Thin (2 page)

The growing-up house was perched on the slope of the hill, facing open landscapes which stretched to Grace’s child’s eye like squares on her drawing paper, plots in the distance, marking out unvisited areas, new imaginings. She sensed the edges of her world as the edges of this quiet, loving space. Her quietness was undisturbed until the birth of her siblings, when textures and colours previously unseen appeared and showed her new possibility. The little house on the hill squeezed in its occupants, sheltering them from the outside, wombing them in its warmth. And as the family grew, more bricks were added and a coat of paint was splashed on the protective walls; an old carpet stretched to fit the growing spaces. The house moved and pulsed and breathed more heavily as each body got bigger within it.

Three:
Grace is taken up the snow-covered hill by Mum who pushes the buggy to and from the small, motionless town. Some days they take the bus; Mum smiles down on her daughter, as they wait in the bus station where northeast accents echo in the dampness. The rain drips down the hood of Grace’s shiny red waterproof mac, along the folds of her eyelids and glides off the edge of her cold nose.

Baby brother’s arrival confuses Grace’s own sense of specialness, and she sulks with her dark brown ringlets in the corner of the room. Mum and Dad divide up the bedroom with a partition wall, taking over her space for him, with his ringing cries and broad blue eyes. She feels unsure of this new arrival in her perfect little world. He is
fed and he is nurtured, and it seems to her that he has no judgements or expectations placed upon him. His delicate fair hair is gentle and light. His lightness matches his mum’s own. Grace watches him closely. He has taken the attention and focus away from her.

Five:
Grace goes to school. She is the first, ahead of the little brother. Gold stars, happy faces, ticks, well done! She is invited to lots of other children’s houses, which do not feel quite like her own warming one.

‘Would Grace like to come round and play?’ one mum says.

‘I’m sure she would love to. Would you like to?’ Mum tilts her head and smiles. Grace is not sure and scowls back at Mum. She hides behind Mum’s long maroon skirt and nods reluctantly.

Dad takes her to the door. They knock. Another dad answers. Grace starts to cry. She screams; she cannot go in, she is terrified: ‘Daddy, don’t make me go.’

Daddy shouts loudly at her in the middle of the street. She doesn’t like it when he shouts because he never usually does. Not at all. But she knows there is always a way out, she should never have to do anything she doesn’t want to – Mummy and Daddy will protect her.

Mum comes out of the hospital, opens the car door and sits down slowly. Grace jumps up and down on the back seat. Mum is going to have twin babies. Mum and Dad look worried because, even though it is the best, amazing day, life is going to be too expensive with four children. Dad feels sick and can’t eat his fish and chips – they go cold. Grace is happy, though, because it means that she will be special and everyone at school will want to know about the little twin babies. Gold stars, full marks, happy faces.

Six:
Dad walks in the door. ‘It’s twin girls. You are the big sister of lovely baby twin girls!’

Gran picks her up and swings her around and around, and Grace laughs. ‘Can we have twin boys next week?’ little brother protests.

Grace tuts at his silliness.

Eight:
The happy-filled, children-filled growing-up house is busy now. There are crying babies and there is a tired mummy. Grace sees Mummy cry and doesn’t like it.

Grace likes to watch over her little sisters to help Mummy out. They are perfect and soft and gentle and cuddly. She looks at them in their cots and wants them to wake up so she can play with them. She feeds them in their side-by-side high chairs. She makes them fish fingers and beans and puts the plastic spoons into their little mouths and they throw it all back into their red plastic bibs.

In Grace’s family, there is control. Orange squash is full of sugar and is not good for you. Coke isn’t allowed because it costs too much money and runs out quickly.

Grace goes to the supermarket with Dad to help him with the shopping. Grace leads the way. She knows a lot. She licks her lips over Lemon Barley Water: ‘Please, Daddy.’

But Daddy says no. Mum and Dad can’t believe that anyone would feed children with such sugariness. One of Mum’s friends gives her little baby Cadbury’s Buttons – Mum’s mouth drops open.

