Shout Her Lovely Name Read Free Page B

Though you want to call her school to see if she is eating the lunch she packs with extreme care every day (nonfat Greek yogurt, dry-roasted almonds, one apricot), don’t. When you find her journal, don’t read it. Her therapist has told her she should record her feelings, her fears. You are desperate to know what it says. The journal screams and whispers your name all day long. Later, when you are folding laundry and can no longer resist, go back upstairs to her room and find that she hasn’t written a single thing. Despair.
     
    Visiting your parents at Thanksgiving, you realize that the difference between your father’s overdrinking and your daughter’s undereating is slim. Deny, deny, deny. The rest of the family is acutely aware, and between watching alcohol consumed and food left on the plate, your gaze ping-pongs between your daughter and your father. Both start out charming enough. Your daughter sets a beautiful table: plump little pumpkins carved out, their tummies filled with mums and roses, thyme and lavender, slender white tapers rising up from the center and flickering light over the groaning table. But as the afternoon progresses and Grandpa’s wineglass is filled and emptied again, the turkey carcass is removed and pies emerge, your daughter’s mood fades to black.
    “Junk in the trunk,” Grandpa slurs, patting your abundant rear as he walks behind you. “Next year, we should all fast.” You want to kill him.
    Your starving daughter pushes away her plate, her face pinched, disappointed, angry. You can see her mantra scroll across her eyes like the CNN news crawl: loser . . . failure . . . pathetic . . . chubby . . . What she calls herself is neither worse nor better than what she calls you. It’s a revelation, and you repeat your Cs: calm, consistent, compassion, communication, calamitous, collapse, cursed, condemned.
    At the hotel, your daughter insists on taking a long walk, stretching her stomach, she calls it. You and your husband say no. She throws a tantrum and you are all trapped in the hotel room, staring at a feel-good family movie involving a twelve-step program, cups of hot coffee, and redemption.
     
God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change,
courage to change the things we can,
and wisdom to know the difference.
     
     
    By the next doctor visit she’s lost six pounds and she cries and cries. Your body goes cold. You feel like a fool, slumped on the pediatrician’s toddler bench, staring at the wallpaper: Mother Goose and her fluffy outstretched wings hovers above you with bemused tolerance and extreme capability. An infant cries in the next room and you yearn for the days of uncomplicated care and comfort.
    “I am so angry.” Your voice is not angry, it is depleted. You are not as competent as Mother Goose, you are the woman trapped in a shoe with only one child and still you don’t know what to do.
    Your daughter agrees to go on antidepressants, to help her adjust to her changing body, the doctor says. When you leave the office you drive straight to the pharmacy and then to a bakery and watch her consume a Prozac and a chocolate chip cookie. Her eyes, her giant, chocolate-pudding eyes, drip tears into her hot milk; her hand shakes.
     
Antidepressants increased the risk compared to placebo of suicidal thinking and behavior (suicidality) in children, adolescents, and young adults in short-term studies of major depressive disorder (MDD) and other psychiatric disorders. Anyone considering the use of [Insert established name] or any other antidepressant in a child, adolescent, or young adult must balance this risk with the clinical need.
     
    “It’s not my fault,” she sobs.
    “Oh, Lovely.” You shake your head, review the many theories that Google dredged up: genetic predisposition, a virus, lack of self-concept, struggle for control, posttraumatic stress disorder.
    “I didn’t want this,” she says.
    “Of course you didn’t.”
    “The voice