Shout Her

Lovely Name
x
Natalie Serber

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

b o s ton n ew yor k 2012

Serber_SHOUT HER LOVELY NAME_F.indd iii 3/16/12 4:24 PM

 Copyright © 2012 by Natalie Serber

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book,

write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company,
215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

www.hmhbooks.com

These stories originally appeared, in some cases in slightly different versions,

in the following publications:

“Alone as She Felt All Day,” Clackamas Literary Review; “This Is So Not Me,”
Inkwell, Porter Gulch Review, and Air Fare: Stories, Poems, and Essays on Flight;
“Plum Tree,” Gulf Coast; “Shout Her Lovely Name,” Hunger Mountain;
“A Whole Weekend of My Life,” Bellingham Review.

These selections are works of fiction. Names, characters, places,

and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination
or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Permissions credits are located on page 227.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Serber, Natalie.
Shout her lovely name / Natalie Serber.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-547-63452-4
1. Mothers and daughters — Fiction. 2. Eating disorders — Fiction.
3. Families — Fiction. 4. Domestic fiction. 5. Psychological fiction.
I. Title.
PS3619.E7359S56 2012
813'.6 — dc23 2011036904

Book design by Melissa Lotfy

Printed in the United States of America

DOC 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Serber_SHOUT HER LOVELY NAME_F.indd iv 3/16/12 4:24 PM

 Content s

Shout Her Lovely Name 1

Ruby Jewel 21

Alone as She Felt All Day 39

Free to a Good Home 57

This Is So Not Me 73

Manx 85

Take Your Daughter to Work 107

A Whole Weekend of My Life 129

Plum Tree 149

Rate My Life 165

Developmental Blah Blah 187

Acknowledgments 225

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 Shout Her Lovely Name

May
In the beginning, don’t talk to your daughter, because anything
you say she will refute. Notice that she no longer eats cheese. Yes,
cheese: an entire food category goes missing from her diet. She
claims cheese is disgusting and that, hello? she has always hated
it. Think to yourself . . . Okay, no feta, no Gouda — that’s a unique
and painless path to individuation; she’s not piercing, tattooing, or
huffing. Cheese isn’t crucial. The less said about cheese the better,
though honestly you do remember watching her enjoy Brie on a
baguette Friday evenings when the neighbors came over and there
was laughter in the house.
Then baguettes go too.
“White flour isn’t healthy,” she says.
She claims to be so much happier now that she’s healthier, now
that she doesn’t eat cheese, pasta, cookies, meat, peanut butter, av-
ocados, and milk. She tells you all this without smiling. Standing
before the open refrigerator like an anthropologist studying the
customs of a quaint and backward civilization, she doesn’t appear
happier.
When she steps away with only a wedge of yellow bell pepper,
say, “Are you sure that’s all you want? What about your bones?
Your body is growing, now’s the time to load up on calcium so

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 2 Shout Her Lovely Name

you don’t end up a lonely old hunchback sweeping the sidewalk in

front of your cottage.” Bend over your pretend broom, nod your
head, and crook a finger at her.

“Nibble, nibble like a mouse, who is nibbling on my house?” cried

the old witch. “Oh, dear Gretel, come in. There is nothing to be
frightened of. Come in.” She took Gretel by the hand and led her
into her little house. Then good food was set before Gretel, milk
and avocado, peanut butter, meat, cookies, pasta, and cheese.

Your daughter stares up at the kitchen ceiling, her look a stew

of disdain and forbearance. “Just so you know, Mom, you’re so not
the smartest person in the room.” She nibbles her pepper wedge,
and you hope none of it gets stuck between her teeth or she will
miss half her meal.
Alone at night, start to Google eating disorder three times.
When you finally press enter, you are astonished to see that there
are 7,800,000 pages of resources, with headings like Psych Cen-
tral, Body Distortion, ED Index, Recovery Blog, Celebrities with
Anorexia, Alliance for Hope, DSM-IV.
Realize an expert is needed and take your daughter to a dieti-
tian. In the elevator on the way up, she stands as far away from you
as she possibly can. Her hair, the color of dead grass, hangs over
her fierce eyes. “In case you’re wondering, I hate you.”
Remember your daughter is in there somewhere.
This dietitian, the first of three — recommended by a childless,
forty-something friend who sought help in order to lose belly
fat — looks at your daughter and sees one of her usual clients. She
recommends fourteen hundred calories a day, nonfat dairy, one
slice of bread, just one tablespoon of olive oil on salad greens. You
didn’t know — you thought you were doing the right thing, and
you are now relegated to the dunce corner forever by your daugh-
ter who is thin as she’s always wanted to be.
The fourteen-year-old part of you — the Teen magazine–sub-

