‘What are you talking about?’ she asked.
‘But it hurts!’ I protested.
‘You’re such a little flower,’ she said, and pointed to the class monitor. ‘Why can’t you be more like her?’
The class monitor was a tough one, even though she was a girl. She was very grown up, too. Once she fell into an uncovered drain on the way back from school — she just crawled out with a huge bump on her head and a broken hand. The highways department tried to make out it was all her own fault, but she stood up in front of the class, her head held high and her bump throbbing, and told us all how she conquered the pain. At the end she raised her arm in salute but came up short — the sling got in the way. Still she didn’t flinch. How come it didn’t hurt? I flinched, just looking at her.
I’ve been through agony. Headache, toothache, backache, bruises, sprains, torn muscles — they’ve hounded me with intense, raw pain all my life. I’ve thought about ending it all, but that would hurt even more, wouldn’t it? On the other hand, once you’re dead there’s no more pain, and that’s some sort of liberation. I used to rack my brains for a way to die that didn’t hurt. Jumping into a river? Hanging myself? Cutting my veins? Maybe overdosing on sleeping pills — after all, it couldn’t hurt once you were asleep. I started sneaking into the pharmacy at my father’s hospital, messing about and chatting up the technicians while I figured out which brown bottle held the sleeping pills. I’d steal a few when they weren’t looking. Just a few — I didn’t want to get caught.
Planning ahead came easily to me. I didn’t dare keep them at home, in case my parents looked in my room, so I tucked them in the lining of my pencil case and carried them around in my school bag. Setting out for school every morning was like saying goodbye for the last time. I’d slip away with a long, sad look at all the familiar things I was leaving behind.
Then there was something on the news about some woman who’d killed herself with an overdose. Her face was bright purple, as if she’d been strangled.
‘But she just took too many sleeping pills,’ I blurted out. ‘How can that hurt?’
‘What makes you think an overdose isn’t painful?’ my father asked.
My heart sank like a stone. It seemed impossible to die without pain.
‘What a crazy kid!’ said my mother. ‘You’re too young to think about dying.’
2
My periods started when I was thirteen — and so did the period pains. Once in biology it hurt so much I rolled off my chair and under the desk. The teacher rushed me straight off to the sickroom.
‘Just your time of the month,’ said the nurse.
But I was in such pain that I couldn’t help rolling around on the bed. The lesson finished and my classmates clattered down the stairs, making the whole building shake. They crowded round the sickroom door — I was so ashamed. There was nothing I could do. Some of the boys even started calling me names. Then the biology teacher came and chased them away.
‘What do you think you’re doing? What’s all the fuss about? It’s a normal thing that happens with girls’ bodies!’ All the boys ran off shouting.
It was so embarrassing. The boys gave me weird looks, like I was that plastic model of the human body in the lab and they were taking me apart to read my secrets. And the girls ignored me, because somehow, through me, they’d become specimens too and I’d revealed their secrets. When we had to line up separately, boys and girls, the girls bunched up together and left me on my own. It was as if I was a different sex, as if they didn’t have periods, as if the ads for sanitary towels on the TV weren’t aimed at them. They were ever so careful to stuff their sanitary towels firmly inside their knickers so they wouldn’t show. They talked and laughed as if there was nothing going on. If the PE teacher asked them to run the 1,500 metres, they just ran. But I couldn’t. I wanted to act like normal, when I had a period, but I couldn’t keep running. I made a fool of myself again: I tripped and fell over. The school called my parents and I was sent off to my father’s hospital.
An old man was bent over at reception, gripping on to the bars of the window and vomiting out his guts. Where were his family? My dad took me straight in — no need to wait in the queue, or register at reception — and they started all the checks: temperature, blood pressure and so on. So much for special treatment. Every patient has to be checked over, even top Party officials, special treatment or no.
The doctor ordered me to lie down and take off my trousers. I was really embarrassed, even though it was a woman. Suddenly I felt a strange, tearing pain. All my nerves went into spasm. For the first time I really noticed that part of my body. It hurt. But that hand was pitiless, the way it pushed itself inside. Then she stood up and washed her hands.
‘There’s nothing the matter.’
Nothing the matter? I was obviously still in pain. She sat down at her desk.
‘I’ll write you a script for the herbalist.’
Herbs? That wasn’t going to work in a hurry. You had to pick them up from the pharmacy, take them home, soak them, cook them, then steep them again like tea … I’d seen my mother do it a thousand times. But this pain was so severe I couldn’t bear it for another second!
‘I don’t want herbs! I want western medicine!’ I screeched.
The doctor was surprised. Then she looked at my dad and smiled. ‘She knows a lot about medicine for such a young girl.’
‘Herbal medicine has fewer side effects,’ my Dad put in, smiling back.
‘I don’t care about side effects! I want western medicine!’
She smiled again and stroked the back of my head. ‘There’s nothing the matter.’ She’d said it again. What was she on about? There was nothing wrong with her, obviously, she wasn’t in pain. I just wanted to curl up under the bed.
‘I don’t want herbal medicine!’ I wailed.
Eventually I got my prescription. But it didn’t do any good. A month went by and it hit me again. I was rolling around on the floor in the middle of the night, all sticky. I was rolling around in blood.
My room was wrecked. The bed was messed up, the clothes were all over the floor and my sheets were tangled round the legs of the table. My mum panicked and begged Dad to go fetch his friend, the director of gynaecology. He went off and my mum started clearing up the room, yelling at me to get up. But I just couldn’t, even when she tried to drag me to my feet.
‘What’s the point in lying on the floor,’ she shouted. ‘How’s the floor going to make it any better?’
But the floor did make it better. I was at one with the blood, the mess and the dirt. I pressed my face against the tiles and gave them a kiss. She pulled at me and slapped me and my face burned and I started to sob. My mother opened the door and the director came in, bringing the cold night air with her. I stopped crying and looked at her feet. They were very bony, like a wise, old face. I crawled nearer. Lying in front of her, I started to hope she might save me. She bent down to me, stethoscope at the ready, and listened to my chest. I longed for her to find a symptom, to tell me what was wrong.
Her face was as blank as her feet. She stood up slowly and put the stethoscope back into her pocket. She asked my father to show her what I was taking. Was it the wrong medicine? Maybe she’d start criticising the doctor who’d prescribed it and give her the sack. After all, she was the head of department. But she didn’t do any of that.
‘Just keep taking those,’ she said.
It was as if the lights had gone out. Couldn’t she see when someone was ill? What kind of a director was she? Was she just in the job for the perks?
‘Once she’s married, it’ll get better.’
Dad stumbled out his thanks, took her to the sitting room and shut the door.