I didn’t want to think of Hamish. I didn’t want to feed that hungry thing inside me. I didn’t want it to grow.
I thought of diving into the cool waters of the creek, of its icy softness engulfing me, of being enveloped in its velvet touch. I imagined the creek as endless, shimmering, the water stretching out before me like a silver ribbon. I could drift without air forever, sliding with the current. Beneath the surface, I was free.
Eventually my body softened and I got to thinking about my mum, and Sophie, and all that had happened before me. It was troubling to come at the end of a family. All the life and colour and drama that had gone before me could only be passed to me in stories, and what if no one was talking? I imagined them instead—the fathers before mine, how one replaced another. All the babies growing like weeds, wild and untended. My mum moving from man to man, like they were ice-cream flavours, and Sophie—older and wiser—tending us all as best as she could. Or that’s how it sat in my head. From the snippets of things said, and unsaid, I had constructed a picture of my family before me and then I’d run with it, wherever the fancy took me.
Sometimes I liked to imagine my mum, crazy in love with babies, unable to stop having them. Lost in that world of gurgles and half-smiles, wind and burping, feeding from the breast. Freshly washed white nappies flapping on the line, luminous and clean. Caught in a cycle of renewal, as though every time she gave birth she could start over. As though every child was a clean slate, perfect and unsullied. And each time she was new too. I imagined her tucking us into the folds of her, keeping us close, until we were so big we toddled right off, and then she’d start again. And all the while, the community she’d helped to build dissolving around her, disenchantment seeping in. I wondered when she noticed almost everyone had gone.
But when I thought of the fathers, it was a whole different story. I imagined them washed up like survivors of a shipwreck, lost and beaten by the waves, my mother some kind of beacon, a lighthouse. And for a while they’d circle her, filled with wanting. And there was something she gave them, some indefinable need fulfilled in her embrace. It would be peaceful for a while. The lull of a pregnancy. But gradually the fathers healed and heard the calling of the world. That tantalising hum of possibility that there was something else out there, something they were missing. At first they ignored it, staring into their new baby’s mysterious eyes, watching the infant breaths rise and fall, but eventually the hum got louder and louder until they could not shut it out, and before long, like the rest, they would be gone. I imagined them one by one—big bodied and strong—awkward in our small house surrounded by babies.
But I never knew if it was true.
And sometimes I’d think of Sophie, the only girl for so long. Pretty with her curls and pink cheeks, done up like a doll in Mum’s wild homemade dresses, unaware that she was to be overrun by the rest of us, her childhood swallowed by a flood of brothers and then me. It was hard to imagine Sophie as a baby. I’d always known her as defiantly grown-up. But when I really tried, when I focused my mind, I could see her—gentle and open, tiny and beloved, the first one to suckle at my mother’s breast.
My brothers were becoming like shadows. Figures that clung on the fringes of my mind—there, but always slightly out of view. I pictured Sunny’s face, trying to recollect the details. The way his front teeth overlapped, just slightly, and how his eyes squeezed shut to almost nothing when he smiled. The last time he’d come home, he’d only stayed for a day, and most of that he’d spent out hunting for his friends. I thought, and not for the first time, about how my brothers so easily abandoned me. Took off without a thought. About how little they held me in their minds. And my heart
I thought of diving into the cool waters of the creek, of its icy softness engulfing me, of being enveloped in its velvet touch. I imagined the creek as endless, shimmering, the water stretching out before me like a silver ribbon. I could drift without air forever, sliding with the current. Beneath the surface, I was free.
Eventually my body softened and I got to thinking about my mum, and Sophie, and all that had happened before me. It was troubling to come at the end of a family. All the life and colour and drama that had gone before me could only be passed to me in stories, and what if no one was talking? I imagined them instead—the fathers before mine, how one replaced another. All the babies growing like weeds, wild and untended. My mum moving from man to man, like they were ice-cream flavours, and Sophie—older and wiser—tending us all as best as she could. Or that’s how it sat in my head. From the snippets of things said, and unsaid, I had constructed a picture of my family before me and then I’d run with it, wherever the fancy took me.
Sometimes I liked to imagine my mum, crazy in love with babies, unable to stop having them. Lost in that world of gurgles and half-smiles, wind and burping, feeding from the breast. Freshly washed white nappies flapping on the line, luminous and clean. Caught in a cycle of renewal, as though every time she gave birth she could start over. As though every child was a clean slate, perfect and unsullied. And each time she was new too. I imagined her tucking us into the folds of her, keeping us close, until we were so big we toddled right off, and then she’d start again. And all the while, the community she’d helped to build dissolving around her, disenchantment seeping in. I wondered when she noticed almost everyone had gone.
But when I thought of the fathers, it was a whole different story. I imagined them washed up like survivors of a shipwreck, lost and beaten by the waves, my mother some kind of beacon, a lighthouse. And for a while they’d circle her, filled with wanting. And there was something she gave them, some indefinable need fulfilled in her embrace. It would be peaceful for a while. The lull of a pregnancy. But gradually the fathers healed and heard the calling of the world. That tantalising hum of possibility that there was something else out there, something they were missing. At first they ignored it, staring into their new baby’s mysterious eyes, watching the infant breaths rise and fall, but eventually the hum got louder and louder until they could not shut it out, and before long, like the rest, they would be gone. I imagined them one by one—big bodied and strong—awkward in our small house surrounded by babies.
But I never knew if it was true.
And sometimes I’d think of Sophie, the only girl for so long. Pretty with her curls and pink cheeks, done up like a doll in Mum’s wild homemade dresses, unaware that she was to be overrun by the rest of us, her childhood swallowed by a flood of brothers and then me. It was hard to imagine Sophie as a baby. I’d always known her as defiantly grown-up. But when I really tried, when I focused my mind, I could see her—gentle and open, tiny and beloved, the first one to suckle at my mother’s breast.
My brothers were becoming like shadows. Figures that clung on the fringes of my mind—there, but always slightly out of view. I pictured Sunny’s face, trying to recollect the details. The way his front teeth overlapped, just slightly, and how his eyes squeezed shut to almost nothing when he smiled. The last time he’d come home, he’d only stayed for a day, and most of that he’d spent out hunting for his friends. I thought, and not for the first time, about how my brothers so easily abandoned me. Took off without a thought. About how little they held me in their minds. And my heart
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