Veeda Khan
Feeding Therapy
The girl doesn’t eat.
This is what the Mother says to the woman who comes to “check in” on them. She knows she has come to investigate her because of the pediatrician, a new one for a new suburb.
The Daughter’s last appointment was a little over a week ago. The Mother had been anxious about those third-year diphtheria and pertussis shots, but she shouldn’t have been. Even as an infant, her Daughter had not cried during vaccinations, just taken the injections with a sort of dazed pain. She appreciates the blessing, an uncommon respite offered from an otherwise colicky child.
As the pot-bellied physician moved his stethoscope underneath the girl’s shirt, he sucked his teeth. He made the same sound looking at her charts on the computer, when he saw the birth date, the month and day which both Mother and Daughter share. (It seems correct, if unfair, that exactly twenty years separate the two. As if twenty of the child could fit into the Mother.)
Criminally underweight, the pediatrician had muttered under his breath and the Mother was silently aghast. Criminal. Here she was, doing her best, and she was being compared to a criminal.
The Mother is aware that her Daughter doesn’t have the plump, nurtured look of other children, seems a little sickly, melancholic, somewhat like a child from a horror film, but the Mother had been the same way when she was young and that had never been too much cause for worry. And still, the Daughter is tall for her age. Despite her sallow, hollow look, the girl is fed. Small meals, mostly pureed fruit and warm milk, eggs occasionally added for protein, but the girl refuses to chew anything, and any foray into real meals is violently rejected.
The Mother is trying to explain this to the pale, blond, white woman in the pantsuit who comes in with a little clipboard and folder in her black briefcase. Her hair is in a low bun, slicked back, and she is wearing a shade of pink lipstick that is perhaps too bright for the occasion.
I put her in the highchair and I give her food in her plate and she doesn’t touch it. When I put it in her mouth, she just spits it out. She doesn’t chew, she doesn’t swallow anything solid.
The Mother takes the woman through her kitchen, keeps pulling out the contents to brandish: bags of rice in the pantry, two percent in the fridge, ground beef in the freezer. And then, food specifically for the child: fruit-flavored puffed crackers that disintegrate in your mouth, candy-colored juice boxes, milky toddler nutrient shakes.
Thankfully, the woman in the pantsuit takes pity on her.
She says that some children have trouble with new foods. She says she’ll assign someone to come over every now and then, to help out. She says she understands, with the Mother being so young, that it can be overwhelming.
The woman doesn’t really understand, the Mother knows this, but still the Mother gives her the times and days that work for her and takes the pamphlets that the woman gives her. The Mother will take a look at these multicolored tri-fold sheets which speak of “encouragement” and “safety.” She decides neither is particularly useful in the case of her child, who is not afraid but stubborn. It is obvious just from the girl’s face, her sharp angular brows, that surly down-turned mouth.
The Mother knows children well. Her nephew, the son of her oldest brother (the boy she feels she practically raised, having been thirteen when he was born) was voracious as a toddler. Once, he had picked up a large carpenter ant between his chubby fingers and, out of curiosity more than hunger, put it in his mouth. It was only after a sudden onslaught of wails that she found out the creature had bitten him on his lip, which was swollen like ripe fruit. The experience made him cautious, less exploratory, but not adverse to food. Not avoidant. Certainly not restrictive.
In the case of her Daughter, there is no ant. There is no bite. She cannot explain this to the social worker, nor the pediatrician, nor the therapist who will come by in the future. The Daughter is not afraid of food, she wants to say to them, she does not need to be acclimated to food the way you might encourage a child to pet a large dog or hug a rarely seen aunt. No, the Daughter’s problem resides in her distrust of something else.
That evening, Mother and Daughter stand at the bus stop waiting for the man of the house to come home from work. They do this weekly, after jummah prayer, although her Husband encourages her to go to the local mosque instead, saying it’d help her find some “community.”
She did once, at his insistence, but found the experience alienating. The other women were receptive of her, but perhaps overly so, marveling at her young age and the already striking resemblance she and her Daughter shared. The same narrow, upturned nose and hooded almond eyes (it irks the Mother that even her features are no longer her own). The Daughter, however, didn’t seem to mind being the subject of such spectacle. Oddly placated by the onslaught of attention, she let the other women pinch and prod and run their fingers through her fine, curly hair.
