Clem prepares a lecture on the filmAlien. She is going to
discuss motherhood. The monstrous feminine. The abject.
It’s early and Eli is still asleep. Clem couldn’t sleep. She had
felt nauseous. Laid there from 3am until 5am, before finally
slipping out from the warmth and turning on her computer.
There is a picture of the alien bursting from John Hurt’s
stomach up on the screen. Clem is scribbling down notes about
borders being violated, bodies transgressed, blood, guts, vomit,
semen, shit and piss. Identity, subjectivity
threatened, destabilised.
She shivers as an icy breeze passes
over her feet and ankles. She looks down.
The child looks up at her, legs crossed,
sitting at her feet, playing with her slippers.
Rubbing its hands over them, through them.
It has a widow’s peak just like Eli. Pale
shadows beneath the eyes, soft blooms,
which match his. Clem’s never noticed this
before. Normally its outlines are vague,
barely discernible. But right now, they
seem a little more solid. Gelatinous.
Shimmering like liquid mercury.
Clem’s stomach churns. She runs for the toilet.
Her period is late, but when she does a test there is only one
line. It could be too early to tell or maybe she’s just late.
Clem googles early signs of pregnancy and how long it can
take to get a positive test result. She reads the comments in baby
forums. One woman says she didn’t get a positive test until eight
weeks. Another says she continued to get her period well into
her pregnancy. Another says she has been trying for 14 months
now and is giving up hope of naturally conceiving. She says
she’s scared.
Clem reads this last one several times before giving up
her search.
Cramps. Not too painful, but uncomfortable enough to wake
her. To make it difficult to sleep.
She bleeds for 12 days. Brown, then bright red. Wine-
coloured clots.
On the twelfth day, Clem books an appointment with her
doctor. By the time of the appointment, the bleeding has stopped.
Clem is apologetic. She feels as if she’s wasting the doctor’s time.
It was probably a freak period, she thinks. Or cancer.
“It could be an early miscarriage,” the doctor tells her, eyes
sympathetic, tone gentle.
“Oh, okay,” says Clem.
She goes for a drive. Stops at a servo and buys a fat donut
with pink icing and rainbow sprinkles. She goes to the lookout
spot at the nearby airfield to watch the planes take off and land.
Modest Mouse plays from her phone.
The icing on the donut is wet and sticks to the paper bag
when she pulls it out. It’s stale when she bites into it. But she eats
it anyway, watching the planes cross a sky that turns from mauve
and gold to cobalt, listening to Modest Mouse sing – “And we’ll
all float on okay.”
“Where have you come from?” Clem asks ghost child. “Who
do you belong to?”
But ghost child is too busy touching the bricks around the
fireplace, feeling them, smelling them, tasting them, tracing the
cracks, to answer.
At 2:48 in the morning, ghost child begins to bawl.
Clem burrows under the blanket. Eli gets up.
Clem spreads out on her stomach, lying with her
head pressed against the warm sheets, Eli’s
smell. Rexona, sweat.
Eli comes back in and turns the light on.
“I can’t find him,” he says. “Help me look.”
They search the house, but ghost child is
nowhere to be found. Ghost child’s cries fill
every room.
Clem sneaks out the back and sits in her
dressing gown with a wheel of brie and
a cigarette. She eats half the wheel. She smokes
the cigarette, watching the stars.
The house is quiet when she goes back in. Eli tells her she
stinks when she climbs into bed. He doesn’t mention ghost child.
“I’ll change the sheets in the morning,” she says.
She lies there in the dark, listening to Eli breathe. She feels
empty even though she’s full of cheese.
“Is ghost child yours?” Clem asks.
Eli is playing Super Smash Bros on the Wii.
“Hang on,” he says. “I’ve almost got this.”
He doesn’t. He swears and throws down the controller.
“What?”
“Ghost child, is she yours?”
“I think so,” he says. “Isn’t he ours?”
Clem looks at ghost child, who is sitting quietly with a book
about succulents. The book is upside down.
“I don’t know,” she says slowly.
They sit in silence, watching ghost child turn pages.
Clem begins doing the pregnancy tests earlier and earlier. As
if she might be able to catch the double line unawares. Feeling
that this might prevent the flow of blood. Trick it somehow. It
doesn’t. Instead her periods come earlier and earlier. She
bleeds intermittently between cycles. She worries she’s
menopausal. She worries about becoming anaemic.
All she seems to do is bleed.
Sometimes, when Clem goes to touch Eli’s shoulder to tell him
something, it’s as if her hand passes straight through him and her
voice disappears. He carries on with whatever he’s doing until she
tries again – her hand meeting solid flesh, her voice barking “Eli!”
“Shit!” he’ll say, jumping, “Where’d you come from?”
“It’s taking longer than I thought,” says Eli.
This takes Clem by surprise. More his articulation of the
thought than the thought itself. She starts to cry.“Her period
IS LATE,
but when
she does
a test there
is only
ONE LINE”