by Sarah Laing
‘Do you think you should, so close to the school? Teachers might come past.’
Samantha shrugged, offering the pack to Megan.
I didn’t want to smoke; I’d gone to the doctor the previous week for an ingrown toenail, which turned my flesh pus-filled and swollen. But my regular doctor wasn’t there. There was a locum, a young GP with shaving rash.
‘Do you know what awful things can happen to you if you don’t look after your diabetes?’ he had asked me.
‘Yes.’
‘You could go blind. All the tiny veins in your retina could burst and shrink. Your kidneys could fail. You could get heart failure. You could have a stroke. And if you don’t look after your feet, they could get amputated.’ He clipped the skin off my toe, which had decided to continue growing beyond where it was meant to. He dipped a bud into some foul-smelling liquid and dabbed the skin. ‘You have to live like a forty-year-old. Carefully. You must take responsibility or terrible things could happen to you.’
I looked at him. My mother was forty. She drank wine and ate cake, woke up with hangovers and spare tyres around her waist. She did play tennis, but afterwards she went out for gins with the girls.
‘Nurse, could you please bandage this?’ he called, scratching his chin and adjusting his brown tie. The nurse pushed aside the jar of jellybeans, offered to other minors requiring minor surgery.
Samantha and Megan shielded a blue flame from an orange lighter. I plunged my hands into my blazer pocket and watched my shadow desaturate as the clouds crossed the sun.
We chose a shopping centre as our first port of call, the pharmacy with all the perfume bottles on the right. I went straight for Opium; this would be what I would buy if I had the money. I sprayed it on my neck and my wrists, all those places where my veins pulsed strongly, pushing the scent out into the world. I would be an enigma, something distinctive, so that if an admirer were to find a piece of my clothing, he could press it to his nose, inhaling my physicality. Opium worked for me, and I liked the advertisement, the gorgeous redhead reclining on a rich palette of velvets. Other perfumes separated into their chemical components on my skin, giving me a headache. Samantha liked Paloma Picasso. Megan stuck to Chanel No. 5. Megan tried some lipstick, ignoring the fact that many others had smeared the same lipstick onto their hands, their lips. The women behind the counter were used to our voracious sampling; they wouldn’t sanitise the cosmetics for us.
Once we had painted our eyelids and lips, accentuating our cheekbones with a dab of blush, we took the escalator to the carpet shop, not because we wanted to buy any, but because they were so exotic, belonging to a hotter, more fragrant country. The shop itself was overlit, bright fluorescents flickering, making everyone look jaundiced, but the stacks of carpets suggested wealth. ‘When I’m older, I’m going to have Persian rugs in every room,’ said Megan. ‘And I’m going to have throw pillows. Of course, that’s when Jeff’s made it big in Hollywood. We’ll be able to afford everything in this shop.’ She paused over a belly dancing flyer, some Middle Eastern beauty photocopied onto pink paper. ‘Maybe I should learn how to do that. That would be a turn-on. You should learn too, Samantha. Look, you get to wear those gold belly chains.’
‘What about me? I’d like to learn belly dancing.’
Megan looked at Samantha, then back at me. ‘I just thought, you know, with your diabetes, you might not be able to.’
‘Well, you thought wrong. Fuck, do you think I’m some kind of invalid? Haven’t you noticed me in PE?’ I burned with indignation: how dare they exclude me.
‘Yes, but you always seem to be going off halfway through and eating those tablets.’
‘Not always. God, Megan.’
‘Oooh, you’re so touchy these days.’ She shot Samantha another look, and I knew they’d been discussing me.
‘You can buy the belly chains here,’ said Samantha, fingering some. The assistant, decidedly un-Moorish in her tight, acid-washed jeans, recrossed her legs, barely lifting her gaze from her Jackie Collins. Samantha wrapped the chain around her wrist, then put her hand in her bag. I felt jumpy; surely the assistant would notice. But Samantha just stroked another carpet, then nonchalantly walked out of the shop.
‘Look, there’s Ursula,’ said Megan. Ursula was in a dress shop with her mother, dresses heaped over her forearms. ‘Do you think she’s being rewarded for her A’s?’