Instead of the mosque, on Fridays the Mother goes across the street to the Chinese bakery and treats herself to a fresh, warm pineapple bun. She finds comfort in the compact, homey feel of the shop, it reminds her of the markets she would go to back in Karachi. She always offers to buy the Daughter something, but the girl is largely disinterested in the food there, and spends most of the time whisper-babbling to the elderly Asian lady who sneaks her candies that she won’t eat.
When the bus comes, the Husband gets off with some students. If it weren’t for his suit, he could be mistaken for one of them, with his lanky frame and full head of thick, coarse locks. He kisses the Mother on the cheek, and the Daughter on the forehead, and together they walk the two blocks back to their apartment building.
That night at the dinner table, over chicken korma, the Mother mentions the visit from the social worker.
What did she say? the Husband asks.
She didn’t say anything. I suppose she also didn’t accuse me of anything. Why would she accuse you of something?
You know what these people are like, the Mother says. They’re going to start sending a therapist next week.
To the apartment?
Yes.
The Husband looks at the Daughter, who is flicking around grains of white rice on her plate.
You’ll have to be on your best behavior for this new lady, he says. Let’s hope she isn’t mean.
I never said it would be a woman, the Mother says.
But it will be, she is sure of it, as she waits on the couch in the living room. She has dressed the Daughter casually, but in nicer clothes than usual: navy blue cotton shorts and a red tank top with a lime-green popsicle on front. The Mother herself is dressed in striped beige linen pants and a white T-shirt, not clothes that she would wear to feed the child, but it seems for the time being that that is no longer her job. The pair look like they’re going to the beach, or perhaps renting a cottage in Port Elgin, not waiting for the feeding therapist in a one-bedroom apartment in Scarborough.
The therapist ends up being a tall, young Jamaican woman, no older than thirty, with waist-length blue braids. She introduces herself as “Crystal,” but both Mother and Daughter call her “Miss Crystal.” She brings with her a cooler filled with Styrofoam cups. During the first session, she asks the Mother for a lot of favors. She wants the spoon and the plate that the Daughter usually eats from. She asks the Mother to sit in the living room and observe, but when the Daughter keeps glancing at her over Miss Crystal’s shoulder, Miss Crystal asks the Mother to leave.
Instead, the Mother stands in the hallway of the small apartment, just out of the Daughter’s sight. In the Styrofoam cups, Miss Crystal has brought a variety of white foods, both in color and demographic. Pale, creamy, mac and cheese; fluffy, whipped yogurt; smooth, viscous porridge. Miss Crystal plops down one tiny bite in the Daughter’s blue plastic bumblebee plate and pushes it over to the child, who seems to stare at it. But, inexplicably, when Miss Crystal prompts her to take the bite, the child does. Out come two orange maracas to celebrate the momentous occasion, one handed to the girl. They play with them for a moment (the sound is softer than one would imagine from such a large instrument), then Miss Crystal places another spoonful. At certain times, when the child doesn’t eat at all, Miss Crystal gives an exaggerated turn away and ignores her, until turning back with another bite of food (which the Daughter then takes).
This goes on for an hour. If eating, the child is celebrated; if not, she is rebuffed. The Mother watches this peculiar dance, a little awed by the child’s eagerness to learn and, more surprisingly, to comply. She has looked through the itinerary that Miss Crystal’s given her and knows she will soon have to take her place as feeder. But for now, she is glad that there is someone else responsible for the child, at least for one meal.
Miss Crystal tells the Mother that she is pleased with the Daughter’s incredible progress, and that she’ll be on to a normal feeding schedule in no time. Your daughter is very smart for her age, Miss Crystal says, either to assuage or to praise, the Mother isn’t sure.
How can you tell? She’s very perceptive.
The Mother doesn’t need to be told this. All the girl does is watch.
