The Girl Who Ate Kalamazoo (20 page)

1991.

“This is unacceptable,” Grandma Pencil said. “I should file criminal charges.”

“Of course you should,” McKenna said. “It’s a robbery. It needs to be reported.”

Grandma stood on the hearth, studying the empty space on her fireplace mantle. When she looked at McKenna, her eyes pulsed with rage. “Don’t get smart with me,” she spat. “I won’t have two traitors in my family.”

She stepped down, clumsy in her Adidas sneakers. She’d purchased new shoes two days earlier because her other pair vanished. Now, her Pope John Paul I Commemorative Plate, made of porcelain and inlaid with gold, was missing.

The week before, it was an antique Royal Bonn vase. The week before that, the framed photograph of herself with her father, standing at Victoria Falls. This one particularly stung. Once Grandma realized that it was gone—really gone, not coming back—she had wept on the sofa for nearly an hour. McKenna comforted her, reassured her that it had just been misplaced, that it would turn up eventually.

Grandma had composed herself, and then telephoned Murray. “That beast,” she said, “is eating my personal property. Tell her I will be watching. I won’t sleep. I lived on two hours a night for four years. I will catch her, and when I do, I will not hesitate to use force.”

What ever Murray told her had placated her for the moment. A few days passed, and she began to question her own perceptions. “Was that the original photograph? I think it was a copy, wasn’t it?” The next day: “I wouldn’t have kept such an important picture on the end table, would I?”

“There
are
bowls of food everywhere,” McKenna agreed. “I don’t think you would have risked getting crumbs on the original.”

“But it
was
out here, wasn’t it?”

“There’s a lot of pictures in this room, Grandma. Honestly, I couldn’t say.”

Then came the commemorative plate. Afterward, Grandma stayed awake for three full nights. She sat in the recliner, motionless, shrouded in darkness, waiting for an invader who never arrived. During the day, she slept like a log.

This was the next phase of Audrey’s war. This was the retaliation Grandma had brought upon herself after Misty died.

It would continue for nearly four years. Her good silver. A brooch. Her toaster. Her wedding dress, dragged downstairs from its box in the attic—the empty box left boldly on the kitchen table. On more than one occasion, all the snack bowls disappeared. Family photo albums. The solid silver rosary, a gift from the nuns.

Not all at once. It followed no pattern. No way of predicting it. There were gaps—days, weeks, even months would pass. But it always started again. At first, Grandma almost lost her mind. Her daughter had died. She’d been exiled from her daughter’s house. Granddaughter McKenna had moved into the spare bedroom and now they shared bathroom, refrigerator, TV, everything. Grandma became jittery. She couldn’t keep food down. She took lots of hot baths and stopped drinking her beloved tea. McKenna would come into the kitchen to find Grandma supine on the floor, hands clasped in prayer, her face lined with anxiety and sorrow. The nuns visited. They cooked dinner, led her in hymns, told her to tough it out. They assured her that nothing the monster ate could affect her core self, her spiritual self.

McKenna also tried to help. She held Grandma. Prayed with her. Voluntarily stayed awake all night and watched the house. She told Grandma she’d reported the robberies and that the house was now under police surveillance. If Audrey
was
the perpetrator, McKenna said, she would be caught. She would be punished. “But honestly, Grandma,” McKenna said, “I don’t think even Audrey would be capable of this.”

The police never caught her. Nobody did. Nobody could prove Audrey had anything to do with it. Doors and windows never showed signs of forced entry. Footprints in the snow were too numerous and jumbled. Murray insisted again and again that Audrey didn’t leave the house at night—“For Pete’s sake, she’s fourteen!” He even sent big, strong Toby to stay with Grandma and McKenna for a week. It didn’t help: During his visit as a guardian on the sofa, Grandma’s coffeemaker vanished.

Grandma sunk so low as to suspect McKenna. “This all started right after you moved in!” she screamed. “Why don’t you go? You bring trouble. Get out!”

After a heated discussion, during which Grandma collapsed in tears on the bathroom floor, McKenna said, “I forgive you, Grams.” They hugged. McKenna smiled.

She heard it as soon as she stepped out of the fifth-floor stairwell: the lovely, aching song of Audrey trying to fill herself.

McKenna thanked the foreman, a white-haired, stocky guy named Merle, whose moustache might have been pilfered from Mark Twain’s lip. He told McKenna to be careful. “Sometimes she doesn’t look where she’s eating. And she moves pretty quick. I’ll be right here if you need me.”

