Little Shames: A Cycle
Fiction by Colleen Grablick
Oral
Really, I just came here for the Dramamine.
I threw up four times this morning — the first three a gradual retelling of last night’s dinner and chocolate bar, and the fourth a mouthful of milky bile with nothing to show for itself. I thought the queasiness would settle after all that, but it hung around in my stomach through the afternoon like someone waiting their turn to speak again. This needed a remedy before work; my nanny kid has a thing about up-chuck, and if I got sick in front of him, he’d probably burst into tears at the intimacy of seeing my insides or, more likely, reciprocate with up-chuck of his own. He is impressively empathetic for his age.
In the Stomach Pain/Relief section, I push the button for help. A robot-woman purrs over the sound system, summoning a 20-something boy with explosive acne and delicate hills of dandruff on his shoulders. He unclips a carabiner of keys from his skinny jeans and asks me which one I want. I point to the Dramamine exhibit behind the glass. He unlocks the case and reaches for Original. I shake my head. Then, he grabs Motion Sickness. I shake my head again. He picks up Less Drowsy. I shake my head, smiling apologetically. This whole thing takes about 20 seconds. Finally, he holds up Non-Drowsy and hands it to me. The packaging is all primary colors — yellow, blue, red — like a baby block. My mother used to cut up the dose and sprinkle it in my OJ when she suspected my humors were out of whack. I nod at the boy: Thank you, thank you for taking care of me.
He is jingling away and I am heading to the check-out when I feel a pinching south of the nausea in my stomach. I think: while I’m here, I should pick up some pads, since even though I’m not bleeding right now and have not for about two months (ish), I will probably have another period at some point in the near future and I can’t keep getting caught off-guard, painting the crotches of my underwear with red mud. My period is unpredictable and irregular, so saying it’s “late” or “early” would be like saying the rain arrived ahead of schedule or the lightning was delayed; my cycle just resists time. I think it’s because my mother had an unhealthy relationship with the moon and also because I don’t eat enough iron-rich foods.
I walk to Feminine Care. I consider absorbency levels, leakage protection, and wing width. My eyes drift to the left and land on the Family Planning shelves; this section is very sensibly located adjacent to Feminine Care. Most retail stores are always either one step ahead or one step behind you. Encased in a glass display to the left of the pads, the boxes of pink, blue, and white tests stand in an austere line. Reading the bold text of each box from left to right, they create a bad poem on collapsing time: “ONE MINUTE. 6 DAYS SOONER. ONE STEP. EARLY RESULT.”
It’s true that this morning was not my first vomiting spell; there have been three in the past four weeks, but I chalked them up to school stress, general malaise, and one-and-a-half nights of heavy drinking. It’s also true that I had unprotected P-in-V sex around a month ago (ballpark), and instead of asking him to put it anywhere else — back, ass, tits, mouth, elbow crook, dealer’s choice – I elected for it to go inside me when given options, because I sensed that, since he was nice enough to ask and also had referenced a recent break-up with a long-term ex-girlfriend twice, he was the type of person who would find that way really sweet and exhale with a sort of grateful “wow” afterwards, which always made me feel like I’d shown them a surprisingly impressive piece of watercolor art or a home-cooked meal. He was kind and ordinary — an underemployed substitute teacher who had graduated from my college three years ago and was currently rethinking his relationship with monogamous ideals but wouldn’t rule anything out with the right person and eventually would prefer something sexually closed. We had an OK time.
My mouth feels a little dry, and a wave of nausea is cresting somewhere between my belly button and second rib as I scan the test prices. I probably am not. Although? No. Well? OK. Say I were. If I were, then what? I probably had a quarter of the money I would need. I’d take more weekends with the nanny kid, maybe. The substitute didn’t seem like he was swimming in it, financially speaking, and although he seemed totally with it, politically speaking, I’d hate to ask to go halfsies when he said he was saving up for the eventual production of his TV pilot, the premise of which I can’t remember.
