Hair Knotted Around My Heart

I have pica. I have had a compulsion to eat hair for as long as I can remember. Whenever I feel strands of hair tugging inside my stomach, I feel strangely calm. I look at my thin wrists and the sharp outline of my ribs, and I feel proud. Sometimes Mom cries and asks why I became like this. Seeing her hurt because of me fills me with satisfaction. Dad runs himself ragged trying to get me appointments with specialists, his hair turning completely gray from the strain. And somehow, that makes me feel happy too. My therapist asks whether there is some knot inside me I can't untie. I shake my head and say that my parents have always favored and spoiled me. How could there be a knot? It isn't until Mom completely breaks down in the consultation room that the truth begins to surface. She drops to her knees in front of me, presses her forehead to the floor, and sobs. "Please forgive us. Please stop doing this to yourself, okay?" Chapter 1 Dr. Shaw froze, then hurried over to help Mom up. Mom wouldn't move. Her forehead struck the cold tile, and her voice shook so badly I could barely make out the words. "Owen, I was wrong. "Please stop eating hair. Please stop doing this to yourself." I looked at the red mark on her forehead and almost laughed. "Mom, what are you talking about? "I've always liked eating hair. What does that have to do with you and Dad?" Dad stood beside her, white as a sheet. He'd aged so much over the past few years. He was only in his early fifties, but his temples had gone completely gray. To cure my pica, he'd waited in line before dawn for cancellation slots with specialists. He'd sat through healing services at a church he'd never once set foot in before. Every relative said I had the most devoted parents in the world. I said the same thing. Whenever a doctor asked what my family was like, I answered seriously: "They're wonderful. Mom and Dad love me most. Even my little brother, who's six years younger than me, gets jealous." But when Mom heard that, she only cried harder. She sobbed until she could barely breathe, both hands clamped over her face. Dr. Shaw's hand, holding out a tissue, stopped in midair. "You said your brother is jealous of you?" I nodded. "Of course. "Noah's always had a great appetite. He can eat anything. "I'm different. I'd rather have hair. "Mom and Dad are always focused on me, so of course he's jealous." Mom's head snapped up. Her lips were trembling. "No... that isn't how it was." I smiled. "Then how was it?" Her mouth opened, but nothing came out. I went on. "I know Mom and Dad favor me. I know that probably made Noah feel left out. "But I can't help that." I lowered my head and put on a rueful face. A strand of hair had fallen across my shoulder. I pinched it between my fingers and lifted it toward my mouth. Mom lunged at me and clamped one hand around my wrist. "Owen, don't!" Her hands wouldn't stop shaking. Tears kept falling onto the back of my hand. Looking at how terrified she was, I couldn't keep the smile off my face. The room went horribly quiet. After a long moment, Dad finally spoke. His voice was frighteningly hoarse. "If it will help you get better, your mother and I will do anything." I looked down at my wrist. Bone pressing up under a thin layer of skin. Two fingers could circle it. My hair was getting thinner too. There were bald patches on my scalp now, and every day before I went out Mom put my hat on for me herself. She was afraid people would laugh at me. And afraid that the second she looked away, I'd pull out more hair and eat it. The truth is, I loved that. The instant my fingers touched my hair, Mom was on me. She'd hold me and coax me and beg me to spit it out. That strange, crooked happiness wrapped all the way around me. Yet I couldn't help thinking back to my childhood. Whenever Noah cried, the whole family said the same things. "He's still little." "He doesn't understand." "You're the big brother. him have it? What's wrong with letting him have his way?" Back then, I wanted someone to soothe me like that too. But Mom said, "Owen, you're six years older than Noah." And Dad said, "You're the big brother. You know better." Nobody said that anymore. Dr. Shaw asked suddenly, "When was the first time you ate hair?" I shook my head. "I don't remember. "Maybe I've liked it since the day I was born." Mom whispered, "No. "When you were little, you loved food. You never tried to eat your hair." Dr. Shaw turned to her. "Then what was happening at home the first time he swallowed hair?" Mom braced a hand against the wall and slowly sank into a crouch. Her face kept getting whiter. Dr. Shaw asked again. "Diane. The first time Owen was