The Right Intention Page 9

  It was almost dark when a dog began sniffing at the bush. She realized she must have been staring at this one leaf for a long time. In an attempt to put the cold and the wet out of her mind, she’d resolved to contemplate one of the shrub’s branches and then zoomed in until she found her attention focused on a single leaf sticking out at her like a tiny green tongue. First indifferently, then in curiosity, she’d leaned toward it. An hour later, when the dog started sniffing around the bush, Sara was utterly engrossed in its simple beauty. Fleshy-looking, it was divided in two by a vein on its underside that branched off into asymmetrical hands. Water made the other side look unusually dark and shiny. And yet it was not the sum of its parts that made the leaf beautiful, but the fact that it transcended beauty, the leaf did, in a way that made it imposing and indisputable, like a cathedral.

  When the dog stuck its snout into the bush and turned its glassy eyes toward her, Sara felt like she’d been caught in a private act. The stupid look on its face lasted a few seconds, the animal mesmerized by her—a strange object. She struck its nose, hard, and it gave a little whimper, followed by two sharp barks.

  “Indi!” shouted a woman, calling the animal.

  The dog thrust its head in at another spot and stared at her, growling low and throaty; she responded, growling back like a dog whose territory has been threatened.

  “Indi!” the voice repeated, coming close. “What is it? Did you find something? Is there a little doggie in there?”

  Sara saw two hands part the branches and a rosy round face appear. She screamed as loud as possible. The woman’s face froze in a rictus of panic and Sara ran. There was no one on the path, but fear made her run through the trees. She was panting and felt like her heart was about to explode. The bush she hid in this time was smaller than the previous one so she had to force herself into a narrower space, branches digging into her.

  Night fell slowly and Sara didn’t dare come out until hours after dark. Upon emerging, she felt that she had quite naturally adopted an animal way of walking, of moving—the cadence of a trot, head slightly forward and down, as though tracking someone’s scent. That night she didn’t go directly to the lake but first circled it, all the while feeling the authoritative satisfaction of one whose grounds are in perfect order. She wanted to yell, drag herself across the ground, sweat, eat flesh.

  Sara would never recall how she got there or what exactly she did that night. She does remember that, waking up in the morning, she was hiding in a bush at the edge of the park. It was a beautiful day and her pink watch said Friday. Her head hurt and her clothes were damp. Her skin, though, was dry and whitish and the feel of wet fabric gave her a visceral displeasure. She took off her shirt and pants and curled up in the beam of sunlight streaming into the bush. Although her body accepted the warmth with pleasure, she remained completely tense.

  A man’s voice said, “Look, there’s no one here.”

  A woman: “I know.”

  Through the branches, two bodies lying together on the grass, kissing.

  From that moment on, Sara had only extremely vague, disjointed memories of the whole scene: the tips of her shoes, a used syringe, the light, the rotten smell coming from her clothes.

  The man was saying, “But there’s no one here.”

  And the woman: “I know.”

  He parted the woman’s legs with his knee and pushed his thigh towards her crotch, licking her neck. Sara felt herself slipping away, as if her senses had reached the limits of the tolerable. Not just the couple but everything, even the most insignificant objects, seemed to be shrieking horrifically, producing a sound that grew exponentially louder until finally it stopped at an unbearably sharp, sustained note.

  “No, let’s go to your place,” she said, but the man kept licking her neck.

  It was too hot, or too cold, and the brightness hurt her eyes. The ringing sound was still deafening but at the same time she heard, with perfect definition, the sound of their two bodies rubbing against one another.

  “Let’s go to your place,” the woman repeated, but in an acquiescent tone signaling the opposite, spreading her legs as the man climbed on top of her.

