Hunger Pains

Julia Beecher

I loved my mother more than anything, but I couldn't stand to feel the weight of food in my stomach, so I just laid in bed and watched my ribs get bigger. She made me my favorite meals every night and scooped butter and ice cream and extra calories into the pot when she thought I wasn’t looking. I loved her so much when I was sick, even though I hated myself. Sometimes I think I even loved her more than I loved being skinny. 

I started to hate her when she made me get better. I hated the doctors she dragged me to, the scale she made me step on every week, how she made me close my eyes so the numbers wouldn’t haunt me later. I hated the way she stared at me when I got out of the shower, glancing over the stegosaurus spikes of my spine with tears welling in her eyes. You look so thin, she’d say as I wrapped my towel two, three times around my chest to keep it from falling down. Thank you, I’d say. That wasn’t a compliment, she’d say, and slam the bathroom door behind her. 

I hated her when she brought me a snack in my room for the second time that day, even after I told her I’m not hungry. I hated the clink the bowl made when she set it down on my desk, and the way it stayed there even after I yelled Take it back take it back take it back! 

Just eat the damn popcorn, she said. You love it. 

No, I don’t. I don’t love things that try to hurt me, I said, and that gave me an idea and I thought that maybe I could hurt her so she would be in just the same amount of pain as me, so I said all quiet-like under my breath: like you, and she said what are you talking about? and I said you just can’t wait to fatten me up, can you? and she said that’s disgusting, the way you talk to me and I said that’s disgusting the way you treat me, even though I loved her so much and I knew she loved me even more than that, and she said you’re going to end up in the hospital with a tube down your throat, and I said Okay and she said FINE and picked up the popcorn bowl and threw it down onto the floor, and it broke in a million little pieces scattered everywhere like teardrops, like crystals, like rain falling after a week of sun. I hated her more than anything when she did that. 

I loved her even more when she stayed there for hours afterwards, picking up every little shard of pure glass anger, slicing up her fingertips so my feet would stay untouched.

Julia Beecher is a college student from Cambridge, Massachusetts realizing her kindergarten dream of becoming a writer. Her work has been featured or is upcoming in Misery Tourism, Talk Vomit, The Daily Drunk, Modern Teen, Entropy Magazine, and others. Send her fan mail (or hate mail) on Twitter: @JuliaBeecher.