Fauna Read online

  Sometime later, clouds have darkened the sky and I wake up cold to the school pick-up alarm. I have missed a call back from him so I try again. Sip the cold tea to calm my nerves. Not sure what to say.

  ‘At last,’ he answers. Relief.

  ‘My God, I miss you,’ and I sob uncontrollably. I hear him breathing, repeating my name. A dog barks in the background.

  ‘Sweetheart. Calm down a minute.’

  I breathe. Think myself calm.

  ‘Stace, I’ve booked a ticket home next week.’ He waits silently on the phone while I cry again. ‘You need to pick up the kids.’

  14 WEEKS

  The maternity clothes I had are old and faded. LifeBLOOD® have given me gift cards to get some new ones but I spent most of it on winter clothes for the kids. I managed to find one dress. Not suitable to wear to ultrasounds. Beyond my chest it falls loose and long, flowing like the gardens of Babylon, and more cheerful than I have been for weeks. I am an ancient wonder after all. The dress and I work together, unifying our mood and approach to Isak’s arrival.

  The arrivals hall at Perth airport is packed with a large contingent of robust and fair-haired expats from South Africa waiting for the flight. They are quick to adopt the local winter wardrobe and many wear sheepskin boots and jeans with shapeless jumpers. Emmy has done her own hair into a haphazard bun, bits falling around her face, and put on her new best dress, so she is too cold. Jake is in his pyjamas and dressing-gown, playing a game on his screen. He seems disinterested but Emmy watches the arrivals doors intently with a firm grip on the welcome home card she made. The blue glitter came off all over the back seat of the car, which I had hoped would be clean for a change.

  ‘He’ll be a while yet,’ I tell the back of her crushed hair. She points at the arrivals board. His flight shows Landed. ‘Even though the flight has arrived,’ I tell her, ‘he has to go through customs.’

  ‘What’s that?’ She turns, little frown lines in her forehead. Glimpses of him in her sharp eyes.

  ‘Don’t you remember? They have to check that you aren’t carrying any plants or animals or food into Australia so they don’t bring new diseases here to our special plants and animals.’ She nods, staring back at the gate.

  I adjust the bow on the back of her dress and she ignores me as if my touch is part of her. ‘I remember the long line of people and the man in the uniform who threw away my scissors,’ she grumps.

  ‘You have a good memory for a girl who was only five.’

  I watch too, just as anxious as she is to see Isak. In my heart I knew he would come home, but part of me doubted, still doubts, that he will actually walk through those doors. The crowd is a band stretched tight, getting louder until figures begin to appear from behind the wall. Tension releases as each appears, pushing trolleys of suitcases, boxes, backpacks and packages of duty-free alcohol and electronics.

  ‘Dad!’ Emmy runs out of the row of seats and jumps at him. They are both smiling—unified, unbreakable. Relief fills my eyes with tears and I draw Jake from his game, pulling his hand out to his father. He is warm, smells of diesel fumes, holds me tight against his bulky chest.

  ‘You’ve grown.’ He smiles at me.

  ‘You have too.’

  He laughs.

  ‘Yes, Oma’s cooking and too much Coke, of course.’ I can see the fresh energy in his face. Eased tension.

  ‘Did you bring us presents? I made this for you,’ Emmy interrupts to thrust her sparkly card at him, keen to put in place a principle of fair exchange, knowing her brother and I are not bearing gifts.

  ‘Absolutely, for all of you from Oma and from me. They’re in my case so we’ll open them later.’ He picks up Jake and props him on top of the trolley, wheeling quickly out of the airport into the night air.

  The parking is costly and he swears about the discrepancy between the economics of life in Australia and South Africa. He drives out onto the freeway, in a hurry to get home. A speed camera flashes at us. He curses, ‘Used to the roads at home. I got fined there yesterday, going sixteen kay over the speed limit and the fine was only five hundred rand—it will be a lot more here.’

  Everything seems normal. Jake falls asleep in the car.

