Old Milwaukee Brace

From Make Me by lisa stathoplos

Old Milwaukee Brace

Hey, Flatso! Loud, calling me from the back of the bus. Hey, Flat and ugly! Are you bored? Cuz ya look like a board! Ha, ha, ha!

End of friggin’ school for the day and, oh joy, the ride home on the beach kids’ bus — all nine of us. And, neat, the two four-foot dipshits from my class with a two-digit combined IQ - my own personal schoolyard dumbasses — are at it again.

Hey, flatso! You're ugly! You're flat AND ugly!

Is there no limit to their genius? Bus pulling out at last - Route One to Mile Road and across the marsh and Atlantic Avenue? Really?! We're going all the way down to the harbor for one new kid? Ugh. The creative chants continue.

Flat and ugly, flat and ugly, flat and ugly. Ha, ha, ha!

Will they never tire of yelling what I already know? I sit and stare dully through my window prison at the clutter of empty seasonal cottages whizzing by.

In my head:

Hey, fuckers! I know I'm not pretty and I look like a boy, you playground moron creeps — I'm a tomboy, shitforbrains! Wanna know what I do after school? 400 fucking reps of upper and lower body spinal work. It only takes about an hour and a half out of every single day but I could take both of you with one well-placed kick with an enviably toned leg before you croak out your next moronic witticism!

At last, the seawall and open air and the endless moving blue vista that is the ocean and my home. A wall of reenergizing sea air engulfs me as I mercifully step off the number 28 and wave to our garrulous bus driver, Rick Bowen. Yeah, right. His monosyllabic barks and rude manner have no doubt scarred hundreds of kids before me. After seven years of living in Maine I still wonder if he remembers my friggin’ stop. Big sign saying Fisherman's Cove Inn oughta be a dead giveaway but I don't think he was at the top of his class.

Our house is a haven even if Mom and I fight a lot. It is a good home and I know it even as I often want to flee it. Warm smell of granny stove and the tea kettle chattering with its large contents of boiling water. Cookies baking or soup stewing and the comforting smell of woodsmoke. I don't hang out in it though. Time to head upstairs, chuck my shit into my freezing room and begin my routine. The routine I adhere to with a monk’s fervor to stave off the horrendous possibility of a full body Milwaukee Brace or spinal surgery.

Yeah, Milwaukee. Shit, up to now, I thought they only made beer.

At my very first visit with Dr. Salib, he explains to me and my horrified parents in nail-biting detail exactly what my serpentine spine is doing to my internal organs and why it is causing incessant pain. In a nutshell, my spine is squeezing all of my gastrointestinal tract — in my case, a real marvel of human genetics — together with no room to function normally. Hence, pain. He then describes options. Option A: intensive physical therapy, possibly entailing years of hard labor to correct curves, Option B: the mysterious but soon to be illuminated Milwaukee Brace or Option C, and last chance at help: spinal surgery.

Mom gasps. Kidding. Mom never gasps; she stuffs all her anxiety and masks it with incredibly piercing and knowledgeable questions. Mom reads a little.

Okay, wow. Exercises seem fine but, what the hell is a Milwaukee Brace? Handily, there is one on a skeletal model right in Dr. Salib’s office/showroom. It is a medieval contraption of leather and metal that cups the chin and the neck and fastens the entire upper torso in a kind of Dark Ages straitjacket. Future Inquisitors might want to swap out the thumbscrews. With this possibility, the bus ride’s looking better every day.

There are probably many in your school who wear these! exclaims Dr. Salib exuberantly in his warm Egyptian lilt, clearly unaware of rural areas outside of Greater Boston.

No!!!! There are exactly ZERO fucking kids wearing these nightmarish contraptions in my Wells, Maine high school with a potential graduating class of about 80!

I play basketball and run track, for Christ’s sake — there is no FUCKING way I am going to wear that thing; I will deal with the pain!

So, intensive physical therapy it is. No change in three months and I'm getting put on the rack. Talk about motivation. Mom and Dad are on board for whatever it takes to stop the pain but, for now, seem pleased with my less invasive attempt. Spinal surgery is an absolute last resort.

