Cut by Hibo Wardere Read Free Book Online Page A

said, in an attempt to get some sense out of me. ‘Now, why do you think you’re dying?’
    I took a deep breath. ‘There’s blood . . . in my knickers,’ I told her. ‘I don’t know what’s happening to me. I don’t want to die!’
    Her expression lightened as realisation dawned, and she sat down on the bed next to me. ‘You’re not dying, Hibo,’ she said. ‘You’re becoming a woman.’
    ‘What do you mean “becoming a woman”? I’m not a boy! I’m nearly sixteen, I
am
a woman.’
    ‘No, Hibo, you were a
girl
– until now,’ she said.
    My face must have shown my confusion, because she sighed in exasperation and then tried again. ‘When you get your period it means you become a woman, and you can get pregnant.’ She
crossed the room and pulled out a piece of cloth from a drawer.
    ‘This is mine,’ she said. ‘Use this inside your knickers and keep washing it out. If you don’t, the blood will seep through your clothes and everyone will see.’
    I took the cloth from her and stared at it. It was clearly from an old dress of hers – I faintly recognised the faded striped pattern that ran through it.
    ‘Does Hoyo bleed?’ I asked her.
    ‘Yes, all women do. Now go and wash your bedding.’
    I stripped my bed and took the sheets out into the yard, washing them in a tub of cool soapy water. My mother found me out there, and when she saw the blood she started whooping with happiness,
making the sound usually reserved for weddings, a call women make in celebration.
    ‘Why are you making that noise?’ I asked. ‘It’s not a wedding.’
    ‘Because you’re a woman now.’
    I know she told my aunties because from across the yard I saw them pointing and congratulating my mother, patting her back and throwing their arms around her with joy. I watched them, confused,
the cloth firmly held in my knickers, and wincing with each stomach cramp that came in waves across my belly. What did this mean ‘to be a woman’? And why did it always seem to involve
pain?
    ‘Why are they so happy?’ I asked Fatima.
    ‘Because you got your period,’ she sighed, and turned back to sweeping the yard. ‘You really need to stop your brain asking questions, Hibo.’
    So this was the next stage – there was clearly a distinction between being a girl and being a woman – and unknowingly and involuntarily I had transitioned through the first two
phases. I had been cut and now I bled. So what was next? And what would it cost?
    I got used to the pain that would grip my insides every twenty-eight days. I also came to understand that without a proper hole for the menstrual blood to exit my body, the
flood would build up inside me, and I would be doubled over at times, in agony for ten days, sometimes for two long weeks. I learned to dread my periods just as I had learned to wait patiently for
the slow trickle when I urinated.
    And still I didn’t know why I needed to suffer as I did, still my mother refused to answer my daily question. Until one day, a few months after my sixteenth birthday, on a day that seemed
like any other, I got a response that differed from my mother’s usual dismissal. I’d had a shower that day and had styled my hair differently in two tight ponytails. As I came out of
the bathroom, steam rising off my skin, my mother looked up from her sewing.
    ‘You look pretty, Hibo,’ she said. ‘I like the way you’ve done your hair today.’
    I don’t know what it was, perhaps my new hairstyle had softened me around the edges a little, but I felt myself smiling a reply to her. And in response, her face relaxed, the tension eased
for a moment. It was a tiny gesture on both our parts, a truce of sorts in a ten-year struggle. I decided then that this was my chance.
    ‘Why did you do this to me?’ I asked, as I had on every single day before that. I wasn’t expecting an answer; I was expecting her to fix that same hard look on her face and say
nothing. Instead, she gestured for me to sit down