When we first moved to Michigan, we started going out to restaurants. As he was still starving me, Mr. Troll* almost always told me how much and what I could and could not order from the menu when we went out to eat: “That’s too much for you,” “That’s too rich for you,” “You don’t want to eat too much and get fat,” “You won’t like it,” “You’re not that hungry,” etc. If it was a new restaurant, he told me at the restaurant what I could order. Before we left the house to go out to eat, he always warned me to listen to him. He said he knew better than I did what would be good for me to have. If we had been there before, he often told me on the way to the restaurant what I could have and repeated it again at the restaurant. He wanted to make sure that I never had enough food and this was one more way for him to control me. I knew that if I didn’t follow his dictates about what I ordered or ate, he would get very angry and beat me later. There were times when he ordered my food for me, telling the waiter I was too shy to order for myself. I hated him. On another evening during the visit when at Grandma Troll’s house when I was ten, we all went out to dinner at a very nice restaurant and I was too tense with his dictates of what I could and could not order, what I could and could not eat, to actually want any food. I was too sick with tension to eat and, even though I was starving, the thought of food made me ill. They all ordered and I did not. Seeing my distress made Mr. Troll laugh over dinner. Every time he looked at me, he laughed again. I knew I was hungry but even the smell of other people’s food was more than I could stand. My stomach felt like it was cramping and I thought I was going to throw up (or, in my case of an empty stomach, dry heave). After their food all came and they had been eating for a while, I suddenly had to run to the bathroom. I had been constipated with the tension and suddenly it all came flooding out of me. I don’t know how long I was in there but when I came back out I was suddenly feeling much better and less stressed. When I came back to the table, I was starving. I asked if I could order some food and Mr. Troll told me no, they were almost done eating and they didn’t want to take the time for me to order, have the food prepared, and wait for me to eat. He was laughing again as he said this. I hated him and his laughter. I had to sit through the rest of their meal, starving, waiting for them to finish when I was weak from hunger, knowing I would not be allowed any food once we got back to Grandma Troll’s house. That night after everyone else was in bed I snuck down to her kitchen very quietly, hoping to find something quick to eat that no one would notice missing in the morning. I found some leftovers in her fridge and ate a little bit of some of them, thinking no one would know just how much there had or hadn’t been or attributing the loss to someone else eating them. I was at least right about that. I had been in the habit of trying to sneak food since I was old enough to reach the food in the Troll house. I had gotten good at judging how much I could take that wouldn’t really be noticed and doing it very quietly so I wouldn’t get caught.

It was still not enough food and every doctor that I saw growing up commented to Mrs. Troll about how thin I was, didn’t I eat? Mrs. Troll, who always accompanied me to the doctors’ offices, always told them, of course she eats, she’s just thin. At fourteen years old, when I was about to enter high school, I had a physical. I was about 5’6” tall (my full height) and weighed 86 pounds, you could see my ribs sticking out and I looked like a concentration camp victim. I had developed body hair consistent with that of an anorexic (a disease as yet not really well diagnosed when I was a teenager): without enough body fat to keep me warm, my body developed hair all over to try to conserve body heat. (At this time I do not yet have the financial means to get it all removed.) It still stands out in my mind that Mrs. Troll always forbid me to talk with the pediatricians and doctors who examined me, she would talk to them for me and she told them I was “too shy to speak.” I remember as far back as starting kindergarten and being examined by the pediatrician. Before we went to his office, Mrs. Troll impressed upon me by shaking me the need for me not to say anything to the doctor. She would speak to him for me. When he asked his first question, Mrs. Troll gripped my hand hard and answered him. When he mentioned I seemed a bit underweight, Mrs. Troll told him I had a healthy appetite and was eating well (lie!!!). I knew if I said anything about being hungry all the time, Mrs. Troll would tell Mr. Troll and Mr. Troll would beat me. Then I would start to feel sick and panicked again (from his poisoning me) and Mrs. Troll would impress again by yelling at me that I was not to talk to the doctor, probably shaking me as well.