Free Eating Heaven by Jennie Shortridge

threw up. Why was that?”
    “I got the flu and puked for four days straight. It was so awful I decided that I’d never throw up again, and I haven’t.”
    “What happens when you get the flu now?”
    “I feel like I’m going to die, but I don’t throw up,” I told her. “That’s it.”
    “That’s amazing self-control,” she said, not looking all that impressed.
    “I’m an amazing person,” I said, happy to see that our time was nearly up. I haven’t gone back.
    It’s true that I had the flu in fifth grade and threw up for four days. Somewhere around day two or three, I remember languishing in agony in the living room, goose-bumped and sweaty, feeling myself shrink whenever I’d close my eyes, a frightening feeling like I might disappear. I was struggling to lie in a position on our green floral couch that wouldn’t make my head whirl, my stomach lurch. I was trying to watch the images on the television set, the soap opera actors extraordinarily animated about something, but I’d float in and out of their conversations, losing the thread and mixing it up with dream thoughts, with other voices. My mother’s voice from the kitchen, saying, “Of course I’m worried about her, silly.” Wondering if we were on TV, if I was lying on the fancy leather couch in the living room on the show. “Come on, just for a minute.” Mom’s voice, laughing softly. “I can sneak out when she’s sleeping. She won’t die on me, it’s just a stomach bug.” Trying to shout, from down inside my dream, “No, don’t leave me here alone!” The soap opera actors laughing, too, with my mother, telling her that Richmond would be beautiful this time of year, that she should definitely go to the reunion, but she’d better take her husband with her. After all, Genevieve had always wanted to get her clutches on him, and while the cat’s away . . .
    “Just five minutes, okay? Meet me in front,” my mother said, and I snapped to life.
    “Where?” I called out, a crying sound in my voice. “Where are you going?”
    Her cool hand was on my forehead then, her voice soothing. “Only to get you some ginger ale, Ellie, to help you feel better.”
    “I don’t want ginger ale. It makes me throw up,” I moaned. “I don’t want you to go to Richmond.”
    She laughed, and I hated her for sounding so happy when I felt so miserable, for looking so lovely when I knew I looked half dead. “Honey, you’re having bad dreams because of the fever. I’m only running down to the market, just for a minute. I’ll be right back. Close your eyes and you’ll never even know I’m gone.”
    I closed my eyes as she said and the world spun around me. I began to cry because I knew I would have to run to the bathroom soon. “Mom, I’m going to get sick,” I whispered, but I opened my eyes and she was gone. I sat up on the couch, shaky and unsteady, then realized it was far too late to run anywhere. I threw up on the green floral couch, my pajama bottoms, the white shag carpet, my feet. I’d vomited so much by then that it was only yellow bile and the water my mother had forced me to drink, hot and foul all over me, but I knew the smell and the stains would last forever. My mother would hate me.
    Even more, I thought, staring at the television set, where a man wearing a wedding ring was locked in a tortured embrace with a beautiful red-haired woman in a gold lamé dress. He whispered, “Genevieve, my darling,” and I knew something had changed forever.
     
    I wake in my dark room, sweaty and confused, and look at the red digits on the clock: 3:47. Nausea overwhelms me, and I moan, “Those stupid fake eggs.” I lie still, trying to make it go away.
    “Most people feel better when they throw up,” I can hear Suzanne Long saying.
    “Not me,” I told her. “It just makes everything worse.”
    I stand now, grope my way through the dark to the bathroom, leave the light off, sit on the cool tile floor next to the toilet. I hang my