Monthly Photos: Lady in Red
PS The rather brilliant Australian fantasy author Rowena Cory Daniells let me start my ebook blog tour at her place, where I talk about how the book that I wasn’t meant to write came to be.
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When Louisette was four days old, I put her in a red dress and took the photo below. I liked it so much I tried it again exactly two month later – and a (mostly) monthly tradition was born. Here are twelve photos taken over one year, on roughly the same day of each month (as you can tell, I forgot a few):
Cry, Wolf (free contemporary fantasy short story, PG for violence)
I howled for the joy of night and the hunt. The rain and the darkness fell as one, and I licked them up. I leapt and streaked through the trees, and the rabbits knew my name. They knew my name was death. Their name was dinner.
I smelled the wet earth, and the rot of pine needles thick under my paws. The taste of the air was river-fresh and water-wet. I opened my mouth to lap at the rabbits’ sweat as it steamed in the chill air. My dinner smelled of panic. I ran, they ran; the rain ran down the trees.
Howls broke out beside me, and I couldn’t name whose howls they were.
It wasn’t the song of Bristle-Fur, my pack’s alpha male, or of Broken-Teeth, his mate. Long-Tail was a long way behind, and his yaps were faint as footfalls. He never could keep up.
I didn’t recognise the howls at all, and put on a burst of speed. The rabbits appeared and disappeared as they bounded up and down. “My food,” I snapped to the strange she-wolf beside me. “Go hunt with your own pack.”
The bitch burst from a screen of bushes and locked her teeth around my shoulder. It burned.
I couldn’t drag both her and her wet coat no matter how I ached for fresh meat. We two wolves tumbled over and over, off balance and angry.
I felt a warm fluid oozing from my shoulder. The she-wolf had let go and I was bleeding. I struggled upright.
My fur stood to attention when she dared to face me, her back to a broken tree. The colours of her coat mirrored the night sky, where clouds scattered to hunt the full moon.
I didn’t like the way she looked. The mottling of her fur shaded her body in the wrong places, making her shape waver and bulge. I growled, and she lowered her belly against the ground, suddenly submissive. She pointed her muzzle up at me and whined. I quivered with the wrongness of it all: “What are you playing at?”
“I’ve changed you,” she said. “Don’t be afraid.”
“Of you? Your pack?” I barked short and sharp, and she tipped herself onto the ground, drawing her front paws in toward her chest.
Her belly was paler than the rest of her, and her teats grew out of shape. They were larger toward her neck. I turned away in disgust.
“Forgive me,” she said, and her voice screeched like a human in my ears. I turned back to see how she made that sound. My ears flattened against my head. She was writhing on the ground, whimpering, knocking her back paws against the dead tree. I crouched into the prickly sweetness of the pine needles and watched.
She changed in front of my eyes. Her body stretched out, and her fur turned pinkish white. It vanished against her skin. The fur on top of her head grew long, yellow and curling. Her claws turned stubby and wide, the same off-pink as the rest of her. Suddenly she stood over me, balanced on elongated hind legs that were thick with fat. She smelled of control and death. She was human.
“Forgive me,” she said again in her high voice. “I didn’t want to be alone.”
My bitten shoulder seared me with new pain. I squealed with it. But the human wasn’t touching me.
She watched silently as the bite she made tortured me. I twisted my body into the ground, itching so badly I wanted to scrape my fur right off. Desperate, I bit into my own flesh to ease its pain. My fur filled my mouth – and then it shrank under my teeth.
All I had left was a mouthful of blood, stuck through with pine needles. Beyond that was my naked skin, smooth as a snake. I sat bare and shivering on the ground, with my hind legs poking out in front of me. Big fat legs, good for nothing but eating.
There was a root sticking into the back of my knees. I could feel every knobble of the bark. No fur. . . My shoulder settled into a pulsing, but normal, wound, and I lifted my hands to press on it. I had hands, two of them, and my claws were gone. Lifting my hairless chin, I tried to howl. I screamed.
“It’s all right,” said the other girl. “The first change is always a shock.”
“What have you – am I –” I stopped and snarled at her.
“Oh, you can talk. That’s good.”
I swore.
“You’re adapting well,” she said.
I clenched my teeth against more screams and waited until my heart stopped thumping out of my bent ribs.
“What is going on? Tell me, or I’ll snap your skinny neck.”
She folded her legs beneath her, with her bald belly exposed so I knew she meant no harm. Other than what she’d already done to me. “You’re a human.” Her shoulders lifted and fell.
I stiffened at the movement, but didn’t attack.
“Just for tonight,” she said, “and whenever the moon is full it’ll happen again.” She examined me through narrow eyes, and finally sighed. “My human name is Juliet. What’s your name?”
I stood upright, pleased to find how tall I was, and that I could dominate on two legs. Perhaps the big legs were good for something after all.
“My name is Howler.”
“Okay. For tonight, we’ll call you Helen.”
“Why?”
“You and I are a new pack. A human pack, for the night. The other humans will give us food like you’ve never tasted.”
My stomach growled on my behalf. “Where?”
First she made me dress with her in human clothes she’d hidden away for her own use. I learnt to use buttons and zippers, and to resist the urge to bite off the constraints wrapping my chest and arms and legs. The clothing wasn’t dead and wasn’t alive, and it itched. Fabric flapped against my skin as I walked.
I was still unsteady on my hind legs. My jaw ached with longing to have something struggling for its final breath between my teeth. “Soon,” I muttered. “It had better happen soon.”
Juliet and I trotted down the highway, walking into the realm of humans. My wolf heart told me it was a trap.
I wanted to crouch, to run away, but I grimaced and settled for wrapping my arms around me. The rain slowed and stopped.
Every stone of the road pressed its claw into my soles. It didn’t smell like it should. The metallic road-stink remained, in a smaller dose, but it didn’t smell of danger. That was worst of all. Even my nose told lies to me.
Then we found Blood-Mouth, my mate. I tasted him on the air, and lifted my head. My nose told me the truth: Pain. Danger. Death.
Juliet bared her teeth. “Someone’s body is here.”
We walked on without speaking, and found Blood-Mouth on his side in the bushes. His corpse was packed with maggots expanding their territory outward from his belly. The gravel around him was black with his blood. His mouth was frozen open in his last howl.
Instead of noting his passing and calculating the new social order, I felt tears running down my cheeks.
“What are you doing?” asked Juliet.
I sniffed, and scrubbed my cheeks with the palm of my hand. “Crying. Why aren’t you? You’re as human as I am.”
“He wasn’t my pack, Helen. I’m sorry, but can we go? I feel like there’s maggots in my stomach, just from looking at him.” She sighed. “Being human makes me so weak, I can hardly stand it.”
“Who killed him?” I asked. “It’s. . . important. Was it you?”
She shook her head, and walked to the other side of the road. Her hand over her mouth muffled her words. “It would have been a car, controlled by a human.”
“Then it was humans that killed him.”
“Yes.”
“Which ones?” My fragile hands curled up and became fists. “So that’s what they’re for,” I said quietly.“Why are you asking so many questions?”
“This is what it is to be human,” I said, sniffing out the truth of my words as I spoke. “I care. My mate was murdered. It’s. . .”
“Wrong,” she said softly.
“Yes.”
“Let’s make it right,” she said. Her eyes gleamed in the darkness.
We ran along the road until we found a house. It was neat and square, and made up of smaller red squares, with a rectangular door. Juliet showed me the human way to knock on the door. A human man answered, yawning and blinking. His top half was unclothed, and his chest and head had orange fur.
“Did you kill the wolf?” I asked. “The one on the road?”
He scratched his head. “Are you from the animal society? It’s late.”
“The wolf was killed some days ago,” said Juliet. I could hear the growl in her voice. “Do you know who did it? Was it you? Your car?”
“Listen, there are far too many wolves around here anyway,” he said. “I had no idea you people needed a report for that sort of thing.”
Deep within myself, I noted the moment when I became fully human. It was hate. I lifted both my fists and hit that murderer in the throat.