  If anyone had asked Sara what she felt, at that moment, she’d say that out of nowhere came a great silence, and then it was as if everything cracked, breaking into individual pieces, and each of those pieces into smaller ones, and so on, until a point that seemed impossible and yet everything still kept breaking into simpler and simpler parts, and that in this process everything not only lost all harmony but stopped making any sense. Sara leapt on the man. Leapt as though destroying him would restore order once more. The woman screamed. Sara can recall her face—her wide-open eyes, her mascara. She bit the man’s arm but he threw her off, leaving her sprawled on the grass. It was like challenging a colossus to a fight to the death. She leapt again, trying to bite his neck. Sara remembers the thick heavy air, and that the man finally grabbed her firmly by the shoulders. Meanwhile, she kicked, trying to turn and bite him somewhere, anywhere. She managed to wriggle free and then attacked again. Then nothing.

  She must have gotten hit because now, in the room she finds herself in, opening her eyes, Sara discovers that she can’t move and feels a sort of pain, a stinging, in her right cheekbone. The room is white, like a hospital. There’s a chair by her bed. Lifting her head, she can see her feet, absurdly small, and a door through which she can glimpse a bathroom. A woman walks in. Smiles. Sits in the chair beside her.

  “Hello,” she says.

  “Hello.”

  “Are you feeling better?”

  “Yes,” she replies, not knowing why she’s being asked that but guessing that the right answer is yes. She feels weak.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Sara.”

  “Someone must be trying to find you; I bet someone’s very worried about you, you know.” The woman smiles. She’s got lipstick on one tooth.

  “Can you give me a phone number? Someone we can call and tell you’re here?”

  Sara recites a number, a name. Both seem to have come from far away, but she remembers them distinctly, simple and decontextualized, like two foreign objects.

  “What were you doing in the park, Sara?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Why did you try to hit that man?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The woman smiles again.

  “You rest,” she says, placing a hand on Sara’s forehead. “We’ll call your mother.”

  Sara feels the urge to cry. The lipstick-toothed woman gets up and leaves. Then comes a very long and very white silence, a silence inhabited by metallic sounds coming from behind the door and voices off in the distance. A nurse comes in with a little cart, rolls it over to the bed and uncovers it. She says something Sara can’t fully make sense of.

  “We’re not allowed to untie you.”

  She raises the top of the bed with a lever until Sara is upright with a tray before her on which sit a steaming cup of broth, a little bit of ham and a yogurt. Sara wants the woman to leave but the woman does not leave. She spoons broth into Sara’s mouth. One spoonful, then another, and another. The hot liquid burns her guts like acid.

  “No more,” says Sara.

  “You have to eat it all, doctor’s orders.”

  Another spoonful of broth, and another.

  “No more, please,” Sara says.

  “I’m sorry,” the bovine nurse replies tenderly.

  Sara looks at the ham, feels nauseous and vomits onto the tray. The nurse leans away to avoid being splashed and wordlessly removes the tray and dirty sheet like a dog accustomed to being beaten.

  “What did they do to me?” she asks.

  “Nothing, sweetheart, what would they do? Try to make you better, that’s all.”

  Sara begins to cry. Slow, heaving sobs. She tries to stop and can’t, it’s too late. She’d always been so proud of her ability to hold back her tears. Now the shell of her visible strength cracked, it�
��s as if she’s melting in the sickening viscosity of snot and tears.

  “Poor baby,” the nurse says, leaning in with a little cloth she uses to wipe her face and then holds to Sara’s nose so she can blow. “Poor, poor baby.”

  Sara feels contempt for the woman.

  Her perfume smell.

  Her woebegone eyes.

  Her matronly bosom.

  But she feels incapable of showing her contempt. Contempt requires too much strength. She’s so small, her enemy enormous. This woman could break Sara’s bones just by hugging her, could suffocate her with nothing but her body weight.

  “I’ll talk to the doctor, don’t you worry. Cry all you want, nothing wrong with that.”

  By the time she stops crying, Sara can hardly feel the pudgy hand stroking her hair. The white of the room darkens, turns black, leaden, and later light, and then black again, and in that confusion she is falling into nothingness, a fragile and enfeebled darkness, wanting to be tiny, tinier still: a speck of dust, an invisible insect that can escape under the door, air. But not like before, not feeling the urge to shout but feeling the whole world is on her shoulders and she’s going to die, without actually doing it.

