up drinking, so. she said the other day, grandpa confessed that when he saw aunt kay's virginia slims on the counter, it took everything he had in him not to sneak one.

that's when i realized how bad it is for them.

and still we are the lucky ones.

aunt kay has all the old pictures up in her new house, mimi as a little girl, granny and her sisters on the beach in 20s bathing suits. she’d put the old pictures on the second floor of her house in st. bernard before they left. but all the pictures of her own kids were downstairs. they’re ruined now. that’s all i had cared about, before i knew about my house. the home movies and the baby pictures. i can’t imagine them gone.

i played frisbee at bethy’s with a little redheaded girl, no relation, who looked like a ten-year-old katie p. she had her hair all curled up on top of her head and she was good at throwing the frisbee. uncle mike’s two-year-old, ryan, was running around in a batman costume. he looked at me and the little redhead and he put his hands on his hips and he said OOOOOOOOOH YEAH. then he ran around in circles and shouted it, again, OOOOOOH YEAH OOOH YEAH OOOH YEAHHHHH. ooooooh yeah.

kelsey told me to come sit in her bedroom. she and kaylen are sharing a room now, they bought new posters today: led zeppelin, jimmy hendrix, bob marley, pink floyd. they bought them, i think, at bed bath & beyond. which is probably the same place they got their matching reversible purple/teal bedspreads. kaylen asked me about waiting tables, she wants to get a job, she’s got too much free time because her new school is easy and she has no homework. i asked the girls what they do in baton rouge for fun, and they exchanged glances and said: we walk. sometimes, they said, we get chased by dogs. claire came into the bedroom and kelsey, irritated with the girl-talk interruption, told her to get out. kelsey is claire’s surrogate mother and it was weird seeing her fuss. 

--but kelsey—
i played barbies with you today.
--no you didn’t--
yes i did. on the internet, remember. (get out.)

sibling bargaining. michael was like that, he would chase me around the house wanting to play and i'd run into my room and slam the door, or try to, and if he caught it before it closed he’d stand on one side leaning and i on the other side leaning till the wood bowed or i could get it locked. and he would cry. and then if i would play with him, it was never enough. and he would cry. his adoration was thorough, endless, there was no satisfying him, and i felt horrible all the time. but he was almost six years younger than me. and it’s not like we could play barbies together. he dismembered my barbies. and besides, i played barbies better alone. if i sat on the sofa he had to sit next to me. and if i snuggled with him it only made him want to snuggle more. i told him, when we were both little, that he was a black hole of affection. my dad used to sit me on his knee and tell me how i was emotionally scarring michael for life. that made me cry. just like every time michael got hurt, scraped knee busted lip, that time when he was three and nearly impaled his right eye on the coaster holder at grandmotherdear’s, i drew him a band-aid.

hey, fix me a coke.
how many ice cubes?

this morning when i woke up, he was lying awake on the sofa in my apartment, it was 12:30 and we were supposed to be at mimi’s for 1. i told him get up. and do you want a shower. (yes.) so get up. (he lay there.) now. get up. hurry. (so he did.)

later, after the party, we’re driving down siegen to the bus stop so he can go back to natchitoches, and he’s being quiet and i’m worrying about him, and i think: there’s no one else in the world i can talk to like that. who else can i tell to wake up, now, and take a shower, and hurry up, and he'll actually do it. this is a weird point of sibling affection, but it’s true.

in kaylen and kelsey’s room, aunt kay and aunt ellen have joined us and they’re sitting on the carpet. beth comes in and says uncle mike’s on the phone. she puts it on walkie-talkie mode so we can all hear him. 

aunt kay says: well, mikney?
he says: your house, the downstairs, is gutted.

to me this sounds scary, but evidently for her it’s good news: and he took the kitchen cabinets down by himself: and next weekend, saturday and sunday, they’re doing more work, he wants kaylen and kelsey to come help him pull nails.

i think: i want to go, i'll pull nails.

and aunt kay will bring a radio with batteries: there’s power now in some st. bernard neighborhoods: there’s running water at her house.

aunt kay says: power and water, what more could you ask for?

kelsey sits up straight.

can we go back?
yes, my girl. but not yet.
--when--
not till may, kelse. at least.
--we could live upstairs--

kaylen stops her. (shut up. it’s not going to happen. stop asking.)

