And this baby would break her in so many ways. Her baby, who was loved right from the start, would squeeze out of her with every effort, while the room filled with more people checking everything except her. But there would be one old midwife, the one who still wore a pocket watch, and that midwife wouldn’t need to say anything, because the ending at that point was already so clear. And the midwife with the pocket watch would hold on to her forearms in a vice-like grip, and they would breathe into the gap between them, making a calmer space where they could both focus, while the room around them crumbled. The mother listened only to this midwife, focusing on her words, keep breathing, keep breathing, and she knew, even then, that she was talking about afterwards. And then, and then.
Then the mother would have slapped everyone else away to reach down and pull her baby out, and the tininess of her perfection would have burst open her frightened heart. And she would have known that she had birthed a whole person that had already bypassed this life. The grandmother would cling to her, scared of what she might do, and her partner would implode with feelings. And then she would have lain there, an open portal to another world, holding her baby, looking at her hands, and her feet, and realising that her baby would never have a chance to fall, or swallow, or cry. And if you tore open the warriors from all of history and looked at what they were made of, none would be as strong as this mother. None would have entered a battle so unprepared for the horror. None would have had to fight to live more than her.
I’m so close to the tiny face that it is all I can see, and before I am aware of what I’m doing, I’m giving her the softest kiss right between her eyes. The lightest touch I have ever laid on another human being, and in that kiss I feel all the broken parts of me shift in recognition. Love. I’ve laid love on her tiny self. The kiss lands right above where she would have done all her thinking, and when I pull back, I see that my tears are now falling down the corners of her eyes.
And maybe, if time is eternal, and reality can be fractured into many versions, she will be somewhere else, growing and learning in another dimension. And I believe, more than anything, that I was always going to have lived a life that would cross paths with her. She was the lighthouse for me. My guide home.
And maybe, in an alternative universe, things would have been different. We all know that. You and I both. Perhaps my mother wouldn’t have cascaded down the stairs, and I wouldn’t have moved to an island and been broken apart by grief and other people. Maybe my existence would have rippled on for years being the same. I would have made manager, or partner, or started my own branch of Aurelia’s. I like to imagine that line, that stream of living, would have stretched out before me like a luminous white tablecloth. I also like to think I would have stopped having casual sex with men I met online—but we all wish that, don’t we? It takes time; I’m sure in dog years it takes aeons.
And what becomes of all our musings? All the wounds? All the pain and confusion? Well, I’ll tell you. You reabsorb them. You’re like a mechanical ocean recycling its own salt. You are the same size as a pool that houses one lone killer whale. That’s you. That’s the reach of a human being. A pool precisely that big. That’s your aura: your energy field.
Every person was once joined to another, upside down in the belly. Only ultrasounds and the gods can see you in there. Precious cargo inside precious cargo. That’s human. That’s us all. Grey hairs sprouting and spirals for fingerprints. We sigh even after we’ve gone. I wish you knew how loyal your casing is. How your body happily trots everywhere with you like an indebted lover. And it’s you who lays your body out under sweethearts and foes. You. You did that. Because sometimes you need to feel another person’s weight in order to feel your own.
But your body. Your beautiful, beautiful body. It clings to you through it all.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Some ideas leave you better than they found you, and I realise that (for many reasons) I owe a great deal of good in my life to this book being published.
I would like to acknowledge the ACT Writers Centre Hardcopy Program, especially Nigel Featherstone and Benjamin Stevenson. Someone once told me that you only need to be lucky once, and I owe my first wave of luck to Nigel and Ben.
I would also like to thank the City of Melbourne for awarding me a grant so that I could afford to receive mentoring from Nadine Davidoff, who taught me how to write honestly while keeping the reader very close to my heart.
Thank you to my agent, Grace Heifetz, the rarest, most electric creature of all. To my publisher and editor, Jane Palfreyman, a raven once literally fell to the ground at your feet, and now so do I. To the rest of the wonderful team at Allen & Unwin, including Angela Handley for sculpting this beast alongside me, Christa Munns for reading my work so closely, and Ali Lavau for your discerning eye and enthusiasm. All of you have worked so hard to help me to
