I go fishing off the rocks
every morning and have fresh fish for breakfast then hunt around my
lawn and eat any dandelion flowers that have popped up. I crave
their bitter yellowness.
I'm three months pregnant
now, so past the riskiest bit. I hope the baby is okay and there's
nothing wrong with him. I feel really good so I'm sure he's okay. I
think he's a she but I'm not too sure. I stand naked in front of
the mirror and wonder about my little bump; he's going to be so
much trouble. My skin has gone all perfect and smooth and almost
glows with healthiness and my hair is growing like crazy. It's down
to my shoulders and really thick. It's not blond blond like it was
before; it's starting to get browny streaks in it. Mum has
beautiful reddy-brown hair. She said she used to be blond when she
was little. I hope my hair goes the same colour as hers; blond is
okay for kids but looks a bit wimpy on adults. I never understood
why they dye their beautiful hair streaky blond. It always looks so
tacky.
I wonder what my baby
will look like. I think it will look like me but it won't. Zula has
beautiful dark skin and thick black hair. Will it have his
greeny-brown eyes? I hope so.
I wonder how Ijju's baby is
coming on. I click my fingers and the white wormoscopic refractor
appears on my front lawn. Some daisies have come up. They almost
taste as good as the dandelions.
Ijju is looking good. She
should be a supermodel or something.
She is still
slim but her bump is more than a just a bump, it looks like a
balloon that's ready to pop. It must be due soon. Maybe I could
watch. I'm not sure if I want to, childbirth is one subject I've
been avoiding thinking about. How can a great big baby fit out
through my little fanny, something has got to give.
It's going to hurt!
Ijju and me will be
related; our babies will be half-brothers. I ask the slugs to let
me know when Ijju is ready to give birth.
I avoid looking at
England. I will cry if I see Mum and Dad and might do something
stupid, like bing them up here. I'd love to see their faces though.
They'd get such a shock! They'd freak out and run around screaming.
I don't want to see Annie; I'm still feeling a little guilty about
her dad. Not that guilty though, if I had the chance again, a
Burmese tiger would escape from the zoo and eat him. That way he’d
suffer for what he's done to Annie and her mum.
It's time to relax. I need to
kick back and give my baby a chance to grow, to let my energies go
into growing his bones and giving him great big muscles. The
trouble is that I can't find a good book to read; I've grown out of
Jacqueline Wilson. I need something a bit meatier to read. I visit
Pollux and we go shopping. I ask him to recommend some books.
'You'll
like
The
Hunger Games
,' he says.
'What's it about.'
'It's about a teenage girl that
kills everyone. It's very good.'
'It sounds like me, I'll get
it.'
We order it and
the
Harry Potter
series and a whole lot of other
books. Pollux offers to download e-books but I want proper books
with pages that I can throw at Negrita when she sharpens her claws
on my bedspread, so I'll have to wait.
I sit out on the sofa
enjoying the sunshine but soon get bored. Then I remember my
diaries. I used to carry my diary everywhere in a secret pocket, so
that it was always with me if I got abducted or blown up or
something. Now that my life is a little less precarious, the
diaries are tucked in the drawer on the little table next to my
bed. I haven't written anything since the slimeball got me, there's
a whole lot of catching up to do.
First I read through my diary
from the desert, starting in Timbuktu and crossing to Khartoum. The
sketches Ijju and me drew come alive again: the camel train, the
sand surfing, the rock paintings and the pyramid hidden under the
sand. It all seems so long ago now, like from a different life. I
flick through the pages from Abdullah's seedy penthouse; I didn't
like that much, and reach Camillo and my wonder of being on this
special little asteroid.
The second diary is about half
full. I read up to my last entry at the beginning on December then
go back and tidy up some of the drawings which I made in a bit of a
hurry, colouring them in carefully and trying to make the clouds
and sea look realistic. Clouds are tricky.
