arms and legs for their first movements. True bone is forming rapidly, displacing the cartilage of the embryonic skeleton, which acts as a mould for the stiffcalcium layers. In the long arm and leg bones, the calcium is first laid down in the middle of the bones, progressing outwards in both directions. The body wall, beginning at the spine, has grown forward and is now joined at the front.
I walk home through the falling evening. A period must come soon. It weighs low in me, solid like a lodged apple. The blood is well and truly gathered and ready.
Tonight
. The ache is big enough, and I feel faintly feverish, and all those tears … all the signs point to it.
Mum’s cooking up some Italian thing when I get home, all garlic and tomatoes. Just the sight of the olive-oil bottle makes me back out the kitchen door, without having spoken to her. Up in my room I listen to the hormones chug and feel myself turning into a pre-menstrual monster. Pug looks crazy, cradling me and telling me fireworks stories. Why is he stupidly not seeing this black me, wimping out on life at every turn, letting herself be victimised, fucked over, dragged around by anyone who offers her the first scrap of approval? So I’ve fooled him—these others aren’t fooled, these parents who’re so tired and impatient with me all the time, these schoolkids who’ve seen how easy I am. They all know the worst.
Night comes, and I don’t turn the light on. Mum comes up when tea’s ready. ‘Oh dear,’ she says when she sees me curled on the bed. ‘That time again, is it?’
She leaves me in the dark, in the dread, in a place where nobody can make me feel any better. Bodies do this to you. It’s just a matter of electricity in your brain: suddenly all the switches are down and the black chemicals flood in among your thoughts, staining them all, blotting out the bright ones.
In the middle of the night I wake up boiling in my clothes, shed some layers, crawl under the covers, drag sleep back over me.
In the morning I wake clean and dry, not bleeding. ‘This is getting ridiculous,’ I say out loud, for courage.
Home pregnancy tests come in packets of two. They are reliable, the girl at the chemist said; if they are faulty they’ll tell you you’re not pregnant when you are, not the other way around. In four minutes I am standing in the bathroom with the test in my hand, the thin blue line in the tester window as clear as it can be. There’s no denying it, no possibility of a mistake.
There was a bleed with the miscarriage. There was another, when, January? Sometime. There may’ve been two. It must be three, four months. It must be—
I dig my fingers into my belly. Yesterday’s apple, still there. Quite firm. Not about to be bled away.
In the mirror my face is the same old face I’ve dragged through every crisis. I am one of those pale people, English-pale, always sunscreened to within an inch of my life. My hair is a mess of black squiggles escaping from their band. There are pillowcase-crease marks up one cheek like a very old person’s wrinkles.
The house is so quiet. Mum and Dad’s alarm hasn’t gone off yet. Thank God. I hurry out, dress. I write a note to Mum, two hard truths, numbered (a) and (b). I push it, in an envelope marked, ‘Mum’, under their bedroom door. I run. I am a coward. I flee. I slam out the door. I hurry up our street, which is foreign, autumn fresh. Mr Close, walking Nelson the bull-terrier, greets me kindly; I bare my teeth at him in an approximation of a smile. I’m past, I’m gone—except that your self always follows you. I’m hurrying, breaking into a run, wanting to be lost in traffic, the world to swallow me up.
Crossing the park I realise I’m going blind. A patch of blindness has started at the centre of my right eye and is growing. I know what this is: a migraine. Mum’s told me about them. The blindness spreads; I have to peer around it to see the right-hand side of the path. I stand on the
I walk home through the falling evening. A period must come soon. It weighs low in me, solid like a lodged apple. The blood is well and truly gathered and ready.
Tonight
. The ache is big enough, and I feel faintly feverish, and all those tears … all the signs point to it.
Mum’s cooking up some Italian thing when I get home, all garlic and tomatoes. Just the sight of the olive-oil bottle makes me back out the kitchen door, without having spoken to her. Up in my room I listen to the hormones chug and feel myself turning into a pre-menstrual monster. Pug looks crazy, cradling me and telling me fireworks stories. Why is he stupidly not seeing this black me, wimping out on life at every turn, letting herself be victimised, fucked over, dragged around by anyone who offers her the first scrap of approval? So I’ve fooled him—these others aren’t fooled, these parents who’re so tired and impatient with me all the time, these schoolkids who’ve seen how easy I am. They all know the worst.
Night comes, and I don’t turn the light on. Mum comes up when tea’s ready. ‘Oh dear,’ she says when she sees me curled on the bed. ‘That time again, is it?’
She leaves me in the dark, in the dread, in a place where nobody can make me feel any better. Bodies do this to you. It’s just a matter of electricity in your brain: suddenly all the switches are down and the black chemicals flood in among your thoughts, staining them all, blotting out the bright ones.
In the middle of the night I wake up boiling in my clothes, shed some layers, crawl under the covers, drag sleep back over me.
In the morning I wake clean and dry, not bleeding. ‘This is getting ridiculous,’ I say out loud, for courage.
Home pregnancy tests come in packets of two. They are reliable, the girl at the chemist said; if they are faulty they’ll tell you you’re not pregnant when you are, not the other way around. In four minutes I am standing in the bathroom with the test in my hand, the thin blue line in the tester window as clear as it can be. There’s no denying it, no possibility of a mistake.
There was a bleed with the miscarriage. There was another, when, January? Sometime. There may’ve been two. It must be three, four months. It must be—
I dig my fingers into my belly. Yesterday’s apple, still there. Quite firm. Not about to be bled away.
In the mirror my face is the same old face I’ve dragged through every crisis. I am one of those pale people, English-pale, always sunscreened to within an inch of my life. My hair is a mess of black squiggles escaping from their band. There are pillowcase-crease marks up one cheek like a very old person’s wrinkles.
The house is so quiet. Mum and Dad’s alarm hasn’t gone off yet. Thank God. I hurry out, dress. I write a note to Mum, two hard truths, numbered (a) and (b). I push it, in an envelope marked, ‘Mum’, under their bedroom door. I run. I am a coward. I flee. I slam out the door. I hurry up our street, which is foreign, autumn fresh. Mr Close, walking Nelson the bull-terrier, greets me kindly; I bare my teeth at him in an approximation of a smile. I’m past, I’m gone—except that your self always follows you. I’m hurrying, breaking into a run, wanting to be lost in traffic, the world to swallow me up.
Crossing the park I realise I’m going blind. A patch of blindness has started at the centre of my right eye and is growing. I know what this is: a migraine. Mum’s told me about them. The blindness spreads; I have to peer around it to see the right-hand side of the path. I stand on the
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