Notice Me

Colleen Hay

Kim was late for lectures. It was a common thing these days. Her lecturers did not seem to notice her late arrivals, or the fact that she would fidget, unpacking her books and then realising that she had taken the wrong ones.

Anthropology would start in fifteen minutes, but Kim had just got undressed and she stepped in under the spray of water in the shower. She squeezed shampoo into her cupped hand, not noticing the glob of Pantene seeping between her fingers. She didn't get it all into her hair. The cuts on her arms stung under the soap and shampoo, but she could not worry about that when she was already going to be very late for her class.

As Kim ran from her residence - having downed a cup of warm coffee to kill off her hunger until lunchtime - she held tightly on to one side of her jeans. She had forgotten to thread a belt through the loops and not even her sharp hip bones could hold her pants up properly. It was about twenty-five degrees outside, but goose-bumps prickled her skin and raised her body hair even though she was wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt and a track-top.

She got to the lecture hall just as Mr Graham was putting the slides up. He gave her a glance, but then continued with his lecture on human behaviour and where our bad habits originated from.

Kim opened her folder and began making untidy notes in pencil. Jason, one row up, tapped her on the shoulder, kicking her seat as he leaned forward to whisper something to her. She grimaced in anticipation of his putrid breath, and sat back in her chair, giving him her ear, but not her nose.

"Can I borrow your notes after this?" Jason asked. There was more expectation than query in his voice.

Kim nodded reluctantly and continued scribbling - Mr Graham's words talking on her paper. Jason slouched in his chair. His eyes wandered over the female heads in the lecture theatre, and ended up right in front of him again. He imagined Kim naked, and sat and daydreamed for the next half an hour, not noticing that her skin appeared far too tight for her bony frame, naked or clothed.

Kim's strength dissipated fast from concentrating so much. English Literature followed her Anthropology lecture and she ran all the way to the other side of campus to make it in time for that class. The one lecture she was never late for was given by Ms Johnson … if the Devil was a woman … When Kim raised her hand to answer questions, Ms Johnson ignored her and found another student from whom to squeeze a response. Kim paused, raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips, but then simply continued taking meticulous - albeit messy - notes. She considered the option that perhaps Ms Johnson's retinas were not functioning so well any more, but that's about where the wondering stopped.

She sat out in the sun while waiting for lunch to start.

That's when I spotted her.

The temperature had risen to about thirty-two degrees, which was enough to make Kim take off the track-top, but the long shirt stayed on. I realised later that she was self-conscious about the marks on her arms. She did not want to attract unnecessary attention to herself.

I followed her into the dining hall when its doors finally opened. I watched the serving Sisi scoop a mountain of food onto her plate, and I watched her eat barely three or four mouthfuls of it. Kim's face contorted scarcely enough for anyone - anyone but me - to notice, and I knew that her body was telling her that it was full, that she should stop, should not eat a single morsel more.

The dining hall began to fill up rapidly with loud students returning from their period five lecture. Some of those students went silent and watched us with curious eyes as Kim and I walked out through the double doors.

She was exhausted by 1:45 pm, but there was no such thing as taking a much-deserved break, not now anyway. Dragging her feet down the stairs, she accidentally bumped her elbow on the railing and flinched painfully, but she continued down until she reached the bottom floor, fumbling with her keys and finally letting herself into her room. She unwittingly let me in too, but I knew that she did not really mind when I was around, because I always stayed out of her way … unless crucially necessary, of course.

Kim sat on the edge of her bed, put her face in her hands and rested her elbows on her knees. It was uncomfortable. Her bones mashed against one another, with only skin in between to cushion them. She sat like that for fifteen minutes. Not a single move. With her knees together, she stared down between her thigh bones, at the horrible green carpet around her shoes. With sheer concentration, she was resting.

I waited in the mirror. I knew her routine by now. Before her afternoon classes, Kim would drink hot coffee to quell the hunger that returned so soon after it had disappeared over lunch, and then she would stand in front of the mirror and scrupulously check every inch of her body. I waited, only a thin sheet of glass between us, preparing myself to tell her what I've been telling her for more than a year now … every single afternoon, for over a year.

Kim got undressed and stood like a bored mannequin in front of the mirror.

"Perfection, my dear," I said, enthusiastically.

She rubbed her face, felt the bones, then felt the caving of her cheeks. She ended her facial with an evaluation of her jaw line. She lifted her chin and traced her fingertips over her neck, frowning at the loose skin. It was not quite hanging, but it felt too loose to her.

"A bit of firming lotion," I said, "that will do the trick."