He stumbled backward, but gripped onto a table and kept his feet, gasping for air. I could see his skin changing colour, because he didn’t have the fur to cover it. The colour was good. Juliet was one step behind me, and she clawed at his face with her clawless fingers. The table tipped and fell, smashing a vase and sending water and jonquils across the floor. I jumped at the man’s chest and ripped at his throat. My teeth didn’t work properly and I got barely a mouthful of flesh; bald and wrinkled. I spat it out in revulsion. Juliet and I stood to watch the man bleed into the flowers and broken glass. Loosened strands of our hair lay across his chest. Juliet’s hair was yellow. Mine was black. Black is better. It’s always better.
“That was easy,” Juliet said doubtfully.
“Haven’t you killed a human before?” I asked.
She shrugged, admitting it. “They’re just like us except naked. And slow.”
I picked up the table and put it back in its spot. “I’m hungry, but I don’t want to eat him. His blood smells – odd.”
“Humans eat the strangest things. I ate cow once.”
“What, a whole one all to yourself?” I asked.
“Pieces so small I had to ask what it was. Cooked, too. That’s why the blood smells wrong. All blood will smell wrong to you tonight. Us humans have to cook our meat before we eat it. It’s part of being civilised. Come on, we have to find the kitchen.”
Juliet was showing me how to eat fruit when we heard a human scream from the front entrance. We took our apples and went to look.
An adolescent female stood in the doorway, framed by the night sky. The skin of her face was red instead of pink like ours, and her short hair stuck up around her head. I liked her for her hair at once. If it had been grey instead of that same orange colour, she would have looked more like a wolf than Juliet.
“Good evening,” said Juliet, and introduced us both.
The teenager screamed again and ran away. I watched as she grabbed for the hallway phone and sent the plastic base crashing to the floor. “Do you think we should chase her?”
“We can’t eat her – not raw – and I don’t think she’s playing,” said Juliet. “Something’s wrong.”
She sniffed the air, and I knew she was truly worried. “Maybe we should explain to the pup who we are.”
“That seems very human,” I said, and found my head nodding a yes.
We walked up the hall to the girl’s room, automatically stepping lightly so we didn’t make a sound. The carpet was soft as pine needles, and perfectly flat.
It was easy to tell which room belonged to the girl, because we could hear her saying her own address, loudly and clearly.
“She’s on the phone,” whispered Juliet. “Talking to someone who’s not here.”
I lay flat on the carpet and held my mouth to the crack under the door. “Good evening,” I said, copying Juliet’s level manner. The girl stopped breathing. I didn’t need a fully developed sense of smell to scent her sour waves of fear, even through the door.
“I’m Helen. What’s your name?”
“Marie,” she whispered. Juliet nodded encouragingly at me.
“Was that your dad, by the door?”
Marie whimpered, and I exchanged a pleased grin with Juliet.
“Marie?” I said.
She began to cry.
“Answer me in words, little human. Was it your dad I killed?”
“Please go away.”
“You’re doing so well,” I said. My voice was smooth as the sighing wind. Juliet was nodding at me, impressed.
“I’m sorry we had to destroy one of your pack, but we had a reason.”
“You – of course you did.”
I sniffed loudly at the air beneath her bedroom door. “Marie, your dad was a bad human. He killed my mate. Do you understand?”
Before she could reply we heard a splintering of wood from the front door. Marie screamed, and kept on screaming. Juliet and I turned and found ourselves staring right into a new pack. They were all men, bigger than us. Each one was dressed the same, in blue, and they were on the hunt. I could smell it in their sweat.
We gaped at them; at their short hair and at their guns. I could tell without looking at her that Juliet felt the tiny stirring of air on the back of her legs at the same moment I did. We were a pack, and the men were against us. If there was air behind us, there was a way out. I rose into a crouch. The hunters took a step forward and Juliet and I broke for the back door. We toppled two more hunters on the way out.
The air was as sweet as the first breath of a winter morning. Under my naked feet the grass was wet with dew. We ran so fast the wind couldn’t have run faster. The highway was flat and there were no tree branches dragging on our backs.
We scented cars behind us as they bellowed rage at our escape. They roared the hunt to one another, and we remembered my dead mate. Fear-maggots crawled in my own stomach. Juliet and I were smaller than the cars, and slower. We both knew we’d be eaten before the sun rose. I remembered the taste of human skin, and how soft it was in my mouth.
“Cars stay on the road,” Juliet yelled to me. I howled in reply, and understood what hope was. Juliet and I were a pack. We’d stay alive. She ran to the far side of the road, and I cut away into the trees. My legs itched and bled.
I heard her howl out a human song note that flitted through the trees to let me know she was near. It was as familiar as my own voice, and as alien as my hairless, itching hands. I shrieked like a human girl when my body clawed at me from within. There was no time to hide, and no strength to run. I collapsed without another sound. The pine needles cushioned my fall.
Juliet screamed out to me through the trees, and I understood the howl in her voice. My pack member was caught; she was hurt, she was dying. I tried to stand, to go to her, and fell face first into a bush. My fur pushed out of my skin while I shuddered. Juliet’s clothes broke and I ripped them off me. I bit my own lip straight through, but I didn’t cry out. I didn’t want to be dinner.
When I had my own body back, I stood silently to listen for Juliet. The stink of human was already fading from the air. My stink. Sweet-smelling pine needles filled the forest in every direction, and I knew who I was again.
I howled my joy to the morning. The rabbits would feel my teeth in their necks before the sun was high.
Broken-Teeth howled out a reply, calling me to come. But I ran for the road, cursing my bleeding shoulder. There was something I had to do before I ran to him. I had to know.
Juliet was easy to find. The humans had driven off the road in pursuit of her, and all I had to do was follow their car tracks. I could hear them hunting not far from me, but they were as clumsy as giant pups wading through the undergrowth. The forest was mine, and they no longer concerned me.
Juliet was slumped at the base of a tree, almost invisible in mottled grey death. Her body hid the artificial brightness of her human clothes as they lay beneath her. No wonder the men had passed her without stopping. I licked her rough fur, searching for a wound. She was shot. All that killed her was a tiny bite between her ears. It smelled of civilisation; of fire, iron, and blood. I cocked my head, wondering what to make of her, the one who bit me.
She never told me her real name.
Don’t Panic
Okay, you can panic if you like.
Yep, I changed the theme. Mostly to celebrate the fact that after all these years I’ve finally caved in and published an ebook (the decision wasn’t unrelated to my recent purchase of a Kindle).
It’s contemporary fantasy (that means it’s set in the modern day, apparently) set in Canberra. You can buy it here for the lofty sum of $2.99. It comes in a bunch of formats, so you can read it on your computer if you don’t have a reader (you DO have a computer, I assume).
And you know what? Here’s the beginning:
SEE THROUGH
by Louise Curtis
PROLOGUE
I felt cold, and knew someone in the room was afraid. Dad leant over me to see through the window of our flat. Before I knew whether the fear was his or Mum’s, my own hands shook and the rainbow I was drawing turned to yucky scribbles.
“They’re here,” he said.
Mum dropped our best salad bowl and it smashed on the kitchen tiles. “No! It’s not her birthday until tomorrow.”
I began to cry.
Mum ran to me and gripped both my shoulders. Her hands were small, as small as mine, but her touch forced me to See into her mind. I stared at her cold terror and stopped crying. “Good girl,” she whispered. “Do you remember what to do?”
“After my party?” I said.
“Before the party. Now. Go, quickly.”
“But you said –”
“Now!”
I scowled at her but turned obediently to the sliding glass balcony door, which was shaded with gauze curtains. The law said I had to be raised by my fellow empaths once I was five years old, even though both my parents were Normal. I’d seen from Dad’s mind what it was like when empaths were still allowed in Normal schools. Another boy, an empath, had waited until Dad liked a girl, and then manipulated him so that he had kissed her sister instead. Dad remembered that boy whenever he was angry at me, which was often.
“Don’t go out yet,” said Mum, clutching her brown hands together to stop them fluttering like frightened sparrows. “They’re still in the carpark, looking up. We don’t want them to see you.”
