Big Bones

by Laura Dockrill

  But now it’s just me. Just me, trying.

  Trying really badly to look like a grown, confident woman knowing what I’m doing when all I want to do is be in the family changing room with Mum and Dove. I’m not sure I’m ready to be grown up. Independent and alone.

  The changing room is a gloomy, damp place. Full of black, coiled hairs, strong like hedgehog spikes, snailed around the bumpy-nippled floor. I am wearing my costume under my clothes already and it’s making me feel really hot and panicky and trapped. What do we talk about? Me and these women? Will everybody in here know that I’m a fraud? Will they judge me? This is the secret life of people who aren’t at desks, this is the rabbit hole of the world. The swimming pool.

  I feel enormously hot again and worried somebody might ask me if I need help and that will mean I’ve failed at my challenge of independence and keeping fit. I could faint any second and I cannot wait to get out of my clothes and into the water. I shove my stuff in a locker, dropping my jumper onto the disgusting tepid floor. Gross. The ground is so clingy. I forgot my coin too for the locker but no one’s going to steal anything of mine so I dump it all in, even though I’m tempted to just put all my clothes back on and go home. My thighs are rubbing a bit. They are also covered in purple-green trademark witch-coloured bruises from my constant clumsiness and misjudgement of small spaces. Anyway … you can’t be expected to live in England and have evenly toned skin. It’s cold: the heating dries us out and then it rains all the time, which is great for potatoes but it doesn’t mean it has to make ME look like a potato. Rough and gnarly and knobbly.

  Splat. Splat. Pad. Pad. Towards the pool. I LOVE that my toenails are painted green. They look so exciting next to the hideous beige of the floors.

  I edge into the water. Underwater makes every part of everybody look like a mirage, a blurry painting, a circus mirror …

  The fat under my arms is here.

  The fat on my back oozing over my straps – here.

  The print of my cave of a belly button squeezing behind my costume – also here.

  The squiggles of silver stretch marks that sprint down the backs of my legs and arms. All here.

  All present and correct.

  Tromp. Tromp. Tromp. And weightlessness …

  Swimming becomes calm. I find a rhythm. It’s OK. So at least I haven’t forgotten how to swim. Am I sweating? Wait, can you sweat in water? I imagine it to look like sun cream on the surface of the pool, oily and rainbow-coloured.

  My baby curls tickle my ears as I breathe deep, arms swanning in and out, rippling the water, butterflying. I am not sure if I am enjoying this or not. Is that normal? To not know if you’re having a good time or not? I think about the view of me from behind. The gusset of my costume sucking in between my bum cheeks and my two round legs. My big legs. Knees frogging in and out. I do feel short of breath. This swimming is not as easy as it looks. I keep staring at the clock. Why do the seconds seem to freeze? I stop.

  I catch a glimpse of myself in the grooves of the pool’s reflection. I lean forward and tie my hair up into a big topknot. A bony old woman with grey hair does a breaststroke past me. She looks at me and then tears her eyes away like she’s seen something she doesn’t want to see but is trying to be polite.

  It seems that exercise has given me nothing but a belly full of chlorine.

  BANANA

  My wee is boiling hot. I feel tired and energised at the same time and at last, actually, for the first time in ages, truly hungry. I feel taller. Great.

  My banana is bruised brown and smushed. I don’t really mind, it makes them sweeter. I eat it while I rummage for my inhaler. Swimming makes me starving. Why is that? I think of somewhere to sling the skin.