aunt ellen says: michael, listen to me. don’t touch my house. are you listening. don’t touch it. i want it bulldozed.

she looks around at us and nods. she says: i never want to see it again.

there’s a trampoline out back, i take off my shoes, i haven’t been on a trampoline since i was twelve. kelsey is jumping and talking to erin on her cellphone. claire climbs up with me, and sean patrick, and colin. then ryan, still in his batman costume. he sits on the trampoline instructing the other boys to stop jumping. maybe he’s scared, so i sit down with him and he climbs onto my lap. he’s got his arms around my neck, he’s saying something like “jump me,” and i bounce with him, sitting. then i stand on the trampoline and pick him up, he attaches himself to me, he’s heavy, i’ve got him. he whoops and we jump.

humanity and bottlecaps: a defense

in the past six weeks, talking about relationships, shuchin has called me enigmatic, antisexual, and elitist.

"elitist, like, for example," he said, "...the shoe thing?"

breton said yesterday, a little reluctantly, almost an accusation: maybe you're picky.

i said: maybe?

but unapologetically so.

and i don't consider myself 'picky,' really. when i hit it off with someone, i follow up until i'm done. even if a guy is wearing ugly shoes, or if he lectures me in eastern philosophy and self-righteous vegetarianism, i'll give him a chance. i've gone on coffee dates and movie dates and martini dates. it doesn't take long to tell. it probably only takes one date. one date with a self-righteous vegetarian pseudo-philosopher is usually enough.

here's the truth: i don't connect with very many people. and the coffee dates, the movies, the martinis--i go on them to be fair, or to get guys off my back, or to have something to do on a wednesday night. for the most part i can tell from the beginning if there's a connection or not. sometimes i'm wrong; i can learn to like a person. but if it takes that long for the two of us to come to an understanding of each other, there's a very slim chance that we'd ever..

it's because what i want is to be fluent. i don't want to have to labor over explanations. my favorite thing is to be understood without having to explain. because you just know. and some of that comes with time, but some of it happens because it's already there. you can call it mind-reading, and maybe i'm asking for too much. or maybe it's just intuition. and i think intuition is hot. and it's a quality most guys don't have. maybe this is why i'm attracted to shy boys. because they spend so much time listening and learning to read people indirectly.

to address the 'antisexual' accusation: for one thing, shuchin and i became friends when i was more like 'presexual'--at least, i'd never had a boyfriend before. and ever since then, he tells me it's weird to think about me kissing boys, because it's like thinking about his sister or something.

there is a great lack of kissing boys in my life right now, though, and it's not because i'm 'antisexual,' but. i don't see the point in kissing boys just to kiss them. i never have. i've always suspected that i need emotional intimacy to make the physical stuff any fun at all. this suspicion was confirmed for me at the beginning of the summer, when i went to destin with hari and julie and lennon. i made out with this waiter, he was cute, okay, and we were at this bar and everyone was buying us shots and yes i was drunk, no he didn't come home with me. but we made out, and it was nice kissing, but it was just kissing, and kissing is just lips and teeth and tongue, it's just flesh. and i did it just to do it, and it was its own little victory and an ego boost. but then you're just using someone and discarding them when you've gotten what you wanted. that's exactly what it was. i really don't see the point.

so, as always, i'm holding out. maybe that makes me picky. maybe it means that i know what i want. or what i don't want. i'd rather be picky than desperate. and i'm not that afraid of taking chances, but when other people's feelings are involved, i don't necessarily want to trifle around with them and wait and see if maybe i develop some far-fetched romantic notion. it's too hard to get myself out of those situations; someone inevitably ends up with their feelings hurt. i'd rather not waste everyone's time and energy.

i'll say this: when i talk about shoes or hair or whatever petty ridiculous thing i'm claiming as the ultimate dealbreaker, all i'm doing is giving the backwards ineffable reason for what i knew in the first place: not you, not yet.

what i learned about love when i was seventeen

from a letter to matt / christmas break '99

as far as the whole "i love you" thing goes--i don't know what my deal is. i mean, i know i like you. i more than like you. i don't know, i always thought love was this whole big mystical thing that, like sex, was reserved for marriage. true love and soul mates and all that stuff. i assumed it was a one person deal. i'm starting to reevaluate my thoughts on that, though. because, okay--honestly, i don't know how long this relationship is going to last. i don't know what's going to happen after graduation in five months--i don't know what's going to happen in one month--i don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. i don't see an end any time in the near future. i don't know where your head is, though. so we're taking it day by day, which is a good thing.

