The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1635 by Angharad Copyright © 2012 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

“What’s the matter?” asked Si.

“Nothing, why?”

“You’re tossing and turning.”

“Sorry,” I tried to lie still.

“So are you going to tell me or do I have to tickle it out of you?”

“It’s Jacquie.”

“I’d got that far myself.”

I sighed, sometimes his smart arse answers just annoyed me. “She was raped when she was about twelve and then had to have an abortion. Looks like they did a total hysterectomy as well.”

“Perhaps they had to?”

“Dr Smith thinks it was done by a butcher.”

“Oh.”

“Ever since she was convicted she’s been treated like some sort of monster. She was contemplating suicide earlier.”

“Oh, should we have her here with the children–they don’t need that sort of trauma, do they?”

His answer surprised me, he was thinking of the children, or was he? Was he thinking of himself–suicides are messy in every sense. “We can hardly send her away can we?”

“Oh I don’t know, perhaps that clinic Stella goes to?”

“No–she’s not going anywhere.”

“She’s your latest project is she?” He paused while began to glow incandescent. “She’s bad news, Cathy. Despite all your good intentions, she needs more help than you can give her.”

“So why did she come here?”

“Because you invited her in–remember?”

“She’s here because she needs to be–the universe sent her.”

“Got a hotline to God have we?”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“Listen to yourself, woman–the universe is sending you damaged goods for you to repair–maybe it’s you that’s damaged, you know exploding ego syndrome.”

“This isn’t ego, this is basic parenting skills–we have someone who was damaged as a child at age five–some of her emotional growth will have stopped then. At twelve she’s damaged again. She needs to build a relationship with someone she can trust, who doesn’t abandon her. She needs to feel a loving family round her, supporting her. I want her to realise through her interaction with you and Daddy and even Danny, that not all men are bastards–that some are human beings whom she can trust, who will help to help her build her ego strength and grow into the age she is emotionally. She needs all of us.”

“And what part do the girls play in all this?”

“I hope she can learn to respect those who trust her and need her to protect them and care for them.”

“Can’t we just get her a kitten?”

“Trish would have it off her in a flash, she’s always on about having a cat.”

“A rabbit, then?”

“No. Please just support me in this. I want her to feel safe surrounded by people who won’t judge her but who will show her love and trust.”

“She is your latest project though, isn’t she?”

“She isn’t a project–she’s a woman, flesh and blood.”

“So she can’t have babies then?”

“Hardly if they’ve taken her womb away.”

“But she’s still female?”

“Of course she is–why shouldn’t she be?” Where was he going with this?

“So lack of babies doesn’t disqualify her as a female?”

“No.” Stupid man.

“So how come someone I know and love, can’t seem to accept the same message?”

Oh so that’s where he was going–there’s a surprise, although I suppose I ask for it at times. “She was born female.”

“So were you, weren’t you?”

“My birth certificate didn’t think so.”

“But I thought you told me that being transsexual was a biological thing, not acquired through conditioning?”

“Most of the experts who seem to know what they’re talking about seem to think so, that sense of gender and sexual orientation are essentially programmed into the brain by age three or four, why?”

“So you were born female, QED, just because you can’t grow your own babies doesn’t stop you being female–so the next time I hear you agonising about not being a proper woman–I’m going ot point out to you that if you’re not, neither is Jacquie.”

“Sermon over now?” I asked him.

“Yes.”

I kissed him and rolled over to sleep–I didn’t of course–I was still worried about Jacquie–but why? I’m her employer not her mother. For goodness sakes, she’s only eight years younger than I. I shouldn’t be mothering her–and Si was right, do I honestly think she’d been sent to me by the universe to sort her out. Honestly, my ego must be about the same size as the sun.

The next morning, I was like a piece of limp lettuce and Jacquie didn’t look much better. We did manage to organise breakfast between us and then we both took the girls to school. We bumped into the headmistress who surreptitiously asked if Jacquie was transgender. My response was nearly to thump her–perhaps I over reacted.

After that we went to the doctor’s for her blood tests and then home after we stopped at Morrison’s for a cuppa. It revived us enough to get home–but I was so tired that after doing the bread machine I fell asleep in the chair where they left me until lunch time.

I did a casserole for dinner which Julie and Stella could serve, Jacquie and I were going to see the gynaecologist.

Miss Juniper Sabatini–I know, perhaps her mother liked gin–originated from Menorca–perhaps her mother did like mother’s ruin. The island is covered in the bushes apparently–I’m still waiting for Si to take me there so I can try and find the dormice they have there.

According to one text book they had a unique species back in the Pleistocene or some such time, but it’s only found in fossil form and rejoices in the name Hypnomys mahonensis.The one they have now is a distant relative, the garden dormouse or Eliomys quercinus. I’d love to see those in the wild but until I can get Si to take me to Spain, it’s just a pipe dream. According to the photos I’ve seen they’re quite cute but they’re bigger than our little hazel dormouse, which will always be my first love.

She was quite dark haired and eyed, although her skin didn’t seem too swarthy for someone of Menorcan extraction and her accent sounded more Oxford than Mahon. She was pleasant but brusque–I suppose it had been a long day–and she wasn’t at all happy about me being there while she examined Jacquie.

She confirmed all that Dr Smith had suggested–it looked like a total hysterectomy, she wasn’t sure about her ovaries, but the scar could have indicated they had those too. She was not impressed by the surgery.

“These are old scars, when were they done?”

“About seven years ago.”

“Not by a gynaecologist?” she sounded horrified. Then she looked at Jacquie, “But you’re only twenty now? Who the hell did this to you?”

Jacquie explained that she was in a young offenders institution and she had been raped by one of the officers and subsequently became pregnant. The abortion had caused the damage Miss Sabatini was seeing now.

“I’d like to see the notes of this, this looks like it was done by a general surgeon or even someone like an orthopod. No gynaecologist would have left you in such a mess.”

We were still awaiting the blood tests for hormones, which would indicate if the ovaries were still present or not. Sabatini was disgusted when she heard the full story. She also said that it was quite likely that the records would have been faked or lost–probably suggesting that you suffered some sort of problems with the womb and they had to operate as an emergency. It was probably all rubbish but it would be very difficult to prove.

I began to feel there was more chance of me seeing the extinct giant Menorcan dormouse than catching these bastards.

Miss Sabatini was to arrange a scan to see what was happening inside but she didn’t think there was the slightest chance of Jacquie ever having babies. We returned home feeling despondent, we’d learned nothing new but confirming our previous suspicions and the impotence we felt about catching the people who perpetrated these acts of abuse against Jacquie and other girls like her, left us both rather depressed.

So when Trish swanned up to tell me my translation of Dies irae was wrong, I nearly strangled her. “It means Day of Wrath,” she announced.

“Yeah so?”

“You said Wrath of God,” she smirked.

“Yeah, it relates to the Day of Judgement, so the wrath is going to come from God. So okay, I got it literally wrong, but technically, it means the same.”

She looked confused and walked away far less confident.

“How old is that child?” asked Jacquie.

“She’ll be eight in two weeks.”

“Bloody hell–I thought she was a thirty year old midget,” she said and we both exploded with laughter.