  Eleven years ago in Dublin I could never have imagined the reality of our lives now. He was mischievous then, standing out from the crowd with curly hair and a wardrobe of European football shirts. We caught trains, held hands constantly and slept together in single beds at backpacker hostels. We went to concerts and bars and ate in the park, falling asleep on St Stephen’s Green, in Hyde Park, the Luxembourg Gardens and Trsteno on the stone benches among the marble and greenery. There were other people around us, friends and other travellers sharing moments in sublime landscapes. The wonders of the world. But for Isak and for me there was only us. My gaze fixed upon him and his upon me. The wonders all around and within us. It seems so magnified to me, that time. Those months we walked like giants. Time stretched.

  Along the quiet highway, concrete warehouses barricade acres and acres of horizon from our vision. We pass through it like a curse thinking only of the warm interior of our little house in the suburbs at the outer edge of the city. Spangled with souvenirs of those journeys we once had.

  Isak carries Jake over his shoulder like a sack of grain, tucks him in. I wake Emmy and escort her, glittery, to her overstuffed room. Tuck her in with her menagerie of stuffed toys.

  Finally, he holds me tight in his arms, kisses the top of my head. Tears rise in me but I force them down. ‘Chamomile tea?’ I ask him.

  He nods. ‘I need to wind down a bit from the flight. I brought you some little things.’

  I make the tea and he lugs his bags into the house. Locks us in. On the table a little package wrapped in raw paper and a pile of colourful fabric. A print scarf, with zebras. Earrings and a matching necklace.

  ‘They’re made from bottle tops. Unbelievable, isn’t it?’ I turn the little treasures over in my palm. He pulls out another parcel, wrapped in gift paper. ‘My mum sent this for the baby.’

  ‘You told her?’ A lovely knitted cardigan, bright green. A couple of T-shirts in tiny sizes with a rhino, a map of Africa. I unwrap them slowly and tenderly.

  ‘Of course. She was very happy.’ He laughs but does not hold my eyes for long.

  ‘But you didn’t tell her the truth, did you?’ We are bound not to but over there he might ignore the rules of our agreement.

  ‘No, I just kept things normal. I’m hoping we can keep things as normal as possible, Stacey. That’s what the doctor told us to do and if we can just go with that, then I can deal with it.’ He tries to smile. He is calm, at peace with it. For now at least.

  His hand rests on mine.

  ‘They told me it’s a girl.’

  His fingers wrap around mine, squeeze them tight.

  ‘Emmy will be happy.’ He smiles at the thought. Sighs and leans closer to me. ‘I’m so sorry for leaving you like that, Stacey. I just …’ He looks at me, teary.

  ‘I know. I understand.’ I understand more than you know. Sometimes I wish I could run away from myself for a few weeks. ‘I’m all right. In that middle stage now, having a burst of energy. I had some ultrasounds and you saw them online, not that you can see much really.’

  ‘They put all the ultrasounds online? Some were very close, blurry ones that looked like time lapse or something.’

  I have the urge to stare deep into my tea or pick up today’s schoolbag chaos erupting on the floor.

  He kicks at a lunchbox by his shoe.

  ‘It’s not public, just for us and the medical staff.’ I bend to pick up the empty container, bread crusts fallen on the rug. ‘They installed a tiny ultrasound device.’

  He picks up the crust and tosses it in the box in my hands, ‘Installed? You mean put it in with the baby?’ His mouth draws tight, pale.

  ‘Yes.’ I don’t want to tell him. It’s just so invasive. ‘I didn’t want to really but they said if I didn’t we’d hav
e to pay for additional scans and tests all the time.’

  He shakes his head, takes the lunchbox from me and stands up. ‘They bribed you?’

  ‘Yes, I guess they did.’ Please don’t be angry with me, it’s not my fault. I brace myself for his rage—too soon.

  ‘Fuck!’ He seems explosive. ‘So did they inject it or what?’

  It seems obvious to me how it got there but I tell him anyway. ‘They said it wasn’t risky to the baby or me. I saw it, it’s tiny.’

  ‘So they can see what’s going on up there? All the time?’

  She is under surveillance all the time. I try to forget it’s there; talking about it makes it so real. Even in our most private places, anyone—everyone—might be watching the two of us.