So, yeah, daily standing sets, hanging sets, prone sets, side sets, wall sets and now to sit sets- all in the hallway between my brother's room and mine. Eyeing my parent’s transportable full-length mirror as I sit, spine flattened to the wall, arms pushed back into it, I compress my two scapulae toward my spinal column and slowly force my arms outward resisting the push always and being certain that my left shoulder reflection stays in line with my right.

Whoa. My cheeks look chubby today. When the hell did that happen? Come to think of it, my jeans don't feel as loose as always. Okay, gross. Gotta fix this.

I eat all the time. That's it! I never overeat — have never even understood what people mean when they say they are stuffed — but I snack all day while running in and out. Always have. I resolve to eat only my three meals a day. No snacking.

Ta da! Two or three weeks in and no more fat cheeks, jeans feeling normal, whatever that is, getting a bit too baggy even and, pretty soon, it warrants a rare trip to Ames Department Store with Mom to change sizes.

I never looked at scales much before but now, my parents’ bathroom scales lure me in daily. Okay. Started at around 130 and now down to 120. Excellent. Just need to keep up the good work. Meals start getting smaller or skipped altogether when possible. And then, something happens that makes skipping supper, the meal my family always eats together, possible.

Around January when I turn seventeen, my creative writing teacher corners me after class in the sun-soaked west wing of Wells High School and says this lunatic thing.

I’d like you to try out for the school play.

I'm wearing this new red and white sheath dress Mom got me for Christmas from Sawyer Mills in Dover and, with my gold hooped pierced earrings, I guess I feel pretty great for like, the first time ever, but, really?

Okay.

Shit. Try out? Like, how? Try out thinking anyone would want to watch me onstage? Crap. How do I get outta this?!

I must confess here that I really like this teacher, and love her class and I know she likes my writing but it all seems hard to believe.

Last summer, though, between sophomore and junior year, I made a big decision that changed my life. Up until then I was just a jeans and frayed jean jacket frumpy closet reefer girl who was somehow accepted by the most popular kids with whom I didn't really belong. I do have my beach kid friend, Gem. She’s a year younger than me, though, and we are kind of growing apart.

But, summers. Summers were when I had a real tribe. Around August fourth every year, the Cosettis and the Landons from Acton and Leominster Mass came up and rented the Magnolia cottage down the street from me for three straight weeks. With them and our friend Cindy Jameson from Holderness, NH who stayed all summer in the Wild Wave, a few of my beach friends and I became thick as thieves. When I was with my summer friends, I could be myself. I even fell in love for the first time with Danny Cosetti and he loved me back. It was absolutely thrilling. We prowled Wells Beach and the Casino area, just an arcade and movie theatre, smoked cigarettes and pot, swam in Fisherman's Cove, and endlessly played Neil Young's HARVEST and Zep’s ZOSO. Mike Cosetti got a hold of a new Boston band’s album that WRKO Boston was playing all the time and it blew our minds so DREAM ON by Aerosmith regularly blared from the summer porch at the Cosettis. In summer, I could just be me - something I never felt at school. So, the decision was: go back to school in the fall and be the real, authentic me. And I did. What happened, weirdly, is everyone accepted me - the jocks, the stoners, the nerds, the artists - everyone. Strange times.

I've added lipstick to my look. Orange is nice and Mom has it and wears it. I like it. I am buying lipstick now and I am wearing it always. Mascara, too. I guess it makes me look like someone she wants in the play. I know she will realize her horrible mistake but, feeling weirdly brave, I go to the tryouts. I get the lead. Wow.

First rehearsal, major realization. I feel completely at home here. Lisa disappears here. I could just live here. And, this is perfect because now I am at play practice every school night and, boy, do I have this not eating thing mastered so there can be more plays after this. Barely a cup of homemade granola in the morning, skip lunch and, if I have to be home at dinner and not at play practice, which is rare now, just push food around on my plate, give some to the two cats at my feet and shove the rest in a napkin to put in the trash while doing dishes. Easy-peasy.

115! Yes! Can’t stop now. If I stop, I will get fat.

Lisa, I’ve taken in this gown twice now. Are you eating enough, honey?

