On my fourteenth birthday, My Hunger stepped out of my body and sat beside me at my party. She looked me up and down before wrapping both hands around my slice of red velvet cake and whispered, “Well, I heard they get the colour from dead beetles anyway.”
My mother denied this, looked right through My Hunger and implored me to “Eat girl, it’s yuh birthday!” as she surveyed dirt in the cracks of my knees, collected from searching for evidence of beetle corpses in the garden.
I hid the cake in my pocket and discovered my aunts, gathered in the kitchen like a coven of witches casting spells. Halal chicken feathers burned over dancing orange flames. The fowl skin bubbled translucent and separated from the flesh, as hot oil spat like molten lava in a heavy cast iron cauldron. I considered the poor chicken hanging from its feet, a knife pressed against its throat, and wondered if the chanting of the prayer brought comfort whilst the cold blade sliced through the jugular.
“Why do we buy halal if we’re not Muslim?” I enquired.
“Because it’s cleaner, mi cyan stan di sight ah blood. Di Muslim dem ah drain it!”
My mother handed me a knife and an onion to initiate me into their sorority. As I chopped the pungent layers, my fingers tainted with the sharp odour and my eyes stung red. My Hunger observed the women, bellies and breasts one and the same, tear through flesh and suckle on marrow and discuss the benefits of the collagen in the gristle. They spat white shards on their plates, and I wondered how they ground the bone without piercing the soft delicate skin inside their palate or cracking a tooth. The Witches are round and soft with no edges, save the point of their canines. Men refer to them as thick, and their wardrobes and thighs burst with lycra when they heave their mass into the rainbow colours they peacock in at the dancehall.
“Mi nyam da chicken regardless!” Aunt Rose enveloped me in her thick sticky arms. A rogue dreadlock escaped from her bun as a guttural laugh escaped from her belly, and she pinched the doughy rolls hanging from my own. I wanted to carve them away with the bread knife at the table, to put each sliver in the toaster and burn them to ash.
“Why yuh nuh touch yuh birthday dinner baby girl?” My mother reached for a dumpling from my plate.
My Hunger looked me dead in the eye, “Feed it to the dog. He’s starving.” I thought about the heat from the scotch bonnet but I did it anyway.
When my mother found the rotten cake a week later, my pockets were stained crimson on account of the beetle’s blood.
+
At night My Hunger lay beside me in bed and stroked my hair. My stomach beat loud, like the timpani at the back of the orchestra. My Hunger pushed tissue in my mouth to mute the blows.
I dreamt I was in a lush green field stretched out on a tartan blanket that itched the back of my legs. Before me, spread a feast of moist white cream gateaux with glazed strawberry crowns and whole honeyed hams shot with peppercorns, golden buttery ackee and salt cured fish with sun yellow plantains, fried and honey sweet. I stuffed my face until I vomited and then I stuffed it again.
In the morning, I discovered blood on the sheets and skin under my fingernails. My Hunger sat on the end of my bed and rubbed my icy feet. “Skip breakfast, you’re not hungry, plus you had breakfast yesterday and that’ll be two days in a row now.” I pushed my toast under the bed and made a mental note to throw away the plates of rotting fruit, soft and black in the heat. A beetle burrowed into a decaying banana. I crushed it with the palm of my hand to see if it would bleed.
+
Despite her efforts to stay discreet, My Hunger underestimated the power of a Jamaican mother. Once she noticed I’d avoided a few meal times, my mother dragged My Hunger by her ankles from under my bed with the decomposed sandwiches and bowls of moldy brown stew. The familiar sting of her belt branded my exposed flesh, hot and tender.
“This ends now!” She threw open the windows as the dog crept in for scraps.
+
Stay at the clinic is by invitation only, and my mother had to provide photographic evidence of my affliction, as well as urine and stool samples to check my proteins. I brought My Hunger with me and she sat in the front of the car as she gets travel-sick.
She doesn’t usually leave the house but when she heard my mother tell me I was staying in the countryside for a while, she knew I would be afraid to put my own fingers down my throat and insisted on joining me for the trip. All patients were allocated a personal doctor who referred to our various conditions by an umbrella term known as “Reflex Departure”. The doctors specialised in returning the Reflexes to the body in a way they would be unable to escape again. There were no reports of secondary cases in patients healed at the facility.
+
I shared a room with only one patient, rather than the usual four. The door opened before I had the chance to knock and a despondent nod was the acknowledgment for my enthusiastic “Hello!” Alice’s yellow slacks swept the floor and her toenails were black underneath. She had split from her Vanity, and was under supervision to brush her teeth and hair, and to shower with soap. Left unattended, she refused to bathe and a post it note was stuck on her wardrobe as a reminder to change her clothes. Her previous roommate left to share with four other girls in a larger dorm, since they were only missing their Laughter, and maintained the usual standards of hygiene. On my first night at the clinic, I slept with the windows open, as once Alice bathed and her nurse left, she slipped out of the dorm to rummage through the dustbins naked, and I had to cover my nose on her return.
