Snowflake

by Louise Nealon

  * * *

  I’m flicking through magazines trying not to get sucked into The Jeremy Kyle Show on the telly in the waiting room. I lied to the receptionist and told her I had an earache. I’m considering going along with the earache charade because I’m not sure how I’m going to approach the subject. The handsome male doctor who I hoped I wasn’t going to get eventually calls my name.

  “What can I do for you today?” he says as he welcomes me into his office.

  I wait until he closes the door. The rehearsed lines have disappeared from my head. “Em, well, first of all, I should apologize. I lied to the receptionist saying I had an earache because I was a bit embarrassed to tell her.”

  “OK, that’s no problem.”

  “I’m wondering if there’s a test you can do to find out if I’ve had sex or not. I realize that it’s a strange request. I just, I’m not sure.” The words come out quickly, tripping over each other. I’m staring at his shoes.

  “Has there been an incident?” he says gently.

  “Em, a few.”

  “An assault, I mean.”

  “Oh God no. Just sometimes when I drink, I can’t remember.”

  He taps his pen on the desk. “Right, well. It is virtually impossible to know if someone is sexually active through a physical examination.”

  “Of course. I’m sorry, this is stupid. I shouldn’t be wasting your time.”

  “No, no. It was definitely the right decision to come in and talk to me. There are a number of things we can do. You can book an appointment for the clinic to get you checked out for STIs. The likelihood is, there will be nothing to worry about. It’s probably a good idea to go on some sort of contraception. I will discuss those options with you. But most importantly,” he scribbles a phone number on his prescription pad. “I really think you would benefit from talking to a counselor. It’s a free service and they are doing really great work over there.”

  I take the piece of paper. He goes through the contraceptive brand that he thinks is best suited for students like me. Then he gives me the prescription and reminds me to book an appointment for the clinic. I thank him. I don’t book in for the clinic or fill out my prescription. I have no intention of ringing that phone number either.

  Hedgehog

  There’s a hedgehog stuck at the bottom of our cattle grid. I bend down to look at the mound of prickles down in the corner of the pit. I imagine it moseying around in the dark the night before, snout first, carrying its cape of spikes and stroking the grass with its little feet before falling down the gap between two metal bars.

  “Stupid fucker,” I say, getting down on my hunkers to get a closer look at it. It doesn’t give much away. Beside it, two recently deceased hedgehogs lie on their sides. Their unfurled bodies expose vulnerable bellies. They seem far more relaxed than their friend who is still alive.

  I’m lying flat on my stomach now, looking down at him through the bars of his prison. There’s a swish of feet in the grass and the bars creak under the weight of a boot. Billy is crouching down next to me.

  “What are we looking at?”

  “There,” I say, pointing to the corner.

  “Stupid fucker.”

  “I know.”

  “They really should be hibernating by now. It’s a mild December but there’s going to be snow in the next week or two.”

  “Thanks Met Éireann.”

  “I’ll get the long shovel from the shed and try to lift him out. Sometimes they puff up so big you can’t get them out through the bars.”

  “No don’t,” I say, grabbing his arm before he has the chance to move. “We’re best leaving it there. We can’t be lifting them all out.”

  “It’s a big lump of a yoke. It’ll take at least a couple days before it starts to starve to death.”

  “That’s what happened to the other poor devils and where were you when they needed a dig-out?”

  “I never had you down for a sadist, Deb.”

  “I’m not, but shit like this happens all the time. You can’t come rushing over pretending to fix it all.”

  Billy stands up and starts pacing the length of the cattle grid. “So I’m not allowed to lift poor hedgie here from his death?”

  “No you’re not, and you’re not allowed to turn this into a joke either. It’s not funny.”

  “I gathered that,” he says. “You just seem a bit . . .”

  “A bit what?”

  “Nothing. I’ll leave the hedgehog alone so. Should I apologize to it?”

  “Go away.”

