Reasons to Be Happy

Eight days later, sitting in our hotel room as the sun rose on my first morning in Ghana, I dug my sequined purple notebook from my duffel bag.

I flipped through a few pages. Reasons to be happy? Please. More like reasons to be terrified:

1. My father doesn’t want me around

2. My father is going to end up in jail

3. I have no real friends

4. I’m never going to get well

5. I’m in a third world country half a planet away from everything I know

6. I’ll never be able to finish all the schoolwork I’m missing

7. I’ll flunk and have to repeat my eighth grade year

8. That won’t matter because I’ll end up weighing five hundred pounds and won’t be able to fit on the plane to go home

I am really, truly in Africa!

What am I doing here?

We’d arrived the night before. As we started to descend in Accra—Ghana’s capital—it had just begun to get dark and the sky was red. For real red. Red like Chinese lanterns. Underneath all that red was a glittering coastline of lights. Like any other city in the world.

Stepping off the plane was total sensory overload that made it hard to breathe. What I could breathe had a distinct odor: meat cooking, sweat, animal musk, and a smoky aroma of something on the edge of burning. Mix all those ingredients with hot, humid, oily temperatures and you’ll understand why the first whiff of Africa made me woozy.

We met Ben, our guide and driver. He’s a big man with a lullaby voice. I attached myself to him like super glue, practically holding his hand.

When we stepped outside the airport, I saw men and woman dressed in modern trendy clothes, men and women in tribal dress, and everything in between. Of course, by that point, we’d been traveling for twenty-four hours. I was an overtired, overwhelmed, scaredy-cat zombie. When we got to the hotel, I practically passed out.

After waking, I looked across our hotel room; Aunt Izzy was still asleep, curled on her side, her back to me. I tried to be quiet as I sat cross-legged on my bed with my purple book and contemplated my list. I thought about putting Not bingeing for three days, but the list wasn’t like that. It’s only for things that always make me happy, not too specific to any certain time in my life.

I could’ve listed Not having to go back to school too. I didn’t have to face the B-Squad and all their judgment about my dad, my fat butt, and my loserdom for a good long time. I had tons of homework to do while I was gone, though. I’d been freaked out when I’d seen the pile of stuff and instructions from my teachers. I knew Aunt Izzy had told my teachers what was going on with me—all of it, not just the Dad crisis. I could tell by the cheesy notes they wrote me. DeTello wrote me this great note, though, and said she only wanted me to do my Make a Difference Project, “Because I know Hannah Carlisle has a lot to offer the world.” Hmm.

I could’ve also put Starting therapy on my list, but I wanted the list to stand on its own. Aunt Izzy got me an appointment in Yellow Springs with this woman Giulia Florio. Her first name is pronounced Julia but it’s spelled that gorgeous Italian way. She’s freakishly tall, but stunning, with his huge beaky nose that makes her look exotic, and crazy hair with wild messy curls.

I liked her.

That surprised me. I went prepared to hate her. I’d hoped that maybe there’d be some magic cure, something Giulia would do or say to “fix” me right away. I’d been shocked that she’d hardly even mentioned bulimia the first couple of times. (I had gone eight days in a row. That was “highly unusual” my aunt and Giulia both told me, but since we were leaving the country, “these were extenuating circumstances.”)

For the first few appointments, I actually felt guilty knowing how much they cost, when all Dr. Giulia did was talk about things I liked to do and asked about things I thought I was good at. We drank chai and chatted about my cities and running. We talked a lot about my mom and dad, but it wasn’t until the fourth visit that she brought up bulimia at all.

At first, I didn’t even know she was getting to the bulimia. She stood up and said, “Humor me a moment, okay? We’re going to do a little experiment. Could you crawl under my desk please?”

I was like What? but she was smiling. “It’s kind of a game. Just go with it.”

So I got on my hands and knees and stuck my head and shoulders in the nook where her legs usually went. “Okay,” I said. “Am I looking for something?”

“No,” her voice floated down to me. “But try to actually fit in there, all right?”

“Uh, okay.” I had my doubts, but I jammed myself in. I had to hug my knees to my chest and keep my head sideways on my knees. There was no way to relax.