In the afternoons, before the Husband gets home for work, the Mother takes the Daughter to the park nearby. It’s a warm spring this time around, and the playground is often overrun with all the neighborhood children back home from school. Although there are always parents there, mostly smoking near the chain-link fence entrance of the park, the Mother does not interact with them much. Often, she sits on the opposite side of the playground, on a dingy wooden bench, and reads Urdu Digest, which she gets from the local halal grocer. She doesn’t really care for the stories, but they keep her occupied as she watches her Daughter mingle with the other children out of the corner of her eye. The Daughter is quiet, but not shy, and hardy despite her lanky frame. The other kids like her, but it’s the Mother who has to tell them her name, because the Daughter doesn’t like talking.
Once the mosquitoes come out, the Mother calls the Daughter to head home. The girl swaggers over, dragging her feet in the sand so she leaves puffs of dust-smoke behind her. As she comes closer, the Mother notices her knees are bloodied and raw.
What did you do? the Mother asks, immediately crouching down to inspect the damage.
Fall down, the Daughter says.
The Mother then has the sudden urge to scoop the Daughter up in her arms, like she did back when she was an infant, and cradle her back to the apartment building, but the Daughter is walking just fine, unfazed by her butchered knees. So, instead, the Mother holds the Daughter’s clammy, limp hand as they walk back home.
There is not much time until the Husband arrives, so Mother and Daughter bathe together. She washes the child first, gingerly rinsing the cuts on her knees, trying her best to not get water in the girl’s eyes. Then, as she lathers herself, she lets the Daughter play with her bath toys on the opposite side of the tub, sitting cross-legged. She wonders, momentarily, where the Daughter learned to do that. Surely no one in the house sits cross-legged, but the Daughter is doing just the same. In her lap she has a little plastic clownfish that she keeps dunking in and out of the water. Her hair is plastered to her forehead and falls into her eyes, but she doesn’t seem to mind. The water makes her eyelashes long and dark. She seems less like a child and more like a doll. Even her skin glistens like porcelain.
The Mother gets out, drying herself off, and brings out the child, who has become sleepy from play and bathtime. She tickles the girl’s back to keep her awake as she dresses in her soft black pajamas with the bright pink hearts. She gives her a glass of milk with nutrient powder mixed in, and the child is fast asleep before the Husband gets out of the shower, before the Mother’s hair has dried.
I have an audit coming up in two weeks, the Husband tells her over dinner, spooning daal over his plate of rice.
What does that mean? the Mother asks. I’ll have to go to Chicago for three days. You’ve never had to audit before.
It’s a responsibility that comes with the promotion. The apartment will feel so empty.
It’s only three days. And Crystal will come by. You’ve never met her.
You’re right. She could be a ghost for all I know. Maybe your hallucination.
He chuckles at his own joke.
The Mother dreads the audit. She is not looking forward to her Husband’s three-day absence. This trip will be the longest time the couple have been away from each other since their marriage. The Mother cannot fathom that less than five years ago, she was not even aware of her Husband’s existence, although this is the objective truth. Their relationship had been a whirlwind, not a romance. She had been in her first year of college, her mother had died a few years ago, her father spent most of the time doing business in Dubai, both brothers were married. Hers was a fate that befell most youngest daughters; it was nothing new. Her future Husband arrived one summer having finished a master’s in engineering. He had a job, a visa, and a small apartment in Toronto. He had a full head of hair. There was nothing left for her to do in Karachi but wait for some other man to come by.
Ten months into her marriage, six months after her arrival to Canada, the Mother gave birth to the Daughter in a sterile room in North York General Hospital. A three-kilogram birthday present souvenir. She remembers that they asked her, as soon as it happened, if she wanted to hold the baby, but what she had really wanted was cold vanilla ice cream. It had been a hot, dry spring that year too.
* * *
The Mother doesn’t cook the first day he’s away, eats buttered toast for every meal. She buys groceries, but doesn’t clean the house, instead watching Indian serial reruns. She takes the Daughter to the park earlier than usual.