Looks of consternation are exchanged by the clearly jealous Home Ec teacher/Costume Designer and my Creative Writing teacher/Director.

This is so fucked up. They are messing with my head. I am friggin’ fat. Whoa. When did that shift happen? How did that shift happen? Wasn’t I just trimming down slightly, halting the flesh gain that would have invariably left me fat? I am now afraid to be fat. I am now afraid of food. This is good. This is what needed to happen.

Lisa, can I talk to you?

My Psych teacher captures me in the hallway by Rothoff’s room.

Jesus. She's part of it. And, I kinda liked her ‘til now even if she and her husband hang out with my parents sometimes, which is always complicated. She drives a slick silver Toyota Celica, wears kinda groovy pants at school — not a lot of female teachers do that. It's the early seventies.

Leave me alone! What do these people want from me?! I'm fine. I have the lead in the school play, am the sixth man on our winning basketball team now headed to the States, have mostly A's and B’s and I weigh around, what? 110 pounds? Back off!

I politely say:

Oh, yeah, no, I'm fine. I get hot lunches now.

Liar. No one needs to know I’ve been living on one boiled egg a day for a while now. That is IT! It's great. I haven't had a period in months but, hey, don’t knock the bonuses!

Wells High School gym. THE GREAT SEBASTIANS by Lindsey and Crouse going up in a week. Designer and Director gang up. Costumes have been altered for the third? fourth time?

We’re worried, honey.

Uh, huh. Yup. Okay. I will. Sure.

Polite as heck to their faces but, ohmygod, can they not SEE?! I am not too thin; I am barely acceptable to myself in any lurking mirror and, what's worse, if I don't keep to this diet I will explode into a giant, fat, disgusting blob! I know it is a conspiracy; I know they are seriously jealous or some weird thing. I only need to continue to nod and acquiesce yet never waver from my one true goal: eat close to nothing.

Then, around Easter, my brother, Mark, hops through the kitchen where I rock by the granny stove cranking LEVON from Elton John’s MADMAN ACROSS THE WATER on my headset and he's got a whole jar full of Good n’ Fruity. For the first time in nine months, I desperately want something sweet.

Can I have some?

He's feeling generous. Dumps a handful.

More?

More??!!! An alien is inhabiting my brother’s body. Probably near to a cup I manage. So sweet, so good. I practically swallow them whole. I start vomiting around two AM. Then, I get really sick and pass out. Everything coming out both ends. Mom gets me to the shower before a trip to the ER. In the shower, feeling very unsteady, I look down at my body for the first time in months. I can see every rib; my hip bones look like something in a museum. My formerly thick long hair is just plain falling out in my hands.

For the first time, I think: I look like shit.

And I’m scared. I am almost five feet, nine inches tall. This morning the scales read 105 pounds.

Can’t remember much in the ER — I guess tests and stuff; they like to do tests. But I remember one thing that, even at the time, I knew I would never forget. Attending physician, Dr. Dodge, standing near the examining table and looking down at me where I sit feeling miserable says:

You have two options: you can either eat, or you can die.

Memorable. A literal “click” went off in my head as if my life force had been shut off for a while and the switch just got thrown again. I want to go home and eat a hamburger or ten. Of course, that is not possible. My body has to relearn to accept food, so, even though I slowly get better and begin to eat again, I still hate my body; it needs constant correction. The other thing is, it really hasn’t liked me that much since I was about eleven when my first swing through medical testing began. See, my intestines never really worked right and they were kind of always mixed up in the whole spinal/gastrointestinal thing that mystified my doctors so. I really hate stumping the medical establishment all the time, what with all their fun tests and whatnot; although, I never helped much because I either didn’t understand Dr. Sanjay with his vowel-rich East Indian accent or, I just clammed up about symptoms too embarrassing to admit to. In short, I was the perfect candidate for the inimitable and endlessly irritating Irritable Bowel Syndrome diagnosis. Meaning, basically, we have no idea what is wrong with you but here’s a diagnosis to last a lifetime.

I guess Celiac disease never crossed their minds.

 Copyright © 2021 Make Me/ lisa stathoplos