McKenna walked down the hallway toward Rooms 501—520.

“Hey!” Merle called. McKenna turned around. “Tell her she don’t have to finish the whole city if she don’t want to.” He tried to grin. “If she don’t want to, that’s all.”

McKenna rounded a corner. The sounds of crunching fell silent.

She stopped in her tracks. She couldn’t grasp what she was seeing. On her left side, it looked like any hotel—a row of numbered doors.

On her right was a surreal scene. McKenna stood facing a bizarre diorama—a string of ten hotel rooms and bathrooms stretching for two hundred feet. No walls anywhere, except the exterior wall. It looked like a department store display. Everything in its place. Beds made. Television cabinets closed. Writing desks clear of clutter. Wastebaskets empty. Shower curtains draped regally over tubs. Freestanding toilets and sinks. A doll house. Everything peaceful beneath a snowy blanket of dust.

The curtains were drawn, but sunlight poured in. A humid breeze touched the top of McKenna’s head. She looked up. The ceiling was gone. Mist enchanted the air, an ethereal glow.

Maybe this is Heaven. Couldn’t I make it so? Climb into one of those beds? Sleep here forever.

“You look like I feel,” a voice said.

McKenna stepped into one of the “rooms.” She squinted through the toxic fog, grateful for the filter over her mouth. On a queen-sized bed, Audrey reposed.

She hadn’t bothered to clear the drywall and sawdust before lying down. She didn’t wear a mask. She watched McKenna approach. Her lips pulled histrionically at a cigarette. She blew a column of smoke toward the sky.

“That’s always been your problem,” McKenna said. “If you felt how you look, you wouldn’t be eating a city.”

Audrey considered this. She shrugged. McKenna dragged a chair from the writing desk and sat beside the bed.

Audrey scooted herself into a seated position against the headboard, grunting as if making a great effort. She was dressed in a brown WMU sweat suit. Her expensive feet were nowhere to be seen. Not even her padded socks. Just bare, exposed stumps. Didn’t they get cut by glass, splintered by wood? Where were her crutches? Did she crawl around the floor and eat things? Like she’d done with McKenna when she was a baby?

Maybe this was what Audrey longed for, a return to the days with McKenna, days of joy and crayons. It was a pleasant idea, and McKenna held onto it.

“You’re the first one to visit me,” Audrey said.

“Johann says he tried a few times.”

“Oh, him. He tried. He failed.”

“I thought you were in love with him.”

“Who said I wasn’t?”

“Are you? ”

“Is there a rule that says people you love should get better treatment than everyone else?”

“I thought so.”

Audrey shrugged. “News to me.” She took a drag. The ember sizzled a stray hair. She flicked her cigarette into the bathtub ten feet away. “Two points!”

McKenna waited.

“Look, we had no future. I cut him off a long time ago. End of story.”

(It’s a lie, but did McKenna know it at this moment? Or was it only years later, from reading books, when she learned that Audrey couldn’t bear Johann a child, so he’d sent her packing? Sent her back to Michigan, back to her destiny.)

Here comes that Hershey bar again.

“Chet wanted me to tell you ‘Hi.’ ”

With her fingers, Audrey flung the hair off her shoulders, did a head shake. A familiar move, whenever boys were mentioned. “Really? He’s sweet.”

“He’s got a kid.”

“Why are you here, exactly?” She rolled off the bed on the opposite side from McKenna. She came up with crutches under her arms. She looked gaunt and hollow-eyed. Her hands were skeletal, the skin papery and transparent.

“You don’t have to keep doing this,” McKenna said. “Some people don’t want you to—”

“Oh, let me guess. You’re here to boss me around. Because you don’t have a goddamned life of your own.”

“Come home! Or go somewhere! Do something.”

She blinked. “You really are saying this?
You
?!”

McKenna stood from the chair. Audrey crutched to the bathtub. She leaned over and with a primal scream rent an enormous chunk of porcelain with her teeth. McKenna plugged her ears. Audrey took another bite, and another, and another. It was quick and brutal, her head whipping back and forth, a bedlam of obliteration mixed with the wails of a dying animal.

Fifteen seconds later, the tub was gone. Audrey sat on the floor and quietly slurped the shower curtain into her mouth, followed by a handful of plastic rings, which she ate like donuts while speaking.

