While the Moon is Still Whole
A Short Story
The soundtrack for me walking into the house is ah-mazing. This song was released three years before I was born. Two and a bit years before I was conceived, slightly more than that before I was “a twinkle in my Daddy’s eye,” as he used to say. I was “supposed” to be a boy and when I was yet another girl, after three others, he said he might as well throw me in the river. He tried to give me to my Auntie who couldn’t have children. My auntie told me this just last year. When I asked my mother about it, she silently left the room, so I know it is true.
She got really big when she was pregnant with me, which is probably why they thought they were going to have a boy at last. Back then, they thought it was the woman’s “fault” if they got the “wrong” sex, so she would have been punished good.
She ate a lot of treacle during that pregnancy, which is why she got so big. But then after she had me she became really thin. I’ve seen the photos — her hairline receded and you couldn’t see the shape of her body under her baggy dress but you could see the paths of the bones and veins across her face. My grandmother was really worried about her.
I was in and out hospital all through that first year, sick with one thing or another. But by the time I was two I was huge. What you’d call a bonnie baby.
