184 / MARYA HORNBACHER
my coat. All the other patients were staring at me, of course. I'd just left. A girl I'd gotten friendly with leaned over and said, Marya, eat.You were eating fine last week. I said,Yeah, well. It's not very polite to say, at dinner, that you only ate to get out to stop eating all over again. No good giving away tricks. People on eating-disorder units are notoriously supportive of one another's recovery. Less competition. The next thing I remember is at the end of the stay. The rest of it is gone. We were sitting—me, Dr. J., primary nurse, Kathi, my parents—in the conference room. They were discussing what would be done with me, as I was beyond their control at this point. I was staring out the window, tapping my foot as hard as I could, thinking: Butter, butter, butter, butter, trying to work off the butter I'd eaten at breakfast by wiggling and shifting and scooting around in my chair. Gray foggy day, dirty snow outside on the streets eight floors down. I remember they were talking about the unlikelihood that any eating-disorder unit would take me, given my history of total nonresponsiveness to treatment. Voices and voices. Dr. J. throwing his hands up, my parents shaking their heads, my mother with her head in her hands. Kathi's calm low voice, voice of reason. Butter, butter, butter, butter, butter, Marya? (MARYA.) I come to attention. Hmm? (Do you want to get well?) I'm not sick. Buzzing in my head. Habit of taking my own pulse, cold fingers pushed under the cuff of my coat, laid on the thin skin of my wrist. Still beating. Lose track while I'm counting, start over. Lose track. A small and private giggle. I can't count. Ugly winter's end, gray snow and city soot on the streets, bare trees. (MARYA.) Hmmm? (You see what I mean? someone says, not to me.) Willmar. The word shoots out into the room, cracks through the haze like a bullet. I sit up in my chair. Did someone say Willmar? Silence. They all stare at me. I start screaming. Willmar. Minnesota State Institution. For the legally insane. Where you are left to die in the kind, soft-spoken care of nice men in white coats. Never promised you a rose garden! screams this little girl, all eyes and bags of clothes. Fuck you all! she screams. I won't go, I won't go, I won't go!