a million times over.
So fucking stupid
I missed an exam when I had that sickie on Monday
and
because I don’t have a doctor’s certificate, I
failed.
But
I reckon I would’ve anyway.
I’m so fucking stupid.
Signs
The school counsellor calls Char into her office
because of her grades.
Because of the blackness under her eyes
that just won’t go away.
Because everybody, everybody in the school says that
Char and Jim drink too much.
Because she might as well be walking around with a sign
on her head that says In Danger.
So yeah
So yeah, I’m crap at school.
(Why don’t you just call me stupid, lady?)
So yeah, I can’t sleep real good. (Who does?)
So yeah, we go out and party.
(Why is that anyone else’s business? And it’s not like
we’re the only ones at those parties anyway.)
So yeah, I’m not doing so good right now.
So yeah, it’s really none of your goddamn business.
So yeah, can I go back to class now?
Bronwyn talks
Bronwyn still sits next to Char in some classes, because
she can either sit there or with the computer geeks
who ask you out whenever you sit next to them.
So she sits next to Char, and today
Bronwyn talks.
She tells Char about her job,
her latest boyfriend,
the fight with her parents last night,
how much her streaks cost,
how this term has really been a bitch.
Char isn’t listening, not properly.
When the bell rings she gets up and
leaves the room,
leaving
Bronwyn in the middle of a sentence,
mouth open.
Char drinks
Char doesn’t go home that night.
She stays with Jim instead,
almost forgetting to call her parents and tell them where
she is.
Her olds aren’t impressed
of course,
but they don’t know
how to say no.
Jim’s parents are home,
but they leave them be.
Unlike Julie and Paul,
these parents are the kind
who don’t mind what their teenagers get up to
as long as it isn’t dangerous.
Jim’s mum says,
‘There’s a lot of worse things in this world
than your kids having a few drinks at home,
and besides
it’s better if you learn to drink
somewhere safe
than in a nightclub or pub.’
Char knows
her mum would have a fit
if she heard Jim’s mum say that.
Luckily for Char,
that isn’t going to happen.
Watched
They wake up on the floor.
Late for school.
Char is wearing her bra and undies, and yesterday’s
smudgy eyeliner.
And Jim is wearing yesterday’s school shorts.
Char is still sick,
and she ducks into an old lady’s rose garden to spew
on the way to school.
She looks like shit, she knows,
but can’t really bring herself to care.
She can feel eyes on her from halfway across the school.
It’s that nosey old bat of a school counsellor.
Char knows that she is being
watched.
Very carefully.
When Char goes home,
her mother watches her.
She can think of many things she wants to say to this
strange (stranger) child
but nothing will come out.
She wants to yell and scream until her throat is hoarse.
She wants to say, ‘What’s worrying you, baby? Talk to me.’
She wants to shake Char until she snaps out of it.
But she can’t do it all at once
and she can’t decide what to do first.
So she just watches.
Very carefully.
Haunted/hunted
I’m haunted.
Haunted hunted haunted.
Stalked.
Like some exotic animal wanted for their fur.
So I move stealthily around floorboards, furniture,
but the eyes are on me.
I get so paranoid
that I check my desk, cupboards, under the bed,
for cameras and microphones.
Parents these days are high-tech.
Highly into being sneaky.
I wouldn’t put it past mine.
Rubbish
Char reads an article in the newspaper
about how drinking can age your skin,
make you fat as it
poisons your body,
kills your body.
It’s probably all rubbish, she tells herself,
but her tummy protests that thought.
She’s been feeling sick for a while now
and her body really doesn’t feel too good.
But neither does her head.
Mirror mirror
As she’s about to get into the shower
Char glances, then looks, really looks in the
bathroom mirror.
She’s pale, paler than normal.
Black under eyes that keeps creeping further south.
Blotches on skin.
She touches one, gingerly,
resisting the urge to squeeze.
There are little lines under her eyes.
Surely not wrinkles!
