Holes
Maybe you’d always had them, or maybe there’d been a terrible accident in the fuzzy time of shapes and colours, when your head was soft and couldn’t yet form lasting memories.
You assumed that everyone had them somewhere. But the first day at school brought sidelong glances and openmouthed stares. Holes the size of pennies dot your arms and legs, holes that seep and cry, staining white cotton pink. They don’t hurt, just annoy, gathering fluff and crumbs, itching when your dad buys the wrong washing powder. Some of the children come to stand by you, pointing chubby paint-stained fingers. “Look,” you say, sticking your thumb into one near your elbow, twisting it round. There are gasps and squeals. At the end of the day everybody hugs goodbye. You wait in the centre of the room, tugging at your trouser legs, pulling fabric away from skin. When they are finished hugging each other they look back at you and wave, big and wide, walking backwards, like they are bringing planes in to land.
Back home, you throw your satchel across the room and examine the holes for the first time. They are deep enough to see down to the bone, tunnels through muscle and skin, puckered and bumpy around the edges. You look into the mirror at your freckled face and punctured arms, a child matador, gored by horns. You hear your dad’s key in the door and you go to stand at the top of the stairs, to confront him.
“Why have I got these holes?”
“What holes?”
“These holes.” You say, holding your arms out.
He pauses for a moment. “I don’t know. You just have them”
“I don’t like them,” you say, gulping and screwing up your fists. “They look weird.” He climbs the stairs and takes you in his arms. “Shhh,” he says.
You blink back tears while he stuffs each hole with cotton wool, securing it with sellotape.
“There you go,” he says, smiling down at you. “Let’s see them laugh now”
At playtime you slink in corners, fiddling with the dressings. Girls walk by, linking arms. They wave at you and you wave back, half-heartedly. “She’s got holes all over her, you know,” one of them whispers. You make your way to stand by the gates, to watch the cars and maybe spot someone who knows you, peeling off tape, dropping heavy, pink wads of fluff in a trail behind.
Rosie Adams is twenty-one-years-old and has just completed a BA in English Literature and Creative Writing. She lives in London.
