Sickled O’er with the Pale Cast of Milk Chocolate

Erin Anderson

                When my father died in his sleep from myocardial infarction, my brother blamed me. He accused me of driving the sugar train that had run over our father. My brother happened to be suffering from schizophrenia, but that did not mean he was mistaken. I had driven the sugar train. Sugar had been a major ingredient in my bonding with my father. I had been only too happy to run out to the store and buy a Sara Lee cheesecake on a Sunday afternoon and eat it with my father while we watched television. We were comforted by the predictable sweet creaminess and the predictable television narratives. We were safe from the intrusion of my brother’s worsening ramblings, signs of a psyche unraveling.
                A few days after my father died, I saw him in a dream. “I thought you died,” I said.
                He silently shrugged his shoulders.
                “Well, we’re going to have to watch your diet so that doesn’t happen again!” I told him.

***

Much later in life, I discovered that my own body was having a hard time metabolizing sugar. Insulin resistance they called it. So I finally committed to decreasing my intake. I also repeatedly told myself, “Sugar is not going to make you happy, Erin. It just isn’t.” Once I had made that realization, I began to notice a social plot to keep me heavily sugared. Sitting in a buffet-style cafeteria with friends, I admired a piece of cake that was destined to be consumed by a man in our group. “That looks good,” I said. It was just an innocuous comment during a lag in conversation, but one of the women got up, went to the dessert island, and returned with a pink frosted square. She put it by my plate. This was not her home, and I had not asked for a piece of cake. I had simply voiced how attractive her diabetic husband’s cake had looked. Identifying myself as the victim of a sugar conspiracy helped me resist.

***

               When I was walking through a grocery store with a colleague after a day of professional training, she kept repeating the same request. “Let me buy you an ice cream.”
               “I don’t want an ice cream,” I said. “You can eat an ice cream. I don’t want one.”
               A few minutes passed. She asked again, “Are you sure you don’t want an ice cream?”
               She had not felt the urge to buy me a bottle of fish oil capsules fortified with Vitamin E.
               Then she bought a package of cookies that just happened to be my favorite. They were delicate translucent discs of buttery sesame-seed brittle that melted in my mouth. Later in the hotel room we shared, she told me to help myself. I took one, two, three.
               One evening after a particularly long and boring day of training, I ended up in the hotel room alone with her cookies.
               When she came in, she asked me where they were.
               “I ate them,” I said. “I can buy you another package if you want.”
               “No. That’s okay,” she said. She’d proved her point.

***

                When I was working in an elementary school in Armenia as a Peace Corps Volunteer, the social forces that encouraged the intake of simple carbohydrates took on cult-like proportions. Many ate nothing for breakfast beyond a small cup of coffee, taking sips between bites of chocolate. The teachers also had no regular lunch. Sometimes they ate sweet buns. Other times they tore chunks of white bread off a flat loaf and ate it with salty cheese, but usually no regular sustenance was ingested beyond serial sips of coffee and bites of chocolate during school hours.
                Even when I politely refused a chocolate, my counterpart unwrapped it and placed it next to my coffee cup. I stared at the dark rectangle. Later I found out that her father had had a diabetes-related foot amputation.
                When I saw an article in Armenian detailing the evils of white flour, explaining how it raised blood sugar levels, I brought it to school and forced several of my colleagues to read it. “See?! It’s not just sugar! It’s also white flour! It’s written in the newspaper! Now you have to believe it!”

***

I occasionally relapsed. After ducking into the Moscow Cinema in the capital city of Yerevan to watch a Russian-dubbed American action film, I sat in the back row and scraped melted Jumbo Twix chocolate off the inside of the wrapper with my teeth. These were my passive pleasures, my escapes from a life that overwhelmed. Besides, it was the weekend! I was supposed to be having fun and not be psychologically weary from listening to Armenian educators scream at children all week. After yelling during the first few weeks of school, one teacher lost her voice.

***

I had listened to enough screaming in my life. As my brother’s schizophrenia bloomed during his teenage years, my alcoholic father increased his screaming rants, calling my brother the worst things possible in the English language. About ten years later, my brother would follow my father to the grave. It was interesting that my brother had used a train metaphor when referring to what he perceived as my culpability in our father’s heart condition because it would be a train that my brother would use to end his own life.
Sugar was not going to help me with that.

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Erin Anderson has taught English in the U.S., Czech Republic, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. As a Peace Corps Volunteer, she has taught in Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Georgia, and Armenia. She has an M.A. in English from California State University, Northridge, and an MFA from Northern Michigan University, and her work has appeared in Bending Genres, The Cream City Review, The Mississippi Review, Wordriot, Slow Trains, and The Summerset Review.