The mirror is full length
and hides nothing.
Her stomach is bloated
and her skin is dry.
‘Stupid fucking newspaper,’ she mutters,
and steps into the steamy water.
Fuck
Instead of sleeping tonight,
I think about what that newspaper article said
and I think about my own body.
I’ve been so tired lately I could sleep for days.
I throw up long after the hangovers are over
and my boobs are really sore.
That always happens around my period ...should’ve
maybe had that by now.
When was my last one?
Fuck. I turn the lights on and grab the calendar.
Fuck. Eight weeks ago.
Fuck. That has to be wrong. No ...that’s right, it was the
swimming carnival and I refused to do it. What kind of
school has mandatory white swimming togs?
Eight weeks ago.
Fuck. Jim doesn’t wear a condom, not always.
Fuck. He always says that the amount of alcohol we drink
would make us infertile and, anyway, half the time I’m too
drunk to realise whether he puts one on or not.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Little blue lines
Jim and I look at the home pregnancy test for a long time.
It’s still in its box
but neither of us really wants to know the answer.
We’re in his room, with the door locked
even though there’s no one home.
Eventually, he takes it out,
reads the directions,
then passes it to me.
We head towards the bathroom.
It’s embarrassing, trying to pee in a little cup
and I’m scared I’m not doing the test right,
even though you only have to hold the stick in there.
I wait, five minutes,
and both little blue lines come through.
One to say the kit wasn’t faulty
and one to say that I’m pregnant.
Jim bangs on the door, wanting to know if I’m OK
but I can’t talk, can’t move, can’t breathe.
Somehow I unlock the door.
Don’t even notice the cup of pee on the floor.
Jim doesn’t either.
His eyes flicker back and forth,
like a pendulum,
back and forth,
between my face and the stick.
He knows what those little blue lines mean.
‘What do you want to do?’
Jim says.
I don’t want a baby.
I’m too fucking messed up for one.
I’ve probably half killed it, anyway, with all the alcohol.
They showed us slides, in Health, of what babies look like,
at different times, you know?
And until about three months they just seemed like
little blobs of blood to me.
It’s hard to care about a little blob of blood.
Especially if you don’t think about it.
Jim doesn’t want a baby either, not yet anyway.
He says he’s not ready to be that responsible.
Neither am I.
Chemical sleep
I stay at Jim’s that night,
forgetting to ring my parents and tell them where I am.
When I go home after school the next day,
they don’t even ask,
just give me baleful looks.
I go into my room,
lock the door.
Jim said he’ll make the appointment for the abortion,
pay for it,
that it’s the least he can do.
I’ve never felt more like shit in my whole life.
I grab the bottle of sleeping tablets out of my desk drawer,
tempted to take them all.
But there are only three left.
I take one
and climb into bed.
It’s only 7:30
but that doesn’t matter.
Char who?
Later that night,
Char’s mother picks the lock
and looks in on her sleeping daughter.
She doesn’t know what to do with her.
Doesn’t know what’s wrong with her.
Doesn’t know how they managed to screw up so badly.
Julie has, ashamedly, searched through Char’s room for
drugs.
And breathed a sigh of relief when she didn’t find any.
She also, ashamedly, rang the school today
when Char didn’t come home last night,
to ask if she’d turned up to school.
And she made Paul ring Jim’s house
to ask if Char was there.
She’s not on drugs,
she is going to school,
and she isn’t wandering the street.
So it can’t be that bad, can it?
She lies awake that night,
trying to pinpoint the exact moment
when she and Char stopped talking, really talking,
but she can’t remember anything.
Anything significant, that is.
A hundred thousand picky petty fights come back
to haunt her.
Not letting Char go to a party at the house of a friend
she didn’t know.
Grounding her when she snuck out of the house and went
anyway.
Fighting with her every step of the way on parties, clothes,
piercings, sleepovers with boys, not drinking until she
turned eighteen.
She knew the teenage years were supposed to be
hell for parents
but weren’t they supposed to ease up already?