hungry enough to eat his own hair, what were you doing?" Dad opened his mouth. Nothing came out. Mom was the one who broke. The words came out before she could stop them. "That was the day Noah went missing, and all Owen could think about was being hungry..." Chapter 2 She stopped halfway through and clapped a hand over her mouth. Dad's face changed too. I still remember that day. It was my twelfth birthday. Dad had promised to take me to a restaurant I'd always wanted to try. Mom had said that since I was the birthday boy, I got to pick everything. But the second we walked into the mall, Noah wrapped himself around Mom's leg and cried that he wanted the indoor playground upstairs. Mom gave me an apologetic look. "He's still little. He'll play for a few minutes and we'll go. "Owen, you're the big brother. You can wait a little longer." I nodded. A few minutes turned into two hours. By the time Noah finally had enough and we got to the restaurant, our reservation had already been canceled. Dad said another place would be just as good. Then Noah started crying because he wanted a toy. He twisted out of Mom's hand and bolted into the crowd. A few minutes later, he was gone. Mom and Dad came apart. They had him paged over the mall speakers, they called the police, they went store to store asking for security footage. Mom cried so hard she couldn't stay on her feet. Dad was so frantic he slapped himself across the face twice. Nobody remembered that I hadn't eaten anything since that morning. By evening, my vision was going black at the edges. We passed a bakery. There was a tray of samples out front, and I took a small piece and was about to put it in my mouth when Mom slapped it out of my hand. "Your brother is missing and you can still eat?" Everyone nearby turned to look. I covered my face and said quietly, "But I'm hungry." Mom had been crying all afternoon. She'd fallen apart hours ago. She grabbed my shoulders and shook me hard. "Noah is six years old. He's out there alone and God knows how scared he is, and you don't care at all?" I told her I'd been helping look. I'd run all over that mall with them for hours. The soles of my shoes were worn through and my heels were bleeding. Mom might as well not have heard me. "Is this because we're focused on your brother and you didn't get your birthday? Is that it? "Will missing one meal kill you? "Owen, why are you such a glutton?" I just stared at her. She regretted it the second it was out. She reached out to hug me. But right then the mall speakers crackled. Noah had been found. Mom shoved me aside and ran for the information desk at a dead sprint. Dad went after her. Neither of them looked back. I stood by myself outside the bakery and picked the piece of bread up off the floor. It was covered in dust. I didn't eat it. But I remembered what Mom said. Being hungry for a little while wasn't going to hurt me. My little brother mattered more. On the way home, hunger made my stomach cramp painfully. Noah sat in Mom's lap eating cookies. Crumbs went all down his front and she didn't say a word. I sat next to them, smelling sugar and butter, my mouth filling with saliva. But I didn't dare say I was hungry. I kept my head down, and that's when I noticed a strand of hair on my shirt. I picked it off and chewed it for a long time. It was stiff and rough and I couldn't break it. When I swallowed, it scraped my throat raw. But there was finally something in my stomach. After that day, whenever I got too hungry to bear it, I ate hair. Dr. Shaw asked quietly, "So that's when the pica started?" I shook my head. "At first I was only trying it out." I skipped one meal. Nobody noticed. I skipped a second one. Mom told me I was being so grown up and gave my drumstick to Noah. That night I was too hungry to sleep, so I hid under the blanket, pulled out a few strands of hair, and swallowed them one at a time. On the third day, I passed out at school. A teacher pried my mouth open and found hair caught between my teeth. Dad dropped everything at work and rushed to the hospital. Mom held me and cried the entire night. When I woke up, for the first time, I felt like I'd won. I looked at Mom and said softly: "Mom, now I understand. "Missing a few meals really won't kill me. "And when I can't stand it, I can just eat hair." Mom slid to the floor and cried without making a sound. But Dr. Shaw was frowning. "Where exactly was Noah found that day?" Dad answered in a rough voice. "In the emergency passage behind the playground. "He said he'd gotten lost." I smiled. "But there's something you don't know. I went back to the mall later and watched the security footage. "Noah was never lost." He'd been behind the