It's been a while since I've been on here. I've missed writing but such is the nature of life at the moment as I finish my diploma in Public Relations. It's always a great boost to stumble upon a good piece of writing though - and the following piece is an exceptional one. This year's (joint) winner of the prestigious Commonwealth Short Story Prize is none other than our very own Trinidadian writer Sharon Miller. Enjoy her breathtaking piece, 'The Whale House', below.
These offshore islands rise out of the water, rugged and black with deep crevices and craggy promontories. Her father used to tell the story of building the house. Dynamite under the water to blow a hole in the hill, a false plateau appearing like a shelf, the hill buckled up behind it. Sometimes, after heavy rain, stones clatter lightly on the roof as the soil shifts and moves behind the house. Her parents’ ashes are buried here in the rocky, flinty soil, but Laura and Mark scatter the baby’s ashes in the ocean, looking for black-finned porpoises as the talcum-powder dust hovers on the misty spray. When Mark releases the last of the ashes they drive the boat towards the house in silence. Laura is the first to slip over the side, wading carefully towards the shore, eyes on the horizon. Over the years she’s learned to watch for scorpion fish and the low-lying stingrays that rise like illusions when dusk slides into the bay.
Mark had cried in the hospital, but now, after they’ve scattered the ashes, there’s just the heat of blame rising off him. Even in the boat, he’d passed her with averted eyes. Later that night, she waits for him lying on her side of the two single beds pushed together. But by time he comes up from the jetty she is already dreaming hard. Under the sepia mosquito net, she lies on her side, a small feather pillow between her legs. The mosquitoes settle in dark clumps on the netting, whining softly into the night air.
By morning the dreams are gone, flying through the tiny holes in the net in sudden starling movements. The twin beds are pushed together and the net strains to cover both beds. She wakes with the mist of the dreams still heavy in the room and Over the years she’s learned to watch for scorpion fish and the low-lying stingrays that rise like illusions when dusk slides into the bay.moves up behind her husband, trying to wrap her body around his larger one. To reach him she must lie on the join in the bed. The hard knotted bump where the mattresses meet bites into her hip, but she lies still, matching her breathing to his soft exhalations; when she feels his breathing change, she knows he’s awake. Overnight their legs have tangled, their limbs sealing in the humidity but slowly he inches his leg away with the soft mollusk sound of flesh separating. She rolls back over onto her side and he leaves the room without speaking.
Would the baby have survived if she’d rested in the afternoons, stayed in bed as the doctor had advised? Mark has not accused her of endangering the baby. Such a bald statement would take them to a dangerous edge. So instead it is hovering between them, nebulous and monstrous. She had not rested enough, she knows, but it had been a time of neither wanting or not wanting, a strangely remote period. It is that indifference that she is exploring, testing it as gently as a tongue on a wound. She’d thought the feeling hidden, so solidly concealed that she’d doubted its potency. But now there is no baby, the grief has come upon her, making her bones hollow. An empty womb is punishment no man can understand. And if he did, there would be no judgment.
Out the window, the tide is changing, the sea frothing and roiling into the tight channel. But beyond, in the harbor, it expands in relieved swells, glad to be past the slick mountain walls. Four months ago, Laura had gone to see Dr Harnaysingh. She’d made the appointment because at forty-six, her body was suddenly an unknown entity. Once calm and predictable, a source of surety and absolutes, it was now dense, fleshy, prone to thickened skin and odd middle-aged lust. She’d missed three periods, but pregnancy was not something she’d considered. She’d been researching menopause and hormone-replacement options. When she’d told Mark, he’d lifted her nightie, rested his dark head between her ribs and hipbones, and traced gentle circles around the hard space above her pubic bone. She’d imagined a light swooping and fluttering deep inside of her as Mark murmured to the quicksilver heartbeat, that mere conspiracy of cells. A baby.
The day she’d felt the new baby’s first movements, she cracked three eggs. She separated the yolks from the whites; each yellow globe quivering gently on the edge of a shell as the clear albumin streamed into the bowl. Alone, in their blue bowl, the yolks leaned into one another, separated by the thinnest of membranes. Gently she skewered them, holding the bowl tightly to gain purchase on the slippery surfaces. When she next saw Dr Harnaysingh, she lied, smoothly and easily, assuring him that she was being careful and staying off her feet. At home, she continued to bake; cakes, casseroles, soufflés; balancing on the stepladder as she lugged down heavy iron pots and ancient mixing bowls. She even weeded the back stairs, squatting heavily on the mossy concrete, the varicose veins in her ankles thudding in protest.
‘Shouldn’t you be resting more?’ Mark asked.
The baby was born at just twenty eight weeks.
‘Come baby, breathe.’ Dr Harnaysingh said.
Mark sat in the corner of the room his head in his hands. Laura stretched the lavender baby along the inside of her arms, the perfect feet pressing against her breasts, the heels of her hands supporting the fragile head. Cupping the tender skull with both hands, she kissed the violet fingers, ears and toes, running her fingers along the butterfly eyebrows. To keep her warm she pulled the baby close to her breast, swaddling and rocking her. After three hours, Dr Harnaysingh sedated her so they could pry the baby from her.
‘Can babies feel regret?’ Laura asked Dr Harnaysingh as the opiate dripped into her veins.
http://www.granta.com/New-Writing/The-Whale-House
Click on the link above to finish reading 'The Whale House'