Then, to make it more bizarre, Dr. Giulia said, “Excellent. Now I’m going to try to fit my chair in place, okay?”

Was she nuts? There was no way! The chair pressed against me. A cramp started in my hamstring. My neck ached.

“Comfortable?” she called.

“Uh…no. Not at all.” I wasn’t laughing anymore. It was obvious I didn’t fit.

She pulled the chair away and crouched down to look at me. “Really?” she said. She asked it sincerely too. “You don’t like this?”

“No. Can I come out now?”

“Of course you can.” She gave me a hand up.

As we stood there, looking down at the space, she said, “That’s the prison you made for yourself with bulimia. Trying to fit yourself into a space that’s too small.”

I looked at the nook under her desk, then up at her face. I felt dizzy.

“But the most important thing is, you admitted you wanted to come out.”

Okay, okay, cheesy, I know, but it actually made me get teary-eyed.

“Your life has become reduced to this.” She gestured to that tiny hole I’d crammed myself in. “You define yourself this way. Remember how you told me you hated it when your mom became a ‘sick person’? How she became to everyone ‘a woman with cancer’ instead of interesting, talented Annabeth, your mom? Well, the same thing has happened to you, but you’re doing it to yourself. Your world has gotten so small with all you’ve given up to do this.”

She had Aunt Izzy and I make a pact of total honesty before we left the country. I couldn’t lie or hide a binge if one happened. Or, rather, when one happened. She assured me they would happen, and that I was to “treat myself with compassion” when they did. My binges, she said, were “a substitute for confronting painful feelings,” just like my dad’s drinking. Both my dad and I had to work to find healthier ways to deal.

Deal with what I wanted to know. Why was life so hard for me? Why was I such a baby? I didn’t know, but in our pact of honesty, I promised to let Aunt Izzy know when I wanted to binge and she would help divert me. I was supposed to go do something else really active, like run. I couldn’t imagine being able to divert a binge once one took hold of me—it felt like being possessed—but I said I was ready to try. Heck, I’d do just about anything to get rid of the DRH.

What’s DRH? My Disgusting, Repulsive Habit. No more SR, because it’s no longer secret, and it’s not a remedy for anything.

So, sure, I’d try to divert a binge.

Fortunately for me, Ghana turned out to be quite the diversion.

• • •

Once Aunt Izzy woke up, it was nothing but go go go. She and her crew had already been over here five different times, beginning three years ago. That day, they were visiting an orphanage in Kumasi to do some follow-up. We weren’t going to spend a lot of time in Kumasi; the heart of the documentary was a group of orphans in a smaller village called Tafi Atome (pronounced like Taffy Ah-TOE-may).

Aunt Izzy’s crew was small on this trip. She had a bigger team back home for editing and production, but here, she’d brought just three other people and they had the weirdest collection of names. Pearl Hays was her main assistant and a camera person. Just like her name, everything about her was round and pale. Wide in the hips, well-endowed in the boob department, with a natural sway when she walked, she wore her almost-white blond hair in a thick braid down her back. She was a big woman, fat by L.A. standards, but she knew how to dress for her size, and she never apologized. She could laugh louder than anyone I’d ever met.

Dimple Singh—is that the coolest name or what?—was a skinny Indian woman who did sound production. Everything about her was straight and flat compared to Pearl. She kept her hair cut short, which made her dark eyes stand out even more.

The cinematographer was the only man on the trip and won the prize for the absolute best name. Kick McKew was originally from West Virginia. His funny expressions and his soft hill accent always made me grin—like, when we stepped out of the compound of our hotel, lugging equipment to Ben’s van, Kick said, “Whew. It’s hotter than the hinges of hell.”

He was right. The heavy air pulled on my limbs as I moved through it.

Once in the van, crawling through snarled, chaotic traffic, Kick announced, “Well, we’re off like a herd of turtles.”

I glued myself to the van windows, leaving nose prints I’m sure.

Women (and some men) carried outrageous things on their heads—loads of firewood, flats of sunglasses, a tall stack of pillows, metal tubs piled with plastic bags of water (that the entire team and Ben made of point of telling me never to drink). These people talked, walked, and gestured without their loads ever losing balance.

Traffic careened along, sometimes five vehicles competed with each other across what looked like three lanes, with plenty of bicycles and motor scooters whizzing between them too.

