Chapter 7: Monday Evening

There’s a word that starts with “ep.” I remember Dad using it once. I had to ask what it meant. He explained that it meant suddenly understanding some gigantic, important Idea (that’s idea with a capital I). That’s what had happened to me. The word is ‘epiphany’. <I looked it up in the dictionary.>

I had an epiphany!

Epiphanies hurt! It felt like this huge explosion in my brain. You should make a mental note to yourself right now never to have an epiphany of your own. I sure don’t intend to have another one. They really hurt!

I was sitting on my plastic-covered bed. My legs weren’t working properly so I don’t know how I got there. My ears were ringing. I think my tongue had been blown right down my throat because I could feel it flopping around in my stomach – well, something was flopping around in my stomach anyway. My eyes had popped right out of my skull. Maybe if I felt around with my feet, I could find them rolling around on the floor.

The over-sized painting on my bedroom wall filled my vision. It was me. It was me, completely naked, lying on a sofa, a velvet-covered sofa. It was me looking sexy! Never in my entire life had I ever thought I could ever look sexy. It was me looking beautiful. I always hated the way I looked. I always thought I was ugly. Mum had painted me beautiful. She had painted me touching my boob! I know she’d made that part up – Mum had never, ever, ever seen me doing anything like that! Apart from anything else, my boob hasn’t even really started growing. Maybe she made the rest of it up too.

Doubts attacked me like a buzzing cloud of wasps swarming inside my skull.

I stood, peering into the mirror. It was still me. Still the same me, but at the same time it was a different me. It was the new me – the post-epiphany me! I peered into the mirror trying to see past my loose clothing to find the me that Mum had seen. Trying to see the me that Mum had painted.

Vaguely I became aware of Mum standing right behind me, whispering into my ear. “Not like that! You won’t understand until you see it all.”

I was still stunned from the epiphany exploding in my brain. That’s my excuse. Why else would I have allowed my mother to reach around and undo the buttons on my top and slide it off me? Why else would I have let her pull the t-shirt I had on underneath, up and over my head without the slightest struggle. I didn’t even notice when she undid the button and zipper on my jeans and slid both them and my panties down my legs. I must have stepped out of them at some stage ‘cause otherwise they would have been around my ankles, but they weren’t, so I must have. I stood in front of the mirror and I was naked.

Mum posed me like I was a doll: chin up, back straight, shoulders back, hair spread out and draped down my back, feet slightly apart. I stood and stared at myself. Mum was whispering in my ear, I couldn’t tell you exactly what she said. It was something about being strong and beautiful. And there, between one blink and the next, I saw what Mum was telling me to see. There I was! This nice looking girl stared back out at me from within the mirror and I was her and she was me. It was like she was challenging the world to see me as Mum saw me. My legs seemed to fold up under me and I sank slowly down to the floor.

I was sitting on the floor, in front of the mirror. The soles of my feet were against each other with my knees out sideways and flat to the floor. My hands were gripped around each ankle, pulling my two heels into my crotch. My back was still straight, shoulders still back, chin still up, eyes still locked on their reflection in the mirror in front of me.

A hand was gripping my naked shoulder, shaking it slightly. A voice murmured something about getting ready for basketball. The hand slipped under one armpit and tugged upward. My brain moved my feet under me and pushed myself upright. Vaguely I registered it was Tara, whose hand now slid down to the small of my naked back and pushed me gently but firmly towards my closet. My brain steered myself around Mum, who seemed to be painting on the wall beside the mirror. My brain seemed to be doing things without me actually deciding to do them.

Arriving at the closet I stopped and stared stupidly at the closed doors. After a moment they opened and a pair of hands started sorting through hangers and then they pulled out my bright green and white basketball uniform. The shirt and shorts were both on the same hanger, just the way I always hang them. I rubbed the palms of my hands up and down on my naked thighs. Then I wondered why I could see my hands sorting through my closet and at the same time I could feel those same hands rubbing on the outside of my legs.

Tara appeared in front of me, holding my basketball uniform. She pushed it into my chest and my hands reached up and clutched them to me. She disappeared again. This was something I knew how to do. Using all the concentration I had, I carefully draped the shirt over one shoulder and took the waistband of the shorts in both hands. Carefully spreading out the shorts I stepped into them, one leg at a time and pulled them up. Tying up the strings to hold my shorts up was amazingly difficult. I had to keep starting again.

Tara was there again, holding something in her hands. She muttered something about panties but it didn’t make sense so I ignored her and kept trying to tie the shorts up. Suddenly there were four hands holding the strings and tying knots instead of two. That was really confusing. No matter how much I concentrated, two of the hands didn’t seem to do what I wanted them to do. That’s not true, none of the four hands were doing what I wanted. Eventually two hands took over. They pushed the other hands away and quickly and efficiently pulled the strings extra tight and tied the bow, and then they tied it again making it a double knot. My brain thought that wasn’t right and the original two hands started picking at the knot, but one of the other hands slapped them away.

The uniform top was lifted from my shoulder and I raised my head to see why. Tara stood in front of me, holding out the top. I carefully slid my arms through the armholes and Tara guided the top down over my head. Then she pulled the shirt down and tugged it into place. I looked at Tara as she focused on dressing me, and a bit at the back of my brain remembered thinking about me having to dress her this morning. That bit of my brain started giggling at how I’d got that one backwards. Here she was dressing me.