‘Her mum must have collected an alimony cheque,’ I said. Ursula’s dad was rich, some hotshot Reserve Bank guy. I was repulsed and fascinated by Ursula. I wasn’t her friend, but in many ways she was like me.
Ursula also played the cello. Sometimes I was first cello in the orchestra, sometimes she was. She was more dogged, waking up at six in the morning to practise. I couldn’t rouse myself from bed at that time. I loved the warm embrace of morning sheets, the stolen extra minutes, and the vivid waking dreams. When I was little, my bed had risen from the floor and flown out the door at dawn. I still wondered if I dreamed that or not. I secretly believed I had more natural musicality but Ursula was the uneasy proof that hard work could take you further.
Another reason I disliked Ursula was because she was so eager to be good, so Pollyanna-ish. But it was a skin. Sooner or later, the pressure would mount, and her peel would split to reveal a messy pulp of emotion. She stormed out of orchestra practice when Mrs Grooby pointed out she had substituted an E-flat for a natural. ‘Stick it up your arse!’ she shrieked, thrusting her bow, and Mrs Grooby had looked so surprised that she said nothing. Not bothering to pursue her, she aligned the stripes on her left and right stockinged legs, then quietly asked me to move up to first position.
Ursula looked like a better version of myself. She too had dark hair and black eyebrows, but where mine slashed across my face, hers were perfectly arched. She had an hourglass figure and her mother was a one-time back-up singer to Howard Morrison. Even though she brought in a photo of a woman in a little white dress and white go-go boots, hair teased into a beehive, singing into a microphone, we had trouble believing it was her. Ursula’s mother looked nothing like that now.
It wasn’t just me who sensed our similarities: so did some of the teachers. My maths teacher, whom I hadn’t impressed thanks to my lack of interest in the subject, repeatedly called me Ursula. We sat on opposite sides of class, and whenever the teacher made the mistake, we would snap at her in stereo. ‘Rebecca,’ I would say, then bumble the answer to her question.
‘Hi girls,’ Ursula called, a speech bubble from a 1959 annual. ‘What are you up to?’
‘Hanging out,’ I said. Samantha and Megan ignored her. I felt obliged to speak to Ursula, since we shared a music stand and a sense of alienation. ‘I might get my ears pierced.’ The thought filled me with a thrill; it would imbue me with extra sexuality, and it was forbidden — my mother thought pierced ears were slutty.
Ursula fingered her own virgin lobes. There was a freckle where a stud might sit. ‘Mum’s taking me shopping. We’re going for afternoon tea at Kirks to celebrate end of term.’ She gestured behind her. Her mother, short and plump, her hair grey, a perm half-grown out, was handing the stack of clothes to the assistant to be hung up in the changing room.
‘I don’t even want to look at my report,’ I said. It sat at the bottom of my bag, absorbing grease from dropped biscuits and packets of chips that I was never meant to have eaten in the first place. It rattled around with all my syringes, their lids off, their needles bending over but not quite yet snapped. If I put my hand into my bag without looking, I often drew blood.
‘You’ll do okay for music, won’t you?’
I shrugged. I didn’t want to discuss music with her. ‘I’m really getting into art at the moment.’
Ursula would be the one to collect a heavy first-prize book for music. I would get a second, or maybe another one of those merit certificates to go in the folder for when I needed to get a job and show my employer what a good student I was. It was because of music theory that she was better tha
n me. Theory was more about maths. If it were performance, then I might really try. Then I might get up at six in the morning to practise, and I might forgo cappuccinos after school to practise again. ‘I think your mum’s calling you,’ I said. Her mother was shaking a shiny frock, with too many frills to be fashionable.
‘Well, see ya,’ said Ursula, reluctant to go. ‘Maybe we should meet up during the holidays?’
I shifted uncomfortably. ‘Maybe.’
‘Hey, Beck, we’re going down to the bookstore now,’ said Samantha. I linked arms with her and we walked, a chain once more.