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 Shout Her Lovely Name 3

scribing part of you that bleached your dark hair orange with
Super Sun-In and hated, absolutely hated, your thighs; the part
that sometimes used to eat nothing but a bagel all day so if any-
one asked you what you ate, you could answer, A bagel, and feel
strong — that part of you thinks your daughter looks good. Your
daughter is nearly as thin as a big-eyed Keane girl, as thin as the
seventh-grade girls who drift along the halls of her middle school,
their binders pressed to their collarbones, their coveted low-rise,
destroyed-denim, skinny-fit, size-double-zero jeans grazing their
jutting hipbones. She is as thin as her friends who brag about
being stuffed after their one-carrot lunches.
“It’s crazy, Mom. I’m worried about Beth, Sara, McKenzie,
Claire . . .” she says, waving her slice of yellow bell pepper in the
air.
Google eating disorders again. This time click on the link under
standingEDs.com.
© iStockphoto.com

waif low-rise $59.50

100% cotton, toothpick leg, subtle fading and whiskering, extreme vintage
destruction wash, low-rise skinny fit, imported

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 4 Shout Her Lovely Name

July
Don’t talk to your daughter about food, though this is all she will
want to talk to you about. Spaghetti with clam sauce sounds amaz-
ing, she’ll say, flipping through Gourmet magazine, but when you
prepare it, along with a batch of brownies, hoping she’ll eat, she’ll
claim she’s always detested it. She’ll call you an idiot for cooking
shit-food you know she loathes. “Guess what, Mom,” she will say
with her new vitriol, “I never want to be a chubby-stupid-no-life-
fucking-bitch-loser like you.”
After you slap her, don’t cry. Hold your offending palm against
your own cheek in a melodramatic gesture of shame and horror
that you think you really mean. Feel no satisfaction. When she
calls you abusive and threatens to phone child protective services,
resist handing her the phone with a wry I dare you smile. Try not
to scream back at her. Don’t ask her what the hell self-starvation
is if not abuse. Be humiliated and embarrassed, but don’t make
yourself any promises about never stooping that low again. Re-
mind your daughter that spaghetti with clam sauce and brown-
ies was the exact meal she requested for her twelfth birthday, and
then quickly leave the room.

Lovely’s Twelfth-Birthday Brownies

2 sticks unsalted butter
4 ounces best-quality unsweetened
chocolate
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup fresh raspberries

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 Shout Her Lovely Name 5

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter large baking pan. Melt

together butter and chocolate over a very, very low flame
or, better yet, in a double boiler. Watch and stir constantly
to prevent burning. Turn off heat. Add sugar and stir until
granules dissolve. Stir in eggs, one at a time, until fully in-
corporated and the batter shines. Blend in vanilla; fold in
the flour and salt until just mixed. Add raspberries. Bake
for 30 minutes. The center will be gooey; the edges will
have begun to pull away from the sides of the pan. Try
your best to wait until the brownies cool before you slice
them. Enjoy!

Later, after you have eaten half the brownies and picked at
the crumbling bits stuck to the pan, apologize to your daughter.
She will tell you she didn’t mean it when she called you chubby.
Hug her and feel as if you’re clutching a bag of hammers to your
chest.

Indications of anorexia nervosa are an obsession with food and

an absolute refusal to maintain normal body weight. One of the
most frightening aspects of the disorder is that people with an-
orexia nervosa continue to think they look fat even when they
are wasting away. Their nails and hair become brittle, and their
skin may become dry and yellow.

Prepare meals you hope she will eat: buckwheat noodles with
shrimp, grilled salmon and quinoa, baked chicken with bulgur,
omelets without cheese. When you melt butter in the pan or put
olive oil on the salad, try not to let her see. Try to cook when she
is away from the kitchen, though suddenly it is her favorite room,
the cookbooks her new library. Feel as if you always have a sharp-
beaked raven on your shoulder, watching, pecking, deciding not
to eat, angry at food, and terribly angry at you.

