Mini Haunting: Blood

Her house breaths with her, as she curls up in her bed, curls up with a book. Curls up, back against life. She smells the faint smell of blood about her.

On the wall there, amid the pastel dotted wallpaper that feels silky and still brand new to the touch, father has hung a wicker shelf unit, not very big, not very sturdy, you certainly cannot store books there, but little things, beautiful things, like a diary, and the old Raggedy Ann and My Melody figurines, and pencils in a pretty little mug with a picture of a penguin on it.

She is sitting there, on her peach colored bed covers, a poster of Monet’s water lilies above bed, The Water Lilies, oh, oh, the sun hat, a mock safari hat, on her chair over there, the lace gloves peeking a little underneath it, the lace gloves mother let her buy at a flea market even when there is really no point to lace gloves when you are thirteen, living in the country, none, apart from them being pretty and indulgent and romantic and making you think of Agatha Christie’s mysteries, and making you feel pretty and feminine and not at all like the unpretty, lanky girl in rubber boots and big sister’s hand-me-downs (although if you are honest, you really love your big sister’s hand-me-downs). Romance. A dreamer girl. With pink roses printed on your sweater, even your shoes.

And when her back is against life, she contemplates eating a strawberry yogurt. The towel makes a rasping sound against her skin as she shifts a little, readjusting herself. She has no idea yet how to use tampons. It’s one of her secrets. A big one. She is afraid to explore too much – in there. Shame, guilt, a sense of secrecy and doing a bad thing, because that is what they are being taught, at school, in their homes, by the silent treatment and the stop that right nows when they are little, insinuating that touching themselves in there is somehow bad and wrong and good girls keep their hands where they can see them, and can she see anyone in those Sarah Kay posters touching themselves there?

No one in her house has spoken to her about it, but it is implied in a roundabout way that that kind of stuff is hush and not for daylight hours and certainly not to be spoken about. It is an unspoken rule. But she only thinks about it sometimes when she is alone. Not very often. It occurs to her only on occasion.

It is early afternoon, school ended early, and no one is home. She cleaned her room, did her homework. Mother and father won’t be home until hours from now. With her back firmly against life’s lovely cream colored throw pillows, she contemplates for a while - doing stuff. But she is having her period, so stuff is out of the question for now.

The water lilies, her pastel room, the safari hat, inside her head all these dreams of an unattractive adolescent girl, suddenly blooming, turning into a gorgeous woman and why won’t her breasts grow (a feature she has no idea how much she will love about herself later on). A girl with her loud sanitary towel and the smell of menstrual blood hovering about her.