In the shower
I think about Lee
as I shave my legs (I got my razor privileges back).
Filled with
bleakness,
I stare
as I drag the razor across my forearm.
Watching,
fascinated,
as a line of blood forms right near my wrist.
I didn’t expect it to sting quite so much.
I don’t feel any happier,
but maybe a little
lighter,
like there’s less pressure.
Like a balloon that’s been blown up real big,
and someone’s let out a little air.
I wear a silver arm cuff to school the next day,
down on my wrist instead of pushed above my elbow.
Bronwyn comments on how funky it looks,
but Lee raises her eyebrows.
A few teachers try to take it off me,
but I glare at them from behind black,
thickly lined eyes.
I tell them it’s emotionally significant to me —
so there —
and they don’t push it.
Around me,
some teachers
are wary as rabbits.
Sleepover
I stay at Lee’s that night.
My parents think that we’re working on an assignment.
We are,
kind of,
but we’re practising drinking straight vodka
without coughing and making faces.
Lee drunkenly tells me
that she didn’t want Bronwyn to come,
because we both know how she drinks,
and Lee didn’t want to have to deal with vomit,
not tonight.
We’re sitting side by side against the bed
when she slides the cuff up my arm.
I’m half expecting to be told off,
but she just hugs me tight.
In the morning I borrow one of her uniforms,
some make-up,
and some bangles.
As we leave her house,
I watch her mother as she says goodbye to Lee.
I see in her eyes
what I see in my mother’s.
We share a smoke on the way to school.
She says it’ll help the hangover.
I don’t cough as much this time,
but it still tastes like shit,
and it’s not helping the headache any.
In class
Jim sniffs my hair suspiciously and whispers,
‘Have you been smoking?’
‘What do you care,’ I ask,
feeling like a bitch but unable to stop.
He doesn’t say anything else
but,
at lunchtime,
he holds me tight
and says,
‘It’s no use trying to piss me off, Char.
I’m not leaving you. So stop trying to push me away
and tell me what’s going on.’
Char sniffs
frowns,
sniffles again,
and starts crying.
‘I don’t know, Jim, I don’t know what’s wrong with me
and I don’t know why I act the way I do and I feel so bad
for being a bitch to you and I don’t know, I just, I don’t
know what’s wrong.’
He smoothes her hair,
and rubs her back,
as she chokes on her sobs.
Bronwyn
Bronwyn is watching from the sidelines,
jealous,
of how tenderly Jim is holding Char.
She thinks,
I want,
more than anything,
for someone to touch me like that.
It must be so nice
to be held when you cry.
The shrink asks me
what I’m not telling her.
What it is inside that’s eating me up and churning my guts.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I tell her,
wide-eyed and innocent.
‘Bullshit, Char, absolute bullshit,’ she says,
and I’m still wondering if I did actually hear her swear,
when she does it again.
Like vomit,
involuntary and convulsive,
the shame purges out.
‘I had an abortion.’
And there it is,
spewed out into the world,
like so much black bile.
It’s interesting
what the shrink said
about so many women having abortions in their teens.
Deciding to only have kids when they no longer
act like one.
About forgiveness of self
About letting yourself heal.
About wanting to heal.
About it being OK to make mistakes.
About learning from your choices, good and bad.
Mum is screaming
Why?
Why, Char?
Paul, will you just look at that?
Char, what on earth possessed you
to get a stud put through your chin?
Do you know how unsightly that looks?
What am I going to do with you
(you bad child)?
Dad
sits,
looks me in the eye,
and says,
so quietly that I have to strain to hear him,
‘Tell me. Please.’
Right, well
my life right now is like this piercing,
a bit yucky,
tender.
If it’s gonna heal
I have to want it to heal.
And I have to do something about it.
I have to concentrate on taking care of myself.
I have to cherish myself.
My parents look proud of me
after that little spiel.
They take the car off me for a month anyway.
Jim’s opinion
Jim calls me a little rebel,
looking befuddled.
He doesn’t get the analogy either.
In his opinion,
labret piercings look kinda funny.
I lie in bed one night,
thinking.
Thinking that I might love Jim.
And I’m scared.
Because love makes you vulnerable.
Lee’s cuts
are getting worse
but she refuses to go to the doctor.
I’m the only one who knows
but what I don’t know
is what to do.
I bump into Guy at a party
He looks at me coldly
and turns away.
I run after him,
fuelled by vodka
‘I never meant to hurt you, Guy.’
‘Well you did,’ he says. ‘Whether you meant to or not,
you did, okay?’
I can’t lie,
he’s really hot.
And I want to feel his kisses again,
so different from Jim’s.
But I turn around
and walk in the opposite direction.
Ol’ Yapper
Ol’ Yapper is talking to us
about human nature.
One of the girls in my class saw a segment on the news
where these kids bashed an old guy
because they were bored.
And now she thinks that there really are
evil people in the world.
Yapper says,
‘I like to think that all people are inherently good. But
people can make bad choices.
Just because a good person makes a bad choice,
does that make them a bad person?’
He makes a good point,
but I still feel like a bad person for having an abortion.
The voice in my head whispers,
‘You’re going to hell anyway, kid,
so why not enjoy the party on the way down?’
I have a dream one night,
about Lee.
We’re at a party
and she comes out of the bathroom,
gashes in her wrists, gaping open.
She turns white
as the blood drains out of her
onto the floor.
I wake up shivering.
The sheet tangled around my legs.
Bored out of my fucking brain
Jim doesn’t want to party this weekend.
He’s got assignments to write,
study to do.
Final exams start next week.
I lie on his bedroom floor while he writes assignments,
drawing doodles on the page where my Maths homework
should be,
drinking Coke and eating chips.