  The showers are in this big communal steamy box of different women of every kind looming and cleaning like pecking flamingos … like talking trees … like willowy flamingo talking trees. Hanging goggles, splodges of creamy silver conditioner and chlorine-flavoured yellowing bikini bottoms, the snap of latex swimming caps. The ground, all urine and shampoo splattered tiles, peppered with more crop circles of hairs and toenail half-moons. The women look up as I go in. Swamped like squids smothered in clouds of fake vanilla-smelling foam. They herd together, like cattle. They mostly look like mums. I’m the youngest, bar the small toddler clinging to his mum’s big cliff-face legs with sucky barnacle hands and the baby clutched in one of her strong arms. She has drooping ripe purple nipples that almost touch her pelvis, belly clumpy like soil. Quivering rivers of streaky stretch marks. Once a baby’s house. A kangaroo pouch. A sacred nest for creation. Arms muscular and defined from carrying shopping bags and pushing prams and swimming lengths of breaststroke. Wheeling shampoo into her knots of fuzzy hair. She has bumps and lumps earned from living. Hips like the big dipper. Great for that little boy, I bet, for driving toy cars up and down. The little boy stares at me. At my body. I’m in my costume still. I feel like a child. I wonder if the mum is thinking I’m a child too. They dry off and leave, the mum talking nonsense about rice cakes.

  Funny how women are the ones that suffer the most attack and punishment for their bodies when they are the ones that have to change the most … What a weird world we’re in.

  There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Notice how when we watch a nature programme and see fifty elephants washing themselves by a lake and they all look the same to us, but really they are all unique, all have their own quirks and ways – but we can’t see that; we just see fifty elephants. Well, that’s us showering. In the grand play of the world, we all look the same; we are all a flock, a species, of quite beautiful women, just taking a shower, just taking care of ourselves. That’s all.

  I am proud to be a girl. Because that’s a fact. But prouder that I love myself. Because that’s a choice.

  CORN ON THE COB

  Cam and I both have lipstick on our chins from the corn nibbling. Hers is purple and mine pink.

  The salty butter dribbles down our forearms as we go in again for another bite each. Black charcoal flakes stuff our gums and replace our teeth with small golden squares. I know I have to say it. My heart thumps.

  ‘I’m sorry I was horrible last week,’ I admit.

  ‘You weren’t.’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘You weren’t. I’m sorry for speaking to you like that, BB. I just know you’ve got it in you to know how to deal with this properly. I know it’s hard and every day is new but Dove needs you. More than ever.’

  ‘I know I have to be strong for her.’

  ‘Not even strong; just be yourself, just be you, you know, normal. Annoying. Normal.’

  ‘You’re right.’

  ‘And I’ll be there for you.’

  ‘You are there.’

  ‘Smile.’

  ‘And you, let’s see …’ A grin of nibs and corn kernels and black stuff slathered in wet, buttery dribble.

  ‘Kiss me, darling!’

  ‘Oh, mwah …’

  ‘Actually … speaking of kissing … what’s going on with you and that Max?’

  ‘I don’t know. I kind of think that might be … you know … done.’

  ‘Why would it be done?’

  ‘I think I messed it up, maybe?’

  ‘Why? How? By leaving him in a pancake cafe?’

  ‘Crepe, Cam. Not pancake.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘You did NOT mess that up. Text him now.’

  ‘No. I dunno. I’ve got bigger things to think about.’

  ‘’K. Well, you haven’t messed it up. He’d be mad to not be mad about YOU!’ Cam licks her teeth. Little yellow studs of corn flick off her tongue.

  ‘Alicia is gonna do my apprenticeship form. It’s happening.’

  ‘BABE!’ Cam grins. ‘That’s amazing!’

  ‘Yeah.’ I feel sick. ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yes, completely amazing. What you wanted, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is, just scary. You know … to go off the beaten track …’

>   ‘You’ve always gone off the beaten track, that’s your … you know … thing … and who wants to be on the stupid track anyway? It’s all tracks. If you can put your foot down … it’s a track and … if there isn’t a track … you make one.’

  ‘I think I might want to go back to school.’

  ‘No, you don’t.’ Cam shakes her head. ‘I knew this was coming. You’re just looking for the easy way out. Like you do with everything – with the gym, with Max … You know what you have to do.’ She licks butter off her thumb. ‘Anyway, you got an A* in art. An A-STAR! And if you want to go ahead and be an artist you can do that whenever you want; it’s never too late. Mate, you’ve got your apprenticeship; you got what you wanted. It’s absolutely brilliant, B. You smashed it.’

  Cam’s right. Maybe I did?

