Untitled Story - Chapter Two - Numbers

I wore demure underwear as I sat there on the train making my way to the clinic that I had found on Google, had called, and had made an appointment for. I’d called them on a Monday and was making my way there the next day, Tuesday. The few facts they asked about me included my name, my date of birth and which doctor’s practice I was registered to; they also asked me the date of my last period, and I gave them the date I knew it as accurate enough to be, but I’d never been one of those girls who knew to the exact time of what day they expected it to come, and like how I often did find other aspects of my life, my cycles were at times erratic.

The woman I spoke to on the phone was nice, she arranged a time for a nurse to call me, and that evening I spoke to a nurse who described the procedure I would go through, there were no nouns used to describe the life inside me, there were instead choices and lifestyles and bad timing and the fact I was going through this alone reasons as to why I was to take one pill to stop my baby growing, and another cluster to rid me of it completely.

I chose for them to not disclose that I was having an abortion to my GP and I said I understood all that was being explained to me. When I arrived at the clinic the next day I was to give my date of birth as proof as to who I was, and I wasn’t to have a name that day, I was given a number laminated in plastic which identified me, and I did realise that as I moved through the process that the colour of the numbers all us girls and women in the upstairs waiting room of this clinic, that was a large 1930’s style house, did hold, did change as we met different evaluators and nurses who treated us all, I am sure, with the same disinterest as to why we had chosen to bring ourselves here. I did not find this practice rude, it was professionalism, and it was in keeping with the lack of individualism that afforded any of us sat whilst in that waiting room.

When blue number 2 was read out for the first time, all I did think was, I hope there will still be a chair for me in the waiting room when I come back. I signed some forms, that was stage 1, and after this I returned to the waiting room that was busy with a mix of females that in any other circumstance you would find hard to explain how they had found themselves to be sat in the same one room. My chair from before had been taken and so I found myself moving to a chair located in a corner next to two girls so much younger than I. Unless you were younger than 16 you weren’t allowed to be accompanied upstairs, so for most of us our companions who had attended us for support remained downstairs, or as I did witness on my departure, did smoke, pace and do all the generic things that a person can do when passing time in a clinical environment. The water machine was popular, as were leaflets about STD’s; there was nothing to shy away from here, and I thought about how I would much rather have had Chlamydia than an aborted baby, but when they tested me for Chlyamydia that test was negative, and thank you I said to the nurse as she told me, and I left stage 2 with my finger pricked and my vagina swabbed.

Untitled Story - Chapter One - Semblance

Everyone looked so quiet, or maybe the sounds of the commute were being held inside the fibres of my fake fur coat, I didn’t know what to make of it, I hadn’t eaten and maybe I wasn’t thinking straight, but I could feel eyeballs on me, not glances, but stretched out eyeballs watching me; maybe they didn’t think the fur I was wearing was fake, or maybe they knew that I was getting the train in the wrong direction to the way I usually take it, and if they knew that, then maybe they knew that that morning I was on my way to have an abortion.

If we try we can reduce many things in our life to descriptions set in numbers. I still have a mother and a father, therefore I have two parents. I have two brothers, and one sister. I have best friends of which you can count on just over one hand full of digits. I have an age of twenty-two years. I have been in love, what I know to be real love, twice. I have tested negative on countless pregnancy tests because I gain great satisfaction from their negative readings, and life feels great when your greatest fear at that moment in time is quashed in an instant; yet surprisingly I felt without fear on the Sunday evening which I chose to question why my period was late in May 2010. The stick I’d peed on turned out a positive conclusion, and like many of the answers I find in my life, I set out to find what mine would be on Google.

I would have been around 6 weeks gone when I found out I was pregnant, I hadn’t felt all that ill in these weeks, but I must admit I’d felt strange, and on the train to work only days before I’d revealed this matter of fact to myself, I’d faltered in the aisle as I made my way to the end of the platform to exit the train station. On route I did stop and rest against a metal railing as I wiped my head and thought about how the body changes as you become older, and then I did entertain the possibility of how maybe I could be pregnant, and so I bought myself a pregnancy test which I expected once again to be nothing more than a bolt of cheer to know I had absolutely nothing to worry about, for I was not within the capable market of motherhood; especially when single and still attesting to being heartbroken. This lack of suitable circumstance for motherhood is however no real champion in the contraceptive stakes.