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 6 Shout Her Lovely Name

Begin to have heated, whispered conversations with your hus-

band — in closets, in the pantry, in bed at night. He wants to sneak
cream into the milk carton. He wants to put melted butter in her
yogurt. He wants to nourish his little girl. He is terrified.
You are angry, resentful, and confused. You want help. You are
terrified.
“She’s mean because she’s starving,” he says. “How you feel
doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, but I have to live in this house too.”
“How you feel doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, but she used to love me.”
“This isn’t about you.”
Later — after you once again do not have sex — get out of bed,
close the bathroom door behind you, close the shower door be-
hind you as well, then cry into a towel for as long as you like. Ask
yourself, Is this about me?

September
Take your daughter to the doctor. Learn about orthostatic blood
pressure and body mass index. Learn that she’s had dizzy spells,
that she hasn’t had her period for four months. Worry terribly. Feel
like a failure: like a chubby-stupid-no-life-fucking-bitch-loser.
When the pregnant doctor tells your daughter that she needs to
gain five pounds, your daughter starts to cry and then to scream
that none of you people live in her body, you people have no idea
what she needs, you people are rude and she will listen to only
herself. You people (you and the doctor and the nurse) huddle to-
gether and listen. You don’t want to be one of you people, you want
to be hugging your frightened, hostile daughter, who sits alone
on the examination table. But she won’t let you. The doctor gives
her a week to gain two pounds and find a therapist or she will be
referred to an eating-disorder clinic. You want your daughter to
succeed. You want her to stay with you at home, to stay in school,

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 Shout Her Lovely Name 7

to make new friends, to laugh, to answer her body when she feels
hunger.
You watch your daughter watch the pregnant doctor squeezing
between the cabinet and the examination table and you know ex-
actly what your daughter is thinking — Fat, fat, fat.
Before you leave, the doctor pulls you aside and tells you that
your daughter suffers from “disordered eating.” She tells you to
assemble a treatment team: doctor, therapist, nutritionist, family
therapist. “You’ll need support; you’ll need strategies.”
You’ve never been on a team before. Ask the obvious question:
“Eating disorder versus disordered eating? What’s the difference?”
Get no answer. Try to go easy on yourself.

Knowledge about the causes of anorexia nervosa are not fully

known and may vary. In an attempt to understand and uncover
its origins, scientists have studied the personalities, genetics,
environments, and biochemistry of people with these illnesses.
Certain common personality traits in persons with anorexia
nervosa are low self-esteem, social isolation (which usually oc-
curs after the behavior associated with anorexia nervosa begins),
and perfectionism. These people tend to be good students and
excellent athletes. It does seem clear (although this may not be
recognized by the patient) that focusing on weight loss and food
allows the person to ignore problems that are too painful or seem
irresolvable.

Remember, you were always there to listen to painful problems,

to help. You kept your house purged of fashion magazines, quit
buying the telephone-book-size September Vogue as soon as you
gave birth to her. Only glanced at People in the dentist’s office. So
why? How? How did this happen to your family?

Karen Carpenter, Mary-Kate Olsen, Oprah Winfrey, Anne Sex-

ton, Paula Abdul, Sylvia Plath, Princess Diana, Jane Fonda, Aud-

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 8 Shout Her Lovely Name

rey Hepburn, Margaux Hemingway, Sally Field, Anna Freud,

Elton John, Richard Simmons, Franz Kafka, for Christ’s sake

You should never have paid Cinderella to enchant the girls at

her fourth-birthday party. Cringe as you remember the shim-
mering blue acetate gown and the circle of mesmerized girls at
Cinderella’s knees, their eyes softly closed, tender mouths slack-
ened to moist Os. Cinderella hummed Cinderella’s love song; she
caked iridescent blue eye shadow on each girl while they all fell in

© Elizabeth M. Perham

love with her and her particular fantasy. Know in your heart that
even though you canceled cable and forbade Barbie to cross your
threshold, you are responsible. You have failed her.
After the doctor’s appointment, drive to your daughter’s favor-
ite Thai restaurant while she weeps beside you and tells you she
never imagined she’d be a person with an eating disorder. “If this
could happen to me, anything can happen to anyone.”
Tell her, “Your light will shine. Live strong. We will come
through this.” Vague affirmations are suddenly your specialty.
“I’m scared,” she tells you.
For the first time in months, you are not scared. You are calm.
Your daughter seems pliable, reachable. During the entire car ride,
the search for a parking space, and the walk into the restaurant
you are filled with hope. And then you are seated for lunch and
she studies the menu for eleven minutes, finally ordering only a

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 Shout Her Lovely Name 9

green papaya salad. Hope flees and this is the moment you begin
to eat like a role model. You too order a salad; you also order pho
and salmon and custard and tea. Eat slowly, with false joy and fri-
volity. Show her how much fun eating can be! Look at me, ha-ha,
dangling rice noodles from my chopsticks, tilting my head to get it
all in my mouth. Yum! Delicious! Wow! Ha-ha! Ha-ha! Ha!