Up until right now, I had always considered myself more of a receptacle in the biological sense than an incubator. A system of endings, rather than beginnings. I know this isn’t how the science works, but I thought of my million eggs as a sort of internal adornment, furniture pieces for my ovaries to house, rearrange, and discard when they no longer fit the aesthetic eras of my body. They weren’t something to be acted upon. They lacked potential. My mother told me she only truly believed she was pregnant with me when she felt my head come out — like me breaching a membrane confirmed a difference between inside and outside existed within her during those months, and that she was capable of making something that could move from one world to another. She said my birth was both of our biggest traumas, and that the next would be when one of us kicked it. She beat me there.
I compare prices behind the glass. A disfigured portrait is reflected back to me in the doors. My features shift as I stare at myself; eyes moving apart, nose narrowing. Now, my mother is looking out at me, trapped on the shelf with the poetry of the boxes. The thick layer of thumb skin I’d been working on with the nail of my pointer finger has opened. I wipe the blood on my jeans.
I look at my phone; school pick-up started 10 minutes ago. The nanny kid doesn’t do well with changes to routine — he’ll be freaking out. He’s easy to calm down, but it makes my chest tight when his face twists up in tears. He’s a really good kid.
I decide it’s probably better just to know. I can handle the results. Or attempt to. I finger the help button, and this time, an older woman with unruly gray hair and plump cheeks bounces down the aisle, her keys swinging around her neck on a hot-pink lanyard that says “HOT STUFF.” Immediately, I feel like I don’t want her to know this about me. It would’ve been easier if my friend from Stomach Pain/Relief were here, given the rapport we’d established over the Dramamine interaction and the fact that he looked about my age and was in no place to judge. He might’ve also found it thrilling to hand it to me.
“Sweetie, what do you need?” she asks. I don’t turn to face her. I’m scared that if I open my mouth, everything will come out.
“Hon? You alright?”
My head starts to feel like it’s coming off my body, so I place my forehead on the glass for balance. When I move my eyes from the floor to HOT STUFF’s face, it’s as though someone has scraped off a layer of my mother’s face and applied it over hers. I start to retch. It’s coming. I fold over. “Oh no, Jesus, sweetheart.” She places a hand on my back.
I vomit once on the floor, missing her neon Sketcher by a centimeter. I try to get out a few words — something like “I’m sorry for the mess,” — but my mouth is too full.
Anal
The doctor has a smooth, soft face, like the surface of a perfect egg. When she smiles, the lines along the sides of her mouth glide quietly into place without any of the rigidity of filler or Botox. Her skin is just naturally resilient like that..
I hate her for this.
“What can we help you with today –” she scans my chart “– Mrs. Berry? And oh, sorry we couldn’t get you in with your normal PCP. He’s on vacation. I’m Alana.” When I shake her hand, her palm is warm and supple. She can’t be more than 40. Before her, I am a collection of dehydrated skin, bulging veins, and fat deposits. I miss Dr. Hawk. He’s in his late 70s and always tells me I look great for my age during my physicals. “The picture of health for another year, Mrs. Berry!”
“Oh, it’s okay. Hi.” I look down at my orthopedic Mary Janes. “Um, I’m uh. Well, I’m having trouble going to the bathroom.”
I called the doctor’s office at 7 a.m. this morning after sitting on the toilet for an hour, straining, crying, bleeding, straining more. They couldn’t get me an appointment until the afternoon, so I sent an email to the school requesting a sick day. From the toilet, I typed out some shoddy lesson plans on my phone and attached it to the admin portal for the sub. MATH: HAVE THEM DO ADDING WORKSHEETS (IN LEFT DRAWER OF DESK). GRAMMAR: VIDEOS ON PUNCTUATION (LINKED BELOW). SCIENCE: FIND SOMETHING ABOUT MOON/PLANETS ON YOUTUBE. I hate showing them stupid videos, but it’d have to do.
“And how long has this been going on?” Dr. Alana’s acrylics tap dance against the keyboard. Under her open white coat, a flimsy blouse curves effortlessly against the natural slope of her breasts. They hold themselves up no problem.
What I do not want to tell her is that I haven’t been able to sit down properly for 10 days. I’ve been skipping church, unable to endure a 45-minute mass in the wooden pew. I’ve been eating my lunch while walking in loops around the recess lot, even when it rained for three days straight last week — holding my umbrella in one hand and a soggy bologna sandwich in the other. I’ve been eating random food in front of the fridge for dinner, telling my husband that something’s up with my stomach and truly, you eat, I’ll see how I feel later, no I’m fine. Last weekend, I skipped a road trip upstate to visit my daughter and her new baby because I couldn’t imagine sitting in the car for that long or testing my luck on an unfamiliar toilet. I told her I must’ve eaten something, and she bought it without question.
