It’s odd that hospital food never makes you sick. Only your mom’s food, Phil said.
I remembered that moment in perfect detail, like it was preserved in a snow globe. I was sixteen, sitting at the desk in Mom’s bedroom, where she insisted we keep our computer. It was the middle of the night—the only time I dared talk to Phil. Mom was snoring loudly in her bed a few feet away.
I stared at the computer screen, fingers frozen on the keyboard. My illness. My mother. Illness because of my mother. The connection had never crossed my mind.
I have to get to bed, I told Phil. Thanks for listening. XO.
I signed off but stayed up all night, following link after link like a scavenger hunt. The sun was starting to rise when I found it: an image of a small brown bottle with a white cap and blue lettering. I had seen the bottle once before while putting away laundry.
Holding my breath, I tiptoed to Mom’s dresser and, an inch at a time, opened her sock drawer. Buried in the back was the same brown bottle. Lettered in blue were the words “Ipecac Syrup.”
I hurried back to the computer and scanned the page for more information. Ipecac syrup was used to make kids or pets vomit when they accidentally swallowed poison.
My mother had been poisoning me.
I became aware of a throbbing in my chest. My hand couldn’t feel the mouse it was holding. The chair fabric under my thighs disappeared. I was terrified of reading further.
Suddenly I felt hot, angry breath on the back of my neck.
I whipped around in my chair, expecting Mom to be looming over me. What would I say? But I was imagining things. She was still in bed, the quilted comforter rising and falling with her steady breath. How confident she was, even in sleep. Nothing kept her up at night. I read for as long as I dared, then erased my search history.
I climbed into my bed that morning with no idea what to do next. I understood Mom was putting ipecac in my food, but it still didn’t occur to me then that I didn’t have any food allergies or digestive issues. It took me another six months to figure out I probably didn’t need the feeding tube. Piece by piece, I realized everything she’d told me was a lie: the vision problems, the chromosomal defect, all of it.
Back in the café, Vinny said, “So lemme get this straight: the only thing wrong with you was your ma put ipecac in your food?” He sounded disappointed.
“When I was given food at all,” I pointed out. “The ipecac explains the vomiting. The rest of my symptoms were malnutrition.”
“But you had the feeding tube.”
“After Mom was arrested, I found out she’d been feeding me half of the daily calories I needed.”
Vinny let out a low whistle. “At the risk of offending, I’ve gotta ask”—he paused—“how did you not know? I get not understanding when you were a kid, but even at fifteen, you had no idea?”
Vinny King was an a-hole. I wished I could dump my gross coffee in his lap. I’d heard comments like these before: Why didn’t you get up out of the wheelchair? Why didn’t you cook your own meals? You really didn’t know you were playing sick? They were judgments more than questions.
I narrowed my eyes at Vinny. “What Mom said was true—I was sick all the time. I did throw up every food she put in front of me. I did get really bad headaches and dizzy spells. I never had the chance to make my own food, because I was too weak, and she was always a step ahead of me. If your mom and your doctors and your neighbors all say you’re sick, why would you question them? The pain was there. The proof was in my medical file.”
By the time I was ten, I’d had ear and feeding tubes, tooth decay, and a shaved head. I needed a wheelchair. I was allergic to almost every food on the planet. I’d had cancer scares, brain damage scares, tuberculosis scares. I told Vinny I’d been weeks away from a heart catheterization, which wasn’t totally true. My doctor had rejected that idea as soon as it came out of Mom’s mouth. But by now Vinny was hanging on my every word.
I took a breath and continued. “How could I have known malnutrition was causing my hair to fall out and making it hard to breathe? How was I supposed to know the ear tubes and the allergies were all one hundred percent made up, all lies my mother told before I could even talk?” I thought of her betrayal for the thousandth time and let my eyes fill with tears, heard the pitch of my voice rise. “When you’re a kid, there are things you don’t question. This is your mom. This is your dad. Your name is Vinny. This is your birthday. When you turned fifteen, did you ever ask your parents if your birthday was really your birthday?”
A couple tears rolled down my cheeks. This was not at all the cool person I’d been hoping to be, but this version of me was even better, because this version of me was the one Vinny paid attention to.
He made a sympathetic face, like a nurse right after she stuck a needle in you. “You’re right. I’m sorry. That was a dick thing to say. It’s like Stockholm syndrome or a cult or something—impossible for people on the outside to understand the inside.”
I didn’t say anything, let an awkward silence fall between us. I wanted to eat another muffin, to show my teeth some more, but I thought I might throw up if I had another bite.
Vinny cleared his throat. “What about the doctors? You blame them? How could they not have known?”
I had this part memorized from the trial. “Doctors rely on the parents to understand a kid’s health. They assume the parent has the kid’s best interest at heart and is telling the truth. If any of my doctors got suspicious after a few months, we’d move to a new doctor’s office. I went to dozens of doctors all over the state.” I combed my fingers through my hair. “Mom told me we were moving on because the doctors weren’t smart enough to fix me.”
Vinny shifted in his seat. “So how’d you stop her?”
I started the chain of events that got Mom arrested by accident. I told Alex about Mom’s abuse not because I thought she’d call the cops, but because I wanted to impress her. Alex had boyfriends—plural— went to school in a big city, and majored in graphic design. She had fascinated me my entire life. All I’d wanted was to fascinate her once.
“I had to take action,” I said instead. “But I was too scared to do it by myself, so I went to the friend I mentioned earlier, and she helped me do the right thing.”
“Any chance you’d tell me your friend’s name?”
I shook my head. Alex would love the spotlight, but this was my story, not hers.
“Fair enough.”
Vinny and I talked about the trial. I told him what he would have already known from following the news: nobody from Deadwick would testify in defense of Mom. One of my old doctors came forward to say he suspected “something foul might be afoot.” But it was my testimony that sent her to prison.