I bought a pregnancy test in the way that the happy indulge in their passions on a whim, this was a vice to me, a rectangular packaged and still visible through the plastic Boots bag vice of hormonal validation. That day was Friday, and it took me until the Sunday to take the test, partly because I was scared, and partly because I’d plans that Friday and Saturday night with friends I did not want to let down, and with friends who could busy my thoughts with ideas that I was as impregnable as the male of our species.

On Sunday I became aware I was a pregnant woman, and for less than one week I remained as such.

I’d be holding that baby now, boy or girl, I do not know, and I do not know if this is some form of grace to not know, because with not knowing I do find that I do wonder on my present existence in the company of a competing baby boy and baby girl, and this reel of wonderment is exhausting - but do not misunderstand me, for I am grateful for my choices, but now in their aftermath I do sometimes feel sad, and I should not like to tell my story as a love letter to the freedom of being the master of my own body, because there are days when I do realise that I did decide to rid myself of something that was in stature such a small part of me, so undefined and blank at that time, yet in all its veil of semblance I do feel the ache of loss, but not of guilt, and I am satisfied that I did settle on what was right for my future, and sad that what was right was the pursuit of remaining singular and lonely, when for one conscious week I had kept the closest company I had ever known, and had felt purpose, but what is purpose when you still beg to question whether you can make another happy?

It was others who did answer this more simply for me, for they did say, in as similar a form as this, 'You just weren't ready yet Justine'

Pink Milkshake

Any other milkshake except a strawberry one I call it by the flavour, so when I want a chocolate one I call it a chocolate one, when I want a vanilla one I call it a vanilla one, but when I want a strawberry milkshake, I call it a pink one, I ask ‘can I have a pink milkshake’ and those people selling pink milkshakes to me ask if I mean a strawberry milkshake, and of course I do, but I just say yeah at them, pretty unimpressed with their translation of my milkshake request, because it didn’t matter how accurate the translation of what I asked for and what they understood it to be was, by them changing my description of a pink milkshake into a strawberry milkshake they also sold me the idea that sometimes I did things all wrong; but because I’m stubborn, I don’t change, and because I’m nice, I let them keep the change, and because I have favourites, I always drink milkshake that’s pink.

John F. Kennedy's Birthday

When a baby was born they gave it the name John F. Kennedy, and as a bystander of this birthday I disguised anguish with a balloon that I held perfectly ahead of my own head.

My sister had given birth to a baby girl and was in the same ward as the parents of John F. Kennedy. My niece, my sister’s daughter, remained nameless, and nameless we enjoyed her just as much as something that gives inference to meaning, perhaps even more so.

Tiny little fingers and toes that were new to this world, were for those moments, as free as they would ever be.

By the evening, her name was Greta, and a transposition of letters would lead you to believe that she was Great - and she is.

In a hospital ward on her first night, Greta slept close to John F. Kennedy, who was only a few beds and a closed curtain away. He was Irish and Catholic, and so was my family; and that kind of thing always seems to mean more when you meet someone you like, like really like, who has that background too.

It’s easy for me to remember John F. Kennedy’s birthday. It isn't as easy for me to approve of his parents choice in baby name.

the world's smallest disco

I invented the world’s smallest disco
In a thimble room
On my thumb
My finger flicked a light switch
On/ off/ on/ off
And I swayed
And where a door stood ajar
My fur coat hung
A little wet from the rain that day
And at the disco, I did sweat
The songs all ones I loved
Because the DJ knew to play them
Because i'd wrote them on the kind of card you save for occasions
With pretty edges and spacey middles
Like women nearing 30
Skirting bored men around their heads
In a small disco
That's so small you wonder how so many can fit in there
And it is with such rationality
That the disco ends
As we walk home, in what always feels like rain.