  “You rest a little,” the nurse says, exiting with her little cart.

  Then silence. Silence, flooding the room, like a strange part of herself.

  It’s almost dark out when the door opens and the woman with the lipstick tooth says, without actually entering the room, “Sara? Good, I just wanted to make sure you were awake. Look who’s here, look who came to see you.”

  A woman who looks like her mother walks in, a woman who, like her mother, wears a blue dress, and a gold chain, and shoes like her mother’s, but this woman is also exceedingly pale. And looks thinner, and has purple bags under her eyes. She’s also carrying a bouquet of red flowers, which she places on the nightstand, trying to smile. She doesn’t know how to behave.

  “Sweetheart,” she begins.

  Sara realizes that now she is supposed to give some sort of explanation—cry, feel guilty; but she can’t make any of those feelings show on her face genuinely.

  “Does she really have to be tied up like that?” her mother asks, turning to the woman.

  “I don’t think so, I’ll speak to the doctor.”

  “Good God, look at your eye. Does it hurt?”

  Two men come in and free her from a complicated contraption involving straps and buckles. Her mother kisses her. Cries. Sniffles.

  “Sweetheart, say something,” she says.

  Sara doesn’t know what to say and says nothing.

  “Tomorrow you’re going to be moved to another building. They have a program for girls like you. Right, doctor?”

  The doctor, a man of about forty wearing a white coat full of pens, whose presence she hadn’t noticed until that moment, says, “Yes,” and gives a slow, serene nod, a papal nod.

  “They’re really going to help you, you’ll see. You’ll be home in a week.”

  “That depends on her progress,” the doctor amends.

  “I know. But you will, you’ll be back home in a week.”

  She kisses her again. Sara is sickened by the feel of her mother’s tears on her cheek.

  “Your father’s right outside. Should I tell him to come in?”

  “No.”

  “He asked me to tell you he’s sorry. He didn’t mean to slap you that day, you know that.”

  A few seconds later, the doctor kicks everyone out of the room. He holds out a white capsule and a glass of water.

  “Take this. It will help you sleep.”

  It’s dark out when the door is closed. A strip of white light shines under on the floor tiles. So many eyes, out there.

  It’s 10:30 on the worm minute-hand of her pink watch, and Sara is in a different room. She was pushed, in a wheelchair, down an interminable white hall, taken up in an elevator. The only sound the clacking of nurse shoes, the only smell vaguely disinfected. Oral Medicine. Eating Disorders. This room is smaller than the last one, but it does have a window that looks onto what must be a garden. She climbed into a cold bed and a nurse, jabbing a needle into her arm, hooked her up to a transparent tube connected to a saline bag.

  “If it gets backed up, if it stops dripping, if the needle falls out, you call me. Try not to move your arm, and don’t touch anything,” she recited, like the chorus of a song learned by heart. Then another woman walked in.

  “You’re going to have a roommate,” she remarked, sliding her bed over slightly to make room. “The two of you can chat, that will be nice.”

  Ana. The door opened and: Ana. The door opened and: Ana’s enormous brown eyes and Ana’s nose and the mole on her left cheek, and Ana’s hands and feet, so like her own, and even a little tube like hers, leading to a contraption attached to her bed that the nurse kept her hand on, as though afraid it might fall.

  “Hello,” said the nurse.

  But Ana said nothing, made no sound to accompany the nurse’s words, no movement with her arm. What she did do, throughout the complicated series of maneuvers undertaken to wheel her past, was stare fixedly at Sara the whole time. It was obvious she’d been bathed, even had her hair washed, because Sara was getting a faint shampoo smell. And she had a red hairclip on one side, holding her bangs behind her ear, and a fake-gold ring with a huge lilac-colored stone that looked like a diamond on one finger. And eyes.

  “This is going to be nice for the two of you, you’ll see,” the nurse said. “Ana, this is Sara; Sara, Ana.”

