Free Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia by Marya Hornbacher Page B

luv (name).”
    When we first arrived in Minnesota, I went on a desperate crusade to get my parents to buy all the stuff that “everyone else” had: microwaves, VCRs, reproductions of bad art in gilded frames, plush couches, sports cars, expensive clothes that I would surely outgrow within weeks. They, refused. I gave up my cause and settled, for good, on the goal of getting thin.
    The year is 1984. It is fall and I am in Mrs. Novakowski's fifth-grade class. I am living in the land of the Pretty Blond Girl in White.
    I am not a pretty blond girl. I am short, solid, brown haired, freckled, snub-nosed, and loud. I can't help it. I try to be dainty and pleasant and sweet. It works for about five minutes at a time, when suddenly I laugh too loud, or shout out in class, or get in a fight. Every time this happens, in the embarrassed aftermath, I am suddenly, horribly fat. I pull my sweater down over my butt because it is too big. My thighs are also too big, and my boobs poke out through my shirt. I cross my arms over my chest and put my hand over my mouth to shut myself up. I am too much. There's too much of me. My parents are weird, and I wear Lee jeans, not Guess. Plus, I puke in the bathroom during recess, and that is definitely not dainty. Definitely gross.
    Eeew , say the blond girls during sex ed class as we watch the screen showing the weird cross-sectioned female lower body. The body is outlined in pink, and it suddenly starts to bleed as the motherly voice-over tells the blond girls that they, too, will bleed, and that they should watch what they eat as they go on their Journey to Womanhood, or else they'll break out in zits. Meanwhile, under the desk, I am surreptitiously bleeding. I picture myself cross-sectioned.
    I fold my arms over my chest and say, overvigorously, Eeew .
    That year, I began posting letters to my mother: a note in the sewing room, an eleven-page missive on my best stationery folded neatly in her jewelry box. It was at about this point that my poor dad told me that I needed to get a bra because, in a white T-shirt (he stood, staring at his shoes) I was a little (he rubbed the stubble on his chin), I looked a bit (he twitched and pulled at his ear), well, busty . There was no reply to my mother-bound letters, which form-ally requested some data on the female body and what, theoretically , might be happening to mine. The
    only response was from my father. He freaked out. He was jealous that letters, marked PRIVATE, were circulating. He began to avoid me. My mother averted her eyes when I asked; Did you read my letter? Yes. Well? I'll talk to you later.
    Something had to be done. I finally accosted her in the living room and demanded that she take me to buy a bra. I HAVE TO HAVE A BRA, I declared. Why? she asked. I burst into tears because she couldn't see that I was wiggling and jiggling everywhichway and what I really wanted was a good butcher knife to chop 'em right off, which I actually threatened to do once, as I sat sullenly in the car with my father. He believed me. But my mother, sighing heavily, said, well all right. Everything was silent: our drive to the mall, our walk through the shops, our perusal through the children's department of Dayton's, where, of course, none of the damn things fit. But we bought them anyway, ugly white training bra contraptions that itched and pinched. They were too tight. My mother was inexplicably furious, so I thought I'd best shut the hell up.
    When I was ten, I also got my first period. I took a five-dollar bill from my stash of runaway savings and tromped up to Valley View Drug Store. I plunked a box of tampons on the counter, stared at the ceiling, and paid. Back home, I locked myself in the bathroom and read the directions very carefully. I hated the diagrams; more cross-sectioned half-bodies. But, truth be told, I was glad. For some reason, I had an innate sense that menstruation was a good thing. All the literature on eating disorders claims that anoretics