“Can they See?” I asked, fascinated despite myself.
“They see like you do,” said Dad, combing his thick fingers through his blond moustache. “Too much. They see thoughts and feelings that aren’t meant to be seen. They see inside you, and your bad thoughts.”
I stepped back, realising the other empaths were in the carpark. They could be speaking to the cars, or the trees, or even the old brown bricks of the walls. All of the nearby objects knew who I was. As an empath, I was the only person around who talked to them.
Worst of all, the other empaths would be able to See me by my feelings, straight through the simpler feelings of the glass and gauze. Didn’t Mum and Dad know they could already See us?
“When I say, ‘Go’, you go, and quickly,” said Mum.
“I’m scared.”
“I know, sweetheart. It’ll be okay.”
“But you’re scared too.” Fear came off her like smoke – a clear sign to the empaths below that my Normal parents didn’t want to let me go. “You’re more scared than me.”
Mum didn’t answer, but peered out at the watchers through the gauze curtains. I looked at the carpet. Dad said I shouldn’t look straight at people. He said showing my eyes was rude. His eyes were green and Mum’s were brown. Mine were black, like all empaths, so I looked down.
I liked the carpet, so I tried desperately to think about our carpet instead of the empaths. The parts that weren’t too worn were the same blue as the sky. It was a quiet carpet, and I knew it didn’t mind me. A lot of carpets don’t like kids.
“There’s still three of them there.” Mum’s horror stabbed into me and I shivered again, like a dog. “They’re looking right at this window.”
“We can’t escape them, you know,” said Dad.Dad was big, much bigger than Mum, and his long blond hair tangled like string on his head, and grew wild on his chest. Next to him, Mum looked like a shadow. I stopped shivering.
He wasn’t afraid of them – not in the same way as me or Mum. I crept closer to his feet for confidence, even though there was an edge of darkness that made me feel sick near him. He was thinking of that boy again, the empath boy who played with his mind.
Mum’s breath turned ragged. “I’ll shield her!” she said. “My feelings are loud enough to cover hers. Will it work, Amy? What do you think?”
I nodded yes, pulling down the stretchy edges of my white dress as if it could hide me. As if anything could hide me from empathic Sight.
“Where are they now?” Mum asked.
“The big lady’s on the stairs,” I said, Seeing her through the cheap inner wall. To me she walked like a sea creature swimming closer, dripping slime along the way. “She’s wrinkling her nose at the smell of dog wee.”
Mum nodded quickly. For a second I Saw her change into someone tall, as tall as Dad, and her brown skin made a wall strong enough to keep me safe. “Outside, Amy. Go. Now. Hide your feelings behind me, okay? Like you did when there was an empath in the park with us, remember?”
She opened the glass door too fast and it squeaked. I felt the watchers in the carpark jerk up their heads. Mum walked outside. Her panic blazed like fire. I was scared to follow, but I didn’t want to stay with Dad.
There was something joining his thoughts to the big lady. To my Sight it looked like a dirty string, and that’s what was making me ill. It frightened me more than the empaths, because I knew it came from Dad and not from them. He hit me sometimes, and Mum too, but this was different. This was on purpose.
So I crept out, holding onto Mum’s fire in my mind so I was one flame with her, hidden behind both her body and her mind. I didn’t like making myself so frightened.
The balcony creaked and tipped sideways. Mum wasn’t meant to go outside. That wasn’t what we practised. The balcony was too old to hold anyone except me. But she stood at the broken iron railing with her feet far apart like she was starting a fight.
I pulled at the concrete lid we’d made in the balcony floor, but it was too heavy now my hands were shaking. Mum crouched to help, shielding me from the empaths with her body. Concrete is good for hiding behind. It’s too thick for thoughts to pass through.
Inside, the doorbell rang – three times. The big lady knew I was trying to get away – how could she not? Mum’s fire was too big. Any empath would see it from kilometres away. They didn’t need to See me directly any more.
The lid came up and I crawled inside our hollowed-out air conditioner, long since broken but still bolted onto the underside of the tired balcony so it didn’t fall down. It was spiky with metal and twisted wires. I’d talked to it often, making sure it would hide me as well as it could.
Mum stood on the lid on top of me, pushing the concrete down onto the arch of my back. I didn’t complain, even though it pressed into my bones.
Dad opened the front door. Mum didn’t see him turn and silently point to me, because she only saw with her eyes, and her eyes were looking down at the carpark. But I Saw everything. He wanted me to go away. Dad didn’t want me Looking at him ever again. That was why he’d made the string between him and the big lady. So I wouldn’t be his any more. I wanted to cry, but my tears were used up.
Physically, the big lady was shorter than Dad, and slender, but her mind reached out all around her like questing tentacles, black and dripping with power. Her mind made her big; bigger than anyone I’d ever seen. I wished yet again that I couldn’t see the secret shapes and colours and words of other people’s minds and hearts. She felt me right away, even trapped as I was in the heart of Mum’s flame-fear. The flames hurt me more than the concrete.
“Hello Mrs Preston,” she said. “It’s time for your little girl to come to school.”
“I don’t want to talk to you,” Mum said. “Amy’s gone now. We sent her away.”
“Come inside,” said the big lady, patting at the perfect bun of her black hair, “or my associates will make you come in. You know we’re capable.”
Dad’s mind flashed back to that boy, and to me, and for a second he didn’t look big to me at all.
I Saw one of the big lady’s tentacles playing with Mum’s fear. It wasn’t hurt by the flames at all. Not like me.
She could control Mum if she wanted to, like a doll. A tiny whisper told me I could control Mum too, if I wanted to. I imagined the surprise in her wide brown eyes if she ever realised the truth.
Dad already knew. He’d known for years.
“No,” I whispered out loud. “Not the bad thoughts.”
Mum took a deep breath. Her fear turned sharp and cold. She charged through the open balcony door and threw her small dark body at the big lady. Both of them fell to the kitchen floor, and I gasped in pain as the broken glass dug into their skin.
“Get off!” Dad yelled. But he wasn’t yelling at the big lady. I Saw his mind clearly for the first time. He pulled Mum off the big lady, and he didn’t even care that she was bleeding.
The balcony tried to warn me to get out of the air conditioning box. It told me it was too old, too tired, and it was going to fall. The balcony was smarter than most of my friends. It knew I’d be killed, and that dying would make me stop being friends with it. But I couldn’t open the lid anyway.
So we fell – balcony, concrete, air conditioning box and little empath girl.
The box tried to get less sharp for me, but it was just a box. I pushed and pushed at the concrete lid, but I was falling too fast to get out.
Suddenly I wasn’t falling too fast. The balcony pressed against the air, and made it softer. We all drifted like a leaf and settled gently on the dirty asphalt of the shared carpark.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
I felt the balcony smiling back at me. But then I opened my eyes.
Three empaths looked down on me with empty black irises. “Hello, Amy,” they said together. “We’ve come to take you home.”
Mum barrelled out of the ground floor stairs clutching a piece of salad-bowl glass in her hand. Her feet were bloody, and her knees, and the hand holding the glass was dripping blood down her wrist. “Leave my daughter alone! She’s mine!”
Dad ran down the stairs after her. He grabbed her bloody wrist in one big hand and squeezed until she dropped the glass, hurting my hand as the glass cut her. “Enough! Don’t you know when to give up?”
Mum stared at him, and I Saw her hope shrivel up.
The big lady appeared out of empty space, standing over me like Dad loved to do. Her head was covered in black bobby pins. I felt them digging into her scalp, keeping her hair in order. “Now, Amy,” she said. “You want to be with your own kind, don’t you?”
“How did you just appear like that?” I asked, reaching up to touch the stiff stocking of her leg, and check she was really there. The hairs beneath the fabric made the stocking bumpy. “Why didn’t I See you?”
“I learnt to shield my emotions a long time ago. Wouldn’t you like to learn to do the same thing?”
“Mum?”
“Amy?” she whispered. “Are you okay, sweetheart?”
Dad didn’t let go of her wrist.
“They know I’m here, Mum.”
