“Got it,” he said. “It’s a combination of warmth and sterile conditions.”
On the way in we’d noticed a big sign about some fund-raising the hospital was doing.
“I’ve got a great idea,” he said to me as we peered in through the glass at our new half sister. Mum and Walter were still deciding whether to call her Jessica or Molly. “They should put eggs in there to hatch at the same time. Raise money on the side as chicken farmers. It would kill two birds with one stone. Metaphorically speaking.”
I got the giggles, at the mental image of hundreds of newly hatched chickens roaming the hospital as much as the “metaphorically speaking.” He’d recently taken to saying it as often as possible. “Yes, thanks, Dad. I’m full, metaphorically speaking.” “Yes, I’m ready for school, metaphorically speaking.”
Standing beside us, Mum wasn’t amused. She told us both off for being so silly.
Walter told us off again when we got home. “Your little sister is very fragile. It’s veally no laughing matter.”
She—Jessica, they finally decided, who quickly became Jess—might have been fragile when she was first born, but by the time she came home, it was as if she’d been in the superstrength incubator. I’d never heard a noise like her crying. The walls seemed to shake. I also don’t think she slept for more than two hours at a time in her first year. Which meant we didn’t either. She needed to be held all the time, and she had her favorites. I wasn’t one of them.
One Saturday afternoon, when Jess was about four months old, Charlie and I were working on a jigsaw puzzle together. Walter was at his office in town. He often worked six days a week. Mum was folding the wash while talking on the phone. Jess started to cry in her room. Mum called over to me, “Ella, darling, go in and check on her for me, would you?”
I reluctantly put down my jigsaw piece. I was just getting to the interesting corner bit. I winced at the noise as I went into Jess’s room, which I secretly still thought of as my room. As I lifted her out of her crib, she started to cry more loudly. The more I jiggled her, the louder she got. I brought her into the living room. Her cry turned into a shriek. Charlie put his hands over his ears.
“I think something’s wrong,” I said, as loudly as I could. “Is she sick?”
Mum said something into the phone and then hung up. She was barely visible behind the piles of baby clothes. It amazed me how much laundry Jess generated. “Of course she’s not sick. You’re just holding her wrong. Ella, really, how many times do I have to show you?”
“I’m
not
holding her wrong. I’m doing it just like you told me to.”
“You’re not, Ella. Your hands are in the wrong place. You know she needs to have her head supported.” Mum took Jess from me and Jess instantly stopped crying. Then, to my dismay, Mum handed her back. “I’m going to need lots of help from you over the next few years, Ella, so you need to learn how to do this properly.”
The next few
years
? She instructed me again exactly how to hold Jess: a hand here, another arm there, like a cradle. I tried it. Jess was quiet for a second, another second, even a third. We all started to relax. And then she looked up at me. Her whole face seemed to scrunch in on itself. Her skin reddened. Her mouth opened. The bellowing began again, louder than before.
“Oh,
Ella
,” Mum said, crossly this time. I started my Jess-jiggling again, to no avail.
“She’s obviously allergic to you,” Charlie said over the sound of the cries. He took in my furious expression. “Don’t blame me. Don’t shoot the messenger.”
“Give her to me, please, Ella,” Mum said. I did. Jess stopped crying immediately. Mum started cooing to her, smiling and stroking her face, speaking in the singsong voice she’d started using only since Jess had arrived.
“There we are, my Jessie. Are we all better now? Of
course
we are. You’re with Mummy, darling,
aren’t
you? That’s my dear little baby, yes! Who’s a good girl, my little Jessie? Who? You, that’s right. Good
girl
, Jessie.”
Jess started to gurgle, a sweet, musical sound. At that moment, I hated it even more than I hated her crying.
“She’s definitely allergic to you, Ella,” Charlie said. “Alternatively, she hates you.”
He was joking, but it didn’t matter. I felt a surge of something wild inside me—hurt, anger, jealousy, all mixed in together. To my own astonishment as much as Charlie’s and Mum’s, I swept the jigsaw off the table and started shouting.
“I’m allergic to
her
! I
hate
her! I hate
all
of you!” I ran out of the room and slammed the door. I heard Jess start crying again.
