by Ellie Eaton
“Sit,” the housemistresses ordered the dog. “I said sit.”
Back in my dorm I ran to shower. I smelt rancid. A day-old fish. I washed, scrubbing hard at the terra-cotta line of dried blood inside my thigh until it was gone. It was only then, sluicing water between my groin, that I fully realized the recklessness of what I had done.
“Oh my god,” I said out loud, banging my head against the cold tiles.
I turned the temperature as high as I could stand and sprayed between my legs. I wasn’t under any illusion—I knew that you couldn’t stop yourself getting pregnant like that, or wash away diseases—but still, I tried. When I emerged, the shower room was thick with steam. I felt extremely faint. I hobbled back to my room and, even though it was still only the afternoon, I put on my pajamas and climbed into bed, lying with a hand on my stomach.
Little by little I heard my peers return, the shrieks, the darlings, and the air kisses. Gerry Lake marched through the door just as the bell went. This was the first time I had seen her since the incident by the shoe tree. She was wearing her team tracksuit, her hair pulled tight in a bun. The lurid makeup she wore for competitions—pale face, red lips, peacock-colored eye shadow, fake lashes—made her look like a concubine. She frowned at me.
“What’s wrong with you?”
When I didn’t answer, she kicked her training bag into the back of her wardrobe.
“Suit yourself,” she said and went off to the bathroom to change.
Later the deputy did her rounds. Divines scuttled to their rooms and our lights went out. Gerry and I hadn’t exchanged a single word. Once in a while a loo flushed or there was a giggle from friends illicitly sneaking into each other’s dorm room. Even at fifteen and sixteen we weren’t above such things as midnight feasts and nighttime pranks.
I curled into a ball. How could I have been so stupid, so cavalier about my own body? I was not a risk taker by any means; I hated heights and needles and horror films, and I was diligent when it came to studying. Unlike Skipper or the twins, I had never winged an exam in my life. When I closed my eyes, I pictured Stuart juddering inside me. I wanted to shriek, to pull my hair out. I pressed my fist into my stomach, bit the pillow. Stupid, stupid, stupid! I imagined the shame of telling my mother and father, their shock and disappointment. As parents they were pragmatic but deeply prudish people. Sex was not a word any of us would have willingly uttered out loud. The birds and bees, as my mother called it, was something one discussed with friends or learnt in biology lessons.
I thought then of the talk Gerry’s stepmother had given, held one evening in the rec room. How Daphne Lake, dressed in her nurse’s uniform, had laid out various props and switched on the overhead projector. She was not a natural speaker. She was thin wristed, timid, inaudibly quiet, and before she even said the word banana Skipper and I were doubled over on the floor laughing.
“Gerry,” I whispered. “Gerry, are you awake?”
Slowly Gerry rolled over and put a hand to her forehead.
“What?” she snapped.
She loathed me, I realized; it was hopeless.
“Nothing,” I said. “Never mind. Go to sleep.”
I wished I could call Lauren. Gerry sat up and blinked. The gap between our two bunks seemed a dark, impassable crevasse. She fumbled around then shone a torch at me. I stared back at her, not moving, caught in her beam.
“What?” she ordered.
My mouth opened. I shook my head. A sob rose up to choke me. I stuffed my hand into my mouth and bit down hard on my knuckles.
“Sorry,” I gagged. “Sorry.”
34
There is such a thing as boarding school syndrome. According to Jürgen, this is a real condition. He heard it on one of the podcasts he listens to driving to class. I look it up online and find he is right. There are survivors’ groups and trained trauma therapists. Specialists in the sudden and traumatic abandonment of one’s childhood self. I find an article about it online to forward to Rod. She video-calls me as I am feeding Lena her breakfast. I turn the screen so that Lena, seated in her high chair, can babble indecipherably at her grandmother.
“Poppycock,” my mother says, offended by the article. “What utter nonsense. To be honest, darling, I didn’t even bother to finish reading it.”
