She says

 

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She says

NINETIETH BIRTHDAY

They must suppose, I suppose, that I have no idea what is happening around me. But right here, I have the most privileged position. And I miss nothing. I never have. But, just because that is so, there is no need for me to let everyone else in on all that I know. However much they are my family, and however much I love them.

And however much my telling them much - even now, not all; there is much we all should keep to ourselves - but telling them much might help them along their ways. Even do me some good. But there is so much of all this, the business of living, that we each have to get through in our own way.

It is something to be done for yourself. By your self. It is the making of you. Just as it is of me. And I have been today ninety years in the making. The making of me.

All around, they're making a fuss. I told them don't bother, but they are "family," they said, "we are family, we love you, and we want to do this". And since I had already made my position clear, that I didn't want any fuss made however much love was going around, and they'd listened in the way they do to me these days but then gone straight ahead with all their plans to celebrate the ninety years of my making (making their plans just out of my earshot they thought) well, what could I do? After all, I'll let you in on this, you don't get to be ninety years old worrying about what other people are going to get up to anyway, regardless of what you might say. Especially family, and especially in the name of love.

Besides, I like both. Family and love. The family has grown spreading out from under and around my skirts. I am mother, grand-mother, great-grandmother, many variations upon aunt, letting alone sister, daughter, wife, and however many permutations of cousin, all because this family is a broad spreading one.

Right now, I am the longest-lived, perched here at the apex of the pyramid, the matriarch of all these people, this family, who bear my name, blood and genes, and other attributes you will recognise too, some of which I have tried to disown - the attributes, not the off-spring. But neither proved easily disposable. For they are part of me, and that's that.

My ninetieth birthday, and for just a tiny blessed while I have had my way, what I called my 'birthday wish' on my birthday, a little time alone, here, no-one fussing over me, checking my hair, straightening my clothes, pushing this pesky chair somewhere I didn't really want it, into the sunlight, or out of the breeze, or almost anywhere except where I asked.

Bless them, they don't really know (and I suppose there is some fear too that I am the model of themselves to be) that odd as it may be, what I am saying I really do want, I am accurately stating my preferences, my wishes - so they will put me where they want me not where I ask because they suspect that my mind wanders these days. Well, of course it does!

Is it so hard to imagine that when you have ninety years of making to look back over, when you can't move except in a wheeled chair that now someone else has to wheel for you, so that when you are put somewhere without someone else close-by to wheel you, you can't wander anywhere, you have nowhere to wander except in your mind?

Certainly not 'off' to cause consternation up and down the street and have the police called out to cruise slowly the neighbourhood looking for an old lady on her own, possibly singing, possibly not, but certainly relishing every instant of grasped at and held held held the way a lover used to be, freedom.

When I could still walk, I would walk away, but now, the legs my lovers knew so flexible, so muscular, so fleet, they are marooned here in this chair with its disguising rugs and cushions, disguised so that it appears great-grandmama is really sitting in her favourite easy chair, not a medical contraption. It's all right, it's considerate, and besides, it was another time when nobody quite listened to what I said, that I actually appreciated the technology of my chair. I was impressed with the gleam of the metal and the softness of the arm supports, and the smoothness - I wanted to see the springs and pistons and so on - of the hydraulics of this contraption.

But I can't go up or down stairs.

Regardless, the rugs and the cushions crept upon my functional, technological chair, growing on it like lichen, quite colourful I imagine if I still had the eyes to pick out colours like I used to, covering it. More each morning as I was lifted from my bed by the husky young male nurse who is around to do those things. When he feels my legs, of course, he feels 'sticks', and just lifts me as if it is his job, which it is. But I have been lifted like that before by other young men - not all husky, some, though - and my legs were not confused with sticks then, and when my cheek rested on a male cheek those times, it was the start of something purposeful, not what it is now, an 'accident' I contrive. And still enjoy.

In this chair, alone, I've been left blessedly alone, most probably not because I asked but because the whole house has failed to contain the secret they all wish to contain from me - that as many of them as could possibly be here are here. That I am to have the family birthday party of all birthday parties with everyone here who could be, all presently hiding from me, pretending it is not about to happen.

But this is my house, and every creak in it tells me how many souls are under its roof. Today it is bursting with the living, for once out-weighing the dead - for this house is heavy with them, too, sharing the on-going unrelenting and overall not too bad days of my dotage. Or so I have read my situation, this advanced age of mine, defined in books.

All the passed-away ones are here, the ones who wait upon me, I suppose, though there is no contact. I don't talk with ghosts, I've not turned to that, looked for comfort from the 'other side', 'over there', heaven or hell, wherever. No Tarot, no palmistry, no funny chats with funnier people or priests.

It's simply that this house is a container, of the living and the dead of this family. As the oldest of the former, and tragedy aside, the next of the latter, I am the link in this house to all who have lived in it, and will die in it, or as members of the broader wider vast and loving family, those who return here wherever they might actually die.

This house speaks of them. Family is seeped into it. And it echoes - not with words, not with sense, no one talks to me, offers me any sort of spiritual guide-book, none of that, but they are here the passed-on ones certainly as are all the living breathing ones the other sides of the four walls of this room preparing my birthday surprise that I have known about for ninety years.

Really, you can't have eighty-nine birthdays without learning something about birthday parties, ceremonies, the marking of time.

So I pretend I have noticed nothing, not the whispering arrivals, not the sprinting feet of children in corridors and in the garden outside shushed to quiet which never lasts and which I love to hear anyway, the laughter, songs, sudden eruptions of argument and interjecting adult querulousness that is the core of this and every other family always in the making.

Which is everyone everywhere. I know there are people older than me. Ninety is nothing. Well, not nothing, it is ninety years, nine decades, almost a century. But I have never been impressed with numbers. They add, subtract, multiply, all the things numbers in chalk and ink can do. They always could, it was only us who needed to catch up, to figure things out. The numbers were always waiting. So, ninety waited for me. And I have arrived.

I don't have any idea whether one hundred is waiting for me, whether I will live that long. It's not of any real consequence to me. I've just told you why. The numbers happen anyway.

Some people will argue that numbers can be used to explain love laughter tears and pain. They're thinking on other planes from me. I accept their arguments that this could be so, that numbers might rule all, everything to do with living.

But then, I have never turned away well-presented young people at the door sharing their own truths with me, either. Hence I know so much but only a little, if you total it all up, about religions and the stars and the likelihood of fate. And how to tip the balance by prayer or abstinence or other formal behaviour it's so much fun to skip doing.

But ninety was always waiting, as one hundred may yet be, with very little in that to do with me. This family of mine are healthy, always have been, and there may be numbers somewhere in the explanation of that, so it is a deeper thing than just me that I should have made the age of ninety.

The years alone would mean nothing if I was in any sort of pain, but that hasn't happened either. I have no more than the aches and strains of a body that used to be able to do so much, and feel so much, cooped into this contraption - all the rugs and cushions of it good enough for padding, for softening, but they can't keep out what's inside me, the bits and pieces that tighten, stretch and then won't loosen, won't listen to my brain that used to say, when I wasn't listening, "relax, calm down, release", all the messages it conveyed to my body to bring me smoothly through these ninety years.

I wish I had listened a little harder then, perhaps, but it was all on automatic really, wasn't it? We all are when we are young and everything is working the way it should just because that's the way it should. I can think hard as I like now, form imperious commands with my thinking brain, send them out, and nothing happens - the aches strains stiffness remain until they are replaced by others equally recalcitrant and shifting. Nothing happens. It wouldn't, it needs to be automatic. We do our best on automatic. There's some wisdom for you, ninety years in the making. 'The best stuff happens without thinking.'

It won't last, this time alone, this period here where I have been granted my wish for some time alone - and because it served the purpose of my family with their clandestine plan to surprise me, they gave me it.

For I can hear them approaching now, quietly, but not so quiet as the ghosts of my house they sidle past without any sense of the other presences they are sidling past. I can hear the suppressed giggles of the younger ones, the children who if they aren't careful will be sent outside until 'the cat is out of the bag' before me and my oh so surprised and slightly bewildered eyes.

It is the gigglers that I want to spend my birthday with, the littlest ones who know this is as much of a joke as I do, not the oh so serious ones, the adults here, the planners and the setter-uppers who've put so much into their surprise for me ninety years in the making.

But I have no intention of disappointing anyone, any of them. All of this, however much of it is for me, and however much of it is for you, my broadening widening loving family, it's been ninety years in the making, and I am ready, I'm waiting, let all the celebrations begin, all cats out of every bag, and if, just momentarily, my attention seems to have wandered, I look a little sleepy perhaps, worn down by too much excitement - think of it as that if you wish - I'll be thinking too, how I am come here, all of you with me, ninety years, ninety.

I do hope nobody has beggared themselves to buy ninety candles. A symbolic one will do - a symbolic one. That will be me. Ninety years made, the living link, the first in the family, the last in the family, the symbolic one… and oh, how I got here. How I got here!

I shall be thinking how I got here.