Right then, I really didn’t care. I didn’t care about any of them, or anything. Why should I? They didn’t care about me. I ignored Mum calling to me to come back right now and apologize. I ran down the hall into my tiny room, threw myself onto the floor and wiggled under my bed as far as I could, until I was pressed right up against the wall, the carpet rough against my bare legs and my face. I started to cry, the tears hot on my cheeks. I heard the door open and the light being switched on. I could see Mum’s feet. I shut my eyes and stayed still until I heard the door shut again. My tears kept falling but I made no sound. A few minutes later, the door opened again. I held my breath. “Ella?” It was Mum again. “Ella? I know you’re there somewhere. Come back out here and apologize.” I stayed where I was.
I ignored Charlie too when he came into my room soon after. I ignored Mum when she came in a third time. She had Jess in her arms, I could tell. I could hear her little hiccupy breaths. “Ella, I know you’re hiding under the bed. This childish behavior has to stop; do you hear me?”
I lay there, as still as I could, until they went out again. I waited a few moments and then I really started crying, tears and loud sobs at once. I couldn’t seem to stop. I cried for every sad thing I could think of, going back as far as I could remember, finding new and old hurts. I cried about my dad, about him leaving, about the divorce. I cried about Lucas’s sad little baby fox. About a bad result on a recent school test. The loss of my bedroom. But, mostly, I cried about the now obvious truth. Mum loved Jess more than she loved me.
I don’t know how much time passed, how long I was under the bed—an hour, maybe more. I could hear voices outside, Walter arriving home, the sounds of dinner being prepared, the TV. I stayed where I was, on the floor, in my dark room, my face pressed against the carpet. Eventually, I got up. I didn’t go to the bathroom, brush my teeth, any of it. I just put myself to bed, in my clothes. I was hungry, but there was nothing I could do about it. I wanted to keep crying but there didn’t seem to be any tears left. I waited for Mum or for Walter, or even Charlie, to come in and check on me. No one did. I fell asleep and slept the whole night through.
I woke at six a.m., before anyone else was up. I dressed, made my own breakfast of cereal and toast, then quietly let myself out of the house. I was waiting at the school gate when the first teacher arrived. It wasn’t until the next day that I found out Charlie had been right behind me on my walk to school, and that he had also gone back home to report to Mum and Walter that I was okay. He’d heard me get up and followed me. He didn’t want them worrying about me, he told me. He’d thought I might be running away.
“And I’d miss you,” he said. “Like, I don’t know, a dog would miss its fleas.”
That night, after Jess was fed, bathed and put to bed and while Walter was helping Charlie with his homework, Mum called me in to her and Walter’s bedroom. I knew what was coming. A telling-off. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it. She took a seat on the bed and patted the cover beside her. I came in and sat down.
“Darling, we need to have a little chat.”
I got in first. “I’m sorry,” I said. I knew I’d misbehaved the night before. And I
was
sorry. I didn’t like feeling this way either.
“I’m glad to hear that. Ella, you really do have to stop being so jealous.”
“I’m not jealous. I’m really not. I’m just very tired.”
She gave a laugh. It wasn’t a nice laugh. “I think if anyone deserves to be tired around here, it’s me. You just have to try harder, Ella. She’s your little sister. You should love her.”
My apology was forgotten. I felt that surge of crossness again, but I tried pushing it down this time. “She should be the one getting used to me. I was here first.”
It was the truth, but I was also trying to be funny. I wanted to make Mum laugh. I wanted lots of things. I wanted Mum to stop telling me off and to give me a big hug, to tell me she still loved me, to tell me she was sorry that Jess, and Walter, seemed to take up so much of her time these days. I wanted her to ruffle my hair and say, of course you’re tired, you poor kid, come on, an early night for you. I wanted her to tuck me into bed, and read me a story. I wanted her to thank me for being such a good girl lately, for getting on so well with Walter, and with Charlie. I wanted her to say that of course Jess wouldn’t take up all her time forever, that of course she would soon be able to come into school again to listen to my reading and do tuckshop duty and all the things she used to do, and not make me take in another apologetic note to my teacher, explaining that she just didn’t have the time anymore, not with a new baby in the house. I wanted her to give me another big hug, and tell me that she loved me just as much as she always had, before Walter had come along and before Jess had come along, and that, yes, she did now have another daughter, but I was absolutely right, I
had
been there first, so I would always be her special, first daughter, no matter what happened.
