Chapter 16
I have already noticed the clear plastic cube, with its tube and dropper, on the vanity table. ‘What’s this?’ I ask my mother. I am six and wondering why she has a toy when grown-ups don’t really have toys.
‘I’m going to be having a new baby,’ my mother says in a bright, sing-song voice. ‘You’ll have a little sister just before Christmas.’
This is good news, but also, I’m already worried. I don’t know if a baby will be happy when she gets here and realizes how much my dad shouts. Sometimes my mum joins in, but mostly she doesn’t.
A few days after this, I tell the grown-up neighbour Mrs Carson that I am getting a baby sister.
As her mouth rounds into a perfect ‘O’, I am thinking of all the ways I will be able to have fun with a baby girl.
I can put her in the baby bath. I can brush her hair, the way I do with my dolls.
She can hide under the blankets with me whenever Daddy is around.
I wait and wait for the bump to come, because that’s what happened with Jilly’s mum down the street, when Jilly’s baby sister Sharon came along.
But when I ask my mother whether the baby will be here in time for Christmas, and whether Santa will bring her a present, what my mother says next surprises me.
‘Oh, there won’t be any baby, no.’
‘Why not?’
‘There just won’t be a baby now.’
‘Why did you say I was getting a baby sister?’ Pain sweeps through me as I realize I won’t get to play with a new baby after all. But I’m also relieved that the new baby won’t have to hear any of the shouting.
A few days later, at Mass, I overhear Mrs Carson, in the pew behind me, talking to another woman I don’t know, but who wears the same sort of fancy hat and walking stick that she does.
‘I don’t care what anyone says, he should be in jail for what he did to that woman.’ Mrs Carson sighs. ‘That poor baby.’