Tag Archives: dancing

The Girls at 17 Swann Street by Yara Zgheib

Anna Roux’s life changed drastically when her husband moved them from Paris to the American Midwest. Her profession as a dancer fades to history, and she disappears inside herself, despair manifesting as anorexia. In a holiday visit home, her family’s shocked reaction to her appearance prompts her husband to commit her to a strict program at 17 Swann Street, where Anna learns the hard way to eat again. There’s so much more going on than Anna feeling fat, so much involved in succumbing to an insidious disease. Zgheib carefully maneuvers through the complexity of her character’s inner turmoil. As a contributing factor as well as an integral part of Anna’s support system, her husband is explored through his emotional roller coaster, denial, and finally, tough love response to her illness.

This story paints a detailed description of a unique life with an unfortunately common disease, where one cannot point to any one action as a causation. Readers with no connection to this illness still will reel from the pain of a young woman who feels out of control of her own life, who cannot reconcile her less than desirable circumstances with the love she feels for her husband, sympathizing with her as she is forced to confront the voice of anorexia telling her that she is not enough. The slow, challenging journey is well told by a talented writer. This is a must-read for the awareness and understanding it brings. If anorexia has touched your life in any way, offer this story to friends and family. Even if it hasn’t, read and share for the compassion invoked.

Yara Zgheib’s poetic and poignant debut novel is a haunting portrait of a young woman’s struggle with anorexia on an intimate journey to reclaim her life.  

The chocolate went first, then the cheese, the fries, the ice cream. The bread was more difficult, but if she could just lose a little more weight, perhaps she would make the soloists’ list. Perhaps if she were lighter, danced better, tried harder, she would be good enough. Perhaps if she just ran for one more mile, lost just one more pound. 

Anna Roux was a professional dancer who followed the man of her dreams from Paris to Missouri. There, alone with her biggest fears—imperfection, failure, loneliness—she spirals down anorexia and depression till she weighs a mere eighty-eight pounds. Forced to seek treatment, she is admitted as a patient at 17 Swann Street, a peach pink house where pale, fragile women with life-threatening eating disorders live: women like Emm, the veteran; quiet Valerie; Julia, always hungry. Together, they must fight their diseases and face six meals a day.
Every bite causes anxiety.  Every flavor induces guilt. And every step Anna takes toward recovery will require strength, endurance, and the support of the girls at 17 Swann Street.

Yara Zgheib is a Fulbright scholar with a Masters degree in Security Studies from Georgetown University and a PhD in International Affairs in Diplomacy from Centre D’études Diplomatiques et Stratégiques in Paris. She is fluent in English, Arabic, French, and Spanish. Yara is a writer for several US and European magazines, including The Huffington Post, The Four Seasons Magazine, A Woman’s Paris, The Idea List, and Holiday Magazine. She writes on culture, art, travel, and philosophy on her blog, “Aristotle at Afternoon Tea” (http://www.aristotleatafternoontea.com/).

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Prompt: She watched the blood-stained dress burn, as I watched her.

Cheap Sparkles

Mama stood in the already blistering heat of the Nevada desert we both loathed. She watched the blood-stained dress burn, as I watched her. Black Irish, my mama looked like a Disney princess, with her long dark hair and fair skin. But she was no princess. Not that she was evil. It’s the ridiculous nature of the princesses that I deny in her. Practical to her core, does what she’s gotta do.

She had to do this.

Podunk, Kentucky was founded in 1842, boomed with forty-niners, and exploded with railroad and river travel. Then it slowly died. I lived in a dead town. Mama worked in the big chicken farm, like most everyone else. Smelled like shit every day. Whole town smelled like shit.

I heard Mama making call after call one day when I got home after school. I lingered in the doorway to the kitchen, so I could get the gist of it from her side of the conversations. They all sounded the same.

“So you work for Harley? Uh-huh. I see. Oh, really? It pays well? Higher than most? Oh, that’s good. You like living there? Gotta be better than Podunk, Kentucky.” She didn’t have to laugh that loud, and not every time. I could even hear the other women laughing loudly with her. Whoever they were, I didn’t want anything to do with them. After the fifth phone call, she turned and saw me. I faked like I was just coming in, threw my backpack on the table.

“Hey, Suzi Q, how are you?” I grinned. Though she said it every day, that phrase made me feel loved. Maybe it was the continuity of it, the expectation fulfillment. “My precious girl.” Mama kissed my forehead and pulled out a chair. “Sit down. I’ve got big news.”

“Yeah?” Why was I suspicious? Was it the phone calls, all them women laughing at my home town? Mama sat next to me, held my hands, and took a deep breath.