  ‘Just the baby. It’s so close to her you can’t really make sense of the picture. I guess they can.’ I know what he’s thinking. But I can’t answer his unasked question, don’t know what to say.

  ‘Are we celibate then?’ He looks tired, lines across his forehead etching back.

  ‘No, I don’t know. Maybe. I’m sorry, Isak—I felt like there was no choice.’ I feel a panic rising, want to push the thing out of me.

  ‘There wasn’t. It’s not your fault. It’s those pricks at LifeBLOOD®, dodgy bastards. I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you.’ He tosses the lunchbox on the kitchen bench. Pours his cold tea into the sink and leans against the bench, staring back at me on the couch.

  ‘Does she look okay to them?’ He reaches into the fridge and finds a block of chocolate, snaps it loudly and returns to the couch. He cracks off a row for me and reaches for my hand. I touch a bruise on his nail.

  ‘Boy’s own adventures. Uncle Henrik and his kids out on the farm. You don’t want to know.’

  I laugh at him. He knows I’ll hate the story, the slaughtered wildlife, the drinking. ‘She’s fine, just like a normal baby. So far there is nothing strange, nothing we didn’t see on the ultrasounds for the kids. They say she’ll be little and the pregnancy will not go forty weeks.’

  ‘Do they know when?’ The lines quickly deepening.

  ‘Just best guess. We’re about halfway.’

  And we are not halfway ready, especially me.

  16 WEEKS

  Every time I come in here and wait in this room I’m faced with the same posters: the amputee man ‘Nothing sweet about diabetes’ and the hollow-eyed girl ‘Pregnant and injecting?’ Normally I am pragmatic and I can see the point, but they are like sand in my eyes. I am tired of trying to be calm for them. I didn’t want to come back here alone but Isak is back at work, has already borrowed days off he hasn’t earned. What I did to my baby is worse than drugs or too much lemonade. I volunteered her to be broken and made into something not human. I want to run and hide with her. I don’t want to bring this child into being with all eyes turned to her. I tell Isak she is normal but she is a freak already and she always will be. I play scenarios in my mind where I pack them all up and go hide in a little town somewhere dry and inhospitable where nobody will know us.

  They did a psychological profile before they started—so much for that! I came up stable but I feel myself unstitching. Taking my kids to school I hide behind normal, but each day it’s getting harder.

  ‘Stacey?’ The same radiographer leads me down the dimly lit hall. ‘Have you drunk all the water this morning?’

  ‘Yes,’ I snap at her, knowing it’s not her fault.

  She opens the door. ‘Been to the toilet since last night?’ Her head tips to one side, she fake-smiles.

  I shake my head.

  ‘Well, let’s get in here and get started.’

  I bet you say that to everyone, I want to snarl at her.

  No dress this time, a skirt and a rounder belly too so altogether I feel a little more dignified, on the outside at least. I swallow down my irritation, try to hide it a little.

  ‘Just a little cold gel and we’ll tuck you up a bit here.’ I breathe deep as she pulls gently at my clothes.

  ‘Where are all the doctors?’ I try to make some conversation.

  ‘They won’t be in here today unless something isn’t right. They are just with another patient but they said to take the measurements. We’ll record all the images so they don’t miss anything.’ She taps into the keyboard and starts the movements over my abdomen.

  ‘Is someone else having a baby like mine?’ They must be thinking the same things as I am. I wonder if their husbands are ambiguous, if their minds have turned tidal—surging and sucking back, dumping detritus on their shores.

  ‘Every patient is important, Stacey. There are lots of unusual pregnancies and the doctor and his team try to make sure everyone is looked after.’

  Treating me like a child. Deep breath. Lots of unusual pregnancies, they must have a whole army of ‘research’ on the way. It’s all right that they aren’t here, really. Maybe I will find out more from her.

  ‘There she is. That’s a hand …’ She clicks and measures, narrating the body parts but I don’t really listen. I’m just looking, as if that is the only way to know something.

  ‘She looks like a normal baby.’ There’s a tear in my voice.

  ‘She is a normal baby.’ Her sweet cheeriness makes it seem okay.

