Fauna Read online

  Praise for

  FAUNA

  ‘Fauna is the story of an experiment, as every relationship, every child, every hope we cling on to is an experiment—a leap into air. It is lush and corporeal and one of the most honest books I’ve ever read about what we carve away for our children from our hearts, our bodies, and our possible futures. I knew when I started that this book would end, yet every moment I hoped it wouldn’t.’ Amanda Niehaus, author of The Breeding Season

  ‘Fauna lays bare an electrifying genetically re-coded future so real, so terrifying, so close, I can feel its baby breath soft against my cheek.’ Robyn Mundy, author of Wild Light

  ‘Mazza’s novel asks hard questions, yet brims with compassion. A thrilling, unsettling read.’ Paddy O’Reilly, author of The Wonders

  First published in 2020

  Copyright © Donna Mazza 2020

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  ISBN 978 1 76087 630 2

  eISBN 978 1 76087 337 0

  Internal design by Bookhouse, Sydney

  Set by Bookhouse, Sydney

  Cover design: Sandy Cull

  Cover image: Stocksy/Studio Firma

  FOR MY MOTHER, HER MOTHER, MY CHILDREN, THEIR FATHER AND MINE

  CONTENTS

  IN UTERO

  4 WEEKS

  6 WEEKS

  8 WEEKS

  9 WEEKS

  12 WEEKS

  13 WEEKS

  14 WEEKS

  16 WEEKS

  17 WEEKS

  19 WEEKS

  21 WEEKS

  24 WEEKS

  25 WEEKS

  28 WEEKS

  29 WEEKS

  30 WEEKS

  POST-PARTUM

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  IN UTERO

  The longer I stare at the ring on the screen, the more it appears to shift. Cells are pinpoints, some surrounded by a thin halo, carrying the weight of life and all that it means. A concept so enormous I can’t hold it in my mind. Its walls look thick, yet in reality it could drop on the floor and be impossible to find. It could blow away in the breeze or be sucked up a vacuum cleaner. The tiny things that make us who we are—smaller than a speck. Yet also everything. The totality of us written in strings and twists hidden inside each cell.

  Isak sits beside me, our fingers interlocked while we watch the perfect circle magnified on the screen, already populated with a small collection of cells gathered in one hemisphere. The coagulation of being—sticking together. Re-made and made. This is a new experience for us. Our other children were conceived naturally, but no amount of acronyms or scientific terms can take away the magic of life and what makes it. They were all magical. This one is even more so.

  The journey to this point hasn’t been as complicated as I thought it would be. Not that far outside the realm of normal really. Lots of people go through IVF programs. A few blood tests. Harvesting some eggs and sperm. Laughing about the stupidity of it all. They took them off to the lab, did some snipping and pasting and now we have a successful blastocyst, with some germ-line modification— so they say. Testing has been done and it’s still growing, cells dividing and forming, faster than usual and now ready for implantation. Heart and spine and brain and skin. There, under the microscope, are the beginnings of a new life.

  In the toilets at the back of the clinic I pee into a plastic jar. Of course I also pee on my hand, I’m sure everyone does, but I wipe it dry with a piece of toilet paper and screw on the yellow lid. This is the test. Just an eye-dropper of urine on the stick and they know right away. Isak turns to me and smiles. I am shaking.

  And so it begins. This journey I have travelled three times before, twice to a happy ending and once not. This time, I am reminded, the journey will not be the same.

  A blood test confirms it—the wee did not lie.

  LifeBLOOD® are very respectful and professional. They’ve explained the terms of our agreement in detail. Take it home, they said. Isak tried to read it but it was thirty-six pages of policy speak and clauses which all seemed quite straightforward. A lot of stuff about risk and indemnity, keeping informed, communication, mutual obligation. Isak read the financial support section in some detail, nodding to himself and interpreting it to me. What we expected, if we had given it that kind of thought. He signed it. There was nothing about love, but it was a legal contract and the two are repellent to each other. I signed it.

  After the appointment we walk down the street for a coffee. At the florist Isak leads me through a heavy purple door and grabs a bunch of orange lilies from a bucket.

  ‘Congratulations.’ His arm around my shoulders. Kiss on the forehead. The dense scent of flowers and essences masks a note of green rot festering in the buckets.

  I pull back a little, his grasp overly tight. ‘It’s a bit weird though. Not like our other kids.’ I never saw their ingredients. Their codes and sequences remained veiled inside them.

  He laughs, deepening the folds that crease his cheeks. ‘I doubt it will be anything like our other kids.’ Eyes shift. He pushes his hair back and we return to the street, traffic rippling the air.

  This is the old part of Perth, buildings thick with paint, some restored to neat red bricks with tidy mortar. Constantly reinventing itself for each generation. New signs and styles of coffee, new specialists offering therapies, surgeries, enhancements and regeneration. Across the street, a row of pigeons perch on the rooftop of a bar, eyes firmly set on the tables below.