Mum collapsed onto the asphalt, leaving her bloody arm awkwardly held up by Dad’s grip. “I love you Amy – remember that. Remember! No matter what they make you feel. Remember me! I’ll see you again!”
The big lady smiled hard. She had very thin lips, matching the thin tentacles already coming out of her head and arching down to touch my face. “Shh, Amy. Stay still. I’m going to make you feel better now. Try not to resist, or it might hurt.”
That’s when I saw something else, just inside her mind where I wasn’t meant to Look. I Saw how to shield myself from the Sight. All I had to do was think like whatever I was next to, and I’d vanish from her Sight like she’d vanished from mine. Physical sight meant so little to us.
I became asphalt. Everything in my head turned to rockish thoughts, crunched and trampled and mixed with tar. Slow, thick thoughts about hot weather and stiff white paint.
The empaths gasped – even the big lady. I knew I’d done it – vanished right in front of her.
“Grab her!” she shrieked.
I dived away from their arms, burning my knees on myself. On the asphalt. No! On myself. And I didn’t have knees.
Then I made my mind stay slow and thick and stiff while my body walked away, fleeing carefully across the asphalt where the empaths could search all day while I moved between their outstretched hands, invisible as air.
Dad was right: we Saw too much. We Saw so much we could learn to become invisible to one another – for a moment. I felt myself become almost visible as he came into my mind, so I quickly stopped thinking of him, and his fist-hands, and his fear that I was secretly bigger and stronger than him. Asphalt doesn’t have a Dad.
“Oh, good girl!” Mum called. She was looking right at me, and quickly looked away, up at the sky, so no-one could see me through her Normal thoughts.
Dad finally let go of her arm. He combed his moustache with his fingers before he realised there was blood on his hands. He hacked and spat at the ground. Since I was asphalt, I didn’t mind. Asphalt gets a lot of things on it.
The big lady lifted her head and sniffed the air. “I can still see you, Amy. I know exactly where you are.”
She was lying, and we both knew it. But then a bright glow of joy filled her aura. I cringed by accident, then quickly thought of tar and paint and a childhood as a mountain.
“Mr Preston!” she said. “Find your daughter. Bring her to me.”
“Can’t you see her?” Dad asked. “She’s right in front of you.”
The big lady’s tentacles quested out in front of her, while her physical body remained dignified. She Saw nothing.
I was gravel, and stone, and recycled concrete. But Dad walked right over to me and took my arm.
When I shook my head at him, he just tightened his grip. The empaths closed in.
“No,” whispered Mum. “She’s ours.” But she didn’t move from her place.
The old air conditioning box wanted me to crawl back inside. It didn’t understand.
I understood perfectly. Dad was giving me away. He must have called the big lady and told her everything. I bet he told her to come early, so I didn’t get a birthday party, either. So none of us were ready.
Clever Dad, to hide it even from me. I should have known sooner. Of course he was afraid of me – everyone was, even Mum – but I thought he loved me, too. Sometimes I even made him laugh. He liked the pictures I drew, where he was so big and everyone else was so small. It was how he always looked to me, because I Saw the truth of things.
But he pulled me to my feet and when I refused to walk he lifted me up by the armpits and held me out in front of him like a wet bedsheet. Even then, he kept my back to him, so he didn’t see my eyes.
The big lady’s tentacles outlined my body. I wasn’t asphalt any more. “Did you really think you could hide from me? The instant you opened those blank black eyes, you belonged to me by law.” She reached out her hands to take me.
Dad smelled of sweat, the sour kind that isn’t because of the sun. He was either angry or afraid now. I couldn’t tell which.
But I knew what I was: angry. Angry enough that nothing anyone else felt could hurt me. Not any more.
I pushed back on Dad’s chest and kicked out with my legs. My foot hit the big lady’s hands with a satisfying smack. Dad’s grip loosened as he lost his balance. Taking my chance, I wriggled to the ground and fled.
I wasn’t asphalt – I was a scared girl, and I wanted to get far away from all Mum’s blood and Dad’s sweat and the empaths’ black-coloured eyes. So I fled.
Mum struggled to her feet, gasping in pain as shards of glass dug deeper into her. She grabbed at Dad as he ran after me. He flung her aside and she slid on the ground, scraping open the skin on her arms and knees.
I jumped into the Lantana bushes and wriggled through. Dad tried to follow but his foot caught and he tripped. He jumped back up and pounded after me, ripping out the flowers by their roots.
“Mr Preston!” called the big lady. “Mr Preston, wait!”
He didn’t listen to her. “I’ll get you, Amy. Don’t you dare run from me.”
I ran down the cracked concrete toward the shops. Dad’s footsteps pounded after me. He was catching up.
My breath caught in my throat, hurting me. I heard the big lady yelling again, but I couldn’t hear what she said. The brown bricks of our flats were in the way. Bricks are quiet, and they’re good to hide behind. But I couldn’t hide from Dad. Dad had Normal eyes.
He caught me, wrenching my shoulder so I faced him. “Enough!”
“Stop it, you’re hurting me. Daddy!”
He shook me until I stopped pleading. I looked at my feet, like he taught me. His feelings made me ill. I shook with rage – a mix of his and mine.
“You disobeyed me,” he said. “I should beat you ragged before I feed you to them. No-one can see us here, you know. So much for seeing through walls, you cheat.”
I pushed at him and writhed in his grip, but he was ready for me.
“You’re a bad girl. Remember that when the empaths lock you in a concrete cave where you belong. You’re a bad girl. Say it!”
“I’m. . . a bad girl.”
“That’s right. Say it again.”
“I hate you!”
He shook me. My head flopped around. It hurt my neck. “Now say it right.”
“I’m a bad girl.”
“Again.”
“I’m a bad girl.”
“That’s right. That’s what you’ll always be, because you’re an empath, not a Normal. Time you realised what you are. Now walk back with me or I’ll give you something to cry about.”
I remembered Mum sliding across the asphalt, bleeding from her face and hands and feet. Dad had hated me all along, and I’d been too stupid to admit what I’d Seen every day.
Already I could see the big lady’s tentacles questing around the corner of the house. But she couldn’t See me, and she couldn’t See Dad’s sudden explosion of hate – not yet.
But did I have tentacles too? I squeezed shut my eyes and hated Dad with all my heart. He said I was a freak. He said I was a bad girl. He knew how to hurt me, and I’d learnt plenty from Seeing inside his head every day of my life. Normals feared me for a reason.
He screamed and let go of my arm. “What are you doing to me?”
I kept my eyes shut, so I could See him more clearly. He thought he was in pain. His body didn’t think so, but his mind was mine. I concentrated harder, clenching the empty air in my fists as I imagined his heart in my fingers. Dad fell to the ground. He tried to speak, but he couldn’t.
I stared at him, getting frightened. No-one had taught me how to make it stop. Something new was happening, and I couldn’t control it. It was happening in his body – really happening this time.
Dad clutched at his chest. “No,” he wheezed. The fear made him shrink to a tiny boy before my eyes. A tiny boy with messy blond hair and a big, crying mouth. “You little murderer.”
My own chest hurt like someone was squeezing me too tightly. I couldn’t breathe. My legs gave way and I lay on the ground at Dad’s side. Suddenly I saw the whole world through his eyes: saw my dark-skinned daughter and her black curly hair and shiny black irises staring back at me. I screamed in agony, and then suddenly it didn’t hurt any more. My vision was my own again, and Dad lay facing me with frozen eyes.
I stared at him; stared and stared and stared but I couldn’t See him any more. He was gone, leaving just the shape of him on the ground – exactly like the shape of wooden furniture, because it used to be a living thing and now it’s not. I touched his body, still warm and sticky with sweat. He wasn’t inside. I shook him, carefully, not wanting him to grab me again. “Dad?”
“Enough,” said the big lady. “He’s dead.”
One of the others walked along the path. She knelt down and touched his neck and mouth. “He’s cooling,” she said, and her voice shook. She reached out a hand for me, and I knew she wanted me to cry, so she could comfort me. The shape of her was soft, and her eyes were crinkled in concern. She wore a long skirt with daisies wound all around it, and I wondered if maybe not every empath was bad like me.
