✍ - a memory of their mother
She’s fifteen, all spindly limbs while her cheeks still hold the roundness of childhood. Her mum holds none of that awkwardness; she’s thirty and radiant, her stomach swollen with child for the second time. Fee is worried about being a sister, sharing her parents’ love and affection, but she’s excited too. ‘Any day now, Felicia,’ her mum says, and Fee can believe it —— she looks like she might pop!
But she’s happy, her dad’s happy, and Fee is happy to see them happy.
When the time comes, she can’t wait to meet her little brother or sister. Her mum is glowing even through labour pains, one of her hands squeezing Fee’s in the car as her dad drives them to hospital.
And everything is so normal, so by the book, it’s hard to envision anything GOING WRONG.
“Does it hurt, mum?” she asks. Her dad is busy talking to a nurse and her mum is in a wheel-chair, one hand resting on the swell of her stomach and her other still holding onto Fee’s, gripping tightly with every contraction.
“Like hell,” her mum says with a grin. “But it’s worth it.”
Fee’s anxiety returns when her mum is about to be moved into the labour ward. She holds on tighter, reluctant to let go of her hand for reasons she can’t quite put into words. “Mum,” she says, but there’s so much emotion in that one word. All of her excitement, nerves and insecurities.
Her mum smiles at her, radiant even when her skin is aglow with perspiration. She urges Fee down, kisses the crown of her head and whispers soothing words. “You’ll be the best sister in the world, Felicia. I know you will. I love you.”
But Fee’s throat is still tight when she’s wheeled away. She wants to say she loves her too, wants to tell her it’ll all be okay, but she can’t find the words and before she knows it, it’s too late to say anything at all. Her dad kisses her forehead, says he’ll see her soon, but then he’s gone too and Fee is left alone staring at the empty space in the corridor where they used to be.
And that image stays with her for the rest of her life. Her mum smiling, her skin glowing and her stomach rounded with child. The words ‘I love you’ on her lips, the last time Fee will ever hear it from her.