She didn’t. She stood up, put her hands on her hips and gave me a cross look. “‘I was here first’? Ella Baum, you should be ashamed of yourself. Jess is your baby sister. You should be welcoming her into our family, not being so mean to her.”
I stood up too, just as crossly. I’d heard that word “should” from Mum too many times recently.
He’s your new father; you
should
love him. This is your great new house; you
should
love it.
I felt the fury inside me again. This time I let it out. “I don’t care! You can’t make me love her!”
“Go to your room, Ella. Right now. I’m very, very disappointed in you. And Walter will be too.”
My fury was running free now. “I don’t care about that either! I don’t care about you or Walter or Jess. And I’ll never love her, no matter how much you try to make me!”
Once I’d slammed my way into my bedroom, the fury turned into tears again. I was nearly twelve, old enough to know that Mum was right. I
was
jealous. I
should
love my baby sister. But at that moment, I couldn’t. It was too hard. For the second night in a row, I found myself under my bed. I cried myself to sleep.
Charlie woke me up two hours later, using my hockey stick to poke me awake. “I come bearing food,” he hissed. He’d smuggled in some biscuits and chocolate (he always had a secret stash). He pushed them under the bed, reciting what was on offer as if he were a waiter, chatting to me in his usual conversational way, as if it weren’t a bit strange that I was lying in my dark bedroom, under my bed, cramming biscuits into my mouth.
He waited until I’d eaten three biscuits and two chocolates before he spoke. “Are you okay?”
“No,” I said, my voice muffled by the food.
“You’re in the right, you know.”
I swallowed. “About what?”
“Jess,” he said. His voice was clear and firm in the darkness. “She is a complete nightmare. She has brought nothing but pain and suffering to this house. Not to mention a great deal of washing. She is nothing but a big, stupid, red-faced, bald crybaby. A midget, stupid, red-faced, bald crybaby.”
I suddenly heard myself laugh.
He continued. “She can’t feed herself, either. She dribbles. She’s also incontinent. You know what that word means, don’t you? Disgusting. She wears
nappies
, all day, every day. She can’t string two words together. She hasn’t got any teeth. Did I mention she was bald? Hairless and toothless. No wonder you hate her. She’s absolutely hateful. Hideous. A blight on society. She should be banished, not just from this house, but this city, this country, thrown to the wolves, eaten alive, torn from limb to limb—”
He was going too far now. “She’s not that bad. And it’s not her fault she cries so much.”
“It is,” he said, matter-of-factly. “She is evil and she must be destroyed.”
“She’s not evil,” I said. “She’s just a little baby.”
“Come out here and say that, if you’re so brave,” he said.
I edged out, and sat up, pushing my hair out of my eyes, feeling the imprint of the carpet on my face.
He handed me another biscuit.
“Thanks, Charlie,” I said. I wasn’t just thanking him for the biscuit.
“No need for thanks,” he said. “Anyway, maybe your mum is right. Maybe you’ll learn to love her. Like you’d learn, I don’t know, to live with a wart. Or a boil. Metaphorically speaking.”
He gave me one more chocolate, told me it was my turn to load the dishwasher and left the room.
I remember lying down on the carpet again for a few minutes to think his words over. Could I learn to love Jess? Like I’d learned to ride a bike, cook an omelet, climb a tree? With practice and repetition? Maybe I could at least try. I left my room, said sorry to Mum, to Walter, to Jess and to Charlie. And for the next few months, it was almost peaceful at home. If you ignored Jess’s constant crying. Which I tried to do.
Life settled for all of us. I received the news about my dad’s death. I was sad at first, but I also found it confusing. I’d rarely heard from him and I realized I didn’t really remember him. He’d become a distant figure in my life. Mum had also made it clear she didn’t like him, that he had been an error of judgment in her life. And there was always so much going on at home to distract me from any thoughts of him. Jess was starting to crawl and talk a lot. No words, just babble, a nonstop stream of nonsense words, which even I had to admit were pretty funny. I began to feel happier most of the time. Mum had started noticing me again. I had friends at school and Charlie’s great company at home. Having Lucas helped too. I was still sending plenty of faxes to him, and getting plenty in return. He was my confidant and adviser and he made me feel special, something I needed whenever the jealous-of-Jess feelings started to rise. Jess might have been the apple of everyone’s eye here in Melbourne, but she didn’t have an uncle in London who sent her faxes and foxes and books, did she?