  JAFFA CAKES

  I try swimming again. Once, I saw a footballer run onto the pitch eating Jaffa Cakes so I make sure I topple a few into my mouth before I climb into the swimming pool to look pro, like a true athlete. Dark chocolate that cracks when your teeth bite a half-moon into it, the little orange jelly disc, chewy and tangy and then the light soft cakey sponge bit underneath.

  Today there are a couple of skinny women talking by the edge of the shallow end. They have their babies bouncing in floats in front of them and they are ‘yaaaaying’ at them in between gossiping. They are both so tanned, their skin colour is like beech, their shoulders like highly polished doorknobs. I wonder if they know they have a stereotypically ‘better’ figure than a sixteen-year-old and they’ve just squeezed humans out of their bodies? Then again, I’ve seen sixty-year-old women that have stereotypically ‘better’ bodies than mine. I look like I’m about to give birth to kittens.

  I begin to swim. I think about my skeleton. It feels like my bones are the parts of a ship. But they’re not. They are just as delicate and small as the women with the babies.

  Once I watched this documentary where this little boy had this horrendous skin disorder, his own skin would just eat away at itself. It looked bloody and angry. Even the touch of fabric against his skin would be agony for him. A bath was so painful. He had to constantly be covered in thick healing ointment and lubricant to stop anything rubbing his fragile raw skin. He had to be bound, the whole time, like a mummy, in a complicated dressing of cushioning and bandages … With clothes on he looked like a scarecrow – all the padding between the clothing and his skin made him look like he was stuffed. Like a child wearing a fat suit to a fancy-dress party.

  I wonder if that’s how people see me if they think of my skeleton. Like it’s buried for protection. Hidden under fat?

  I don’t like to climb out of the pool using just my arms like they do in adverts because I always get nervous that my arms are too weak and I won’t be able to drag myself out of the water and will end up looking like 2B does when he tries to climb up onto the high wall outside and topples backwards. Dogs get embarrassed too, you know? I use the ladder, even though the sides of it brush past my bum and the steps clank and clatter when I get out, as if I’m going to pull them off the wall. I ship water up with me. That makes people stare.

  I wash stares away in spirals down the drain.

  With my hair still a bit wet I peep my head around the gym. I figure with wet hair it will make it really clear that I am on my way out so Todd the personal trainer, or anybody else for that matter, can’t try to coax me onto one of the cardio contraptions.

  The room is spacious and white. And quite empty. There are rows and rows of the same thing. Hideous shiny machines, sniffing and panting and showing their high-tech muscles. I imagine what it must look like full: everybody moving their bodies at the same time, like ants. It must look like some Daft Punk music video. Full of robots. Silvers, greys and blacks. Dizzy pop music tries to lure me in, enticing me to step onto one of the machines and try my luck as my reflection pings all over the zillion corridors of mirrors. I look about, wondering what to do with these giant coloured blow-up bubblegum balls. I realise then that the gym is an electronic futuristic playground made for the same people that take double shots in their coffees.

  I rinse my mouth out with water at the fountain and leave.

  On my way out I walk past a room full of people cycling really fast on stationary bikes to really loud music, disco lights spitting off the walls.

  A gym person walks past with a clipboard. It’s a young guy, not Todd; he has acne scars on his face.

  ‘What on earth’s that in there?’ I ask.

  ‘That is spin class.’

  ‘Why don’t they just go for a bike ride outside?’

  He laughs but he doesn’t find it funny. It’s not a real-life laugh. ‘They could, but I don’t know if you sweat as much. Plus, the music is all part of it; see how they go up and down and left to right? Can’t do that on the road.’

  I watch some more. It looks fun. I think I’ll say that out loud.

  ‘It looks fun.’

  ‘You should try it,’ he suggests, but his tone feels ripe with sarcasm.

  ‘Fine. I will,’ I reply boldly. ‘When’s the next class?’

  ‘Tonight. But you have to get here early. It tends to fill up quick.’

  ‘Well, I’ll see you tonight then.’

  And I walk feeling like I’m in a music video and the gym boy with the acne scars is thinking, Wow, oh my days, that girl is so cool. But I think he probably isn’t.