“They wanted me, Kenny,” she said, chewing. She stood with difficulty. “I know you don’t like to hear it, but it’s the truth. I know most of my family hated me for being what I am. Hid me away, treated me like a disease. Listen, Kalamazoo
needed
me. This was
their
idea. They made the rules. They can’t just
stop
now and say good-bye. They can’t just be tired of me. That’s not how it works. I won’t allow it. I WON’T ALLOW IT!”

McKenna startled. Audrey burst into that same aggressive guffaw she’d used on Grandma Pencil, but this time, her voice was wheezy and thin. She stopped. Her breathing was labored. She rested on her crutches, her eyes closed.

“I’m sorry I punched you,” McKenna said.

Audrey didn’t open her eyes. She swayed in place, her stumps padding on the floor in a delicate dance, her head bowed. She wanted to melt, dissolve into this nightmare domestic space she’d created. At last, she whispered, “I forgot all about that.”

The Hershey’s slid back and forth along the inside of McKen-na’s throat.

Audrey opened her eyes. “Did you apologize to Grandma?”

McKenna made a smiley face in the dust with the toe of her shoe.

“Of course not,” Audrey said. “You and those pigtails. Still a child.”

“Grandma’s sick, if you want to know. She’s in the hospital.”

“Oh.” She raised her left leg, picked a couple chunks of porcelain off her stump and ate them.

“She had a stroke.”

“Oh.”

“And by the way, she took back what she said.”

“Took what back?”

“That thing she said about Mom.”

Audrey gave her sister a hard sidelong stare. “Bullshit.”

“Honest. That’s why I came to see you. She said there’s no passage in the Bible that calls suicide a sin. Nothing explicit, anyway. I worked on her. Maybe it’s because . . .” McKenna paused, feeling the Hershey bar drift back down, the final time. “Anyway, I thought you should know.”

Audrey wiped her mouth. Blinked. Her eyes were watery and red from the dust. “Well. I guess our plan worked, then.” She coughed wetly. “I’m glad you told me.”

McKenna felt the urge to step in closer, perhaps touch her sister on the shoulder, but she couldn’t be sure of the outcome. “Remember how I used to feed you?”

The sun climbed from behind a cloud and brightened Audrey’s hair. Sounds of machinery, of repair, rumbled beneath Audrey’s voice: “I don’t remember.”

“You weren’t even a toddler yet. I smuggled crayons, soap, whatever you wanted. I can still see your face, so happy.” McKenna felt a rising sensation inside her, as if her blood were being drawn toward the sky. “And now I’m here. When nobody else is.”

Audrey’s jaw tightened. She pursed her lips. She seemed to be fighting to keep the words in her throat from escaping her mouth. When she looked up at McKenna, her eyes appeared scarred by the glaring sunlight. She nodded as if they’d come to a mutual agreement about something.

Then she brought a cigarette out of the pack and lit it. “I’m still going to finish eating.”

“Of course.”

“These people love me,” she puffed. “They do.”

“Of course. We all love you.”

It was a crisis of calculation. Kalamazoo thought they could fund the reconstruction of an entire city with the profits from tacky celebrity merchandise. The plan worked for the first year. But the famous face never showed her famous face. She granted no interviews. She lived like a bat. She hated cameras. She didn’t speak publicly, didn’t smile. In many ways, and especially to the outside world, Audrey never
was
. She existed only as a name, a concept. At best, she was a caricature, a cartoon figure. At worst, she was a Freudian nightmare—the cherubic, fair-skinned girl-next-door with the mouth that might swallow your head.

Most importantly, though, Audrey stopped capturing hearts and imaginations because people didn’t believe in her. How many T-shirts can you sell of a fraud, a cheat? Ask Pete Rose. Ask Milli Vanilli. Ask Jim Bakker. Ask Tonya Harding.

To millions, she was a hoax. Conspiracy theories abounded. There is no Audrey Mapes, they said. Kalamazoo bulldozes their own buildings in the dead of night so we’ll think they’re hot stuff. We’ve done the math: She’d have had to wolf down fifty buildings a day to finish in two years. Sure, there’s a girl named Audrey Mapes. A shyster who faked her way through a sideshow performing tricks any third-rate magician can do. She just “happens” to be gorgeous? With a
handicap,
no less? UC Berkeley did a comprehensive study in 1995, and they
proved
she couldn’t do what she said. But you didn’t care about that, did you, Kalamazoo? Slap adrawing of the pretty cripple on a bumper sticker; sell it for ten bucks. Instant attention, instant cash. Add computer effects to some grainy night-vision footage and boom—a modern-day legend!

Don’t you want to buy an oven mitt?

