"What I Eat in a Day" by Nicole Zhu
Susie waits to see what the woman in the adjacent building has for breakfast. Today, the woman, who Susie calls Brie, mashes avocado on toast, seasoning it with fat pinches of salt, a few grinds of black pepper, and a shake of hot sauce. On top of the avocado, Brie lays slices of hard boiled egg that look too perfect to have been done by hand. Susie looks up “egg slicer” online and puts one in her cart. $9.99 isn’t so bad.
When Brie finishes eating, standing at the counter as she usually does, Susie throws back her covers and starts her day. Her breakfast is what Brie ate the previous morning: youtiao in warm, sweetened milk. Unsure what Brie used, but unable to bring herself to buy whole milk, she compromises with two percent. At least today she manages to take a few bites of the fried golden dough without the voice telling her she’s worthless. The voice is a constant companion, some days bearing down until she fights for a breath. But today, it is a low hum. Progress, she thinks.
The one thing Susie drinks that Brie doesn’t is coffee. She puts on a pot and saves some for her roommate, even though the two haven’t really spoken since Susie returned from her program a few months ago. Susie hasn’t really spoken to anyone.
It was around that time that she first saw Brie. One evening, a neighbor screamed so loudly that Susie ripped off her headphones. By then she’d learned that to survive living in New York, one had to limit their reaction to the stimuli offered up. Whether it was rats feasting on pizza crust, a man clipping his toenails on the subway, or a weeping woman outside a bar, the smart choice was to simply not react. But the screaming continued long enough for Susie to venture into the hallway where others on her floor had also emerged, casting furtive glances.
“It sounds like someone’s getting killed in there,” an old man cried, clutching a cat to his chest.
“Someone is definitely getting destroyed,” a woman snickered.
Eventually, the super banged his meaty fist against the door for five minutes until a sheepish man finally cracked it, face red and hair mussed, and accepted the super’s scolding.
Susie returned to her apartment, equal parts relieved and disturbed that the noise had been violent sex. She laid back down in her bed, opened up TikTok, and wondered what it would be like to experience pleasure so good that the whole floor thought you were being murdered. She scrolled and videos passed: what I ate on my 140lb weight loss, horoscope slideshow, a therapist’s suggestions for asserting your boundaries, makeup tutorials and blush placement comparisons, what I cook to make eating healthy easier this week, here’s why you should do pilates. She flicked past the app’s reminder that she’d been on her phone too long, then realized the sky had darkened out her window.
As she crossed the room to turn on the light, she caught sight of an Asian woman leisurely flipping a grilled cheese in the building neighboring hers. Susie paused, her screen frozen on a woman prepping a complicated salad.
Their apartments separated by a few feet, Susie drew closer to the window, grateful that with hers situated slightly higher, she wouldn’t be easily caught snooping. Pulling back the curtains, she watched the woman flip the sandwich with a swift flick of the wrist onto a clean plate, slice it diagonally, and take a neat bite out of one triangle. A wheel of cheese and half an apple sat out on the counter. She ate standing but did not seem hurried. She didn’t check her phone or glance at any clocks, took uncomplicated bites, neither wolfish nor tentative. Susie’s chest tightened with want.
Since then, Susie has watched Brie every day, stocking her fridge and pantry with Brie’s groceries, accumulating the same cooking devices as Brie, eating the meals Brie eats one day behind like a hungry shadow.
* * *
At the residential program, meals had been heavily regulated. Everyone ate the same thing at the same time and was given the same amount of time to eat. Afterward, they adjourned to a dimly lit room that felt like a womb to talk about the emotions the food had brought forth.
On Susie’s first day, she tried going to the bathroom after eating but a therapist gently barred her way. When she asked why, the therapist blinked a few times before explaining the obvious: to prevent people from purging or abusing laxatives. Susie had tried both in the past but could stick with neither. Even among supposed peers in this program, she lacked discipline.
