Purge Read online

  To Nancy Head Thode, for helping me find my

  words and learn to use them

  CONTENTS

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  EATING DISORDER RESOURCES

  COPYRIGHT

  The bathroom might be an unusual place to have stage fright, but it’s where I am and what I’ve got. I really need to go, and have ever since breakfast. I served my post-meal thirty-minute sentence, and now I’m sitting here trying to do what I’ve got to do, but Nurse Rose is outside the door, which she told me I have to keep open a crack, and I’ve got stage fright, because she’s listening to every noise I make.

  It’s completely mortifying, but having a watchdog outside the bathroom door is one of the many oppressive rules they have here at Golden Slopes. There are rules for everything: the No shoelaces in case you hang yourself Rule, the Thirty-Minute Rule, the No Napkin in the Lap Rule, and the Finish every single thing on your plate even if you are full or else you drink a can of Ensure Rule. But the worst part is this: trying to do your business with someone outside the bathroom door listening.

  At least she can’t hear my thoughts. But if she could, this is what she’d hear echoing in my brain: How the hell did I end up in this place?

  July 20th

  At least they’ve given me a journal, even if it’s just a cheapo notebook like everyone else’s. Sometimes I feel like a journal is the one place I can be honest and real, where I don’t have to weigh my words and worry about what I’m supposed to say and what everyone is going to think and who I’m supposed to be. On paper, I don’t have to smile and pretend I’m fine even though inside I feel like I’m breaking into a thousand tiny fragments too small ever to be put together again.

  But enough of all that. If I’m going to have to write a spill-it-all exposé of my life for a bunch of strangers, I guess I should start off by introducing myself.

  Greetings, doctors, nurses, therapists, and other interested parties. My name is Jane Louise Ryman, but I prefer Janie. Jane seems too, well, boring, for a person like me — or rather the person I’d like to be, even if I’m not quite there yet.

  I’m my mother’s oldest child and my father’s middle child, if that makes any sense. Dad was married to someone else before he met Mom, and he had my stepsister, the eternally can-do-no-wrong Jenny, who is twelve years older than me. Then he and Jenny’s mom, Clarissa, got divorced, Dad married Mom, and they had me and then my younger brother, Harry, who’s twelve, four years younger than me. So depending on how you look at it, I’m the overachieving, anxious eldest child or the mixed-up, rebellious middle one. Talk about a lose-lose situation.

  My dad, Harold, or “Hal,” as everyone calls him, is a hedge fund manager, which basically means he takes big sums of money from really loaded people and makes it into even bigger sums of money — or not, depending on the year. We know it’s been a good year if Mom gets diamond jewelry for her birthday or we get to go to the Caribbean AND Europe in the same year. If it’s been a bad year, we’re lucky if we get to go to Florida to visit my grandparents.

  Carole, my mom, used to work at Bayview Partners, Dad’s firm. She gave it up when she had me and now she’s just an upscale suburban übermom.

  Perfect Jenny, Harry, Ringo, the golden retriever, and a never-ending procession of hamsters, all named Horatio, round out our picture-perfect suburban family. Picture-perfect except for me, that is ….

  The funny thing is I’ve always hated puking. You probably think that’s a strange thing to hear from someone who stands in front of a toilet and sticks her finger down her throat five or six times a day. But it’s true.

  When I was a kid, I always used to cry every time I threw up. It hurt my throat. It hurt my stomach. It smelled bad. I felt gross. Those 24-hour stomach flus were the worst.

  If I cried every time I threw up now, we’d all drown.

  What I don’t understand is this: How did something I hate so much end up controlling every moment of my life?

  “Time for lunch,” barks Joe, the beefy male nurse with a crew cut. I think he used to be in the Marines or something — probably a drill sergeant. I can just see the guy terrorizing poor innocent recruits on their first day of basic training.

