Peeling the Onion Read Online Free PDF Page A

me in? If I give in to the blackness, will the pain let me go?
    I can't do much about the rest of me, but this hair is unbearable. I've got to wash it.
    Maria says she'll do it. She lies me flat in my foam collar, my head at the foot of the bed. I hope she knows what she's doing: it'd be stupid to die for the sake of clean hair. But it's so dirty!
    Maria is tiny and wiry with a faint moustache; she's a nurse's aid, not a sister. She washes my hair carefully, almost lovingly; dries it gently and styles with mousse and pride. I feel clean, new and fresh; for at least an hour I feel like a human being. Are there any new humiliations left? My period's early—and torrential. Blood floods onto the sheets, the floor, the shower; onto my new plaster cast. Ingenious Maria draws pictures with fat black texta, a house with a long path and flowers, to disguise the blood.
    My mother told me once about her friend whose child had died. Standing there by his empty bed, she began to bleed, out of control, as if her body had opened to pour out grief. Can a uterus understand the death of a child, a child it nourished patiently, from seed to fish to babe? How could it not?
    My mind flits from one disaster story to another, searching for meaning.
    It's nearly time for my friends to come after school. I get what I need from my drawer and ask Busy Butt to take me to the toilet. She walks me across the hall and leaves me in privacy.
    And doesn't return. I ring the bell, ring it again . . . go on waiting. The price of privacy.
    When the door does finally open, it's still not a nurse. It's Caroline—Ruby's decided that I'm stranded and has sent her to collect me. As I wash my hands she says, 'Oh, Anna!'; wets a paper towel and dabs at my legs, at the unnoticed, unreachable trickle of blood.
    If I say anything I'll cry. I'm too embarrassed to be grateful.
    'That's what friends are for,' she says.
    I don't know if I believe in you, God, but I'm so angry now that I'd rather think there was something there to hate. So angry: if you were here I'd spit in your face and tell you how I felt. You're a fraud — you trick people into worshipping you, you and your mercy are nothing but lies. I don't know what you think I did to deserve this, but I will never forgive you and never, never, stop hating you.
    'A woman like that! Haunches on her like a working bullock!'
    It's the middle of the night; the 'bollocks!' voice again. It hasn't woken anyone else. Maybe I dreamt it.
    The bed in the corner creaks as the old woman tosses and mutters.
    The nurses hate my frame, the nail-breaking clips, the responsibility of the wobbling head before it's braced; the nuisance of finding two nurses to do it at once. A new nurse is on this morning; she's done it before, nothing to it; she doesn't need a helper.
    She whacks me across the neck with a red-hot branding iron.
    I scream.
    'Behave yourself!' she snaps. 'It barely touched you!'
    She does up the final clip with a jerk to let me know who's boss.
    The world turns black; I can't see. As it comes back I explode. Scream, shout, swear. Rage like this and I could spar with van Damme.
    Tablet Sister comes in to see what the trouble is.
    'I've bloody broken my neck!' I shout. 'Don't tell me it doesn't hurt!'
    Ruby and Mrs Hogan begin to clap.
    Apart from those mysterious midnight outbursts, the old woman in the corner hasn't woken since I've been here. Her son comes at lunchtime to spoon soup and custard into her mouth; she won't eat much for the nurses. If that's a choice, it's the only sign of life she gives. The last few nights I've woken to hear the nurses, clucking quietly, working by torchlight to wash her and change her sheets.
    But tonight the sounds are different. There are no suppressed giggles or the occasional 'Oh, yuck!' that makes me try not to picture what they're cleaning. Curtains are pulled—mine, Ruby's and Mrs Hogan's—then whispered commands and the sound of wheels. When I wake again in the