Shame On Me by Tessa McWatt

Author:Tessa McWatt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO026000, BIO002000, SOC008000
Publisher: Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
Published: 2019-08-05T16:00:00+00:00

My niece, Kiera McWatt. Photo credit: Andrea McFarlane.

5

Ass

dark phrases of womanhood

of never having been a girl

half-notes scattered

without rhythm/no tune

distraught laughter fallin’

over a black girl’s shoulder

The temperatures in May were the highest since records began in the UK, and June has begun like a fever — the days are long, over sixteen hours; the sun persistent. My terrace plants are constantly thirsty. Everyone is outside in shorts, slinky tops, short dresses that skim the edge of buttocks. Sex is in the air. Sex is in everyone’s thoughts. It is already so hot at night that sleeping is difficult — too soon in the summer. In Guyana, June is the beginning of the sugar-cane harvest, before the rainy season. First, the cane fields are burned to remove the leaves, which contain very little sugar. In the tropics, burning crops, burning temperatures: these are a way of life.

I call my mother to ask her whether, as a girl, she saw the sky turn orange with the burning of cane fields; I want to know what she remembers about harvest time. Not much, she tells me, but she proceeds to describe June as a month for dances, as the month she was married in, as a month of romance. She has not lost track of these things the way she has the days of the week.

‘What was the name of your boyfriend?’ she asks me, and I know which one she means because she has asked several times — the one who came with us on one of our trips to Barbados. A long, long time ago. She doesn’t ask me about any of the others.

As we say goodbye she tells me she’s happy, which she does frequently, trying to reassure me that she’s fine on her own, that she doesn’t need me to worry about her, and also making the point that she doesn’t want to be moved out of her home. We hang up and I wonder if I should write things down for her, like the names of boyfriends and friends, but then I think that when she asks such questions, she is not looking for facts but for ways to acknowledge me, to connect, because indeed she is happy and fine on her own after so many years of worrying about others.

—

I stopped being a high jumper or competing in track and field when my breasts arrived. Late. Later than most young women. My period didn’t come until I was sixteen, and I had been worried it never would. Skinny, flat-chested, without hips or ass, I was boy-like. I was light. I broke records.

The day I got my period I lay on the floor in our dining room, now in a bigger house in a different suburb — a room that was used only on special occasions — because I knew no one would find me there. I held my hands on my pelvis and felt for what was going on inside me, trying to picture it. I was alone.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.