  I start to run through all the reasons I can’t go to the spin class tonight:

  I’ve already been to the gym once today. I don’t want to look like an addict – good reason.

  It’s too hot and sunny today – another good reason.

  My room needs a tidy – completely acceptable reason.

  My trainers are a bit old, they might not be so spinnable – valid reason.

  I should spend some time hanging with Dove – hmm … I think she’d prefer I was here, to be honest.

  GREEK SALAD

  ‘Hi, munchkin.’ It’s Mum. My phone screen is already sweaty. ‘I’m going to be held up a bit at work today; are you able to pick up some food for us?’

  I pull the phone away from my ear and growl silently into the darkness. Why does she think because I’m at home that I’m automatically her PA/slave? It’s so annoying. I don’t have an endless stream of money, Mum, actually, and I also don’t have buckets of time on my hands.

  ‘Are you there?’ she continues. ‘I was thinking a nice Greek salad: feta, olives, tomato …’

  ‘I KNOW what goes in a Greek salad, Mum.’

  ‘Great. Is that OK? I would ask your dad but he’ll never get the right things. I’ll give you the money back when I get home.’ She never does.

  ‘I can’t,’ I say. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Why not? What you doing then?’

  I breathe in deep. Because once I’ve said it, I can’t take it back.

  ‘I need to buy a sports bra.’

  ‘A sports bra … a … OK? That sounds … adventurous.’

  ‘Don’t annoy me or else I won’t go.’

  ‘All right, calm down, where are you going then?’

  ‘I’m … going to spin class. At the gym.’

  ‘Oh! Well, that’s … that’s brilliant!’ Her voice sounds a bit too happy. It annoys me MORE.

  ‘Yeah, so sorry, I won’t be around to get your Greek bits.’

  ‘No, no, course not, don’t you worry. I’ll get that and you enjoy … spin.’ Her voice tingles. ‘Go, girl!’

  Well … here we go then.

  ENERGY DRINKS

  They are probably my food hell. I know it’s not technically a food but I think they are gross. I just can’t understand why anybody would need an energy drink on a normal day when we’ve been all right up until now as human beings living on just actual real-life food. People were giving birth, climbing mountains, hunting, making fires, writing novels, painting the ceilings of buildings, making sculpture out of marble, smashing the living daylights out of a …
I don’t know … harp or whatever and inventing things, all without energy drinks. I’d understand it a bit more if they tasted good, like how chocolate tastes good, but they taste like 2p coins and blood and make your breath stink. I can’t believe how many kids I see drinking them. Like, actual twelve-year-olds just banging an energy drink. When we were twelve, if anything, we needed a tranquilliser.

  Lots of the people in spin class are swigging from energy drinks before class. I feel like I’m doing something wrong with just my bottle of water. I am wearing tiger-print leggings and a violet sports bra with a T-shirt on top. Didn’t realise everybody planned on dressing quite so gloomy. I feel eyes looking at me, taking in my size. I am, by far, the fattest person in the room. Still, we board these bikes. Some people take an age, fiddling around with the rusty seat and adjusting the height. I jump on mine. I feel the saddle squash into my bum cheeks, losing itself in the crush of me. My thighs are clamped around the bony ridge of it. We wait for the instructor to enter, lots of awkward coughs and sniffs. A few ‘stretches’ from people ‘prepping’. One woman is wearing a visor. A visor. What the hell? Tour de France, is it now? And then she enters. She is NOT the man I saw before. It’s Ibiza leading the class. Oh HELL! Her tadpole brows are stuck in a constant frowning glare. She greets us like we are a room of snotty babies that have just vomited squashed carrot all over the floor. I am already dreading her ‘tunes’. I turn the pedals of my bike. They are stiff. The pressure of my feet won’t turn the wheels. It’s like churning concrete. Sticky. It MUST be broken. STOP! STOP! CLASS DISMISSED, MY BIKE IS BROKEN. The bike screeches back in agony like a disgruntled mule screaming GET OFF ME!