In January 2023, an excerpt from my memoir will be published in the anthology, Shaking the Tree, volume 4.
‘Flings’ is a coming-of-age essay that explores puberty and pansexuality against the backdrop of my parents’ divorce.
The April after we moved from London to southern Spain, I sat with my new friends around a long table covered with a pink tablecloth on the patio of a sprawling cortijo, a traditional Andalusian farmhouse built around a courtyard. My friends sang happy birthday in English, then in Spanish, beneath a warm spring sky, our faces clustered around the amber glow of ten pink birthday candles. Next to me was my new best friend, Chrissy, an American girl. I knew a bit about the States, having lived in Los Angeles a couple of years earlier. I felt comfortable with Americans. When I’d returned to my school in London, I’d only been gone a year, but so much had changed. One friend’s mother had dropped dead of a brain aneurism. Another friend had moved away. And I experienced culture shock, returning to my birth place. “Foreign Lauren!” my classmates taunted. “You sound American!” And somewhere between moving again—this time, from the damp masonry and green leaves of West London to the dust of the ochre fields of Andalusia—I became aware of my parents’ troubled marriage.
It probably started in London, a few months after we’d returned from Los Angeles. A slow afternoon with breakfast plates piled by the sink, still sticky with toast crumbs and balancing marmalade-smeared butter knives. I was playing in my room but stopped when I heard shouting. I looked down from my bedroom window at the glass roof of the kitchen conservatory three stories below. I could see my mum on the phone, waving her hands. Her shouting continued, creeping up the ancient wisteria that connected the brick wall of the kitchen to my windowsill, disrupting my play. I tiptoed across my room to the top of the stairs outside my door, and began a slow descent on my bottom, one step at a time, listening to one side of a massive row. My mother was hurling verbal abuse down the phone at my dad in California.
I appeared in the doorway of our conservatory kitchen in time to see her fling a pot of Rose’s Lime Marmalade across the room. I watched as the glass jar flew towards the glass walls, its trajectory truncated by the smash of a blue willow print china lamp. The fat grenade shape of the jar remained intact, preserving the preserves inside. It rolled under the table, a conduit for my mother’s anger whose face softened slightly when she saw me peeping in the doorway. It would be another year before I realized I was witnessing the cracks in my parents’ marriage.
§
It was bedtime at the cortijo. My new bedroom was at the far end of the courtyard from the main house. My legs were tucked under a white woven bedspread and I leaned my head against the textured bumps of a concrete wall painted pale pink. My dad came in to say goodnight. He perched on the edge of my bed but didn’t turn out the light. I felt mixed up inside, like I should know what was coming, except I didn’t. I smelled the sour and dusty green of booze and joints and knew he wasn’t there to read me a story.
“Your mother doesn’t love me anymore, Lolly… And I don’t know what to do.”
He looked like an altar boy, beseeching the heavens for intervention. He closed his eyes and his lashes wicked away tears. When he opened his eyes, he stared at me expectantly, like I should have answers. I was wide-eyed with uncertainty. I wanted to say, “I don’t know what you should do. I’m only ten!” but I felt guilty for even thinking that. I felt sorry for my dad. He looked so sad. But I was overcome by a new feeling that I didn’t have a word for yet: helplessness. To make all the feelings go away, I suggested he buy my mum a ring. She hadn’t worn her wedding band in a long time. Isn’t that what grown-ups did, buy each other jewelry? “That’s a good idea, Lolly. Go to sleep.” He kissed the top of my head goodnight.
Not long after, my mother was sporting a teardrop-shaped ruby surrounded by diamonds on her hand. I was baffled that my dad had taken my advice. But that’s another thing grown-ups did: talk to you like an adult, but treat you like a little kid.
Adults were confusing.
So was puberty.
I was still playing with dolls, but I had a new secret game. I fantasized about being a mother. I’d dump a mixture of talcum powder and yellow baby shampoo to simulate poop into my baby dolls’ tiny diapers. When I overheard my dad sigh about the innocence of childhood, I felt guilty. Like I was lying about what I was really doing—not playing, but growing up. I knew I was still a kid, but my body was changing and I was newly aware of what life beyond childhood looked like—filled with bosoms and periods and sex.