October
Rejoice! Your daughter adds dry-roasted almonds to her ap-
proved-food list. She eats a handful every day. She also eats loaves
of mother-grain bread from a vegan restaurant across the river.
You gladly drive there in the rain, late at night. In the morning,
she stands purple-lipped in front of the toaster, holding her hands
up to it for warmth.

People with anorexia nervosa often complain of feeling cold be-

cause their body temperature drops. They may develop lanugo (a
term used to describe the fine hair on a newborn) on their body.

Your daughter furiously gnashes a wad of gum. She read some-

where that gum stimulates digestion and she chomps nearly all
day. You find clumps of gum in the laundry, in the dog’s bed,
mashed into the carpet, stuck to sweaters. Seeing her aggressive
chewing makes your skin crawl. Tell her how you feel.
“Why?” your husband demands. “How you feel is irrelevant.”
“Good for you,” your childless friend tells you. “Your daughter
shouldn’t get away with railroading your family.”
“She's an angry girl.” The new therapist pinches a molecule of
lint from her fashionable wool skirt.
“She called me pathetic-cunt-Munchausen-loser.” Where did
your daughter learn this language? Your daughter has been re-
placed by a tweaking rapper pimp with a psychology degree.
“What does she mean?” you ask.

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 10 Shout Her Lovely Name

The therapist, in her Prada boots and black cashmere sweater,

speaks in a low voice. She has very short hair and good jewelry.
Stylish, you think; your daughter will like her.
“She means you are making up her problems to get attention,
Munchausen syndrome by proxy,” the therapist says.
You still don’t know what that means, so you volunteer infor-
mation. “She chews gum.”
“They all do.”

“I hate that bitch,” your daughter shrieks in the car on the way
home. “I’m never going back.” Remember to speak in calm tones
when you answer. Remember what the therapist told you about
the six Cs: clear, calm, consistent, communication, consequences
. . . you’ve already forgotten one. Chant the five you do recall in
your mind while you carefully tell your daughter that she certainly
will go back or else. In between vague threats (your specialty) and
repeating your new mantra, feel spurts of rage toward your hus-
band for sending you alone to therapy with your anorexic daugh-
ter. Also feel terribly, awfully, deeply guilty for feeling fury. What
kind of monster doesn’t want to be alone with her own child?
During this internal chant/argument/lament cacophony, right be-
fore your very eyes, your daughter transforms into a panther. She
kicks the car dash with her boot heel, twists and yanks knobs try-
ing to break the radio, the heater, anything, while screaming hate-
filled syllables. Her face turns crimson as she punches and slaps
at your arms. Pull over now. Watch in horror as she scratches her
own wrists and the skin curls away like bark beneath her finger-
nails. All the while she will scream that you are doing this to her.
Don’t cry or she will call you pathetic again. Remember that your
daughter is in there, somewhere. Tell her you love her. Refuse to
drive until she buckles in to the back seat. Wonder if there is an
instant cold pack in the first-aid kit. Wonder if there is a car seat
big enough to contain her. Yearn for those long-ago car-seat days.

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 Shout Her Lovely Name 11

Think, We’ve hit bottom. Think it, but don’t count on it. Then re-
member the last C: compassion.

For some reason, driving suddenly frightens you. When you must
change lanes, your heart thunks like a dropped pair of boots, your
hands clutch the steering wheel. You shrink down in your seat,
prepared for a sixteen-wheeler to ram into you. You can hear it
and see it coming at you in your rearview mirror. Nearly close your
eyes but don’t; instead, pull over. Every time you get into your car,
remind yourself to focus, to drive while you’re driving, to breathe.
Fine, fine, fine, you will be fine, chant this as you start your engine.
Be amazed and frightened by the false stability you’ve been living
with your entire life. If this can happen to you, anything can hap-
pen to anyone.
When your husband leaves town for business, worry about
being alone with your daughter. Try not to upset her. When she
tells you she got a 104 percent on her French test, smile. When
she tells you she is getting an A+ in algebra, say, Wow! Don’t let
her know that you think super-achievement is part of her disease.
Don’t let on that you wish she would eat mousse au chocolat, read
Simone de Beauvoir’s Le deuxième sexe, and earn a D in French.
Begin to think that maybe you are always looking for trouble,
Munchausen by proxy. Be happy when she has a ramekin of dry
cereal before bed.
Hug her before you remember
© Stephen Vanhorn | Dreamstime.com