The Italian dictionary sat on the stand with all the other pocket-sized ones, waiting for travellers to buy and stow in their suitcases. I picked it up. How hard could this be? I looked around, and curled in on myself, like an autumn leaf. I stuck it in my bag.
My blood beat hard in my head, and also in my groin. I had an Italian dictionary, I had an Italian dictionary! I could learn Italian now; I could move to Florence, I could meet my own George, I could hang from an olive tree calling out Truth! Beauty! ‘Come on, let’s go,’ I said to Samantha, who was flicking through a Face magazine.
‘I’m still reading,’ said Samantha. ‘Have you heard of trepanning? These people drill a hole in their head to let more air in and get a high. The Mayans used to do it.’
‘Ew gross,’ said Megan, but she may have been commenting on the Sheila Kitzinger book. ‘They’re so ugly! How could she publish such disgusting photos. Look at her crotch! What a bush. If I were her, I’d get something done about my moles.’
‘I think they’re trying to be realistic,’ I said. Maybe Megan hadn’t done it yet after all. The dictionary was prickling and writhing in my bag. ‘I’ll meet you at Kahlo’s.’
It took all my self-control not to run from the shop. I could walk; it seemed that no one had seen me. There was a friend of my mother’s, but if I looked at the new books stand, she might not notice me. She walked by, and I continued towards the door, each second imagining a hand on my shoulder, a security guard hauling me upstairs to some low-ceiling mezzanine office with Venetian blinds. When I made it out onto Lambton Quay, I released my breath in a whoosh.
I walked past Stewart Dawsons corner, along Willis Street, until I got to the rickety stairs that led to the café. The walls were peeling and adorned with Frida Kahlo prints: Frida with a monkey, Frida with a broken spinal column, Frida with Diego on her forehead. Upstairs, there were candelabras and rough versions of Frida Kahlo portraits, painted maybe by the owner, the colours muddy compared with the originals. As usual, I gazed longingly at the counter, the unavailable chocolate afghans and pieces of cheesecake. I asked for a cappuccino sprinkled with cinnamon.
I sat at the table next to the window, staring out at the building that was rumoured to be a brothel. The table was an old school one, covered in layers of enamel, grafitti etched into it. Megan had scratched her own alongside Jeff’s here; I found her marking and ran my fingers around it. Where were they?
I heard their voices, the stairs creaking beneath their feet. Megan sashayed in first; I wondered whether it was true you could tell if you’d had sex by the way you walked. And if so, why? Did the pelvis, which was locked, suddenly splay? Or was it that you bloomed down there, your vulva swelling like a chimp’s? I considered whether Megan had confessed anything to Samantha; Megan was secretive by nature, aware of the power of keeping quiet. She had a habit of tapping her nose and smiling and I’d learned not to beg. In third form I had paid her two dollars to find out which classmate’s dad was in jail for white-collar crime. I had been disappointed by the knowledge; it was more exciting not knowing. Afterwards I was uncomfortable around the girl and couldn’t tell her why.
‘Look,’ I said, as they sat next to me with their chocolate cake to share.
‘Oh my God, this is divine,’ said Megan, rolling her eyes back into her head, arching her neck.
‘Look at what?’ said Samantha, guiltily licking the chocolate from her lips.
But then I changed my mind. I didn’t want to show them my Italian dictionary; this was my secret. ‘Look at my ears. Virgin. D’ya still want to get them pierced?’
‘Yeah, that would be cool,’ said Samantha. She already had two in one ear; this would be her third. ‘Or maybe I should get my nose done.’ We were beginning to see it around, a small jewel glinting in nostrils.
‘I’ll just watch you guys,’ said Megan. She was the most conservative dresser out of us three. She’d got a supermarket job when she turned fifteen in July, and she used her earnings to buy smart clothes from Glassons, while Samantha and I were trawling the op shops, trying to look like the university students we saw around. I still didn’t understand how Jeff, who wore cherry red Dr. Martens himself, could have chosen Megan.