BURYING MY HUSBAND

All the time we spent together ends here. For the last time, I stand over you, but there is no face now, no smile, no grimace of pain, turned to me. There is not the clear skin of your brow that became lined and flaking as you aged, and as disease, insidious, but proclaiming itself all the while for those with eyes to see (but neither of us could, and then it was there) taking you, slow and ugly, taking you inch by inch and heartbeat by heartbeat right before my eyes, tutored by then, seeing it happen, you, taken away, so that all I can see here is the shiny surface of a dark-wood coffin, dirt scattered on it, but nothing of your face, eyes, corrupted brow, your lips.

Husband, you are gone now, completely, but you were leaving me all those years, the years of your sickness, that un-manned you, that crept up and in to you and eviscerated you, soul, heart and last of all, bodily, humiliating you, disgusting you, reducing you as we all fear we might be and will do anything to avoid, except, when it begins, we believe it is not happening - you refused to believe, you denied, you sought strength there, in your will, in your sense of yourself, in your being what you had always been.

But it was not enough. No physical strength would be. No denial. No identity. This was too big for you, this smaller than any part of you thing that crept in and took over all of you, every part of you, and then took you. Brought us both here, me standing above a hole in the ground you are lowered into - and it is no longer a hole, it is occupied. But there is no-one there.

Are you? Are you still somewhere you can hear me? Can you hear but not answer? I have sent the children away. They are over there, twenty metres away, thirty, an eternity? They are here, but they are gone, away from us. We made them, you and I, they are flesh of our flesh and other things of us besides, and entirely themselves too.

But we made them, fine children all of them, some that will achieve more than others, some who I will bewail and then be proud of, others the reverse of that, all of them going on, being themselves, all of them.

It will be there now, in them, a seed of fear that what came to you might come to them, that the seed is not fear only, but a seed that you will have passed onto them with your seed. The doctors cannot say. You struck them dumb. Even as you lay there wasting, they couldn't say, with the laboratory of you there for them to plumb, and darling, how they did!, the pain you had as they delved and dived into you, chasing an end to your pain. But that could only come one way, which you always knew, and I did too, and the doctors also, but you were there, a laboratory for them to delve and dive in, and how could they resist, all the while saying, to you, to me, it might be "to some good", this "might work", or that, "return you to health", return you to me, and to yourself… but we all knew, didn't we?

Our children cannot know, they cannot be sure as we were. All they know is that a seed is in them that right now is fear and lodged; they hope that this fear is only a short-term lodger, and neither of us would deny them this hope, for they are only children, our children.

But I ask you now outside their hearing as I never asked you within yours, will I be damned for asking God to take a child of ours, a child of yours, and spare you?

A hellish bargain, but I could never decide which child I could sacrifice, and God clearly couldn't either, although he could have had no doubt of my sincerity as I wept and howled over you in the middle of the night when you were deaf to my weeping and my hellish bargain, and no-one in the house could hear me (I wouldn't let that happen) and I must have done that so well because God didn't hear me, all our children live, and all but one too far away to be here on time, they are all here twenty to thirty metres away, all healthy, all frightened, and you are gone, and God couldn't have been listening. Or didn't I offer him enough to preserve you? What more could I - a child's life for a husband's?

Do you hear me? Do you hate me for revealing what I just have? That I could sacrifice, even if only in my mind, one of ours to claim back one of mine? Were you ever that, husband, my husband? Forty one years together, take out those last years of memory-blasting disease, thirty eight - many years, though. Not all good years. But some great ones. Enough great ones to leapfrog the bad ones, to link up all the years with good times, corral away from recall the bad ones, except they return, bad memories - they home, sharp and sudden. The good times are the background, the unnoticed glow, the ongoing. The bad times spike through to return pain.

But we all have pain, and must learn to handle it, to deal, bargain with it, place it. Do you have pain now, is that all gone? If the unlistening God is listening now I pray this, that your agony really has ceased, that now your body is unfeeling your spirit is also released from all that extravagance of hurting, the arching back, the cracking joints, the sweat running from round your distended eyeballs, your body failing, falling away from you.

I don't want to remind you of any of that, the last years of hurt and humiliation, the final years of not knowing me, your children, having no idea why you were alive, here upon Earth if it was only to be scourged, drained, racked, broken. If you can hear me, think back further, think back to the links of the good years, the great years.

When we loved, husband, when love wasn't just a wry word, when love wasn't something slantingly invoked in letters to friends, bandied to children fallen out of it, adults by then, parents themselves, our spiteful, wounded children wanting to be hugged again by Mum and Dad, blind to their own children bewildered by the war and spite between their Mum and Dad.

When we were young - do you remember us 'young'? - starting out, first married, just you and I, no children, no war spite or bewilderment, just two of us to come home to and be out with, the two of us closed in on each other, no room then for anyone else, though we humoured our friends, put up with workmates, casual acquaintances, all them, the others, but we were complete in ourselves, we finished each other off. Didn't we almost do that, husband, as we explored each other, as our bodies raged one upon one, our flesh stuck together, tears in it as we parted, then, when love was sex and sex was ferocious and loving and soft and vicious and demanding and exhausting and all in itself and us in it and it in us, and there wasn't enough, of sex, of each other, time, place, opportunity, there was never enough, we couldn't get enough of each other. But we tried, voracious and fearful. You took me to fear then, what I felt with you, and I saw it in your eyes, too, the fear of us in flight, exultant and damned, surely such ecstasy reserved for angels, weren't we stealing something not meant for us, and punishment must follow?

It didn't. Even when I thought it was me alone punished, and I was pregnant, denying it, frightened by it, knowing it weeks before I told you, for fear of something I couldn't say. I couldn't put either thing into words - telling you, and why I was frightened of telling you - but then I did, and the fear evaporated because you became you twice over with what you now knew, that you, husband, had made with me, wife, us into 'father' and 'mother'.

We were more gentle with each other afterwards, not wanting to hurt the baby, but we were still paired by exultancy. Except, I never told you, though you knew, I guessed, and neither of us could put it into words, that there was another exultancy now, one barred from you, one growing in me, unique to me, special to all women, barred from all men, the exultancy of fresh life ballooning in me, cell by cell, expanding at a rate only my heartbeat could measure, my thoughts, my aches and strains as the weight of the life increased, that you could never know with your heartbeat, thoughts, concern for my aches and strains.

I saw your face as you watched out first child born. You were terrified for me. You were agonised as childbirth ripped me open (though I was to learn this first time was one of the easier ones). But my pain, I couldn't see it, no mirrors there thank God, but my pain must have been horrific to watch if your face, your fear (you pleaded with the nurses to do something, anything, for me at one stage) showed me anything of what you saw.

There was nothing anyone could do because I was just minutes away from our child appearing, the crown of her head about to be visible. And yes it hurt, I wanted to scream - but I couldn't because of what I could see on your face, that if I had you might have been maddened by your helplessness to do anything for me.

I kept the vision of that look upon your face, your fear and rage for me, and I never expected to see it again, because I promised myself I would not allow you into a birthing room again. But you were there every time except the once, the bad time I was early and you were away on business, and the knife did what my body couldn't. They give you something for the knife - men can understand the pain of the knife - but there is nothing that's enough for birth as nature allows it.

I never expected to see that look upon your face, never wanted to, but I did again. I never told you this, you wouldn't have understood, by then you wouldn't have understood anything, but that look was back in the last months before you died.

The pain was all yours then, what you were seeing I can't possibly know. But the grimaces, the distortion of your face, the screams, some silent, some yowls, were all yours, and I was the one who couldn't look then.

Forgive me for looking away, my husband, sharer of the good times, the bad, past lover, antagonist, old friend, simmering rival, petty and marvellous man, hero and clay-foot of my life with you, then I couldn't look - not as you did watching me give birth, when your eyes were locked to mine, and you knew then as I was to know four decades later there is nothing to be done when pain has take undislodgable residence in someone you love like this.

You are gone. Your pain with you, both taken from me. I have memories, times that come back to memory, and I have our children. I have life, husband, but you need not be jealous of that. For I do not have you. No more.

What we were, what we made together has become me alone - for all that what we had, the things, the children, the places we have been and made a little ours by visiting, I am now on my own.

As are you. I am healthy. I have no idea, how could I, when or if I shall ever see you again. Can you even hear me now?

No-one else could, ever, not hear me the way you could, knowing what I meant, and me knowing you that way, too, except for the times we surprised each other, which could just as often turn to tears as to shocked laughter, that there was still this in us, the possibility of the unexpected between us, of all people, some thought, some word or deed the one never believed possible in the other until it was out there in the open, shock and reaction following hard on the arrival of 'impossibility'.

We'd say that was what kept us alive, kept us young even, that we could still surprise each other. Our children might find us laughing together and be perplexed, joke that we were both going nuts - but they'll find out themselves, everybody does.

Those things, out in the open, things we might have kept from each other - disguised exultancies, shared things not completely shared, given things a little held back - all of them, well, not all of them, for you are dead now, but most of them, revealing the small piece unshared, the fraction ungiven, rounded-off finally, between us, where it would bring us to tears, shock, laughter, but at last out in the open.

Where you are not, husband. You are closed away, locked in your dark-wood box, soil on its top, a hint, a suggestion of the hard packing of dirt to come, when I have walked away from here, been driven away, with my family to my house. I must become used to using the first person singular talking of our things, before our children. They have already begun telling me you are gone - how could I not know?