she won’t let you, and don’t answer

when she says, “Bitch, get off me.”
In the middle of the night wake
her and tell her that you’ve had a
bad dream. Ask her to come and
sleep in your bed. When she does,
hug her. Comfort her. Comfort
yourself. Remember how she smelled as a toddler, like sweat and

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 12 Shout Her Lovely Name

graham crackers. Remember how manageable her tantrums used

to be. Whisper over and over in her perfect ear that you miss her.
That you love her. That she will get better. Know that she needs to
hear your words, believe that somewhere inside she feels this mo-
ment. In the morning, look away while she stands purple-lipped
before the toaster.

When your husband dedicates every Saturday afternoon to

your daughter, taking her to lunch, shoe shopping, a movie, use
the time to take care of you. Kiss them both goodbye and say
with a forced lilt, “Wish I could come too.” Quickly shut the front
door. Try not to register their expressions, the doomed shake
of your husband’s head, your daughter’s eyes flat as empty skil-
lets.
“Take some me time,” your childless friend urges. “Get a facial
. . . a massage . . . a pedicure. Take a nap, you’re exhausted. Read O
magazine.” The magazine counsels:

What to Do When Life Seems Unfair

Do you ask, “Why me?”
Or do you look at what your life is trying to tell you?
How you choose to respond to the difficult
things that happen to you
can mean the difference between a life of anger
. . . or joy.

Instead, take a long bath. Light aromatherapy candles and in-

cense. Pour in soothing-retreat bath oil. Even though it is only
eleven o’clock in the morning, mix a pitcher of Manhattans.

Mommy’s Manhattan
2 ounces blended whiskey, 1 ounce sweet vermouth, 1 dash bit-
ters, cherry

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 Shout Her Lovely Name 13

Play world music and pretend you are somewhere else. Except
of course you aren’t. You know you aren’t somewhere else because
as you were filling the tub you noticed raggedy bits of food in the
drain.
Wouldn’t she vomit in the toilet? Your daughter must be terri-
fied for herself to leave behind these Technicolor clues. Get in tub.
Continue adding hot water. Drain the water heater. Notice as the
water level climbs, covering first your knees, then your thighs, and
then your chest, that your stomach is nearly the last thing to go
under. Weeks of role-model eating have changed your body. Try
to love your new abundance.
When your husband and daughter return, you are still in the
tub. She slams her bedroom door. Your husband comes in and
slumps on the toilet, his head in his hands.
Quietly listen.
“She pretended not to know where the shoe store was. We
walked for forty-five minutes. Really, it was more of a forced
march.”
Say nothing, though you feel more than a dash of bitters; you
feel angry and tired of being angry. Stare at your wrinkled toes.
You are each alone: your daughter in her room, your husband on
the toilet, you in the tub. You’re each in your private little suffer-
ing-bubble.
“Exercise is verboten,” you say. The doctor has given you both
this directive.
“I know.” When his voice breaks and his hands shudder, get
out of the lukewarm tub. Climb into his lap, and put your arms
around him. Cling together.

November
Hooray! Your daughter has added whole-wheat pasta to her
approved-food list. At the doctor’s office, her blood pressure is

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 14 Shout Her Lovely Name

amazing! She’s gained five pounds! You people are all smiling. This
time in the elevator, your daughter stands right beside you. For
days you are happy.
Until you find her in the kitchen blotting oil out of the fish faji-
tas. When you confront her, tell her that is anorexic behavior, she
throws the spatula across the room.

Persons with anorexia nervosa develop strange eating habits such

as cutting their food into tiny pieces, refusing to eat in front of
others, or fixing elaborate meals for others that they themselves
don’t eat. Food and weight become obsessions as people with this
disorder constantly think about their next encounter with food.

