Milk Fed - Melissa Broder Page 0,3

was stealing candy from convenience stores, eating other kids’ lunches in the coatroom. She eyed me from across a birthday party as I chewed a bite of cake. She threatened to ask my teachers what I was eating if I gained more weight. Once a month I was weighed on a scale at the YMCA. She didn’t yell in public, but in the car I would cry in the back seat.

At sixteen I began restricting my food intake for myself. I developed an arsenal of tricks: Diet Coke, cigarettes, fake-sweetened everything, meal delay, steamed vegetables, never eating with others. My grandparents and I took our trip to New York, but the restaurants that were once my temples had become a threat. I fended off cheese blintzes, knishes, and schnecken, replaced cherry hamantaschen with Dr. Brown’s diet soda. I slurped around matzo balls, set boundaries with bagels, found safety in pickles—so low-calorie, baruch hashem.

For years I couldn’t be thin enough. Then, in an instant, I was too thin. If I had 20 pounds to lose, I lost 45. I wanted to stay there forever. I pared my food back further: spinach, broccoli, steamed chicken. I called it my Spartan regimen. I felt high on my sacrifice.

But I was freezing all the time. I lived in the bathtub. A downy fur grew on my body. My period stopped. At night I dreamt of wild buffets. My hip bones chafed against the bed. At school there were whispers. My mother said nothing.

One night, I was shivering so badly I got scared I would die.

“I have to tell you something,” I said to my mother. “I think I have an eating disorder, anorexia maybe.”

“Anorexics are much skinnier than you,” she said. “They look like concentration camp victims. They have to be hospitalized. You aren’t anorexic.”

“I haven’t gotten my period in months.”

This troubled her. My fertility was important; she wanted grandchildren one day. She sent me to a nutritionist, who helped me increase my daily calorie intake. We did it slowly, methodically, with charts and lists that reduced every food to its serving size and caloric value.

I went from freezing to just cold. The shaking stopped. The fur disappeared. I could sleep on my stomach. The whispers got quiet. I bled again. But I remained engrossed in calories. The constant mathematics in my head never went away.

CHAPTER 3

As I waited in line at Yo!Good, I plotted the concoctions I would create if I ever found myself magically immune to calories. I envisioned red velvet yogurt dripping in caramel, freckled with slivers of Snickers. I buried a dulce de leche yogurt in marshmallow sauce, then poured a stream of crumbled Oreos over its sweet head. On a Dutch chocolate planet lived every species of gummy: bear, worm, fish, penguin, dino, and peach ring. It snowed Reese’s Pieces and chocolate sprinkles on a cake-batter-flavored mountain.

They had everything: strawberries in syrup, cookie dough balls, and tiny white chocolate nonpareils in a rainbow of pastel shades. They had hot fudge, warm caramel, and a butterscotch sauce that hardened at the moment of impact. They had a diet version of the hot fudge that made me consider, What if? What if I just had a drizzle? But the nebulous calorie count of a drizzle posed too many variables. I feared that if I tried the sauce once, I’d never eat my yogurt without it again. I didn’t trust myself to taste the fudge and let go.

Thankfully, the Orthodox boy didn’t say, “No topping?” the way the Subway sandwich artist always said, “No sauce?” I watched him closely as he pumped the yogurt, inspecting to make sure that he didn’t go over the top (that airspace was calorically uncountable). When he reached the top, I called out, “Stop!”

He stopped right away, brought the cup to the register, and pleasantly issued the total for the yuh-gort. Other than in his politeness, he showed no recognition that I was a regular customer. I was thankful for that.

I consumed the first three-quarters of the cup at the back corner table inside Yo!Good facing two walls. I was always cold, but I preferred to eat inside the chilly yogurt parlor than outside at the sunny tables, because they were popular. I had a specific style and rhythm with which I liked to eat the yogurt, and I didn’t want anyone watching me. First, I licked around the sides of the cup to get the melty parts. Then, I put spoonful after spoonful of the cooler