The group arranged itself in a circle, and Susie held her pee for another hour while people cried about the hunger they still felt after the meal, their guilt and confusion because they didn’t trust the signals of their own bodies. The woman who had taken the entire allotted time to finish her portion spoke quietly about how hard it was to not monitor everyone else at the table. Susie, who had watched this woman during mealtime, nodded in agreement. Susie would finish a whole meal while her friends proclaimed how full they were after just five bites. In those moments, the voice taunted how pathetic she was and she saw the stark evidence of being the outlier, the one who couldn’t be satisfied. She stopped going to those dinners.
The meals arrived at the program weekly in a giant truck Susie could see from her window. They didn’t taste bad. There was a decent range, from pizza to salmon with green beans, but they tasted like they came off of a truck, systematic and prepared for optimal nutrition. The vegetables were never garlicky enough and the pizza turned gluey in Susie’s mouth if she left it on the tray too long. “We want to give you the ability to navigate the foods you’ll encounter in daily life,” the therapist said. “Food should not be off limits.”
Susie did her best to accept this reprogramming, but at the same time craved rice, dimsum, and pork belly. While others in the program bonded over their shared difficulties with Fourth of July cookouts and office parties, Susie longed for foods that reminded her of her mother’s home cooking or group dinners with friends in Chinatown when they felt homesick over the Lunar New Year. Dishes that were meant to be shared. But Chinese food was also a tightrope, bringing her closer to others while also reminding her of how she failed to belong. How could she reconcile her mother always commenting on her weight, yet finding it insulting if Susie didn’t eat the dishes she’d prepared? Those trucks could only bring these Very American meals, and so she kept her hunger to herself. Even in recovery, Susie remained on the periphery. She was alone.
When she stepped back into the real world, it didn’t take long for her to fall back into old patterns. She couldn’t bear the idea of being around others, not even her friends, who might ask her where she’d been or suggest they split dishes that she still yearned for and avoided in equal measure. Against her new training, she ate minimally throughout the week, only to rationalize “rewarding” herself every Friday night by devouring whatever hodgepodge she could assemble while her roommate was out. They were always terrible, eaten over the sink, and doused in something spicy to distract her from the actual taste. The most she ever allowed herself of what she really wanted were Asian condiments. She cycled through bottles of Sriracha, chili crisp, and sambal oelek. When she was done, she bought replacements of what she’d eaten. Her roommate never said anything.
* * *
The first Brie meal Susie made was one Susie’s sister used to make when their parents worked late, stir-fried tomato and egg.
When her roommate left, Susie fetched the rice cooker from the cupboard, where it had sat untouched for months. She cut tomatoes into wedges and whisked eggs with a pair of chopsticks. Her sister had used canned tomatoes for convenience, but she trusted Brie, whose version also incorporated white pepper and garlic.
Finishing off the dish with a healthy sprinkling of scallions, Susie brought the bowl into her room. Despite those months of group meals, she preferred eating alone. Susie was pleased, however, that her dish was comparable in portion size to the program meals.
In the first bite, there was a recognition that stole Susie’s breath. The acidic burst of fresh tomato alongside savory scrambled eggs enriched by the lightest drizzle of sesame oil. White pepper tingled on her tongue. The flavor was simultaneously new and familiar, complex and comforting. By the third bite, she’d raised the bowl to her lips, wanting every glistening grain of tomato-soaked rice. A tide of pleasure welled up in her.
Observing Brie became her meal plan. A balance of consistency and variation. Similar to the program, it took choice out of the equation. Rather than having silent wars with herself in refrigerated aisles, it felt good to stride into grocery stores knowing exactly what she needed. Some days, she felt more or less full, but surrendering to those feelings was freeing. If Brie was satisfied with it, then it was good for Susie, too. There was a disconnect between her mind and her body. Susie took the discomfort as a necessity in the process of yoking them back together.
Brie was real. A gulp of fresh air.
Gone was the allure of watching influencers mash tinned fish into rice in their pristine white kitchens or prepare elaborate bento boxes for their spouses and children. Most of Brie’s meals weren’t fussy—lap cheong in the rice cooker and one-pot pastas with Trader Joe’s ingredients. Even in their simplicity, the meals gave Susie something to look forward to. The voice that nagged her quieted, became a manageable pattering in her ear. Rather than feeling dragged beneath her shame, she learned to tread, or occasionally even float on the surface of it. On some days, she let herself wonder about the possibility of making it back to shore, of walking comfortably among others.
