Virgin Planning Clinic

Huh-h-huh-h-huh-h. I pant into the crack in the ceiling. Out of sync with the sounds of Surry Hills: peddling of bikes, broken hums of conversation and the b-bp-b-bp-b of pedestrian crossings. Different. I thought sex would feel different. Not just a hollow pressure in-between my legs and a tightness kept wound from a place just beneath my pubic bone. Huh.

“Did I bleed?” I puff shakily, mouth full of my own sweaty plait and Sam’s (my Tinder date turned maybe boyfriend) grimy doona cover.

Beside me, in the corner of my eye, Sam is a dark curve of curly head hair, chest hair, arm hair and a curly snail trail to match. Different. I thought sex would smell different. Not aerated red wine and something like the stink of a rain drenched car mat. Eckh.

Laughing under his breath, Sam draws me in to his warm and softened pecs. On the side of my face, he feels like my favourite comfort food – a stringy cheese toastie. Cringing at myself, I dig my chin into Sam’s fleshy decolletage, until his buh-bu-buh-bu-buh calms me down. Same. At least sex sounds like I always thought it would. A lover’s heartbeat. Hmmm.

“Not everyone bleeds their first time. It’s a myth,” Sam explains, his ‘is this a dagger I see before me?’ voice teetering.

Stupid. Stupid. What’s the bet he’ll tell his acting troupe all about this? Stupid. “Oh,” is all I manage to say.

Giggling to himself, Sam fidgets to pull the condom off — slrrrpuk.

*

Within the pastel blue-pink-yellow walls of a private room at Penrith’s Family Planning Clinic, I think of a blood bespeckled bedsheet. It was something my aunt Meadow, who I am named after, once asked of me when I was twelve. It was a few days after I had gotten my first period, which broke out of me during a summer downpour, hours after my seventh and youngest sibling was born.

“Now you have to protect something that is most rare and beautiful of all,” Aunt Meadow said in a voice as wispy as Fa Mulan. She was tinkering away inside the hood of my beat-up Holden Barina, which was constantly breaking down in the uni carpark. Meadow Senior’s cloud-like form produced sweat drops that hit the metals of the car engine with a plip-plip. I grumbled my confusion in tune to Mount Druitt: buzzing cicadas, humming powerlines and swoops of mynahs.
Ignoring my whinging, Aunty Meadow continued: “Remember what I’ve always taught you. Men are worms because have two heads but only one brain. Would you give a diamond to such a slime? Sure friggen hope not! The more you give yourself to dirt, the dirtier you are. My little one. Stay clean, stay Tongan! Only break yourself for God on your wedding bed. Surest way to have kids. Just keep the stained quilt for me so I can show off to family.” Tightening a bolt, she pokes a pudgy motor oil-stained finger into my ribcage, making me jolt with laughter. “Please, give honour to your poor old aunty.”

Casting my gaze down towards the grey clinic carpet, I sigh, knowing I gave away the one thing my mehekitanga ever asked of me. Childless. I’ve chosen. Please understand, Aunty. I’ve lived in Dad and Mumma’s marriage and seven kids. Kill me. That’s why Mummy Le’o was blessed to die of cancer at twenty-seven after popping out three babies. She knew what was gonna happen if she stuck around. Just a hater about her life… like Dad.

A nurse returns with a silver trolley laden with sterile supplies, making the pastel puke room stink with fresh rubbing alcohol. Nurse is a freckly stick in scrubs of cotton candy pink.
“Good news,” Nurse announces in a sugary voice, measuring out a liquid in a needle she’s holding. “Since you’re on Youth Allowance, your Implanon and its insertion are free. Yay! Just mind the scarring dearie. Good-er news. Since you’re on your period today, you’ll be blocked from getting pregnant quick smart. No kids until you decide dearie, that’s very important. But like we spoke earlier, keep using condoms to block those pesky little bugs.”

Holding my breath, the poke of anaesthesia tastes like crushed Panadol in my mouth.

*

Covering the bandages on my upper-left arm with a ratty cardigan, I step out into the tiled hallway. Suddenly, I am standing in the kitchen-cum-living room, which smells of brewed tea and dish soap. Dad, Mumma and my sister, Nettie, are sitting around the kitchen island bench. My bladder wants to burst as soon as I realise Nettie has been crying.
“Oh Jehovah,” Mumma laments over a steaming cup of herbal tea. The purple bags under her bark eyes are sap-black. Her triple-D chest is wrapped up tightly in a high collared paisley dress. I find it sad, how much of a stuffy sausage she’s become as a witness to ‘God’s real name’ or whatever.

“Youse the oldest Meadow, so we called youse here first,” Dad grumbles, rubbing the back of his hand against his rugby ball nose. When I was younger, my father was a mountain. These days, he is so ragged from years of nightshifts that he reminds me of an anthill – small, but still kinda scary, but kinda just annoying to walk around.

Has Dad been crying too? I’m shaking all over. Does Mumma have cancer like dead ol’ Mummy Le’o did? Or worse, does Dad have cancer? Far, why do I think that’s worse? Oh my god. Does Nettie have cancer? Bet. One of us was bound to get it. The thought of all this death makes my rectum quiver. I want to shit my heart out.

Then, my little sister, my only one from the same Mum and Mister, looks up at me with reflective brown eyes so shallow and muddy it’s as if her soul is nothing but a puddle. Nettie’s looked this way all her life, which is why me, my two brothers and three other sisters sometimes whisper to each other that she is a bit dur in the head.

“Good news, Sissy,” Nettie breathes. Her tears make her milk-skin flow, especially when she breaks into a smile and says, “I’m pregnant.”

Burning. My left arm is burning when I scream back, “But you’re eighteen! How could you do this to yourself?”

Mumma and Nettie burst right back, as if stuffing my mouth with Twinings and Dettol suds to get me to shut up, shut up, shut up.

“Told yas Sissy would be jealous. She’s only the oldest when she wants to be,” Nettie moans.
“Babies are a blessing!” Mumma declares like a steam kettle.
Dad remains silent. I stare back at his bald head with my own melting frown and hot tears. I can’t bring myself to say what I want: Memba that one time? When you told me if you could do your life over, you’d have me later? Not at nineteen. Be a dad so much later in your life. It was fair enough. How? How could you let the same thing happen?

When Dad finally speaks, I am already running back to my room. “Trust. Youse have to see this as good news.”

Idiots. Idiots. Am I the idiot but? Idiot. When I was younger, walking the long hallway at the centre of my family’s one storey brick house felt like Alice falling, falling, falling down the rabbit hole. Now, when I slam my bedroom door, I know there isn’t a hallway in the whole wide Wonderland world that could get me far enough away from my fricked up family.