All patients gathered in the dining room for breakfast. I was asked to give the obligatory awkward introduction, in which I had to include an interesting fact about myself, along with my name. I said the woman who lived next door to us had been strangled at home and I wasn’t allowed to answer any questions as the case was under investigation. I felt interesting and exotic and I was proud of myself for the ease in which the lie slipped off my tongue. The conversations I expected would follow were scarce at first, with silent judgment served alongside the bread. It reminded me of the first day of school, when you scope out the competition and decide whom you want as your best friend. I sat with Alice, conscious of the other girls mistaking her stench for my own, but I knew inhaling her body odour would make it easier for me to vomit afterwards.
Bigger girls hustled for seconds, sometimes thirds and their primal greed meant my avoiding the spread went unnoticed. My Hunger stayed in a separate building with the other Reflexes within the compound, and I longed for her embrace when I spied their morning exercise routine outside the window.
Since dorms were void of mirrors, the only way to see our reflection was to wait until nightfall and stand in front of a window. I spent my free time pinching the fat inside my thighs and under my arms, using my thumb and index finger to measure for any inches lost. Alice tore her hair out from the roots. I found her strands of hair on everything, on top of the toilet seat, inside the sink and on my toothbrush. Her scalp was a garden of short chestnut bushes and a smooth patio that she rubbed her middle finger on for comfort. When I pulled a mousy brown tendril from the back of my throat, I hoped she would lose the remainder of her hair quickly.
I didn’t come to the clinic to make friends, yet I was glad for the company of those who understood and shared similar conditions. We practiced daily therapy, had one to one coaching, foraged in nature and visited art galleries and museums. I enjoyed weekly lessons in Fine Art and culinary skills, and though the girls with hollows instead of eyes were unable to appreciate the brush strokes of a Monet, their cooking was delicious, given their sense of smell was stronger than most. Pupil loss was a rare side effect of Envy, which in turn, heightened their remaining senses, and they were able to identify the most pungent herbs and appropriate measurement of ingredients.
I savoured these meals before flushing away the vile evidence down the toilet.
Despite the separation from My Hunger, trusted strategies enabled me to continue our progress. Our nature walks allowed me to fill my pockets with small stones I found nestled in the grounds of the clinic. I stuffed these in my knickers before my daily weigh in, and watched the numbers on the scale rise, and the nurse nod and mutter “mm hmm,” as she ticked a box in my medical notes.
We had been pre-warned during a lecture that our Reflexes would likely suffer from separation anxiety, and under no circumstances must we reconnect with them unsupervised. To do so would regress our treatment, and they would be able to regain control over our bodies. Rumours of Reflexes hiding in cupboards and under beds were rife, and signage in our dorms warned of harsh punishment if a Reflex was found on the premises. Details were omitted, but the girls were smart enough to not get caught. Fireside lore of previous patients disappearing from the clinic and not returning home were enough to scare us all into almost decent behaviour.
Patients were given an initial schedule to reside at the clinic but the doctors were unable to estimate the true time and level of treatment we needed to heal. Many young girls admitted to the clinic would leave as women, some past the age of the change, childless and alone. Alice was in her twenty-second year. She didn’t readily give up this information, and her comical appearance confused me. Recently, she began to change her clothes three times a week. Her wardrobe was a jukebox of the past century and her outfit choices were a blend of Starman Bowie and Dorothy Gale. One night, I heard a soft tap on the window. I assumed it was Alice returning from her nightly dustbin escapade and drew back the curtain to see My Hunger, eager to share the story revealed to her by Alice’s Vanity. Alice had been a child actress I didn’t recognise, but had some minor success on the small screen until she started puberty and her career ended overnight. My Hunger regaled this tale with glee in the bathroom, whilst cradling my head over the toilet and smoothing my hair away from my face like old times. I laughed at Alice’s desperation to be seen as young again before I realised she was slowly recovering from her affliction. Our recent art classes on the Renaissance had tuned her into the intricacies and depth of visual beauty. She was yet to grasp the importance of personal hygiene, so her putrid scent still gave me the fuel I needed to vomit, but the desire to regain her youth was the first step towards recovery. I was happy for her.
As she was leaving, My Hunger gestured for me to join her and for a fleeting moment I considered my own escape. I packed a small bag in haste before taking a second to pause and breathe, a coping mechanism we had been taught in therapy, now seared in my subconscious. I was unsure if I feared leaving Alice alone, or the unknown disciplinary I would receive from the doctors should I get caught. I realised abandonment was the root cause of her disease and I somehow felt responsible for the small progress Alice had made after a number of years, plus I was aware of the consequences of sudden change. As I drew back the curtain, I caught a glimpse of the scar above my eyebrow, a reminder of the traditional Caribbean punishment of the belt or slippers. Sometimes both. I kissed My Hunger goodbye at the window and instead, welcomed her into my sleep, like an old friend.
In my dreams, we were both on our knees in the garden, crushing black beetles with our palms.
+++
Amanda Miles-Ricketts is a writer from a leafy North London suburb, where she lives with her husband, two daughters and a cat. She has a BA in Journalism from the University of the Arts and writes short stories, flash fiction and poetry.