  He leaves and I stay lying on the tarmac, thinking about the fist that is curled up in my belly. I watch the spikes inflating underneath the cattle grid until I’m able to feel the sharp prick of its needles inside me.

  Wizard’s Sleeve

  I wake up thirsty. My sweaty face is stuck to Xanthe’s leather couch. It makes a noise like Velcro when I peel myself off it. My head is still giddy with drink. I’m getting used to the sound the city makes in the morning. The whirr of the Luas going by. Its warning bells seem to ding against my head.

  Xanthe’s bedroom door creaks open. I turn around to see a sheepish Griff in the doorway of the kitchen.

  “Good morning,” I say.

  “Morning,” he mumbles, pulling his hair over his face. “I’m supposed to be teaching a class in fifteen minutes.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  “It’s too late to send an email to say it’s canceled, isn’t it?”

  “I think so.”

  “Right.” He sniffs under his arms. “Do you have any deodorant?”

  “Not with me, no.”

  “Xanthe!” he shouts and heads back into the bedroom.

  * * *

  When he’s gone, Xanthe creeps into the kitchen, ready for the confrontation.

  “What the fuck?” I say.

  “Nothing happened, obviously.”

  “You have a boyfriend.”

  “He’s gay.”

  “Did you kiss?”

  She says nothing.

  “You have a boyfriend!”

  “Stop. I know.”

  I sigh. “He’s using you, Xanthe. He knows he can crawl into your bed anytime he likes and that’s not healthy for either of you.”

  “It was just a cuddle though,” she insists.

  “Was it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I hand her a cup of tea.

  “You didn’t bring anyone back?” she says.

  “Why the tone of surprise?”

  “Just . . . it’s good? Progress?”

  I’m about to be offended until I realize this is one of the only times I have gone out with Xanthe and not brought a stranger back to her apartment.

  “How was the doctor the other day?” she asks.

  “Good, yeah.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “My sexual health.” I can’t say it without being sarcastic.

  “Did you figure out whether you . . . you know, actually had sex?”

  “The memories are coming back. Like, one time, it was really sore. Afterward. In the morning. And I was bleeding. But I don’t know if that was from, like, his fingers or—”

  “You really can’t remember?”

  “No. Like, some of it has to do with the alcohol. But I disconnected from my body as well. Sort of like when you go for a run but you completely forget that you’re running. And even afterward, you’re sweaty but you can’t remember the run itself.”

  “I can imagine sex can become automatic when you’ve done it for a while, but the first time? You can’t remember your first time?”

  “I don’t even know if it was my first time.” I look up at her. “You don’t believe me.”

  “It’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s just—it makes no sense.”

  I imagine Xanthe’s first time was in the morning, in soft sunlight. He definitely asked her if she was all right, and she was as adorable as Reese Witherspoon in that Cruel
Intentions scene. Was it recently? With him? “When was your first time?” I ask.

  “Haven’t had it yet.”

  “Oh.”

  “I tell people I have, if they ask. I almost believe myself. I came close with Griff before, but I couldn’t go through with it. He still teases me about it.”

  “Dick.”

  “In hindsight, I’m glad I didn’t lose it to him.”

  “It’s not a gift, you know. Virginity.”

  “I know, but it is something he could hold over me.”

  “Only if you let him,” I say. “I used to hump the armrest of the couch in the sitting room. Mam used to hit me when she saw me doing it, like I was a dog. Can you remember the first time you—you know—touched yourself?”

  “I think I do it wrong.”

  “There’s no way of doing it wrong.”

  “No, I googled it and I’m definitely doing it wrong. It doesn’t help that I hate my vagina.”

  “What did you google?” I ask.

  “How to masturbate,” Xanthe mutters.

  I whip my laptop out of my bag.

  “What are you doing?” she asks.

  “Googling masturbation. I want to see where the word comes from.”

  “Nerd.”

