Chapter 8: Tuesday

I was breathing deeply, trying to regain my breath. Tara leant over me, resting on her elbow, her eyes shining in the darkness as she giggled quietly.

“I’m sorry for screaming,” I said.

“You were moaning before you were screaming,” she said. “And I have to say the moans weren’t unhappy moans. No, not unhappy at all. And then the screams were more like you couldn’t make up your mind whether you liked it or hated it.”

She giggled again. “So come on, my sweet little sister. Fess up. Exactly what were you dreaming about?”

I blushed.

“That’s what I thought,” she said.

At that moment, the door burst open and Dan stood in the doorway. Light poured into the room from the hallway. His eyes scanned the darkened room, looking for trouble. I became conscious that one of my hands was resting on my naked chest. My pyjama top was unbuttoned and open. My other hand was now resting on my abdomen. The sheets were down at my waist; exposing myself like some ... I don’t know, tramp or something. I whipped my hands away from my body and hauled the sheets up to my chin. I don’t think Dan saw anything. He was looking all around the room, not at me.

“I heard a scream! What happened? Is everyone okay?”

“Everything’s fine, Dan! It was only a dream.” Tara’s voice was reassuring and calm.

She reached over and turned on the bedside lamp. My eyes blinked in the light as I lay there, holding the sheets up to my chin, staring wide-eyed at my brother. He stood in the doorway in his t-shirt and boxers. He’d obviously bounded out of bed and burst in here, expecting to find us being attacked by some masked intruder or whatever. When Tara’s words sank in, he visibly relaxed, and then his face became concerned. He came into the room and walked towards me.

“Is everything okay now, Bec? You haven’t had bad dreams for ages.”

I nodded, not trusting my voice. At that moment Dad appeared at the doorway in his flannel pyjamas and a hastily flung on robe. There was some brief discussion while we reassured Dad, then he went back to bed. Dan came to my side to give me a kiss and stroke my hair.

Dan glanced back and forwards between Tara and me. He started to say something then he stopped. He reached over and grabbed Tara by the wrist. Pulling firmly on her wrist, he dragged Tara right out of bed and over beside her closet. She followed without resisting. They had a short whispered discussion. Well, it was more like Dan asked a series of whispered questions and Tara just nodded or shook her head and maybe said a couple of words. Dan was fully standing over her and Tara was completely letting him. It was that other Tara standing there, the one I didn’t usually like, the one who I sometimes saw at school when Tara hung out with that Laura DiMartino girl. The Tara who did whatever Laura told her to do. Except with Dan it didn’t seem like such a bad thing. I thought of all the times I’d stood toe to toe with Tara and had screaming fights over just about everything. I wish I knew how to turn my sister into that meek, nodding Tara who stood in her room that night.

Dan left her standing there by the closet and came and sat on the bed beside me. He used his hand to gently move some hair that was stuck to my sweaty face and tucked it behind an ear.

“So, I gather it wasn’t so much of a bad dream as a different sort of dream, a sexy sort of dream?” Dan’s voice was gentle and soft.

I nodded and then I shook my head. Eyes still wide, hands still clutching the sheets to my chin. I mean, how was I supposed to answer that? It was a bad dream that was a sexy dream.

“Tara says she didn’t touch you, that it was just you, you and your dreams. Is that right?” asked Dan.

“I ... I guess! I was asleep. Are you saying ... would you’ve been angry if Tara had touched me?”

Dan started to speak then stopped himself. I watched as emotions chased each other across his face. He didn’t seem to want to answer. I waited. I wanted him to answer. He could tell I was waiting.

He finally licked his lips and answered, “I guess I wouldn’t be angry if you both wanted ... but if Tara did something like that to you that you didn’t want, or when you were asleep, then I’d be angry with her. In the same way that I’d be angry with you if you made Tara do something she really didn’t want to do.”

“Huh!” I said. “Like I could ever make Tara do anything, ever!”

He gestured over to where Tara still stood in her t-shirt nightie beside her closet. She was standing there, looking down at her hands, twisting her hands together.

“Normally, you’d be right,” said Dan. “But there are times when you’d be amazed how easily you, Bec, could get Tara to do absolutely anything you could think of. If you abuse that, if you abuse her, I would be very, very angry with you.”

“I wouldn’t...”

“I know that, and that’s something very precious about you.” Dan lent down and kissed my cheek. Then he looked me straight in the eyes.