but alright, so say i decide that i love you--and we break up. according to my previous way of thinking, that would mean--what? that i didn't actually love you, i just convinced myself that i did--self-delusion--and that all of my past emotions were null and void? that's bullshit. and then in college, maybe i'll meet some other guy, and decide i love him--and we break up--and i meet someone else--and this goes on and on--and maybe love isn't just a one person thing--maybe you can fall in and out of it--but..i don't know, that sort of seems to cheapen it. it's much prettier to think, oh, i'll find my one true love. but realistically, it seems like that's sort of a silly way to think. because until i get married, apparently all i'd have would be...fake love, or something. and that's just depressing.

...i guess it would explain why i'm so hesitant to say "i love you." because to me, right now, it's like....huge. and then there's the whole "in love" thing--which is something entirely different--i can love you, and be in love with you, and they're not the same at all. i mean, i love my brother--forgive me for this analogy--i love my brother, but i'm obviously not in love with my brother. but then, i definitely have different feelings for you than i do for my brother. or stephen, or murray, or any of my other guy friends. but saying that i'm in love with you--i feel like such a stupid teenager--la la la, look at me, i'm seventeen, i'm in love--as if i have the life experience to know what the hell being in love is. as you well know, i've never had a boyfriend before, so i've got nothing to compare this to--

...so it's like, yeah, strong feelings, i like you a ridiculous lot--but now what? and i guess saying "i love you" is...this is sort of weird, but see if you can follow this--it's like, okay, well, i don't think we're going to be getting married any time soon, obviously, so saying it is like...acknowledging that sooner or later, we're going to break up.

...then, acknowledging that--basically saying "i love you at the moment, but in a few months from now this might all be over and i'll be thinking back to how stupid i was for saying this"--is not easy--

i know i've told you how hard it is for me to open up to people--there are very few people that i can just be completely comfortable with. it's this whole personality thing; i've always been like this. mr. allen told me i operate in a "safe zone"--i dance safe, i sing safe, i act safe, i live safe--i can't go out on a limb, i can't wear my heart on my sleeve--because if i don't put myself out there, then there's no risk of getting hurt. and i miss out on a lot of good stuff.

...so admitting that i love you is like, absolutely terrifying, because it's giving up control, acknowledging a dependence on someone else, and knowing that eventually i'm probably going to get hurt--not necessarily by you, but that's part of relationships, so at some point i'm sure it will happen...i think that's why i'm having such a hard time with this. so...um...be patient with me, i guess.

--------------------------------

from a letter, written but never sent, to jesse / december '02

Fuck you for leaving.
Fuck you for not coming back.

I don’t see why I have to be the inconsiderate one. I never accused you of anything. I expressed that I was upset, and explained why. Rather than bullshit me with fake apologies (yes, I think you’re full of shit and you won’t admit it—go ahead and be pissed at me for that, too) and dismiss my questions with yup and nope, why can’t you just say “Gee, Ann, I understand why you felt frustrated. I’m sorry I was tired—I even apologized for it last night. I’ve been unusually tired all week.” I can understand that. That makes sense, and that’s forgivable.

But instead you bullshit me and bullshit me and then finally give me this pissy “Well, I’ve been a little fucking tired.” Why do you have to turn it into how I’m the bad one? I never accused you. I never said, “Look, you fuck-up, you’ve failed me and you’re a horrible fucking person.” I just told you that I was upset with this thing that you did, that seems to correspond to a pattern of behavior, and then I asked you if you could basically see where I was coming from or if you thought I was crazy. I was asking for a conversation.

...Unfortunately we are unable to have this rational conversation. Instead you concede like a fucking martyr that you’re “sorry”—because you’re such a superior fucking person, because it’s so fucking easy for you to admit you’re wrong—even when you don’t think that you are—which I personally think is bullshit, and ridiculous. Sorry when you’re not for something you don’t think is wrong—way to be proactive. Way to solve the problem. That apparently isn’t even a problem.