They say, "Dad's dead, Mum, you have to go on." Of course, but, who's "Dad"? You were never 'Dad' to me. To them - who else? To me, somebody else.

The second youngest boy is walking towards me, husband. They have decided that I have had enough time with you now. They are our children, but they have no right to decide that. Only we had that right, to decide how much time between us was 'enough'. And we have been cheated of that. But then, there never would have been enough, my husband, my lover, co-habitant of the realms of pain we shared and could never feel as the other was racked in it. I have my own pain now, your absence.

He was always the one the others chose, remember, the second youngest boy, to bring things to us, requests, suggestions, ideas that our children had put together, wanted to share, felt was best.

He is the natural diplomat, the sympathetic one, the fellow they all felt was best at putting things. Perhaps even at pulling the wool over the olds' eyes. He's a lot like you. And a lot like me. They all are.

"Hello, darling. Is it time to go now?"

CHILDREN GONE

So, they are gone, all gone now, the last of my flesh moved away from me. No longer under their mother's skirts, no longer holding onto my legs with arms almost too short to reach around me, until, all of a sudden, I was having to tilt up my head to meet my boys' eyes, and two of the girls too.

The third girl, Amy, inherited her grandmother's small stature, but also her fiery nature, and she's felled brothers and sisters, lovers, careless men, who've towered over her.

That part of Mum passed straight through me to her, but I didn't miss it. I saw what the stubborn streak of independence did to her, and my own sister. Besides, we all find our own way of establishing ourselves.

No-one in this family was ever unsure about who I was, mother, wife, always me. At the centre of it all.

But now, there can't be a centre. There is only Tom and I here, binary again, more warily perhaps, but circling each other alone as we did almost thirty-five years ago before we two stars merged and began making the small satellites that have all gone now, as I close the door, I'm closing it right now, even before my second youngest boy's car is round the nearest corner. He'll understand. I'm not a waver, I've never waited until there was nothing left to see, until everything was out of sight. The door's closed. Not forever, of course, they all come back.

And Tom will push his way through it after he's finished at work. He'll come home. He made his farewell this morning over breakfast. His glance met mine as he left, his small daily leaving, for work, and I could see what was written there, what he was telling me, what he was assuring me, but I already knew it, "he'll be back, they all come back. They haven't really gone". If he'd put it into words I know he would have talked about piles of laundry, raids on the kitchen, family affairs, birthdays, anniversaries, special times special to our family alone.

I know all that, know it deep into my bones, my mother-bones that my children all carry in them, with Tom's father-bones and the bones of all the fathers and mothers of our families back to whenever, I know that.

I also know that after dark, as late as dark gets, just before the dawn, this house was a place of breathing. All of us, silent, but I could hear each and every life here under this roof breathing, my ears pricked for the first sign of irregularity, the first indication of wrongness, when my mother-bones, my mother-blood -breasts -legs -eyes -arms could rise and do something, even if I could do nothing. Here, all under the same roof I could reach them, they were here, I was here, we were within touch. Tom, I've tried to explain - he says he knows what I mean. But he doesn't. Even if he does, he can't.

Now the house is the dawn-breaking breath of only the two of us, the birthdays the anniversaries the special occasions aside. And there are many of them - Tom has pointed out how many - I know how many. But they are gone, there is only the two of us now, and my mother-senses will dull - how could they not when there is no-one here for them to be keen for, except Tom, and me, of course.

I will not be able to reach them beyond this house, even though, the time Kate was hurt in her car, a state away, a thousand miles, I knew. I screamed in the middle of nowhere and the whole supermarket went quiet. I couldn't wait to get home, to a phone, to Tom, to Kate, yes I knew and thank God she wasn't bad, I knew that even, but the shock cut through first before I knew she wasn't that bad out of the horror of it.

The boy driving died but I couldn't find anything real to say to his mother at the funeral, I was too glad, too happy Kate wasn't - so yes I know my mother-bones -ears -breasts, all of it remains aware of them, my satellites, but still, she was so far away, it took so long to reach her to be sure, utterly sure she wasn't gone forever.

Tom was wonderful. Even before the police called, confirming the worst that turned out not to be as bad as it could have been, he believed me, in the middle of it all, I was hysterical, I admit, I had to be, but he stepped right past all that, came in close to me, held me, and as his arms closed closer like that, like they always had, the phone call came, and we were both calm then, calm enough, so that Tom answered, he took the details, then knew he could give me the phone to hear them all again, as he knew I had to hear them, every detail, to drain the horror out of it all, and I'd do it without losing my calmness, our calmness, then.

Even so, there is only the two of us now, not even a dog now, I couldn't watch another one waste and die, for hours and hours only me, under this roof, in this house, this great lung of a house, this beating heart of a house, that for years and years has contained all of us, seeming sometimes too big, sometimes too small, and now, as the aloneness closes tighter around me - his car will be well round the corner now, and I didn't wave, he knew I wouldn't, but I didn't - the aloneness is crowded in close, but the house seems wide and hollow, sighing, the great bellowing breaths of it when we were all here, a whole family, reduced to small sighs, whistling pants.

It's me, not it, you understand, making the tiny noises, taking in the shallow breaths, looking around me, standing here just inside the door that has been opened, passed through, in and out, however many million times by my family.

You wouldn't know it to look at it - there are no threadbare sections of carpet from all the feet that have skipped scuffed shuffled run slid along the hall and living rooms of this house, no small fingerprints on the walls, forgotten for decades - to look at it you could never guess the life-hours totalled up within the bounds of my house, thirty five years from the time of only two of us, then three in Mum's last terrible year, when the house was quiet, sad, and tense, and she forgave me for the times I was unable to confront what was happening to her - her last words, she whispered a blessing on me and all Tom and mine, which was my first child, six months in my belly, still to come, and then Mum was gone.

The house of two that was three then two became home to three again, and all of a sudden, without any real planning or certainty why, as if the house and Tom and I had opened new doors to life itself, my mother's blessing light on us and protecting, I had the next three children, one a year, as if Tom and I had agreed on a five year plan, each new child a productivity bonus - the years of nappies and talcum powder and squeals and tears, baby-teeth, dashes to the hospital, the neighbours shaking their heads in something like bewilderment. Four children one upon the other, and then, changing nothing between us, everything changed, and there were no more, not then - ten years respite, I can call it that now, it was.

Until, two more, out of nowhere again, after the respite, a decade when Tom and I had completely forgotten what babies was all about - we were used to dirty socks, school reports, friends we didn't always approve of, candles stretching around birthday cakes' circumferences instead of patterned in the middle by then - forgotten about nappies, safety pins and strollers tangling with shopping trolleys.

I remember the shocked expression on his face, the same look I must have shown my doctor when she told me I was pregnant, shock that switched to a beaming smile and swept me up into his arms and ten years flowed off both of us, and we teased each other about everything we'd forgotten to do, the exact thing we must have forgotten to do, and none of the kids had any idea why their Mum and Dad, all of a sudden, and for a couple of weeks, were acting younger than any of them, the oldest just over fourteen, the youngest - till then, and didn't that cause some upset? - just ticking over into double figures.

It was her tenth birthday when the first contractions came, and the fourteen year old was left in charge while Tom drove me in to the hospital. We couldn't be angry when it turned out 'being in charge' involved collecting every spare piece of change in the house to hire a taxi and follow us in, even bringing the dog, which they had to tie up outside - the ten year old couldn't understand why everything couldn't go her way on her birthday - but she soon forgot when she had a new little sister nothing like any of her dolls, which, she told me seriously the next day she was too old for anyway.

Just to rub it in, Jake came along the year after, the same unexpected mayhem of a rush to Maternity, the dog left home this time, which is the only place you'll find damage marks of anything, human or animal in my beautiful house, where she tried to chew her way through the bottom of the back door to get into the house and then I don't know what she was thinking.

Jake was easy, two hours labour, but Tom and I had decided that six was definitely enough, and I had a tubal ligation while I was in there. He had a vasectomy too. It was our own little celebration, a mutual decision, symbolic - we'd been fruitful together, we'd choose this, too, the end of fruitfulness, although the doctors said both were reversible, the little incisions in us, the tiny knots tied inside of each of us. We listened to them, knew what they were saying, but, holding hands, we knew that there were enough knots binding us already, living breathing knots, a couple more of our own was going to seal things as they were, perfectly as they were.

It wasn't Jake who left last. He and his sister proved different from their older siblings, both independent, determined, self-determining, great kids, but urgent to get out into the world.

It was my third who left last, he was thirty when he went, just now, his car well round the corner, well down the road, too far to see my wave, even if I opened the door right now and waved big arm-swings over my head, big enough to be seen for miles, he's too far away now to see that his mother, against everything he thought he knew about her, is still standing at the front door of his home, waving him 'goodbye goodbye goodbye don't go too far, please never go too far, you my child, any of you, all of you, my children that I have had and now have gone'. Gone where you are, gone where I know you all are, but gone now.

I already know you'll be back, there's our family Sunday lunch, I'll see you then, the house puffed full with all the breathing and the heartbeats and the excited voices of my children and their's, the barking of all your dogs, the puzzled looks of new girlfriends and boyfriends, like those who've been and gone before.

