The Bed.

She could feel and see herself shaking: small tremours that rocked her hunched body and rattled her pores. The tremours were intermittent: they came and they left her battered, like a hurricane or the-cold-beofre-the-hot in a shower. It made her feel weak and young and soft and wishing for warmth.
To the touch, she was hot, she was burning.
Maybe, she thought lazily, idly, maybe if a drop of water were to fall on my head it would turn to steam.

She'd seen in a film how you could cook an egg on a car bonnet in the heat of summer on a dry barren desert-side road, perhaps this was a scenario her body was emulating. Perhaps she had watched too many hazy Western films, where such scenes (although not always played out with such similarity) were commonplace. She loved the Western films because of the cowboys. She loved their faces: the sun-filled wrinkles, the brown faces contrasted so breathtakingly by these sharp and sudden blue eyes. Their accents were always so drawling and laconic and leisurely. It was like they had every second of time to say what they wanted to. But often she couldn't understand what the cowboys were saying, because the drawl was so thick. But this did not bother her too much.

She was hunched on her bed, cowering against the wall. The wall was a pale baby yellow, a colour that only looked good in the dark. She had often wondered why such a hideous colour had ever been foisted upon the world. Was God inflicting some punishment upon a particularly wicked person? The colour could be described as:  not-even-creme, vomit white, off white, dirty white, soiled white, dirty hanky, jaundiced skin, sad sad sunshine. Can you see it in your mind? I bet you're grimacing. The girl refused to look at the wall in the light, which is why she now needed glasses.
She said to her parents when she was old enough to talk:
"This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me."

She was loath to even decorate the walls, for this would have seemed like an okaying of the foul shade. It would have been like saying: Hey Wall, you're ugly and I hate you but that is okay, here, be friends with my poster of Azealia B." It would have been like losing some ultimate big battle: herself versus Wall. And she couldn't lose, because she had to live in this rectangle room every day and she would have to see it sneering at her, with such an invisible expression of scorn and something.

She was hot to the touch but cold so cold. She wished now that she'd made her bed because her duvet lay lumpy and unwelcoming on the floor. It required a certain dexterity and drive to make her bed. One that she was yet to really find. She was kind of at that age when she was maybe meant to find herself, but such revelation was yet to occur. Especially in the bed category. Sometimes she even slept on her bed without a sheet, because she was too lazy to put it on. The corners, especially, were hard to do. She liked to wait for her mother to get so mad that she would make it herself, but this time had not yet come to pass.

story of some girl

Once upon a time, in a land quite far away, a baby was born. In this land – a particular continent called Africa, many babies were constantly being born, and perhaps this pink infant was not starkly different to any of the other thousands of babies that were born at the same instant as she. However, to a particular pairing of people, one Barry and Debs, this baby was rather spectacular and special and quite extraordinary. This bawling youngster was the first grandchild of Diane and Sonny, and Freda and Barney, so all concerned parties were rather thrilled.
The young tyke was a good-natured child, with blond locks and a tendency for falling asleep in her food. Erin and her parents lived in a nice 1-storey house in St Lukes Rd in Claremont. They had a grey mazda that was at least 100 years old but still ran OK and a red little Toyota that was the car that took Erin to the hospital to exit her mother’s stomach.

They got the most delightful of dogs: Jasmine the golden retriever. She was the runt of the litter, but not actually very small, and was a very good-natured and agreeable hound. Jasmine liked to snap at bubbles in some vain hope of achieving something great. She also occasionally killed pigeons for her owners’ delight.

In 1997, Mother Rosenberg got pregnant again and had baby Lauren. She was premature and very tiny. Erin got a new Ken doll in compensation for not being an only child anymore. New baby Lauren was also a fun new toy.
A few years later, Erin started primary school. How big and old she was getting! A prominent memory from the first day of school is Klara Scholtz being able to spell cat and Erin being suitably impressed. Oh how far she has come since such days. Another sister was also born in this year, although she was not accompanied by any Ken dolls. And then in the Rosenberg household girls outnumbered boys 4 to 1. Jasmine the dog was a girl too. Poor Barry.

In 1999 Erin performed in a school play lamenting the incoming invasion of the Y2K bug. She wasn’t too sure what it meant, but the costumes sure looked like ladybugs. She played an orphan. She managed to survive the y2k bug and made it into the new millennium!

Debs and Baz took the family on a trip to Australia. The flight was very long, but fortunately there was a Pokemon game on the aeroplane screens. Whilst Down Under, Erin and sisters saw fun things like Australian animals, the Sydney Opera House and similarly exciting landmarks.
The parents were so enamoured with the land that they thought they would try to emigrate there. South Africa, for all its breathtaking beauty, was a dangerous and scarred place: perhaps Australia would yield a better future for their children.
At the end of 2004 Erin had her batmitzvah. In Orthodox Judaism when a girl is 12 she becomes a woman, and is rewarded with lots of presents and endless gefilte fish. This occasion was particularly auspicious because it was a batmitzvah-cum-farewell party, so, although everyone had fun dancing the horah, a few tears were shed.

On the 19 January 2005 the Rosenberg family left the beauty of Cape Town and moved to Melbourne, in far-flung Australia. Erin started high school, Lauren and Hannah integrated into primary school where they weren’t allowed to say ‘mom’ anymore, but rather were forced to say ‘mum’. They got a new doggy, a most rambunctious Labrador/spaniel/mutt called Daisy. She was joyous.
Time passed and the childrens’ Australian twangs increased, although their affinity for Vegemite did not.  Everyone grew a little bit older, a little bit taller. Erin finished high school, which seemed like a strange thing. School was forever, or so it had seemed. She even got to wear a graduating gown, which was all a little High School Musical. (Zac Efron was not present).  Real life seemed to be starting. She got into a university course that seemed relevant to something she may wish to pursue in some far-off adult future, and travelled to far-off places in the world. She saw things she had never seen before, and experienced wild adventure. She was overcome by this revelation: that the world is a huge and wonderous place, merely waiting to be discovered.

And then she went back to university and real life again, and her baby sister started high school. Her parents asked her scary questions like, “What are you going to do after university?” and she thought, “I am getting a little old now.” She wished for a blue genie to appear and guide her, but this seemed an unlikely scenario.

Who

Her gaze shifted and then, with the very flick of her eyeball, everything was starkly different. The dog hadn't been there before. And neither the giraffe.
And the man. The man made her brain tingle with faint recognition. With a recognition so faint and fleeting that it may have been a miniature brain freeze, but was not. She knew him: with his surly grimace and ginger growth and big dinner-plate hands.
He was approaching, idly. He was wandering in her general vicinity.
She said: "Hello"
She said: "Do I know you?"
He seemed startled by the sound of her voice. It was thin and reedy and sounded like a child. (A prepubescent child.)
The giraffe, which had been grazing inconspicuously in the background, make the noise that giraffes tend to make, and trotted over for a pat.
But the girl only had eyes for the man.
Her brain was buzzing with greater buzz than before.
He said:
"If you had been born a man, and in 1980: I am you."
She blinked with slow comprehension.