At every intersection people walked between the rows of cars selling maps, toothbrushes, dried plantain chips, peanuts, pastries, and cassettes.

The heat wrapped itself around me, giving me the woozy sensation of an out-of-body experience. The smells were so intense, the sun so piercingly bright, the sounds so jarring.

A girl my age rapped on the side of the van, thrusting her open hand through my window. “Please. Please,” she said. The entire right side of her head was blistered from a burn, with actual bubbles in the skin. Her right eye was gone, the lid pulled taut so that only a small slit of emptiness showed above her stark cheekbone.

Thank God I was sitting down, because my legs went totally weak. I felt all my joints and limbs just disconnect from my body, like the slightest breeze (not that there was much chance of one of those!) would detach them and they’d blow away.

The van began to pull forward. “Wait!” I cried, digging in my pockets. I handed the girl a fistful of the bright, fake-looking money I’d exchanged at the airport the night before.

“Whoa, Hannah, that’s a lot,” Kick said.

But I placed the money in the girl’s hands. Her skin was remarkably cool in this heat.

“Medasi, medasi,” she chanted as we pulled away. Thank you.

“You okay?” Aunt Izzy asked me, looking back from her shotgun seat next to Ben.

I nodded, but the image of the girl’s face was permanently seared on my brain.

• • •

We finally got out of Accra, heading north for Kumasi, farther into Ghana, farther from my life. I didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing, getting farther from my life. My life was pretty sucky, but at least I knew it. Every single thing I laid my eyes on here was strange and unfamiliar to me.

A young girl walked with a wooden tray of shiny red tomatoes balanced perfectly on her head. I wondered if she had friends she trusted. Did she wonder Am I pretty enough? Thin enough?

• • •

In Kumasi, people surrounded our van like my parents were on board. It had been a while since I’d experienced this kind of fanfare, and it had never before been directed at me. Little kids ran up to touch me then ran away. Everyone called out “Obruni!” to us: “Obruni, hello!”

Obruni means white person. I’m not sure what language it is, since there isn’t one official language in Ghana. Even a little boy in his mother’s arms cried out the greeting like a kid might say, “Santa Claus!” It was kind of funny, but also incredibly weird. I mean, I can’t imagine calling out, “Hello, black person!” when I saw one at home.

While Aunt Izzy and her team unloaded equipment onto the sidewalk at the orphanage, children tugged on me, asked me my name, wanted me to take their pictures, wanted to touch my skin and hair. When someone patted my butt, I wheeled around, but it was just a little boy, maybe five years old. He then patted his own butt as if he was trying to see if I felt like he did. Thick heavy traffic crawled past us, everyone looking to see what the commotion was.

“Sister, sister,” one man in a car sang at Pearl, leaning out his window. He didn’t call like to get her attention; he said it more in an admiring tone, the way someone at a museum might look at Starry Night and say, “Van Gogh, Van Gogh.”

Pearl smirked a bit but tossed her braid as she hefted camera equipment in the brigade from van to orphanage door. I could tell she was trying not to laugh.

The man, stuck in traffic, raised his voice. “Oh, please, Miss Fatty. Give me one look.”

I gasped. How rude. “What a jerk,” I said.

But Pearl laughed. “It’s a compliment, sweetie. Calling me ‘fatty’ is the same as someone whistling back home.”

I looked at Ben, who nodded. I also noticed he looked at Pearl with appreciation.

“Ghana is good for my ego,” Pearl said.

Children surrounded me, pressed their hands on me, asking if they could have my camera, my watch, my shoes. My claustrophobia tipped toward meltdown.

I ran into the orphanage, after the team, afraid to be left in the crowd alone.

• • •

Inside, I couldn’t shake the dream-like blur. Constant noise, chaos, like I was getting live streaming video from about fifty different sources. The heat pressed me down.

Aunt Izzy’s team filmed and interviewed orphans while I hovered and watched. Their stories made me feel that limbs-might-detach sensation again.

• • •

During a break, Kick said, “Maybe our scope is too broad. We could do a whole series on Darfur alone.”

“Or Sierra Leone,” Dimple said.