second-floor railing the whole time. He watched Mom and Dad tear the place apart looking for him. He watched Mom knock the bread out of my hand. And at the exact moment I got hit, he leaned over the railing and smiled. Chapter 3 Dad finally forced out one sentence. "He was only six." Mom nodded quickly. "He was probably just scared. He didn't know how to come out. "And that smile — it might not have had anything to do with you." I wasn't angry at all. My parents were simply too kind. Even after watching Noah lie to their faces, they couldn't bring themselves to think badly of him. Dr. Shaw looked at me. "Your parents misjudged you. They hurt you. You don't just refuse to resent it, you're sitting here explaining it away for them. Why?" I paused. "Because they love me most." After I collapsed at twelve, Mom didn't close her eyes for three days. Dad put all his work aside and stayed in that hospital room, repeatedly asking the doctors why his son would eat hair. Noah cried and said I'd done it on purpose. He said I'd picked his birthday to pass out on, on purpose, so Mom and Dad would yell at him, on purpose, to get back at him. It was the first time Dad ever lost his temper with him. "Your brother is in a hospital bed and you're still making this about yourself?" Noah ran out crying. Mom didn't go after him. She sat by my bed and fed me soup, one spoonful at a time. That was the first time they didn't chase him. I'll never forget it. I was dizzy and half out of it, and my whole body felt warm. After that, all I had to do was pull out one strand of hair and Mom would go tense. If I put it in my mouth, she'd chase me down and beg. If I went a whole day without food, living on hair, she'd stay by my side and cry. And when my stomach hurt so badly I couldn't straighten up, Dad would walk out of Noah's parent-teacher night and drive me to the hospital. The year I was fourteen, Noah had the final round of a piano competition. Mom and Dad had both promised to go. Before we left, I ate half a bowl of noodles. My stomach turned over. I made it to the bathroom and threw up everything I'd just eaten. At the end of it, a tangled clump of hair was sitting in the sink. Mom took one look and pulled her coat back off. "We're not going. We're taking your brother to the hospital." Noah stood in the doorway in his performance clothes, and his eyes went red. "Today's my final." Dad frowned at him. "Your brother is throwing up like this and you're still thinking about a competition?" In the end he went alone. And I lay in a hospital bed with Dad holding my left hand and Mom holding my right. Noah took first place. He put the trophy in the most visible spot in the living room. Mom and Dad didn't even notice it. They were holding my test results, asking the doctor how they were going to get the hair out of my stomach. I was the most precious thing in that house. So naturally I loved them most. Dr. Shaw asked suddenly, "If they really loved you most, why did you have to be sick to get any of it?" The smile froze on my face. "What's that supposed to mean?" She gripped my hand and pressed me with another question. "When you were healthy, what did they ever give up for you?" I opened my mouth. My mind was completely blank. Mom burst into tears. "Stop. Please stop asking him things. "Owen can't take any more of this." I nodded quickly. "See? "Look how much my mom loves me. "She can't even stand to let me hear one harsh word." Dr. Shaw looked at me for a long time. In the end she let it go. She opened the chart again. "The imaging shows a very large mass of hair in Owen's stomach. "Something like that doesn't build up in a day or two. "He's been swallowing hair for a long time, and the entire time he's been telling us he was simply born liking it." She looked at Mom. "Children don't decide hair is food for no reason, Diane. "After the first time he was hungry enough to swallow it — what did the two of you do?" Mom flinched backward. But I smiled. "Mom bought me a kitchen scale. "She said I was greedy and needed to learn some discipline, so she weighed out every meal for me herself. "I wasn't allowed to eat a single bite beyond seven ounces." Chapter 4 Mom rushed to explain. "I bought that scale to take care of you. "You kept saying you never had enough to eat. I only wanted to know exactly how much you were eating." I shook my head. "No. "You bought it to punish me." Every bit of color went out of her face. The day after Noah was found, he stood in front of every relative we had and cried that I hadn't cared about him at all. "Owen kept saying he was hungry. "I was lost and he was sneaking bread." Every relative in that room started looking at me