Emma Richler - Feed My Dear Dogs

I don’t like it, this business of death and childbirth and I am stricken suddenly, even though I can see Mum right here on the edge of the bed, completely alive, with a completely alive baby in her arms and there is simply no cause for grief and anxiety. Stop it, Jem. Everything’s OK.

I watch my sister trip forward a step or two, very courteous and everything, leaning forward at the waist, and bending a little at the knees, her hands slipped neatly between them and her fluffy head dipping Gus’s way like she is smelling flowers in a flower bed. I just know she is struggling with some instructions I have given her lately in the run-up to Gus’s birth, advice regarding unseemly comments and how not to say them, beginning with, Isn’t that my pink blanket?

‘Hello, Gustavus,’ says Harriet in a fine display of seemliness. I feel proud. Here is why.

Walking to school is a much bigger job than it used to be for me since Harriet joined me at the convent in the year 1 BG. Before Gus. The bare fact is Harriet rarely moves in a straight line or at regular and unchanging speed, so the main thing is to keep her in my field of vision. I pretend I am a commando with a pair of binoculars, concentrating hard on a fellow commando. I watch him with my binoculars and I am ready to cover him with gunfire (Thompson sub-machine gun) and nip in close, if need be, in a hand-to-hand combat situation (Colt 45, Fairbairn-Sykes knife). It is the year of the Great Raids in France, 1942. In that same year, Jude says, Hitler ordered the execution of captured commandos, an order some German soldiers refused. Some, not many. I made a note of this. I try to keep an open mind about German soldiers and not give in to prejudice, recalling what Jude said. Some, not many, because for most, orders are orders, even if the chief is crazy, reminding me now of Mean Nun who is in charge of clocks and tidiness and being on time for school and so on, no excuses. No prisoners.

Where is Harriet?

I try not to boss my sister. She needs to stray a little and explore the flora and fauna on her way to places, though she will come across a sad sight now and again, mashed up wildflowers a person has stomped all over by mistake, or a limping bird or some such thing, and this is grievous for my sister though not so grievous as it is if I boss her, calling out, Forward march! or, Move it! Instead, I keep a 1½ oz box of raisins in my pocket and call out, Raisins! if ever she strays too far and, mostly, this reels her in like a fish. Raisins are second best after chocolate, her favourite comestible, which we are not allowed except on special occasions, and definitely not in the morning apart from Christmas Day. Raisins are permissible at all times.

‘Harriet! Raisins!’

Harriet scuffles out of the bushes in a shivery sad state like she is a small animal herself, with no mother animal around and no animal homestead or anything. Oh-oh.

‘What, Harriet?’

My sister points into the bushes. She just can’t look, so I brush through to investigate. Lo! I spy four, maybe five eggs, not the eating in an eggcup kind which come from chickens for that very purpose and with their full knowledge, I believe, but eggs that were on their way to be birds and will now never be birds. The shells are swirly with colour like decorated Easter eggs hidden in the garden, but these are broken, and sprawled across the ground, the guts spilling red, streaks of red like ribbons. It is impossible not to think about blood and baby birds who never got anywhere. It’s a battlefield.

I cross my fingers in a wish I can help Harriet recover from this bad scene, and get her to school on time also, I cross two fingers of one hand, not both, or the wish is cancelled out, Jude says. I aim to tell my sister about embryos and I need to get it straight first in my own head, I need to recall the main points, so I stare at the ground for a moment, I look down in thought as opposed to nuns who look up in thought, because they are married to God and look to Him for answers to all questions, except ones to do with sports. Sister Martha, for instance, is keen on sports and she looks me right in the eye when she has a sporting question, largely Manchester United questions due to her big thing for Charlton, Bobby, and Best, George. Sister Martha supports Manchester United although she comes from County Cork. This is because she goes for the man and then the team, and there is nothing unusual about that, not to me anyway.

Nuns look up, and in paintings relating to catechism, all eyes are on the sky, aside from the eyes of criminals and heathens. The sky will take up a lot of space in the painting, and bristle with angel activity and light beams and doves and so on, though in reality, that sky is empty and all the activity is symbolic, and the artist knows this, but he has painted it in, same as he paints trees and buildings and passers-by with their feet on the ground. It depends how you look at it. Maybe I should look up more, maybe there are too many distractions on the ground for clear thinking, or maybe I look down because I am not a Catholic or a nun.

Embryo.

Not long before Gus arrives, I press Ben with a question on the subject of something Mum described to me, how the baby is an embryo and feeds IN THE WOMB, and it is all so wondrous, etc. Yikes. If our new baby is feeding off Mum, in my opinion, she needs to pop a few more snacks to make up the shortfall. My mother does not eat much in regular life, and I certainly do not see her changing her ways now that she has an embryo within. In the weeks before Gus, therefore, I keep pushing my toast her way in the mornings, going, Sorry, I’m not very hungry, sorry, because I know she does not approve of waste, though she is not a bad case like nuns are, nowhere near. I do think she is likely to finish my toast, however, so I pretend I cannot finish the toast, or have a big urge to share, or, for variety, I act like I am in a terrible hurry. I am simply trying to save this woman from starvation, that’s all.

‘Want a bite, Mum? I’m late!’ I say, waving my toast in the air.

‘I’m LATE! I’m LATE, for a very important DATE!’ she sings, whereupon Harriet leaps out of her chair to do some accompaniment, singing along, and dancing a jig. ‘My fuzzy hair and whiskers took me MUCH TOO LONG TO SHAVE!’

Jiminy Cricket.

I take the problem to Ben and he puts me straight on this question of embryos and not being fully formed, and early stages of life, etc., hauling out an encyclopaedia and splaying it open on the floor. Embryo. Various vertebrate embryos .

‘What’s vertebrate?’

‘Having backs and spines. For locomotion, right?’

‘OK’ I say, reading on. ‘The different species are hard to distinguish in the early stages of development; later they develop individual characteristics.’

Above the words are two rows of drawings in a large box with three up-and-down lines, making eight compartments, with the top row for early embryos of a fish, chicken, pig, man and the bottom row for late embryos of a fish, chicken, pig, man, reminding me of Harriet’s bedside cabinet with her display of little animals within, little chicks and lambs, each one in a box, no man in any box. I stare at this drawing and feel a bit woozy. All the early embryos LOOK THE SAME. Kind of like fishhooks or seahorses. Yuck. Below, there is a second drawing of a late embryo with lots of pointing arrows and detailed information such as: ‘A few weeks before birth this foetus is practically fully formed.’ A few weeks. The embryo has a head and squeezed-up eyes, and feet, ears, all the accoutrements. A mouth and a stomach. Hands for wielding cutlery. I close up the book.

‘Ben?’

‘Yup.’

‘Does Mum look OK to you? Thin?’

‘She’s fine, Jem. She’s always thin.’