  “Were you never into etymology as a kid?” I ask. “It was my favorite pastime. Huh. Nineteenth-century Latin. Origin unknown. Wow. Do you know what the synonyms of masturbation are? To abuse oneself. To practice self-abuse.”

  “Jesus.”

  “So, what are you doing wrong?” I ask.

  “I can’t touch it directly. I have the world’s most disgusting genitals.”

  “Ah don’t be getting full of yourself now. Everyone has disgusting genitals.”

  “Mine are the worst,” she says.

  “How do you know?”

  “I have a wizard’s sleeve.”

  “A what?”

  “Google it.”

  “Is it a Harry Potter thing?” I ask.

  “No, it’s not a Harry Potter thing.”

  It’s only coming up on Urban Dictionary. “‘When a lady’s lower region has been hammered that much it has expanded and seems to have no end.’ There is so much wrong with that sentence.”

  “I know.”

  “Ah lads,” I snort. “A baggy fanny? Are they serious?”

  “It’s not funny. The flaps, they, like, dangle down. It’s so embarrassing.”

  “So how do you—manage?”

  “I do it through my knickers. I have to. I can’t touch it. Some people get their teeth straightened, but if I could change one thing about myself I’d have normal labia. I’d like a coin slot.”

  “What do you think you are, a vending machine?”

  “I’m serious. I can’t imagine letting anyone else see it.”

  I’m surprised and a bit relieved that her boyfriend hasn’t seen her naked.

  “People don’t tend to inspect,” I tell her.

  “I only really noticed how deformed it was after a sex education class in secondary school. Mine wasn’t like the diagram at all. I wanted to cut the protruding lip shorter. I got as far as stealing my dad’s surgical scissors and placing the cold blade against the excess. Anyway, I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t brave enough.”

  “Jesus Christ, Xanthe. You know in some cultures they do that to girls.”

  She nods. “FGM? Yeah. In our culture, they let us do it to ourselves.”

  Mad Cow

  I catch Mam sitting in the dark in the kitchen. The open laptop makes her face glow blue. It’s a bit of a shock, like finding Jacob on the phone trying to dial the number for a takeaway with his paws.

  She shuts the laptop as soon as she sees me.

  “I didn’t know you knew how to work it,” I said.

  “I was researching,” she sniffs, looking away from me.

  I sit down beside her and open the laptop expecting to see something about dreams, but it’s the Wikipedia page for mad cow disease.

  “I think I must have contracted it.”

  “Hah?”

  “The BSE virus. It can infect humans too, you know. The symptoms make a lot of sense.”

  I reach out and take her hand. “Mam, you don’t have mad cow disease.”

  “No one fucking believes anything I say.”

  “I’m not saying I don’t believe you.”

  “I’m the best judge of what’s happening in my body.”

  “OK, but is it fair to say that you might not have mad cow disease?” I ask.

  She crosses her arms. “But I might!”

  “Yes, but there is a very, very slim possibility.”

  “All I have to do is eat infected meat, which is very possible. I know it’s irrational, but every time I see meat I want to vomit.”

  “Well, how about we just don’t eat meat for a while. How does that sound?”

  “Can we?”

  “Yeah, of course we can,” I say.

  “That sounds good, yeah. What about Billy though?”

  “What about him?”

  “What about dinners?”

  “Fuck him, he’ll eat what we give him.”

  I look at the other tabs that Mam has open. She is reading academic articles on JSTOR about cows.

  “OK. So no ham even?” Mam says, and looks doubtful about her vegetarian future.

  “Does ham make you feel uncomfortable?” I ask.

  “Not really.”

  “OK so, ham’s all right.”

  “OK, thanks. What’ll we eat so?”

  “My friend’s a vegan. I’ll ask her for some recipes.”

  “That’s a lot of effort though. What about stew?”

  “Well, there’s meat in that too.”

  “I don’t mind that sort of meat. Just maybe not steak, like.”

  I’ve never seen Mam eat a steak. “Yeah, sounds good,” I say.