...While we’re not at all on the subject, I just love how I’m the one who is supposedly so fucking randomly and obsessively jealous of all women when you are repeatedly informing me of yet another good female friend of yours who “is in love” with you or “wants to marry you.” For all my old crushes that you’re so jealous of—M___ K____ being a good example—and I’m sure you’ve had similar old crushes—I never claim that anyone from my past is still in love with me or wants to fuck me or wants to marry me. ‘How do you think that makes me feel?’ Fuck you and I hope you don’t get any sleep. And if you think you’re coming over here in the morning and typing on my goddamn computer, you’re out of your fucking mind.

-----------------------------------

letter to myself about ben / late may '04

...god he makes me so self-conscious. i don’t think it’s anything he’s doing. i think it’s that i’m so into him, in spite of myself, that i really want him to like me. and i’m terrified that he doesn’t, or that he won’t once he really gets to know me.

and yeah okay, sometimes he does sit there and judge me. audibly. which is obnoxious, and makes me bristle, and he can tell, and he always apologizes after.

so we talked about insecurities today, and i said some of this stuff, and he said something about how insecurities are “easy to banish” (which is a lie) and that if you pay attention to them they grow into all-consuming monsters (which is true. which i said. i said that i felt like my relationship with jesse got out of control when i started getting really insecure, and then the whole thing snowballed...)

...realized today that jesse’s insistence on my telling him why i was upset was a function of his own insecurity—because he always assumed it was about him. which it was, but probably never in the way he expected.

realized this because: when ben is upset, he does the whole sucking-inward thing, which may be similar to the feeling-insecure-and-retreating-to-banish type of thing that i do. and when he does it i sit there and assume that i’ve done something wrong or that he’s somehow otherwise dissatisfied with me and would rather be with someone else. which is how jesse must have felt. so it’s like: i would get insecure; i would retreat; jesse would get freaked out because he was insecure and misinterpreted the retreating. i think i knew all of this already. but it’s different seeing it from the flipside.

so part of me thinks that silence in this case is a good thing. because opening up would be like setting off pandora’s box. but then the other part of me is so frustrated. because i never keep my mouth shut. and stifling this stuff feels unnatural. and it’s just making me sit and dwell in silence on stuff that may have absolutely no basis in reality. so i’m torturing myself needlessly. maybe.

...i don’t want to sit here and be a part of something half-assed. partly because that’s not my style. and partly because i really like him. and i could be into this in a way that i’ve never been into anything before. and i don’t think this is going to be that kind of experience for him. and he says he doesn’t want unconditional acceptance and affirmation, that he wants to feel like he will be betrayed at any minute, but i can’t feign indifference. i’m not good at faking it. it makes me feel...well, it makes me feel like i’m feeling right now. which is heartsick and fucking frustrated.

...if the point is that we’re holding back so that the summer doesn’t hurt, then what’s the point of any of it, since he’s graduating in december and i’ll never fucking see him again anyway? it’s bullshit. holding back is wasting time. if we’re sitting here holding our hearts with one hand and shielding our balls with the other—we might as well have not started this in the first place. because it is going to hurt. so we can either enjoy it while it lasts, or we can do this half-assed bullshit. i choose the former. and i won’t stand for the latter.

the thing is, i don’t even believe him when he says it. i do think he’s holding back. i don’t know the reason. i don’t think it’s because he’s worried about the summer. but if it is, i don’t think he’s doing it on purpose. or that he thinks it’s the best way to deal with it.

fuck this. fuck being careful. fuck it.

how?

the doody family birthday song

i love birthdays. especially my own.

except i thought this year was going to be not so much fun. maybe because i'm turning 22 this time.

but i've only been awake for about ten minutes and i got two txts (lennon, breton) and four voicemails (mom, becca, dad, matt) and something like four facebook messages and twelve people wrote on my wall.

even though the first people to wish me happy birthday on my birthday were total strangers: i was at louie's last night, philip taylor came in and i told him i was turning 22 at midnight. thirty minutes later, my table (two guys studying) said, "happy birthday!" i was confused. i thought maybe they knew me or something. they told me, "well, it's midnight now, we overheard you telling that guy." and one of them showed me his watch, and it was exactly 12:00. i guess they'd been watching it. they left me a nice tip, too. and phil made me french toast on raisin bread.

