Outed.

I was 15 years old when I discovered that everyone else had a belly button except for me. Looking back, I’m not sure how it took me so long to work it out. All I can say in defence of my baffling ignorance is that I was always a shy child, and there had been no reason in our isolated community for exposing my midriff or examining other local specimens. Crop tops were a few years off becoming fashionable, and swimming meant jumping into ice cold lakes. I could do without, thanks. I suppose if I ever saw one on television I must have assumed it was a genetic quirk, like freckles or red hair. But at the age of 15, I had my world turned upside down by my lack of an innie or an outie.

“There she is, the alien!” They would call, laughing as I walked down the hallway at school. “Wish she would hurry up and go back to the mothership. What a weirdo.”

I’d been home-schooled until I was 14 because we lived so far from the nearest town. When Dad said we were moving to the city I’d been prepared to find the change to public school difficult, but being viewed as a different species altogether had not been something I’d anticipated.

Outing my lack of outie had been an accident. Up until then I’d never had to change in front of people – our version of home schooling was not big on physical education – so turning up to my first PE class I didn’t realise that most of the other girls had those strappy vest tops on under their school uniforms to avoid awkward moments in the changing rooms. As a new student I was already attracting a lot of attention, and my attempts to blend into the farthest corner of the room as I tried to protect my modesty didn’t go as unnoticed as I’d hoped.  Suddenly, the girl nearest me – a gobby blonde called Zara who was the year’s biggest gossip – gasped as she glanced in my direction.

“Oi, where’s your belly button?” She asked, frowning at my stomach.

“My… urm… I don’t have one. Why, do you?” I glanced down at my smooth midriff, not understanding her shock.

“What? Everyone’s got one…It’s, like, basic biology or something.” She looked confused. “How come you don’t?” She nudged the girl on the other side of her, “Hey Steph – she hasn’t got a belly button! Look!”

“What?” Replied Steph incredulously, “She must have!” She stared down at my stomach, which I had not covered up quickly enough. “Unless she wasn’t born – hey, are you another species or something? Did you hatch from an egg?” She began to giggle.

As news of my strange physical appearance made its way around the changing room, I sank down onto the bench. The truth of it was that I had no idea why I did not have a belly button. I had never even known to ask.

It only got worse from there. By the end of the lesson I’d been labelled ‘alien girl’ and as the day dragged on, the entire school seemed to have found out that I didn’t have a belly button. In the lunch queue, some boys in the year below tried to pull my shirt up and see for themselves when I wouldn’t let them look at my ‘freaky body’.

I went to the library after I’d eaten to look up human anatomy. They were right. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t known until now: every human has a belly button from birth, where the umbilical cord linked the foetus to the mother. My world began to wobble - not quite upside down yet, but definitely tilting sideways. Why had my parents never mentioned it? They must have known that I was different, but they had never acknowledged it or explained it to me. Rage bubbled up inside me; they had let me walk into this situation without even a word of warning, and as soon as school finished I was going to demand answers.  

I tried to keep my head down and stay out of the way for the rest of the day, counting the minutes until I could go home. But even as I walked down the corridor to my lessons I could feel the stares of other students, hear the muted whispers. I felt like every teen movie I had ever seen was happening around me and I was the central character, the underdog who didn’t fit in. Part of me wanted to yell out, to defend myself, but after my lunchtime revelations most of me was preoccupied with wondering if maybe there was something weird about me. Panic started to wash over me as I sat alone at the back of the French classroom. All sorts of weird possibilities for my lack of naval were swimming around in my brain; was I some sort of twisted experiment grown in a test tube? Were my parents really my parents? The rational part of my brain tried to tell me that there was surely some kind of reasonable explanation – an operation as a baby, a birth defect – but I couldn’t help thinking that, if this were the case, they would have been upfront with me rather than hiding it all these years.

The second the bell rang for the end of the day, I made for the door without a backwards glance.

“Which planet do you live on? Are you going home in your spaceship?” I heard sniggers from behind me as I walked towards the school gates. Ignoring their taunts, I rushed towards the bus stop. The bus was late and I began to pace up and down as I waited, willing it to hurry up. My brain felt like it might implode if I didn’t get home soon. I needed answers.

“Hey honey! How was school?” Mum greeted me as I closed the front door behind me. She’d taken the day off to do some final unpacking in the new house and to make sure she would be around on my first day. She appeared in the door of the kitchen, directly across from me as I dumped my school bag on the coat rack.

“Survive?” She smiled. “I made brownies. You look like you might need one.”

I didn’t reply, but immediately burst into tears that were equal parts frustration, rage and sadness. I wanted to be comforted after the terrible day I’d had, but I didn’t know who she was to me anymore, or how I should feel about her. It was too much.

“How could you not tell me?” I demanded, when I was finally capable of words. She’d moved to hug me but I backed away, confused and angry.

“Tell you what, honey?” My mother looked at me with concern, her eyebrows knitted together and lips pursed. Surely she knew what I was talking about. She must do.

“Mum, why don’t I have a belly button?” I hadn’t meant to blurt it out, but I couldn’t stand it any longer. I looked at her, accusation and hurt in my eyes.

Her eyes widened as she stared back at me. A guilty look passed over her face, and she sighed heavily before moving towards the lounge.

“Oh… That,” She said, motioning towards the couch. “Darling, I think you’d better sit down.”