And the ones who stayed, your wives, your husbands, if they still remember how it was the first time they came into this house, perhaps offering small smiles and shrugs of sympathy and understanding to them, the new ones.

If you stay, if you join my family, the puzzlement will fade. I've seen it before, I hope not too many times again, because almost all my children are partnered now, and I like them all, their partners, I wouldn't want to see any of them go, even though it has happened several times already.

The lost ones are still family too, they visit, they talk, sometimes I meet their new friends, and I realise how big a family can become, and how many lives a house can embrace.

I know all this, know it, but his car is miles away by now, Tom still hours to put in at work, and for the first time, it's just the two of us again. Till Sunday. Till Sunday.

But Sunday's so many days away.

MARRIAGE

Six children. Beautiful children. All individuals. Every one of them. All six of them. When I think that this body has borne six children, such a weight of humanity, my thoughts go nowhere. It is too amazing for words, for thoughts.

I know what I've done, had these lives begin in me, pass out of me, in pain and joy, the first of it for each of them and me and Harry, each one a package for life of pain and joy and a hundred other things. Six. Six of them. My children, beings made from my being.

The fruit of my marriage. When I can find a little time alone, this time just before sunrise when no-one else in the house knows that I am already awake, awake and aware, not Harry, not the children, just me and the dog sitting here in the kitchen, alone, this faithful dog that has come to rely on me and our early starts, our secret starts, with the house still except for the breath and spirits of the seven sleepers around and above us, the dog and I alone, numbers eight and nine.

But that's unfair. If you asked Harry I'm sure he'd promote me to Number One, he'd say that I'm the engine of this family - the breath and spirit of the whole family if he knew I used such words thinking about all of us - he'd tell anyone and mean it, he means everything he says about me, that I'm this family's Number One. The dog doesn't care what number she is.

Sometimes, though, I care. Care a lot, a lot deeper than anything anyone in my family can say or point out in numbers or degrees.

I know what Harry means, how sincere he is about my holding this family together, this ship of eight plus dog. I'm aware he's aware of what I do, and is grateful for it. We hold each other up, have since the first when Mum was dying and then the kids, the first four, were underfoot all the time, crawling and sicking all around the house and the pressure was on at work, he was having to put in extra hours anyway. But doing much more, trying to get as much overtime as he could, all those little mouths to feed.

And he did it, though he says he did the easy stuff, it was me at the battlefront, I was the one who had no peace, no release, he understood - and that got me through so many days, knowing he knew and was there in spirit wherever he actually was and whatever else was on his mind at work.

I don't doubt Harry, never have. The way we are together, I haven't seen it too many other places. Believe me I know how bad it can get, my friends who've fallen apart, their marriages, their homes, their lives, I've seen them, and occasionally I've had to put friendships aside rather than see too much of it and allow any of their bitterness to creep into this house - it's self-preservation, it's family preservation, it's something I've never told Harry. But, I think he knew why I stopped seeing some people, really old friends to both of us. I know he knew.

We've always held each other up, bolstered each other. The dog knows. I tell you everything, don't I, 'faithful'? How can I tell him I can't do it anymore? Tell him when I've never had to say any of it before. We've always known, read each other's minds I'd say if it wasn't simpler than that.

Oh God, I love him, I do, him and all of them. Listen to them breathing under the roof of this house - I love, love it, love them. But I can't do it anymore, can I?

Wag your tail? That's simple isn't it, just look up at me, like any other morning, place the gaze of your wet eyes square on mine. Mine are dry, it's not something I can cry about, I can't even cry about wanting to leave, not stay, just walk away, be gone from all and every thing and person I love. I'm thinking of it, I'm sitting here thinking about it. Why doesn't he know? He's always known. I've never had to say anything before, never had to spell anything out, hint it even. Harry's known, sometimes before me. I don't know how he did that, but he did.

He's silent now, all the time this has been building, a year, more, eighteen months, he hasn't noticed. Has he cared? Doesn't he care anymore? Is that the answer? Of course he does. I'd know if the love had gone away. It's not that. It's not that simple. I need to talk, I need to sit down and talk about everything that's built up crushing me. Seven of them, the seven I love above all else in the world, and not one of them has asked, not one has noticed the change in me. Is that what this is - I'm invisible, taken for granted, just 'Mum'. No more than 'darling', functioning mother and wife, with no other life?

Should I stand up and scream out loud, 'faithful', wake the house, shake the house? You tilt your head, your eyes still locked on mine. You know when I'm asking a question, an important question, don't you? You know. But you can't answer me, you can't suggest anything. You're here though, every morning, last thing before dawn, you're here. Why doesn't anyone ask, at least ask me, how come no matter who's out of bed first they'll always find me already up? Has everyone just become used to me being around, always here, any time of day and night?

What if I open the door now, walk away, down the street, disappear? I needn't go forever. A day, maybe two, enough for them to miss me, until, when I come back, I'll just walk in, all surprised, playing innocent, wondering what all the fuss is about, 'what are the police doing here?'.

But that's just play acting, sand-pit blackmail. I'm too old for that now. Am I too old for anything? Is all the best of it past me, behind me, nothing ahead now but every day the same?

It isn't. Even today, you and I here, 'faithful', sitting here in this sleeping house, it's not like yesterday, or the day before or last week or last year. Like but not the same. I keep finding little differences, enough to be going on with.

I keep finding them. Or, is it more truthful to say, they find me?

It is. It isn't the same day everyday, because of all the funny little things that happen. And they don't just happen, do they? They're people things, at the end of it, family things. Nine of us all under one roof, two of us over forty years old, six under twenty, you all your dog years young, how could every day be the same? It's not possible. All this life, doing being, getting on, changing, switching through every emotion, swinging 'ups' and crashing 'downs', no-one feeling exactly the same at the same time.

Am I in the middle of that? Is that what being Number One means, having to take all the changes, the shifts, the battles, the unexpected upsets, take them on myself and filter them, mother and wife, make them smaller, better, make them go away?

Except they don't go away. I smother them, I envelop them, but they're still here, the bitternesses the hurts the rankles, inside me. Are they my children too, the bitter offspring, cancerous inside me, contained and hived away from where they started but locked and destructive still in my stomach, squeezed around my heart, fire and sting in my brain? Mother and wife, wife and mother, blanket and sponge, can't anyone hear me? Can't they!?

Did I scream, 'faithful', did I? Did you hear me, did anyone else in the house hear me? You haven't moved, the rest of the house is still, still silent.

Am I the only one who hears my screams? God, they split my head, the screech of them. My throat tastes of blood afterwards - I can't say a word to anyone, my throat is so raw, my tongue swelled up, puffed up. It clogs in my throat, I can't breath, I feel I'm about to collapse on the floor, my last breath here right now. But no-one has ever noticed. They don't hear my screams, they don't see me suffocating, and I don't blame them at all.

There is no blame to be blamed. I am here, like this, and what I do next is up to me. I won't leave. Not my sleeping seven, I won't leave them. I won't leave you, faithful dog. Or this house. This house, the sleepers - they are love, whatever they miss when they fail to hear and see me. I miss nothing. None of their hurts, none of their joys, their bewilderments, their excitement and panics, their determination and confusion.

I am mother and wife, I am Number One; I am centre and first outrider, pivot and perimeter guard. This is the place of me and mine, my house, my progeny, my being and the fruit of my being. I am here, you and I, faithful dog, sharer of the dawn, welcomer of the first light.

It is here soon, my house will be rising soon, descending, meeting merging and joined.

I am the glue of this, the maker and the sealer, and only you know how, at the last of the darkness of night, what I see I see again - it is here, fresh light of the fresh sun of the fresh day, and we have work to do, you and I, all the work of love and being.

And nobody around to tell anything about it.

Hear? - someone is waking. There, another.

CAREER

It's not either or. I know that, of course. Nothing's ever completely either or. Except, how much do I want this? And that? There is this and that. I have a perfectly good job, a job that can take me far, a job I enjoy. I'm also in love with David. They aren't exclusive things. They aren't. Then why have I always felt that I'm confronting a choice, that I have to make a decision, either or?

OK, OK, lets put this down in logical order. I'm working in the publicity department of an international hotel chain. I'm drawing attention to myself. I've had two promotions in the last year. There are hints I'm next in line to go overseas for experience with our hotels everywhere.

I have a career in the making, a real career, something that I have worked for - the rewards are what I deserve. I'm good at what I do. I want to do it. I've always wanted to do it.

Those are all the pluses. Negatives? I work very long hours, every minute of them devoted to the job, to representing the company, to shielding it from anything that reflects badly on the hotel, its service, its people - a lot of time preparing 'damage control'.

At any given moment any one of our hotels in this country alone might have a thousand people under its roof. A thousand people all sleeping, eating, using the bathroom, arguing, making love, celebrating, retreating, hiding from someone, trying to impress someone, sad, exhilarated with success, the list goes on. If any one of these people has a case to make against the hotel - they slipped on the soap in the bathroom, they took exception to something the house porter said, or a maid, the manager, the air-conditioning brought on an allergic attack, their laundry came back stained, the list goes on… if they want, if they set out to make a big stink about it, the hotel suffers. Something unfortunate out in the public eye doesn't look good for the company - that's bad for everyone working here, and most of all, it's bad for us whose job it is to make sure our customers have nothing but complete confidence in us.