  I close my new journal and follow him back into the building, which seems even more gloomy than usual except for the Technicolor spots that dance before my eyes as they adjust to the darkness after being in the bright sunshine of the smokers’ courtyard.

  My stomach growls. I’m here at Camp Golden Slopes because after the Incident at Perfect Jenny’s Wedding, everyone decided I was bulimic, so there are a bunch of other girls here like me. Well, not completely like me, because they’re really screwed up and I’m only partially screwed up. They’re only like me in the eating disorder sense. We Bulimia Babes are always first to the table, because we have this strange relationship with food. We want to eat it badly, but afterward we want to puke it up equally as badly.

  The anorexics are another story. They’ll do anything to avoid eating, including hiding out at mealtimes, because they have a hate-hate relationship with food. It ends up causing plenty of friction between the bulimics and the anorexics, because we’ll be sitting at the table ravenous, even for the gross Golden Slopes food, but we’re not allowed to start until every one of the eating disorder patients is present and whichever nurse is head of the Eating Police for that meal tells us we can begin. It ends up being like a gang war, except instead of the Sharks and the Jets or the Bloods and the Crips, it’s the Barfers and the Starvers.

  Callie and Melissa, the other Barfers, are already at the table with their trays in front of them. Nurse Joe hands me my tray from the cart and I go sit down next to Callie. The entire Barfer contingent is present and accounted for, and there’s not a Starver in sight.

  “This sucks,” says Missy, drumming her ring-laden fingers on the table. “Everything’s going to be cold by the time they round up the stick insects.”

  She can’t stand the anorexics. Missy thinks they look down their nose at her because she’s — let’s be blunt — overweight. It doesn’t matter to them that she’s got long honey-blond hair and Caribbean-blue eyes, and radiates energy like a nuclear reactor. If you ignore the extra seventy-something pounds, Missy could be on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, or modeling underwear in the Victoria’s Secret catalog, being lusted after by all of our brothers and dads. (You didn’t seriously think your dad signed up for the Victoria’s Secret catalog just so he could buy a present for your mother, did you?)

  “Yo!” Callie shouts out to GI Joe, who is standing at the door of the dayroom watching out for incoming Starvers. “We’re hungry here. Can’t we go ahead and eat?”

  “You know the rules, Callie,” Nurse Joe replies, unmoved. “Anyway, here comes Nurse Kay with a few of our delinquent diners.”

  Sure enough, Nurse Kay, one of the cooler counselors at Camp Golden Slopes, enters the room, herding four Starvers before her.

  “Four down, one to go,” she tells Joe. “How about you go hunt for Helen this time?”

  “Yeah, yeah, okay,” grumbles Joe as he heads down the hallway. We can hear him calling out Helen’s name, like
that’s going to get her to come out from wherever she’s hiding.

  Helen is the Starver-in-Chief. She has avoiding mealtimes down to an art. One day Nurse Kay found her hiding in the laundry cart, with all the dirty linens and towels. I mean you have to be pretty messed up if you’re willing to bury yourself in other people’s dirty sheets just so you don’t have to eat.

  Missy’s getting seriously antsy now.

  “C’mon, Nurse Kay! I’m starving. Why do we have to wait for Her Royal Twigness?”

  Nurse Kay gives Missy her I’m disappointed in you look. It’s effective if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t like to disappoint people, but from what I’ve learned about Missy so far, that’s not something she’s all that concerned with.

  “Melissa, you need to learn to support your fellow patients, not insult them,” says Nurse Kay. “Anyway, I’m sure Helen will be here any minute.”

  Sure enough, in shuffles the Queen of Lean. She’s followed by Joe, who uses his broad, muscular body to block her avenue of escape.

  “About frickin’ time,” remarks Callie.

  Helen ignores her and slides her Twiglet body into the only remaining empty chair. Nurse Kay places Helen’s 2,500-calorie meal in front of her and tells us we can start.

  “Glory be!” says Missy, ripping the foil off her tray and digging in.

