checking our progress, I leaned to my neighbor and asked, “Aren’t you going to write the rest?” Our name was a long impressive mess. I was especially unsure how to manage that “y” at the end. It was meant to drop below the solid line on the page, and I didn’t want to get it wrong. She beamed at me and said, “That’s all you have to put.”
No one had ever called me “Kim” before, only “Kimberly,” and Mrs. Shalala showed me how to make the big proud-looking capital D with a period to represent my last name, and thus began my formal schooling as Kim D.—a character I had never been in my short life.
The wisdom to move me up was questionable, but I did fine by watching and mimicking and trying to understand how things were done in the upstairs classroom led by the lady with the big white hair. My size made me look like all the other kids, like a five-year-old, though I was still just three. It was considered a good thing to be of conforming appearance; that much was clear to me. The preschool classroom was on the patio-level of our school, with access onto a small playground that was only for us. Mrs. Shalala’s room was upstairs, and it was all blue—walls, carpet, tables, and the sky I could see from the windows of our lofty perch. She was sort of mean. I was tempted but fearful to take part in her torment of the other kids. She asked us questions as a group and required a response in unison. We learned through repetition and unspoken expectation mostly. She instructed us to add her name to the end of our responses. She’d say something like, “How are you today, class?” And we’d say in unison, “Very well, thank you, Mrs. Shalala.” She’d say, “Class, are you going to have all of the art supplies put away neatly before lunch?” Then she’d look forebodingly at the clock that showed the two lines not quite straight up and we’d call back, “Yes, Mrs. Shalala.”
The resistance the class offered was miraculous, and I can’t say how it began. I certainly wasn’t involved, though I enjoyed the rebellion of the group. If she’d been particularly mean, somehow the class would respond by singing out the end of her name a few syllables too long. Suddenly the group would sing, “Yes, Mrs. Shalala-la-la-la-la!” And she’d spin on her heel to see who was leading the revolt, only to find our cherubic faces pinched silent once more. She was none too quick, really. Her elaborate white hair sat atop her head in big curls that seemed a foot high. I saw a hairpin once dangling from the back of her up-do, and I watched all day to see if a curl would fall when she spun around. The tower held solid.
This is how we learn, through attention and repetition, whether the lessons are forced or passive. I fit in just fine through my elementary career—until sixth grade, when somehow I had outgrown the class again though I was younger than everyone there. How did I keep getting so big? Of course, many of the girls were taller than the boys in sixth grade, and one of the other girls was getting breasts already too. I was glad she was my friend, slender and athletic-looking though she was. How could we have such different bodies if we did almost everything together? My friend group of four ate and swam and biked and walked to and from school. Yet somehow I was different.
The doctor said I needed to lose weight and exercise. Being fat was unhealthy, he said, and so, when I was ten years old, he explained that I simply needed willpower. I thought surely I already had it. I endured a lot with composure—no crybaby like my other friends. Composure sets one apart as mature, above ridicule. I paid attention to what was needed. I already knew I needed to be thinner and that my body, with its fat thighs, blossoming breasts, and hips was out to betray me. I took the diet sheet he handed me and applied myself. There were three pages of mimeographed instructions for how to follow a diet of 500–750 calories a day. Simple. Easy. At breakfast, 150 calories might be a hard-cooked egg and a small glass of juice. At lunch, 250 calories might be a half-sandwich with ham and cheese weighed in just the right amounts, along with an apple for dessert. A 350-calorie dinner would include a piece of fish or chicken, green beans, milk, and salad with only a tablespoon of vinaigrette dressing. I applied myself and ate only what the diet said I should, all summer long. Sometimes I was better than the diet because if eating less was virtuous, and I was in control of my appearance, I could be even more virtuous. I knew I could.
“Sometimes I don’t think she eats enough protein,” my mother said to the doctor who weighed me in and praised my efforts. Then he looked back at my body, still tall and thick, and he said, “Well, she’s in no danger. Look at her!” He then addressed me, “Are you down around one thousand calories on most days?”
I felt insulted. He’d given me a diet for 500–750 calories a day, and I’d followed it. Steel-jawed and quiet, I said, “Five hundred.”
“Well, that’s probably not right,” he said, “but good that you’re trying!” He patted my shoulder. “You’re doing great.” He addressed my mother again but not her concern. “You know, to look at her, I didn’t think she’d be able to do it. But she’s losing weight pretty steadily.” He turned to me. “Whatever you’re doing, just keep it up!”
And so I learned the pleasure of virtue, even if the rewards for conformity were complex and not always forthcoming. In seventh grade, I was thin enough for size twelve jeans, practically painted on. That was the smallest I ever became, even though five hundred calories became three hundred, then fifty. Fifteen glasses of water, three pieces of gum, a mint for my worsening breath, and a piece of lettuce squirted with mustard. That was enough in a day. Fifty calories. The numbers were with me always. I studied a book of calorie contents rather than actually eating food, and people said, “Keep it up! You’re looking good.”
When the first all-liquid, high-nutrient diet—Cambridge—came along in the late 1970s, the doctor suggested it, despite the fact that he’d been encouraging a starvation diet for nearly a year. So I began three shakes a day. I felt gorged and happy for a while to have a bit of sugar, of sustenance. But after the first month of nothing but liquid, a cupboard full of extracts to flavor the shakes, parents and friends praising my willpower, I stopped drinking them. I stopped drinking them, one by one. First two a day, then one, then none. Less is always better.
“You can never be too rich or too thin” was the sentiment embroidered on pillows and printed on greeting cards that year. I could never be too thin. I was starting to know it was true because I had stopped eating and still had a round bottom, regularly grabbed by men who thought they were flattering me. I had round boobs and thighs like they had a mission of their own. I stopped eating entirely and never wasted away.
“You look great! Whatever you’re doing, keep it up.” I heard this from everyone who had known me as a younger child. I was now twelve, being molested by my stepfather and frequently harassed on the street by men who wanted sex. Or maybe they wanted control. It was hard to tell what was behind their leering. Their faces seemed more often angry than appreciative. My mother suspiciously watched me and told me I was becoming “too sexual.” Appearances are important. But, honestly, I couldn’t help looking sexual, and I was curious about sex besides. What was my body saying to everyone? It was intriguing, baffling, and somehow there was power in it. Why else would they be so upset by it, angry, desirous, and strange?
I stopped exercising entirely—no energy. Sunlight hurt my eyes, and headaches drove me to daily naps, sometimes three hours in an afternoon. “You look great!” I knew I needed help. But how to get it? Sometimes I responded, “I haven’t eaten in forty-three days.” In tenth grade, the driving and health education teacher told us that the human body could survive thirty days without food but only three days without water. I knew this wasn’t true. I had survived longer and could continue.
“No one in this room has ever really been hungry,” the driving teacher pronounced, and I wondered if this could be so. Was I hungry? Were other girls in the room hungry? Were boys hungry? No, we were privileged, First World brats. Our families had enough money to buy plenty of food; we had full refrigerators and steak dinners. But somehow, amid all of the plenty, some of us were expected not to eat. We were expected not to want to eat. We became lovable only by not eating.
It’s