We're not trying - I'm not paid - to fool anyone, to pull the wool over people's eyes. We're providing a service, but sometimes people can be difficult. Either by nature. Or because they set out to be, to target a big company so they can sue, cause trouble, and try to squeeze money out of us. That happens a lot - and a lot of that is hushed-up, just because if we can't prove that somebody's trying to scam us, prove it quickly and obviously, then it's not worth the trouble to take them on, go to the courts, to the legal system, which always means the media.

If we know but we can't prove it, we'll pay them off, get rid of them. But there's not a hotel in the world after that, our company or anyone else's who won't have a file on that person forever after - they'll be lucky to be through the door long enough to buy a mineral water in a hotel anywhere after trying that stunt.

But my job's more to do with the good side of human nature, the nine hundred and ninety something people staying under our roof who are here for the pleasure of it, to enjoy our service, to share in what we have to offer - comfort, a home away from home - wherever home is.

I'm proud to tell the world how good a job we do. I've dreamed for years about going out to the whole world, travelling everywhere, and that's about to happen. They're more than hints - my boss virtually told me to have a bag packed, I was on my way the next trip. I've been tiptoeing around the office ever since, because I know something's about to happen, something I've earned, wanted and now it's here.

But so is David. And I love him. And he can't go anywhere. Not with his job. His business I should say. He's a plumber, five years out of technical college, running his own small company, him and another guy on big jobs, on the road 24 hours a day seven days a week on call.

And that's where he is in me, too, on my mind 24 hours a day seven days a week - I'm the one on call. It's the same for him, too. We've talked about marriage, we both want it, and we've planned for two years from last May, twenty one months away. We know where, we know when, we know we both want it more than anything.

We told each other that, but that was before my boss said keep my bag packed. It hasn't changed anything, really. Davey knows my work might take me overseas - we've joked about it, the phone bills, post-cards arriving from everywhere, and him back here crawling up pipes and fixing leaky taps. Really joked, laughed, both seeing the funny side of it.

Now it suddenly seems like it might happen. I haven't told Davey about the bag thing. It's only a joke, being apart, when it's a 'possible', not a 'likely'. I don't know how he'll deal with it coming home like that, that I won't be at home when he phones, won't be there when he comes around so we can send out for take-away or go to the all-night deli down the road. I'll be somewhere probably miles, a whole country or continent away from wherever the last postcard came from, further away from home, from him.

He'll understand, I know that. We love each other, we both know how much we've each put into getting to where we are. Neither of us would dream of asking the other to give up our careers, our dreams. I even know that if it came to the crunch Davey would quit his job before he'd ask me to give up mine. I know that. He loves me.

I wish I could talk to him about this. I mean, we've talked about it over and over, but then it was all about how wonderful things were, how it was all going so right for us, how happy we are.

And that hasn't changed, it hasn't. We're good together, perfect together. I know how bad it can be when two people aren't right, how wrong, how weird, ugly it can get. I don't want to lose what Davey and I have. He's the same. We've both said we'd kill the other one if we ever thought of breaking up, just to put them out of their misery, having gone completely crazy like that.

We understand each other that well, and I can tell, lately, he's known that something's not right with me. He hasn't said anything much, but he's noticed, I know it, the little things that are different these days.

He knows I'm holding something back, keeping something from him. At first he asked me if it was to do with Mum getting worse. And part of it is that. I'm worried sick about her, that's wearing me down too, with the worries about going overseas as well. So he could tell she was on my mind.

But Mum's been sick for years, and I've watched her forever it seems, wasting away like she has. It's so unfair what's happening to her, but it's been happening for so long she and I have agreed how it will be at it's worst, how we'll meet that day when it comes.

Mum being sick's always been there, and Davey's been great about that, too. A lot of men wouldn't understand how much time I have to give her, how much of my love she's due. Some of my boyfriends, they didn't stay around long enough to even be boyfriends once they'd met Mum, realised how sick she was, and ran away.

David's never once been like that. He doesn't think she's a leper, or got something he can get, or she'll bring him bad luck, or anything as cruel and stupid as the others did or weren't any good at pretending they weren't doing. He's no Dudley Do-Good, pretending anything like that, all sympathy and fake - he's just there when I need him when there's something bad with Mum. There.

I'm so used to that, now, Davey being there. We've known each other maybe eighteen months and I can't remember him not being the biggest part of my life. The biggest part a lover could take anyway.

And now I'm thinking about just going away, my bag packed and waiting by the door, ready to grab a ticket, kiss him goodbye at the airport, and fly off.

Am I thinking that? Is it a thought or is it some sort of poison that's been put in my head, a poisonous escape route, just fly out of here, leave Mum behind with the mobile nursing service and her bridge-party friends three nights a week, leave Davey back here with his 24 hours every day business and our all-consuming hovering over me wrapping me up making me feel so warm and enclosed and horny and loving and sometimes I just have to find some time for myself but I never get out of it what I think I needed it for love affair, leave that, leave him and Mum, and the rest of my family, my friends, my life here, just up and away, temporary for sure, it won't last forever, but gone, taken away, safe, distant, removed?

Do I just want to run away? Am I that insincere? Is everything about 'David' and 'Mum' just me being sanctimonious and self-satisfied, here I am the self-sacrificing daughter, the saint in the making, 'Little Miss Efficiency' balancing work, lovelife and nursing an invalid, "how does she do it? Isn't she wonderful?".

Davey would laugh at me, joke that out of me, tell me this was me being sorry for myself the way only I can, beating myself up with a big stick I've personally picked out, being harder on me than I could be on anyone else. "Worrywart" he'd call me, then bring me round, make love to me, till I wasn't thinking of anything but that, the great ball of blue fire building up behind my eyes and licking down to my groin, spreading out through my whole body, till I can't make a sound or move a muscle, open my eyes, the blood bursting along ever artery and vein like Niagara boiling over, flowing backwards to its source, returning to where the power and heat and flow of it all starts, and I come then, Davey in me on me all over me and I have nowhere to go but where I am right then and I never want to leave but I have to and when I return he's there and Mum at home, and nothing's changed, everything's like it was, except, just a little, Davey was right to make love to me, nothing seems quite as bad as it was, quite as constricted, quite as confusing. For a while, it seems, there can be a solution to all this, there's a way to sort everything out, to make the best of what has to be done.

That's what making love with Davey has always done, for me, and for him, too. We've talked about that, after we've made love. Not just chased after the thrill of it, taken it from each other, and ignored how we made it together, shaped it together, with our bodies and our hearts and something timeless in both of us that touches when we are at the height of our lovemaking - we've talked afterwards, maybe the first times amazed, unsure it could ever be like that again, and when it was, and we knew it could always be as long as we both wanted, then we talked, but I don't think either of us have ever stopped being amazed.

When I tell David he'll blame himself for not being careful. But I remember when it was, and there was no time to be careful. I needed him, right then. It was Mum, it was the job, it was a hundred things all piled up in me at once - and it was needing him, so much, needing him. I know if I could have seen myself I must have looked like a frightened horse. I thought my eyes were about to pop out of my skull, the skin of my face was so tight it felt like it would tear if I said a word. My body was hard and unbending as a wooden plank - I needed his touch, I needed his love, I needed him inside me.

That's when it happened, Davey. You were inside me as only you can be, my lover, my friend, my true true true man, inside me, and I went away, I went to nowhere except I could feel and hear everything for miles around, all of it, until it exploded, white light, Davey, then pink, black, and settling to pale blue, so blue, and you were still inside me. But you weren't alone anymore.

I picked up the test today. There's someone else inside me, David, someone else forever. Not in me forever, but with us forever. Tell Mum with me, Davey. We'll tell her together, after I've unpacked my bag. Straight after, we'll go over in your work-van, OK?

LOSING MY VIRGINITY

He's gone into the toilet. He said he had to go, you know, flush the condom away. In case he forgot later, and his Mother found it. Under the bed. Vacuuming or something.

He told me weeks ago he never let her into his room, it was his space, his castle, nobody got in here he didn't want in here. Like him. And me, especially me, he said, even though I hadn't then. Ever been in here.

But now I have. And now I've done it. It. With him in his space that "no-one else ever gets into". Except he's worried about his Mother finding a condom under the bed when she vacuums. Which probably means I should be thinking back about a lot of other things he's told me, and how many of them might turn out to be, well, not lies, but, you know, him looking at things sideways, putting a spin on them… oh, you know!

Lying here, sort of aching, sort of somewhere else altogether, I'm thinking about his Mother walking in and finding me here, in his bed, forget about anything under it!

Lying here alone, the sweat already dry on me, his and mine, that just minutes ago was so slick and warm, and noisy… that surprised me, when he was lying on top of me, where our chests touched, between my breasts, there was a pool of sweat that, don't ask me how, this is all new to me, whenever he lifted himself up away from me, there was a pop sound, like something had been torn. How could that be, when there was nothing there but sweat and two slippery chests, touching and separating, touching and separating? That's what I was actually thinking about, that noise, even when for the first time in my life a man, a male, had his thing in my thing.

