SHIFTED.✔

5

By the middle of year eight, I was well on the way. My breasts had become so sore the slightest bump was enough to make me cry. My body had exploded into a hideous mass of hips, bum, breasts and blueberry stretch marks.

I was miserable.

The only thing good that came from my misery was it brought my mother back to life.

She walked in on me while I was in the bathroom trying to use one of Kerry's tampons. It hurt so much. I couldn't understand the instructions. I had given up, was curled up on the bathroom floor naked from the waist down, my head in a puddle of tears. The tampon crushed and bent from trying to insert it.

Mum saw me lying there. I thought I was in trouble because the look on her face was no longer blank. I sat up instantly, tried to hide the tampon, tried to hide my nakedness. A look of pain spread from her face to her body. She doubled over. Held on to her stomach and covered her mouth.

Fought between sound and air.

"Charlie..."

I frantically wiped the tears from my face. "I'm sorry, Mum. I was just trying one...to be like the others."

She slid down onto the floor with me and said nothing, cradled my head against her chest as giant sobs shook her body.

I don't remember when it stopped.

I don't remember going to sleep.

I just remember waking up the next morning and my mother was back.

My mother was real again.

She introduced me to a different tampon that afternoon. Mum had bought a new version. These had a cardboard tube you could push your finger through and insert the cotton cylinder. We were back in the bathroom, sitting on the floor, me leaning against her shoulder while she read the instructions. We laughed together as she demonstrated how I should put my finger in the tube. The white cotton cylinder suddenly popped out and flew into the toilet bowl. We peered over the rim to see it fill with water, double in size and bobble precariously on the surface.

Mum looked at me and shrugged. "Well, that's how not to do it."

I succeeded that day but it hurt, felt uncomfortable inside me so she made me take it out.

"Try again in the morning, Charlie." Mum touched my face. "I'm so...so sorry I haven't been here for you. But I'm better...getting better."

It hurt so much each time I used a tampon I wasn't game to remove it until I went for a shower. I left it there for the whole day.

And because of Mum's awakening the noise came back.

The hole filled.

The silence went away.

"Charlie you stink. You stink like a dirty Med," Kerry told me one afternoon. "I bet you don't change. You're a filthy little bitch."

I knew what she meant and I started to cry. "It hurts me."

She whirled on me. I was afraid she was going to hit me. "Well go back to using pads or get one of your little boyfriends to give you a fuck! That'll fix you up."

I went back to using pads.

I had always been a pretty girl. At least everyone said I was pretty so in my child's mind I guess I accepted I must be. I had been rake thin in my pre-puberty years, with thick long wavy blonde hair. I was Charlie.

Once puberty took over Charlie was left behind and 'Beach Ball' took her place. The boys thought that was hilarious.

"Hey, Charlie...you want to play volley ball?

"Yeah sure."

"You can be the ball!"

I tried to take it with good grace. Laugh along with them, tease them back, but inside I was fading.

"Why don't you use your own balls? Oh, that's right you don't have any?"

I tried to hide this grotesque thing I'd become by wearing bigger shirts. It just made it worse.

"You know you'd be really pretty if you lost weight."

Lost weight I'd scream inside my head. I played lots of sport and lived on lettuce and water as it was.

"And you'd be really smart if you had a brain!" I'd scream back. It made me weary to try to think up new comebacks. After a while I started to bite my bottom lip. To close the door on who I was a little further.

I went to the library a lot and did my homework in my lunch hour because I didn't have many friends. They were kids I played sports with or happened to be in my class.

  Kids like me who had problems of their own.

Copyright © 2017 by Donna Fieldhouse. All rights reserved.

Thank you all. Please remember to vote, comment and follow.

I really appreciate it xoxo