What frequently brought dread now became a moment of anticipation. Susie kept an eye on her window, waiting for Brie to stroll into view. Brie’s actions weren’t choreographed, rehearsed and architected for other people to consume. She ate when she was hungry, stopped when she was full. Susie marveled at the simplicity. In those brief moments, she saw how easy it could be to be alive.
* * *
The day after the avocado toast, Brie does not appear in the window.
Susie waits an extra thirty minutes and is late signing on to work. She drinks coffee on an empty stomach and feels nauseous after. These are the worst days, when Brie’s kitchen remains stubbornly empty.
Of course, Brie has a life outside her apartment, the voice reminds her. Restaurants, cafes, and bars line every street. She probably meets people for drinks, dinner, brunch, and doesn't think twice about accepting the invitations. She doesn’t worry about people watching how much she does or doesn’t eat. Brie and her friends actually try the new East Village restaurants that Susie only reads about on food websites. Susie tries to self-soothe with long showers and walks around the tiny neighborhood park, but no relief comes.
Resentment simmers.
Three articles are needed for her current freelance client, a project management software company, but the last thing Susie can think about is writing “customer success stories.” Her head fizzes, threatening to overflow. It’s three in the afternoon when she realizes she’s missed lunch. She thinks about throwing eggs at Brie’s window. How dare Brie leave? Susie tries to review interview notes but can’t focus. The anticipation of being swept back out to sea builds, panic rising in her throat.
Brie finally returns by dinnertime.
When the kitchen light flickers on, Susie closes her computer, slides out of her chair, and stands by the window, angling her body slightly so it’s out of frame. Brie opens the fridge and pulls out a LaCroix. Susie scampers out to her kitchen and fills up her own glass with water. Calmness floods her body.
When she returns, Brie is standing in front of her fridge again, hand on her hip. From the slight hunch in her shoulders, Susie can tell Brie is tired. Guilt laps at her. She hadn’t really been serious about throwing eggs at Brie’s window.
Brie eventually pulls out a box of prewashed lettuce and taps at her phone. A pizza arrives a half hour later and Susie waits to see the cover of the box before ordering her own. Takeout always makes Susie nervous. It feels illicit, but she has Brie’s permission. Brie eats two slices and fistfuls of greens, apparently too tired to fix a proper salad with dressing.
A knock comes at Susie’s door after a little while.
“Did you order pizza?” her roommate asks, poking her head in.
“Yeah, do you want some? It’s pepperoni.”
Her roommate takes a floppy slice and retreats to the living room. Brie is still in the kitchen, crusts scattered on her plate, scrolling on her phone. Susie sits in the darkness of her room, chewing each cheesy bite thoroughly until the tingling in her head recedes. It’s a little like having dinner with a friend.
* * *
Summer arrives. Brie brings home hot dog buns and egg tarts for breakfast. Susie lets herself be enveloped in the sweet yeasty smell of Chinese bakeries on Mott Street and walks out with her own assortment of pastries. Brie eats a lot of cantaloupe and berries. Susie’s favorite is the sandwiches, juicy tomatoes sprinkled with salt and pepper on top of thick slices of bread. She grows bolder, generously slathering mayonnaise, enjoying the ability to explore new depths as long as she’s tethered to Brie.
A heat wave rolls through the city. Brie eats at home less and less, and Susie’s anxiety grows and grows. She tries to recreate dishes using Brie’s leftovers, but it never feels quite the same. They are pale imitations and without the affirmation of Brie’s presence, every meal is soured by Susie’s self-doubt. She goes whole days without eating again. When she can bear it no longer, she returns to her kitchen sink creations and draws up increasingly elaborate fantasies of confronting or confessing to Brie. A heartfelt admission at the Tompkins Square farmers market, tears welling as she tells Brie what she means to her. Pelting Brie with heirloom tomatoes for abandoning her when she needed her most. In her dreams, Brie is understanding and grateful, ashamed and apologetic, resolved and encouraging. She is whatever Susie needs her to be.
The momentum created begins to sputter with every absence, until it feels like Susie’s very mind has ground to a halt, unable to plan or decide anything. Each day is simply to be survived.
