Motherhood
She was a honeymoon baby, her virgin parents believing
that week in Eastbourne gave them immunity from conception.
Her impression on mother’s figure, a small bulge as if she was
digesting a large meal. So pencil skirts and stilettos need not be
given up for sensible shoes and smocks after all. Shopkeepers
still flirted and business men continued to eye her up in the street.
As the screaming ambulance muscled its way through the city’s
Saturday traffic , despite the blackened out windows discrete as giant
sunglasses, mother clasped her clammy dressing gown around her
and tried to smooth her ruffled hair. Brought to a temporary stand still,
she peeped out and glimpsed ‘Julie’ wife of her old flame traipsing
along in a cream linen dress, swinging a department store carrier bag,
and lay back tearfully on the stretcher. Labour was like childbirth
in a Victorian novel; sombre nurses and doctors on standby.
Her first public appearance as a mother, the cricket match, where wives
sat in cars and waved to each other like passengers on passing trains.
Whilst she flicked through fashion magazines, sleeping daughter
was cradled by the back seat. Suddenly he was at the car window,
Prince Charming who had defied Fairy Tale convention by marrying
an ugly sister. She has her mother’s looks his words oozed like syrup
down her throat. Afterwards she saw, shameful as incontinence,
the dark stain creeping across her navy sweater, the breasts that had so
far only produced a drizzle of milk, chose now to express themselves.