voicemail from matt/1:11pm:
ann g., i am paying entirely too much for this telephone call for you to not be there. this is unacceptable.
but i'll still wish you a happy birthday all the same...
um..from charlottetown [something] island canada...
so i have like all of thirty-five seconds left, so i'm going to use it...
so i'm just gonna, uh, take up your message time
so how's it going? 
uhh thirty seconds..[DOO-DOO-DOO: please-deposit-sixty-five-cents-for-one-minute]
so well the lady was just telling me to deposit more money,
so yeah happy birthday i hope things are going well, i hope your job is going well, i'm assuming you still have it
um yeah that's it
go out, have drinks tonight, talk to you later, email you later, something...
[DOO-DOO-DOO]
[click..]

voicemail from mom/9:48am
happy birthday to you
happy birthday to you
happy birthday dear ann
happy birthday to you
stand up stand up stand up and show us your face, your face
stand up stand up stand up and show us your face
happy birthday to you oo yeah uh huh okay red hot
happy birthday to you oo yeah uh huh okay red hot
happy birthday dear ann oo yeah uh huh okay red hooottt
haaappy birthday to you oo yeah uh huh okay red hoooootttttt...
this is mom i love you
call me later when you wake up
have a really happy birthday......bye...

(thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes. )

dirty dishwater

thursday morning i was sitting up at louie's. it was 6am. people were coming in to start their day but i had not yet slept. instead i was rolling silver. and it was one of those surreal moments where you flash between realities: am i dreaming? nope. i work at louie's.

first i got a new job as a grant-writing/research assistant. the pay is good. it's only ten hours a week right now, but pretty soon it will be twenty, and i could survive off that paycheck. the managers at On the Border were "happy" for me but they didn't want me to quit. i agreed to work two shifts a week; i figured i could use some extra cash. my last day on the full schedule was a double: food running lunch and section nine dinner. section nine is the shittiest section in the restaurant; i only had five tables all night, and walked with a whopping forty-three bucks. when i went to pick up my tip-out from the food running shift that morning, damien informed me that the morning manager had forgotten to collect it. i thought: this is bullshit. i should just go work at louie's or something.

the thing is, even though the managers (who are very nice people, and i have enjoyed working with them) say that they're glad i've got a new job, a real job, etc, they are looking at me askance and kind of distant. and like i've cheated on them. it's like if you tell the person you're dating, "we should just be friends," and they say, "oh, yeah, that's a great idea, that's totally fine, you should so see other people" but then they look at you like you've betrayed them, and turn cold towards you, as if they're somehow justified. except On the Border is not my jilted lover. it's a corporate mexican restaurant.

so i got home from that shift, that shitty double, and nicole is sitting in the living room with her boyfriend and rachel and rachel's boyfriend and fred, the GM of louie's. and nicole looks up at me with a big smile and says, "wanna come work at louie's?" and i was like....ummmmm.....actually, yes.

so the next day i put in an app there for latenights three shifts a week, and then i drove over to OTB, where i left damien a note (in crayon, on the back of a Build Your Own Burrito order pad: Dear Damien, this is my formal notice...) saying i'd work my two remaining scheduled shifts and that was it.

this past wednesday was my last shift at OTB. i was closing front of house, so i was supposed to stay till everyone was done rolling their silver and cleaning their sections. i cleaned my section, flipped my chairs, and finished my sidework. karen was waiting for me at chelsea's. aaron, who was closing back of house, kept saying "clock out and come sit at the bar, have a margarita, we can just sit back while everyone finishes their work, blah blah blah" and all i wanted was to get out of there. finally dave, the working manager, took our cash-out and told me to have a good night. aaron was like, "no, she has to stay until everyone else is finished"--he's saying this as i'm walking out the office--and then he sticks his head out and yells "dave says you have to stay"-- (dave could not have cared less) so i hurried to the front of the restaurant when aaron wasn't looking--my heart was pounding--and pushed open the door and ran across the parking lot to my car. aaron threw the door open, calling after me, "friends off! friends off!" and i blew him kisses and shouted goodbye, goodbye..

what are they going to do, fire me?

grinning like an idiot all the way home, with elliott smith turned up and the windows down. it was one of the most exhilarating moments of my life. it was what graduating from college should have felt like, but didn't: free.

i think everyone should, at least once in their life, work a really shitty job, and then quit. it's a great feeling.   

