And Poppy Wandered

Poppy was a toddler and her parents were naturists. The place that they would go was called The Club. It was a long, slow, dirt-track road to get there with huge electricity Pylons they would sometimes drive past. Her brother who was older than her was allowed to sit on the lap of whoever was driving and pretend to drive, Poppy wasn't allowed to because 'one day her brother would be a driver' and she wouldn't. At The Club there was a wooden house on huge concrete bricks called The Chalet, it was a huge room with a massive bed that folded straight up on one end against the wall even with its sheets on. On this day she remembered being picked up from behind by her armpits and taken outside by her mother and being placed on her feet about twenty feet away from The Chalet. She was given stern instructions to stay there and not go near the old man with the wheelbarrow. This was a routine she knew. She said nothing but thought the old man with the wheelbarrow was kind, he would just walk past and she thought him kind. Her mother returned to The Chalet and closed the door. Poppy was young, the tufts of grass and ground underneath her feet made it difficult to balance and looking back at the closed door she knew it was futile to try and go there and stretch her arm up and knock on the door, she didn't want anybody to get angry. Poppy did try and keep still but she was wobbling because of the undulating ground and she felt exposed so decided to walk around to a very green, hidden away hedge, a bit like a maze, where she knew she could sit in a corner and hide and be with the nature spirits. Except for some reason she never arrived at the hedge, much of Poppies childhood memories are blank. All of a sudden she was at the perimeter of The Club ground. the view was amazing, blue sky and vast fields. This perimeter was high up with a rickety wire fence and some barbed wire in places running along the top. But the view was amazing. She could see a thickly grassed steep bank of about a fifty meters below her, where the colors ranged from green to beige and met the greener grassy plain, flat and empty but for a few sheep. She knew she could get through the fence if she tried and maybe fall down the bank where the thick grass would protect her and at the bottom she would be free like those sheep and she would go and never go back. But she didn't she was held in place - she couldn't move, not return or go forward. She imagined what she'd often seen at The Chalet which was arms and legs entangled like spaghetti and she knew that she wasn't wanted there. Something held her there, longing to get past that fence, her legs tired she sat on her haunches with her hands in the grass, the grass was alive and responded gently, the grass was kind. She put her head on one of those tufts of thick grass, her body against the wire fence as physically near as she could be to the peaceful freedom field with the sheep that would never harm her and the vastness that went on forever. Poppy didn't remember being found she just remembered it was dark and there was lots of screaming and shouting and anger and smacks on her legs and back and head. Drunk people are rarely a joy and drunk frightened people are worse. She wet herself but it didn't matter as her nappy was already sodden - it was only later when 'they' realised that if they walloped her over the head she didn't wet herself and Poppy was ok with that, it seemed to hurt less and she wasn't further humiliated by having to clean up her own wee or be in trouble that someone else was doing it. Poppy knew never to ask questions, to fit in meant a more peaceful day. Until the day that question was about her own body. She was about seven. The days at The Club had stopped by then. Sticking out her arms and frustrated with thought she said: "Mom, am I stuck in this body? Am I really stuck in this body because I think we should move around in other bodies, being in one body is boring!"