  But she won’t be normal when she’s born. She might be hairy. She might have a jutting jaw, lumpy forehead. She might not be able to speak, ever. She might walk like a gorilla.

  ‘She’s not human, you know?’ Maybe I shouldn’t have said that, maybe she doesn’t know the truth of this.

  ‘Yes, she is human. She is your baby.’

  It strikes so deep, that little sentence, like a charge quavering in my chest. She is. But she isn’t.

  ‘Just think, some people adopt babies and they still call them “my baby”. Yours is your baby, even if she is not genetically all yours and your husband’s.’ Maybe Miss Radiographer is only half human. ‘We have lots of pregnancies in here that have had gene therapy and they get born into normal babies.’

  ‘Really?’ Her pale eyes block any signs of understanding and I feel a sudden spike in anger. ‘I won’t even be able to take her to the shop without people staring at her and wondering what the hell is wrong with her.’

  She doesn’t say a word. Looks stunned.

  ‘She won’t be able to go to school. In fact she might not be able to talk or learn to talk. She might not learn to play with my other kids or learn to swim or ride a bike. None of us will ever have a normal day again.’

  Not a word. It surges through me. Comes out with force.

  ‘The whole world is going to change once this baby is born. Nobody will think of life the same way. And what do you think she is going to do when she grows up, if she actually does?’

  I haven’t let myself go there. I haven’t really thought about the possibilities before, but slowly things come to me. The reality that not only is she different from our other children, she’s also not ours in the same way they are either.

  ‘She’s going to be doing whatever they want her to do.’ She’s their property—to use for making babies, or testing drugs or whatever else they plan for her. I’m not even really sure. Jeff said something about developing new gene therapies to treat a whole range of things. She’ll be strong. Strong organs. A big, strong heart. ‘But she herself—she is of no real importance to anyone except me. Because I am her mother.’

  And that last word is too much and I shake and quiver and cry until the radiographer stands to leave. She pulls her card out of the computer and points towards the toilets. Obviously upset.

  A few minutes later I wipe the gel from my stomach and find the keys to my car. There really is nothing to do about it now. I am on the journey and there is no way out. What the journey means, well that is only just starting to become clear.

  17 WEEKS

  In the car park at the clinic Isak parks under the same tree. The car is littered with takeaway packages, disposable coffee cups and school socks. In a couple of weeks the
attrition of my resolve is complete. We are always in such a rush, caught in the winding traffic to school, away from school. Hours spent in this tight little cocoon, Emmy reading aloud, doing her homework. Jake gaming quietly in her shadow. This pattern, firm as a binding cloth. Each day. Isak is enjoying the Paleo breakfasts as an excuse for a fry-up every morning and eats more of it than I do, marching out the door with a bacon sandwich for smoko. My heartburn persists, she grows on my stores. And tea.

  I check my messages in the car park again as Isak finishes the last of his lunch, keen to multitask on his break.

  Dear Stacey

  All signs from your ultrasound are normal and the baby looks to be growing as expected.

  I understand you are having some emotional stress about the child so I have referred you to our resident psychiatrist as well as Fee, your usual counsellor. Please notify the staff at my offices when you are next there and they will make an appointment for you at a suitable time.

  Kind regards

  Dr Jeffrey van Tink

  LifeBLOOD® Professor of Obstetrics and Paleogenetics

  ‘Everything okay?’ He brushes the crusts from his shirt onto the floor of the car.

  I return the phone to my handbag. ‘Yes, ultrasound is normal.’ His gaze follows mine to the floor. We look at each other—complicit in ignoring the mess.

  ‘Normal?’ He laughs. ‘Maybe their experiment has failed?’

  We book in with Lauren and wait for a few moments for the woman with oversized glasses. Isak sits quietly to one side while she tests my blood pressure, stabs my finger, dips a card into my wee. He raises his eyebrows as if to say she’s a bit odd. Her silent and efficient delivery of her service a sign that incompetence won’t be tolerated. There is something comforting about things going wrong though. A reminder of our fallibility is a great unifier. More forgivable than perfection or absolutes. She leaves the small clinic room and Isak laughs and whispers.