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The Dress
Hannah Nahm
My sister says she wants a cake, anything with chocolate, lots of it. I
make a mental list of places I can go to order a specialty cake, sugar­
free, low fat. Maybe there's an imitation chocolate out there. My sis­
ter's at risk of diabetes and God knows what else. At five four, she weighs just
under two hundred pounds. She tells me this. I weigh just under two-hundred. She
doesn't bother lying about these things, things that I, if I could, would cover up
even at my own funeral. I see her eat - a lot. A whole mound of apple pie, sal­
isbury steak, kimchee cake, anything she can get her hands on.
Hospital food gets you fa t, she says. It's the hospital's fault.
I think, which one, there's been so many.
She's been wantingto die off and on since twenty-one. She's turning
thirty in less than two weeks. Her recent diagnosis: bipolar with psychotic man­
ifestations. She'll be facing her birthday at a psychiatric rehab facility, but I'm
not moping over it. There were other birthdays far worse. At La Montana
there's a mirror in the bathroom, a real one. At least here, she could close the
door behind her to shower. In her teens, we used to call her "Cliff-hanger
Sandy." We were talking about her chest. It dropped, straight down, no traces of
budding nipples anywhere. But after cyclic years of hospital admissions and
discharges and now a couple of months at La Montana, she is doughy like a
sumo wrestler.
This time, she says, I want a whole cake. Don't have it cut into small
pieces or anything. I want to be able to cut my own birthday cake.
check point.
But Sandy, I say, the hospital won't allow that. I'll never get beyond the
There is static on the other line. I picture my sister thinking about what
I just said. Maybe she's checking her left wrist. Maybe she's surprised at the
many slashes she sees there. I'm Sorry would be nice.
Did you hear me, I say. You still there?
Talk to the doctor, Dee. He said he needs to talk to you.
What about the knife, Sandy? How are you going to cut that cake
without a knife? Do you think they'd actually let me bring in a knife?
Sandy snorts into the phone. I'm not going to hurt myself with a plas­
tic cake knife. I can't!
Well I guess you're the expert. But I don't need to catch myself because I
would never say this. Instead, I say, I don't know, Sandy. I don't know.
I'm good now.
When are you going to call the doctor, she asks. I want to come home.
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