Yes, pretend you’ve been chosen, Kalamazoo. Pretend you matter. Exploit the world so you can find an identity. Shame on you, Kalamazoo. We knew you were desperate, but geez.

Of course, millions of believers remained, all around the world. Audrey received fan letters from Argentina, Zimbabwe, Russia, Malaysia, Mexico, India, Iceland. Families saved money to pilgrimage to Kalamazoo in hopes of catching a glimpse of the “Miracle Mouth of Michigan.” Unable to actually see her, they did their best to elicit stories from the locals. Most every Kalamazoo resident had met Audrey. She’d slept in their beds. She’d played “Simon Says” with their children. She’d taken coffee with them, kissed their babies good-bye. But no one was talking anymore. They were all talked out. Even the most destitute refused fifty bucks for an anecdote of their encounter with the eternal. That’s how badly they wanted Audrey gone. She’d become a bad dream; they wanted to wake up, or at least move on to a different dream. Travelers inevitably left Kalamazoo with a few dozen photographs of construction vehicles, a profound sense of disillusionment, and a souvenir tennis visor.

The merchandise stopped selling. The cash dried up. Construction crews went weeks, months, without getting paid. Flatbeds bearing lumber were turned away due to lack of funds. Businesses and homes couldn’t be reassembled. Campus dormitories lacked walls. Church parishioners waited impatiently for Italian marble altars that never came. A waiting list was created. By August of 1999, the backlog was one thousand strong. An emergency meeting was called. Taxes were raised. Undocumented laborers were shipped in to speed production. Shoddy materials saved the city a bundle, but now and then a house caught fire.

People stopped helping one another. They noticed each other’s crooked teeth, love handles, double chins. The imperfections sickened them. They elbowed each other in the pews, if they were lucky enough to have pews. They no longer kicked off their sheets in the morning and rushed out to gab with their neighbors. Instead, they huddled under the covers and cursed Audrey. Out of a job indefinitely. All those lucky assholes that got their houses eaten first. Who came up with the stupid spiral idea, anyway? Rich people, probably. Portage was probably behind the whole thing.

Some people actually moved away. Most didn’t. But they talked about it.

Audrey ate through it all. Protesters gathered. Unruly crowds waved crude messages—“Mapes Rapes the ’Zoo,” “Audrey Can Eat Shit For All I Care,” “Beelzebub Called, He Wants His Appetite Back,” “Bite on THIS, Mapes!” and “Last Time I Checked, Gluttony Was a Sin.”

The friendliest
Gazette
editorials commanded her to leave town and never return. The others called for a criminal investigation. Local television news ignored her. The evening “Mapes Watch” was replaced by the “West Michigan Golf Course Spotlight.” Activists or ganized; petitions were circulated. Twenty-five thousand signatures for Audrey’s immediate ouster were presented to the mayor.

Mayor Bowman stood firm. Not much longer, he said. We need patience, he said. We need to stick to the plan. No one said it would be easy.

It was October, 1999.

Security forces were doubled. Two dozen rent-a-cops guarded the downtown structures Audrey ate: the court house; the Michigan News Agency, which hadn’t missed a day of business in thirty years; Jiffy Print; a parking garage.

One night, three angry, unemployed men carrying handguns snuck past security into the dry cleaners Audrey was ingesting.

The men emerged five minutes later. Their faces were bloodless. They surrendered without resistance.

One of them said, “I never expected it to move. Jesus. Was that
her
?”

Another one said, “I think she’s alive.”

The other one didn’t speak for a month, until after Audrey was gone.

Even as she fed on the machinery of civilization, she wasted away.

Even as she consumed the muscle of society, she shriveled.

Even as she chewed cinder blocks the size of Buicks, she shrank.

In darkness, she drifted through corridors. Outside every window hung a moon she could never swallow. Clouds she could never wrap herself in. Stars that twinkled, stillborn, into her eyes.

Icy wind crept into her lungs, swirling.

Her flesh withered. A veil shrouded her eyes, turning them to ink. Her bones screamed softly, and her hair fell out, slow and gray, in the moonlight. Her once-enchanting glow faded. Her rib-cage yawned.

She ate her own teeth, and then she ate no more.

Nobody held her. Nobody came running when she finally cried out, her ragged voice indistinguishable from the machines on the streets, the earthmovers.

She relived the baths, the tender hands. She splashed diamonds in the sun.

She was my sister.

She shivered on a concrete floor that smelled of gasoline.