One Saturday evening, Susie waits for Brie, who has been out since Thursday. Susie worries that Brie is on vacation. How selfish. She watches the window until her head begins to prickle with a desperate static. It’s like her body is caught between frequencies, unable to settle on any sensation or action without the signal of Brie to help her.
The urge to scour the fridge washes over her, but she doesn’t let herself leave the room, not even to pee. When her stomach tightens, she breaks down and opens up a food delivery website. She fills her cart and stares at the thumbnail images of noodles and cake slices until her computer dies. Eventually, her eyelids droop. The heat lulls her to sleep and she lets herself drift off, because only in sleep does she not have to think about the crossed wires of her body.
When she wakes up, it’s nighttime and voices are screaming. Is her neighbor getting fucked again? Hosting an orgy?
The room is even hotter than before. She tries turning on the lights and fiddles with the switch of her fan but nothing works. Outside, the streets are dark. Without the traffic lights, cars are honking more aggressively than usual, crawling carefully between intersections. There still isn’t any movement in Brie’s dark kitchen. Susie calls out to her roommate but there is no response. Her half-charged phone reveals it’s almost midnight and that there is a blackout on this side of Manhattan.
But Susie doesn’t care about the power outage. The hunger that was a dull throb is now heavy, crowding every other thought out of her mind. She catches herself before opening the fridge. Who knows how long the outage will last? She doesn’t want to let the cool air escape and the food to go bad. If she has to toss and replace everything, she’ll be even further out of sync with Brie’s rhythm.
Below, people have spilled onto the streets, drinking and eating outside as if it were a block party. Some businesses seem to have working generators. Susie ventures outside. Her block is bustling while the side streets are silent. She feels an invisible thread tugging her toward the open storefronts. The oily and fried smells are seductive. The bright lights make Susie see splotches of color that intensify her lightheadedness. It has been months since she’s felt hunger this acutely.
After doing a survey, she decides the safest and easiest option is to quickly grab something from the bodega downstairs and eat it in her apartment. She turns the decision over in her head like a stone, to smooth the rough edges of it until it’s one she can comfortably hold. She expects the voice in her head to have a response, but it remains dormant.
The bodega is busy—regulars buying cigarettes and lotto tickets, joking with the cashier as if it were any other Saturday night. This place is known for turning any combination of meat, cheese, and vegetables into a “chopped cheese” equivalent, pulverized with mayonnaise and condiments and served on a hero or roll. She’s worked hard on her relationship with mayonnaise. But should she get the roast beef (fattier) or the turkey (healthier, but by how much)? It’s been so long since she’s made such an active choice.
Susie’s palms are sweating when it’s her turn to order.
The man behind the deli counter has a kind face but she feels the line of people behind her growing impatient.
“I’ll do a chopped hero,” she begins, mind still not made up.
“What meat?” the man asks.
“Roast beef—no, turkey.”
“What kind?”
Susie looks at the hunks of turkey in the display case, each one shaved to different lengths. Subconsciously, she runs her tongue over the gap between her upper teeth where meat tends to get caught. The oven-roasted one is a fleshy pink and looks both bland and naked. The hickory-smoked one has too many spices and whole bits of cracked pepper that will numb her mouth with one wrong bite. It’s the salty-sweet combination of the honey maple that catches her eye.
“Cheese?” the man asks.
Panic seeps into her veins as she takes in the blackboard of cheese options. Her legs want to bolt, but she knows she can’t leave. It feels like a test. Her heart hammers as she thinks about what she wants. What does she want? If the turkey has a touch of sweetness, then maybe she could use something spicy and sour.
Taking a deep breath, she speaks loudly and clearly, “Honey maple turkey and pepperjack cheese with banana peppers.”
“Lettuce, tomato, onion?”
“Yes.”
Decisive. The man chops the ingredients with casual efficiency while Susie’s gaze tracks his movements. When he’s done, he slides most of it neatly onto a hero, but gathers the excess into a rolled slice of pepperjack and gives it to her.
“A sample,” he winks.