  A cafe in one of the older buildings is carefully shabby, drawing on historic styles that never co-existed. We find a comfortable seat at a smoked glass table. Isak orders cake to share, coffee. He’s already a bit buzzy from the appointment so coffee will make him talkative. I don’t mind, it might stop the light from shining on that little seed that lurks at the edge of my thoughts, that truth. The one buried in the dark there—tangled in reasons.

  When the cake comes, it has a tower of cream with it and Isak rakes a fork through the soft wedge, toppling it onto the table. I wipe it up with a serviette. ‘We won’t lose the house now, Stacey.’ He talks through the cake about them paying our bills, details of the contract, which will make our lives much more secure. Education, clothes. He is boring when he gets stuck on money and I wither inside. I can make do with what we have, with op-shop clothes and simple things. I’ve never had much, or been much either. Bearing this child has a value beyond money.

  ‘You’ve got more idea than me.’ I hope this is the truth so I leave the administration of our lives to him. He finds ways to pay for things he wants but he works for it, not me. Not very empowering I know but I don’t want to deal with our money. He would hate to think he is controlling, but it’s me who surrendered.

  ‘And when the child is an adult our job is done. That’s the way with Emmy and Jake too.’ He pushes the cake towards me but i
t’s already collapsed. ‘Want some?’ Dark grains of it specked in the cream.

  ‘You finish it,’ I tell him, irritated. It’s so rare that we eat out. ‘When they’re adults seems a long way off.’

  He shrugs. More cake.

  ‘It’s pretty good.’ I think he is talking about the cake but he goes on further about the money. ‘We can give them all more of the things that are important. Music lessons. Holidays.’

  ‘I can’t even imagine what that’d be like.’ We were both keen travellers but kids come first now and I haven’t even bothered keeping my passport valid.

  ‘We can take them back home.’ I know he misses his mother, all the things he loves about the landscape and the wildlife, the lifestyle. I never had those roots and somehow this will help give it back to him, just a glimpse. I owe it to him now. He scrapes at the final smear of cream.

  ‘We’re not done yet though,’ I try to bring it back to the pregnancy.

  He holds my hand, realising there is a knot in me and why it is there. They talked in the clinic about the risk of miscarriage and the possibility it won’t go to plan. He kisses my knuckles. ‘We’ve been there too, Stacey, but LifeBLOOD® are investing in this baby and they’ll look after you. They won’t want that to happen.’ But, of course, it is more than that.

  Nobody really thought the first embryo would work but it did. In fact, as soon as the chance was there, that little life took it, growing in quick, definite arrangements. Unlike other pregnancies, I have not vomited. As my organs rearranged and things began settling into the nest of me I have had some cramps, which pin me to the couch for a few days, anxious not to bring on that unbearable loss.

  The garden, such that it is, withers in the heat and I don’t even rise to water the pots of scraggy basil. In the silence of school days I watch the breeze from the air-conditioner shift garlands of cobwebs across the ceiling. I wonder what this child will bring, to us and to the world. I bubble with the thrill of it, I swell and drop with anxiety. Nausea aggravated by my emotional tides. It’s understandable, they say. As each day passes and the baby grows, I begin to understand it and the infinite possibilities it might bring and I wonder what I have done. So does Isak.

  Mornings are the worst for nausea and afternoons for cramps. I turn in on myself and build a shell against Isak’s growing uneasiness. He trawls through websites, shaking his head and sharing facts. I say I am sick and avoid the normal tasks of getting the kids ready for school, let Isak iron their uniforms and pack lunches. Emmy curls into bed beside me in her school clothes. ‘Can’t you make us lunch please, Mumma? I’m so sick of Dad’s cheese and pickle sandwiches.’ Her bony knee pokes into my abdomen and I flinch. She pulls back. Tomorrow, I tell her.

  They kiss me goodbye. Isak leans over, ‘Stop avoiding. The sooner we get to grips with it the better for all of us,’ hands me the screen and a cup of ginger tea. ‘Read it, you can’t revoke your decision.’

  ‘Our decision,’ I call back and he rushes out the door, Jake’s Spiderman schoolbag across his shoulder. Tension hangs in a silent wake that seems to hiss. A languid fly crawls across a convex mango skin scraped clean by small teeth.

  The site on the screen is slick with graphics— LifeBLOOD® Bringing Life Out of Darkness. I scroll through the page, scan the promotional text.

  LifeBLOOD® provides as normal a life as possible for all our parents and children. Raising any child is challenging and we understand how this will be different for parents of LifeBLOOD® children.

  They refer to children. We’re not the only ones doing this then. More spiel about qualified and inducted doctors and other allied health professionals. Occupational therapists, education experts, financial advisors and speech therapists are among the many staff available to support new parents. I have no patience and skip down the page—a non-disclosure clause that all parents must maintain complete discretion surrounding the genetic conditions under which LifeBLOOD® children are born. I skip sections. Can’t focus on this language, have no discipline to read this kind of thing, it’s no wonder I wasn’t a good student. Parents are required to—something about counselling and I scroll down— respond to all inquiries regarding the nature of appearance or developmental delays and behaviour in the LifeBLOOD® child according to postnatal direction. My hand naturally drifts to below my navel and rests there. This child will be perfect and beautiful. This time.