“Bec, I realize you’re learning some things and discovering about stuff to do with sex. I want you to always remember this. You’re always allowed to say no. Don’t let anyone ever make you do anything you don’t want to. If someone tries, you tell them no and if they keep trying, you scream and you scream and you scream and I’ll come running. I’ll make them stop!”

“Will you make Mum stop painting those pictures of me?” I asked.

Dan sighed and looked away. He took a deep breath and then looked back at me.

“If you really want me to, I will. I guess I could distract her! Give her something else to obsess about. But I’d rather not. Mum’s painting is really important to her. It’s the one thing in her life she does for herself and not for someone else. When she paints during one of these episodes, she does her best work, stuff she’s really proud of. I think it’s because she becomes totally focused on the painting and doesn’t notice all the things that would normally distract her. I know her current subject is a bit embarrassing for you but they aren’t really hurting you are they?”

I sighed. “I guess not. It’s, you know, a bit much, to see myself there on the wall like that.”

“I get that,” said Dan. “Do you want me to try to stop her?”

I thought really carefully before I answered that. I knew that if I asked him to, Dan would try. Somehow I sensed that if Dan tried to stop Mum, something would change in the family and it could never be put back. That made the answer easy.

“I suppose not. I see how good the paintings are, I really do. I only wish she’d picked something else to paint, you know? Especially since they’re all on my bedroom walls!”

“Yeah! I get that too! I never imagined she would do something like this, but...” Dan paused and shook his head. “Well, I better get back to bed. I have lectures in the morning. And you have school, so you should get some sleep too.”

He leant over and kissed me gently on the side of my mouth. I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him back. With my arms up like that, the sheets started slipping down my chest and I hurriedly let go of Dan so I could grab them and hold them up to my chin.

“Good night, Dan. I love you!”

“I love you too, princess! Good night!”

Dan went over to Tara and whispered something to her. They hugged and kissed, and then Dan left the room, pulling the door closed behind him. Tara came over to the bed, smiling shyly at me, and then perched herself on the bed.

“So?”

“I think Dan thought that we were fooling around with each other,” I whispered, and then I guess I giggled a bit as I tried to imagine that happening. “I think he thought you did something to me that made me scream.”

“Yeah!” She smiled at me again, only this time it was more like her normal smile.

“I think he kind of said it would be okay with him if we’d both wanted to do that. Does he think we’re like Aunty Penny and Aunty Ally? Does he think we’re like lesbians that we would do sex things with each other?”

“Girls don’t have to be lesbians to do that, Bec. Some girls do things with other girls just to experiment. To see what it’s like. That doesn’t make them lesbians. A lesbian is like, someone who only wants to have sex with women. Aunty Penny is kind of an extreme lesbian; she doesn’t like men at all...”

“Except for Dad...” I said.

“You can’t count Dad, he’s her brother! She gets on okay with Dan too. Apart from them though, Penny hates even having to talk to men.”

“Yeah!” I said. “I’ve seen her at restaurants. If it’s a man waiter, she goes quiet and lets Aunty Ally do the ordering for her. And it’s not shy quiet either.”

“Ally isn’t really our aunt don’t forget. She’s Aunty Penny’s partner. They’d be married if it was legal, but we kind of adopted her as our Aunt because she’s with Aunty Penny.”

“I knew that,” I said.

“But anyway, Ally once told me she’s not really a lesbian,” said Tara.

“Huh? But why ... how... ?”

“She’s really bisexual. Do you know what that is?”

“Um, I think so...” I said.

“A bisexual is someone who likes both men and women. That’s what Ally is. Ally had other partners before Penny, back in England, both men and women. But she’s been committed to Penny for ages. I think they’ve been together for about eleven or twelve years now. She was committed enough to move out here with her and start a new life together in a new country.”

“They came out here at the same time we did, didn’t they?” I asked.

“Pretty much.”

“Now I’m missing them. It seems like ages since we last saw them. I’m even missing Sam, even if he is a bit of a pain. I guess it must be two or three weeks since we had that dinner together.”

“You’ll see them this Sunday. It’s your birthday, remember.”

“Yeah! I hadn’t forgotten.” I grinned at her, and then I thought of something. “Is that where Sam came from, one of Ally’s previous partners?”

