Possession
It’s Complicated: Lit Up & The Writing Cooperative Contest
I stare at my reflection in the bedroom mirror. The line extending from my navel to my pubic bone is dark as ever although my belly is now slack, no longer taut with the life pulsating inside it. I reflexively stroke it, the way it had become second nature to, these past few months.
I was always tagged the ‘mom type’. Perhaps because Nori came so many years after me. At twelve, I was a pro at changing diapers, mixing up formula and rocking her to sleep. There was never a need to hire sitters; I was an eager nanny.
Naturally, everyone expected me to get married young and have many kids.
I was forty-three and single when I gave birth. I conceived easily, albeit aided by science. The pregnancy was uneventful, and baby Neil came after only seven hours of pushing.
He was perfection, every miniature bit of him. A head full of lush hair. Gorgeous dark brown eyes that piercingly held my gaze. I wanted to breathe him in, to fuse him to myself somehow so we could be one for the rest of existence.
But he wasn’t mine to keep.
Nori -my little sister -was deemed medically unfit to carry a pregnancy to term. So I offered to do it for her. It nearly crushed her -the grandness of the gesture, the gratitude she felt towards me. I brushed it away; I’ve never been big on sentimentality.
Except where Neil is concerned. I long for his presence in much the same way a recovering addict craves his next fix. I had moved in with Nori so we could experience the pregnancy together. I continue to stay to nurse Neil.
He may be borne of her eggs but I’m sure he has something of me in him. Science says that women who get pregnant with donor eggs still pass on some genetic material to the babies they carry.
I like to think his eyes often seek me out in a room full of noisy people — Neil, my almost-son. My first born, yet not quite mine.
Yet.
They think I’m altruistic, saintly even. The perfect older sister. They’ll never know the malevolent intent that inspires my every move.
First, there was my father. Giddily in love with my mother even after years of marriage. I had to set that right; it was annoying how into each other they were.
Until she died. Accidentally, of course.
For two and a half blissful years it was just the two of us. Then he decided to get married again. It still wasn’t so bad because his entire focus was on me and making sure I was adjusting fine.
But then Nori was born. And it was like my entire world tilted.
My father worshipped her. He spent every waking minute at home playing with her. Basically, he forgot I existed.
I was not okay with that.
So, as a responsible and caring step sister, I stepped up. I took over all her needs, rushing home from school to look after her. I encouraged my father and stepmother to go out by themselves. No one ever knew that I often let her cry for hours in her crib or that I sometimes added melatonin to her milk to make her sleep longer.
My step mother was only too happy to relinquish as many of her responsibilities as she could. Nori grew up entirely reliant on me. I advised her on what clothes looked good on her, which boys she should date and how to deal with mean girls.
What she didn’t know was that I was slowly, deliberately brainwashing her.
I chipped away at her confidence. I filled her head with doubt and paranoia. She grew up to be a tremulous, anxious woman prone to nervous breakdowns.
Which is why I was shocked when Kabir, my best friend, the man I had secretly loved for over a decade, fell head over heels in love with her. How her quivering, fragile personality could appeal to anyone, least of all him, stupefied me. Apparently, he fell for her innocence and her “golden heart”.
None of my interventions worked this time. It’s as if the two of them inhabited a world of their own making, a world immune to logic and reason.
This presented a huge problem.
Nori had already once disrupted my life by taking over my father’s love and attention. Now she was snatching the man I had envisioned to spend my life with. I had to withstand the torture of being maid of honor at their wedding, of witnessing their feverish passion for each other, all while I absorbed the mantle of being the spinster older sister whose only redeeming quality seemed to be her maternal instincts towards her step-sister.
I planned even more carefully this time. Things simply could not go wrong again.
The perfect opportunity presented itself when Nori started having repeat miscarriages. I stepped in again as the miracle older sister and offered to carry her baby.
When Neil was born, he was first handed over to her since she was the biological mother. No one thought of the woman who had just pushed out an eight and a half pounder out of her.
She might be the universally acknowledged mother, but is my body that fed him, nourished him and kept him safe till he was ready to join the world. And now it is my milk that is his singular source of nutrition.
I am going to do everything to stake my claim on him. Kabir will realize soon enough that life with someone as high-strung as Nori is an exhausting endeavor, not the rose-tinted joyride he envisioned. Regardless, it doesn’t matter. He can spend the rest of his life soothing her querulous nerves for all I care.
Neil will need his birth mother, more and more. I’ll make sure of that.
Because love justifies all means. You’d better believe that.