Your daughter claims oil gives her indigestion, the food in the
drain is because of acid reflux, you are the one obsessed, you are
the one who is sick, she is fine.
You say, “Bullshit.”
“Shh,” your husband says. “Can we please have peace?”
Like a middle-school principal, he calls you into his home of-
fice to tell you that she doesn’t need to be told every single mo-
ment that something isn’t right. “Stop reminding her,” he says.
“Leave her alone. It’s hard enough for her without having to
faceherproblemeverysingleminute.”
He can’t even say the word anorexic.
Properly censured, return to the kitchen. Your daughter eyes
you with smug satisfaction and eats barely one half of a whole-
wheat tortilla — no cheese, no avocado — with her fish. A vise of
resentment tightens around you. Anorexia has rearranged your
family.

di·vorce [di-vawrs, -vohrs] — noun, verb -vorced, -vorc·ing

noun
a judicial declaration dissolving a marriage in whole or in

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 Shout Her Lovely Name 15

part, especially one that releases the husband and wife from all
matrimonial obligations.
any formal separation of man and wife according to estab-
lished custom.
total separation; disunion: a divorce between thought and
action.
verb (used with object)
4. to separate by divorce: The judge divorced the couple.
5. to break the marriage contract between oneself and (one’s
spouse) by divorce: She divorced her husband.
6. to separate, cut off: Life and art cannot be divorced.

Fantasize about how you will decorate your living room when
you live alone, when you disjoin, dissociate, divide, disconnect.
Imagine your new white bookcases lined with self-help books:

Wishing Well
The Best Year of Your Life
The Power of Now
When Am I Going to Be Happy?
Flourish
A Course in Miracles
Get Out of Your Own Way
The Upward Spiral
Forgive to Win!
Super Immunity
The Essential Laws of Fearless Living
Feel Welcome Now
100 Simple Secrets Why Dogs Make Us Happy

You’re filled with a thrilling flutter of shame. When did this be-
come about you?
• • •

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 16 Shout Her Lovely Name

Snoop. Look through your daughter’s laundry basket for vomity

towels. Stand outside the bathroom door and listen. Look in the
trash for uneaten food. Though you want to call her school to see
if she is eating the lunch she packs with extreme care every day
(nonfat Greek yogurt, dry-roasted almonds, one apricot), don’t.
When you find her journal, don’t read it. Her therapist has told
her she should record her feelings, her fears. You are desperate to
know what it says. The journal screams and whispers your name
all day long. Later, when you are folding laundry and can no lon-
ger resist, go back upstairs to her room and find that she hasn’t
written a single thing. Despair.

Visiting your parents at Thanksgiving, you realize that the dif-

ference between your father’s overdrinking and your daugh-
ter’s undereating is slim. Deny, deny, deny. The rest of the fam-
ily is acutely aware, and between watching alcohol consumed
and food left on the plate, your gaze ping-pongs between your
daughter and your father. Both start out charming enough. Your
daughter sets a beautiful table: plump little pumpkins carved
out, their tummies filled with mums and roses, thyme and lav-
ender, slender white tapers rising up from the center and flicker-
ing light over the groaning table. But as the afternoon progresses
and Grandpa’s wineglass is filled and emptied again, the turkey
carcass is removed and pies emerge, your daughter’s mood fades
to black.
“Junk in the trunk,” Grandpa slurs, patting your abundant rear
as he walks behind you. “Next year, we should all fast.” You want
to kill him.
Your starving daughter pushes away her plate, her face pinched,
disappointed, angry. You can see her mantra scroll across her eyes
like the CNN news crawl: loser . . . failure . . . pathetic . . . chubby
. . . What she calls herself is neither worse nor better than what she
calls you. It’s a revelation, and you repeat your Cs: calm, consis-

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 Shout Her Lovely Name 17

tent, compassion, communication, calamitous, collapse, cursed,

condemned.
At the hotel, your daughter insists on taking a long walk,
stretching her stomach, she calls it. You and your husband say no.
She throws a tantrum and you are all trapped in the hotel room,
staring at a feel-good family movie involving a twelve-step pro-
gram, cups of hot coffee, and redemption.

God, grant us the serenity to accept the things

we cannot change,
courage to change the things we can,
and wisdom to know the difference.

By the next doctor visit she’s lost six pounds and she cries and
cries. Your body goes cold. You feel like a fool, slumped on the
pediatrician’s toddler bench, staring at the wallpaper: Mother
Goose and her fluffy outstretched wings hovers above you with
bemused tolerance and extreme capability. An infant cries in the
next room and you yearn for the days of uncomplicated care and
comfort.
“I am so angry.” Your voice is not angry, it is depleted. You are
not as competent as Mother Goose, you are the woman trapped in
a shoe with only one child and still you don’t know what to do.
Your daughter agrees to go on antidepressants, to help her ad-
just to her changing body, the doctor says. When you leave the
office you drive straight to the pharmacy and then to a bakery
and watch her consume a Prozac and a chocolate chip cookie. Her
eyes, her giant, chocolate-pudding eyes, drip tears into her hot
milk; her hand shakes.