Where was that great relationship, that even closer
mother–daughter bond that parenting books promised?
Liars.
She thinks, My daughter hates me. And I don’t know why.
I don’t even know her any more.
Don’t want to
I feel
numb.
And I don’t want to
leave my room
eat
shower
go to school
go to class
breathe.
But
Mum thumps on the door and shrieks, ‘Char. CHAR!!!’
I have to roll myself out of bed,
fall onto the floor
and pull myself up.
In the shower
I turn the water as hot as I can stand
and adjust the shower head until the water needles my skin
until it stings my skin and makes it red,
makes it hurt.
I poke my stomach and a little niggling thought comes
about what could be
and what I could have.
But
Tim thumps on the door and shrieks, ‘Char, hur-ry up.
Come on, you cow!’
I want to shriek as well.
But
I get dressed
and go to school.
Uniform requirements
No one says anything to Char
about the black eyeliner she’s wearing.
It’s against uniform requirements
but she’s at school,
trying to take notes,
listen in class.
It looks like a huge effort for her.
Teachers cluck in the staffroom about her,
watching how Jim seems especially tender with her,
how Char seems not-quite-OK today
(more so than usual).
No one thinks teachers notice things like that,
that teachers watch.
And no kids have figured out the staffroom windows are
tinted for that explicit reason.
They’re not going to pick on the black eyeliner,
not today,
not when it has streaked down her face because
she’s been crying.
English Assignment #3
Numb the pain.
Take it away.
I’ll sell my soul.
Sell every sense I have.
Just take it fucking away.
Can’t eat.
Can’t sleep.
Can’t think.
Can’t breathe.
Take this pain away . . .
and you can have my soul.
Play now, pay later
I go to the clinic.
I wear big sunglasses
so the people standing outside yelling at me
can’t see my eyes.
Jim holds me up,
stops me from falling,
basically carries me in.
I stumble over the doorstep,
grab at my stomach on instinct.
Not that it really matters.
These nurses wouldn’t be good poker players.
Their thoughts are written on their faces plain as day.
I know I look like shit.
And I know I’m young.
And I know they’re not making it any easier.
I fill out forms,
Jim hands over his keycard.
I always wondered what people meant by the expression:
Play now, pay later.
But I didn’t think they meant it literally.
The room they take me into is cold.
Everything looks hard, even the faces of the
doctor and nurses.
They mutter under their breath about the number of
schoolkids they get in here,
give me disdainful looks.
I want to run away, keep the baby.
I tell myself,
when you wake up
it will be l
ike a dream.
And it will all be
Over.
I wake up.
At first I don’t know where I am
and I feel
empty
like there’s nothing inside me.
Then I remember.
They make me drink a coffee, eat biscuits.
Jim asks me if I’m OK
and I don’t say anything
because I don’t know what to say.
I’m bleeding,
just like a period,
but I know I’m bleeding
because a baby is dead, not alive.
I touch my stomach and stop myself from crying.
The doctor gives me a prescription for the pain.
He mutters something about stupid schoolgirls
as he walks away.
Doesn’t get it
For once, my house is empty.
My parents have gone away somewhere.
They’ve left me dinner in the fridge, a note.
Something about going interstate to visit my grandad
who’s sick.
We go and lie down on the bed.
Jim suggests a drinking binge
but I’m not in the mood.
I feel numb enough already.
Jim doesn’t understand, I know.
It isn’t his stomach.
What have you done?
I don’t want to think about what happened today.
I don’t want to think.
Don’t want to breathe.
But my lungs keep taking in air,
regardless of whether I want to or not
just like thoughts keep coursing in my head,
over and over
what I’ve done.
This feeling
That feeling.
That feeling of sore boobs.
That feeling of nausea long after the
hangovers had stopped.
That feeling of wrapping my hands around my stomach.
That feeling of something.
That feeling is gone.
What Does Blue Feel Like? Page 4