  “Thanks, Debbie.”

  “No bother.”

  * * *

  There are underwater cows—three of them—white, red, and black. They have shackles on their hind legs and they are on a mountain that is rising up from the sea. Their eyes bulge when they emerge from the water.

  * * *

  I wake up and try to reach back to remember more of the dream. The bit before the underwater cows . . . There were just flashes of webpages. It was like I had been studying for a test and I was processing information. Still, there was a tug of familiarity to them. There were facts about cows.

  I open the laptop and check the Internet history. I feel like I’ve seen flashes of the webpages before. It’s good for calving cows to eat seaweed—that was one fact. The dewlap of a cow is the fold of loose skin hanging from the neck or throat—that was another. The word cumhall originally meant female slave. It made me think of Fionn MacCumhall, whom I knew from school. Fionn (meaning “fair” or “white”), Mac (meaning “son of”), and Cumhall. I thought of my own name, White. But I didn’t know any of this before I went to sleep. It was Mam who had read these facts, not me.

  The logic creeps toward me and I back away from it. There is no way I could have fallen down the rabbit hole of my mother’s mind in my sleep.

  Coffee

  My phone vibrates.

  It’s Xanthe:

  Are you around for coffee?

  I message back:

  Always. Meet you in Starbucks?

  I’m in the hipster café on South William St.

  She sends me the location. I really want to ask her to go to Starbucks because that’s our usual. I know the people who work there so our interactions aren’t awkward. I’ve only gotten used to calling a normal coffee a grande Americano without blushing like a twat.

  I work on psyching myself up to entering new territory. I head toward the place, following my blue dot on Google Maps.

  * * *

  It’s only four o’ clock but it’s getting dark already. The city descends into a deep blue fog. The hipster café is next to a sushi place. There are fa
iry lights outside.

  * * *

  It takes a while for someone to notice me. I order an Americano from a girl with an asymmetrical haircut and loads of ear piercings. She takes my money and gives me a laminated sheet of paper. I look at it. It’s a map of Central America. The only country labeled is Guatemala. I sit down at our table and show it to Xanthe.

  “What should I do with this?”

  “When your order is ready, they’ll shout Guatemala.”

  “Is my order from Guatemala?”

  “No.”

  “But what does Guatemala have to do with it?”

  “Nothing. It’s just a way of sorting out whose coffee is whose.”

  “Why don’t they ask your name, like Starbucks?”

  She laughs. “You love Starbucks.”

  “It just makes more sense.”

  “Starbucks coffee tastes like shit, Debbie.”

  “Why do you drink it then?”

  “Because you always want to go there!”

  “Guatemala!” someone shouts.

  I raise my laminated map and my coffee is placed in front of me. The mug is a little bigger than an eggcup. The handle is so tiny that it is redundant. I feel like I’m at a hipster doll’s tea party. Xanthe is staring straight past me. She is wiping tears away from her cheeks as though they have nothing to do with her.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She shakes her head. “Nothing.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Something must have happened,” I say, handing her the serviette that came with my coffee. I can’t believe that she has the balls to cry in a public place.

  “No, nothing happened,” she says, wiping her cheeks. “Just, having a bad day.”

  “But”—I say, and stare at all of her carrier bags—“you went shopping.”

  “Yeah.” She laughs. “I always go shopping when I’m having a bad day.”

  “But, you’re always shopping.”

  “Exactly.” She sighs. “I just feel like shit and I don’t know why.”

  “But you’re not shit. You’re the opposite of shit.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I mean it.”

  She starts taking stuff out of the shopping bags and puts them on the table. A mindfulness coloring book, a mood diary, a bullet journal, a briefcase of art supplies, candles, incense sticks, bath bombs, essential oils, pajamas, face masks, a foot spa, fluffy slipper socks. The last thing she takes out is a self-help book. She turns the title toward me. It’s called Overcoming Depression.