Is that what I should have been thinking about - a funny noise that our chests were making when all the time I was doing what I'd spent the last few years, since I was twelve and found out what people really do to each other, sneaking one of my brother's dirty videos on while he was away playing football with his friends, watching it, the thing people do, and the other stuff, and I couldn't believe my eyes, but it was right there - happening?

I re-wound the video, watched it over and over, the bit where the male was right inside the girl. You know, you couldn't see his thing at all because it was all the way in her, and the camera showed you that and then it showed you her face, and it didn't look like it was hurting her or anything, but she looked like she was acting, too, you know what I mean? I mean, the look on her face, I wasn't sure if she was acting like she'd swallowed something the wrong way, you know, gulping cause a pea or a nut or something was caught in her throat, like that. Or acting like she'd just remembered something really scary, her eyes all wide and looking way away, like that. But I wasn't so interested in her face, not so much as the camera was, the video kept showing us her face, I was interested in how far the male thing could get inside hers. All the way! Whoa!

And now I'd done that too. I looked down, once, when he lifted his chest away from mine, after that sweaty tearing 'pop' sound, I looked down, and all I could see was hair, pubes, right, cause he was all the way in me. For a second, I just wanted to be out of there, I tried to shift away, but that just made things worse.

Well, better, you know, cause he said, "yeah, yeah, like that, move like that", and I didn't know how I was moving. First time, how was I supposed to know what was right, or good, or… anything? So, instead of getting out of there, trying to move out of there, I'd got myself in deeper.

He didn't stop. I didn't say to, or anything - it wasn't that, me asking him to stop, saying 'No'. It was 'Yes', had been since we'd stepped through the front door with his Mum and Dad gone round to some cousin's or somewhere for a family thing for adults. We had his place to ourselves all day, and we'd both been looking forward since he found out last Tuesday it was on that we could be here with nobody else in the house.

We'd done other stuff, you know, touching, kissing, that stuff, I'd let him put his hand down there, and things, but we'd never gone the whole way. I hadn't wanted to. Not because of any big deal about it or anything, just because till today I hadn't wanted, especially after seeing my brother's video - I hadn't wanted it to be fake like that. All acting, choking on a peanut sort of stuff. I wanted it to be real, really meant. You know, with the right person, the right time, and place. Place is important, too, and I couldn't do it in my own bed. How could I? I've slept in that bed all my life, since I was really little.

His bed, yeah, his space, I wanted that, to be surrounded by him, let him sort of run things, this being the first time, how would I know what to do? The people in the video looked like they'd done it heaps, heaps enough to be bored even, over-acting it all. How was I to know what was going to happen?

Now he's in the toilet, he's flushed it twice already. Must be floating, the condom thing, rubber and air, the stuff out of him. I saw that when he pulled the condom off, milky stuff, and his dick was already sort of shrivelled, red and shrinking, cause I hadn't really looked when we got under the covers. I still had my bra on, my panties were off, which I remember thinking was so weird, cause before, he'd take off my bra, right, and my panties might stay on all the time, wherever his hand went.

But this time, I was in his own bed, and my bra was still on, and he was kissing me like he didn't even notice, when, usually he couldn't wait to get it off, boy, couldn't wait, but here, in his bed, where the two of us had been planning all week to end up, I still had my bra on, and the catch was digging into my back.

I'd had to squirm away, make him stop kissing me for a sec so I could take it off, and he sort of sat back - I think he thought I was telling him I didn't want to go through with it, he was looking like he might be about to get angry or sulky or something. But he couldn't make words, I could see that, couldn't do anything.

I had to take it off myself, sitting there in his bed, my fingers sort of stiff. Usually he'd be laughing, we'd be giggling together, taking my bra off - it was fun, it had always been fun before, but this time, I don't know, it was like we were watching each other from somewhere else, not behind a camera, but maybe behind a curtain or a window, and both of us were all sort of heavy and scared, yeah, scared, which is weird cause we'd gone so far before, and we know each other real well, and we'd both agreed there wasn't going to be a better time.

I dropped my bra beside the bed. His Mother might find that vacuuming.

Ha, would that be worse than finding a used condom? I mean, think about it - a used condom, he might have, you know, used it on himself, alone. Boys could, couldn't they? It'd be tidier, for one thing, cause I know when I touched him there weeks ago down at the oval, and he came, that was a mess. A condom would make sense even on your own, so it wouldn't prove anything.

But, boy, a brassiere under her son's bed, a Mother could think anything. Like, he might've worn it. Her son might be dressing up as a girl, locked away in his bedroom, his private space he told me no-one else ever came into, behind a closed door, her son might be dressing up as a girl, and here's the bra to prove it. Well, not prove it, but give her a fright.

Course, I wouldn't forget it. My bra. I'm not likely to walk out of here leaving it behind me. A condom, you know, they're made to be left behind, shed, pulled off squeaky and tight but not so tight as they were a minute ago, rolled off so nothing spills out of them, and then flushed away down the toilet.

Three times. He just flushed the toilet again! Maybe condoms aren't so easy to get rid of. But, you do, don't you? Dispose of them. After you've used a condom, you hide it, lose it, put it somewhere you never have to see it again. Till you use the next one.

But the next ones are all locked away wrapped up in a packet at the back of the drawer - well, that's where he keeps his; maybe his Mother does get in here to vacuum, but I reckon he doesn't let her anywhere near his chest of drawers anymore. So the unused condoms of the world are all 'wrapped up in waiting', hidden away till they come out and get used as wrapping themselves.

Ha, Life in Education at school, the teacher blew some condoms up like balloons, which, sure, was sort of funny. We laughed cause you could tell they wanted us to, laugh about using a condom as a party trick. But, truth is, most of us had seen them like that before. Nobody I know's never been to a party where some boy didn't think it was some real original joke to blow up condoms for balloons, we'd all seen that before.

And then, gross, the teacher sort of rolled a condom onto a banana, a perfectly good banana, right, that nobody, nobody!, was going to want to eat after that. And!!!, she wasn't any good at it anyway. She couldn't get the condom to roll onto the banana all the way. Then she dropped it, halfway, picked it up, off the floor, a classroom floor!!, and kept rolling the thing on.

With all my experience, even if it was pretty much nothing till just now, I reckon if I used a boy's thing, you know, his penis, the way that teacher used the banana, putting on a condom, I'd put him into hospital.

Did I like it? Yeah… but. I don't know, there's a first time for everything, and from what some of my friends've told me, it wasn't too bad. Some of them reckon stuff I've never believed about doing it, never, and maybe now I have to sort of agree that bits of what they said might've been right.

But some other things, now I've done it, you know, felt what it's like… I don't reckon that could ever happen, some of the stuff I've been told. I don't know, maybe, when I get more practised, do it some more.

Reckon I'd probably make up stories, too. You know, you see them on those videos, all 'over the top' with the faces and the snorting noises and stuff, and I can't remember whether I did any of that stuff, 'cept he said he loved me, you know, after he went all rigid and lifted himself away from my chest. It didn't make the squelchy tearing sound that time, and his face was really red and I thought his eyes might pop out, even though they were closed, they looked like they might pop out.

I could feel inside me, 'thump thump thump', his thing sort of jerking in there - which I guess is what they showed the guy on the video doing outside the girl, all over her stomach, so she wouldn't get pregnant I suppose cause he wasn't wearing a condom - I felt that, and then he just fell on me, put his mouth real close to my ear, and said, "I love you, really love you", and I figured, 'whoa, is this what I want?'.

I still haven't decided. I'm lying here, but not really here, except I can feel all over me, you know, 'cause the bed's cold, the sweat's gone into the sheets it feels like, they're all clammy and cold-wet, and…

He just flushed the toilet again.

That has to be it. He'll be back in here in a moment. I don't know, will he want to do it again? He pulled two condoms out of the drawer. The other one's just sitting there, all wrapped up, waiting. Bit like me, I guess, the sheet over me, my bra lying half under his bed, the condom there, waiting to be used and disposed, flushed away.

No, that's not me.

I wish he'd come back, though, I wish he would. I really need him to hold me now, right now, just hold me, tight. Not say anything, not do anything, just hold me, put his body close to mine, head to toe, every inch of us touching, kiss me even, kisses like we used to, before we started any of this other stuff, before we were almost holding hands even - kisses like when we were worried our friends might find out about us.

Hold me tight and kiss me the way we used to, sort of frightened and proud and finding things out and both of us getting scared but wanting to sing out loud our favourite songs and tell everybody we knew we shouldn't what was going on between us.

Kiss me like that. He can use the other condom later.

DOUBLE FIGURES

I've been sent to my room! Can you believe it? Sent to my room till I understand what it is I've done wrong. I live in my room. Sometimes I never ever want to come out of my room. And they've sent me here as punishment??

Like, I am my room. I'm meant to figure out what I've done wrong in the middle of everything so right?

