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Feb. 18th, 2006 07:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
called_lionessThese are the thing you’ll never think, when you die a few weeks before turning nineteen.
You will never think, “I wonder if social security will be around when I need it.”
You will never think, “I wonder if I have a new wrinkle.”
You will never think, “I wonder if I need to see the doctor about that lump.”
You will never think, “I wonder if I’m pregnant.”
If Lucy were alive—if Lucy were alive, she thinks, as she sits on her bed and brushes knots out of her hair, wincing at a snag, she would need things at this time of the month, to keep from ruining clothing, or furniture. But she’s not, and she’s never really noted the absence before. You grow used to it. Not in the way that it ever becomes pleasant—it always hurts, or almost always, it’s always smelly and messy and rather a pain—but it becomes routine. You may find it inconvenient, but it’s part of life as much as anything else.
It’s part of life, but not part of death, which makes perfect sense really. (She wonders, a little, at how the body—or whatever it is she has—decides to imitate some things about life and not others. She knows if she cuts herself she’ll bleed, and her hair grows some, and she caught a cold a few months back. But other things are just for life, and she wonders who decides what is and isn’t and why.)
Lucy was—in a way—thirty-three (more or less—if she tried to add in the months they’d spent sailing, she imagines it must be a bit longer, but math was never something she cared for, and she’s not about to worry so much about it as to try and figure it out) when the train went off the tracks, but she was living as someone almost nineteen. The idea of having a child was something that she’d always assumed would happen, someday, and always assumed someday was not at all close to today.
Which, she supposes, as she sets her brush down and bends to pick her nightgown off the floor where she’d dropped it, was true, and always will be true.
If she thought someone could see her, Lucy would never pick up the pillow, hesitantly, and put it under her shirt. It’s plain curiosity, the same way it is for a little girl. What would I look like?
The pillow is rectangular, and fake, but she indulges for a moment anyway, studying herself in the mirror. It’s not about something realistic. It’s just about the idea, getting a hint.
If Lucy were alive, she wouldn’t be in Milliways, likely. And she imagines that sooner or later she would have married, and sooner or she would have known what she’d look like, for real, instead of a pillow, and there would be, eventually, a smooth stomach again and a child in her arms.
But—and she doesn’t have to even remind herself of this, she muses, as the pillow is pulled out and set at the top of her bed, neatly, because you don’t think about things like this all the time, but you don’t really forget, not for long, either—she didn’t live, of course. There had been wheels and tracks that had gone wrong, and burnings and crushings that she can’t remember, and if there was blood then, she never saw it.
And so, even though it’s that time of month that she once had to mark out carefully on the calendar her mother brought up from the grocers and gave her each year, there’s nothing to require padding and extra baths, right now.
And it’s simple as that.
You will never think, “I wonder if social security will be around when I need it.”
You will never think, “I wonder if I have a new wrinkle.”
You will never think, “I wonder if I need to see the doctor about that lump.”
You will never think, “I wonder if I’m pregnant.”
If Lucy were alive—if Lucy were alive, she thinks, as she sits on her bed and brushes knots out of her hair, wincing at a snag, she would need things at this time of the month, to keep from ruining clothing, or furniture. But she’s not, and she’s never really noted the absence before. You grow used to it. Not in the way that it ever becomes pleasant—it always hurts, or almost always, it’s always smelly and messy and rather a pain—but it becomes routine. You may find it inconvenient, but it’s part of life as much as anything else.
It’s part of life, but not part of death, which makes perfect sense really. (She wonders, a little, at how the body—or whatever it is she has—decides to imitate some things about life and not others. She knows if she cuts herself she’ll bleed, and her hair grows some, and she caught a cold a few months back. But other things are just for life, and she wonders who decides what is and isn’t and why.)
Lucy was—in a way—thirty-three (more or less—if she tried to add in the months they’d spent sailing, she imagines it must be a bit longer, but math was never something she cared for, and she’s not about to worry so much about it as to try and figure it out) when the train went off the tracks, but she was living as someone almost nineteen. The idea of having a child was something that she’d always assumed would happen, someday, and always assumed someday was not at all close to today.
Which, she supposes, as she sets her brush down and bends to pick her nightgown off the floor where she’d dropped it, was true, and always will be true.
If she thought someone could see her, Lucy would never pick up the pillow, hesitantly, and put it under her shirt. It’s plain curiosity, the same way it is for a little girl. What would I look like?
The pillow is rectangular, and fake, but she indulges for a moment anyway, studying herself in the mirror. It’s not about something realistic. It’s just about the idea, getting a hint.
If Lucy were alive, she wouldn’t be in Milliways, likely. And she imagines that sooner or later she would have married, and sooner or she would have known what she’d look like, for real, instead of a pillow, and there would be, eventually, a smooth stomach again and a child in her arms.
But—and she doesn’t have to even remind herself of this, she muses, as the pillow is pulled out and set at the top of her bed, neatly, because you don’t think about things like this all the time, but you don’t really forget, not for long, either—she didn’t live, of course. There had been wheels and tracks that had gone wrong, and burnings and crushings that she can’t remember, and if there was blood then, she never saw it.
And so, even though it’s that time of month that she once had to mark out carefully on the calendar her mother brought up from the grocers and gave her each year, there’s nothing to require padding and extra baths, right now.
And it’s simple as that.