“We’re leaving this chicken shit town.”

“What?” She placed her hand on my cheek.

“Mr. Harley, the guy I met yesterday? He’s legit. He does own a club in Vegas. I called all nine of the dancers on his list who work for him.”

“Mama, you ain’t been a dancer since before I was born.”

“Ain’t that kind of dancing, sweetie. it’s all a show of fancy costumes and bright lights, with easy dance steps. Mr. Harley told me I’d fit right in.”

We piled everything we especially wanted in our old pickup and drove west on the advance from Mr. Harley. Two days later, we pulled into Vegas near midnight. It was glorious. Sparkles everywhere, even from the fountains. Huge fountains of sparkling water in the desert. Crazy.

On Mama’s first night, I went with her. The club was way off the strip, with a couple bars on both sides. Harleys filled their parking lots. Inside was busy, women wearing extraordinary costumes. We passed a wall of photos across a map of the US. I pointed out Mama’s picture to her and she grabbed a passing dancer.

“Why’s my photo on this map?” The woman looked at the photo and back at Mama.

“Rosalie!” She hugged Mama. “I’m so glad you’re here. I’m Donna. Let’s get you a costume. You’ll be in next week’s show, so you’ll be backstage tonight. But you gotta get used to the heavy costume.” She took her by the hand, but Mama didn’t budge.

“Tell me about the photo.” Donna turned around with a blank face.

“Oh, that’s how Mr. Harley chooses his dancers. He’s got a whole system of traveling salesmen and tourists giving him pictures of beautiful women. He’s rescued all of us from dead boring little towns across the country. Isn’t that wonderful?” Mama snake-eyed her, then followed her to costuming. On the way, Donna explained, “When someone leaves, we dancers get to pick the next one on the map. We chose you. Anyone else goes, you get to help choose our next dancer.”

Mama’s look told me she didn’t give a crap. She smiled and shrugged at me, whispered, “Whatever.”

In the costume room, Donna helped Mama pick out her size in the white dress covered with rhinestones, with slits up the sides at the waist. Mama handed it to me. Man, was it heavy. Then she tried on the headdress and nearly fell over.

“Yeah,” Donna said, “Practice at home. That’s what we do. Each costume forces a different center of gravity. Just a matter of focus, really.” She stopped and looked at me. “Hey, if you’re interested, we can get you a costume for backup. I mean, it’s not regular pay, but…..you’re still in high school, right?”

“She’s 13,” Mama snarled.

“Holy geez! I thought you were at least 17. Sorry.”

Everything went okay, I guess. I wandered through the casinos every day after school before I did my homework. Mama made more money and nobody smelled like chicken shit. Vegas had its own stench. The desert, however, had no scent of its own, which freaked me out. Mama didn’t seem too much happier here than in Kentucky. Still didn’t date, said cuz of me, how I didn’t need no one messing up my childhood.

About three months into Vegas, on a Tuesday, the only night I was allowed, cuz of low traffic, a dancer’s boyfriend touched me.

Mama danced on stage as I watched from the sidelines. She was gorgeous in the rhinestone dress with the feathered headdress that doubled her height. Just before she came offstage, Ella’s new boyfriend stepped close to me and breathed into my ear lewd suggestions that I didn’t understand. Then he latched onto my butt cheek and I screamed. I didn’t mean to. I’d never been touched like that before.

Like Mama says, all hell broke loose. The music went louder. Mama and Ella crashed through the other dancers. Mr. Harley was yelling on the other side of the stage. Mama launched herself at Ella’s boyfriend. Ella jumped me. I went down easy, the breath knocked out of me. Mama hauled Ella off me. Then the weirdest thing happened. Ella reached into her dress. I swear I heard the “snick” of the switchblade, though I know I couldn’t have. Out of the tussle, Ella backed away with big eyes.

Mama’s dress was shifting to red, like a wave coming in. The boyfriend snatched Ella by the hand and dragged her out the back door. I helped Mama to the truck. For the first time in my life, I drove. I felt bad for every jerk and lurch that made my mama gasp in pain. I doctored her up and threw everything we especially liked in the truck. By sunrise, Mama claimed she was rested enough.

“One more thing,” she said.

The rhinestone dress sat in a bucket in the bed of the truck as we drove into the desert. We watched it burn together.

“You and me, babe.” We held hands.

“I hate this fucking town,” she said.

“We going back to Podunk?”

“Hell, no.”

“Let’s go to California, Mama.”

“Yes, my love, let’s go be beach bums.” She smiled and we hit the road.