Jerry folded in the poker game, something he’d been intending to do anyway, and logged out of Partypoker. He scratched his head, not knowing where to start. Despite the fact that he had decided what the official version of his relationship with Theres was going to be, this was the first time he actually
‘Well…’ said Jerry. ‘This is something that happens. It’s going to happen every month. You’re going to bleed like this. From now on.’
‘Why?’
‘To be perfectly honest…I don’t have much of an idea. But it’s because you’re growing up. It happens to all girls as they grow up. They bleed for a few days each month.’
Theres carried on looking at her fingers, her eyes sliding over her stained clothes and striped legs. Then she frowned and asked, ‘What am I?’
‘What do you mean? You’re a girl-is that what you mean?’
‘More.’
‘You’re about thirteen years old, you’re…I don’t know what you are. You’ll have to work that out for yourself.’
Theres nodded and went back to her room. Jerry stayed where he was for a while, thinking he was completely useless. That was how things were with Theres. She accepted everything you said to her, as long as it wasn’t contradicted by something she’d been told in the past. When he went into her room she was sitting quite happily on the floor looking through a pile of CDs as she bled onto the rug underneath her.
‘Sis,’ said Jerry. ‘I have to go and buy a couple of things. You go and have a shower, and then…’ Jerry found a blank sheet of paper, wrote the word ‘menstruation’ on it and gave it to Theres.
‘That’s what it’s called. When you bleed like that. Look it up on the net while I’m out. When you’ve had a shower.’
Jerry pulled on his jacket and hurried out. The problem of Theres and her periods had never even crossed his mind. He had never thought of her as a young woman, or even a girl, really. She was too different to be anything other than simply herself. Neuter. But now it had happened.
He knew a bit more about the phenomenon than he had told Theres, but not a great deal. During his wild years he had managed to get laid a few times, but he’d never lived with anyone. Never followed a girl’s or a woman’s daily routine. Except Laila’s, of course, and she hadn’t been comfortable talking about that sort of thing.
Besides which, it was so difficult to explain things to Theres because her view of the world was so fucked up. To put it briefly, she thought people were out to get one another. Jerry agreed with her up to a point-man is a wolf to his fellow man and so on-but her version was more violent and concrete, and above all it was the big people who were after the little people so that they could kill them and exploit them.
It was true that the twins’ friendliness had caused some confusion in her conviction, and a couple of times she had ventured out onto the balcony to look at the people down below, but her basic attitude was one of deep suspicion. As far as Jerry was concerned that was a perfectly acceptable attitude, but she needed to loosen up a bit if she was going to be able to live among other people.
In the local shop Jerry read the packets of panty liners and tampons very carefully, but was none the wiser. On top of everything else, the damned things came in different
A man of his own age was sitting at the checkout, and as he passed the boxes over the reader, Jerry said, ‘My daughter. It’s her first period.’ The man nodded sympathetically and asked if Jerry was on his own. Yes, he was. And what about Mum? Well, she’d cleared off. To Sundsvall, of all places. Didn’t want anything to do with her daughter. Very sad, that kind of thing. Yes, very sad indeed.
Jerry was quite pleased with himself as he left the shop. That was all sorted, then. People did have a tendency to stand around gossiping in local shops. The man on the checkout seemed happy to chat, and if anybody asked, Jerry had given a reasonable account of himself and Theres. Job done.
When he got home, Theres was sitting at the computer with wet hair. ‘How’s it going?’ he asked.
‘It’s English,’ said Theres. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ said Jerry. ‘Shift.’
Theres got up, and of course she had bled all over her clothes on his desk chair. Jerry took out a box of tampons and a box of panty liners, and gave them to her. ‘Here. These things will stop you bleeding. Well no, they won’t stop you bleeding, but they’re like a kind of bandage. A plaster. Understand?’
Theres turned the box over and shook her head. Jerry opened the box of tampons and found a number of hard, compressed cotton cylinders and a plastic tube. He sat down in the armchair and read the instructions until he had worked out what to do.
Why the fuck did girls have periods? What was actually the point? The instructions didn’t contain any answers to that particular question, just the practical matters. His cheeks were on fire as he explained to Theres how to insert the tube then push out the cylinder with the string attached. When she pulled down her knickers to do as he’d told her, he turned away and said, ‘Go and do it in the bathroom.’
Theres obeyed, and Jerry flopped down in the armchair. He felt dirty. This wasn’t a new experience, but he didn’t want to feel dirty in this particular way. Theres had begun to develop breasts and she was a pretty girl- beautiful, in fact. She was completely in his power, and an entire scenario flickered through his brain for a few seconds until he gritted his teeth and forcibly ejected the unwanted images.
She was his sister, and he was no fucking incestuous paedophile, end of story! She had that problem girls get, and it was no more complicated than him having a nosebleed once a month, for example. A bit of cotton wool up his nose, and that was that. The fact that he felt so uncomfortable and had to look away didn’t mean he was a psycho with a filthy mind.
Sorted. When Theres shouted from the bathroom a little while later to say that she couldn’t manage, he went in and helped her to insert the tampon, made sure the string was in the right place, and explained to her that she would have to change it a couple of times a day, and she could bloody well do that herself. Then he washed his hands.
Perhaps it had something to do with her menstruation and perhaps not, but Theres was changing. From time to time she opened up her shell a little and peered at the outside world. She had started to take a serious interest in the internet, and when Jerry wasn’t using the computer she often sat there clicking through articles on Wikipedia, mainly about different animals.
One day when Jerry was reading the paper in the living room, Theres asked, ‘What’s this?’
Jerry looked at the screen and saw that Theres-presumably by following various links-had ended up on a website called poetry.now. There was a poem about cats on the screen.
‘It’s poetry,’ said Jerry. ‘Poems. You write like that when it’s a poem, I think. Do you think it’s good?’
‘I don’t know. What’s good?’
‘How the fuck should I know? It doesn’t seem as if it has to rhyme these days, anyway. Write something yourself, then you can see if anybody says anything.’
‘How shall I write?’
Jerry clicked through to another poem that he thought seemed very disjointed, and appeared to be about not knowing what you want to be. He waved at the screen. ‘You just write like this, kind of. A few sentences here and there. Hang on, we’ll set you up an account.’ Jerry keyed in a made-up name and linked it to her email account. Why had they set up an email account for her anyway-who the hell was she going to write to? Oh well, at least it was useful now. ‘All you have to do now is choose a username and press enter, then you can write whatever you want.’
Jerry went back to his armchair and the evening paper, while Theres sat with her fingers resting motionless on the keys. After a while she asked, ‘What’s my name?’
‘Theres. You know that.’
‘When did I get Theres?’
