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“You needed more to fuel your brain. Your bones. Your organs.”
“The Mother said I needed exactly enough and no more. Perfect balanced nutrition. If I exercised enough, I got one additional whey protein shake per week.”
My throat seizes, fury filling my bones. I remember Mira begging me for a cough drop. A fucking cough drop. She saw it in my backpack, and I gave it to her. She chewed it like it was a piece of filet mignon and searched my backpack for another one, weeping when she came up dry. I was thirteen then and too clueless to understand what Gaia was doing to her.
And definitely too innocent to understand our mother’s complicity in it all.
Mira would go on long walks, all under the approval of our leaders, all to burn calories. Sometimes, she asked me to go with her. Toward the end, the months before she died, she would search out plants along the way, bending down, urging me to come next to her.
Only in her final month did I realize she was gleaning edible leaves. Stray purslane that grew in sidewalk cracks, a good natural source of Omega 3 fatty acids. Dandelion leaves, a source of vitamin K. Wood sorrel, plucked and eaten right in front of me as she handed me a piece and urged me to try it.
Once, we found something that made her weep with joy, a tall, leafy plant she pulled out by the thick, bulbous roots.
“It’s called a sunchoke,” she said, brushing the dirt off the roots, taking a bite from the choke in front of me, chewing and swallowing so fast I feared she would gag.
“What are you doing?” I asked, horrified.
“Look at me, Cam!” Her cheekbones stuck out like a shelf under sunken eyes. “They’re starving me.”
“Because Gaia calls for balance,” I’d said.
So much like “The Prophecy above all.”
The next day, I started sneaking her pieces of my food. Peanut butter smeared on a torn piece of paper, taken from a sandwich. As many cough drops as I could find in the public-facing reception area in the main building.
Greens she’d taught me to forage.
“Cam? I’ve upset you. I’m sorry.”
“No!” I shake my head, shoving the memory in a box inside me. “You need to eat.” I push her hand toward the lasagna. “You will never be hungry again. We have no rules around food. Eat, drink, as much as you want.”
“I cannot pollute my body.”
“You’re not polluting it. You’re nourishing it.”
“How do I know the difference?”
“By never listening to another word out of The Mother’s mouth.”
Her eyes drift to the lasagna, then to my coffee. “You really eat whatever you want?”
“Yes. Within reason. If I gain weight, I eat less and exercise more. If I drink to excess, I take a few days off to recover.”
“Drink to excess? Water? Coffee?”
“No,” I say with a laugh.
“You mean alcohol?” Horror fills her face. “You pollute the king’s body with alcohol?”
“I’m no king, Prin – Paigelynn.”
“Right.” She blinks steadily, quickly. “You are not my king.”
“Eat.” Firmly, decisively, I order her. She complies, picking up the fork, but the damage runs deep.
“I – after we eat, is there a gym?”
“A gym?”