It was something I remember asking Mum about when I first found out it took a mummy and a daddy to make a baby. I asked how come Sam had two mummies. Mum had put me off. I remember being annoyed at the time. It was one of the few sex-type questions Mum never answered. For a while I had the idea that maybe Mum was wrong, that two mummies could make a baby and Mum didn’t want to admit it for some reason. I eventually worked out that was wrong, but I still didn’t know where Sam came from. I mean, I knew Ally was the actual mother, I still hadn’t worked out who Sam’s father was.

“Sam is only nine, Bec! I don’t know. That’s way after she got together with Aunty Penny. Maybe she did that in-vitro thing with test tubes.”

I shook my head. I couldn’t imagine how chemicals in a test tube could somehow transform into a living, breathing baby, let alone my annoying little cousin. I sat up in bed, letting the sheets go and pulled my pyjama top closed. I started to do up the buttons but as I did I must have shivered.

“What is it?”

“I got all sweaty before, and now my pyjamas are all damp and sticky.”

“Come on,” she bounced off the bed. “Let’s get you into some dry things. You can borrow some fresh panties and a nightie or something. I’m afraid I haven’t got anything like your sexy pyjamas for you to wear. I stopped wearing PJs ages ago.”

Tara was pointing at my blue flannel pyjamas with the little pink and white flowers all over them. I didn’t think they were that sexy and I was about to comment, but then I realized she was pulling my leg so I kept my mouth shut. She dug out some clean panties and an extra-long white t-shirt for me to wear. I started to turn my back so I could change, but then I figured that over the last week, she’d seen me completely naked at least three times, so I shrugged and stripped off my damp pyjamas in front of her. I was surprised to find that it didn’t embarrass me at all. Tara found a small hand-towel and handed it to me so I could wipe myself dry.

My panties were damp too. I glanced at them before I dropped them in Tara’s clothes hamper and was shocked to see a streak of blood. I think I must have squeaked.

Tara was beside me in an instant. “What is it?”

“Blood! Look!”

“Cool! Maybe you’ve got your period, would that be your first one?” She sighed. “I guess you better let Doctor Tara check you out.”

“That’s okay, I’ll do it myself thank you.”

“Trust me on this, Bec. This is one part of you it’s easier to have someone else check for you. Unless you’re a total contortionist it can be really hard to see what’s going on down there!”

With that, Tara pushed me back onto the bed and pushed my legs as far apart as they would go. My mind flashed back to that visit to the doctor with Mum about three months before when the doctor had put me in a similar position and poked around down below, like Tara was doing. Except that the real doctor didn’t start giggling.

“Well Doctor Tara, what’s the verdict? If I’m pregnant that would be a real miracle.”

“I don’t know how to tell if someone’s pregnant except by getting them to pee on that pregnancy test stick thing. I can tell you your cherry is gone. As far as I can tell, you did that ages ago. There’s only a bit left here around the edge. I think that’s pretty normal for sporty people. It’s a good thing. It’s supposed to mean sex doesn’t hurt so much the first time you do it.”

I could feel her finger touching around near the entrance to my vagina as she spoke. Vagina! I rolled the word around in my head. We’d learnt the names of all the parts in health classes at school but I never expected to be lying on my back in my sister’s bedroom with her finger touching near my vagina!

“I’m pretty sure it’s not your period,” said Tara.

“How can you tell?”

“Because the blood came out of a couple of scratches you’ve got down here. You idiot! You’re not supposed to dig your fingernails in when you get an itch!”

“I didn’t mean to. I was asleep! I didn’t know what I was doing. Can you make it better?”

“I can’t exactly put a band-aid down here. Don’t worry, it’s nothing serious.”

I suddenly started giggling.

Tara glared at me. “What?”

“I was thinking about what Dan was talking about. What do you think he would have said if he walked in just then?”

Tara grinned. “Yeah! Probably he’d give us some speech about safe-sex or something. But what if it was Dad that walked in?”

“He would blush and walk out again,” I said.

“Or it could have been Mum?” said Tara.

“She’d want us to hold the pose so she could paint us,” I said.

“Probably!” said Tara. “We’d end up with a huge painting of me inspecting your vagina on the living room wall.”

“I can just imagine the principal, Miss Webster, coming to visit and having to sit looking at that painting,” I said.

“Yeah!” said Tara. “She’d be all: I’m here to talk about your daughter!”

“ ... and Dad would say: Which one? The one lying on her back with her legs spread wide open...” I said.

“ ... or the one on her knees touching her sister’s pussy?” finished Tara.

We laughed for a bit and made up some ever more silly situations that would be caused by Mum doing a painting of us like that and hanging it in the living room. Then Tara changed the subject.

