Big Girl: How I Gave Up Dieting and Got a Life (14 page)

I took the towel from the back of my door and headed for the bathroom, fast. It wasn’t just my stomach now; every cell in my body felt nauseated and shaky. The back of my neck burned and my fingers felt dumb and clammy as I pulled my hair into a sloppy bun. I didn’t vomit to get rid of the food, but of this hateful cacophony of feeling, flooding out of my nasty brain and all over me. I never could stand a stomachache, and was always terrified of throwing up as a child. The act itself was a momentary nightmare, my body absolutely out of my control. But in these moments when I did control it, taking deep, preparatory breaths, then applying the lightest tickle to that hard spot in the back of my throat, it was a manageable terror. And, when it was over, oh how instant came the calm.

I didn’t do it often. At most, I allowed myself this ritual maybe twice a month. But any more than that would have been a problem with a name. As it was, I only vomited to relieve the worst of the stomachache nights. I was sick, I told myself (and my roommates). Perhaps I’d eaten something funny earlier in the day, or maybe it was just tension and alcohol, but what twenty-three-year-old wasn’t stressed and drinking too much? Either way, if a person vomited they were sick—sick, and off the hook. That’s the rule of puking.

All I had to do now was clean up. I sprayed bleach all over the bathroom and then scrubbed myself down in the shower. A shower made everything feel better. Back in my room, I made up my bed and tucked myself in neatly with a glass of ice water and a bottle of Tums. I didn’t have to do anything but feel better. I didn’t have to worry about anything but rest. I had license to cancel dinner with Debbie the next day, guilt free.
Ugh, was up all night puking
, I’d text her in the morning before I spent my Saturday watching television in bed, maybe cleaning my room if I felt up to it, then watching a movie on the couch with Sydney and Jeff, if they were home. If they weren’t, then fine, more couch for me.

When I did manage to leave my messy nest, I gave my friends the highlights reel of my nights out with Cal. It was a good one; I spilled drinks on some
pretty
famous people. But the long, numbed-out nights between my bedroom and my bathroom and Tasti D-Lite were the real story of my twenties—or as real as every trip to Paris and dinky credit at the end of an independent film. Kelsey Miller: Assistant to the Director. I told that story to everyone. Kelsey Miller: Ice Cream-Puker, Couch-Sitter, Chronic Plans-Canceler. That story sat balled up in my belly, and I kept it well fed.

In truth, it was another secret that had been keeping me sick for years. It was the only one I could not tell, too lethal a poison to release. But every day I felt it rising higher in my throat, so close to spilling out of me. Any day now, I would open my wretched mouth and ruin us all.

T
he first time William grabbed me, I was eight years old. It was the end of another dinner party at our house, the adults gathering coats and deciding who would drive, while I made the rounds for goodnight hugs. Good nights were mandatory for me, a huggy kid. I found him in Mom and Steve’s darkened bedroom and reached up. He put his arms around me for a quick hug. Then, as if by natural impulse, he reached down and clamped his hands over my butt, so hard it made a slapping sound. He pulled me in and pressed me against his crotch, squeezing my bottom in a rough, whole-handed clench. I was wearing my favorite nightgown—a frilly, floor-length shift, perfect for wandering the house in my
Secret Garden
fantasies. The fabric was overwashed and thin, and I felt naked against his body. He leaned down into my neck and growled, a hungry “Mmmm.”

It was over in seconds. He planted a wet bourbon kiss on my face and released me. I felt nothing. I felt hands everywhere. I stumbled out of the room on dumb feet. In my bedroom, I took off the nightgown, now reeking with the smell of grown-up party and someone else’s body, if only in my mind. I wanted to wash his bourbon breath out of my hair, but more than that I wanted to sleep. My brain was still awash in panic, waves of whiteness pulsing across each thought. And my body was somewhere else.

I’d seen him do the same thing to his wife. At the end of many nights, she’d laugh and brush his tipsy hand away, rolling her eyes at this silly husband of hers. He must have simply thought I was her—that’s all. Because it was dark. Because he was a little more than tipsy tonight, and I was a little too developed for a girl my age.

