except it felt wrong, even at a young age, something in her realized that her prettiness was supposed to make her compliant, and when she wasn’t, when she rebelled, she was letting down all those invested in her being adorable
Mum being her primary cute investor
who she let down a lot, one Sunday Megan threw herself on to the floor in hysterics when forced to wear another vile, pink, puffed-up dress
and she kept it up until her mother was vanquished
Megan was her otherwise liberal mother’s blind spot
there’s something not quite right about Megan, she overheard her telling Aunty Sue one Sunday after lunch
as they sat drinking tea in the tiny sitting room with just enough space for one small sofa, two armchairs and a telly
she’s such a beautiful child but there’s not a feminine bone in her body
I hope she grows out of it, I worry about her
where will it all end?
meanwhile
Dad was in the garage with Uncle Roger, her two boy cousins, and brother Mark, tinkering with the prehistoric Cortina Dad still drove
Dad came from Malawi where he boasted everything was repairable: watches, pens, furniture, clothes, lamps, broken crockery superglued together jigsaw-style, and yes, his daughter
he was her mother’s enforcer, and after the dress protest that day (victoriously, she got to wear red jeans), he’d ordered her upstairs to play with her Barbies
the Barbies with their stick legs and rocket breasts were another problem Megan had to endure
she was supposed to spend hours dressing up or playing house with them, including the darker ones she was supposed to find more relatable
in a fit she’d once tried to commit Barbicide, defaced them with coloured marker pens, chopped off hair, extracted eyes with scissors and de-limbed a few
it resulted in the punishment of bed without any tea
the Barbie invasion proliferated on birthdays and at Christmas, relatives talked about her incredible collection, as if she’d actually chosen to have them in her life
on her bed, on shelves, sitting on the mantelpiece, on the windowsill, each one creepily staring her out wherever she was in the room, like in a horror film, mind-talking her with their perfectly-pouty mouths saying, yeh, we know you hate us but we’re here to stay
when she stuffed them under her bed at night, her mother took them out again the next morning and repositioned them in the room
going on about how much they cost
and what’s wrong with you, Megan?
GG, her great-grandma on Mum’s side, was the only one who accepted Megan just as she was
GG allowed her to roam the countryside around her farm with Mark for the five weeks they spent with her every summer
they’d go riding down the back of the house to the lake, circumnavigate it, and gallop across the fields
until the year she turned thirteen and her periods started, and Mum turned up for the last week, as usual, and said she was running too wild and would have problems later on in life
you have to keep her where you can see her, Mum said to GG, we’ve got to nip her tomboy tendencies in the bud
Megan was eavesdropping at the kitchen door (bad habit), heard GG tell Mum not to be so silly, Julie, I myself roamed wild as a child
Mum still threatened to stop Megan’s annual holidays on the farm
Megan watched through the ancient kitchen window as Mark rode out of the yard on a pony for a day of freedom, knapsack on his back containing a flask of orange juice, sandwiches, fruit and a mobile phone
he looked back and shrugged, there was nothing he could do
GG spent the rest of the week teaching Megan how to make Victoria sponge, gateau of peaches, vanilla slices and orange cheesecake
oh well, there’s no harm in learning how to bake, she said when her mother was present
when she wasn’t, she said, let’s play along with this for now, Megan, next summer you’ll be free to play out again
we’ve got to make sure Mark doesn’t tell
which he didn’t
Mum was a nurse, Geordie born and bred
a bit Ethiopian because GG’s mum was half Ethiopian, and a bit African-American, because of her grandfather, Slim, who married GG
she looks almost white in a family that’s proudly got lighter with every generation
until she went and ruined it by marrying Dad, an African, fellow nurse at the Royal Victoria Infirmary, who loved her until she loved him back
so the story went every time they told it
Mum said she was colour-blind, when she looked at Chimango she saw not the darkness of his skin but the lightness of his spirit shining through
it put him streets ahead of all rivals, and trust me, Megan, I was spoilt for choice
Megan wondered how Mum couldn’t see Dad’s colour when that was all most people saw, including many of Mum’s own family
who refused to smile in the wedding photograph
stood there like a row of undertakers
Megan was part Ethiopian, part African-American, part Malawian, and part English
which felt weird when you broke it down like that because essentially she was just a complete human being
most people assumed she was mixed-race, it was easier to let them think it
the girls at school cooed over Megan’s ‘natural suntan’, which they tried to emulate by spending their pocket money lying on sunbeds
likewise with their curly perms trying to unsuccessfully reproduce her blonde corkscrew curls
she had it made, really, according to her classmates, the boys liked her too
then her body started to show womanly curves and it didn’t feel right, it wasn’t what she felt herself to be
so much so that she hated catching herself in mirrors, hated the breasts that appeared without her permission
two amphibian mounds taunted her with their nipple eyes
she thought she’d grow into her body, but it began to repulse her, at sixteen she shaved off her hair to see what it felt like, loved running her hands over her new, low-maintenance bristle
she felt free, weightless, herself
except it had the drastic effect of turning everyone against her, her classmates implored her to grow it back
why would you even do this to yourself? are you crazeee?
the girls she thought were friends dropped away, embarrassed to be seen with her, GG reassured her there was something wrong with a friendship based on having the right haircut
hurt but resolute, Megan abandoned all pretence at conforming
she wore men’s shoes, black lace-ups, liked how comfortable they were, how powerful she felt when she walked in them, loved that men didn’t eye her up any more
which was liberating
at the end of that school year when her class was voting on titles, she won two: the butchest girl in the class, and the ugliest – scrawled in chalk on the class blackboard and with a black marker pen on the white toilet walls
it felt like the whole school was laughing at her
Megan walked out of school that day for the last time, she left behind two thousand kids sitting at their desks working towards a future with at least a few qualifications
she’d been headed for university where Mark was already making a success of his life
she walked into a job in McDonald’s, the first one she applied to
devoured the free Chicken Legends, Quarter-pounders with Cheese, and Belgian Chocolate Honeycomb Iced Frappés in her breaks
she pumped herself with additives until she looked ready to pop like an inflated balloon
this was her life now
McStupid
McFuckedUp
McStuck
McForever.
2
Megan spent her evenings hanging about on the Quayside with the men and women who accepted her as she was
an outsider, just like them, she snorted, injected, smoked, swallowed whatever came her way
cocaine, crack cocaine, ketamine, cannabis, LSD, ecstasy, whatever took her to a higher, happier plane