“It’s over,” interrupted the big lady, and the other lady guiltily snapped back her hand. “Call someone to fetch him. That Indonesian woman, perhaps.”
“Mum,” I whispered. “She’s my Mum.”
One of them picked me up. I didn’t fight as she carried me back the way I’d come. Mum lay on the asphalt, surrounded by dirt and dead leaves. She wrapped her bloody arms around her bloody knees and cried. Her pain sapped my strength, and I was too weak to call out to her.
One of the empaths said to me, “You’re one of us. You always have been, and you always will be.”
They put me in a black BMW. One sat on either side of me, and the big lady drove. I twisted around in the too-tight seatbelt, but Mum didn’t get up.
As we turned the corner I tried to glimpse Dad’s empty body on the broken path. But I couldn’t see him anymore.
CHAPTER ONE
TWENTY YEARS LATER
I lined my students up against our practice wall – a stone slab. Jenny pinched Eric and Eric pulled her hair. They both giggled.
I pretended not to notice, but turned my back and carefully kept my Sight ahead of me, where our courtyard of bright grass filled in the gap between the girls’ dorms on one side and the boys’ dorms on the other – all built of stone so we couldn’t See through the walls. “All right kids – whenever you’re ready. Remember, disguising yourself by feel only works on empaths. Normals rely on their physical sight, since they can’t See like we can.”
I counted to five in my head, knowing all of them could hear me. The physical world was quiet except for the low sound of other classes happening in their rooms behind the twin rows of dorms. Beyond the dorms and classrooms, birds trilled to one another in our acres of bushland.
When I reached the count of five I turned around and opened my mind. I saw the practice wall. Nothing else. Then a twitch on the right hand side. A shimmer of ponytail. “Jenny!”
“You can’t!” she said. Her voice seemed to come from the wall – but the wall grew freckles as she spoke. Then a nose.
I pointed directly at her. She laughed and appeared. Eric appeared only one step closer to me than her, with his finger stuck up his nose and his hair hanging in his black-irised eyes. He was grinning – Eric was always grinning, giving the impression his teeth were simply too big to fit inside his mouth.
“Very funny, Eric. Okay, everyone else has done very well. I can’t see you at all. Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
Half the class was less than a metre from my face, grabbing blindly onto one another’s shirts and stepping on each other’s shoes. As they stopped thinking like a wall they tumbled to the ground together.
“Did you see me?”
“How about me?”
“Udita almost touched your shirt!”
“I didn’t see you at all.” I was genuinely impressed, and let them see it in my mind. “If you keep improving at this rate we’ll have a try at the brick wall next week.”
“Brick, no!” said Jenny. “It’s got so many different bits!”
I raised my hand for quiet but Eric plunged ahead. “Jenny’s just mad because it doesn’t like her.”
“Is that true, Jenny?”
Jenny twisted her shoe in the dirt until we all felt the dirt asking her to stop. “I ran into it by accident once.”
“Really?” Clumsiness was unusual in empaths – we learned from infancy to be respectful to inanimate objects. Even my Normal early upbringing hadn’t taught me otherwise. If anything, I was even more respectful. Back then, I’d had no-one else to talk to. “Was it really an accident?”
“I didn’t See it,” said Jenny.
For a moment I was worried. Some empaths weren’t very good at Seeing. I’d once met a man who said he couldn’t hear pavement at all.
Eric flipped a cartwheel. “It was sleeping.”
I sagged with relief. That particular wall slept especially quietly. It was a reasonable mistake for a young child to make, relying on her Sight instead of her physical vision. We all did. “That’s enough now. Be off with you.”
They turned to go.
“Except you, Eric. I saw you pulling Jenny’s hair before, and you know it. If you’re not careful, I’ll tell your aunty you’ve been misbehaving.”
To my empathic eyes he shrank at once, turning into a mop of hair the size of a toy dog. But as soon as he saw my sympathy he knew it wasn’t a real threat. Hidden deep in our minds – hopefully better hidden in my case – we both called her the big lady. Out loud, Eric called her Aunty Beth and I called her Miss Nowan. To me she looked like an octopus, inky black and forever reaching tentacles into other people’s hearts. To Eric she was a spider weaving webs for the unwary. I was constantly tempted to admit I agreed with his sentiments. But then I’d remember she was my boss. She could still limit Mum’s access to the empath compound if she wanted. Most Normals weren’t allowed in at all. Not that they wanted to come.
At that instant Eric’s grown-up brother rounded the wall. I could tell by Danny’s grin he’d heard every word and felt every feeling of our conversation. Especially mine. He glowed with contentment, and as always I felt drawn to him like a moth to flame. Every move he made was made with such certainty. When he spoke, he simply assumed people were listening – and they always were. When he smiled, it was as sunny and open as a summer day, and I basked in it. Without that certainty, he was merely pretty, with smooth skin and high cheekbones. With it, he took my breath away.
“Eric, you naughty thing,” he said. “What have you been doing to the boarding school’s best teacher today?”
Eric ran straight at his big brother and veered off at the last moment to run for the oval. Danny swatted his backside as he passed, then came and clasped my hand. The warmth of him was welcome even on such a hot day, and he knew it. He kissed my cheek and we walked hand in hand back to the dorms. I rested my head on his arm, since he was too tall for me to lean on his shoulder.
Most empaths transmitted a self-image gained from other people’s view of them, tweaking it to make themselves a little taller or better looking. I’d touched every centimetre of Danny’s face and he fit his self-image exactly. He even knew his nose was a tiny bit crooked, and let that stay in his image of himself for anyone to See. I loved Seeing it, knowing it was real.
“Why are you still scared of Aunty Beth?” he asked.
I didn’t bother lying. There was no point. But I could avoid the truth, boxing it away in the back of my mind as she’d taught me. “That’s just the way I am with her.”
“And why is she scared of you?”
I shut my mind hard, and he took the hint.
At that moment I saw a mind-tentacle snaking around the wall. “Danny – she’s here.”
He took one look at Miss Nowan’s psychic call and pulled me into a run toward her. “It’s something to do with the police – and it looks like something’s wrong. We might need you.”
“But –”
He didn’t let go. I yanked my hand out of his grip, and he apologised without slowing down. He knew exactly why no-one ever pulled me around. Not since the day I met Miss Nowan.
After a moment of watching his thoughts, I decided to follow. Not for his aunt – for him. But a part of me liked the idea of being crucial on a police call-out. The big lady would have to respect me after that.
So I ran, and kept the most altruistic of my thoughts highest in my mind.
“Amy,” said Miss Nowan, already getting into her latest black car – a four-wheel drive this time. “Good. Get in.”
“Where’s Yolanda?”
“Sick. Someone’s got hostages at a school. You’ll have to do.”
She lifted her arm to shove me into the SUV, but I moved fast enough to avoid her touch. Miss Nowan always had cold hands. Danny slid into the driver’s seat. He switched on the SUV and revved as Miss Nowan sat in the passenger seat and I threw myself in the back. Yolanda was an obvious first choice. These days she taught the combined Kindergarten and Year One class, but she’d originally studied forensics, and worked with a lot of other police consultants.
I’d seen Danny drive above the speed limit before –it was expected when he was assisting the police. But I’d never been in the car at the time. The seatbelt sliced into my neck as he raced around corners, and my shoulder jammed against the door. Miss Nowan kept in radio contact with the police and told Danny when to switch off our siren and slow down.
We all listened to the radio in grim silence, trying to prepare for what we’d soon face. There was a man with a gun – no, not a man, a kid. It was his school. We all heard Danny suck in his breath. “Pain,” he said. “Normals always call us when someone’s in pain.”
“Keep your feelings in check,” warned Miss Nowan. “Your mother thinks we need to stay friendly with them, and I don’t like it either – but she’s right.”
“Why don’t you just marry one then,” he muttered. “She did.”
One of her mental tentacles snapped out and slapped him across the face. I caught the usual glimpse of Danny’s father in his mind – a sucking blackness, and radiating hate – and turned my Sight away.