“Or Congo or Rwanda or Zimbabwe,” Aunt Izzy said, eyes blazing. “But that’s the point. This whole continent is turning into a land of orphans! I want to do that story. The bigger story.”

Next, they talked to children who looked like the ones in the geography film, who had hands, arms, or eyes missing. Their stories made my skin buzz. I listened to four of these interviews before I began to fantasize about a binge. I had three pastries from the hotel wrapped in napkins at the bottom of my backpack, along with a Luna bar.

After three more interviews, the buzzing was just too much. Sweating, woozy, and leveled, I went in search of a bathroom.

When I found it, I stood on the slanted stone floor, listening to flies buzz in the rough troughs. No door, no water, no toilet paper.

A binge and purge in Africa was going to be very hard to pull off.





115. Being safe

116. Having a home

117. Never having been physically harmed by anyone

118. Having my entire body intact

That night, in a new hotel room, sharing a double bed with Aunt Izzy, I couldn’t sleep.

I realized I’d gone four days without a binge or purge. Was I fatter? The hotel’s room didn’t have a mirror, so I couldn’t even look at myself.

Trying hard not to jostle the bed and wake Aunt Izzy, I reached down for my duffel bag. In the dark, I groped around until I felt my mother’s pink cashmere sweater. I pulled it up to my cheek and breathed deep. Even with the ever present smells of Africa all around me—palm oil and smoke—there she was. The lemon scent of my mother.

What was my dad doing right this minute? Thinking of my mother too? Thinking of me?

Did he miss me? I missed him.

• • •

We began our long drive to Tafi Atome in the morning. We stopped, hours later, for lunch, where I ate red-red—a stew made from cowpeas (what they call black-eyed peas) with red palm oil, tomatoes, really hot peppers, and onion.

Market stalls surrounded the roadside café—pyramids of oranges and coconuts, hills of limes, plastic flip-flops, used empty cans, rabbits strung up by their feet, chickens hanging in bouquets of three, whole goats, goat heads, goat legs, a pig.

I even saw a stall selling ingredients to make voodoo fetishes. Ben explained that Vodun is a real religion, but the idea we have in our heads of voodoo dolls and witch doctors all came from Western movies. I was already heat-dazed, my senses stupefied, as I gawked at buckets of vulture heads, monkey paws, monkey testicles, parrot wings, and dried chameleons. Coiled dead snakes, tongues of who knows what, horns, bats. Hooves, quills, a cheetah skin.

I watched people bargain over these items—the lemons, the tin cans, the dog heads—an aggressive process with lots of huffing, high-pitched cries of indignation, and people storming away from each other only to be called back. It made me afraid to buy anything.

I saw shiny bead necklaces I wanted to buy—not to wear but to disassemble for my cities. The bright colors tugged on me. I heard my mother’s voice say, “Our Hannah is a magpie.”

An African man saw me looking and said, “Ah, sister likes the beads, yes?” He tried to draw me closer, but my heart pounded and I scurried back to my aunt. The bargaining stressed me out. Why couldn’t there just be a fixed price?

“Sss! Sss!” a woman hissed at me—when a Ghanaian wants your attention, they hiss, kind of like we do to shush someone, but just an s, not an sh. “You like the beads? Mine are better. See.”

I was so relieved to drive away from all that wheeling and wheedling and demanding.

As we pulled away, I caught a last, longing glimpse of the beads as they flashed in the sun.

• • •

Later that day, after the highways turned into red dirt roads, we finally reached Tafi Atome.

The village—only the size of a football field—sat plunked down in the middle of the rain forest, nothing more than two main dirt streets with three shops, a visitor’s center, and one restaurant. The school was the biggest and best structure, and the village water pump—in the schoolyard—marked the center of the village. Residential homes stood on the outside edge of the two main streets; smaller roads lined with houses disappeared into the jungle.

As Ben parked in the schoolyard, he honked the horn, and people came running from all directions. The villagers and the film team greeted each other by name.

The second I stepped out of the van, a monkey snatched the sunglasses off the top of my head (and a few strands of hair with it)!

Villagers and the film crew laughed as I turned red with anger.

The village had created a sanctuary to protect the Mona monkeys that lived there. You could’ve fooled me that the Mona monkeys were endangered; the little brats were everywhere. Small and dark—the size of house cats—with white faces and bellies, and long tails, they leapt onto roofs and branches of trees, playing, wrestling, tumbling with each other.