Kim's bowed collar bones created odd-looking, knobbly protrusions on top of her shoulders where they ended, but seeing these, she smiled and her eyes continued to blaze a trail over her reflected image. I sensed her feeling proud and yet dissatisfied with her breasts. They don't make bras in her size. With those little boobs being so flat, she didn't really need one anyway. A harsh line divided Kim's brow when she saw how her ribcage swelled angrily beneath her skin. Her torso had never seemed so big before. She inhaled and her ribs expanded, so she let the air go and sighed.

"What?" I asked, "You're never going to breathe again?"

I didn't mean to mock her.

Kim's hip bones jutted out sharply. The tight skin over them was dark purple, and blue, and faded to green in some places. Tiny capillaries raged red just beneath her skin; they would be spent by the end of the evening. The colourful markings were thanks to her insomnia … or caused it, I'm not sure.

At night she would lie on one side, but that hurt her shoulder, hip bone, knee, and ankle bone, so she would lie on her stomach, but that just hurt her hips. The other side was no use, so she would then roll onto her back, but the pillow was wrong for her neck. She could not find a comfortable position to sleep in, and every night she would lie awake and allow the nonsense in her head to repeat itself over and over. I could only watch. She generated her own stress. Kim's body was her worst enemy, especially because it plagued her sleep. And every morning, she woke up with aching bones and tender skin.

As soon as Kim looked down at her thighs, I distracted her - made her look at her arms, or her back again - I knew the shock of seeing how thin her legs were would make her start eating again. But she didn't notice, instead she became irritated by the fact that her legs were still flabby and bulging in all the wrong places. Kim searched her room for two rulers. Retrieving the rulers - one from her desk and one from whichever book she happened to be reading - she lay down on her back on the horrible green carpet and relaxed completely. Careful not to rouse her stomach muscles, she balanced one ruler across her hips. Without looking, she placed the other ruler perpendicular to her stomach, and pinched her fingers on the spot where the rulers intersected.

"Five centimetres?" I asked, unable to mask the pride in my voice. Her hip bones rose up five centimetres on either side of her concave stomach.

Half a centimetre is not good enough for one whole week …

I heard the thought rock Kim's body, slap her face. Disappointment saddled and rode her like a wild horse - she just could not kick the feeling. I wanted to tell her that she was doing brilliantly well, and that at this rate we would have nothing to worry about for the rest of the year. I was okay with her progress if she was.

But she was devastated by the slowing of her success. I watched her fight herself. Something on her outside was too weak for something on her inside. Her eyes watered and a look of absolute fear stripped the colour from her already pale cheeks. She got up on her knees and reached over to the desk again. This time, she pulled a pair of scissors from the top drawer and sat down, crossed her legs and looked at the blade. She knew that blade very well.

I sat down in front of the crying girl and tried to stop her from punishing herself. I screamed silently, told her about the way in which the world would find a way to punish her if she really deserved it. I bit my lip and realised: this was the world's way of punishing her.

Kim arrived at her Psychology lecture with a fresh long-sleeved T-shirt on, the bandage barely protruding from the end of the sleeve. Her face was blotchy - red and white - from the emotion (and the lack thereof) ringing in her ears. She sobbed at the contradictions that governed her rationality and forced her logic to set itself on fire. She was so hungry, but she could not eat. She wanted to escape the pain of losing control (too much work, not enough sleep, too many things to do), yet she punished herself with the scissor blades that her own hand was guiding. The pain forced her to feel good. When it was over, she felt nothing again.

Kim slipped away from me. Me - the little voice that pushed her towards perfection. Me - the loud voice that perhaps pushed her a bit too far, to a place where perfection is like mud-hoppers and buckets of vomit and road kill: it makes no sense and it's just ugly.

I sat on the edge of the bath tub. Kim's pulse had slowed to a soft, two-second tap, exactly where she had cut it in half. Her face was so white it was grey, and her eyes bulged for a lack of flesh. When she blinked it was like sandpaper stroking a goldfish bowl. She cried no tears. I could only watch, because guilt diffused me into the steam rising up from the bath water.

Kim's breathing was thin and raspy and when she sighed her last, I was gone.

Colleen Hay I was born in Newcastle, studied in Grahamstown, and I am now living in Krugersdorp ... which is why most of my friends call me a perpetual small-town girl. I, at 23 years old, am officially unemployed, although I do the laundry and ironing in return for a place to stay, food to eat, and a rather generous amount of love. My name appears on two degree parchments which do nothing more than make me nostalgic. An article in the January 2005 issue of Marie Claire relieved some of my debt, and I am currently working on two big projects that might see my name in publication within the next two years (though I pray it's sooner). I've also been drawing and painting for as long as I've been writing (about 10 years). The novel I'm working on at the moment ... is a secret, 'cos Stephen King said so.

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