Lena squeezes a banana, pulverizing it in her fist. Dod, she says, trying to get Rod’s attention. Dod, dod, dod. I repeat the symptoms out loud to my mother.
“Difficulties in relationships and parenting, workaholism, inability to relax, isolation, highly experienced as a bully, substance abuse, a sense of failure, as well as physical, sleep, and sexual problems.”
Rod raises an eyebrow.
“Nonsense, I sleep like a log. Always have. And you have friends, lots of them.”
This is not true. Since we’ve moved to Los Angeles I’ve made a total of one new friend, Audrey, a tall redheaded woman I met at Lena’s toddler group who raised both eyebrows during the group sing-along, locking eyes with me across the room, and above the head of her eighteen-month-old son mouthed the words, Kill me. The other mothers frowned. They bent into spouts, tipping themselves over, pouring themselves out.
On the screen Rod covers her eyes with her hands, then flaps them open.
“Peekaboo.”
Lena grins. She wiggles her arms. Blobs of banana splatter onto the floor. I can tell from my mother’s tone that she doesn’t want to discuss the matter any further. Hurt by the implied criticism.
“With the adoption of a strategic survival personality—a disguise, a front, a mask—the true identity of the person remains hidden. This pattern distorts intimate relationships and may continue into adult life.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, please. What a lot of whiners. Your father and I were very content. And look at you and Jürgen, you’re happy, aren’t you?”
I don’t give her an answer. Lately, with the baby and Jürgen’s new teaching job, our primary source of communication has become the Post-it note pad left out on the kitchen counter. We haven’t had sex in months. I look at my face on the screen, my finger trailing my puffy, inflamed skin, peppered with spots. I had a better complexion at school.
“It’s hormones, darling,” my mother reassures me. “Did you try that cream I sent you?”
Rod is a firm believer in self-maintenance, beauty regimes and expensive lotions and potions. It’s so easy after having children, she tells me, to let oneself go. Go where? I think. Wistful.
I haven’t worked since Lena was born. On a freelance wage, who could afford a nanny? When Jürgen comes home early, he kisses us on the head—the baby first, then me—and asks us what we’ve been up to. I stare at him blankly. Sometimes I pass an entire day without speaking to another adult. During naps, I sit beside Lena’s crib, aimlessly scrolling through Facebook or, once or twice, looking up Gerry’s former skate club. Just last week I lost an entire afternoon to pictures of Dickie Balfour’s wedding. It is then that I remember the camaraderie of school life. The sensation of having my knee tickled, my hair stroked, the weight of an arm linked through my own. The complete indifference to the outside world. The jokes, the rumors, the secrets.
This morning I found myself in front of the garage, where, buried deep in a pile of storage boxes, hidden amongst old baby clothes and winter coats, is the metal tin. Lena on one hip, a knife in my hand. Deciding.
On the screen my mother starts to look worried.
I force a smile.
“I’m just tired,” I say.
Rod sucks in her cheeks, looking her most Divine.
“Of course you’re tired. You’re a mother. Oink, oink,” she snorts at Lena.
Lena blows a raspberry back, spraying me with food. I wipe banana from my shirt.
“Anyway”—she changes the subject—“I mustn’t keep you.”
“From what?” I say.
“Toodlepip.” She waves, already gone.
35
Gerry Lake took me to the San. The school nu
rse, a gaunt and malnourished-looking woman, who lanced our boils and deloused our heads and checked our feet for verrucas, asked what kind of symptoms I had. I stood there, picking my inner arm. Gerry stepped forward and said in a scathing voice it was a personal women’s matter and that I needed a doctor’s appointment immediately.
I stared at Gerry, amazed.
The nurse sighed and nodded. Then she opened a locked desk drawer and wrote something in my file. We each had one of these identical beige folders with details of our various allergies and ailments, and I wondered whether the nurse took the Hippocratic oath like a doctor, or if this was the kind of anecdote teachers tittered about in the staff room during their cigarette breaks.
