Page 95 of Queenslander
Ronnie nodded. “Yeah.”
Reg whooped and jumped to his feet, pumping his fist. He looked like Mattie.
In May she resumed coaching her primary school girls, the Wattles, belly-laughing at their dancing, ponytail flips, cheers, cartwheels, dribbling and passing, the routine of it, thesmell of freshly mown grass, amazed and grateful that this ridiculousness was her life.
Her back ached. She had been ignoring the letter from the Lions. By October she would be strong enough to play for her local amateur team, the Cutters, but would she be fast enough to survive try-out camp week in Brisbane? Standards were higher at the pro level. If she wasn’t scoring tries by the spring, there would be no reason to fly to Brisbane.
Trying out for a professional team three days away wouldn’t demonstrate commitment to parenting. But weren’t self-care and self-improvement parts of being a good parent? Playing pro footy would be good for her.
What kind of role model would she be if she didn’t pursue her dreams? What kind of role model was she now? A high school dropout working a dead-end minimum wage job?
“Which way are you leaning?” Jackie Collins asked on the sidelines of the Atherton primary school athletic fields.
“Leaning toward taking the free vacation. Realistically, they won’t pick me anyway.”
After practice she high-fived her Wattles, girls pink and sweaty now in yellow school uniforms, then took the public bus back to her dad’s purple Queenslander in Lionheart, feeling old, watching FOR SALE signs for properties she couldn’t afford float by along the roadside, wanting two mutually-exclusive things.
29
RAINBOW’S BIRTHDAY
On Rainbow’s tenth birthday, May twenty first, Ronnie lay in bed alone, looking out the screen into Blaise’s native plant garden. No rain again last night, cooler morning, mist rising off the mountains, autumn transitioning into dry season.
Quiet outside.
Reg’s flag hung limp. The ocean would be glassy, not even enough wind for mush burgers. Nature felt less alive this morning, except two small brown honeyeaters in the bottlebrush grevillea cheerfully took turns whistling “tyzuit.”
Next weekend they would pretend it was Rainbow’s birthday, decorate a cake, sing the song, blow out candles.
Feeling hollow, she lay in bed staring at the ceiling. An empty anniversary. Memories echoed in the closed zoo sounds of her dad and stepmom’s empty house. Wallaby water bottles rattled in the family room. Matilda and Maya’s nails clicked over tile as they padded around the kitchen.
When she closed her eyes, she saw her fingers delicately caressing the tiny lavender body. Rainbow had been the size of a footy ball when she was born, a squishy alien with fat belly and skinny frog limbs. Nothing had prepared her for that moment—suddenly being responsible for a helpless creature who owed her everything and nothing.
Ronnie had labored quietly. No one had known she was in active labor, alone at night in her cell. Slow at first, then fast and bloody. Those first miraculous moments as a duo had been wild. No audience. She had pushed out an organ, watched it come to life, breathe for the first time, flail her arms and legs for the first time without resistance, had seen Rainbow as she had been inside her: her-shaped, a piece of her attached by what looked like a white telephone cord.
Immediately after birth, Rainbow smelled like roast beef.
The first time Ronnie held her in her arms and hugged her to her breasts, Rainbow had relaxed. Home. It felt like she had always been there, like she had never left.
Ronnie’s womb was on the outside now, perched on top of her round postpartum tummy. Squishy mama shaped to hold a squishy newborn.
Rainbow opened her eyes.
Ronnie sang to her.
Rainbow’s wrinkled hand gripped her finger.
No one had warned her about the placenta. At first, when she labored to deliver the thick organ at the other end of Rainbow’s umbilical cord, she thought Rainbow had a twin.
After the placenta came out, she had fallen asleep holding her daughter against her chest in the silence and the dark, had woken alone in light and deafening noise.
A decade later, after years of therapy, she still missed her baby.
Ten years old. How was that possible?
In the kitchen, she stuck a pink and white candle in a banana, found a lighter in a drawer and lit it, careful not to burn her thumb.
The flame flickered, then held steady.