What I do not want to tell Dr. Alana is that last night, in the bathroom, I spread my legs in a linebacker squat and cleaved my buttocks, which were not so much buttocks anymore — things with a grabbable resistance and a desirable plush — but instead two tied-up curtains hanging off my tailbone that one could just gently shift aside. Holding a mirror under my crotch, I examined in the reflection what I suspected had grown in the past weeks. Thrombosed there, a small, magenta orb hung out of me like a robin’s egg tragically dropped from the nest. I poked it slowly with my hand, wincing. It felt delicate and bulbous, like a tiny water balloon full of milk. I slept on the couch after seeing it, too disgusted by myself to put my body next to my husband’s.
“Um, it’s been about a week and some.”
“Okay, and are you experiencing pain when you try to go?”
“Yes, well. Yes. Not in my stomach, but more –”
“External? Lower? Right. And are you noticing any blood?”
“Um. Yes, this morning, when I tried to go. In my underwear and the toilet.”
“Okay. Hm. Well, let me take a look and then we’ll see where to go from there. Can you put a gown on for me? Just undress from the waist down. I’ll be back.”
She pulls a thin gown wrapped in plastic from a drawer and places it next to me before stepping out of the room. I slide off my shoes, my joggers, and my underwear. A constellation of blood droplets has stained my underwear in the shape of the Little Dipper handle. I think I’m going to cry in front of Dr. Alana, with her gently sloping breasts and her perfect posture and her smooth-egg face.
A few seconds pass, and Alana is back in the room, rubbing sanitizer all over her hands in quick, dramatic circles like an elegant fly cleaning its legs.
“Is it okay if I have a look?”
I turn around on all fours and, as I’m going to lie down, notice a dark brown blotch on the scratchy paper of the examination bench. Behind me, I know she sees the same thing. “Oh, don’t worry about that. We’ll clean it later, happens all the time.”
I lower myself onto my stomach and rest my right cheek against the bench. A hot tear rolls sideways out of my eye and across the bridge of my nose. Alana is taking her hands, cold from the sanitizer, and lightly separating the flaps of my gown. I think of what she sees and can’t decide what’d be uglier to witness: a 63-year-old asshole, or the face it belongs to, crying over it.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “For getting that there, on the bench.”
“Oh, the blood? That’s no mess.” She draws the curtains. “Okay, wow, yep. There’s your problem.”
Phallic
The substitute is just walking back and forth in front of me and it’s about to happen again. I’m really trying for it not to happen, because when it does happen and I get home, I’ll have to tell my dad. Or probably, Miss Lucy will tell him about it in private for me, after dad gets off his calls, while I’m in the kitchen or something. Miss Lucy takes care of me. I always know she’s told him about it because of the way he looks at me with a sad face before bed, like the face my dog makes when she’s begging for chicken fingers. Her eyes turn into these big marbles. It’s not as fun when my dad does the face because it’s not so easy to know how to make him happy again, like with my dog. She’s nine, two years older than me.
It’s just me and the substitute out here because Miss Lucy still hasn’t showed up to get me and the substitute doesn’t know the normal system, which goes: students wait in the office if their grown-up misses the pick-up time. No one tells the substitutes anything. This one’s a lot younger than my dad and Mrs. Berry. He showed us a video about the cycle of the moon on YouTube and then let us watch two Mr. Beast videos while he did stuff for “his other job” on his phone. That was fun, but he wasn’t as fun as Mrs. Berry. I missed her all day.
I am on the bench, swinging my feet and trying not to think about it happening. I am too scared to tell the substitute that I have to go because if I tell him I have to go, he’s going to have to come with me to unlock the bathroom. They close them when we leave for dismissal, and if he tries to take me, I won’t be able to do it with him there next to me, or him there out in the hallway, waiting for me. I can’t do it with anyone next to me. Not even my dad, or my classmates, and especially not even Christopher and Peter, who are my best friends, in that order. I believe you can have two best friends in your heart, but if I had to pick one, it’d be Christopher.