The rest of my brain was mostly still confused about what was happening around me. Slowly it was sorting things out. I remembered it was Monday and I always play basketball at the local community center on Mondays at 5:30. I looked down and realized that I was already dressed in my basketball gear. That was useful. The only problem was my feet were bare. Tara appeared in front of me and pushed me backwards until I ended up sitting on my bed. Why was she being so bossy? A bit of my brain started to tell her not to push me, but that bit of my brain wasn’t connected to my mouth, so the voice just echoed around in my head. She knelt down in front of me and started putting a pair of bright green socks onto my feet. They matched the uniform I was wearing. I thought it was a good choice of socks. I’d hate to wear socks that clashed with the rest of my clothes. Then I remembered they were part of the uniform so of course they matched. Then Tara was pushing my feet into shoes and tying the laces.

I was sitting in the passenger seat of Dan’s car, one hand stroking up and down my ponytail. It was plaited very neatly, very tightly, much more tightly than I usually did for a game. I wondered why I did it like that. I wondered when I did it like that. Houses raced past the window in a frantic attempt to get to wherever houses go when no one’s looking at them any more. I glanced down and saw I was wearing my basketball warm-up suit. That was handy. I hoped I had my basketball uniform on underneath or I was going to get really embarrassed when I stripped off the warm-ups in the middle of the community center. I glanced across at Dan who was concentrating on driving.

“Hi Dan.” My voice came out husky and quiet, like I hadn’t used it for ages.

“Hey Bec! You ready to play basketball?”

“I guess!” To be honest I was worried that it might be difficult to play if I couldn’t shake myself out of this weird state of mind I was in. Maybe my brain would take over and play for me without me having to think about it.

“That’s good because we’re here,” said Dan.

I stood on the court. A basketball thudded into my hands. I bounced it once, twice, and then glanced up at the ring and threw. Swish! Nothing but net! A team-mate, Sabrina, bounce-passed the ball back to me, I caught it, lifted the ball above my head, flexed my knees, pushed up and let go with a nice jump-shot. Everything felt right. It rattled the ring as it dropped through. Again Sabrina bounced the ball back to me, but it was slightly off. I moved, gathered the ball with one hand and drove into the key, pulling off a nice lay-up which bounced neatly off the board and through the ring. I kept moving as I landed and ran to our bench where I stripped off my warm-up suit. The string on my shorts was a bit tight and I went to loosen it, but I found the strings were double knotted, so I left it. I ran out onto the court with the rest of my team, ready to start the game.

Is there such a thing as a perfect game in sport? I don’t think so, but that game was close. I mean, sure, not all of my shots landed and I fumbled passes a couple of times, but mostly things went right for me. I was in that zone that I’d heard professional sports people talk about. You know, that zone where it all boils down to just the game and everything seems to click into place. Nothing else exists – there is only the game.

I was there and it was fine. It was fun too – not laughing and giggling fun, but the sort of fun that made my whole body feel alive and buzzing. I got rotated to the bench a couple of times. That was the coach making sure everyone got to play, but each time I could barely sit still. My entire focus was on the game and it felt like this enormous elastic band was wrapped around me, pulling me back onto the court. Each time I was put back in, the elastic would yank me back in, right into the thick of it. It was awesome!

We won the game by quite a bit in the end. I think it was close up until half-time but we’d pulled away from them in the third quarter. At the end of the game, we shook hands with our opponents and gathered around our bench. The coach and other players all patted my back and told me how well I’d played. Everyone was pretty buzzed! I looked over his shoulder at the scorecard and checked my stats for the game. Everyone hugged and said goodbye, then split up to go home.

Dan and Tara came down from the bleachers and congratulated me. Dan offered me a water-bottle and I drank it down. I’d been drinking from my own bottle, but it was empty well before the end of the game. Tara scooped up my warm-up suit and held it out for me, but I was still too hot to put it on. We headed home. I wondered how Tara had got there, I didn’t remember her being in Dan’s car on the way, but she assured me that she’d been in the back seat. She said I’d been a bit spaced out and didn’t seem to be noticing much. I guess that was true.

During the drive home I felt hyper-alive. I noticed everything. I looked at everything. I checked out all the people in the other cars on the road. I checked out the houses we drove past. It had rained during my game and everything looked fresh and clean. I rolled down the window so I could breathe in the clean air, but Tara complained about the cold so I had to wind it up again.

I bounced into the house and headed for my room. I said “Hi” to Dad when I saw that he was cooking in the kitchen. He asked how the game went but by that time I was already in the hallway so I had to yell my answer back to him.

“It was good!” I yelled.

I charged into my bedroom and did a nice jump shot to throw my balled up warm-ups onto my bed. Then I realized Mum was there, holding a paint brush between her teeth while she squeezed paint from a tube onto her palette. I said sorry and went to tidy up the pile of clothes. She stopped me with a grunt and waved the tube of paint at me. I must have looked puzzled because she took the paint brush out of her mouth so she called talk.

“Do that again!”

“Huh?”

“Do that throw again!”

“Oh! Ooookay!”

I grabbed up my warm-ups, balled it up again and did a second jump shot, but this time they landed on the edge of my bed and slid off the plastic onto the floor.

“Hmmm!” Mum had a weird smile on her face. “How was the game, sweetie?”

“It was great, Mum! I had a really good game.” I glanced up at my portrait on the wall and wondered if I’d played so well because of my epiphany. If that was the case, maybe I should have epiphanies more often. All I had to do was schedule one for the afternoon before an important game and I’d be set.