to take a little nap while the road is straight

the weather was so blue and clear and windy cool that it made me restless all day. when it's this pretty outside there's no way to do it justice. there's no way to absorb it all into you. i wanted to lay in the grass somewhere but i wanted someone with me. i don't know who. it's like when you go somewhere cool by yourself and it would be twice as cool if you could share it. i read outside at highland, i wore a cardigan, my toes were cold. ethan's pipe sounds like dried leaves and smells like my childhood. all day i kept thinking about being alone, and beginnings. this is renewal. i always get excited when the weather turns. i don't like being cold but i love this season.

mallory

katie r. had a slumber party for her birthday when we were in second grade. and her mom told me, laughing, "your legs look like toothpicks!" and i cried.

in my head i'm still stick-limbed and small.

i didn't develop, in the judy blume sense of the word, until the end of my junior year of high school. i continued to make flat-chested jokes for a long time afterwards, out of habit, and people would look at me strange.

it's the same way that i'm startled when i'm around girls who are shorter than me. i was always the shortest. now i'm just slightly below average. the average american woman is five-foot-four. i'm five-foot-two. but there i go again. i'm not really five-foot-two, i'm actually more like five-foot-two-and-three-quarters. practically an inch taller than i claim. but i've been 5'2" in my head for so long that i can't reconcile the extra three-quarters of an inch.

similarly, it's hard for me to reconcile the shape of my body now--the curvy parts--with the skinny kid i used to be, and still am in my head. it's like the platonic idea of myself. not perfect, but habitual. it's like the way my aunt meg kept talking about her jet-black hair--she and her sisters all have jet-black hair--and finally one of them, aunt kay maybe, gently informed her that her hair was, and had always been, brown. not black. aunt meg alone of the five girls had brown hair. she was shocked to discover this.

i mean i don't think i'm fat or anything

(but)

and my mom, she has food issues. like i think she was anorexic for a while. she denies this still. she gained weight after michael, and then she got mugged when i was in fifth grade, and it was sometime around the mugging and before my parents got divorced, i don't remember, but she lost a lot of weight. she bought a scale like they have at the doctor's office, and she used to weigh herself every morning, and i remember going into her bedroom and the scale was on 115. my mom is about 5'8". and i guess we were in sixth grade, at gulf shores with all my aunts and uncles and cousins, and ben or meghan or someone told me your mom is anorexic and i went to her crying. she said, what are you talking about, you saw me eat dinner, i ate a big bowl of red beans and rice. and don't listen to them. they don't know what they're talking about.

she says that now, furiously, when i bring it up. which is very rarely. it's one of those things we don't talk about. remember when you were really skinny.

she eats cardboard food like protein bars, and she works out every day. but she's fifty now and it's not working like it used to. her body is spreading past the boundaries she's set.

they say that eating disorders are about control. i always thought of anorexics as people with an abnormal need for control. but i think people feel betrayed by their bodies on lots of different levels--weight gain, pregnancy scare, acne--how many different ways are there to get rid of body hair--we all fight to get our bodies under control. some semblance of it.

and what does it mean to resign yourself to the inevitable. because ultimately it's a fight we're going to lose. for the most part i think we're vain until we're pretty much dead. i tell myself every summer that even though i feel self-conscious in a two-piece bathing suit, i might as well wear one now. because eventually i'll be too old to pull it off. enjoy it while it lasts. i wish i could enjoy it. i think about how i'm going to look back in twenty years--i'll be wearing a matronly one-piece--and i'll see pictures of me from this summer and i'll think how great i looked. and if only i could have realized it when i was twenty-one and stupid.

i think my mom has given up on being a size four. she used to say that she couldn't afford to gain weight, literally, as in she couldn't afford to buy new clothes to fit her. but i think she bought some new jeans. they're cute. i can't help but notice that her ass is bigger. it upsets me that i notice. but it's also payback. for all those times my mom has told me "you look good, you look like you lost weight." beginning my junior year in high school, when i went away. why would you say that to a sixteen-year-old girl.