We went to a place on Manners Street that hired teenagers to dress up in clown suits and call out the jewellery specials. The teenagers always sounded flat in contrast to the glittering baubles they extolled. Inside, there were lights and mirrors, silver and gold everywhere, as if this was a place of luxury, but in fact everything was really cheap. I looked at the stand of hypoallergenic earrings, the birth stones, the plain gold or silver ones. I would go for plain: once my ears were healed, I would choose myself a moon or a cat, something different. I didn’t know what my mother would say when I got home, but maybe she wouldn’t notice if I wore my hair down.
The small, plump, Indian jeweller took our ten dollars, ushering us into the back room to pull grey curtains behind us. She got out her blue pen and drew a spot on the place where she was going to pierce. I fixed my eyes on the red pigment she had smeared along her centre parting. She then sprayed on a disinfectant that made my ear feel slightly numb. Tiny droplets made their way into my ear passage; I hoped they wouldn’t damage my hearing. She loaded the gun with one gold earring. I gripped the vinyl stool, my fingernails digging into its skin. Bang. It was done. And I felt nothing — yet. But now, the hot pain, rushing through my ear tissue, flooding the skin around it. And then the other, there was no going back. When it was Samantha’s turn, she cried out, eyes filling with tears as the stud pieced her nostril. I felt secretly proud; as if all my injections had been practice, and now I had a superhuman capacity for pain. I could probably do this myself with a sewing needle and a flame. Soon I might have three studs up one ear, one through my lip.
‘Did you have a fun afternoon?’ asked my mother.
‘Yes,’ I said, head down, hair over my throbbing ears. I tried to push past her so that she wouldn’t find me out.
‘Don’t think you’re going to get away with it.’ Mum had her hands on hips, a firm press of lip. My hands flew up to my ears.
‘No, don’t try and block me out. It’s your report I’m after, young lady.’
‘Oh, yeah.’ I opened my satchel, rummaging around the exercise books and the syringes, the Italian dictionary, whose green glowed radio-actively. There was a mandarin, half-rotten, that slimed my hand, but thankfully hadn’t stained the dictionary. And then the report. I handed it over.
Mum looked at me quizzically. ‘I’m going to do some cello practice,’ I said, and she looked at me even harder. I was safe there, behind the cello. I was doing something worthy, which could forcefield away any negative effects of my bad report, my maths marks compromised by too many absences, my English marks by general inattention. My music marks should be adequate, I hoped.
I pulled the bow across two strings, the double stopping filling the living room, causing the glass doors to vibrate. I sank into the space between those rich notes, the snug pouch they created. There was no room for remorse there. That would come in the middle of a sleepless night: an anonymous letter to the bookstore, the dictionary packaged in lined refill.
But there was my mother at the door, my report in one hand, her other tugging at her lobe. I had unthinkingly tucked my hair behind my ears when I went to put my fingers on the strings.
‘What have you done?’
�
��Is my report okay?’
‘I can’t believe that you went against my wishes. You know how I feel about earrings. And infection — the doctors said that diabetics’ wounds take so much longer to heal. I’ve seen it myself on the adult-onsets that come to the infirmary.’
‘I’m old enough to do what I want with my own body.’
‘I expressly told you that you weren’t allowed to get your ears pierced. And while you live in this house, I expect you to obey my wishes.’
‘I’ll move out then. I’ll get a flat. I’ll get a foster family. Irreconcilable differences.’
‘And then there’s the question of this report. I thought you said you were doing well in music.’
‘I am, aren’t I?’
‘If you call getting a B in your best subject doing well.’
‘I’m no good at theory. And the other kids get their parents to help them with their homework. You don’t know anything about music.’
‘I know about driving you kilometres each week to drop you off at lessons and practices. Are you telling me that you want to make your own way there? Well, maybe you can. Maybe that’s your punishment. Take the bus.’
Karoom. I crunched the bow across the strings, drowning her out, yelling at her through the cello. It felt so good, this fierce sound I was making. I pressed my fingers down until they hurt, until she went away. I thought of the Italian dictionary in my bag, and how I was going to read each word, I was going to remember what they meant. There were Italian words on my music already. Forte. Graziozo. Con molto passione. I felt a flush of shame, and then I played it away, watched it mingle with the air along with the rosin dust from my bow.