My Secret Family

This Broken Art of Mine

Mia

56 kg

A bird's mother throws up food to feed it.

My mother spooned out a half-portion of mashed potato into my plate and cut the fat off my steak, despite my health-nut father grumbling that we all needed some fat, that some fat was good fat in moderation... that lecture I'd heard over and over every time we had a meal together. I desperately wanted to move out and not have them hovering over me, going to the bathroom after me just to check.

We had to eat a balanced diet, which meant gorging myself on disgusting animal parts and their favorite throat-cloyingly bland quinoa that tasted like a pile of termites. They loved saying quinoa, gloating every moment they knew how to pronounce it.

Pass the quinoa, darling. Have you had enough quinoa, darling? Give you sister some more quinoa.

My poor Addy, her face a carnival of emotion every time they put a bowl in front of her, starting with a look of disbelief, then exasperation that faded slowly to sullen acceptance. Other kids had cocoa pops and chocolate milk, she had to deal with food, to get through it. Then she'd glare at me and her eyes would say, this is all your doing.

They had changed their classic 'there are kids starving in Africa' speech after Addy asked them 'Just how do starving kids in Africa benefit from us eating all of this quinoa?' Now my dad had graduated to a psychological manipulation closer to home. How we couldn't afford to waste food because money was tight. How every meal was a blessing. Blah blah blah. Who cared? If we spent our entire lives eating perfectly balanced little meals our only reward would be to get old and die.

I wanted to die young and beautiful, to be an eternal memory of the best I would ever be.

I pretended to voraciously eat my dinner, listening to my parents argue about the cost of food, how we must not waste it on silly snacks and other weaknesses like that, my dad looking in my direction every time he said weakness. We all knew he wanted a boy. What a disappointment it must have been when I emerged from the womb with the wrong equipment, equipment not suitable for throwing balls or riding quad-bikes, but equipment that would break every so often, send me into tears, get me into 'serious trouble, young lady' if I was ever anything but virtuous.

I never wanted to cycle with him, despite getting a very expensive mountain bike for my birthday - (we don't have money for snacks, dear!) - more of an obligation than a gift. I never rode it once just to prove to them I couldn't be bought and that they didn't get me.

My signs of weakness, he would remind me. Every candy bar a humiliating defeat, every salty potato chip a tool designed to ensnare the weak-minded into some corporate-sponsored addiction of calorie-afflicted waste-products. My dad would die if he met Ana, but my crazy mom had met her after school a few times with a twinkle in her eye... my secret friend.

"Why aren't you eating?" My dad broke my thoughts.

"I am eating, " I said, pushing the food around, trying to compact the sprouts and hide and change the oh-so nutritious plate just so that it would disappear from my life. Right now someone in the world was eating a big steamy plate of lasagna and not having any guilt about it.

"What's wrong? You've only had half your lentils."

Uh, because I don't like lentils?

Ana had come into my life and now food had changed for me. She eliminated the pretense, the denial we were all in that we were going to live forever if only we ate lentils and beans and sprouts. Ana had won me over with her allure, her flirty eyelashes that promised seduction, wild men, and an oh-so sophisticated social life. She gave me hope, a goal I could reach. Just do ABC and everything will work out.