Wishbone Part 1
En excerpt from Jessica Murphy's brilliant novel about becoming a woman while contending with anorexia nervosa
In the hospital, an infant arrives by Caesarian two weeks late. Pink and shrivelled, yanked from the security of the womb, this alien appears, already old, inexplicably knowing, and prematurely small. With shiny eyes and a bald peach for a head, thumb and index finger lightly touching, a baby Buddha is born. A seemingly idyllic childhood precedes a turbulent adolescence in which growth and regression clash as the self, tiny and tentative, struggles for survival and as a body, on the brink of womanhood, is forced to cannibalize itself to stay alive.
Wishbone, by Jessica Murphy
If you’ve had an eye on my Instagram account, then you may have heard that my brilliant friend Dr. Jessica Murphy, who is a scholar and author, graciously agreed to let me publish an excerpt from her novel, Wishbone here.
This is not an easy book. Reading Jessica’s account of living with anorexia nervosa is exacting and often chilling. However, the text is both exquisitely crafted and powerful. Her work feels incredibly important.
I will be publishing Chapter 8 over 2 weeks. Please share this article with all those you think may be interested. This is a subject I think we could all benefit from being better-versed in.
Wishbone
by Jessica Murphy
CHAPTER EIGHT
A Cautionary Tale (as told by a mother to her daughter)
Turning the handle and opening the door slowly, as if entering the den of some wild beast, my friend, Janice, and her mother tentatively step into my room, my guests on this crisp, fall afternoon. Janice’s mother, a cold, haughty woman who tried and succeeded somewhat in thawing the warm tide of friendship between her daughter and me some months earlier, eyes me surreptitiously as though fearing that my illness may be contagious. Trying not to gawk but looking at me disapprovingly, she studies me carefully with an expression of intense curiosity mingled with mild terror, examining me like a caged animal in a zoo, taken from its natural habitat and now put on display for all to see—provided the visitors arrive during visiting hours.
“Hey buddy! How’s it going?!” says Janice, warmly, gazing about the room, “How’s the hospital? What are all these machines that you’re hooked up to?”
After naming each one and telling her its purpose, we chat about school and friends before discussing our plans once we finish high school in a few months. Glancing at her mother who nods approvingly, Janice then informs me that she may go to a prestigious private college next year or maybe to a popular but less esteemed college nearby with a strong Liberal Arts program.
“That’s my plan too…” I tell her, nodding as she mentions her second choice, while her mother does her best to appear disinterested in our conversation, “…if I get out of the hospital soon enough and manage to make up what I missed in school.”
“How long do you think you’ll be in here?” my friend asks.
Before answering, I glance at her mother, who looks away and pretends to be examining the paint on the wall just above my head.
“Who knows?” I reply, suddenly annoyed. “No one here tells me anything… I can’t even—”
“Janice, ” interrupts her mother, staring at her watch, “We must be going. Visiting hours are almost over. We have to leave immediately to move the car in the parking lot…”
Janice raises her eyebrows but does not respond or challenge her mother. Instead, she turns towards me once more.
“Okay… Well, bye, old pal,” says Janice, “We should hang out once you get out of here. Keep in touch.”
“Goodbye, dear,” Janice’s mom says to me, looking down the bridge of her nose and nodding stiffly before getting up and motioning to Janice to follow her.
“Bye…” I say sheepishly to both of them.
Before making their exit, Janice’s mom looks once more at her daughter, rosy and free with a promising future ahead of her, and then at me, sick and institutionalized with no release date in sight, as if viewing a chiaroscuro painting and noting the contrast between dark and light. While both darkness and lightness can coexist harmoniously, perhaps it is better to keep the two apart, her face seems to suggest, if only to let darkness fall and fade, obliterating itself, and lightness rise, soaring and achieving its full potential. Shutting the door firmly, she closes me in my iron cage, hoping that it is sturdy enough to contain me and bar me from Janice’s life forever, thus terminating an unfortunate chapter in her daughter’s social life. My visitors gone, the tale concludes with the following words permeating the air like Janice’s mother’s perfume:
What you are
is what we fear
becoming.
So let us go
far
far
away.
There,
in the land of normal and sane,
we will live free from folly and
pain.
The
End.
***
Part 2 - a longer excerpt - will be published next week. Please consider sharing this very important work.
Copies of Jessica’s novel may be purchased as a Kindle edition through Amazon.com.
Comments and thoughts are, as always, welcome and I will share them with Jessica.
Photo by Jairo Alzate on Unsplash
I went to school with Jessica Murphy, in the Liberal arts program that is mentioned. I'm glad she has found a way to turn the trials she was going through then into compelling art. The book looks like it offers a fascinating insight into the perspective of an anorexia sufferer at the time they are actually experiencing it.