Next Gerry escorted me to the doctor’s, marching ahead along the road, her small arm swinging, her hand in a fist. I had a stitch, a pain in my side like a knife wound. I wished Gerry was Lauren.
“Slow down,” I pleaded.
Gerry stopped, surprised, looking at my arm wrapped around my ribs. We walked awkwardly together the rest of the way, side by side, not speaking.
In the surgery, she and I sat for a long time in the plastic blue waiting chairs amongst elderly couples, coughing into their handkerchiefs, and townies with snotty, bawling babies. When the receptionist called my name, I wanted to crawl under a rock.
“Go on,” Gerry said.
I stood up.
“Tell her it broke,” Gerry advised.
“What broke?”
“The condom.”
“Oh, right. Thanks.”
I knocked and saw that it was Dr. Hadfield. Dr. Hadfield had come to school over the years and given us all our diphtheria vaccinations. He had very large flared nostrils and was hairless and polished looking. A pair of glasses, which he used as he was making notes, were strung on a chain around his neck.
“Oh,” I said and backed out. “Is there a female doctor I could talk to instead?”
“Not today. Take me or leave me,” Dr. Hadfield said without looking up.
I didn’t know anything about contraception or what rights I had. I presumed the morning-after pill meant just that. I closed the door and sat down.
“I’ll be with you in a moment, young lady.”
After some time the doctor turned to me, took off his glasses, and asked me how he could help. My hands were sweating, I could feel my heart thumping, I picked at my arm.
“I think I need the morning-after pill,” I said and stared over his shoulder at an anatomical heart.
“You think you do?” Dr. Hadfield frowned.
Dr. Hadfield was a particularly fastidious man, pedantic about the application of grammar. A person who frequently tutted at our “likes” and “ums,” lecturing Divines on our various solecisms while he was administering our jabs.
“I mean, I do,” I corrected myself.
“You had unprotected sex?”
“No.” I flushed.
My hands were pressed under my thighs to stop them shaking. I knotted my fingers together.
“The condom broke,” I lied.
“During penetration?”
“Yes.”
He put on his glasses and began taking notes.
“And approximately how long ago was that?”
“Saturday,” I fumbled. “I mean, early Sunday morning.”
“I see. And how many sexual partners have you had, would you say?”
He peered at me over the top of his spectacles.
“One.”
“I see. And would you say you are in a monogamous relationship with this person?”
“Monogamous?”
“Is he your boyfriend? Does he have other partners?”
I looked at the floor then, picking the edge of the scab I had made with my fingernail so that it flapped completely open. I felt humiliated, chastened.
“No,” I choked out, “he has a girlfriend.”
The doctor clicked the end of his pen, slid off his glasses, and looked at me sternly.
“A girlfriend? That doesn’t sound like a very promising start now, does it? You might want to think about choosing your partner more wisely next time.”
I nodded, too ashamed to reply.
“Well, in any case, young lady, you’ll need to come back in a week for a few tests.”
“Okay,” I said and wiped my nose with my sleeve.
Dr. Hadfield handed me a box of tissues.
“You’ll know better next time, I expect.”
He wrote out a prescription for the morning-after pill.
Gerry looked at my puffy eyes as I walked back out to the waiting room and seemed embarrassed. Unexpectedly, she slipped her arm under mine, holding it stiffly, as if it was set in a cast. She led me to the pharmacy and as soon as we returned to our dorm she got me a glass of water to swallow it down with and that was that.
“Whatever you do don’t puke or it won’t work.”
“Did that happen to you?”
Gerry acted as if she hadn’t heard. I thought of the hairy arm hanging from the window of the beige Ford Escort. The slow drumming of fingers against the door panel, the sobs at night I’d never bothered to comfort her over. I realized I knew almost nothing about Gerry’s life outside of the Divine. I felt a sudden respect for her.