Bored out of my fucking brain.
He comes over to kiss me,
and
suddenly
I tell him,
‘I love you.’
He
pulls away,
his face unreadable.
My heart stops,
hoping this won’t mean the end because
he doesn’t feel the same.
Even if he doesn’t love me back,
I don’t want us to break up.
Luckily for me,
he does.
And he tells me so.
I’m not so bored any more.
I take a detour on the way home,
and knock on Lee’s door.
‘Lee isn’t home, dear,’ her mum tells me tiredly.
I hear myself saying, ‘I know.
I actually came to talk to you.
It’s about Lee.’
Lee confronts me on Monday
eyes bruised with tears.
It’s obvious she’s been crying all night.
‘You bitch.
You bitch.’
It’s a litany that pours,
unstoppered,
from her lips.
And I let it.
Eventually,
she can’t talk for the tears,
and I start.
‘You need help, Lee.
I don’t want to find out that you’ve died because I didn’t
say anything and you’ve bled to death.
You can’t do that sort of shit and not realise that you’re
asking for help.’
‘I am not asking for help, Char, why did you have to say
anything? Why? Why did you do it?’
I feel like a parent,
as I say,
‘You don’t know it,
but you need this help.’
She won’t talk to me for a week.
But I don’t care.
Maybe
I’m melodramatic.
Maybe I’m over the top.
Maybe I am a drama queen.
Maybe.
Maybe I just am.
Maybe.
I can
talk about the abortion
without hating myself
without crying.
It’s how much?
The formal is coming up.
Bronwyn and Char go dress shopping.
Bronwyn tries on a silky blue number.
Her ribs peek-a-boo through the material.
She runs her fingers over her rib cage,
secretly smiling and proud
as the salesgirl adjusts a tiara on her head
and watches her preening.
Char goes through racks of sleek see-through dresses,
wisps of fabric hanging off coathangers.
She’s getting exasperated, frustrated,
when her fingers,
trailing along the rails
land on
a dress.
It’s black,
and it has lace on it,
but it’s more vintage than Too Much Exposure.
She tries it on,
anxiously,
and is delighted with what she sees.
Jubilant,
she calls her mother and says she’s found the dress.
Her mother, sitting in a nearby coffee shop,
awaiting the call,
credit card at the ready,
gasps,
and says,
‘It’s how much?’
My own worst enemy
The shrink says to me,
after listening to my
particularly vicious self-berating,
‘Would you talk like that to one of your friends if
they’d screwed up?’
I’m horrified. ‘Of course not — that’s so nasty and crushing
and hateful. Everyone fucks up.
I would never be like that to them.’
‘So why, Char,
why
do you treat yourself like that?
Why is it okay to treat yourself in a manner that you
wouldn’t anyone else?
Why are you your harshest critic and worst enemy?’
I am
human.
And I make
mistakes.
But I can
grow
and
change.
Final exams have started.
The stress is evident
In faces —
black under eyes
pinched looks
mouths tightly turned down
On hands —
white-knuckled grips on rulers and calculators,
gnawed-down nails,
fingers that constantly twist and turn
On bodies —
shoulders tense and unrelenting.
For the first time all year,
uniforms are scruffy and no one cares.
Tick
Tick
Tick
‘You may start perusal.’
Flip
Flip
Flip
‘You may commence.’
Scribble
Scribble
Scribble
‘Pens down.’
In the grand scheme of things,
it’s just another fucking day.
Jim starts
a swear jar for me,
thinks I swear too much.
Every time I say a bad word
I put in a dollar.
At the end of the first week
I have eighty-one dollars.
Jim smiles,
laughs,
his even white teeth flashing with light,
and
hands over the coins.
They spill into my outstretched palms,
fill them up,
and bounce, noisily,
on the floor.
I take most of them
to buy jeans,
and on the way see a guy collecting money for a charity.
I put the coins in the tin,
and walk away,
feeling lighter.
I take the rest of the money
and get a haircut.
I get my wild tangles chopped out.
I feel sleeker.
More in
control.
Kiss
We’re at a party,
and I’m watching
Jim
Kiss
Me.
His eyes are closed,
drunkenly tasting my mouth.
I’m watching the shape of his lips,
feeling the tenderness of his whole body,
his tenderness towards me
conveyed
in a single
Kiss.
Mum is worried
about Schoolies.
Drugs, of course.
Alcohol.
Sex.
Even though I haven’t been to the shrink’s in ages,
she sends me back.
While I wait, I think about how I walked in the first day.
Hair dishevelled,
wearing jeans because Mum wouldn’t let me
shave my legs,
puffy eyes and no make-up because I’d cried it all off.
I sit,
now,
gelled hair,
shimmery eyes and cheeks and dewy make-up,
sparkling studs in my ears and chin,
diamond on my right hand,
car in the carpark.
I’m still wearing jeans though.
The door opens
and
Vivian ushers me in.
She asks
Why do you have to get blotto at Schoolies?
Who decided?
And why do you have to follow the trend?
Maybe I want to,
I say,
sounding like a sulky child.
Maybe I want to get trashed and watch people dare each
other to jump off balconies into pools and get so drunk I
have to hold on to the ground because I feel like I’ll fall off
if I don’t.
Maybe I want to be predictable.
Remember
It’s almost the end of class and
Ol’ Yapper is going on again.
As we pack up to leave
he says,
‘Remember —
you haven’t achieved anything today unless you’ve done
something for someone who can never repay you.’
Preening
At yet another party,
this one to celebrate the last exam,
the girls preen in the mirror,
like birds.
They chatter animatedly as they
What Does Blue Feel Like? Page 12