Spoons

When your grandfather stands there eating three different types of cereal in the one bowl with one fork, and your father who is your grandfather’s son, is there too, making cups of tea with more milk than tea ever needs, so that these cups become cups of milk with a dash of tea, that look like mood stones, set in a mood like a whipped up sky, where cloud meets colour in a misted up eye that looks to where your granny once stood, on her own two feet, albeit with a cane, pain, and clothes from the mainstream British high-street.

She died in a British Home Stores, with a wicker basket in a metal basket. The wicker basket made it back home with her, along with her body, but this was not of her own accord. They were set to bed, and visited, and the visitors drank milky tea and admitted that they’d already bought presents for my grandmother, for Christmas, and I told them that this wasn’t what they should be talking about, so they said sorry, and thought of living and human substitutes for cardigans.

My grandfather’s passion for cereal was triggered on the day of his wife’s death. My granny hadn’t undertaken the food shop, and all there was to eat was Shredded Wheat, Cheerios, and Al Bran.

There my grandfather stands, in his kitchen, with a fork eating cereal, because a fork holds on to things better than a spoon ever could; it pushes itself into where it wants to be, settling there until the decision not to be is taken by the fork, and by it only - because it is the one who has taken charge.

In their time together my grandfather would spoon my granny at night. He would hold her from behind, like a jacket on the shoulders, and from high above, and with duvets spread across them both, you might think that here you had found a fossilised depiction of what keeps lovers together - but as my grandfather knows, a spoon can drop you, because it never really interfered with you, it just nestled there, in good fit, for a while, whilst you lived through a daydream, without ever pinning it down to make it stay.

Designing A Girl - Chapter Ten

I was friends with a girl who worked in a pancake house. Her name was Anna. I never did know her surname. I named her Anna Pancakes. She would give me free pancakes, until The Dutch Pancake House closed down, I wish I'd now been more adventurous in my pancake choices, but I almost always opted for sugar. For a while we were close. Anna was the one I called when I thought my boyfriend was going to leave me. I guess I did this because originally she was more his friend, and well, somehow my boyfriend ended up kind of letting me have her as mine, and so she was that one I turned to when he made me sad, because she had perspective on him, and at the time I was in dire need of more female friends.

I had a phonebook full of male friends who I'd either once kissed, or dated, or shagged, it wasn't the best company to have when you wanted to leave that kind of past behaviour behind. Through hanging out with Anna I found out all about the time she was duped out of much of her money from a man she'd befriended who told her he had cancer - he didn't have cancer - but he did have Anna's money - but no longer her friendship - but a blemish on her faith in people had began - but not completely, and I could imagine Anna Pancakes being the kind of girl that this kind of thing would happen to again, and I'm unsure of how to word it, but she was small-town, she was naive.

We ate in vegetarian cafes, because she was vegetarian - I'm not vegetarian, but people often think I am, and that's okay, because I like tofu and spinach, and lots of vegetarian things. When my birthday came along, I think this was my 22nd, Anna was the only friend who asked to meet me for it, she handed me an oblong package, and it was heavy, and when I opened it, there was a vase with pages of a book lining its insides. I read passages that struck out at me, and they did so because this was my favourite book I was reading - this was Far From The Madding Crowd, and this was my birthday, and this present was perfect, and I felt overwhelmed.

The friendship with Anna Pancakes didn't last, and if you ask me how it ended, I don't remember, we didn't fall out, we just didn't stay still enough to stay in touching distance.

The present of the vase is one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me, because I don't ever remember telling Anna Pancakes about how much Thomas Hardy and Far From the Madding Crowd meant to me, she must have just have known, because the things we love often have this habit of coming up in conversation without us quite realising it. What does make me a little sad is that I dropped that vase in Topshop, only about an hour after meeting Anna, for birthday tea, so within the confines of the Manchester Arndale, I picked up broken glass that lay near young-fashion, collecting the matter of what was mine so that my bag did chime like chaos.

I'd broken the nicest present I'd ever received, and yet the memory of it, and the extracts of Thomas Hardy's beautiful words, did remain untouched from the calamities of living; and much like this is how I remember the friendship that I had, with one Miss Anna Pancakes.