I watched my favorite pair of sunglasses go from tin roof to tin roof and then into the dense trees. Izzy shrugged at me.

I tried to let it go when Modesta, one of the main subjects of the documentary, approached the van. Aunt Izzy had followed her for three years now. I felt like I already knew her, I’d watched so much footage of her already—a leggy dark black twig with luxuriant lashes any movie star would envy framing her enormous eyes. She wore an oilcloth print wrapped around herself, tied at one bony shoulder. Her smile was million-watt when directed at my aunt.

They hugged each other.

When Aunt Izzy introduced me to Modesta, Modesta’s beam vanished. She nodded and looked at the ground.

“Why don’t you show Hannah the house?” Aunt Izzy asked.

Modesta turned and walked into the house. I had to run to follow her.

I’d already seen some of this house—a cinder block building painted bright blue with salmon trim—in the footage from previous trips. What made Tafi Atome special compared to the other villages was that they’d given an entire house to the orphans who could not be absorbed into relatives’ homes. Eleven orphans lived there—a big number when you considered the small size of the village. All the orphans attended school. Everyone in the village pitched in for their clothing and food. Modesta was the oldest, so she looked after the smaller ones.

She walked through the house, not really explaining anything, hardly looking at me. Great. I had to travel half a world away for another girl not to like me?

The small rooms inside were lined with cots, some bed rolls on the packed dirt floors. Although the beds’ blankets were threadbare in places, each bed had been neatly made. “It’s really very nice,” I said, trying to get her to show me a hint of friendliness.

She nodded.

I didn’t notice a bathroom, but I found out later that none of the houses in Tafi Atome had running water. I looked around, noting the absence of outlets and light switches.

Back outside, on the porch, Modesta crossed her arms over her flat chest and looked out at Kick and Dimple playing football—what we call soccer—with several of the children. More than eleven kids were playing, so I didn’t know how to tell the orphans from the kids with parents.

The van was gone. I wondered where Ben had gone.

My stomach growled.

I clamped a hand over my belly. “The lion wants his dinner?” Modesta asked.

I laughed. She didn’t even crack a smile.

It struck me that I hadn’t felt hungry in a long, long time.

I felt good.

I didn’t have a headache or that awful hangover feeling. I wasn’t tired.

This was all new.

Aunt Izzy and Pearl came up on the porch to talk to Modesta, other children following them. I sat down on the wide concrete edge, wondering why Modesta didn’t like me.

I was surprised Izzy and Pearl didn’t film. They seemed content to hang out and chat with children on their laps. When Dimple grew tired of the football game, she joined us too. The kids asked us questions, about the U.S., about Ohio, about our politics, about California.

“California?” a young boy named Rafael asked, pronouncing all five syllables. “Do you know any movie stars?”

I froze.

I couldn’t make eye contact with any of the film team. Don’t give me away. Don’t give me away, I begged in my head.

“There are movie stars everywhere in Los Angeles,” I said. “You get used to it. They’re just regular people.”

“You are so lucky,” Rafael said. “I would like to meet Will Smith. Or Matt Damon. Or Caleb Carlisle.”

How did Rafael know these names? Where was the closest movie theater to Tafi Atome?

“You are so lucky,” Rafael repeated. “Tell me the movie stars you have met.”

Dimple took out a small recorder, which distracted him. The kids sang songs for us, then laughed when Dimple played their own voices back.

It grew dark, and I did everything I could to suppress the snarling noises in my belly, keeping my arms pressed hard across it. Parents began to steal up to the porch and, with gentle whispers, summon their children home for dinner. The cook fires and delicious aromas wafting through the dark violet sky tortured me and my empty stomach.

I recognized our van’s puttering noise approaching through the darkness. The children remaining on the porch all cheered, and I realized our team was feeding the orphans tonight.

Ben and one of the older orphans—a tall, serious young man named Philomel—emerged from the van and carried cardboard boxes up to the porch. Everyone got a “tray” of newspaper holding rice, fish, and fried yams, all covered in a spicy tomato sauce.

