death sentence
Foreword: This was originally submitted to a zine in 2002, under a pseudonym, and as far as I'm aware, is still online in one place. It's a sad story with a morbid theme, but one of my better works of this kind (imo). If I could produce to this level of quality on a regular basis I would be much less vexed.
Everything that was important took place in the spring and summer. She remembers the days like winter because of the long afternoon shadows but she knows it was spring and summer.
She remembers how the shadows fell across the road as she stood in the shop doorway, after she'd bought the milk and the bread and was preparing to push the pram across the tarmac past the petrol pumps, to turn left onto the footpath and walk those last two blocks home.
She has trouble remembering what she did yesterday but she remembers those old times well, if only in snippets, glimpses, in snatches of time with the continuity all messed up. She remembers the long shadows. She remembers the despair. She remembers the sound of the bathwater running.
The rest she can't remember. The rest is something someone else did. There are videos in the cupboard, shaky home movies of the little girl playing, burping, smiling, sleeping. There are photos in the album, mostly of the little girl with her nanna. So few photos of her and her baby. So few of them together because it was always mummy playing photographer, and no wonder it feels like she wasn't really there.
She remembers those days. Sometimes she feels like they're almost within reach. Sometimes she feels like there's a word or a movement that will take her back or at least change things, fix things, make it all better, make the last five years just a bad dream.
She gets drunk, sometimes, has a little too much. She gets drunk and talks to the walls. Sometimes she feels her father there and tells him what she couldn't tell him while he was alive, because she didn't know, back then: I know what you did. I do. I know. And you were wrong. And now look at me. Why couldn't you just stay out of it?
Mostly she knows she's alone, one person in the big house, all alone. She doesn't deserve the house, she tells herself. The house is a fringe benefit, a prize awarded for the sacrifice she's supposed to be making. The house should not be hers when she knows she's not upholding her end of the deal. She wants to tell someone, wants to confess. She stalks up and down the hall laughing hysterically in between crying in between hating and hurting and blaming.
The house is silent. Nobody there.
She's playing at sacrificing. She deprives herself. Not allowed to sleep in the bed. Not allowed to keep food in the house. Not allowed to have friends, not allowed to have a life.
She's playing at sacrificing but she knows it's not enough. It will never be enough. She can never forgive herself. Should have kept her mouth shut. Should have known he was listening. Should have known he would interfere.
She's punishing herself and she can't stop. She hates it, hates how she lives, hates how she exists... but she can't stop. Can't stop stopping stop stop stop stop
(and it never ends).
Silent. Midnight. Quarter-past.
Dark outside.
Cool, crisply cool outside. Warm inside. Stuffy inside, by comparison, if she stays out too long.
Sometimes she gets drunk and stands outside looking at the moon. When she feels like that she thinks, sometimes, that her baby's up there, somehow part of the moon. She wonders if the gremlins in her head only jumped out because of that, because it was too crowded in there, everyone identifying with the moon.
Outside on a summer night, a cool summer night, the ground damp with dew and the remains of the rain, sitting on the broken camp chair, craning her neck, looking up at the moon. Remembers singing, the cow jumped over the mooooooooon, remembers a baby's delight, the hic-hic-hic giggles, the rosy cheeks, the bright bright eyes.
Remembers that was a different baby, a different little girl.
Remembers she's all mixed up. Remembers. Remembers.
She doesn't remember giving birth. They had to cut her open. Both times. She doesn't remember her first sight of a little pink hand because after the anaesthetic wore off they doped her up on morphine. It was all she could do to keep her eyes open for ten seconds. Wake, doze, wake. Two minutes would have passed but she couldn't tell. Could have been hours. There's the baby in her crib, next to the hospital bed. There's the baby, sleeping. Thinking, trying to hold one thought long enough, trying to stay awake long enough to hold just one thought.
Sometimes when she dredges the morphine veil she mixes up the memories, can't remember baby number two at all or can't remember which one she remembers feeding, holding to her breast, wincing as her staples pulled.
Most times she can tell them apart in her head. Most times.
Dark, cool night.
No-one to hold her hand and no hand to hold.
Halfway between the first quarter and the full moon.
The gremlins in her head are silent.
Remember. Remember. Remember.
She sits inside, rocking. She rocks a lot. She rocks like she's holding a baby on her hip, standing, or in her arms, sitting. She rocks for comfort. She just forgets there's no baby, rocks to comfort herself.
She sits inside, rocking.
Photos of baby number one on the shelf. She looks at them often without seeing. Her eyes pass over, slide over, the images familiar already, the actual seeing too hard to do.
No photos of baby number two on display. Baby number two isn't going anywhere. No need to make the shrine, the tribute, the show of having not forgotten.
But it's not she who forgets. Mummy doesn't forget. Mummy doesn't forget her darling. Everyone else forgets. Even nanna. Nanna forgets baby number one's birthday. Mummy cries silently, clutching the phone tightly because nanna speaks so softly. Cries silently because she's already said it once, doesn't want to have to repeat it, doesn't want to seem obsessed.
Though she is.
Completely.
For always and always.
No photos of baby number two on display because baby number two isn't going anywhere.
So it's just baby number one she wants back.