Jill reads cookbooks. She cooks—mostly chicken. There is a running joke that everything she makes turns into chicken. It might start as steak or pasta, but it ends up being chicken. She lives with her sister and brother-in-law during the summer as the nanny for her nieces. She likes to serve and sits at the kitchen table talking and laughing nervously while the family enjoys the chicken dinner she made. This is not the right time for her to eat; it might not even be the right day.
All the girls ever see her eat is an apple every other day while she watches All My Children in the living room, doing sit-up after sit-up. They don’t really think much about it. To them she is kind of weird, always sick, and irritating: she makes them watch Sesame Street on the little T.V. in their parents’ room because it comes on at the same time as her soap opera. Sometimes, they notice she is grumpy and preoccupied, but they don’t understand why.
If someone forces her to, sometimes she will eat more than her apple. She always makes herself vomit after this happens. The girls learn this is called bulimia. They learn that eating only an apple every other day is starving oneself, and that is called anorexia. And they learn that these two things can be fatal, but they don’t fully understand. The younger one will tell a skinny girl in her kindergarten class that she is anorexic and she will die. After getting an angry call from that child’s mother, Jill’s sister will have to explain that these are not diseases one is born with. She will tell her daughter that it is something people do for control and to be thin.
In a few years, Jill’s parents will have drained their life-savings sending her to various treatment facilities. Her father will tell her they can’t afford to do this with her anymore. He won’t yell or be angry. He’ll say that if she doesn’t stop this then she will die. Most likely, he reaches across the table and places his hand on hers. He’ll say they will all be sad and miss her, but after a while their lives will go on. They will have Christmases, make memories, celebrate milestones in each other’s lives, and she’ll just be dead. He will probably tear up as he tells her this, not knowing if she can or will save herself. He will make sure she knows how much it hurts him to have to say this to her because he loves her so. He