Maya - that November night

Puberty struck me abruptly at age 14. With alarming swiftness, my figure began to curve and my breasts began to grow. A lot. One minute I was running the 100metres with nothing but the finish line ahead of me, the next it was as if someone had shoved two mounds of pudding onto my chest. It was upstairs in Tammy Girl where I bought my first bra. I’d settled on a white under-wired bra with pink bows on the straps after trying on a range of types. It seemed to fit my ever expanding chest. Day by day I watched these lumps loom into escalating mountains that were spreading out of control. Now when I lay flat on my back they took on a life of their own and began to travel sideways, venturing intrepidly into my armpits. I was mortified at their arrival. Boys started to make comments like ‘nice jugs’ as I scurried past, almost purple with horror. Even girls considered nothing strange about alerting me to their size, as if I hadn’t noticed their protrusion. Emily, my closest friend was jealous! She claimed she had ‘nothing’ and would do anything to have a ‘bit of’ mine.

I grew such hatred towards my breasts; they belonged to a grown up world which I wasn’t ready for and which I feared immensely. I suppose that’s why, when I got enough money, I got rid of them– two days in a private hospital, six weeks with bandages and a lifetime of finally looking normal.

I remember an evening about a month after that shopping trip. It was perhaps around November and it was cold. Ice coated the pavements on which the brave took tentative steps on their journeys. The sensible stayed inside, sitting by the fireside and absorbing the heat. I recall the crisp darkness of early evening. I was returning from Emily’s house where I had been since school finished. For as long as possible I had stayed there eating dinner with her harassed mother but the time to return home would always come. Despite holding down a full time job as a nurse and her father working in the local bank, Emily’s parents were strict on ensuring the family, consolidated with Emily and her little brother Anthony, ate together. Amazingly to me, Emily thought it was annoying. I on the other hand greatly coveted it. Since it was cold, we’d eaten a warming shepherd’s pie which Emily and I had peeled the potatoes for, Emily whinging because I got to use the peeler which left her trying to manipulate a sharp and tricky knife.

When I left I made my slow walk. I felt so safe at Emily’s house, comforted by the warmth of the ticking radiators, sibling quarrels, and reminders to Emily to tidy her room. For me, their typicality was enviable.

I saw the light glowing through the net curtains of our living room and his faint form seated in the armchair by the window before I approached the front door. The light was dim, emitted from a side lamp on a plastic table. I turned my key in the lock quietly. Her coat was absent from the gold hooks in the hallway. Without thought I instantly shed my winter parka, unwrapped my scarf and peeled off my gloves. Usually I would have headed straight upstairs, closing the door to my room and taking salvation in the few LPs I had collected in the past year. Instead, thirst fractured my routine and I made my way into the kitchen. The cold air had dried my throat. I began to search the cupboards for lemonade or cordial that I could take upstairs.

The TV was on quietly in the adjacent living room, staged laughter blurting out into the, shadowy room where the outline of the curtains stroked the floor. Thick smoke from his Hamlet cigar coiled upwards, disintegrating into faint wisps as it reached the doorframe where I stood. I remember that the atmosphere felt dense. I remained as far out of sight as possible when I reached for my glass, taking care to turn the tap quietly until the water faded the lurid orange colour to a paler tone. My body felt rigid in its movements; not just linked to the transition from cold to warmth but generated by the growing discomfort I had been feeling in his presence of late.

Something I couldn’t articulate had altered in his dealings with me. Gone were the dismissive glances he would throw at my entrances and exits into this house he had conquered as his own. In his kingdom, I had been a relatively insignificant minion, who mostly spent time up in the servants’ quarters in my room and out of the adult space. Since I avoided being home as much as possible it was rare that we had to share the communal kitchen and living room. When I did venture there my trips were generally fleeting, searching with precision for what little sustenance might be found on the shelves and in the fridge, extracting what I could and then retreating hastily to my dug-out. When contact had accidentally occurred in the last few months he’d awkwardly attempted conversation about my school day or what homework I had. It wasn’t in the pseudo-fatherly way I imagined he might one day try to adopt but more like a friend. He’d begun to comment on my appearance too – noticing that I had tried to wear my hair differently, curling it outwards with my round brush rather than under and recognising that I’d endeavoured to master eye-shadow and mascara, with limited success. The glances now had become prolonged rather than indifferent, probing rather than apathetic and I knew enough to recognise that the uneasiness I sensed in my stomach meant something.

The cupboard door closed with a sudden snap, which must have alerted him to my presence. A decrease in canned laughter meant that the volume on the television set had been turned down. Rigid behind the rim of the doorway, I could see that he had stretched out his legs and crossed them over each other. From the angle that his right shoulder now poked I knew he was craning to locate my whereabouts. He called my name in a thick voice brewing with a cough. I wanted to pretend to mishear and escape upstairs to the safety of my bedroom and it’s lock but an attempt at doing so meant that I would definitely have to cross the door and in front of his eye line. My name again assaulted my ears uttered in a soft, low tone.

‘Sasha,’ it called, like the ding-dong of a doorbell. ‘ Sasha, Sasha.’

I could see the corner of the living room from my position; I noticed the way the wallpaper had begun to peel itself away from the wall. Like a gymnast, it bent backwards, arching gracefully and hovering mid air.

Heavy minutes passed.

Again my name was called, a playground jibe. I couldn’t stay where I was and nor did I want him to sense the fear which had possessed me. Laboriously, I motored my body towards his presence. Eyes settling to stare over the top of his head, I stood and arranged my features into neutrality.

Neither of us spoke. The room was taut.

Slowly, like a snake uncoiling, his arm reached and the outstretched fingers stroked the skin near to my elbow. His fingers were brittle, like sandpaper. As they grazed upwards towards my shoulder, his breathing deepened. His hand hovered by my collarbone. I wanted to speak and move but my ability to had entirely vanished. I think he uttered my name again, in a whisper this time and my mind detached itself from my body. The shell I had become was pulled onto his knee. It tugged against his hold, wriggled as the grip tightened. ‘My you’re a big girl now,’ he sighed, hand resting on my straining leg. ‘You should never be too big to sit on my knee though.’ A smile. The eyes narrowing. Mouth open. Twisting away from him. Being yanked back. A hand moving with urgency now up my school skirt, pushing its way into my underpants. A voice asking if I liked it. A broken cry – my mouth I think it came from. Then nothing, blackness. As though the tape stopped running.