Porky by Deborah Moggach

to pass on a book in class they’d wipe their hands with a shudder, as if they knew.

Part Two

Chapter Six
    THIRTEEN YEARS OLD . Did you stop being friends with your body then? It’s betrayed you, hasn’t it, sprouting spots and thickening, lumpily, just where you don’t want it to thicken. You don’t notice your body when you’re little: you
are
it. I remember Gwen aged eleven, prancing around and snorting, tossing her brown pigtails like a pony. She
was
a pony. To be exact, she corrected me, a palomino stallion called Caspar, that nobody could tame. I wasn’t that keen on ponies myself but I knew what she meant. Your body was what you did things with, what made them possible, like your own soul made elastic. You didn’t think of it as separate, except when you scraped your knee or you had a sneezing fit (I had hay fever, being the pink, allergic type). When I was young, as I said, the only way my body let me down was by blushing. I learnt early that I was a blusher; but that was because I’d learnt so early about guilt.
    I looked at my body in the bath. I was thirteen, and inspecting it as if I’d never seen it before. At this time my Mum was working at the airport coffee shop, the late shift, so my Dad and I were alone in the evenings. But he was usually down at the pub, so that was when I had my bath. I’d wedge the chair against the door handle, just in case, and fill the room with steam. The one thing that worked in our house was the geyser. Then I’d lie soaking for an hour. Those days baths were the nearest I came to contentment, in our home. I’d lie there, propped, too sluggish to worry or even to think, feeling the badness soak out of me. ‘Open your pores’, said
Woman’s Realm
, ‘to “breathe out” the hidden grime.’
    Radio Luxembourg would be playing, but not too loud, so I could hear if the porch door slammed. The corroded geyser spout hung above my toes. Through the DJ’s chatter I’d gaze at my reddening thighs, submerged in the water. I knew, by now, that I was overweight. My tummy went into rubbery creases when I sat up, so I’d lie down again. Being fair, my skin was sensitive to heat and cold and turned blotchy with either extreme; my hands went mottled mauve in the winter, and bright pink in the bath. Pale hairs grew down my arms and legs, and there were light brown, coarser hairs between my thighs. My breasts looked fatty, with big, pale nipples. Once, when I lifted up Teddy, he pressed them and sang,
    â€˜Jellies on a plate, jellies on a plate –’
    â€˜Shut up!’ I hissed. My Mum, and, much worse, my Dad, were in the room.
    â€˜Wibble-wobble, wibble-wobble, jellies on a plate!’
    But here in the bathroom nobody could see except me. I could look at myself with a horrified interest that dissolved, with the heat, into steamy langour. I carried this body around but it didn’t belong to me any more. I rubbed the mist from the mirror and looked at my spots – not many, just two or three crimson blobs on my chin. I narrowed my eyes and my face went swimmy in the glass. I blinked, and opened my eyes wide, and blinked again, tight, telling myself it was all a dream and next time I opened them my face would change. I wouldn’t be Heather any more.
    I willed it. Then I opened them and there I was, large and pink, with the moisture sliding down the mirror like tears.
    I suppose all teenagers feel like this, but I didn’t speak to them on the subject. My only friend was Gwen and she did most of the talking. She was the one who told me about my little piggy eyes. I’d developed earlier than her but she was the bossy type; she’d seen me in the cloakroom at school, slipping my package into the bin. I’d hoped nobody had seen, but she grabbed my arm.
    â€˜Porks, you spoilsport! There I was, telling you what my Mum said, about periods,’ she glared at me, ‘and