Cuento de Mi Id

“Skeleton Girl”

(Callie was one of the first female characters I invented. One of the dreams she had in this story was based on a dream I once had.)

Callie took her clothes off. Stood in front of the mirror. Her ribs looked like a xylophone. Her face like a skull. Her skin was white, too white, but there was a fever in her brain that seemed to compensate for it. Her arms looked like sticks, and she could see parts of her collarbone that she had never seen before.

But it was not enough.

She was still too fat.

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She got up the next morning. Ate an egg for breakfast. Only one egg, but she did it because only dumb girls starved themselves and she was not dumb. She took a quick shower. Afterward, she shivered as she put her clothes on and she never used to shiver. But she shrugged it off.

On the way to school, some radio preacher started talking about creationism and about how if evolution was in fact a reality we’d be seeing mutations all about us. She laughed and changed the station.

The radio started playing an old Robert Palmer song, and she sang along with it. Then it played a song about somebody’s imaginary lover, and then she suddenly stopped singing. Instead she changed the station.

She arrived at school, and her stomach started rumbling. She promised herself she wouldn’t break down and go to the school cafeteria. She didn’t.

Halfway through algebra class, her stomach started rumbling again. It was only ten o’clock, and lunch seemed so far away. She silently cursed the teacher for not letting her out early. Then she cursed the clock for not ticking faster. It was probably a few minutes slow, she told herself. She congratulated herself on her keen insight.

She was so hungry when lunchtime rolled around that she was tempted to buy out the whole cafeteria. But she didn’t. She brought an apple so she ate an apple. After all, if it was good enough for Eve...

She took her time eating the apple, but it still wasn’t enough. Her stomach craved something more. Down boy, she said. You’re just going to have to train yourself to do without.

School was over. Time for work. She punched in at three-thirty, and smiled at Billy. Billy didn’t smile back. Billy was talking to Karen again, and she didn’t like Karen.

She took her stand behind the cash register, and pretended to be interested in her job. She reminded herself that this job was one reason she was going to college in the first place. End up like the fifty-year-old employees you met at the store meeting a few months back? That would be a living hell. Even Billy seemed to sense it. And she was sure he would have told her so if only she had ever got up the nerve to speak to him.

But she didn’t get up the nerve. And she never will -- as long as she looked as she did. Once she lost more weight, things would be easier. Billy would be talking to her instead of Karen, and boys would be turning their heads in her direction when she walked through the mall, and girls would be envying her left and right.

But she wasn’t quite thin enough yet. Just a few more weeks...

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The weeks flew by. The pounds came off more slowly than they did a month ago. Perhaps it was the food she had been eating, she thought. Perhaps if she switched to a liquid diet...

She started having nightmares in which she raided the refrigerator and ended up going on a non-stop eating spree. The next morning, she woke up in a panic until she realized that it was all just a dream. She smiled with relief as she stepped on the scale and confirmed that she hadn’t gained weight. But then she hadn’t lost weight, either. This fact depressed her.

At the store, a customer asked her if she was sick, and she took it as a compliment.

She almost blacked out when she was putting up light bulbs, and she considered that a compliment as well.

Soon they would be envying her at the mall. Heads would turn as she walked by, and every guy there would be asking her for her phone number. Billy would be staring at her -- yes, her, not Karen or those other girls he used to go with before he met Karen -- and he would ask her out, and he would take her to a fine restaurant with white tablecloths and silver candlesticks, and then he would propose, and she would say yes, and then --

But then she woke up.

The dreams she had at night started to change in nature. She started dreaming about scarecrows and skeletons. She pictured a parade of ghouls in black, ragged clothing fetching something white from a river and feasting upon it. Then they tumbled the leftovers into the city reservoir. She did not know what this dream meant.

Her father confronted her one day at the breakfast table. He asked her to start eating more. You’re losing too much weight, he said. To lose so much weight so fast was bad for the heart.

She smiled and reassured him that she would eat more. Then she sneered at him behind his back, and asked why he didn’t worry so much about her when she was overweight. Could it be that her ability to lose weight so easily actually threatened him? Who could imagine a spineless wimp like her having so much willpower? Soon the heads would turn to look at her in the mall, and she would feast with Billy upon white tablecloths, and she would be able to eat anything she wanted, and Billy would look at her, not Karen, at her, not Karen, at her, not Karen, at her, not Karen...

Then one night she showed up for work, and Billy was not there. He had apparently quit, along with Karen.

The next day, Karen showed up, bragging about her engagement ring. If that was not bad enough, Callie heard rumors that Karen had already bragged about being pregnant. But that could not be, she thought. Not her and Billy. It had to be a mistake. It just had to be.

She found herself tempted to eat when she got home. She held off. No way was she going back to the days when she solved every problem by putting something in her stomach. But someone had already put something in Karen’s stomach. And now there was no going back.

The next day, Billy showed up. Karen was not with him. Callie pretended not to notice him. But she managed to be outside when he finally left, and she met him in the parking lot. She wanted to ask him if it was true. But she did not. She just stared at the concrete, and offered Billy congratulations. Then she smiled when he suggested he might come by the store again.

She knew she was not ever going to see him again. But for some reason, she thought she had scored a victory.

She drove home and thought about pigging out. Instead, she got a bottle of her mother’s sleeping pills. She took them out, one by one, Then she lined them up on the bathroom counter, one by one. Then she took them, one by one.

Thought you weren’t going to solve your problems by putting things in your stomach, she asked herself.

Shut up, she answered.

She started dreaming about white tablecloths and silver candlesticks and black, ragged clothing and heads turning at the mall and being able to eat anything she wanted...

When she woke up, the last thing she wanted to do was look at a mirror. She felt quite sure that she looked quite horrible. After all, she had come to hate that increasingly pale image she had seen in the glass for the last three months. But, in the end, she did not have to worry about it. She walked over to the bathroom to wash her face, and, lo and behold, she did not have a reflection in the mirror. Great. She was tired of looking at herself in the mirror anyway.

More importantly, she did not even feel hungry. The food in the family refrigerator no longer tempted her. Not even her mother's lasagna -- which used to be her favorite dish -- tempted her. In fact, her stomach turned just at the thought of eating such stuff. And yet she felt so thirsty.

A thought occurred to her. Something about a thing which was thin, and pale, and hated mirrors, and never ate ordinary food. But the thought did not stay with her for long.

She was already thinking about that thirst of hers. And what she could possibly find to satisfy it...