Hope Road

This week, I’m not going to be writing any new entries. I have three tests and a ten-page paper due coming up next week, and I need to invest my time in homework and in hanging out with mi familia during fall break (which officially begins in 46 hours!!!). However, I want to use this opportunity to re-post some of my Xanga entries from the past, because I had a pretty different readership then. My apologies to those of you who have read these before, but you’re definitely in the minority, so here goes.

From March 3, 2007. It’s fiction. I wrote it for my Creative Writing class last semester (before I read Feeling for Bones, lest you think I was too “inspired” ). It had to be about a homecoming and include the words belch, Buddha, and loveseat.

It seems like it again, the same old same old, always watching that pavement turn into memory, the yellow lines merging with my thoughts. “Go ahead and sleep, Cassie,” Cliff says. His eyes dart off the road for a minute so he can smile at me. “I know you’re tired.” I lean my cheek against the cold window and close my eyes, but I’m not sleeping. My heart is beating too quickly for that.

It’s been an autumn of beginnings, turning my failure into success away from home for the first time. Success not for some, maybe, not the 4.0 or the partying or the boyfriend, but success for me. Success is subtraction, watching the digits on the scale slip down and down and down. Each one lost is a dance around the bathroom.

My god isn’t Jesus or Buddha or Allah. It’s Starvation, and I am her slave.

The passing cars outside the window disappear into my memories. I was the five-year-old who didn’t fit into the “first day of school outfit” my mom picked out for me. I was the eight-year-old on a diet, the ten-year-old who had to go to gymnastics and hated every minute of it. I wanted nothing more than to watch the substance of my flesh fade into nothingness. And I finally did it this semester. Cigarettes and Diet Coke are my sustenance now; I’ve eaten my fill of emptiness.

And I feel old. This homecoming is the first time for college, but I’ve come home before, wanting to be new – from camp, from road trips, from soccer games. I always soak up the rhythm of the miles, longing for a change. And here I am again, going home to that same old family, the one I was never good enough for.

I am now, though. They could count my ribs if they wanted to. I’ll show my mom that I can fit into her precious skinny jeans. I’ll show her that I can fit into her precious little life, too. Not that I want to. But I could.

I could, I could, I could, I think, and I lose track of the difference between thinking and dreaming, until Cliff says, “This is it, right?” and we’re pulling into my driveway.

The house looks the same. It’s brown brick, nothing too special. Nothing like the mansion my mother would have if she could. Cliff helps me carry my bags to the front door, and then he’s off to see his own family, who lives across town. I watch him drive away, and I’m still standing outside my own front door, too scared to go in. But I want to. I want to see mother’s reaction to my quest for perfection.

I leave my bags on the porch and reach for the door handle. I’m inside, through the entryway, into the den, and I stop to look at the family pictures hanging over the fireplace. No more fat Cassandra, never again.

There are footsteps on the stairs, and I’m enveloped in my mother’s hug. It’s polite and perfect, just like she is. She steps back, and I notice her lipstick is smeared a little. Somehow that makes me feel better.

“Cassandra!” She holds me at arm’s length and looks me up and down. “What has happened to you? So much for the freshman fifteen! Why, you look beautiful!”

Beautiful. She called me beautiful. The word echoes in my ears and slams around in my head as she leads me to the loveseat and we sit down. She strokes my hair, smiles at me, asks me questions about school and my social life, but I don’t hear any of it, just the word beautiful.

It’s the same thing at dinner, when my dad and brothers are home. I pick at my food, chicken and rice and asparagus, but they don’t seem to notice. All they can talk about is how much I’ve changed at college. They, too, ask me questions about school and friends. Everything but me is the same. My brothers chow down on their food as quickly as they can. Dad lets out a small belch after the meal is over, and Mom shakes her head at him, as usual. Then she starts clearing the dishes. I’m not expected to help, so I go to my room to be alone for awhile.

Everything’s the same there, too, except a lot cleaner than usual. It’s nice to be back on my soft bed, with my collection of stuffed animals and my old cassette player and my pictures of high school friends, and my tears. My tears were always with me then, and they’re with me now, too. Except I’m angry at myself – why am I crying? My mother called me beautiful.

Now I don’t have to go through my days wishing to be invisible, but I feel invisible anyway, insubstantial, and fragile. I don’t have to hide, but I’m hidden. I hate this goddess Starvation that I’m chained to, but I can’t escape.

I think I’ve lost my soul to her, though. If I leave her, I’ll be fat Cassandra again, and I’ll never ever go back to being that. But I am a failure. I’ve had my fill of emptiness, and I’m still hungry. This skin and bones isn’t enough.

Filed under: Books/Writing on October 8th, 2007