Lunch

It is noon-thirty, and you did not eat breakfast except for a cup of microwaved coffee that had too much creamer in it because your muscles ached from not turning in your sleep. It is cold in your bedroom, but colder still in the freezer that holds no hope of an acceptable lunch. You wander to the pantry, hoping against hope that there will be peanut butter, or—wait—tuna! A small can sits under a jar of mandarin oranges your mother bought months ago to make a cake that she hasn’t thought about since. The tuna can’s label is gold, and the blue mascot smiles out with pride for his product, Gourmet Select. You pick the can up, delighting in its perfect set weight, controlled by computers at the factory, a tidy three ounces. Small numbers like three, fifty, and one-ten make you happy.

While carrying the can to the kitchen counter, you notice that both your parents are outside in the sun. Your father, enormous and bear like, made of something you can’t quite put your finger on, is mowing the yard, and your mother, enormous and spilling everywhere, is working in the tropical garden beside the pool. Other people have hired help to work outside for them, but your family has always done the work themselves, because they have to say that they accomplished something.

You get a cereal bowl from the cabinet above the counter, and open the tuna can, pouring the juice into a smaller bowl for the cats. The familiar metal dinner fork pries the tuna away from the tin wall it clings to like a life raft .Your best friend has the same silverware in her house. She feeds you pasta every time you visit. The tuna plops down in the white bowl, and you are glad that your mother is outside, because if she wasn’t she would say something about cat food and you’d get flustered. You retrieve the mayonnaise and dill spears from the door of the refrigerator, and the small cutting board from the other side of the small kitchen. Half a teaspoon of mayonnaise goes on top of the tuna, and you mix it in with the fork. A dill spear is cut into pieces carefully with a paring knife. You try to keep track of the pieces, but you cannot count. Your hand shakes as you hold the knife, and you unsuccessfully will it to stop. Once everything is mixed in, you return the jars to the fridge and get a bottle of pink stuff to drink, giving bread and cheese a wide berth. You lick the edges of the bowl on the walk back, because the fragments of tuna there bother you a little.

Your room is still cold, and your blanket feels like home. Still trying not to shake, you pick out the pickles one by one and are unable to count them. Every last infinitesimal scrap of tuna is gleaned from them before you spear them on your dinner fork and bring them to your mouth, half terrified that they will fall off from your shaking. With your teeth, you clip off their heads, the soft inside part away from the rind of the cucumber, and move the sour pulp around in your mouth before you swallow it. Then you devour the rest of the tiny piece of pickle, delighting in the crunch of its rind like a feral animal crunching small bones. This delight frightens you, and you set the bowl and fork down until you can control yourself.

Once all the pickles are gone, you travel an impossible distance to the computer and begin to type, misspelling every other word because you are still shaking, you weak little girl. The tuna sits stage left, taunting you from the wings of your peripheral vision. You type in-between bites the size of pencil-top erasers. Sometimes you zone out and focus on what you’re writing, until you misspell another word and remember the food.
You take another bite the size of a peanut.

There are pickle seeds in the tuna. There is no way to get them out, so you will live with them. They aren’t hurting you very much. You can taste them, and you realize you don’t know what normal is. On the choir trip just yesterday (and the day before and the day before) they were talking about it. They, normal girls who eat meat and don’t count everything, were talking about it.

“Everything that isn’t fat-free is fattening.”

“Even reduced-fat stuff?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“And we’re still eating this fried chicken.” They laugh grandly and look away from each other in the shade of an overpriced theme park eatery.

In the hotel, standing on the bed and leaning against the wall as other girls straighten hair, “You’re so tiny. How much do you weigh?”

“One-fifteen.”

“And how tall are you?”

“Five-six.”

“Ugh, I hate you!” She, who you have known since you were babies, shoves you over and you both laugh as pictures are taken from every direction. What is normal? You are better than they now, because they complain about their thighs, butt, stomach, arms, face, chest, but only you do anything about it. Forty pounds ago, you were the same. Now you are smaller, crazier, not really even there. Your hands fumble in the dark over your bones every night, feeling for a scab on the skin or a bruise beneath. Sometimes breathing is hard to do.

Back in the present, you take another bite. There is still a lot of tuna left, and you aren’t very hungry anymore. You will put the tuna in the fridge to wait for supper once you are done writing. It has been an hour and a half since you started being hungry. You didn’t even eat half of what you made, but the pink energy drink is almost gone. It’s the second one you’ve had in the four hours you’ve been awake, and it’s probably what is making you shake, but you need it to wash away the soul of the fish. It clings to your teeth and the sides of your tongue, itching at you until you wash it away in a flood of cold, pink guarana.