Her

I've always had a lump, as long as I can remember. Right on the back of my shoulder.

One of my earliest memories is me asking my mother what it was.

"Stop poking at it, Lea," she said.

I bunched my fists at my sides, and looked up at her, waiting for an answer.

"It's just a little lump, that's all," she waved my question away as if it was unimportant. "Just a silly little lump. We took you to the doctor when you were a baby and he said it was nothing to worry about."

I don't have many memories of being a young child. Some days, I could almost believe I sprang into existence as an adult.

I'm not sure we had a normal mother-daughter relationship. I suspect not. This was perhaps complicated by not having a strong foundation of childhood memories to draw on, or maybe the fact that for a good while, it was just us. No one else. We were bonded as much by loneliness as love. She never actually said, "You and me against the world," but that was the vibe.

+

Fuzzy childhood years passed. During puberty, the lump grew. This, plus some other symptoms worried my mother enough to go back to the doctor. The same one from when I was a baby. A man so old I wondered if he was retiring that very day. He prodded at my lump, peering through his spectacles with milky eyes.

"Just hormones," he announced. "This is a period of intense growth." He huffed through bristly nostrils as if fed up with foolish, neurotic mothers. Especially single mothers with only children, who funnel every scrap of love and paranoia into one little person. "If it gives pain, or gets bigger than this," he made a circle with his finger and thumb, "Then come back."

"But the exhaustion," Mum said, worry making her voice snappish. "The sleep-walking? The headaches?"

When he scowled, he looked like an angry grey beagle.

"I told you. Hormones. But maybe... Ach!" He made a disgusted sound, pulled a pad towards him, scribbled a prescription for iron supplements, and used it to flap us both out of the room.

+

What girl isn't self-conscious? I covered the lump the way some cover their chunky thighs or cellulite. We all have bits we're less than happy with. Don't we?

I kept my hair long. On the hottest days, when I absolutely had to gather my thick tresses up off my neck, I pretended I didn't care about the little protrusion being exposed. If I let on it bothered me, Mother would scowl and snap, "Don't be vain!"

She was always saying that. Don't be vain! I had to smuggle hair removal products into the house. I stashed lipstick at my friend's house. As so often happens with mothers, her admonishments wore away at me. Her voice became my own, the one in the back of my mind sniping at me, monitoring me. Reining me in even when she wasn't around.

+

Aside from intermittent spells of fatigue and sleepwalking (which doctors waved away respectively as "hormones" and "stress",) I stayed in good health. Then, shortly after I turned twenty-two, I went home for the summer. Barely having stashed my things in my old room at Mum's tiny terraced house, I got dressed up, and went out to meet some friends.

"If you want to drink, darling, I have a bottle of pinot noir in the kitchen," she said. As callous as many young adults are, I rejected this offer, and skittered out of the house on a pair of ridiculous, glittery heels. Not having eyes in the back of my head, I don't know if her face fell.

I had a great time, actually. I ran into many people I hadn't seen in ages. Sank too many shots. Blacked out. Don't even remember getting home. Woke up with a wicked hangover.

The next night, my mother waggled that bottle at me hopefully, but I couldn't face more booze. Can you drink two nights in a row? I've never been able to.

+

Several days later, ready to start abusing my liver again, I agreed to have a glass with her. Wasn't that part of the reason I came back? To see her? She treated me to a huge smile, and fetched the nice glasses from the back of the cupboard.

"Darling," she said, as the blood-red liquid sloshed (I started feeling a little queasy, and wondered if it was still too soon after all) "I thought you should know, your father died recently."

I don't know what I'd expected, but it wasn't that. I sat frozen, unsure what to think or how to react.

"You're not sad are you, darling? He was only ever a sperm donor, you know. I'm the one that raised you."

"No, Mum, I'm not sad." At least, I don't think I am. "I'm just... shocked."

"Well, of course you are. Never nice news is it? And the man was hardly any older than me; that makes it more of a shock, don't you think? As I say, I thought you should know. If it's any comfort, they say it was quick. His heart, you know."

Was that a comfort? I didn't know. I felt something at his passing. Regret, maybe? I'd never tried to contact him, never even met him. Felt hardly more than passing curiosity about his existence since I was a child. He'd never tried to contact me, either. I don't think he knew about my existence until very recently.

I swallowed some wine.

There were layers and layers of feelings there. It was tempting to push them all away. Lock them in a little corner of myself.

"When?" I managed to croak.

"Earlier this week. I just found out. Today, actually. Honestly, I wouldn't keep something like that from you, darling, you know I wouldn't."

Do I?

+

Thank you for reading!

This story became far too bloody long, so I've split it into manageable nuggets.

Part Two is here: