Lay It on My Heart by Angela Pneuman

Author:Angela Pneuman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

That night, over the dinette, Phoebe informs me of what I already know: the shirt I’m wearing, like every other shirt I own, is too tight to keep wearing much longer. She pulls it away from my chest, trying to stretch the fabric, and I wince when she lets go and it stretches back against my nipples.

“Does that hurt?”

“Not really.”

“I don’t know what ‘not really’ means,” she says. “How many days since your period?”

“Since it started or ended?”

“Started.”

I think back. “Twenty,” I say. “Twenty-one.”

“You have to keep track, Charmaine. But it might not make much difference. I’ve never been regular.” Phoebe brings her hands to either side of her face and draws her cheeks down with her fingertips, dragging her lower eyelids open to reveal the red rims underneath. I look away.

“Go sit on the toilet and take your shirt off.” She drops her hands, and the skin on her face reshapes itself slowly.

“What? Why?”

“You heard me. I’ll be in in a second.” Phoebe stands and starts running water in a pan. I fold the dinette against the wall, stalling. She puts the pan on the burner and turns it on.

“What’s that for?”

“Go take your shirt off,” she says. “Bra too.”

“Nothing hurts,” I say. “I don’t need you to do anything.”

“Charmaine, I don’t have the energy for a fight.”

I step into the bathroom and pull the accordion door shut behind me.

“Leave that,” Phoebe says, but I keep it shut. I sit down on the lid of the tiny toilet and peel my shirt off. It’s the nipples, sore against everything, but it’s also the rest of my breasts: they’re heavy, and there’s a tightness, like whatever’s inside is growing too fast for my skin. When I release my bra, it’s only a small relief.

I listen to the water starting to boil. After a time, Phoebe switches off the burner. Then she is there, collapsing the accordion door with her foot, a dishtowel in one hand and the pot of hot water in the other.

I cover my breasts with my hands.

“Don’t be melodramatic,” Phoebe says. She settles the pot into the sink and dips the dishcloth in it. “Take away your hands.”

I won’t. She stirs the dishtowel into the hot water, then picks it out gingerly. She wrings it out over the pot, sucking in little gasps of air, it’s so hot on her fingers. Steam rises.

“Take away your hands,” she says again, crouching in front of me. “This will help.”

“But nothing hurts,” I say, keeping my hands where they are. “I don’t feel anything.”

“At your stage of development, calcium builds up in your breasts if you don’t use compresses.”

“Calcium?”

“Calcium, caffeine,” she says. “All kinds of things.” She pulls my left hand away and then she is touching me, probing the underside of my breast with her fingers. “Hard as a rock. We need to break up some of that mass.”

“Stop,” I say. “Please. The mass is okay.” I don’t even know what she’s talking about—a mass.

She covers my left breast with the dishtowel.

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