As Danny parked in the school carpark, Miss Nowan pulled her hair over her earpiece and pretended to check her makeup in the mirror like a Person. We empaths didn’t believe in outer disguises. Not physical ones, anyway.
As soon as the car was still she pulled three pairs of sunglasses out of the glovebox and passed a pair each to Danny and I.
“These probably won’t fit you, Amy. They belong to Yolanda.”
I murmured something back.
We stepped out of the car and Danny quickly took my hand. “Don’t talk,” he whispered. “The Normals recognise us because we don’t use as much vocal expression as they do.”
I nodded.
“Yes, nodding is good. They think we can’t see properly, since that’s easier than admitting they’re the blind ones.” He squeezed my hand. “Kissing is good, too. It makes them look away.”
I smiled, but only on my face. He didn’t push it.
The school itself was built of budget-brown weatherboard two storeys high, with a tall sign at the entrance saying enrollments were open. There was a row of brightly-coloured schoolbags hung on hooks next to the first classroom door. I hoped their owners had run away. One of the bags had fallen down, and was leaking orange cordial.
We strolled into a crowd of angry parents. Their distress washed over me, and I caught my breath. I focused on Danny’s island of peace, and found time to be impressed at how calm he was.
A plainclothes police officer spotted us and took Miss Nowan’s elbow to steer us into the cordoned-off parking area. “We have line of sight – more or less.” He stopped and looked at me for the first time. “You’re not Yolanda. She’s Caucasian, and not so thin.”
“Yolanda’s sick,” said Miss Nowan. “Amy’s another teacher at the empath centre. She knows kids.”
We all heard him thinking, “Empath kids, maybe,” but chose not to correct him. In his self-image, he had a scar across his cheek. His real cheek was clean-shaven and unmarked. Odd for someone to make themselves look more flawed than they were. But he was a Normal, and didn’t know he was doing it.
“I’m Senior Constable Rothchild. Our target’s in the second classroom, holding twenty-two kids aged thirteen to fifteen. We’ll patch your radio into negotiations. If this goes badly, you weren’t here.”
“As usual,” said Danny.
The officer flashed him a cynical smile and left us.
Danny and I watched Miss Nowan, and as soon as she was linked in it was obvious negotiations were deteriorating before they could begin. I held Danny’s hand more tightly, until my fingers hurt. Even just looking at Miss Nowan as she eavesdropped made me feel the despair of a teenager willing to kill his own classmates.
The same three words came into my head over and over again: “I’ll show them. I’ll show them. I’ll show them.”
“He’s easily embarrassed,” Danny whispered. “We can use that to control him without actually manipulating him. Why aren’t there any cameras here yet?”
“They’re behind the police van,” I said, catching a hint of a camera skulking behind the tinted windows. “I’ll tell them to film, so we can have Trevor’s embarrassment on our side.”
Miss Nowan nodded, and touched the tight black bun on her head with one hand.
I walked over to the huddle of disgruntled cameramen and the even more disgruntled policeman keeping them switched off in order to prevent a gory Youtube leak. His eyes widened as he saw my black-irised eyes through the sunglasses.
“We need the cameras on,” I said.
He scowled, but ruined the effect by trying very hard not to think about what I’d look like with my top off. I kept my face steady as he blushed. The reporter next to him was reciting a well-worn diatribe about freedom of speech.
“Right,” said the cop to the reporter. “You’re perfectly right. Go ahead and film.”
The reporter almost swallowed his tongue. “We can film? Here? At a school? Where there are kids and a gun?”
“That is what you wanted, yes.”
He paused halfway through motioning to his cameramen. I walked faster. “You!” he called out. “Black-haired girl with the beanpole legs. What are you?”
I didn’t know what to say, but Miss Nowan did. Her voice in my head told me what to say. “A consultant.”
“Yeah?” said the reporter, and pointed at me to help his cameraman get just the right angle. “Take off your sunnies then.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” I turned on my heel and tried to look offended, but it was too late.
“Empath!” someone shrieked.
Suddenly the crowd had a focus to their anger. They screamed and pushed at one another, and in seconds they poured over the cordon into the police area.
Rothchild grabbed a loudspeaker and the shriek of it cut through the crowd, making them look at him. “Your children are in there. Let us do our job – by the best available means!”
The crowd hushed, standing on the knife-edge between hope and fury. It could go either way.
But I saw a pale face at the window, and I recognised him. The one with the gun, who wore death in every cell of him. He looked straight at me, and he knew what I was. He’d hoped we would come.
“Hello,” he said, right into my mind. I heard him perfectly. For a Normal, he was very focused. He knew exactly what he wanted – pain. For everyone.
Miss Nowan and Danny appeared next to me. They’d meant to take my arm and run from the rumbling hate of the crowd, but with one look they knew I wasn’t leaving.
The gunman spoke again, mouthing the words because he was trying so hard to concentrate his thoughts on us. “You shouldn’t have come.”
“We understand you!” Miss Nowan shouted in his mind. “No-one else but us. We know!”
“Now everyone will understand,” he said, and reached down. He pulled a teenage girl to stand beside him. She was too frightened to cry. My throat blocked up as I felt it.
——————————————————————————————————————————————–
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Cutesplosion
1-2 months of age:
2-3 months of age:
3-4 months:
4-5 months:
5-6 months:
6-7 months:
7-8 months:
8-9 months:
9-10 months old:
10-11 months:
11-12 months:
Top Cat Pics
We have two cats: Indah, who is grey, grumpy, and close to fifteen years old; and Ana, who is fluffy, friendly, and not overly gifted in the brain department. From the time I was pregnant, Ana began mucking up – she stayed out on the town for several nights at a time; she visibly lost weight; she grew ill; she got into fights. All in all, she displayed a textbook case of sibling rivalry – she was no longer the youngest, cutest thing around. But she slowly, slowly came to accept this new beastie in her life, and discovered that the most efficient way to get patted was to drape herself elegantly within reach of the grabby thing. It’s a risky strategy, but both she and Louisette are getting much better at it.
Without further ado, the year in cats, from when Louisette was barely a month old:
On 2 Jan she had her first “educational moment” with Indah, who when provoked offered several warning meows and finally lashed out and drew two tiny dots of blood. Hopefully both of them learned from the experience – normally Indah is smart enough to move to higher ground much sooner. But Ana will now approach her for a pat:
A full year in daily pictures!!
This is it: the final month of daily pictures. You can see the rest here (just keep scrolling down). I have been sorting them into special albums – funny, cats, sheer cuteness – for weeks now and soon you will see some truly excellent collections. Stay tuned! You can also see the official 365 photos (only one a day, but you can view them month by month which is fascinating) here.
Louisette had her first birthday yesterday. She has just started walking on her own (see the real live video on facebook!), and we couldn’t be more impressed. Her first Christmas was a blast, and yesterday was her birthday (the last ten photos are all from yesterday – I took hundreds of photos since it was the last day of daily pictures and I wanted to make sure I ended well).
Battles Lost, Won, and Ongoing
Destruction of Books (board and pages)
We have a LOT of books just for Louisette. About a hundred paper books, and thirty board books (most of them secondhand, hence the sheer bulk). She loves playing with them, and rarely actively destroys them – yet. So this battle hasn’t truly joined yet, and may never occur. If I notice her tearing a book apart, I’ll generally say, “No tearing. Gentle.” and put it on a high shelf. Pop-up books are doomed from birth, though.
Score: Parents: 1 Books: 1
TV/Computer
CJ and his dad both have ADD (now called ADHD whether there’s a hyperactive component or not – which, mercifully, there isn’t in this case) and some research suggests that cutting out TV altogether for at least the first two years may help limit its effects. So we decided, with a healthy amount of caveats (including the all-encompassing, “Well, we’ll just see how it goes”) to try to never watch TV or use the computer when Louisette was in the room. We made exceptions for holidays, for when I was babysitting other children, and for those few seconds as I set a show to tape – but we did it. At least, we did it for TV. Perhaps even more remarkably, CJ almost never uses his iphone when Louisette is around (this is a man who will play on his phone while watching TV – welcome to ADHD). This means a lot to me in terms of modelling polite human-to-human behaviour – something her generation will need a lot of help with.