  I do the same. I’m so hungry I’m almost ready to eat the foil. It’s like feeding time at the zoo at the Barfer end of the table, whereas down at the Starver end, only Tinka’s got the foil off her tray. Bethany and Tracey (who I’m told is the same age as my mother but looks like an old crone) are still working on it. Helen’s just sitting there, looking like she wishes she were back in the laundry cart.

  “Next meal you better get your skinny ass to the table on time or I’ll kick it into the next state,” Missy warns Helen through a mouthful of sweet potato.

  “That’s enough, Melissa,” warns Nurse Kay.

  Helen just looks at Missy as if she’s something that crawled out of the primordial slime. I think it has something to do with the fact that Missy is actually eating, something Helen takes tremendous pride in NOT doing.

  The chicken is lukewarm and the zucchini is completely cold. The sweet potato is okay, though. I’m so hungry I’m shoveling food down my throat without really tasting it. I’ve almost finished emptying my tray before Queen Helen has even removed the foil from hers.

  Nurse Kay is prowling around the table, encouraging the Starvers to eat and keeping an open eye for any attempts at hiding food. It’s amazing what lengths the Starvers will go to so they don’t have to consume all 2,500 calories. Yesterday Nurse Joe caught Bethany with a sock full of peas. Can you imagine walking around with peas squishing in your shoes? I mean, it’s just so totally disgusting. She ended up having to drink an entire can of Ensure, even though she’d already eaten all the rest of the food on her tray. You could practically hear her brain working out how many times she would have to walk up and down the hallway to work off all those extra calories.

  That’s another Starver trick. They’ll keep “forgetting” stuff in their room so they have to walk up and down the hall like fifteen times. They’re not supposed to exercise until they put on a certain amount of weight, but most of them figure out a way to do it anyway. Take it from me — you should never underestimate the crafty ingenuity of someone with an eating disorder.

  “Janie!” Nurse Kay says from behind me, so suddenly that I jump. “Put your napkin on the table!”

  Argh … I forgot about the Napkin Rule. But who can blame me? I mean, seriously, I’ve had a lifetime of my mother nagging me to put my napkin on my lap when I eat. Yet here at Golden Slopes, it’s a criminal offense. I tell you, if you’re not crazy before you get here, you definitely will be by the time you’ve stayed a few days.

  I want to protest, to explain that I didn’t do it to hide food; I did it because it’s a habit of a lifetime. But all I say is “sorry” and transfer the napkin from my lap to the table. Nurse Kay picks it up and shakes it to make sure I haven’t hidden any food in it. As if. I’m way too hungry for that.

  I notice that Helen is looking at me with a faint smile of what appears to be approval. I feel like shouting at her that I had my napkin on my lap because I was brought up with good manners. But I don’t say anything. I just eat my dessert — chocolate pudding with a dollop of Reddi-wip on top.

  Missy and Callie are already finished, and they’re starting to get fidgety.

  “I’m done, Nurse Kay,” Callie says. “Can I be excused?”

  “Me, too,” Missy adds.

  Nurse Kay inspects their empty trays and checks the floor underneath the table to make sure nothing ended up there.

  “Okay, girls,” she says. She glances up at the clock. “You’re out of here at ten past one.”

  The Napkin Rule is mainly for the Starvers, but the Thirty-Minute Rule is aimed at us Barfers, the theory being that if they can stop us from sticking our fingers down our throats for at least thirty minutes after we eat, we’ll lose the Urge to Purge.

  Needless to say, it can get pretty ugly around here after mealtimes, with all these Barfers wandering around the dayroom desperate to get rid of the meal they just ate.

  I finish the last of my dessert and, after passing Clean Plate Club inspection, I join my fellow Pukers in postprandial hell. It’s amazing how food feels so good going down the hatch, but the minute it’s down there and I feel at all full, I get completely desperate to make it come back up again. It’s as if I can feel the calories circulating through my bloodstream, stopping only to glom on to my hips and butt. Despite the fact that I was hungry to the point of desperation before lunch, I’d give anything now to feel empty and light again.