Do these people know anything about me at all? They claim to be my parents. When I asked to see my birth certificate, jeez, Mum went up the wall! What's so big deal about that, a little documentary proof? Dad's always complaining about having to come up with ID all the time, how there are cards for this, cards for that, "they" know everything about us, "we can't move" without "someone" watching. Sometimes I'm not so sure where Dad's head's at. I mean, who'd really be interested in us, this family?

Mum screamed, you know, just cause I wanted proof that this family and me were one and the same, of the same issue, the same stock, cause, one thing's for sure, when Mum and Dad are like the way they've been lately, the one thing we are is not the same. No way. No way!!

OK, I know they're my parents. There's a lot about us, and about my brothers and sisters, which comes out of the same stew-pot. I admit that. But, there's always a little bitsy doubt, right, when Mum's going off the way she does sometimes, that that could have anything to do with me, that one day I might flip out like her, get really angry over nothing - nothing! - and just lose it.

I swear, I promise, I'm never going to be like that. For one thing, she looks like she's ready to have a heart attack on the spot, and I've got too many things to do with my life to cut it short getting freak-out angry and bringing on a seizure or something.

But I'm here, aren't I, sent to my room, for something I didn't do. Sure, I did do something - but that was in response to another thing that I wanted kept to myself, a thing I figured nobody'd ever work out I'd done, so that's the same thing, right? If nobody knew I'd done it, I hadn't, simple as that. What I didn't figure on is that even though nobody can prove anything - and I'm not saying a word, believe me - even so, cause they think I did, cause they're sure I did, even though they can't prove it, which is just the same as not coming up with my birth certificate if you ask me, they reckon I'm the one. Locked away without proof, nothing, just suspicion. Sucks, right?

It's not such a big deal, anyway, what I did that nobody can prove - so my lips are staying sealed. Seal me up in my room, throw away the key, I'm not saying a word. No way.

I remember how this goes, how many times it's been pulled on me. This is the old 'so disappointed' routine, when Mum just breaks into tears every time she sees me, and Dad goes all thin-lipped (which he is anyway, thanks very much for my mouth, Dad!), he goes all thin-lipped and shakes his head, like saying, "look what you've done to your mother". Yeah, I know how that one works. They want me to cry, too, like Mum. Just stand there in front of them all sobbing and sniffling and snotty (yuck, they made me do that once. Not anymore!) like I'm the world's worst person, and I deserve whatever punishment I get because of what I've done.

Forget it! Six years old you got me with that one. Eight even, I fell for it again. No way now, no way. I'm in double figures here, one and one, eleven years old, living in my twelfth year on this planet - I don't fall for the old tricks anymore, I'm not a kid. Read the papers, Mum, my generation's streetwise, worldwise, everythingwise. We know what's going on, we know stuff you guys never knew till you were, I don't know, thirty or something, when it was way too late to be of any use to you.

We're out there, plugged-in, cyber-surfers - nothing in the world gets past us. All the scary stuff, the stuff that freaks you guys out, we already know. It's on the computers, even at school. I talked with a guy in Peru last week. Peru! You even know where Peru is, Mum? Right, 'look up a map'. Nowhere's on the map anymore, Mum. It's on the screen. And it's not even there. Anywhere's everywhere. You don't have to pick up and go anymore to get somewhere. You can stay right where you are, and go anywhere.

And you've sent me to my room as a punishment?? Sheesh.

What's the big deal, anyway? Those guys were giving us a hard time, just cause we're girls, right? So we're girls. That doesn't make any difference anywhere that counts. The guy in Peru didn't care I'm a girl. I didn't tell him, sure. I sign on 'Stig 32', that's me on the Net, but he didn't care. We got on real smooth, talking about all sorts of stuff. Mum, he could've been ancient, twenty eight, more, all I know, and it doesn't matter, none of that matters anymore - in there, we're all equal.

Except to those boys, those immature boys. They reckon they can just walk in and take over, like they have rights or something, prior rights. They don't. Some of them act like they know everything. Yeah, I reckon they don't know who 'Stig 32' is for a start, and some of them probably reckon he's this real cool dude they rap to on the Net. I don't tell them anything about me, or my tag. I don't want to know who they are either, right, how they sign on. For all I know, talking to some guy, he could be the other side of the room at his machine. Why don't I just get up and go talk to him? That's not how it works.

You don't intrude, you don't step over the line, whether you live in Peru or you're jacked-in two seats away.

Phooff, everyone knows that. Except, these guys, the ones who ran to their Mummies so mine can get all red-faced and bawly and send me in here, those guys couldn't handle that, the stuff we all know and agree on. They want to step back, they want to step out, walk up to people and just right off accuse, not even ask, but accuse you of being someone out there surfing minding your own business.

"You're Stig 32, aren't you?", boffinhead-Barry said.

He had some of his friends with him, all looking sort of smug and self-righteous too, like they'd caught me out or something. Whoopydoo, the good citizens.

OK, the school doesn't want us dialling out of the country. They put a bar on and everything. But 'Stig 32' got through. All the way through to Peru. Cost maybe five dollars. Five dollars. It's not the money, really, that's not what it's about. It's the control thing, the tie us down thing, the keep us in place thing. And jerks like boffinhead-B take it all in - they get taken in, and live by it, live by rules that don't mean a thing except someone figured it was another way to keep someone else under their thumbs. Just because.

Didn't stop 'Stig 32', but, and that's why I did it. Just because. Because my because is better than their because because my because isn't trying to stop anyone else anywhere doing anything, or whatever they want to be doing that isn't hurting anyone. Just because.

Wanted posters went up everywhere, chasing down 'Stig 32', all sorts of threats going around about closing the computers room, spot checks while we were on-line, geez, strip-searches next?? So, 'Stig 32' and I did what we did, and nobody came close to catching us. I went to Peru, didn't I?

If this all sounds like big-noting, well, how good did it feel for you when you pulled off something which you knew wasn't wrong in any way, any way, except a lot of real small people were screaming it was? Try it.

Boys can look real stupid without trying at all, have you noticed? Sometimes I reckon it must be wired-in, that stupidity. I used to think it was male wiring, but lately, it's freaked me out, I've seen it in some of my girl-friends, too. Stupid without trying. Stupid bubbling up like it's in the genes. Stupid like its something they're copying from a magazine. A look. A way to stand, some words they use, all stupid. Scary.

I wasn't, of course. Scared. What did they think, that I'd crumble or something, Barry and his posse standing around me at my machine? Like I was going to break down and cry and confess, "yeah, I'm Stig 32. You got me! Oh, genius Barry, great brain Barry, tell me one last thing, How did you do it?". Sure, pigs fly first.

I decided way back, if anything was going to scare me, it'd have to be something huge, and nothing has ever since. I don't even know what it would take to scare me anymore. I figure, just cause I decided, there's nothing huge enough out there. Well, there hasn't been so far. So here's pipsqueak Barry, the way down this far so far you can't even see it without a microscope opposite end of the scale from 'huge' Barry, standing there.

"You are, aren't you?". Right, ask the same question often enough I'm going to slip up and come out, "Yes, I am. I am."

I didn't even bother with the breath, just turned back to my screen, which I'd seen them coming up behind me in and jacked right out of 'Stig 32' into another ID I use, my own name - ha, that fools them, they think I'm like that skimming, huh, haven't even gotten past using my own name? - turned back and pretended I was writing a letter to the Queen or the President, I don't even remember now, it's my dummy file, and ignored them. Which sort of got Barry all hot, you know, in front of his friends, I was treating him like clean air, or dirty static.

That was when Barry made his mistake, 'cept I'm the one sent to my room.

You see, I've watched Mum, I've seen it in my sister as well, a lot of women around school, the neighbourhood, not all of them, but I've seen a lot of it. Women have had to give up - or maybe, I'm not sure, perhaps they didn't even know they had them, or if they did, they didn't know how to value them, what value they were, because perhaps they were blind to them, or didn't want to know about them, wanted to give them away, let someone else be responsible, yeah, almost always men, take charge of them, look after them, clean them out and make them, nothing, nothing, something maybe even to be ashamed of, or laughed about like things you used to think were important until someone kindly showed you they weren't, just toys, childish things, and so many women have given them up - their secrets. What was their's alone, what they owned without ever having to pay for until they suddenly started trying to disown them, when, from what I've seen, they've really had to pay for them, their secrets, their own stuff.

Our own stuff. Mine. And it's not just because I'm a woman, will be, soon, real soon. I reckon men have secrets too, but they start out embarrassed by them, never really want them, disown them deny them from almost the moment they figure they have something which is entirely their own, not their father's or their brothers' or any friend's, but entirely their own. It scares men, from what I've seen, to think they have secrets, that they might be different, special even, without being 'special' special, like they know the answer to everything, or they'll be made emperor of the universe, not that stuff, but just special because we all are. All we are is what we are. And we can be anything, really, unless we give the stuff away that lets us be just that little bit special, like everyone.

Yeah, OK, I'm just figuring this stuff out, so it's a little confused in my mind, too. But you get where I'm going, don't you? Sure. So, when I see so many women have just given away all that - the secrets that are no big deal, the world won't stop spinning if they come out, but the private stuff that's their's alone - well I just decided I won't do that. I'm not giving anything away I don't want to.