I couldn’t remember the last time food had tasted so good. I remembered Izzy’s advice to savor each bite, to truly taste each flavor. I wanted to scarf down the entire tray, but recognized I was full when there was still plenty left. Rafael and the others devoured my leftovers.

Modesta and Philomel made the children wash their hands and faces after the meal, and as they came scampering back from the pump one by one, I saw them going through our trash bag, taking empty water bottles and an empty film canister.

After dinner, we walked to the visitor’s center, where it seemed the entire village had gathered for drumming and dancing. I still couldn’t get a smile from Modesta, but Rafael carried my white plastic chair for me on his head. He balanced it there with one hand and took me by the hand with his other, leading me to the drum circle. A Dutch couple was there—they were staying in someone’s guest room—and a German college student who had paid to camp in the yard of the visitor’s center. And us.

We set up chairs in an aerobic circle around an eye-stinging fire, and the men—including tall, serious Philomel—played huge, chest-high drums.

The women and children danced in a circle around the drummers. Most of the women were draped in brightly colored oilcloth. They became a kaleidoscope to my travel-bleary eyes as they jumped, turned, and twisted in the dusty circle, their skin glistening.

One woman danced with a baby wrapped to her back. I watched in amazement as the baby never stirred or cried through the bouncing, jostling, and noise.

Dancers gestured for us to join them. The Dutch couple and the German student jumped right up. So did Pearl and Aunt Izzy. I scootched down in my chair and tried to be invisible.

The weird thing was, the music made me want to dance. I wanted to move after spending most of the day in the van. But…but what? It had become my habit to hold back? To be chicken? To worry about what others might think?

I watched the Dutch couple. They looked silly. But did anyone care? Was anyone mocking them? Of course not. All the faces smiled, white teeth flashing through the dark.

I thought of those beads I’d seen at lunch.

Because of those beads, I let two village girls pull me into the circle.

They shouted their names over the music. One was Ekuba. Her friend was Beauty. Had I heard that right over the music? Beauty would be mocked back home for her wide hips and the rolls around her middle, but she really was beautiful, I thought, with her dimples, her long lashes, her sweet smile.

The music was wild—the drums like your own pulse amplified. I watched Ekuba and Beauty trying to copy their steps and turns. I actually got into a groove and felt I had a rhythm. I lost myself. I found my trance. Just like with my DRH.

Only I didn’t feel nothing.

I felt something better: I felt joy. I felt life. I felt happy.

Modesta’s gaze met mine, briefly, and I thought she might smile, but she whirled away.

When the music stopped, I dripped with grimy sweat. I stunk, but since I could also smell every other living being in the immediate vicinity, I didn’t figure it mattered. I stepped outside the circle of chairs to catch my breath as the drummers began pounding out the next song.

In the dark, away from the heat of the fires, smaller kids played hide-and-seek on the outskirts of the circle. One used me to hide from the others.

I looked up at the purple sky. “I am in Africa,” I whispered.

A goat brushed by me.

“I am dancing in Africa, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a village, in the middle of the jungle.”

There was a reason to be happy if ever I’d had one.

I vowed to be braver. To do the very next thing that scared me.

Eventually, the drumming ended.

Rafael materialized from the darkness, my chair on his head, and took my hand again. I tripped over a goat and her kids in the shadows, nearly falling. The goat baaed at me.

Modesta’s voice came through the darkness. “Sister goat says cross words to you.”

The children giggled.

Rafael led me and the rest of the team back to the van. Izzy began explaining where everyone was staying. We’d be in private residences, with people who’d volunteered to host us. Izzy and I would stay with one of the schoolteachers.

“Han-nah can stay with us,” Modesta said. She made my name rhyme with Ghana.

Izzy raised her eyebrows at me. She wasn’t going to leave me if I didn’t want it.

I had just vowed to do the very next thing that scared me.

I watched myself, as if from far away, open my mouth and say, “I’d love to stay here.”

Modesta smiled. Finally. She smiled at me.

I hefted my duffel bag to my shoulder, hugged Aunt Izzy good night, and followed Modesta.

I was tired in that really exquisite way, like when you’ve spent the whole day hiking or at an amusement park. I craved one of those tidy little cots. I wanted to sink into delicious sleep.

But my favorite African day was topped by my worst night.