His name wasn’t William, but his real name doesn’t matter. What matters is that his was one of the most familiar faces in my life, and he is an unavoidable presence in my story. He’d been a close family friend since our Sleepy Hollow days. In another family, I might have been instructed to call him “uncle,” but we rolled our eyes at such formalities between children and adults. I’d known and trusted him for my entire conscious life. So, I knew it had to be an accident, and one that I could have prevented. Why hadn’t I jumped back and turned on the lights? Why had I asked him for a hug in the first place? Drunk people didn’t know what they were doing, and if I told somebody now, it would be so embarrassing. Either way, it was a one-time case of mistaken identity, and next time I’d know to keep out of the way.

This became the little litany I ran through each time it happened. Though it kept happening, it never got much worse than that first incident, and I had an excuse at the ready every single time. He’d confused me with his wife again. He had so much to drink that he didn’t realize where his hand was. Or else he was being affectionate and it was my own disgusting mind making something out of nothing.

After all, my clothes were always on, and his touch so fast and sloppy. With little effort, I could shrink the incident down into meaninglessness—an accidental collision in a darkened hallway. It was nothing like what happened in books or movies. There was no creeping into my bedroom at night. No promises of candy.

I got good at keeping out of his way. I’d see his eyes turn glassy and leave the room. If his friendly shoulder squeeze began to drift downward, I faked a coughing fit. I learned to cover up so his eyes, forever dropping to my breasts, would land on an oversized sweatshirt. Sometimes he’d quickly pop into the bathroom while I showered, (“Oops, I’m not looking! Just need to grab a tissue!”), and I’d crouch low behind the translucent shower curtain, holding my knees to my chest.

By middle school, it was instinct. At every party, dinner, and holiday, I knew where he was in the room. I was vigilant enough for the both of us, though he was never careful. A couple cocktails into the evening, his hands might wander right out in the open.

Sometimes we were mere feet from my mother, in a room full of people, none of whom seemed to see a hand where it shouldn’t be, and thank God for that. Because, hadn’t Mom told me that my lipstick was too flashy? Hadn’t I picked this skirt because it made me look grown-up?

Occasionally, I’d slip, mistime my entrance and wind up seated next to him on the couch. Nine times out of ten, it wouldn’t be so bad. He might just put an arm around me, rub my shoulder soft and slowly, and ask me about school. But sometimes—just a few times—he’d lean in toward my face with a goofy smile, then close his eyes. Was it friendly? Familial?
It must be, of course
, I always told myself. But then I’d remember the grabbing and the staring and suddenly realize he was far too close. Wriggling out from under his arm and jumping off the sofa, I’d produce a high-pitched laugh, while his face melted into the pout of a sour, rejected frat boy.

That’s how I described the incidents to my therapist, years later:

“It was just like being a girl at a frat party when it gets a little rowdy.”

“Except kids don’t go to drunken frat parties,” he replied. And I nodded in that way you do when your therapist points out how obviously shitty your childhood was.

I was three months out of college by the time I started saying it out loud. Though already living in Brooklyn, I went home many weekends, in part to stock up on toilet paper, but mostly to see my mom. Her manic cycle of ups and downs was still the extreme weather pattern in my life, and though I feared what I might find whenever I went home, not knowing was far more terrifying. Not even the worry over crossing paths with William could keep me away, and I inevitably did, each time. He might come up behind me while I dressed a salad for a dinner party, and put a hand low around my hip. I’d squeeze out sideways before it could move any farther, before this became another moment I had to try to forget. Those white waves of panic returned as if on cue, pulsing out that awful, necessary numbness through my body. I’d jump away to open the refrigerator and dig around for a jar of imaginary mustard. He’d click his tongue and open his mouth in exasperation.

“I can’t say hello to you? What?”

“What?! Nothing!” I’d chirp into the fridge. Grumbling, he’d slouch out of the room.

By then, the truth was leaking out of me. During late-night conversations with Chrissy or Debbie, I might blurt out a casual reference to that first incident: my nightgown, the painful squeezing, how crazy drunk he must have been to mistake a kid for his wife, gross! They didn’t laugh, though. They sat in shocked and awkward silence; unsure of how to navigate the little grenade I’d tossed into our evening with such nonchalance. It was that silence I both dreaded and desired. I thrilled at the discomfort in their eyes. Finally, finally, somebody noticed.

It was their solemn faces that gave me permission to tell, and then I couldn’t stop. I was spilling out the secret in clumsy puddles wherever I went. Four glasses of wine at my writing group and out it tumbled, turning three astonished sets of eyes in my direction. One night, I stayed up with Cal, swapping asshole-parent stories and childhood-trauma tales. She nodded at my rushed admission and lit a cigarette. “You know, pretty much everyone’s been molested, though.”