Nine:
Grace is scared of dogs and roller coasters and most animals and strange places – lots of things. She is an expert at running away, faking illness to escape things that she would not like to do, not in a million years, like going to the dentist or competing in a drama competition, or going
for a walk with dogs (even if they are on leads and ‘would never hurt anybody’). The fear grabs her in the tummy and so she stays in her room and hides in her wardrobe and makes up stories, much more exciting than any ride in a fun fair, anyway.

Grace likes to be the top girl.

‘Test me, Mummy, test me on these questions,’ Grace asks.

‘Dad, let’s go through a list of all the capitals of all the countries of the world – me first!’

‘OK, if that’s what you want, bubs.’ Dad smiles.

Grace must always be the first person to finish her work at school. She makes sure that she gives a loud sigh as she turns over the final page of her mental arithmetic test and glances up at the other girls who speed against her, just to let them know that she is winning. Grace races to be at the top. She makes some little mistakes but she doesn’t care because as long as she is in the lead then people talk about her. That is what she likes – people to know how good she is. It gives her a buzzy feeling when she is the best.

Janet and John
has been replaced with some new modern books and Grace is on a high level. Not the top level, though. She is annoyed about that. The teacher obviously hasn’t thought it through properly. If Miss knew her better then things would be different. She is not a very good teacher if she doesn’t think about Grace’s ability enough. Gold stars, top marks, happy faces. Tick, tick, tick.

Ten:
Grace makes up plays and always takes the main part: Juliet, Audrey Hepburn, Cinderella. Sometimes in the proper school plays the teachers make her the understudy or the second lead. What do they know? It makes her hurt and cry. They prefer another pretty girl. Secretly, Grace is so jealous that she wants to tear her own hair out. It makes her feel sick that someone else has got her part, and the applause
and attention with it. She is happy when it turns out that girl can’t sing too well.

Grace writes a story about a successful racing driver who is a girl. ‘Formula One Girl’ wins the race and beats all the boys. The moral of the story is that girls are better than boys. Girls had not been allowed to work and make money and be a success, not in the olden days. Grace would like to be successful when she is grown up. Grace is sure that Mum would be happy about that because she is a feminist.

‘I’ve decided to start my own business. Smash Fashion. I’ve designed some clothes, and I’m going to make them and then sell them. I’m going to be a fashion designer.’

Grace holds a coffee morning with her best friend in her big garden to raise money to buy the material to make clothes, but the other Durham mums complain. ‘It’s not ethical for ten-year-old children to keep money from this kind of thing, they must give it to charity.’

Grace runs up to her friend’s bedroom and cries. ‘It’s my Smash Fashion and it’s my money.’

She sits on her second-hand bike and longs to ride away – ride away from the mums and the friends and the school and the small city, and realize her big plans.

Eleven:
Grace sits on the concrete steps of her new school. She is surrounded by nervous-looking girls and boys in grey and black uniform. She is glad that the teacher tells the class that they have to, ‘sit with somebody that you don’t know’.

Grace doesn’t have anybody she wants to sit with, anyway. Her best friend from junior school has found somebody else to be friends with.

The form teacher pulls her aside. Grace tells the teacher that she isn’t happy and that she doesn’t have any friends, not at this big school. The girls in her class have called her a flirt. She was reading the boys’ palms. One girl pulls her
tie, and pulls her hair, and calls her posh. She is not posh. Don’t they all know where her mum and dad come from?

‘It’s because they’re jealous,’ Mum says.

Jealous of what? Grace thinks.

How can she be popular? What can she do to make them like her? There must be something she can do to get them to talk to her. There are a couple of girls she is obsessed with. The pretty ones who stand out, who seem like they are always surrounded by the most popular people and who smoke on the school bus and go out and rebel. She stares at them, completely transfixed. She knows where they live and what they wear and they probably don’t even know her name. She would do anything to be like them. Just anything. Everything would be OK if they accepted her. She hears about their adventures – drinking at the weekends, getting their stomachs pumped, going to concerts, hanging out with boys from the year above. She harbours her desires secretly, folds them inside her tummy, away from everything.