  I scroll down to the tabs for pages on diet, relationships, education, communication, stages of development and more. When I click on them, a notice for username and password pops up. The only ones that I can access are ‘pregnancy’ and ‘policy and governance’. Isak will have read it all. The tea has gone cold but I finish the last of it. It spices my chest and quells the nausea. Scroll and stop—LifeBLOOD® children must be sheltered from certain social situations and environments according to the direction of your practitioner. These may include avoiding exposure to stressful public events, large crowds, certain animals, excessive noise, technology in your home or an outbreak of virus. This area is under constant review to ensure safety and wellbeing. Further down, another part of the page is illustrated by a photograph of a happy nuclear family playing in a park. They all have red hair. A toddler faces away from the camera, the action shot a little blurry— Family units are vital to the development of any healthy child and LifeBLOOD® children require a peaceful home in which to flourish. Families entering into this program have already shown themselves to be excellent parents.

  In the silent air in this suburb of closed doors and faded greys I have planted myself somewhere without nourishment. The garden drags itself through the seasons; it is a victory for it to survive another year. Each grevillea, each aloe and cordyline clinging to the sandy soil, desperate for the fecundity buried somewhere under the fill sand of builders and subdividers. Their pale roots diving deep in search of lost swampland. The true land somewhere deep beneath us. In these long hours between the children’s departure for school and their arrival home, sometimes I have been extinct. Now, though, even in stillness I am animate. Blood and cells and microbes, swirling into new life.

  LifeBLOOD® children are an important part of new research that will bring benefits to human health and resilience. I push the screen to the end of the couch and try to sleep but that last phrase is burned on my internal view, the letters turning white on a black background, forming into a negative. Despite the humanity of this, we are now research. I try to push the thought of it away but it burns on, refusing to fade.

  4 WEEKS

  I cancel the first counselling session booked a fortnight after our conception is confirmed but when the second one comes around I can’t find an excuse. Isak picks me up in the afternoon, a little later than he planned.

  ‘They’ll have to pardon the high-vis.’ He dusts the front of the fluoro yellow and navy shirt. I spit-wash a dirty smear from his jaw as he drives the curves and roundabouts that lead from our suburb to the freeway. He smiles. ‘That’s unhygienic you know?’

  ‘You love the attention.’ A warm moment between us. The car smells of burgers and chips. ‘I should clean out the car on the weekend.’

  Isak slurps the last of his soft drink, rolls his eyes. He knows I never clean the car but he says nothing about it.

  We cross the river, exit the freeway into affluent parts of old Perth where I au-paired for a while when I left home, in a nicer house with a nicer garden than my own. I have the urge to tell Isak about coming here with Alex, but he has heard it all before. Doing school again properly so we could go to uni. That window of freedom, just a couple of years really; it made Perth home, but it hasn’t quite lived up to those memories this time.

  In the waiting room, Isak smells slightly of perspiration and I suppress yawns. ‘What do you think they want to talk to us about?’ he whispers. I have no idea but I see he is anxious so I tell him they probably want to make sure I’m not depressed and that he’s looking after me. I squeeze his hand. ‘Which you are.’ He smiles we
akly. It’s just us. Since we met it has always been just us. I think that’s why they wanted us for this program—because just us has been enough for me and him. Just us and our children. Most of the time. There are no third parties to interfere.

  The counsellor, named Fee, has spikey dyed hair and speaks in hushed tones, leading us into a room of frosted glass with a diffuser pushing a plume of lemongrass steam into a high column on a table between her two spare chairs. It masks Isak but the smell is far too tangy for a small room. My mother would object on health grounds during pregnancy but I don’t want to sound like I’m into alternative medicine in here. I’ve tried to put it behind me. Deny my upbringing. I move the chair away slightly and inadvertently turn my back a little towards Isak.

  After introducing herself, Fee leads with, ‘So is everything okay between you two?’ I twist the chair back. Breathe the toxic steam. He reaches for my hand and we both nod vigorously and giggle foolishly. She speaks for a while about parenthood in general terms and asks our philosophies on it. Isak tries to answer for us and goes on about taking the kids fishing, which he hasn’t done for a very long time. It all sounds very wholesome but I know Jake’s toddler-sized fishing rod is buried somewhere in the sand of the back garden. I cut off the hook so he wouldn’t hurt himself. I shake my head but say nothing about it. Don’t want to make Isak look stupid.

  She refocuses the conversation back to us and aligns her gaze with mine. I hate counsellors, my hands sweat. She is picking something up, she says, from me. My heart is beating quickly, it’s the kind of statement my mother would make during a tarot reading. ‘I feel sick,’ I lie. Do I need a glass of water? Her look of trained concern makes me panic. ‘Can we turn off the diffuser?’ Of course, she says and leans in between us with her broad back. The flowers of her shirt falling flat on the table like a dead bouquet.

  ‘You okay, Stace?’ Isak crouches in front of me, holds my eyes. She disappears for a moment and I calm.