“Oh, of course, of course!” I hastened to apologize, like I did whenever anyone shrugged it off or simply nodded. Then I’d complete the humiliating routine of grabbing my purse, saying
Sorry
, heading out the door—and
I’m sorry
, again—then drafting the official so-sorry-so-embarrassed e-mail on the subway.

When someone replied instead with an open, concerned tone, I melted into tears. I overstayed my welcome at many a dinner table, hysterical with relief. After those nights, I drafted a variation on the so-sorry e-mail, adding a few dozen thank-yous.

Telling people felt like a gamble, but one I could no longer stop myself from doing. Rewatching
The Ice Storm
with Jon one night, I felt the panic rise.

“Turn it off, this is so fucking stupid!” I told him.

“Well, excuse me, film school.”

“Seriously, why are we watching this?”

“Because it’s dark and moody and really great? And you picked it?”

We spent the rest of the sweaty summer evening on his roof, sharing cigarettes and tall glasses of ice water as I uncoiled and began to speak.

We’d rarely had this kind of talk. Jon and I could spend whole weekends arguing the feminist ramifications of
The Piano
versus
The Piano Teacher
versus
Showgirls
, vent about work problems, or conjugate a text from his latest not-quite-boyfriend, but it took ten years and an Ang Lee movie for me to get real with one of my oldest, closest friends.

“I’m sorry,” I concluded, noting his silence.

“That’s okay.” Jon shrugged, but not in the dismissive way that made me want to disappear.

“You’re, like,
never
going to invite me over for a movie again.”

He shook his head a little but didn’t tell me to stop. He didn’t turn concerned and sympathetic, or fill the silence with a joke. In the quiet, I looked up and he didn’t look away.

“I’m still here.”

Eventually, I shared the story with my father, but only after months of worry and hesitation, knowing just how deeply it would wound and shock him. But when I finally blurted it out across his dining room table one weekend, his face melted into anguish. He looked down and nodded.

“I thought maybe that was what was going on.”

“You did?”

“Yeah,” he sniffed. “When you started gaining weight and everything.”

He got up and kissed the top of my head with shaky tenderness, whispering his sorrowful apologies. I could hardly bear the weight of his sadness in that moment. It wasn’t until weeks later that it occurred to me:
You thought maybe this was going on?

There was one person I could never and would never tell. All throughout this klutzy phase of telling the truth in bits and pieces, I kept a mouthful of caveats between the two of us. “The William stuff,” as I always called it, could hardly be defined as real abuse or, Jesus,
molestation
. It wasn’t as bad as what happened to other girls. Yeah, it had screwed me up a little bit, but that was what therapy was for. Telling her would only make things worse, I was sure. And I was right.

In the end, I told my mother only because she finally asked. I can’t think how the conversation started. Maybe we were talking about sex or dating. She was never the kind of mom who would harangue me over not having a boyfriend, and she rarely treaded into the territory of my blank romantic life. I still don’t know just what she knew or how long she’d known it, but one sticky September afternoon, the question came loose.

“Did William ever…” The two of us sat on the front porch of our house in Adirondack chairs, tacky with humidity. She ashed her cigarette into a ceramic turquoise dish and took a breath. I looked out across the yard in disbelief that the conversation I’d waited fourteen years for was finally going to happen while the lawn guy mowed the grass.

“Did William ever touch you in an inappropriate way?”

My heart beat the white waves out across my chest. But there was only one answer.

“Yes.”

She squinched her eyes closed and tucked her chin low into her chest, a flinch in slow motion. She exhaled a long breath through the O of her lips, and every nerve inside me throbbed, watching the bomb land, the force of its terrible impact, ravaging my mother and rendering her silent.

“It was just a few times, mostly just grabbing. That’s all.” Anything, anything that would take it back, a little. But it was too late. The truth lands hard and the landscape is never the same afterward.

Finally, she spoke.

“It’s going to take me a while to process this. I want to respond the right way and I can’t right now. I hope you understand. It’s too much. It’s too much.” She lifted her hands, pressed the palms to her chest and shook her head hard: a brief, blonde hurricane.

“Of course,” I soothed. I wanted to reach for her and I wanted to run. She returned to her cigarette and stared out at the yard, the lawn mower rumbling in the distance. I looked to see if her hand shook when she took a drag, but she was all too still. I got up, the moment no longer mine, and retreated into the dark, cool house.