Weigh-In

I am still exhausted. I'm better now, but today I was so tired I felt that I was in an alternate reality. I literally couldn't filter. I was in a bookstore, looking for something for Jay, and everything sounded the same to me--radio, the traffic outside, the sound of numbers being punched on the clerk's cell phone. They were all equal. They were all deafening. I couldn't read the titles on the spines. I had to leave.

I slept in this morning. Scheduled an acupuncture appointment for 9am. Almost slept through it. Had a dream that my acupuncturist showed up, in the rain, at my house. "Let's do it here," she said. She was dripping wet. I was half-asleep, struggling into a skirt and t-shirt, opening the door. Woke up. Bright sunlight on the bed. 10 til. Made it. A few minutes late. Lying on the quiet table, watching the paper cranes slowly twist on the mobile above me. Trying to grin and bear it through the moxa on the needles in my feet.

"Those are getting hot," I tell her.

"Those are out." She replies.

This always happens to me. Acupuncture illusions. I'm convinced there are needles where there aren't any.

"It's the chi." She tells me.

Every piece of my body is sore.

At 2:38pm, it occurs to me that there is no way I am going to be able to handle a 12-hour day feeling like this. I call in.

I am much relieved. I don't even feel guilty.

At 4am this morning, I woke up, crawled into bed with my birdlike Lilly and just held her to me. She lost 1/2 a pound. We had the weigh in. I was my usual awful self. The way I always am when I am afraid. A medical student did the intake. A beautiful, slender, Indian American girl dressed just perfectly, with candy apple red slippers, good brown wool pants and a brown sweater. On her right wrist was a beautiful golden bracelet made of delicate filigree, a temple dancer's ornament, on her left wrist was a perfectly sober timex watch with a leather band. She looked just like I think everybody ought to. Sigh. But she asked the stupidest questions!

"Do you participate in any sports?" She asked Lilly.

"That's in the chart." I point out. "Lilly hasn't been allowed to participate in sports for the last 3 months."

"Well," she says, "I wanted to hear what Lilly has to say." Patronizing. Doctors.

Then: "I see you choose not to meet with a dietician. Why was that?"

"We meet with the dietician all the time."

"You didn't last time."

"If you look in the chart, you'll see that we met with the dietician at every other visit, but the last one because she'd gained enough weight, Dr. Carson said we didn't have to. "

"When was your last period?" She asks Lilly, ignoring me.

"3 weeks ago," I interrupt. "At her last appointment."

"I wanted to see if she'd had one since."

"Are you anticipating a 3 week cycle? "

The student leaves.

"You don't have to do that, Mom." Lilly says. "She's just a student. She has to learn." But I hate her. For her beauty, her future privilege and her red shoes. And the fact she's dressed according to my standards. "You think you're being nice, just because you're smiling, But no one's fooled. You look like you're going to eat someone. It's creepy."

"She should read the chart." I'll eat her alive. I hate going to Dr. Carson. I hate the way it makes me feel. I hate being around women who have made better choices and who are richer and more successful than I am. I hate the way doctors treat nurses. I hate being treated that way by another woman. I think of Dr. Pitney. Somehow, Dr. Pitney wasn't like this. What is it about Dr. Carson that irks me so? I hate that Lilly's in this position. I can see what she thinks of us. I can see that she thinks I'm too thin and too looks conscious. She thinks I've done this to her. And the scary thing is that I think she's right.

"Lillylillylilly," I say, kissing her hair and crying. "I'm so sorry. I love you so."

"I know, mommie." Lilly says. "What time is it?"

"4"

"You can sleep in here, if you want." Lilly says.

Pebbles the cat, who goes where I go, jumps on the bed. Right on Lilly. Who hates her. "Go away, Pebbles!" Lilly says, pushing the cat off the bed. The cat jumps back on.

"Do you think I'm a bad person?" Lilly asks me after a moment.

"No."

"Do you think I'm like that guy, that psycho killer, Holmes, and I can't feel anything?"

"No."

"I hate Pebbles." Lilly says.

"Yes, but we've had Pebbles for 9 years and you haven't tortured her or killed her. Throwing her off your bed doesn't count as part of the homicidal triumvirate. You like the puppy. You love Marlowe."

"Ok." Lilly concedes. "Sometimes, though, I don't think I feel things the way my friends do. Sometimes I don't think I'm a nice person. I feel like an outsider."

"Well," I think about this. "I think everybody has to work at that. I think that's why all the religions have prayer and daily reminders and everybody has to keep getting together and meeting all the time. It's set up because everyone has to work at it, right?"

"I guess." She doesn't sound sure.

I know she doesn't feel like everybody else. Is that why she starves herself? Because she feels like a bad person? That simple? That horrible?

That's my 1/2 hour.