and the time i actually did gain about ten pounds, between eight and ten, which on me is a lot. my jeans were starting not to fit. and my mom set me up: a book with calorie counts for every food imaginable, a membership card to curitan's, and a lecture on how to do the math. it was the summer between my junior and senior year; i'd hurt my back dancing and had to take a break from ballet. i didn't have normal work-out clothes. i was the one on the treadmill wearing a thrift-store shirt, jazz pants, and blue converse. easy mac has 250 calories. but an apple only has 70. so. i was reading cookbooks for fun. i was hungry all the time. i've never been so obsessed with food in my life. i didn't even lose weight until i went back to school and started dancing again.

never again, never never.

but i can tell you that a double-stuf oreo has 70 calories. a regular oreo has 50.

you've lost weight.

this is a compliment.

janey saw me at the end of the summer and told me, you've lost a ton of weight.

even if she doesn't mean it as a compliment, i take it that way.

breton told me when she came back from france. you've lost weight. but when she says it, she means: what the fuck is wrong with you?

here: i've been waiting tables thirty-five hours a week since june. i haven't bought groceries in four months. i eat whatever i scavenge at work. a piece of quesadilla will keep me going for a few hours. maybe one full meal a day. and i'm on my feet, running my ass off, serving queso-covered fried stuffed jalapeños to a woman who orders a salad on the side, and a diet coke to drink. my idea of a joke.

and even though i look like shit. look at my facebook picture, i'm gray in it, and that was partially because of the hurricane but i don't think i looked all that healthy beforehand. even though i look like shit, and breton is saying "you're too skinny, eat this," i still take it as some fucked-up validation.

it's like when girls say oh i haven't eaten all day. oh god i'm getting so skinny. how unhealthy of me. when they're secretly proud. it's like when breton, even breton, says "i always get skinny waiting tables." and it's not skinny in a good way, but it's still skinny like a fuck-you merit badge.

i weighed myself a few weeks ago. my roommate has a digital scale in the bathroom. 100.5 pounds. that's the lowest my weight has been in a really long time. i can't manage to weigh myself again, though. i'm sure it will be higher, as it should be, but i'd rather not know.

my mom was taking ephedra back when it was trendy. she knows better. she's a registered nurse. i couldn't convince her to lay off. she finally did, i don't know what prompted it, but then she moved on to some other "supplement" that was supposed to kick up her metabolism. or suppress her appetite. she said it made her "pretty spunky." like aggressive.

i don't want to become this. i want to tell her to be a healthy example.

in ballet class i stare at the other girls' stomachs. mine isn't flat. some of the girls have flat stomachs but occasionally i catch them in an unguarded moment, relaxed instead of pulled-up, and their bellies curve out. these are fourteen-year-olds that i'm comparing myself to. these are prepubescent girls. i am almost twenty-two.

there's one girl, mallory, who's been gone about six months. she's the reason i wrote this post. mallory is about sixteen, i think. she was a strong dancer, muscular. you know how some people say muscular when they mean chunky. i don't mean like that. i mean she had great muscle tone. swimmer body. then early last spring, she started looking like she was about twelve years old. she dropped all this weight. she didn't have any excess weight to begin with. she got so small, bony arms, pink tights sagging at her ankles. she was obviously going through some shit, obviously had an eating disorder, but still coming to class. week after week. it kept getting worse. finally i asked another little girl if she knew what the story was. she told me mallory swore she wasn't anorexic but her mom was making her drink ensure.

finally mallory stopped coming to class.

i saw her back for the first time on thursday. she looks about the same as when she left. but she's out now, she's got an acknowledged eating disorder. she wants to be in nutcracker but she had to gain half a pound by auditions on saturday. i kept staring at her during class. the bones of her, childlike, the dark sunken cavities in her face and the lines carved around her eyes. childlike but scary old at the same time. fuck-you skinny. i went to get water between combinations and there's a picture of the 2004 senior company on the wall. there's mallory grinning up at the camera, full face, broad smile. i wanted, a little bit, to cry.

but at the same time, inexplicably, i was angry all class. i wondered how she looked at the rest of us, what she thought. did we disgust her. i looked at the other girls and for the first time i didn't see stomachs and thighs. instead it was all this flesh, muscle, it seemed so extravagant and beautiful. and we fight it every fucking day. hours in front of the mirror in a leotard and tights. no one likes it. so what the fuck is wrong with you. that you would do this to yourself. we're all in it but we cope. we're in it together, except for you, off in the corner, fighting your body for your life.