"Nina Kiriki Hoffman - But Now Am Found" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hoffman Nina Kiriki)

she fell across the bed. The last thing she heard before spiraling down into
deep sleep was Fat Self on the phone, telling someone she was too sick to come
to work today.

When she woke, she felt bloated and ill. The clock told her it was one in the
afternoon. She struggled up and opened the curtains to look out at a blast
furnace day, sun baking the pale wall of the building across from hers. The
street nine stories below shimmered with heat. She fell back onto the bed, her
hands on her swollen stomach. She had been so careful to eat small meals, her
stomach couldn't deal with big ones. Had that morning's breakfast been a
dream?
Rationalization for a binge? She went into the bathroom to throw up, and was
on
the floor, leaning over the toilet, when a hand closed over her mouth. "Not
that
way," said Little Self. "It has to go through you so I can get it."

"What?" Sweat beaded on Iris's forehead.

"Put it on, then work it off. That's the only way I can grow."

Her stomach churned. She vomited before Little Self could stop her, and sat
back, breathing deeply, stomach acids etching her tongue and throat.

"All right," said Little Self, "I guess we're doing this wrong. You need to
build back up to it a little at a time." Little Self went and got a glass of
water and gave it to Iris. She rinsed out her mouth and spat into the toilet.
Little Self flushed it.
When she woke later, one of them had gone shopping, and there were all her
favorite foods in the house again, junk she had learned to stay away from and
despise: Cheetos and Twinkies, ice cream and devilsfood cake, potato chips and
licorice whips, and all the breads -- sourdough, hearth rye, raisin bread --
and
real dairy butter to go on top, and raspberry preserves. The whole house
smelled
delicious with the buttery cooking scents of childhood foods, the ones that
took
revenge on you for eating them by huddling under the skin, moving in like
houseguests who refused to leave.

Fat Self fixed her a salad, and she felt comforted by it; surely a salad could
feed them nothing. Maybe it even canceled out some of the destruction they
were
practicing. She tried to hold onto that thought while they were forcing her to
eat the deep-fat-fried chicken with the skin still on, crackly and spicy.

Iris closed her teeth against invasion. Fat Self stroked her cheek and
murmured,
"Little frog, little frog," and Iris felt her mouth open. The eating was
hypnotic. She felt confusion as she ate, one part of her enjoying the