kaolin, Or How Does a Girl Like You Get to Be a Girl Like You? | Sophie Mayer | Lark Books & Writing Studio 2015
photo by Theodoros Chiotis
Erasers (1989)
Athena kept her erasers very clean.
White (two) and clear (one) and their corners were intact, sides
straight as her ribboned-off pigtails
dowsing down her back, straight as her isosceles
triangles, protracted, mechanical-pencilled. Medusa’s erasers
smelled. They were supposed to. Bootlike, she thought,
of damp wellies, but Cetys sniffed and said, “Mmmmm,
lovely,” when they were choosing back-to-school stuff
in Woolies. Pink flowers with smiling yellow centres, too crumbly
to erase HB. No-one else (this being secondary school) had
flowers. No-one else had a mother who was a mermaid. Athena’s mother
was an artist. ‘An abstract expressionist,’ she said,
when they were introducing themselves to the class. Heart, pink,
with its glowing centre. Medusa adored her instantly, or the words
of her. They were large, flat pebbles: perfect skimmers warm
from a day in the sun. She scrunched her toes against those stones,
so hard she forgot to dread her turn. ‘A dancer.’ And sat down,
abruptly. Eyes to the desk. But in a shot-sideways glance she catches
it: Athena’s expression. Curiosity (one part) and determination (two
parts). ‘Bagsy sit with you in maths, OK?’ They were leaving
their classroom for the first time, Amazons armed with compasses
and set squares, riding out through the vaulted sea-green corridors
tidal with girls. ‘Who does your mother dance with?’ ‘Oh.’ Oh. ‘Oh, um,
lots of people.’ ‘Which companies? My parents drag me to ballet
all the time, but I prefer contemporary.’ ‘Oh.’ ‘Maybe I’ve even
seen her?’ ‘No.’ ‘No?’ ‘She’s… retired.’ A pause
as they glide (I’m gliding. This is grace. This girl is --)
into an onrush of stunned September sunshine. Hot. Athena smiles
under firehair, freckles. ‘Dancers have to, really young, it’s hard
on their bodies. It’s sad. Does she teach? I’m a good dancer, I’ve done
Laban already, but I want to do something where
I’m in charge, you know?’ Medusa knows this: blood serpenting
into her cheeks. Unseen in the gloom of the New Building, Athena silenced
by angles, fractions, arcs. Her pencil moves
smoothly in its groove against her ruler, distributing microscopic
graphite crumbs. Shadow and blur. Across the pitted melamine pin-neat
diagrams: Athena’s triangles are born from air. Medusa’s hand
falters at her line. ‘Here.’ Athena hands her an eraser
(white). ‘Don’t you have one?’ Medusa shakes her head. ‘Keep it,
then. I have, like, zillions. We buy them in France every summer. Mud loves
the papeterie in — ’ The bell rings for break and France is lost. Mud
loves?
La Mer (1992)
First French GCSE homework: an essay on la mer. The stuff
of life, there in the air, off the pier. Everywhere. She hymns it
shantily. Pirates (corsairs) and mermaids (sirènes): Larousse a blue
ocean she dives in. Second lesson: mère and mer. And merde.
Everyone laughs at her. Freudian slip. That’s water for you, and
accents. C’est pas grave. She bunks, gets chips, sits
with the wind stinging her eye. End of the pier. Where you
belong. Airs and bloody frog graces. Excusez-
moi. Wrong ‘un. But sea. Oh sea. Say can you. Sea is always
right. Is shifting. Right because it’s shifting. Grey. Green glass, clair
voyance. Recursive movement against something that parts
but insists, that moves (in) its moods. People are so like that,
she thinks, eye on the tides. Tidal eye, moted with their mocking.
Fuck ‘em. Pack up your troubles. She lights a fag. New habit. Athena’s,
natch. For A, the sea is golden: South of France, sunsets, Mud
at the tiller, daughter of dazzle and privilege. Aphro-fuckin-dite
in an Agnès b. crew neck. She’s seen the photos. The clean
of it. Each wavelet polished every morning by individual pebbles
paid starvation wages. Mer Med. Fantasy creature. Half-hallucinating
sailor’s wet dream, half-dolphin, half-misogyny. She knows that
already: Cetys in her tired sequins every night, wankfish,
naughtical. Any hole in a storm, they say. Seadogs. She’d
run with them. Imagines she’s a pea jacket and peaked
cap. On deck. But she never put out
to sea: never got the hang of diesel, sweat, waders,
cold pre-mornings breaking open. Shards, claws, dead glassy
eyes. Over a barrel. Salt in your eye. Flensing knives and fish
guts. Rum, sodomy and the lash. The sea was not her idea
of fun.
Athena kept her erasers very clean.