I bring it up to date,
starting with Jesus's birthday party on Christmas Day. That was
fun. The next day, Boxing Day, I nearly got killed. I go to draw a
picture of the slimeball getting struck by Zeus's lightning bolt as
it hoovers me up, but just thinking of it makes the scar on my side
throb. Instead, I draw brave little Scruff barking at the rampaging
slimeball. On the next page I sketch Castor washed up on the beach
but as soon as I start colouring in his yellow bits, little lasers
start kicking up the dirt around my ankles. I rub it out and draw
Castor's round white face looking out through the window of my
cottage. I draw Zeus in his fighter against a background of stars
and write a couple of pages about my surprise 14th birthday party.
The seeds, I draw life size and leave space to write what sort of
trees they are, once they grow. I'd like to write something about
Zula's visits but it's just too secret even to go in my diary. I
draw a picture of me curled up in bed with Negrita at my feet. You
can't see much of me, just some spiky short hair sticking out from
under the duvet. Zula is in there with me.
Zwingly is
tricky. It
was so neat having
a boyfriend; we had such fun. That's why it hurt so much when it
all turned to custard. If I went back in time, would I do the same
again? Yes. I might even forgive him one day. I have so many good
memories and it was so nice having someone to love, someone who
was
mine,
if only for a little while. I leave the page
blank; he was such a good looking guy. If I draw him now he's
likely to have missing teeth and devil's horns.
I draw me in my lacy green
knickers with a little baby inside, and add some devil's horns;
I've been such abysmal company these last couple of months!
'Her waters have broken,' says
Castor. 'Emily, Emily, wake up. Ijju's waters have broken.'
It's two in the morning. How
inconvenient! I click my fingers to start up the worm and stay
where I am, snug in bed. It's late at night in Algeria as well.
Ijju is sitting on the side of her bed with a shawl wrapped around
her shoulders. I reach up and touch the necklace she gave me in
Khartoum, twiddling with the little coins. It used to look so good
against her chocolate skin. I wish she knew that I'm with her now.
She has a few little contractions but nothing is really happening.
Zula's mum, Nwella, comes in and lays a couple of towels on the bed
and tells her to get some more sleep.
Great idea. I do the same.
Through the worm I can feel her
contractions. As dawn approaches they get stronger and wake me up.
Then they cut in real strong. The pain is muted through the worm
but is still very real. At first she grits her teeth and just
grunts a little but as they get stronger and more regular, she
crumples up her face and screams against the pain. I go to make a
cup of tea but have to sit down when Ijju has a contraction. I
wanted to see what it'd be like but this is a bit too first hand.
It's her baby, not mine. I turn off the worm and make some tea and
toast and sit outside and watch the sun come up, fretting about
what lies ahead.
I let the sun rise up into the
sky, and a little higher still, then click my fingers and visit
Pollux's moon.
He has Ijju up
on high resonance radar. It still gives a good picture but is not
quite so
hands on
as the worm. She's standing up
against Nwella and is being helped by another woman. She's covered
with sweat and her face is strained. She screams loudly in the
contractions.
'Pant, pant, pant,' says the
lady, trying to get Ijju to control her breathing.
'Com'on, com'on, you're
almost there.' says Nwella.
I can see a dark lock of hair
showing. Ijju screams loudly and strains, making the veins stand
out on her forehead. The baby's head comes into view. The lady
holds her hands gently against the baby's head, and eggs Ijju on,
'Here it comes, one more push.'
One more scream.
Whoosh!
Out it pops in a flood of blood
and goop. The lady collects the red baby in her hands, quickly
checks it over, and hands it to Ijju who pulls it firmly against
her chest and sits down on the bed. The baby gives a little cough
and a whimper.
'It's a boy!' says Pollux. 'It
wasn't too bad, was it?'
Maybe I shouldn't have watched.
I have to sit down. I put my head on my knees and cry.