He’s the fastest boy — not just in my class — but in the whole second grade. “My problem” (that’s how Miss Lucy and Mrs. Berry and my dad talk about it) ruined our first sleepover. Christopher’s mom had to give me new undies and sleep pants, and my dad gave me the face big-time for the whole ride home. It was the worst. For the rest of the summer, I had to wear pull-ups during playdates, like a big stupid baby. Josh from the red house called me a big stupid baby when he saw them.
I don’t know why it happens to me. Even if I have water plus milk at lunch and another milk at snack, and even if I feel like I really have to go right before I get to the bathroom, I just can’t get it out if someone else is near me. It makes no sense because what happens later is way worse. It won’t come out in the bathroom, but then it all comes out when I can’t hold it anymore, sometimes in front of a whole bunch of people. Or in my bed, and that one time, in front of Christopher and Peter when we made the fort at our first sleepover.
“Did your parents tell you they might be late today?”
“My nanny gets me at pick-up.”
“Does she know to come here?”
“I think so. The ladies in the office know.”
“Is that where you’re supposed to get picked up?”
“No, I get picked up here. But sometimes I go to the office if it’s really late. But that happened only like once. In first grade.”
I hope Mrs. Berry and Miss Lucy are okay. Even though girls probably don’t get it, they’re always the nicest about my problem. I wonder if the substitute ever had a problem like my problem, or if he’s now OK with his private parts and never has accidents. You just never hear about grown-ups having accidents like mine.
I try to stand up from the bench and adjust my backpack, but when my legs move too quick, it starts happening. The warm and the wet. My legs feel hot, and when I look down at my gym shorts — it’s always when I’m in my shorts! — I see two streams falling down my leg. They run into each other near my ankle like raindrops on the window of Miss Lucy’s car. They pool around the laces of my sneaker, right next to Spiderman’s face. The substitute stops walking back and forth and moves next to me.
“Oh no, buddy, you’re having an accident?”
He puts a hand on my shoulder, and this feels so nice and so bad at the same time that I start crying. My eyes are leaking big fat baby tears and my nose is blowing snot bubbles. So now my face is wet and my shorts are wet and my shoes are wet. It is so unfair that all my parts leak all the time like this, no matter how hard I’m trying. And I was really, really trying.
Below my feet, the cement has turned gray like after the rain, but instead of worms or grass it smells like my pee.
“C’mon buddy, let me help you to the bathroom, we’ll get you cleaned up.” I can’t move. I wish Mrs. Berry or Miss Lucy were here. They keep extra undies and shorts for me for when this happens.
“I’m sorry,” I tell the substitute, dropping onto my knees in the cement circle of my pee. Wet pebbles stick to my skin. I push my hands into my eyes, hard, like if I push hard enough the substitute will go away, and then Miss Lucy will be here.
I hear the sound of a car pulling up. The substitute’s hand is back on my shoulder. “Hey, bud, I think your ride is here. Lucy?”
The substitute calls my nanny’s name like a question, like with the voice he used to take attendance. He helps me into my car seat and then goes around to whisper something to Miss Lucy, probably about my problem.
When she turns around to look at me in the back seat, her face looks wet like mine. “How was your day?” she asks me, and she sounds sad. Not like normal.
I start crying again because she’s just so nice to me and I’m so happy to see her. And then she starts to cry too, which makes me cry harder for upsetting her, and for making a mess we have to clean up at home, and for the way my shorts are sticking against my legs now, and for the face my dad is going to make when he sees them hanging in the bathroom tonight.
Next to my seat is a bag with red Doritos and Twizzlers, which are my favorites. “Those are you for you. We’ll change when we get home. I’m so sorry I was late.”
Colleen Grablick is a freelance writer and journalist based in Brooklyn, NY. She is a co-founder of The 51st, a D.C.-based worker-led news outlet. she spent several years covering D.C. as a general assignment reporter for DCist.com (rip) and WAMU 88.5. her journalism has appeared in The Washington Post, NPR, Street Sense Media, and The 51st (!). Her fiction has appeared in Struggle Magazine, Bloodletter Magazine, and Hobart Pulp. She is currently getting an MFA in fiction from Columbia University.