Someone Else’s Child
It’s summer and I’m on the Queensland south coast, alone. Venturing out of my motel room for a swim, I’ve trudged around the end of the surf beach to a sheltered cove where there’s a weathered jetty reaching out towards the horizon. As I wander along the uneven planks I see a young blonde woman pushing a flimsy stroller ahead of me. Her head is bowed, her bony shoulders hunched. She makes no attempt to navigate the gaps between the timbers, and the stroller lurches and swerves like a toy car. Hard to tell from behind whether it has a passenger. I slow my steps to create more distance between us.
When I finally reach the end of the jetty the young woman is sitting smoking with her legs dangling over the edge, her back to the land. There was a passenger after all, a girl of about four. She’s standing behind her mother, poking her between those hunched shoulder blades. The child has Shirley Temple curls, thin legs and turned-in toes, which right now are scuffing rhythmically against a protruding nail.
There’s a bench seat on the left side of the jetty’s end, and I perch gingerly on it, trying to avoid the bird droppings. So good to sit down. It took me a long time to get to sleep last night and the five-thirty alarm crashed in on my dreams like a runaway train while Tom slept right through. Now the early-morning flight from Melbourne is catching up with me.
It’s over. No more trips to the IVF clinic. No more injecting myself with expensive vials of liquid fertility. Just Tom and I from now on.
From behind my sunglasses, I pretend to be taking in the view while I watch the mother and daughter.
‘Look at that bird, Mum, Mummy, Mum, Mum, look, look at that bird, Mum.’
The young woman looks, but in the opposite direction. She sucks hard on her cigarette.
‘Mum, look, it’s got a leg gone, Mum, look, Mum, where’s its leg, look, where’s it gone?’
The girl pokes at her mother’s shoulder again. ‘Mum, can you see it, where’s it gone, Mum, I saw it, only one leg, Mum, did a shark eat it?’
The woman slowly turns her head and stares at the prodding child. ‘Go. Away. NOW.’ Her voice is tight and low, but loud enough for the nearby cluster of nervous seagulls to hear. They shuffle along the jetty, away from the angry human.
The girl gives up on her prodding and wanders towards the birds. Suddenly she’s running at them, waving her hands. I lean forward, leg muscles tensed. Just before the girl reaches the edge of the jetty the squabbling gulls rise as one, circling back towards the shore. The child stops and stands with her hands flung wide as if to catch any tardy gulls. ‘Gone,’ she says, to the air in front of her.
Turning around, she notices me for the first time and comes trotting over. She clambers up onto the bench and shifts her bottom from side to side until she’s braced against the back of the seat. Her thin legs are touching my thighs as she beams up at me.
‘My name’s Ashley, what’s yours?’
‘Sian.’ I smile back at the blinking blue eyes. ‘My name’s Sian.’
The girl considers this information for a moment, her fingers scratching at the dried bird shit.
‘Shine,’ she says at last. ‘Like the sun?’ She’s not interested in the answer. She’s standing up now and leaning over the railing, staring into the broth of dark blue below us. ‘I can see a lot of fish down there, can you see them, Shine? Look, I think they can see me, maybe they’re scared of me, do you think they are?’
I want to put my hands around the girl’s jiggling legs in case she pitches headfirst over the railing, but I hesitate. She is someone else’s child. The girl’s mother is fishing around in her cigarette pack, seemingly oblivious. My heart beats faster.
Ashley’s feet have lifted off the ground now and she’s hanging over the edge, balanced on her belly. I take hold of her ankles and tug them gently.
‘Careful, Ashley, you might fall. Then the fish really would be scared. And I would be too, and your mum. Can you swim?’
She doesn’t resist. Planting her feet firmly on the bench again she turns to me and places her hands on my head. ‘Your hair’s all wet, Shine, have you been swimming? Did you see a shark?’ She moves her face close to mine, teeth bared, smiling a crazy shark smile. I glance over her shoulder towards her mother, who still hasn’t turned around.
I could just take her. I could pick her up and run and run to the end of the jetty, before her mother notices.
I’ll hold her tight and when we get to the hotel I’ll leave some cash beside the bed, close my suitcase and grab her hand and we’ll run to the taxi rank and I’ll tell the driver we’re late for a flight to make him go fast, and we’ll jump on the first plane back to Melbourne and we’ll be up, up and away before her mother has even realised she’s disappeared. And her mother might think she’s fallen in the water and drowned, and she might just shrug her shoulders and abandon the stroller and go back to doing whatever she was doing with her young life before the baby came along. And we’ll all live happily ever after—me, Tom and Ashley.
Or maybe just me and Ashley.
I breathe out. ‘Ashley, I have to go. You should get back to your mum, she might be missing you.’ The woman is lying back on the wooden planks with her arms clasped behind her head, eyes closed, a new cigarette standing to attention between her lips.
‘Bye-bye Shiney-shine.’ Ashley slips off the seat. Dropping to her hands and knees she begins crawling across the splintery wood towards the prone woman. ‘I’m a shark and I’m gonna eat my mum.’
Crossing my arms over my chest, I shove my hands into my armpits and walk back down the jetty towards the land. The sea breeze pushes me from behind, out of harm’s way.
This essay was first published in MamaMia in June 2022.