Susie accepts both the sample and the sandwich with the shock of someone being proposed to on a Jumbotron. She pops the cheese into her mouth. Even though the man is watching her for her reaction, the smile that stretches across her face is entirely unabashed. The flavor combination is what she’d hoped for. He grins in response, glad that his offering had the intended effect. Susie is pleased with herself, this moment of spontaneous eating that, for once, ignites excitement instead of dread.
Where she’d floated through the streets, lightheaded and barely there, she now walks the rest of the bodega with attention. She wanders the aisles, past the cat food and expired V8 juices, the shelves of dry pasta and canned beans. To her surprise, they stock Shin Ramyun. An orange cat meows loudly from stacked boxes of Nutter Butters, as if encouraging her to tuck one under her arm. Susie isn’t in the mood for something sweet. A bag of chips, however, would go perfectly with the sandwich.
There’s one other person in the snack aisle rocking back and forth on their heels, clutching a bag of McDonald’s.
“Excuse me,” Susie says, trying to maneuver around them.
The person moves and suddenly, Susie is staring into Brie’s face. Susie stumbles, scattering a few bags of chips to the ground.
“Are you okay?” Brie brings her arms up to stabilize Susie, but she doesn’t quite touch her, leaving a respectful space between them.
“Yeah,” Susie gasps. It feels wrong to see Brie outside the frame of her window, to hear her voice. “It’s just…been a weird night.”
Brie is shorter in person. She wears bright purple Crocs that are hideous. They have little charms in some of the holes, which means she not only wears them out in public, but actually spends additional money to decorate them. Susie finds this to be a particularly destabilizing piece of information. The nail polish on the chewed-down half-moons of her nails is chipped. It’s like getting a glimpse of an eclipse—spectacular, yet not something she can look straight at without injury.
“You can say that again. How crazy is this power outage? I’ve lived in New York for ten years and this has never happened,” Brie says.
All night, Susie’s been waiting for Brie, and here she is. Judging from the grease stain blooming at the bottom of Brie’s McDonald’s bag, she likely got a combo meal with fries. Susie glances down at her own sandwich wrapped in white deli paper. She hasn’t paid for it yet.
Brie, who has been her lifeline all these months, is now Brie the nail biter and Croc-wearer. Coming face to face with her other facets makes Susie wince. This time, the anxiety clawing at her throat takes on a different tenor. A new voice pops into Susie’s head. One that tells her to grab what she came for and walk away. Her want is not Brie’s want.
Susie listens and deftly plucks a bag of salt and vinegar chips. Brie wrinkles her nose.
“Sorry, can’t say I’m a fan of vinegar. Takis are where it’s at though. Have you ever had them with a little bit of lime?” Brie makes a chef’s kiss. “You won’t regret it.”
Susie holds Brie’s gaze. A day ago, she likely would have fallen to her knees in gratitude at Brie’s personal guidance. But now, the forwardness is almost obnoxious. For once, Susie is not adrift, but standing. She lingers in this place of solidity, trying to acquaint herself with the feeling.
“Maybe another time,” she says.
She pays and leaves Brie in the bodega.
In her room, Susie draws her curtains, and turns away from Brie’s window. With steady hands, she unwraps the sandwich and doesn’t hesitate when she takes a bite.
This isn’t some soft, sad Subway sandwich. The bread has integrity and the filling is the consistency of the most robust tuna salad Susie has ever seen, rich from the ratio of mayo but counterbalanced by the crunch of blitzed banana peppers. It tastes like a late night snack and lazy lunch all wrapped into one. With each bite, excess filling falls out the other end onto the wax paper in Susie’s lap. She scoops up the remains with the salt and vinegar chips. The sourness adds another layer. Takis would have had too many conflicting flavors.
Halfway through, she finds herself overwhelmed by a fullness. Not the uncomfortable kind that she feels after binges, bloated with shame. No, it’s an alertness, her body standing at full attention. It is, Susie realizes, a sense of satisfaction. Pleasure, even.
She lets out a moan, savoring this moment, not caring who might hear.
Nicole Zhu is a writer and engineer based in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in Catapult, Eater, Electric Literature, The Margins, and elsewhere. She was the winner of the 2022 Pigeon Pages Flash Contest and is a 2023-2024 Center for Fiction/Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellow. She has received support from Tin House, the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference.