White (two) and clear (one) and their corners were intact, sides
straight as her ribboned-off pigtails
dowsing down her back, straight as her isosceles
triangles, protracted, mechanical-pencilled. Medusa’s erasers
smelled. They were supposed to. Bootlike, she thought,
of damp wellies, but Cetys sniffed and said, “Mmmmm,
lovely,” when they were choosing back-to-school stuff
in Woolies. Pink flowers with smiling yellow centres, too crumbly
to erase HB. No-one else (this being secondary school) had
flowers. No-one else had a mother who was a mermaid. Athena’s mother
was an artist. ‘An abstract expressionist,’ she said,
when they were introducing themselves to the class. Heart, pink,
with its glowing centre. Medusa adored her instantly, or the words
of her. They were large, flat pebbles: perfect skimmers warm
from a day in the sun. She scrunched her toes against those stones,
so hard she forgot to dread her turn. ‘A dancer.’ And sat down,
abruptly. Eyes to the desk. But in a shot-sideways glance she catches
it: Athena’s expression. Curiosity (one part) and determination (two
parts). ‘Bagsy sit with you in maths, OK?’ They were leaving
their classroom for the first time, Amazons armed with compasses
and set squares, riding out through the vaulted sea-green corridors
tidal with girls. ‘Who does your mother dance with?’ ‘Oh.’ Oh. ‘Oh, um,
lots of people.’ ‘Which companies? My parents drag me to ballet
all the time, but I prefer contemporary.’ ‘Oh.’ ‘Maybe I’ve even
seen her?’ ‘No.’ ‘No?’ ‘She’s… retired.’ A pause
as they glide (I’m gliding. This is grace. This girl is --)
into an onrush of stunned September sunshine. Hot. Athena smiles
under firehair, freckles. ‘Dancers have to, really young, it’s hard
on their bodies. It’s sad. Does she teach? I’m a good dancer, I’ve done
Laban already, but I want to do something where
I’m in charge, you know?’ Medusa knows this: blood serpenting
into her cheeks. Unseen in the gloom of the New Building, Athena silenced
by angles, fractions, arcs. Her pencil moves
smoothly in its groove against her ruler, distributing microscopic
graphite crumbs. Shadow and blur. Across the pitted melamine pin-neat
diagrams: Athena’s triangles are born from air. Medusa’s hand
falters at her line. ‘Here.’ Athena hands her an eraser
(white). ‘Don’t you have one?’ Medusa shakes her head. ‘Keep it,
then. I have, like, zillions. We buy them in France every summer. Mud loves
the papeterie in — ’ The bell rings for break and France is lost. Mud
loves?
La Mer (1992)
First French GCSE homework: an essay on la mer. The stuff
of life, there in the air, off the pier. Everywhere. She hymns it
shantily. Pirates (corsairs) and mermaids (sirènes): Larousse a blue
ocean she dives in. Second lesson: mère and mer. And merde.
Everyone laughs at her. Freudian slip. That’s water for you, and
accents. C’est pas grave. She bunks, gets chips, sits
with the wind stinging her eye. End of the pier. Where you
belong. Airs and bloody frog graces. Excusez-
moi. Wrong ‘un. But sea. Oh sea. Say can you. Sea is always
right. Is shifting. Right because it’s shifting. Grey. Green glass, clair
voyance. Recursive movement against something that parts
but insists, that moves (in) its moods. People are so like that,
she thinks, eye on the tides. Tidal eye, moted with their mocking.
Fuck ‘em. Pack up your troubles. She lights a fag. New habit. Athena’s,
natch. For A, the sea is golden: South of France, sunsets, Mud
at the tiller, daughter of dazzle and privilege. Aphro-fuckin-dite
in an Agnès b. crew neck. She’s seen the photos. The clean
of it. Each wavelet polished every morning by individual pebbles
paid starvation wages. Mer Med. Fantasy creature. Half-hallucinating
sailor’s wet dream, half-dolphin, half-misogyny. She knows that
already: Cetys in her tired sequins every night, wankfish,
naughtical. Any hole in a storm, they say. Seadogs. She’d
run with them. Imagines she’s a pea jacket and peaked
cap. On deck. But she never put out
to sea: never got the hang of diesel, sweat, waders,
cold pre-mornings breaking open. Shards, claws, dead glassy
eyes. Over a barrel. Salt in your eye. Flensing knives and fish
guts. Rum, sodomy and the lash. The sea was not her idea
of fun.
Sophie Mayer is a poet, scholar, and journalist. Her previous books of poetry include The Private Parts of Girls (Salt, 2011); Her Various Scalpels (Shearsman, 2009); and Marsh Fear/Fen Tiger (Salt, 2002). With Sarah Crewe, she has co-edited the poetry projects Catechism: Poems for Pussy Riot (English PEN, 2012); Binders Full of Women (2012); and Glitter is a Gender (Contraband, 2014); and co-authored a new feminist Bible, songs of the sistership (Knives, Forks and Spoons, 2013). She is also the author of The Cinema of Sally Potter: A Politics of Love (Wallflower, 2009) and the co-editor of There She Goes: Feminist Filmmaking and Beyond (Wayne State University Press, 2009) and The Personal is Political: Feminism and Documentary (INAAC, 2001).