differently. Mom felt like I'd humiliated her in front of all of them. That afternoon she came home with a kitchen scale, and she locked every snack, every loaf of bread, and every carton of milk in the house inside a cabinet. She set my bowl on the scale. Seven point one ounces. Right there in front of me, she dumped the whole thing in the trash. "Over seven ounces and you don't get any of it." I was so frightened I started crying. "Mom, I'm hungry." She pointed at Noah, kneeling on the couch with a slice of cake, and screamed at me: "When he was lost, all you cared about was being hungry. "So I'm going to make sure you never forget what it feels like to be hungry." Dad stood off to the side and tried to speak up more than once. But the second Noah started crying, he shut his mouth. Mom taped a chart to the refrigerator. Seven ounces a meal, no more. One tenth of an ounce over and the whole meal went in the trash. Sneak food once, no dinner the next day. And if I dared say I was hungry, I had to stand beside the table and watch Noah finish eating. The first night, Noah dropped a pork rib into my bowl on purpose. The scale jumped to eight point one ounces. Before I could get it out, he was already shouting: "Mom! Owen's sneaking food again!" Mom came over and swept the whole bowl into the trash. "You love eating so much? "Then you don't get a bite tonight." I stood next to the table while my stomach cramped in waves. Noah sat in my chair, working on a drumstick. "Owen, are you still hungry?" I didn't dare answer. Because if I said yes, there'd be no food tomorrow either. By the second day I'd learned to weigh it myself. One grain of rice over and I picked out a grain. One leaf of greens over and I put the leaf back on the platter. Then Noah waited until I looked away and poured a spoonful of broth into my bowl. The number went over seven. Mom dumped my food again. On the third day the hunger felt like a knife turning in my stomach. That night I fell out of bed and split my forehead open on the floor. Mom finally panicked. She held me and cried and said the punishment was over, that from now on I could eat as much as I wanted. The chart came down off the refrigerator. The cabinet was unlocked. Everybody thought that was the end of it. But I didn't stop. I still ate seven ounces and no more. And when I couldn't stand the hunger, I pulled out my own hair and put it in my mouth, one strand at a time. Hair has no weight. At least, not any weight that scale could find. More than that — every time I ate it, Mom cried and held on to me. Every time my stomach hurt so badly that I passed out, Dad dropped whatever Noah needed and came to save me. That scale wasn't a punishment. That hair wasn't food. They were how I got back inside my parents' hearts. Dr. Shaw's eyes had gone red. "So seven ounces was never the maximum amount you were capable of eating. "It was the limit your mother used to punish you with." Mom collapsed onto the floor, shaking her head over and over. "I only punished you for three days. "I just wanted to frighten you. I wanted you to understand that your brother mattered more than eating." I lifted my head and smiled at her, sweet as anything. There wasn't a trace of hatred in it. Only gratitude. "It's okay, Mom. "I like that kitchen scale. I like eating hair too. "After I had them, I got Mom and Dad's love back. "So how could they be nothing but punishment? "They were the best gift you ever gave me." Looking at how satisfied I was, nobody in that room said a word. It was quiet. Quiet in a way that wasn't right. Then a phone rang. It was Noah. The second Mom picked up, his crying came through. "Mom, I fell down the stairs. It hurts so much..." Mom was on her feet instantly. I caught hold of her and wouldn't let go. "He's faking. "He knows you're here with me. He's doing it to get you home." Dad said nothing. Mom already had her bag in her hand. "Owen, I'm only going to look in on him. "As soon as I know he's fine, I'll come right back." Only going to look in on him. She'd said the same thing when I was twelve. But her hand had already slid out of mine. I watched her hurry toward the door, and all at once I understood. I hadn't eaten enough hair. I wasn't thin enough. I wasn't pitiful enough. Not pitiful enough to make them look at me and nothing else, forever. I turned and walked to the window. Dr. Shaw saw it first. "Owen. What are you doing?" Mom finally turned around. I stepped up onto the ledge and smiled at her. "Mom, this time... "Which one of us are you going to save first?" Every bit of color drained out of her face and she threw herself at me like something in her had snapped. She was one step too slow. I let go.