Barry didn't know that. If he had he wouldn't have put his hand on my shoulder to like, I reckon he saw it on the TV or some movie, to spin me round, you know, face to face, "I'm talking to you", yeah, some movie. Well, he didn't watch the right one, cause sure, I let him touch me, I let him spin me round, but that was that, cause I was just letting him position me the way he figured was his right leading his friends on the chase after me.

What he didn't figure is what the top of my head, coming out of that chair real fast - he positioned me perfectly, he was leaning over a little, thanks Barry - what he didn't figure is how hard I'd hit his nose like that. Kee-runch, I can still hear it. Truth, I didn't figure there'd be that much blood either. Oceans of it. And doesn't blood make people scream? Whoa, out of everywhere, screams, the boys, Barry, some of the other girls, this teacher supervising the screens room, she started up too, and then, here, downstairs, Mum adds her own little bit, top register low C I reckon.

Sent to my room. Well, I sent Barry to hospital, didn't I? And that feels real good, cause of what he figured he was going to do to me.

Invade me, right? Nobody's ever going to do that. Nobody.

A couple of days, 'Stig 32''ll crack 'em up in Peru with this one, crack 'em up - and they don't care who I am. That's our secret.

IN UTERO

They must suppose, I suppose, that I have no idea what is happening around me. But right here, I have the most privileged position. And I miss nothing.

You've forgotten. I will too. Everything I am aware of now, everything I understand, everything I recall, the people, the places, the experiences, everything accessible to me here of all the lives I have lived previously will disappear with the first breath of my new life.

Taking in the air and the light and the noise of the world of now will blast away everything of this universe of all my pasts, the place I currently occupy, this all-knowing all recalling all expecting place I am floating in. It is my mother who is truly 'expecting' of course. I am inside her, both of us waiting upon my birth. But she is the one friends family and strangers see on the street in the shops at home visiting the hospital huge and ungainly but graceful too in a way that is still huge and ungainly.

I'm to blame for that, though I'm not huge myself. I'm very ordinary. You should understand that. Notwithstanding everything I have already said, and the claims I have made for myself, I am very ordinary. I am a standard human life, just as you are, except that at this instant, I am as you were.

You are what you are now, living breathing walking hearing and seeing in the great wider narrower world - but you were a foetus once, an unborn child - and unborn is different from living.

Unborn, you are sustained by your mother's consumption of the world - but she filters it for you, takes the edges off, rounds it out, pre-consumes, pre-digests the great out there before it reaches the vast in here. She provides peace and quiet for the important processes that are going on. The recollection and the preparation.

I know this because, in here, we all do - know about every other time. You did. I am. We can recall everything that we have been before. Past lives, previous experience. It's like a crash course in future survival - being given the whole of everything that's happened before to prepare us for what's to come.

Problem is, some of it's not so wonderful, all that that's happened before - so there has to be a mechanism to ensure we actually get born, don't want to stay in here, peaceful and cosseted most of the time, and reminisce forever, refuse to consider starting all over again.

So, we forget it all. We even know that we're going to forget it all. We know it ahead. But there's nothing to be done. The forgetting is as wired in to us as is the remembering. It's a promise, in a way - too much remembering sends you mad.

We are born to be clean slates, to start all over, except for two things.

The first is that 'wires' remember. Sure, the memories are wiped away with the first breath of the air, the first flicker of eyelids at the brightness, soft fluttering of the eardrums at the sounds, of the outside inherited world - but that wiping happens the way it does with computers. The memories aren't actually erased - they're just made inaccessible. The key access codes are removed - the memories 'aren't' because they can't be remembered.

But, they are still there, imprinted into the wires of our brains. That's why we all get those little flashes all through our lives, some of us more than others, some of us doing more about it than others, but all of us still have the memories of every other life we've ever lived in us - they're just hard to get at, and not much use anyway.

Well, imagine it, sixty to a hundred other lives, individual personalities, all trying to tell you what to do at once. It would send you crazy. Sometimes, when people get hurt out there, and the barring codes in their head get jumbled up, so stuff can get through that isn't meant to, those people start hearing all those voices, seeing all those faces, sometimes start living all those lives again, all at once.

Not good, not to be recommended.

Hence the standard operating procedure of human existence. You get born the latest in a long line - but the moment you're born there's a knot tied in that line so you don't end up wanting to swing from the end of it, flopping around like a hooked fish, or jerking this way and that without any control like a hanged person suiciding, just to cut it off, the confusion, the contradiction, the overload of 'me me me'. Everything you've ever been could tear you to shreds.

The other thing? I said "two things"?

All that experience can't go totally to waste. Nature abhors a vacuum, right?

You can choose one thing from in here. One thing you'll forget. Nothing changes about that. Once you're born you forget everything you knew in here, all the stuff that keeps you interested while you're being toted around by a huge ungainly but weirdly graceful mother, being taken places you aren't really interested in going to, being introduced to habits you most certainly might have wished to put off a few years - the quick slug of vermouth before your father gets home, the secret cigarette and forceful teeth-cleaning in the middle of the day, the third cup of coffee before lunchtime, endless visits to the toilet, all of that stuff - but that you forget too, small blessing.

We're all allowed one thing, though, something we can pull out of all our previous lives. A skill, an experience, an insight, some thing that we can take forward into this life to come. It's forgotten, like everything else, but not locked away quite so deeply - it's there, it's there to be rediscovered, used, puzzled over, but it's there.

Some people might make a bad choice, go with something that proves to be not much use in the life they eventually lead - nobody can know that ahead of time. So perhaps, something they chose from a past life won't fit at all in the new one, and only causes unhappiness and dissatisfaction.

I know that's happened in my past. I have suicide in me, despair, frustration turned into cruelty; but I also have happiness, success, artistry, sympathy.

Every human life can go so many ways, do so much, for good, for bad, for no real result at all. That's what we do when we are out in the world, living in it, surviving in it, fighting against it, perhaps. I know all that now, in here, in readiness, I'm prepared. But there is nothing I can do to avoid losing all my preparedness, all my understanding, all my grip on what has been and what is to come.

I can only choose one thing, one thing to take from all of that, take out with me, bring with me, forgotten as it will be, but seeded, somewhere here, set in me waiting upon the shape and being of my new life which will be made up of so much that happens around me, outside my control, my understanding, for so many years so bewildering, so implacable, so mysterious.

I must choose. I must choose, for the moment of my birth is soon. I can feel the urgency, the completion of me in here, when the body of my mother, my caressing swooping swaddling holding forming mother and I must part, I must cease to be of her and all of who I have been, and I must stumble into myself, into the next inheritor of the line, the next going out into the world to bring in the world to the fresh start and inevitable end but the forever continuity of me, of all I have been and all I will be, more forgotten than can ever be remembered - going on.

I must choose with all the clarity I have here, this clarity that will never be again, this responsibility, this impossible grasp of living, life, the vast and irreducible being of it. I must choose with absolute certainty that I will forget my agonised choice, this riddle I will carry out with me a whole new life to search for and puzzle over that I must try to ensure I find and use and go forward with. I must choose as I have done many times before, and you and everyone you know, choose and seed the new living to be with what I choose from all the living I have done.

I have. It is my secret. So secret it will be secret even from me, the new me. But I shall discover my secret, I shall discover it and I shall live up to it.

I make this vow here, to the future me who will not know this me, who may well squirm and deny that such a vow could ever have been made, that such a choice might even be possible, that life is anything but what is happening as you go through it, once and never again, that there are no mysteries, no secrets, no understandings to be found 'out of nowhere' - even if that is the me I become from the first breath of the air of the world outside this universe in the belly of my mother, a me who denies and refuses and will not accept what this me knows here with all the calm certainty of one who has been before, one who knows and is carrying on a line of many, even if I become such a me - I will set here in motion by my choice that is secret and destined to be forgotten the moment when I shall recall, and I shall shout my secret to the world. Then.

I am to be born. Re-cast ignorant, fragile, stumbling and exposed; re-newed vacant, malleable, threatened and resilient.

Knowing all that I know; having been everyone I have been; having seen everything that I have seen, the pettiness, the cruelty, the horror, the maliciousness of being human - but also the glory, the beauty, the exultant possibility of love in us, in you and me and everyone we know and the millions more we don't and never will, and what a loss that is, I choose, I choose here when choice is as it will never be again, true choice, clear choice, understanding choice, choice that will take me from all that, the knowing, the believing, the understanding, returning to clumsiness and uncertainty, struggle and failing, confusion and pain.

I choose - you hear me mother, all the mothers before and the daughters and the fathers and the sons that have been and will be, those of this line that I am the living link of, the last, the next, and in my time the last again whispering among the many voices to the next?

I know you hear me. You shifted then, shifted your huge and ungainly graceful weight, shifted and responded, spoke to me, your voice that I will hear so often soon, vibrating on the air of the wide narrow world out there, your voice alone then of all those that have spoken to me while I was inside you. I know you hear me, as I hear you.

We will puzzle each other, mother, for certain we will do that, unsure how we came together, what links us but an accident of reproduction. For I will be in the world everything that you are and everything that you aren't, and all the things we share will be as mysterious as they are undeniable.

Soon I will know so little, be so helpless. Hurry up, life.

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