Thirteen:
Grace sits at her wooden, stale varnish-smelling desk in a boring geography lesson. The teacher is talking about the movement and collision of tectonic plates. Grace is thinking about the nature of time, and how she can’t seem to get a grasp on it. She repeats to herself over and over in her head, ‘Remember this moment, no, remember this moment, no, this moment.’

She feels like time is pulsing beneath her and inside her and yet she can’t understand how it works. She can’t seem to find herself in the present; she is always ahead of it. She is not speaking or acting or even thinking in it. She can’t understand it; it makes no sense.

Fourteen:
Grace is always the last girl in the line to be picked when the class has to play games in PE lessons. She doesn’t really care because she doesn’t like things like that. She is not good at sport. She doesn’t much see the point of it either. She is not interested in running or physical body activities. And she certainly doesn’t want to win at something she can’t do properly.

Food is a practicality; eating is simply something you do every day. Grace never really thinks about it. Occasionally, when friends talk about their weight, she thinks about how she has grown a bit, that she is no longer the shape that she used to be. But change has been quite exciting: there was a classroom competition of armpit hair, then a race to start your period, watching each other’s growing breasts to guess who might have started early.

As Grace catches up with some of the early developers she feels such pride as she stands in the bathroom after school on her fourteenth birthday and her period finally arrives. She wants to tell all her friends, let them know, but she decides not to and feels a special power in her secret achievement.

Grace’s new Best Friend has had her periods for years. She is way ahead of the rest of the girls in all respects. She is the cleverest person. She writes essays and they are read out in front of the class. It’s really hard to catch up with her. Things at the big comprehensive are much more complicated. Grace has to push, push, push to try and compete with Best Friend and she struggles. Best Friend is busy dieting and wearing red lipstick and short black dresses, while Grace is still grappling with how to use a tampon. Best Friend is always dieting. She has one bar of chocolate and a Diet Coke for her lunch and she never eats breakfast. At least, that is what she says. Grace tries it; she eats a bread roll for lunch with no butter, nothing else. It feels strange
– the emptiness in her stomach – but she is not sure what it means. She stands outside the classroom, ready for the lesson after lunch. She wants to tell people how she hasn’t eaten anything much, but for some reason it feels better to keep it inside.

Best Friend tells Grace that she sometimes faints because she doesn’t eat. Grace doesn’t get it. Best Friend is always crying and angry. Grace doesn’t think it makes sense. Why wouldn’t she just eat some more? Grace doesn’t really think about diets or food or anything like that.

Grace goes to Best Friend’s house and Best Friend buys her a chip buttie. Grace is full so she decides not to eat it all. Best Friend storms into a rage and tells Grace that she is a really bad person.

‘Think of all the people in Ethiopia!’

Best Friend doesn’t speak to Grace for the rest of the night. Grace sits on the bed and reads magazines and waits to be spoken to. She goes over and over things in her head but daren’t talk to Best Friend about any of them. She doesn’t like confrontation or angry voices. All she wants is for people to like her, and she will do just about anything for that.

Fifteen:
Grace doesn’t like the fighting and the dieting and the intensity of things with Best Friend. So she decides to make friends with a group of girls who go out into town on Friday nights. They sit by the river and drink plastic bottles of strong, sweet cider. They dance and dance and drink and drink. It is what she has always wanted to do. She is even hanging out in the same places as the girls she used to stare at, and they actually speak to her! She stands, with her dyed black hair, in her black DM boots, which she has decorated with Tippex, her blue vintage velvet jacket and she pulls at her short skirt. She watches the world spin around
her as she stands at the back of the rowing club on the river and lets a boy find his way up her top. The kissing is full and intrusive. She can hardly breathe as he takes over her mouth. She imagines telling people about her latest kissing story. Her head floats away.

Her growth halts – she is shaped. Her fat cells are ready to shift and move into this new body. She is small and has small curves. The excitement fades. She doesn’t think about whether she likes her body. She dresses it to fit in, and allows boys to explore what she hasn’t even begun to discover herself. One by one they encroach upon her space and she smiles, laughing at her rebelliousness, without considering if she likes it.