  They were both about to say hello but then didn’t say hello. Hello would have been what everybody said and they weren’t like other girls. They waited for the nurse to leave and then gazed at each other. Both of them wanted to talk, Ana even made a rueful attempt, which foundered, ending in something that sounded like a cough.

  “What happened to your eye?” she finally asked.

  “I hit a guy.”

  “Oh.”

  Ana lowered her gaze slightly, to the sheet. She twisted her ring a few times and then suddenly stared straight at Sara.

  “Did you notice we both have names that only have As? Ana, Sara.”

  She’d launched into the observation almost enthusiastically but halfway through seemed to regret it, and their names, by the time she finished, were spoken almost in a whisper.

  “Yeah,” Sara replied. “I’m seventeen.”

  “I’m sixteen.”

  “You’re really pretty.”

  Ana stared at her gravely when she said that. They remained quiet for a moment.

  “That’s not true,” she said. “I’m not pretty.”

  “I don’t want to be pretty,” Sara answered.

  “Me either, I don’t want to be pretty either,” Ana replied hurriedly, as though prettiness excluded her from a group she wanted to belong to.

  “I like your mole.”

  “Thank you.”

  They fell silent again, continued staring at one another. It wasn’t that they had nothing to say, it was that they had too much, and neither of them knew where to begin. Sara would have liked, right off the bat, to tell Ana about the park, the lake, the light of the streetlamps reflected in the water at night. Their age difference had ranked her in a position of superiority, and this had immediately restored her sense of power. Ana had given her a look of admiration when she told her she’d hit that man, and from that moment on Sara had the urge to look in the mirror. She hadn’t seen her own reflection in a long time.

  “Aren’t there any mirrors around here?” she asked.

  “In the bathroom, maybe, but you’re not allowed to get up,” Ana replied.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Outwardly, the image of the person in the mirror reflected no evil. She wore a hospital gown with polka dots and had short hair. Though not pale, the girl’s skin had a sickly transparency, accentuated by her dark, almost brown, lips. Her right eye, which was totally bruised, looked swollen an
d had a yellowish tone. Ana’s huge, silent brown eyes suddenly appeared behind the girl’s back. Like Sara, she’d gotten out of bed and brought her saline bag with her.

  “I haven’t seen myself in a long time,” Sara explained, not moving.

  Ana stood, waiting, in the doorway for a moment and then approached, filling the empty section of mirror as though attempting to complete an unfinished portrait, also looking surprised by the girl reflected there.

  “I used to look at myself all the time,” Ana said. “I looked at myself so much I couldn’t stand it, but I couldn’t stop, either. Isn’t that stupid? I’m so stupid.”

  “No, you’re not stupid,” Sara replied firmly, still staring in the mirror, motionless.

  Something happened then. Perhaps it was her words. Perhaps it was that Ana had made her comment jokily, but Sara hadn’t joked in response. Perhaps it was the soft bathroom lighting and the two of them there, in the mirror, suddenly frozen, as though waiting for someone to snap a photo, as though they’d been instructed not to speak and to stare at one another until there was nothing left to understand.

  They were all called together for the first time that afternoon. The oldest girl was nineteen, bleached blonde and named Maite. The next was eighteen and had a horsey smile, which she displayed whenever she didn’t know what to do or say, and her name was Nuria. The third in line was also eighteen and had a difficult name that Sara could never remember; she always wore a pair of slippers her mother had brought her. Then came her, and Ana. A woman told them that they were sick and that the first step toward recovery was admitting their illness. Then she talked about fats and their vital function in a woman’s body. Finally she explained the rules, which basically came down to a one-hour talk with a psychologist and strict vigilance—she emphasized the word—at mealtimes, which could result in their being punished or rewarded, depending. Nobody wanted to talk at first, they all stared at the floor when the woman asked them to introduce themselves. When it was her turn, Sara said her name and that she was seventeen, and had no siblings, and liked to draw, a fact which seemed to really please the woman.