Owen

            It still took her back there, every time she heard sirens. Back to darkness and rain, the wet road, coarse and cold beneath helpless fingers. To the sirens constantly screaming above her head, red-and-blue lights catching on jagged glass, dissolving in rainwater. To that feeling of being frozen in place, desperate to move, but hemmed in by pain, not understanding why every attempt to break free came up against an invisible wall. The smell of blood, and burning, and spilt fuel.

            #

            Mandy was drawn to the window by the familiar sound. She pressed her forehead against the glass, trying to see past her neighbour's guttering into the cityscape behind it. A canopy of rust-dappled iron flowing on through the horizon. Colourful graffiti lapping at the ankles of carbon-copy apartment buildings. Sunset catching their west-facing walls, twinkling off their windows. She could just see the police car's lights, just see it driving away beneath an overbridge and out of her sight. She could never help but think about where it might be going. And in this neighbourhood: well, there were always sirens.

            One day, she told herself, one day she was going find a way up and out of all this. She was going to make good on the future she'd once promised herself – a bigger and better life, all the comforts that came with that. She meant it this time – surely: there were two of them to think about now.

            Mandy pulled the curtains closed on her small, dowdy living room. The carpet was faded and seventies-brown, the wallpaper floral and intensively scratched by a former tenant's cats. The rug had been a gift, and hid where the carpet was most threadbare, where it had been stained by red wine.

            Mandy stood and watched the crib. She felt sure she could watch baby Owen sleeping for decades. For no reason that made any sense, it just somehow set the whole world right. Something sweet and soporific that flowed through her as she listened to his breathing. She stood staring, sinking roots into the carpet, growing old, living lifetimes, her chin rested on her knuckles. She watched until she saw him watching her back.

            Such dark, dark eyes. He got those from their father. But she could see a lot of their mother in there too. That slightly flattened forehead, that sharp little dip in his mouth, his softly puckered chin; a face that was sunset-dark and still vibrantly pink-cheeked. Take away her long hair, her freckles, her hazel eyes, take away the difference in years: and there he was.

            “Is it dinner time, my little love?”

            He gurgled.

            “Yes, it is.” She lifted his warm weight, pressing him against her, scanning the the cupboard. Round little jars of baby food lined up on the shelf like birds along a branch. “What do you want, Owen? Do you like pears? Do you like liver? Or would you like chicken and corn today?”

            He pointed randomly, fingers splayed wide – more grabbing than a genuine act of pointing.

            “Pears.”

            He did seem to like those.

            And she fed him on her lap, curled up on the armchair. It took patience to do this. His attention was everywhere else, staring up at the ceiling, enticed by the pattern on a curtain, by the fading daylight reddening behind it. Reaching to touch her mouth, or just stick his fingers in his own. Anything could go in there – except his dinner, when it was dinner time.

            And sometimes it all seemed like too much, like she would just plonk him down on that chair and march out of there, into the world, into what she'd been before.

            But she hadn't yet. And she'd persevere.

            She distracted Owen by singing to him, by talking softly. “You would have liked Dad. You would have. He was the biggest man you're ever likely to see. Shaggy like those big highland cattle. He had eyes just like yours, and he thought you were the best thing. He wouldn't stop staring at you, even when I laughed at him.

            “And Mum. She was gorgeous. And she was so funny. She didn't care what anybody thought, she just laughed at them. You could always hear her laughing, when you came home from school and she had a couple of friends round. She loved life, she loved everything. And us. Me and you. And poor Greg – you'll never know Greg, will you?” She kissed the baby's forehead, remembering her brother, remembering her parents – and Owen's.

Do you know what you're getting yourself into, looking after a baby?

...too young...

...inexperienced...

…unsettled...

...little more than a baby yourself...

You don't even know what you want for your own life.

Plenty of people had done their best to discourage her.

            But it was only the two of them left now. She teased a spoonful of puréed pears into Owen's mouth. “What kind of a sister did they think I was, huh? Family don't abandon family.” Their father had taught her that.

            In the fading light, she sang them both a song, dreamed them both up a future with no edges and invisible horizons.

Picture credit/discredit: author's own work