“Get into bed,” Gerry ordered.
I did as she said, still fully dressed, and watched Gerry get ready for lessons. Despite the fact our exams were over, there were still two pointless weeks of classes ahead of us before Prize Giving and the end of term. Gerry checked herself in the mirror on the back of our door. She pulled tight the immaculate bun she always wore, smoothing the bumps. She speared stray strands in place with bobby pins.
“Doesn’t that give you a headache?” I asked.
“You get used to it.”
Gerry glanced at the timetable on her desk and slid a folder into the blue canvas tote bag we lugged around school.
“Thanks,” I said quietly.
“It’s all right.”
“I’ll make sure you get your hairpin back,” I promised. “You know, the one you got for your birthday.”
I didn’t tell her that it was inside my desk drawer. At any time I could have climbed down from my bunk and given it to her then and there. But I didn’t. I was too much of a coward. If I waited a few days, I thought I could sneak it back onto her desk while she was out, avoiding further drama. Gerry’s reflection froze, a bobby pin hanging from her mouth. She bit down on it, her eyes narrowed.
“That fucking cow, I knew it,” she said. Meaning Skipper. Then: “Thanks.”
She shouldered the book bag and headed out the door.
“Wait, what will you tell everyone?” I asked.
Gerry stopped, one hand on her waist, her hip jutting out. Her chin tipped up like a cat, blinking. After all that she had endured, she should have reveled in seeing me like this: pathetic, weak, in need of her help. She must have known that if the shoe had been on the other foot, our teasing would have been relentless.
She nudged the rubbish bin closer to my side of the room with her foot.
“I’ll say you ate something funny.”
This was Gerry’s attempt at a joke, I realized, the first I’d ever heard her tell. She looked at me nervously, checking my response.
“Ha ha.”
When she came back after lunch to check on me I was groaning to myself, swallowing, licking my lips like a poisoned dog.
“I want to die,” I said, gagging.
“Did you puke?” Gerry inspected the rubbish bin.
“No.”
I rocked from side to side, pulled my knees up to my chest, anything to stop the nausea.
“Can I get you anything?”
I shook my head weakly. How could one small pill make you feel so bad? Why did women have to go through this when all a man had to do was wipe himself down, roll over, fall asleep?
“This is the worst bit. Try and rest. You’ll feel better when you wake up,” Gerry said.
“Gerry?” I moaned.
There was the shush of feet on the carpet, a fresh glass of water, and once, though it’s possible I dreamt it, a hand gently rubbing my back.
36
It was dusk when I woke and oddly hushed. The hollow quiet of empty dorms and silent corridors. Gerry had left a cup of tea on my desk—long gone cold—a piece of toast, and some magazines to read. I sat up, feeling better. I chewed a corner of toast, flicked through Just Seventeen. Along the corridor was the sound of a phone going unanswered. It stopped, then, after a short pause, began ringing again. The idea suddenly came to me that it was Stuart trying to reach me. Had he changed his mind about the two of us? Perhaps he’d had another fight with Kerry. I kicked down the bedcovers and rushed to the communal phone. When I got to the booth, the door was locked. I pressed my nose against the perforated plastic glass, listening to the phone warbling to itself.
“Shit,” I said. Where was everyone?
I went into the empty rec room and I checked a few dorm rooms, all of them unoccupied, books open on desks as if people had got up in a hurry. I racked my brains, trying to think what day it was.
I went outside to the steps of the boarding house. It was exceptionally quiet. On any given summer evening Divines would be out on the grass courts, thumping tennis balls back and forth into the gloom till they were summoned inside. There would normally be squealed laughter from dorm windows, music from our stereos, bells that announced the start and end of lessons or prep. That evening, though, I remember the tennis courts were silent, no music played. I considered going to see Lauren, since there was no one there to stop me, but I remembered how her eyes had narrowed, sliding between her brother and me. A look of utter disdain.