  I fling myself down on the sofa and grab one of the year-old copies of People magazine. You’d think if they were really trying to help us find ways of distracting ourselves from the overwhelming need to stick our fingers down our throats, they could fork out for some up-to-date magazines. I mean, the Hollywood couple that’s “ENGAGED!” on the cover of the People I’m holding has been dis-engaged for six or seven months already. Still, I’m so desperate to think of something else that I read about their ecstatic, joyful love, even though like the Fates or an omniscient narrator in a Greek tragedy, I already know it’s doomed. Anything’s better than sitting here staring at the clock, willing the seconds to tick by faster.

  When I’m finally allowed to leave the dayroom, all the Starvers have finished except for Helen, who sits in solitary splendor in front of an untouched tray of food.

  July 20th, before dinner

  I had to suffer through my first group session after lunch today. I swear, Dr. Pardy, who leads the group, is enough to give anyone an eating disorder. She’s really pretty and has this perfect figure like she could be a model. And she must be intelligent, otherwise how would she have made it through medical school? Smart and pretty — if she weren’t so nice, I’d hate her guts. As it is, I had a hard time listening to anything she said because I kept wishing I had a figure like hers and wondering why someone that beautiful and smart would choose to work with a bunch of screwups in a place like this. Maybe it was the only job she could get.

  It was a Barfers-only group today, and because I was new to the group, Dr. Pardy made me introduce myself.

  At school I’m really active in the drama club, and if I say so myself, I’m pretty good. I got lead parts in major productions when I was only a sophomore and played Anne in The Diary of Anne Frank this year. You can put me up on a stage in front of an auditorium full of people, with someone else’s words in my mouth, and I won’t bat an eyelid — unless it’s called for in the script. But put me in a room with two other girls and a doctor and ask me to talk about myself and I completely freak out. I muttered, “Hi, my name’s Janie” and then sat there staring at the floor so I didn’t have to look at anyone.

  “Why are you here at Golden Slopes, Janie?” asked Dr. Pardy in her
mellifluous voice. Not only is she pretty and smart, but she’d make a great late night DJ. Some people have all the luck.

  When I told them all that my parents made me come because they thought I had a problem, Dr. Pardy asked me if I thought I had a problem. I told her that I didn’t think I did, at least not more than anyone else at my school.

  The girls were smiling. I thought it was because they understood, but then Missy says, “De-Nile isn’t just a river in Egypt, is it now, Janie?”

  She and Callie cracked up. Even Dr. Pardy smiled.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked, pissed as all hell. It was like they went from being my Band of Barfers, my Sisterhood of Sneaky Eaters, to my Judge and freaking Jury in three minutes flat. I felt like getting up and leaving, I was so mad. I thought of all people this crowd would understand me, because they’re Barfers, too. I thought we shared the unbreakable Bond of Barferhood. Clearly, I was wrong. I miss my real friends — even though Kelsey, who knows me better than pretty much anyone, didn’t understand about my need to get rid of excess calories by sticking my fingers down my throat. Of all my friends, only Nancy got that part of me.

  Callie said that the first part of recovery is admitting you have a problem, like we’re in some freakin’ twelve-step program. If they think that’s going to make me stand up and say, “I’m Janie Ryman … and I stick my fingers down my throat,” they’re going to be waiting a long time. I’m not the only girl at my school who pukes after she eats, and I know that for a fact. It’s not a disease — it’s a diet strategy. Some girls take diet pills; I stick my finger down my throat. What’s the big deal?

  Missy flops down next to me on the threadbare sofa.

  “You writing a book or something?”

  I flip my notebook shut so she can’t see that I’ve just been writing about her.

  “No.”

  If she thinks I’m going to be friendly after she made fun of me in group, she’d better think again.

  “Well, jeez, you’re sure writing enough.”