She forgets her digest, so she spends most of the hour watching the playground. The heat wave is making the children on the playground rowdy and rough. There have been more and more older kids as of late, children practicing leisure for their summer vacations. Running, climbing, wrestling, hanging upside down—all until their cheeks turn pink. The Daughter is not old enough to feel self-conscious yet, so she joins whoever is there, but even amongst her peers the Mother notices a slight inward quality. Even surrounded by all these children running circles around her, picking her up, tapping her on the back, the child seems to be in her own world, outside looking in. If the girl hadn’t been so young, the Mother would have considered her smug.
Eventually, as always, she gets bored by the other kids and goes off on her own, digging shallow holes in the sand to drop pebbles into. When the girl crouches down to pick up her plastic shovel, the back of her green striped T-shirt rides up. Her clothes get smaller at breakneck speeds.
That night the Mother lets the Daughter sleep in her bed instead of the cot on the other side of the room. It is not a good thing, to set this precedent, but the bed is large and unwelcoming otherwise. The Mother wakes up the next morning with the Daughter inches from her face, hair caught in her eyelashes, breath sour with sleep.
Miss Crystal is set to come the second day. They’re going to start the parent-led feeding today. The Mother is wearing dark colors, a black T-shirt and deep blue jeans, just in case.
At the dining table, the Mother feels like a stranger in her own home. Miss Crystal is meticulous with the directions, friendly but firm. The Mother picks up the spoon, pinching the plastic bumblebee between her fingers, and brings the pureed sweet potato to the Daughter’s lips. The Daughter bats the spoon away, as if out of instinct rather than any real intention. On the second try, the girl does it again, even more forcefully, grabbing the spoon in an attempt to tug it away from the Mother. The third time, as the Mother brings the spoon up, only half full at Miss Crystal’s suggestion, the child begins to wail. This reaction feels the most unforgivable of them all.
Maybe she isn’t ready for this yet, says Miss Crystal, her tone curt and placating, as if the Mother needs placating and not this beast sitting at her dining table with orange baby food in her hair. Miss Crystal, apparently deciding to be more curious than helpful, brings a fourth spoonful of food up to the Daughter’s mouth, and the child takes it, chews, and swallows, no longer indignant. Crystal makes a move to turn to the Mother, tilts her head a certain way, but doesn’t commit completely to the act, and ends up only glancing at her out of the corner of her eye.
The Mother wants to cut the session short, but instead leaves to wait in the bedroom of her own home.
That night, for dinner, the Mother prepares oatmeal for the child. She puts in eggs and pureed spinach. She pulses the entire thing in the blender, so the outcome is granular and sickly green. “Gruel” is the word that comes to the Mother’s mind, but she’s not exactly sure from where.
She seats the child in front of the television on her plastic red chair. She turns on some cartoons and holds a spoon up to the girl’s mouth. As expected, the child dodges the utensil, tilting her head to move away. As the Mother presses further, the girl bats the spoon, sending it clattering across the hardwood floor.
The Mother sighs and picks it up, before retreating to the bedroom. When she returns, she has two of her Husband’s neckties in her hand, one blue with small white dots, the other red with thin gold stripes. The child has forgotten about the food and is now slack in her chair, completely engrossed in some show about a girl clown and a doll. The Mother crouches down and takes one of the Daughter’s limp arms, balancing it on the narrow armrest of the chair. She takes a necktie and wraps it around the Daughter’s wrist, before tying it down. She does this with the other wrist, and the child does not seem to register it, staring plainly at the television as if she’s being dressed.
The Mother retrieves the bowl and spoon from the counter in the kitchen and sits down in front of the child. This time, when the girl tries to dodge the spoon, the Mother places her left thumb firmly on her chin, pressing down to force her mouth open. The Daughter struggles and this is when she realizes what has happened to her hands. She straightens her elbows, straining her shoulders against the back of the chair, kicking out her legs. She gives out a strangled cry. She is panicking, shutting her eyes, trying to swerve her head to the side. But she can’t move in any way that puts her out of the grasp of the Mother.
She gives in to defeat. Still stricken and strained against the chair, she allows her mouth to be opened and for food to be shoveled in. She struggles with the spoonfuls, the Mother is relentless, and the mixture sticks to the girl’s throat. When she coughs, intermittently struggling for air, her entire body heaves. She is unable to do much else. She is stuck in this chair, in front of this television, in front of this Mother. These are her circumstances.
