Carole says that Rob has been asking about me. He is willing to try again, another evening. It might work. I wonder what he has told her about me. Carole watches me as I sit quietly with period pain. One hand is smoothing an aching stomach, the other absentmindedly scratching tousled, grown-out bleached hair. Carole is a witch, an ice-cool queen. “Well?” she asks, plucked eyebrows raised passive-aggressively.
“I'm not really interested,” I answer, womb constricting. Carole flips open her magazine.
“You really are too inward looking,” she says from behind the open pages, “self obsessed.”
Carly is hurt, of course, by this sudden criticism, yet remains silent. She sits with her hand on her stomach. She exists in two separate worlds. This is the sacrifice she has made. She keeps it all undercover. Her friend cannot see her tattoos. To Carole she is neither gypsy nor warrior. Nothing special, really. Neither vampire girl, enchantress not stormy lover. Carly has no power, here in this world. Unknowingly Carole has taken her magic, unintentionally disrespectful of her secret sight, her brave battle.
Now I feel hurt, a misunderstood stranger. In pain. “Your roots need retouching,” remarks Carole, brushing back her own, straight waist-length hair, “coffee?”
My womb aches. Heavy with blood. Ovaries engorged, swollen. The pain of my female condition. I taste the blood in my mouth. I swallow. Pain remains. A drop of blood falls onto the bathroom floor, it is thick, dark and clotted like melted chocolate, like the chocolate I have been gorging on, craving for, brighter blood smears the inside of my thighs. Chafes. Blood of my womb, the unfertilised egg swirls around in the flow. Red river...Bleed bleed bleed bleeding red rivers sink in my skin back black back black pain here again here again ache ache ache ache ache egg in my brain cracks open open open into my womb travelling down travelling down burst me open...
This monthly madness. These changes of mood, which misogynists do not try to understand, just fear. Which lovers of women masochistically adore as it adds danger, venom to her voice, an exciting bitterness that yields from the secret, exotic world that is woman. Monthly madness, when a woman is more likely to commit murder.
After every monthly pain we forget. A pain unfair, yet we bear injustice well. We survive. Fluxing moods. Cycles. Circles. Connections. Changing moon.
....Lunar goddess, your silver fingers touch a chord within me. Wombs contracts. Distant pearl. Pain ceases for a moment. Your silver touch envelops delicate ovaries....
Carole is sleeping on the sofa. She stayed too late and did not want to risk danger in the dark. She does not realise that Carly is awake in the next room with a pain so intense, so crippling that she thinks it cannot possibly be period pain....face crumples up...a silent scream into the darkness...the room is too small...confined, claustrophobic...gets out of bed....ceiling tumbles...sweating.
I watch her from my dimension, translucent. The one she never sees. I feel her energies, vibrating in ripples. Hot then cold. The room is too small...finds herself on the floor. Sticking. Sinking. Thinks that she is going to die. “Call a doctor,” she cries, too quietly, a croaky whisper, somehow shy, ashamed of calling for help. Perhaps she is poisoned, she thinks. Bad milk. Decayed meat. Stomach twists, writhes. Knots. Sweating hot then cold. Wet forehead. Makes her way, hunched, doubled, blind to the bathroom. Sits down, panting, moaning. Dizzy as her bowls empty their loose, liquid content...opens the door to where Carole is sleeping...must wake her...needs help....scared. She calls, “I think I need a doctor. Call a doctor.” Carole stirs. Sits up, looks around...back in her bedroom writhes on the bed pulling at the neck of her t-shirt. Torment. Confined. Perhaps Carole did not hear her. “Carole?” Doubles up in the doorway of the front room. On her knees. “I need help,” Carly says, “I've got period pains.”
“Get a hot water bottle,” Carole mumbles, lifting her head, then she lies her head back down, indifferent.
“I haven't got one. I haven't got anything,” says the curled up figure, loud.....Carole ignores her. Cold blue eyes. Cold. Sweating. Hot...back in her room. A madness is running through her mind. Rejection. Loneliness. The room is too small. Voices, faces. Marie from the massage parlour with her sandy blonde hair. The dancer, laughing at her, poisoned. Stumbles into the bathroom.. Wet with perspiration...blood...shit. A tormenting madness. Deep rejection.
Surely I am dying. Surely I am dying. My family is destroying me with their silence. Crushing. I am not living. Nobody cares. Nobody cares about me.
Two hours, three, I am demented by pain. A savage state. After every monthly pain we forget. Shapes dance in front of me, upon the closed lids of my eyes; every foul memory and repulsion. Invisible forces are dragging me down. I am not free. I cannot fly.
I dream of a gypsy in bright skirts. A Romany spirit sitting by a fire. She is telling a story. There is a bright glint in her brown eyes, a glint of gold in her mouth. She says that gypsies were once birds. Beautiful birds flying freely over the land. Special birds with plumage that other birds envied. One day as they were flying they saw some birds below, geese and hens, calling them. Holding jewels of gold in their beaks. The special gypsy birds flew down to the ground to see the gifts the other birds were offering them. The geese and hens were welcoming and placed the gold around the gypsy birds’ necks. Heavy chains bound them. They could no longer fly. They lost their wings yet kept their jewels and became destined to live upon the earth.
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