I first menstruated when I was
nine years old; waking in bed to a small puddle of dampness, the morning light
warming through the heavy curtains. When I felt the wetness there was shame,
making itself known in the tears that came. It had been years since I wet the
bed. I sat up slowly, and it felt as though I’d tipped something over, such was
the gushing. The emptying. I squeezed
as hard as I could and finally it stopped coming. It was too cold in the winter
air and too warm beneath the layer of blankets to get up, so I guessed it was
still real early, and figured it would dry. Two hours later and the day at full
bloom was pressing into my bedroom, up the peeled wallpaper and the cracks of
plaster, black mould spots in the corners of the ceiling. I wriggled my hips.
It felt sticky. It would smell bad, I thought, wary of lifting the blanket.
Mother would not be happy. I tentatively put a hand down there, feeling for the
damp. Instead it was tacky, like wet cornbread dough, and when I brought my
fingers to the light they were the colour of the mould.
I’m mouldy! It was a silly thought, but
I was a child. I let in the ice of the air and there was the meconium stain on my
faded-blue pyjama bottoms, black-red and the size of a newborn kitten.
Shuffling backwards, the stain on the sheet was much larger, as black and as
wide as Rhodri’s well. It looked like
blood! I stifled a scream but the creaking springs of the mattress betrayed
my consciousness and Father came in to make sure I was quick with the chores,
as he always did. He took one look at the sheets, then back to me, and said;
“So you are a girl, after all.
Mother!”
I made
myself as small as I could, backing up against the wall, while Father left to
get Mother to deal with my problem. That he hadn’t acted much surprised settled
what frightened nerves were needling in my stomach. It couldn’t be that bad. Quiet, I listened to the footsteps of the
house; my brothers showed their heads around the edge of the door and laughed
when they saw the blood on the bed. I quickly reached forward and covered it
over, but it was too late. They ran off giggling, screaming “Raggedy Anne,
raggedy Anne!” as though I was meant to know what that meant.
Mother
finally entered, shutting the door behind her. She was the only woman in the
house, and, I guess, after today I became the second, though it would be
another five years until I menstruated again. She pulled the bedcover away and
then sat on the bed, asking if I was scared. I told her there was nothing to be
scared about, and she nodded in agreement, going on to tell me about the way of
things with that resigned sadness she had about her, as though she was
constantly experiencing something in the past. She told me to get up and then
she pulled the cover from the bed. “Go to the bathroom,” she said, locking my
bedroom door. I had my own bathroom, you see.
There, she
told me to strip and poured some freezing water into the plugged sink. I
sometimes made wee in the bathtub, which was green and black with dirt, so I
didn’t much want to stand in it, but I did as I was told. The pyjama bottoms
peeled away with some difficulty, much redder than the sheets, and stuck to my
thick, matted hair. My skin was already hard with goosebumps by then, the lighter
hair across my body prickled to attention, so the water made little difference.
It stung a little over my nub, as sensitive as the end was, but I was used to
that by now. Mother lathered soap into the hair on my inner thighs and up to my
belly button and cleaned away as much blood as she could. I couldn’t help but
notice how she averted her gaze from it,
and wouldn’t touch it. “There you
go,” she said, “you can do the rest yourself. I’ll leave a towel on your bed,
and get you clean sheets.”
Alone, I
finished washing and then dried and clothed, while my belly ached, hammering
blows bouncing around my abdomen. A little cramp. I always wore long trouser legs
and sleeves in those days, to cover all the hair. Even then little wisps crept
beyond the hem of my sleeves, so I wore gloves whenever we left the farm, just
in case we bumped into anyone. And a scarf for my neck.
Whenever I
think back to my early childhood, I always come back to this day, for so much
seemed to change for me from here on out. Father had it right: I was a girl. Not long after, I began to
malt, waking up in the mornings not to blood, or urine, but body hair. A little
later and my breasts began to grow sore, my nipples turning from pennies to old
tuppences. I grew my hair long, because that was what girls did. My brothers
stopped mocking and Mother even began to take me between her knees with a comb,
and brush and brush for minutes at a time. She’d always wanted a daughter, and
I was close enough, I guess. I don’t blame her, how do you treat an orphan baby
covered head to toe in hair and with seemingly both sets of genitals? It can’t
have been easy.
They named
me Ffion, and Father’s surname was Adie, as in A-D, so that was how the locals
knew me. Not that there were many locals to be had up here on the hill. Us
Adies liked to keep to ourselves most of the time, anyway, tending to our farm
and keeping the borders secure. If my family were muntjacs, then I was a vole,
or perhaps a mole, my own sect within a sect, the outsider within.
Father and Jack did the heaviest work; they both had the arms to show for it too. Up early to count the sheep and pigs and chickens, while I and Dylan fed them, and then it was the two hour walk, checking that the border was secure. Where the wind – for it blew a gale up here in the hills just north of Aberffrwd – had dislodged one of the giant tree trunks or bent a section of barbed wire, they were on it, fixing it in a jiffy. Aled was the youngest, though still older than me, and his morning routine was to collect all the water for the day from the nearby stream. When I was done feeding the animals, sometimes I might help Mother in the kitchen, but most often I went off by myself, and always had, ever since I was little. They never stopped me; if anything ever happened to me then I would be a mouth less to feed. Chances were slim – mostly – because that perimeter wall was sturdy. I saw them sometimes, prowling on the other side, testing the barbs and drawing blood. Licking their wounds. One sight of Father’s shotgun and they ran.