While Chrissy was already wearing proper bras with adjustable straps and a clasp at the back, I wasn’t even in training bras yet—but I had underarm hair, so there! An unspoken source of tension between us was who would be the first to get their period. Lately, we had started playing a different game with our Cabbage Patch Kid dolls, Arechelia and Sophie. Our dolls had recently started bragging to each other about how their bodies were changing. Chrissy preened over Arechelia getting pubic hair, and I triumphantly declared Sophie had got her period. After the game was over, Chrissy and I took a bath together. We talked about boys we liked and French kissing. Which boy’s tongue would we most like to have in our mouth? We laughed, Ewww! But we wondered what was it like, so we kissed each other, clinking teeth, slippery tongues, and all. I liked it more than Chrissy did. We lay in the bath, scissors-style, our vulvas touching. Is this sex? We’re not making a baby, so does it count? Chrissy giggled that we were lesbians. Am I? I didn’t think so. I liked boys, I just liked girls too. I said, “No, we’re just practicing.” And so that’s what we called our first experiences: Practicing.
On the day I announced I wasn’t going to play with dolls anymore, my dad sighed again. His eyes turned skyward for a moment before they rested on me. “Don’t be in a hurry to grow up, love. Once your childhood is over, it’s over.” It was the first time I ever felt irritated by him. But the intensity of his beady eyes, glaring with the sadness of someone who feared he was saying goodbye to his little girl as well as his wife, silenced me. His work would soon take him back to L.A. What was supposed to be a couple of months apart would end up being a year: by then, there was a new man in my mother’s life. A Belgian with a fondness for Côte d’Or chocolate and Harry Belafonte.
“We’re going to go swimming today,” my mum beamed “…with Robert.” She pronounced his name the French way, Rob-air, breathlessly. She seemed starstruck, her casual pause conferred significance to his being there. We’d been seeing rather a lot of him; up until that pause I’d thought Robert was just a new friend gladly showing my mum and her kids around a new country. He had a membership to Coral Beach, an apartment club boasting larger-than-Olympic-sized saltwater pool on the edge of the Mediterranean. I loved going to Coral Beach. We ate hummus and burgers in the outside restaurant on the beach, and chose ice creams from a picture menu—anything from a fancy half-coconut filled with coconut ice cream, to my favorite, a vampire popsicle with black cola flavored ice on the outside and a red jelly interior hiding a bubblegum. All day I’d scamper between the sea and the pool. I’d charge into the cold sea, then run, dripping wet, across the hot sand that squeaked underfoot, along cooler pathways lined with dark green foliage of low palms and bright flowers that whipped my ankles as I sped past, and then I’d fling myself into a warm salt water pool. After the stinging currents of the salty sea, the silken pool water tasted sweet. After a volatile marriage, it was hard to know if Robert was friend or fling or…
“Are you in love with him?” I surprised myself with such a bold question. I looked up and met my mother’s startled eyes. I didn’t look away. The answer stared back at me.
“…Yes, I am…” It would have been easy for her to lie. I respected her for not treating me like a little kid, but felt myself slump. Great. My parents are getting a divorce. I wondered if my dad, all the way in L.A., knew about Robert too.
§
One night I had a nightmare. The skies in my dream were stormy. I heard a man’s voice hiss deep in my ear, “A helpless joint upon the floor…” I looked down to see a detached elbow lying on the floor by my bed, briefly illuminated by a flash of purple lightning. I woke up to a pitch black room, terrified. It was raining, so I could hear the frogs in the courtyard. I was a little kid, desperate for her mama. I didn’t know what was worse, lying there shaking under the covers or heading across the new moon courtyard to find her at the other end of the house.
I braved the courtyard, hurrying along its edges. The air was damp with croaking. I tried not to step on any frogs but twice felt the cold squelch of amphibious flesh squeezed between my toes. I didn’t stop. I ran into the house, weeping as I felt my way through the dark. I could see the crack of light from my mother’s closed bedroom door. It was my north star, beaming me in. I opened the door and saw the worst thing possible: a perfectly made empty bed. My mother hadn’t been there all night. She’d left me all alone. On her bedside table lay her ruby ring. I knew where she had gone, who she was with, and what they were doing together.
When I’d dried my eyes, I picked my way through the frogs back to bed. I was only ten, but I knew things. Grown-up things. And I wouldn’t be helpless anymore.