On the third day, the Mother sleeps in. Those two hours are missed when she realizes the rigor of her tasks: sweeping, mopping, dusting, then preparing chicken tikka and pilau for dinner. Thankfully, the Daughter wakes late too, later than her, and takes an early and long nap. She is unobtrusive today, more preoccupied with coloring and animal figurines than what the Mother is up to. This arrangement is ideal after yesterday; the Mother has trouble looking the Daughter in the eye. She finds herself pathologizing the Daughter’s every move, every affectation, wondering exactly what mark she has left on the child. The girl, if noticing this extra distant attention, does not seem to care.
Since the Husband’s arrival is on a Friday, Mother and Daughter make their usual trip to the bakery before his bus comes. As the Mother walks into the shop and past the familiar glass case of pastries, the Daughter suddenly sticks her heels into the ground, bringing the stroller to a halt.
What is it? the Mother asks, wary of an oncoming tantrum, an ensuing scene. The Daughter reaches to the side, straining the belt across her stomach.
That, she says, pressing her small fingers to the glass in front of the coconut cream buns. I want that one.
The pastry is massive, with rich white frosting rippling in its center. It’s too big for the child to eat alone, easily the size of her face, and it’ll surely cause a mess, but the Daughter has never asked for anything before, and the Mother owes her at least this.
The bun is so large that she struggles to pick it up with the tongs. The owner, whom the Daughter has charmed over numerous visits, gives it to her for free. As the old register rings, Mother notices a flash outside, then a roll of thunder. The rain that’s been promised for the past week strikes today, now, but the Mother isn’t prepared. She didn’t think to check the weather this morning, assuming the perpetual dry heat that has recently plagued the city. She makes sure the Daughter is strapped in tightly, then makes a haphazard dash across the parking lot, feeling the droplets violently pelt her body. Rain is infrequent in Toronto; even rarer is this warm, heavy rain that she associates with monsoons on rooftops, not dilapidated asphalt and old sedans.
She has run as fast as she can, but still both Mother and Daughter are soaked once they get to the bus shelter, faces glistening with the sheen of rainwater. She pulls the paper bag out of her shirt, then the bun out of the bag, and hands it to the Daughter. She watches as the girl drags a finger down its center and licks the cream off her hands, before slurping the frosting straight from the bun. The Mother has never seen the child eat anything with such flourish. She’s never seen anyone, let alone the Daughter, indulge in food to the extent she does in this bun. Not voraciously, but with splendor. The Daughter occupies herself with this until the only thing left is the soggy pastry surrounding where the cream used to be. And then she hands the bun to the Mother.
The Mother takes the bun and tears a small piece off the side. It’s buttery and rich, flaky and moist. She has the sudden urge to follow through like her Daughter and tear chunks off with her teeth. Instead, she tosses the remnants in the trash can.
The bus arrives and so does the Husband, wheeling behind him a little blue carry-on. He beams when he sees the pair of them, and hugs the Daughter tightly even though she is still very wet. He had thought ahead when packing, in the front pocket of his suitcase is a black-and-white spotted umbrella. The three of them arrange themselves underneath, the couple pressed shoulder to shoulder, and the Daughter pressed back on her polyester stroller seat.
You must be tired, says the Mother at dinner that night. They are eating earlier than usual, so the Daughter is sitting with them, with a few morsels of rice and shredded chicken placed on her plastic bumblebee plate.
The flight wasn’t that long, the Husband says. Chicago is hardly Karachi. No, I guess not. Less Pakistanis there too, she replies dryly. Out of the corner of her eye she catches the Daughter picking up a grain of rice between her impossibly small fingers. With the delicate, assertive motion of a bird, the tiny hand swoops up to her mouth and sticks in the bite.
The Mother imagines that the girl also steals glances of her. She imagines the bond between them, if in the form of a closely woven rope, has begun to fray. There is less than one year until kindergarten. Just one more birthday, her twenty-fourth, and then more than age will separate the two. The Daughter will share her blood, her spit, will have her face and her eyes, yet will be someone else.
Thank God. Inshallah.