Antidepressants increased the risk compared to placebo of sui-

cidal thinking and behavior (suicidality) in children, adolescents,
and young adults in short-term studies of major depressive dis-

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 18 Shout Her Lovely Name

order (MDD) and other psychiatric disorders. Anyone consider-

ing the use of [Insert established name] or any other antidepres-
sant in a child, adolescent, or young adult must balance this risk
with the clinical need.

“It’s not my fault,” she sobs.

“Oh, Lovely.” You shake your head, review the many theories
that Google dredged up: genetic predisposition, a virus, lack of
self-concept, struggle for control, posttraumatic stress disorder.
“I didn’t want this,” she says.
“Of course you didn’t.”
“The voice scares me.”
“Voice?”
“My eating disorder. Tells me I suck and it never shuts up, only
if I restrict.”
Pay attention. This is language that you haven’t heard before.
Watch. Listen. Mood swings. Suicidal ideation. Changes in behav-
ior. Be terrified about everything. Ask with nonchalance, “This
voice, is it yours?”
She turns away from you. Her skin is the transparent blue of
skim milk.

Later, when you are alone, call your husband on his cell phone. He
is standing in line, waiting to board a plane. Don’t care. Scream
into the phone. Imagine your tinny, bitchy voice leaking around
his ear while men holding lattes, women with Coach briefcases,
students, and grandmas try not to look at his worn face.
“Say it out loud.”
“She has an eating disorder,” he mumbles.
“Not fucking enough,” you shriek, your hands shaking. Until he
says it loud, admits it fully to himself, you will not be satisfied. You
may have gone crazy.
“My daughter is anorexic. There.”
You let it lie.

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 Shout Her Lovely Name 19

“Are you happy now?” he whispers.

Oddly enough, you are momentarily happier.

March
She’s back. Your daughter dances into the kitchen, holding a piece
of cinnamon toast. She wants milk, 2 percent. She also wants a
cookie and pasta, a banana, a puppy, and a trip to Italy.
“I want some of those,” your husband whispers, nodding to the
prescription bottle on the windowsill.
You want this to continue. She may not be eating Brie and ba-
guettes, but she’s laughing. Her collarbones are less prominent.
She’s. Given. Up. Gum.
“The voice is leaving, Mom,” she confides. “It polluted every-
thing.” She smiles, hopeful and charming, so wanting to please.
Even though it may not completely be true about the voice, she
wants it to be and for now desire has to be enough. That she talks
about the voice without anger or tears takes a grocery cart of cour-
age.
“Quit worrying and watching me so much,” she says.
You nod and smile. You will never quit worrying and watch-
ing.
Weak spring sunlight fills your kitchen. Your daughter, with a
hand on her hip, stands before the open refrigerator, singing. You
still are not certain keeping her home and in school is the right
choice. A clinic may be inevitable. You’ve followed advice, you
have your team, yet letting go of watching and worrying would
require a grocery cart full of courage that you do not have. Just
yesterday you checked her Web history and found she’d visited
caloriesperhour.com.
“I’m hungry,” your daughter says.
You haven’t heard those words from her for nearly a year. Grab
on to them, this is a moment of potential. Look for more. Remem-
ber them. String them together. Write Post-it notes for the inside

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 20 Shout Her Lovely Name

of your medicine cabinet. Almonds! I hear me! Two percent milk!

I’m hungry! Dream of the day when your cabinet door will look
like a wing, feathered in hopeful little yellow squares.

Then Gretel, suddenly released from the bars of her cage, spread
her arms like wings and rejoiced. “But now I must find my way
back,” said Gretel. She walked onward until she came to a vast
lake. “I see no way across . . .”

Picture you people: your husband, the physician, the therapists

and nutritionist, family members — all standing across the water,
waving, calling; a part of her remains listening on the other side,
afraid to lose control, afraid to fail, afraid to drown.
Open your arms wide. Your daughter is getting nearer. Know
that it is up to her. Say her lovely name. Know that it is up to her.
Shout her lovely name.

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