And all my life became colourless — I did not have a friend. I grew taller and paler (Mrs. Dingle says am I ever going to stop growing); I hunched my shoulders and my head felt big. Nan said it was growing pains and took me to the doctor who asked if my period had come and gave me iron tablets. My fits got worse (I cry at night). My mother gave me Ovaltine and nerve tonic.

At school everything was changed (I am an onlooker — a spectator to other girls’ friendships). I went by myself under the pepper-trees. I went up the hill by myself on Friday. I did book-keeping and shorthand and typewriting. I said could I go to the High School to my mother. She said it was too late. Anyway, what good would French be to me?

Twenty-Eight

TWENTY-EIGHT

At night I could not sleep. I listened to my mother’s breathing; Tinker moved drowsily; a tap dripped. I was alone.

I thought of my aloneness and of the time when my grandmother would die. I thought of how terrible it would be to have a baby. I thought of my death. Tears ran down my cheeks; I savoured them in the dark. (It is always like this now — in the morning, when the room is full of grey, when the first birds sing, when Tinker cries to be out I will sleep. Now I lie awake.)

And as I lay between the sheets, listening to the tap and my mother’s breath, feeling the weight upon my feet and the tears on my cheeks, I comforted myself.

I put my fingers between my legs. (The hand with the squashed finger plays. There are tiny hairs. Sometimes it coils them; sometimes it plucks fiercely. But always, the finger moves on. It strokes, parts, circles; a nail gathers secret pollen. The finger moves on, and the swollen cleft that was raw and ugly when I saw it in the mirror, opens: blossoms. My finger plays with a row of little lumps and hollows: is sucked into a pool.) And the agapanthus feeling sweeps deliciously; flowers and dissolves behind tight-shut eyes.

My nights became beautiful. With morning, the warmth had fled. I found hairs stuck to the sheets; my fingers smelt. And I felt guilty.

I thought of ways to defeat my hands. I stole a pair of gloves from my mother’s drawer. There was a hole in one finger, but their whiteness comforted me. I wore them in bed. Sometimes I found one had come off in the morning.

I locked myself in the sleepout and took off all my clothes. I stood before the mirror — there were breasts beginning. I pushed them hard and a deep crease came between. I looked at the place that was beautiful in the night — it was uglier than ever.