'Wasn't that neat,' says
Pollux, trying to cheer me up. 'Out it popped, a new life. Shall we
watch some more?' The cockpit screens fill with images of women in
different stages of childbirth, panting and screaming and begging
for mercy.
It's more than I can
bear. I click my fingers and are in bed, cowering under the
covers.
10
It's scary being pregnant.
There’s all sorts of things that can go wrong: the baby can die, or
worst still have some serious disability. What's more there's all
the nasty side effects the go with being pregnant: you pee, you
cry, you throw up, you fart, you get clown feet, and you get
stretch marks and saggy boobs. Scariest of all is that at some
stage you have to give birth. Then there's the chance that you will
die from bleeding or infection. The death rate is really high where
there’s no decent medical facilities, like here.
He hasn't kicked yet, maybe
there's something wrong with him. I do hope he's okay.
'He is one hundred
percent a-okay,' says Pollux. 'Do you want to know if he's a boy or
a girl?'
'No, please don't tell
me.'
That's a relief. The baby is
okay, I only have farting, certain death and childbirth to worry
about. Maybe I need a midwife.
'I'll help,' offers Jesus.
'Do you have any experience?' I
ask.
'A little bit,' he answers.
'But it was a couple of thousand years ago.'
'It would be lovely to
have you there,' I say, 'but I need a mid-wife; someone who knows
what they're doing to guide me through it and do the right thing if
there's a problem. I'm sure Dr Florence could do it.’
Summer arrives and so do my
books. Azziz delivers them along with a big box of supplies: jelly
beans, Marmite, Maltesers, Hula Hoops, chocolate-coated almonds and
Caramello. When there's no one around, I lie out in the sun naked
and read. My body turns beautiful and brown and my little bump
grows a little every day. Being pregnant suits me. I like being
pregnant. Best of all, I have to eat for him too. I open a packet
of Maltesers and have one for me, then one for him, one for me, one
for him, and in no time they're all gone!
I have big long siestas that
last from lunchtime to late afternoon. By the time I get up, it's
almost bedtime. One afternoon in late June I wake up with ringing
in my ears. It must be one of those funny side effects of being
pregnant. I go outside and it gets louder, a lot louder. Cicadas,
the cicadas have finally arrived! I call out to Zeus but he doesn't
answer. He hasn't talked to me since I got pregnant. He's probably
sitting on Isora, stoned out of his tree.
After reading
all seven
Harry
Potters
and all three
Hunger Games
, I'm as brown as a button and the cherries are ripe.
I climb up the old twisted tree and pick a basket full then walk up
to the bluff and sit with my feet dangling over the edge eating
cherries. After about a hundred I feel a funny sensation like
popcorn in my tummy. Maybe I'm going to be sick. There it is again,
and again, a little stronger. It's him, he's kicking. His dad needs
to feel that!
That night I set up the worm
and look out for Zula. He's still in the desert. He can't have seen
his boy yet. He's thinking of me too. Good! Let's really give him
something to think about!
I click my fingers and he's
there beside me. I hold him tight. It's so nice to have him there.
He gets all frisky but I don't want that just now. I do what's
needed to keep him happy then curl up in his arms pushing my tummy
against his. He reaches down and gently strokes the lump. I feel a
little butterfly wing of a kick. I hope Zula can feel it too.
'What-' Zula starts
asking.
I click my fingers before
something happens to break the spell.
It would be so nice if he could
be here the whole time. I'm sure he would like Camillo. If he
wanted a bit of action we could go out in the fighters together and
blast slimeballs. I could click my fingers and steal him away from
Ijju. I'd love to but I can't. You can't do things like that to
people you love.
Jesus said we'd have a rock
concert. I liked the idea at the time but now I just want to laze
through the summer. I don't want all those superstars hanging out
on Camillo. I'd probably get seduced again. It would be nice but it
would end in tears, my tears. They'd just want my body, like the
thousands of groupies they've had before. I need something a little
more, which they wouldn't understand or care about.