She sits in her room for hours alone. Every corner, every drawer, every shelf is tidy, cleaned out… organized. She does not clean her sister’s side which is cluttered, messy, and unkempt. Her sister is free to roam and play, dally with her friends. But for her, there is no input and no out put. She is forced to stay in the back bedroom allowed out only to shower, use the bathroom, or do assigned chores.
They have decided that she is too fat and cannot be trusted out of her room. She might eat something or walk around the neighborhood trying to find some friends to amuse her. She is on complete and total restriction. No phone calls, no play time, no TV.
She has read every book in the bookcase in her room twice. She has an old radio that she listens to for company. It receives exactly four stations: one of them plays Mexican music, one is a news station that also features jazz at midnight, one is a country and western station, and the fourth plays top forty pop, rock, and soul. She loves music. It saves her. She memorizes all the lyrics to all the songs she hears.
Her food is carefully monitored. For breakfast she is allowed a small bowl of Rice Krispies with skim milk. Her mother brings her lunch on a tray which is a piece of American cheese and a slice of bologna cut up into tiny squares and placed in a baby food jar with a dollop of yellow mustard. This is accompanied by two rye crisp crackers which is really six if you break them a part… and twenty seedless grapes – count them – twenty. She really hates bologna. She eats each piece with a tooth pick and nibbles on the crackers.
Her mother is an uninspired cook, so she does not look forward to dinner which she knows will be a lackluster meal featuring ice berg lettuce and a pound of ground round. She will sit quietly in an uncomfortable silence at the family dinner table.
Her dad will have had at least four or five drinks by then. After dinner he will nap on the couch while her mother irons watching TV with her siblings. She will clean the kitchen and do the dishes, sneaking a piece of buttered potato skin into her mouth on the sly.
She is not a bad girl. She is starving. Starving for food. Starving for social interaction. Starving for affection. When she gets out of there, she will seek tacos at the local take-out joint, and the tongue, hands, and arms of the nearest most willing boy available.
(First published 10/19/11)