But we slid slowly and surely into “Meh” on the computer front. We don’t play videos when she’s in the room, but everything else is fair game – even when it’s me alone with her (emailing, checking I have at least one not-too-blurry pic for the day, etc). She limits this to a certain extent by simply not liking it – I’ll do emails and look at photos, but I won’t write novels or browse the net if she’s with me (unless CJ is playing with her).
Overall, we’ve done pretty well.
Score: Parents 1, Meh 1.
Hats
I’ll generally put a hat on her as we go outside (and one for me too, for role modelling). She’ll generally take off her hat and play with it.
Score: Parents 0, Louisette 1.
Socks/shoes
As soon as the weather got above really cold we let her go barefoot. It was conveniently timed for just after she started actively removing her socks every three seconds.
In late November she began showing signs of walking soon, so we girded our loins and went to buy shoes – only to find they’re not recommended for several months yet.
Score: Pretty much even…so far.
Food/mess vs independence
Feeding Louisette has been pretty miserable from day one (no, that’s not quite true – it was day four that things really turned sour). Breastfeeding problems & machines, breastfeeding in public and while travelling, wind (much screaming), reflux (much screaming), teething (screaming), hatred of sitting still and especially being buckled in (screaming), longing for full eating independence (screaming).
Louisette neatly solved the dilemma of, “Should I keep breastfeeding when I desperately hate it?” by refusing to breastfeed at all from three months of age (this is a fight I won’t waste myself over nearly so much next time).
We started her on solids pretty early, and I was SO excited about things getting better feeding-wise. They got so much worse, and stayed that way for months. But nowadays they’re pretty good. Mostly. I walk the line between Louisette’s growing independence/screaming about her lack of independence and the desire to keep her semi-chewed food out of my hair, clothes, ears, furniture, and rental property. At the moment her breakfast and lunch have a spoon-fed section (for messy things such as stewed fruit and yogurt, or meat) and then a larger self-fed section (toast, grated cheese and vegetables, crackers), and I shake out her drop cloth up to three times a day (we have no yard and no grass so at some point one of our neighbours will politely ask me to stop depositing cheese etc into the communal carpark each day. Or possibly they’re glad about the increased bird life). She has a water bottle on a low table that she drinks from often, and generally goes through two or three outfits a day. She also hates bibs, and pulls them off (we start with two – one cloth one plastic – at each meal).
For most younguns, spoon feeding is neater. This (and much screaming) is what happened at lunch a few days ago, when I attempted to spoon feed her from a packet rather than letting her (mostly) self-feed (she started with two bibs, as per usual):
Score: Hard to say. Things are getting better on both sides, but I still dread all her meals, and both of us get desperately frustrated sometimes. Sidebar: It is hot enough inside that grated cheese will melt and stick to any surface (cloth, plastic, wood, metal, etc).
Snatching
This is a battle that has to start early and never stop. Louisette often interacts with other very young kids, and I intervene every single time I see either party snatch from the other. This gets very repetitive very fast, but that’s just the way it is. She has already shown signs of improvement, however, so that’s good.
Parents: Almost 1. Louisette: Approximately 0
Respect to cats (and dogs)
Again, this battle has to start early and never stop. She got her first cat scratch the other day (very very minor, and washed with antiseptic), which I was hoping wouldn’t happen for another six months or so, but neither party was actually injured and I think they both learned something. Louisette is pretty darn good with the cats. Ana will approach her (nervously, but she IS a cat after all) for a pat.
Parents: 1. Louisette: .5 Cats: .5
Please and thank you/ta
I keep forgetting to say ta instead of thank you. I can’t remember if I say please.
Parents: 0 Manners: Non-existent.
Safety – electrical cords, heights, water
Despite her determination, I still don’t let Louisette play with electrical cords. Ever. She never goes to any place anywhere without going to the cords at least once (the ones in our living room, kitchen, and her room are all gaffa taped and/or hidden, which is a mercy).
She can get down off the couch safely 99 out of 100 times, and no longer tries to go headfirst off furniture. I’m working on teaching her how to get down off higher things (such as her change table) because she’ll soon be climbing onto them. She climbed onto a couch for the first time yesterday.
After MUCH effort, she will now put her full face underwater and blow bubbles. She loves the water, and if she ever manages to fall into a body of water she won’t necessarily panic herself to death.
Parents: 3 Baby:0
Dirty face/clothes
She’s pretty much always 90% clean or more. Her mum has inclinations towards OCD. So. . . yay?
Parents: 1 Baby: 0
Respectable hair/long hair
I really wanted to grow her hair long as fast as possible, so tried so so hard to train her hair to go sideways (rather than directly over her face). Once she started pulling out her own hair clips and ties, it got harder. At last I realised this was a stupid battle and once her hair was heavy enough it’d all work fine. So I cut a fringe.
Parents: 0 Rationality: 1
Sleep
We tried a bit of controlled crying (that’s when you let the child cry a little while before going in to comfort them, so they eventually learn to sleep without you there) when she was very young. It was, in my opinion, far too young. From 2-4ish months she settled only with us holding her hand (and with a dummy etc, although she did and does have the ability to fall asleep almost anywhere). From 4-11 months we needed to be in the room, within sight. Then she started really getting into playing, “Fetch my dummy and/or I’ll scream at you” so in the Christmas holidays we did controlled crying again, and (except for a few times when she got her leg trapped between the bars) it went very smoothly, and is now about 90% reliable. We just say, “Good night Lizzie, sleep tight” and walk out. It still takes her up to an hour to actually sleep, but she does it by herself. Amazing! In my opinion, we timed the controlled crying perfectly the second time. She was old enough to not get upset, but young enough that she couldn’t climb out of the cot and lose all chance of settling.
Parents: 1 Baby: 0
There are plenty of battles still to come, but that’s plenty for now. The main thing is that we’ve all survived so far.
Parents: Infinity. Baby: Infinity.
In the laughing chair
The two girls I used to mind after school are moving, and Louisette ended up with some of their castoffs including this Louisette-sized couch. I noticed some photos I’d taken of it had nice composition, and I felt like it was about time I took another really good photo – one with nice composition, a nice (or interesting) facial expression on the munchkin, and, simultaneously, no blurring.
So I took eighty photos in an hour, and these were my favourites (she finds the chair hilarious for some reason):
Pregnancy: Looking back, looking forward
It’s been almost a year now since the horror show of pregnancy ended in the spectacular bloodbath of birth.
Okay, so I’m probably not meant to refer to birth that way, but it’s the simple truth. Ditto on my description of pregnancy.
Have you ever tried to meditate for, say, twenty minutes? The thoughtless thoughtfulness is really difficult.
When I think of pregnancy, I think of the zen-like state in which I held myself for weeks at a time. I needed to focus my mind in order to not throw up. Most importantly, I needed to not think about why I was concentrating so hard. So I spent weeks looking at my curtains, thinking over and over, “Look at my curtains. What great curtains. I really like those curtains.” Then I noticed the hints of orange in the curtains, and I couldn’t bear to look at them (because orange = spew). So I spent several more weeks looking at the pretty curly bedhead of my bed, thinking, “Look at my bedhead. What a great bedhead. I really like that bedhead.” Considering that my “morning” sickness was 24-7 for eight months; that I lost seven kilos in first trimester; and that I had difficulty drinking water/brushing my teeth/walking up the stairs – I threw up very rarely. Hurrah?
Sidebar: I was oddly disturbed to hear about Duchess Kate getting bad morning sickness. Then I resolved my discomfort by deciding that morning sickness will henceforward be called “The Duchess Disease”. Much more glamorous that way.
After about six weeks of focused not-vomitation, first trimester was over and I was well enough to watch TV (being that well? Super exciting). I watched almost every minute of the entire Tour de France (which, incidentally, was a spectacularly good year for an Australian to watch it). For those familiar with the event, you’ll understand that it wasn’t a great mental leap from, “Ooh, curtains” to “Ooh, look! Another castle. Oh, and bikes. Lots of bikes.” I still threw up a little bit, but oh well.