“By the way, I notice Mum’s painting of you by your mirror isn’t quite accurate.”

“What? Why? How?” I thought it was far too accurate.

“Well, she painted you as bald as a baby’s bottom down here.” And with that she reached out and patted the little mound above my pussy.

“So?”

“So? So she missed all your pubic hair!” said Tara.

“Huh? What pubic hair?”

“All three of them! Right here! They’re really small and pale and ever so cute.”

I doubled myself over and examined myself carefully where Tara was pointing. Some tiny little hairs were poking out, almost invisible.

“Hey wow! I have pubic hair!” I said. Tara was being mean, there were more than three.

“Hmm! I don’t think three hairs counts. Maybe we should shave them off so they don’t spoil Mum’s painting!”

“Don’t you dare!” I said, covering that whole area with my hands. “Why would you want to anyway?”

She shrugged. “I shave mine. I do it so they don’t show when I wear my swimsuit.”

“Well I don’t intend to go swimming until next summer, so they can stay right there.”

I jumped off the bed and pulled on the clean panties Tara had taken out for me to wear. That was to protect my precious pubic hairs from Tara’s terrible threats.

We sat cross-legged on the bed in our t-shirts and talked for a bit, but then we got cold so we crawled into bed and turned the light off, but we kept talking. We talked about all sorts of things; all about Mum and her illness, about boys and girls and bras and periods and Mum and school and family and friends and sports and music and films and TV and Mum’s paintings. We made jokes and giggled and then we got serious about something for a while, and then one of us would say something silly and we’d go back to making jokes. Eventually the pauses between the comments started to get longer. Finally one of the pauses stretched and stretched as I waited for Tara to answer some question, but her answer never came. I rolled over and peered at her. She was asleep. I lay there for a moment, listening to her gentle breathing, and then I tucked the blankets up around her shoulders, wriggled a bit to get comfortable and closed my eyes. Within seconds I was sleeping too.

Dad had to drag both of us out of bed in the morning. We were both pretty grumpy. I guess we should’ve gotten more sleep. Tara had a double excuse for being grumpy, she had her period. I tried to check my scratches, but I couldn’t see properly. Tara looked quickly and said they were fine. Dad left for work. Tara took some breakfast in for Mum and came back saying she was fast asleep, curled up on my bed in a little ball like a cat. Dan had a later start at college so he would drop Angie at the day care center. Tara and I caught the bus to school. On the way, I remembered the science test and tried to do some study on the bus with my books spread over my knees.

I was tired and grumpy all morning. I got into the science test and could only answer about half the test. I finished about twenty minutes before the end of the lesson so I sat there and doodled on a blank bit of my test paper. My doodle turned into a face so I scribbled away, adding to it until it was time to hand the test in.

The class before lunch was history. We were watching some really boring video about digging up pottery used by the early settlers in New England. I tuned out and tried to figure out how I was feeling. It was like I was two people; the Bec at home was completely different from the Bec at school. The stuff with Mum was bizarre and I was dealing with all that and giving Dan showers, and taking Angie to the potty and being all post-epiphany me at home, but then I’d come to school and I was the same old shy and quiet me who went to all her classes and did pretty well at all her subjects and hardly ever spoke to anyone. That science test was probably my first ever test that I’d failed. Also I kept expecting people to start pointing at me and shouting “Hey look at her, she’s got one boob! Hey look at her; she’s got pubic hairs! What a weirdo!” None of that was happening. Everyone ignored me and got on with school like they always did. I wondered if I stripped off all my clothes and stood in the middle of the hallway like post-epiphany me, with my chin up and my back straight, would they notice me, or would they walk around me and go on to their next class? To them, I was that shy kid in the corner with the funny accent; someone to make fun of every so often and to ignore for the rest of the time.

At home, I wasn’t nearly so shy any more. I’d stripped Dan and taken my own clothes off and had a shower with Dan and Tara. I’d sat naked in my room for ages in front of Mum and Tara, but I don’t think that counted ‘cause I was kind of out of it at the time. I’d lain on Tara’s bed with my legs spread wide and let her look at my vagina. I looked around the room and wondered how many of the others had experienced anything like that. I decided it didn’t matter. On the outside, I might look like the same Bec, but on the inside, I had taken the first steps to becoming a woman. The fledgling woman rode inside me, looking out through my eyes, listening with my ears, waiting for the time when she could burst out and fly, like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon.