Barfing Laurel

   I used to read a lot of what are called "pro-ana" websites. They are created typically by teenage girls who feel they have the right to be anorexic or bulimic and they share tips on how to not eat or how to purge. Combine all that with the fact I recently met this really funny Somalia pothead teenager with no legs and with only one arm. This piece probably stemmed from a combination of those two things.

Once Laurel’s mouth filled with bright red, stringy saliva, she knew everything was up. The toilet was a pretty big mess of tan goo with whole peas floating around. Flashing in the middle, brighter than a stoplight, was the red Jell-O. Laurel spat forcefully into the toilet, flushed, closed the lid, and hoisted herself up to sit on the toilet seat. She gargled water from the glass she’d brought in with her, brushed her teeth, and finally rinsed with a stinging orange antiseptic mouthwash. Before getting into her wheelchair, she sat on the bathroom counter and took one last look in the mirror, her hands ran over her shrinking stomach. This bulimia is great!

The routine started an hour earlier when her mother called Laurel and her father to the kitchen for dinner. It would be too hard to not pig out on her mom’s grilled turkey sandwiches so she planned to barf it all up later. As with any new hobby, it was a learning process - and Laurel learned about a month into making herself puke a good trick was to down a cup-sized portion of red Jell-O before a meal. When it came up she knew she’d be done. Wow! This bulimia is a cinch!
Ever since she’d been seven years old, ever since the bottom half of her legs were stolen by a speeding El Camino that didn’t even think about stopping after running over her, Laurel felt like she’d been nothing other than “that funny girl in the wheelchair,” or “that really hilarious girl with no feet.” But that was about to change. After eight years it finally made sense to invest in permanent prosthetic limbs. She wanted to become the “the sexy girl with a great personality who walks with a weird limp.” As she steadied her body down from the counter into the wheelchair, Laurel’s normally strong arms shook unsteadily. For the past week or so she’d started to inadvertently use one of her stumps to leverage herself into the chair. Phew! This bulimia sure does take the wind out of your sails.
Her parents made the offer. Before, it had always been a matter of cost. They couldn’t afford the money for new prosthetic feet every time she’d outgrow them, but now the doctors said her bones were more or less fully developed and any artificial limbs she bought would just need to be adjusted. They were going to be fit to her stumps next week, four months before her high school graduation. This bulimia will help me fit into that dress so I can show off my acne free back.  

Laurel pulled at the wheels of her chair to roll backwards and lifted up the toilet seat to take a peak at the slowing churning water in the bowl. A few green peas covered in clumpy brown slime still bobbed and swirled around in the now clear water. She flushed again and rolled out of the bathroom into her bedroom.  She had the master bedroom. Her parents were so good to her, but she was tired of being a burden. Her dad had begged and borrowed to get the materials for all the ramps and bars everywhere in their house, and her mom still offered to rub salve on her stumps even though she was damn near 18 years old. 

It wasn’t like she was a cripple. She’d become the funny girl with two stumps by her freshman year. “My fuckin’ legs work asshole,” she’d say to new students who stared too long. During a project for her American History class she had most of the boys in the room almost crying with tears when she glued mutton chops to her face and performed a monologue about the conditions of Civil War battlefield hospitals in the voice of a confederate soldier amputee. But Laurel was done being the funny, freakish girl and wanted to go out as the funny, sexy girl. Her lean, strong arms would look great in a sleeveless dress, but the bulge up front just wouldn’t do.  

How long am I gonna have to keep this bulimia up before my wheelchair gut goes away?

 
Tammy, Laurel's mom, looked up from the sink  with the dinner dishes in her hand as Laurel rolled up to her. “Honey,” Tammy said sweetly, “are you feeling okay?” Then in a whisper, “I heard the toilet flush a couple times. Do you have diarrhea?”  
"Jesus mom! No. I took a giant dump that wouldn’t go down.”

“Okay. Okay - no reason to be gross.” Tammy scratched off a piece of hardened gravy from one of the plates with her pink fingernail - a skill she’d perfected at the diner where she waited tables. “So would you like dessert? Your father just went out into the garage to get an apple pie from the fridge.”
“Umm,” Laurel paused, then remembered she had plenty of Jell-O cups left. ”Okay.”
“Ala mode?”
“Sure.”

       God! This bulimia wouldn't be so bad if they’d just quiet feeding me.