Column | Girl – NRC

A girl was born. She is wriggling on her mother’s empty belly, her mouth opens and closes. She is a pink mol with a back full of down hair and her father’s hands. She drinks, she grows, she suddenly sits on a chair, at a table full of radiant faces. She sees mommy and reaches, her tulle dress crawls up and itches, she doesn’t know where and how to scratch, she starts crying. There is singing for her. She grows, climbs out of the chair. She is brought to bed. Tomorrow she will go to group four. Her mother combs her hair. It hurts, she looks at her brother who runs through the corridor with underpants on his head. « You are cool, you are smart, you are beautiful, » she hears her mother say. She sleeps and wakes up in the first class. She takes jeans, a navelshirt. She puts on her friendship bracelets, all ten. She grabs in a drawer, brings out a pink lip gloss and stuffs it in her pocket. At school she will occupy the toilet with her new girlfriends. They will handle each other. She hears the high, compelling voices, laughing hard. She shivers, looks in the mirror again, turns around and clocks down the stairs. « Lift your feet, » she hears her mother from the kitchen.

She cycled home alone from the final exam party. Her father is still in the kitchen, reading the newspaper under the lamp. He looks up, she swallows inside. Normally do now. She stumbles up the stairs, into her bed, then she thinks of her classmate who, against the wall of the auditorium. A hand in her pants.

« Could this have ruined my entire school time? » It buzzes while she falls asleep.

She wakes up next to a very sweet friend. He is sleeping. She strokes him over his smooth cheek. She’s bored to death. That evening she sleeps with a boy from the working group. He exudes her breasts and sighs: « Sometimes nice, so much meat on the bones. »

She undergoes an abortion. She goes alone. She comes home again. She drinks tea. She calls her father. He is very sorry. She hangs on. She thinks about his grief and her failure.

She stops eating, eats full. Goes out. Stopping going out, saves money, issues everything, a hangover every day, vegetable juice every day. She doesn’t know who she is. Yes young, and a kind of beautiful.

She’s falling in love, really now. She wants a child. Maybe too early, but she wants to perpetuate something.

A child comes, a girl. She feels carefully on the hairs on the back, how the hands squeeze in her skin. The mouth sucks on her nipple, she sinks away in a well of hormones, why didn’t anyone told her beforehand.

She is standing on the edge of a football field, her daughter has green, Gebutste Knees. She scores. The sun is shining, her mother skin is unluckily weak in this light, but she cheers and is very happy.

She’s alone in the house. There is a newspaper, a cat and everything is in the right place. The bell rings. The grandchild pours on her, she can’t lift it anymore.

She is old and lies in a bed that she doesn’t know. Her body is already sleeping. Something tickles, she can’t get it. But she is used to that.

Sarah Slumber Writes a column every week. She is the author of books, essays and plays.