And there was muscle pain (the hormone relaxin makes all your muscles – most noticeably the back muscles – go smoosh so that your bones can move around to let the baby out – which is awesome, except that the effect kicks in months in advance), baby-kicking-me-in-the-guts pain, constant indigestion (especially at night – I didn’t lie down properly for months – which struck me as grievously unfair when I was so tired) and assorted other effects. In short, it sucked. Two hours after giving birth, I felt better than I’d felt since the first fortnight of knowing I was pregnant. I could eat, and drink water, and lie down, and everything!
Also, ya know, there was a baby around. That was cool.
I managed to get through both pregnancy and birth with no emotional trauma, but I do view the next pregnancy with some purely rational dread. How will we go financially when I’m probably unable to work for about a year? How will CJ handle having the entire weight of all household responsibilities fall on him (I would argue that he is mentally traumatised from the last experience of having an extremely sick wife) – again? What will happen to Louisette when her mum is too sick to pick her up for almost a third of her young life?
I am genuinely traumatised by breastfeeding. As a little girl I was taught that my private parts were private – I didn’t flash them around to anyone outside of my family, and I understood without being told that if anyone touched them without my permission then something was very wrong. It’s true that I’m not a little girl any more, but I’m never going to be okay with how public all my private parts have become. Birth at least only happens once: breastfeeding happens constantly; anywhere and anywhen the baby screams for it. There’s nothing you can do about it other than not breastfeed (sidebar: anyone who makes a woman feel bad for breastfeeding in public deserves to starve and see how they like being hungry and scared and not knowing when the food will ever happen again). Like everything else to do with the female reproductive system (the male system is all hugs and puppies – metaphorically speaking), it hurts. But for me the emotional side was the worst. I felt violated, and still do. I’m not actually crying as I wrote this, but it wouldn’t take much to tip me over the edge.
Sidebar: All the mountainloads of crap that Mother Nature gives to women are worth it for getting first dibs on being the stay-at-home parent. Seriously. And I’m not a baby person (there are good hormones, too – nature WANTS you to like being around your child, and basically gives you a high whenever you look at them. See Appendix A: this blog for the last year).
Physically speaking I was lucky; Louisette refused to breastfeed once she was a few months old – and before she had teeth. Next time I hope CJ will have six weeks’ parental leave instead of four (he’ll need to use holiday leave, of course); I plan to aim for three months of breastfeeding rather than a year; and I think it’s PRETTY unlikely I’ll be breastfeeding on any of the streets of Beijing this time. I also won’t take any milk-increasing medicine (especially the one that makes you gain weight – yeah, awesome, thanks. I didn’t feel horrible enough about myself before, apparently) and if I don’t produce enough milk I’ll just use bottles rather than expressing (often while the baby screamed to be held) multiple times a day. And after all that, if I want to stop for whatever reason, I’ll stop.
I’m in my thirties now, and 3 out of 6 members of our immediate biological families have had some kind of fertility issue with their second child – so I definitely don’t want to put it off too long. I’ve had some physical indicators that things might not be as easy conception-wise next time (but none of them actually concerning. . . . probably). Besides, I want to get the pregnancy over with (the good news is that we only ever wanted two kids). When I think of my future I see a time of peace followed by a time of “thar be monsters” (that’s pregnancy: all sea-serpents and whirlpools) followed by uncharted waters – because every child is uncharted waters.
I also don’t know what will happen to me after next time (let’s not even get into how the kid turns out). It’s normal to take about six weeks to recover from a birth – that’s probably about the amount of time I took to be “mostly okay”. Louisette was a giant baby (adorably, reassuringly giant, at 4.15 kilos – an average baby is 3 kilos) which was probably a factor in my back pain being pretty difficult both before and after she was born (imagine carrying two 2-litre milk bottles around with you every day and all night, and you’ll get the idea). The muscle pain took a very long time to wear off – five months or so – and just when I was getting a few days a week without pain my hip fell out of place (relaxin hormone being overenthusiastic, again – a common post-pregnancy issue).
I’m doing fine now hip-wise, but Louisette’s current ten kilos is way too much for me to lift safely (ever – of course I lift her anyway), and all my muscles remain a bit iffy – including, randomly, my wrists (another common post-pregnancy thing). There’s a few other things wrong here and there, some of them private and some not. Standing, walking, and lifting will probably be markedly more difficult for the rest of my life. Pregnancy and birth aged me abut five years, I think. Unfortunately, I can even see it in my face. I’ve been sick a lot this year too, and I don’t know if it’s because I’m suddenly much older physically or just because there’s a baby around keeping me from resting or sleeping when I need it. CJ has changed too, and his body hasn’t been through anything except the usual daily pummelling from an energetic little monster.
My body shape is drastically different than it was. It’s been eight months since I stopped breastfeeding but it’s clear my breasts haven’t got the message. After losing weight, then travelling overseas, then losing it, then starting a new job, then losing it, then getting quite sick, and now losing it again – I weigh about what I did a week after giving birth. Most of my pregnancy weight is still with me, as anyone can see just by looking at me.
Sidebar: It’s hard to motivate myself to diet because the body always says, “Arg! I’m starving!” and makes me physically shaky and miserable – and I know I’ll be pregnant again before too long, and all my work will be undone. But at the same time, an overweight woman is far more likely to have trouble conceiving. Trying to conceive is a strange limbo, and one I don’t handle well at all.
I have heaps of clothes I can’t possible wear, and I still have no idea where my body will end up. Shopping for clothes is a completely different experience, although I’m starting to learn some clothing methods that look better. I’ve also seen my waist return to me (somewhat obscured by lard but *I* can see it), so there’s hope that I won’t look four months’ pregnant (as I do now) forever. But no guarantees, especially with another pregnancy on the way some day.
Unsurprisingly, I’m nervous about where my body will end up.
It’s possible – even likely – that my second pregnancy will be a LOT better than the last one. Women who are stressed/busy (eg with a toddler!) tend to have milder pregnancies, and I won’t have the first-timer’s sense of sailing into the vast unknown (we’re loving the seafaring metaphors today, aren’t we?) But I’ve already begun battening down the hatches in preparation: I’ll grow out my fringe, make sure my dentist and doctor have seen me, set up online grocery shopping, and stock the fridge full of single-serve home-made meals (for CJ to eat, or possibly – hopefully – both of us). Before going off contraceptives, CJ and I will toilet train Louisette so she’s a bit cheaper and easier to maintain (for me or for babysitters – we’ll be calling in help from every family member and friend who doesn’t despise children), and CJ will build up a lot of flex-time at work. I’ll prepare CJ in advance to pay all our bills on time and correctly (literally the only household task I still did while pregnant, and although I tried super hard to get everything right I failed utterly. I just didn’t have enough mind left to enter numbers into a box on a screen). We’ll do our best to have a stable (and stair-less) home (not this one; it’s just been sold and our contract – which we cunningly renewed just before it sold so we kept the low rent – will run out in July) to live in until well after Puggle is born.
That’s right. We’re calling our second baby Puggle (that’s a baby platypus, usually) until we know if it’s a boy or a girl.
And I can’t wait until they’re here 🙂
A Pirate Born and Bred
When we were at the coast, we stayed at Captain’s Cottage in Longbeach. The “cottage” looks like this:
Yep, that’s a lighthouse. For reals. Inside it had all the usual beachhouse paraphernalia, plus a whole lot of really top-notch beachhouse paraphernalia, including a “bridge” outfitted with brass speaking tubes (soon to be connected to other parts of the house) and real pieces from a real 1930s cargo ship.
I took all four kids – bear in mind two were very sick, one is teeny tiny, and one is a toddler at nap time – dressed them in pirate attire, and had them pose in the bridge. This was the best shot of the results:
CJ and Louisette looked pretty good:
But (for obvious reasons) it’s this serendipitous sequence that made my day:
At which point CJ stepped in and rescued the little treasure from our scallywag – not for the first time, and not for the last either.
Felicity Banks 