Am I the only orphaned only-child in the world? Obviously not. But maybe I am the only orphaned only-child with both parents still-living and a larger-than-life sibling. That’s more likely. My birth date was Wednesday 15th July 1992: not an auspicious one, given my twin brother’s failure to survive the rigors of the complex birth which had resulted in his self-strangulation. Or was it my umbilical that looped itself fatally around his innocent neck?
Growing up alongside me, in that pink granite villa in that grey coastal town, you would never have guessed I was a severed twin. My incompleteness was never referred to overtly by parents or sibling. They told me nothing - but I knew. The ragged, unspecific hole was deep as a well and full of three-dimensional drifting darkness which never left me alone, night or day. It loomed in and out of my sleep.
When I was born they were at war and they are still fighting their way through life today. It sometimes seems convenient to imagine that all the fighting came from the nascent tragedy - but the world’s not really like that, is it? I rang her the other day and could hear him snapping at her as if I had never been away… ‘fucking bitch’ this and ‘fucking bitch’ that… just as always.
‘Speak to me, Nicu,’ she said breathily into the receiver. ‘Speak to me! Can you not communicate like a proper child? Like your sister does? Where’s your sensitivity? Where’s your empathy? Why have you forsaken me? Was it for this the fucking clay grew tall……?’ Who was she talking to? It wasn’t me, was it? And she wasn’t drunk either. She always talked like that.
‘Let it go, stupid fucking bitch!’ the harsh voice broke in, impatiently. ‘The dice are cast. Leave the bastard be. Tell it to fuck off!’ Now he was talking to me – definitely.
‘We want you to come home, darling…’ she added incongruously, ‘…it’s your time to open like a lovely flower, to flourish like a glade of flowers, to…. grow beautiful for fuck’s sake!’ Well, she clearly was talking to me now.
‘Tell it to fuck off!’ he said. But I had already done that, and they both knew it, however much she pretended on the phone.
Growing up alongside me, in that pink granite villa in that grey coastal town, you would never have guessed I was a severed twin. My incompleteness was never referred to overtly by parents or sibling. They told me nothing - but I knew. The ragged, unspecific hole was deep as a well and full of three-dimensional drifting darkness which never left me alone, night or day. It loomed in and out of my sleep.
When I was born they were at war and they are still fighting their way through life today. It sometimes seems convenient to imagine that all the fighting came from the nascent tragedy - but the world’s not really like that, is it? I rang her the other day and could hear him snapping at her as if I had never been away… ‘fucking bitch’ this and ‘fucking bitch’ that… just as always.
‘Speak to me, Nicu,’ she said breathily into the receiver. ‘Speak to me! Can you not communicate like a proper child? Like your sister does? Where’s your sensitivity? Where’s your empathy? Why have you forsaken me? Was it for this the fucking clay grew tall……?’ Who was she talking to? It wasn’t me, was it? And she wasn’t drunk either. She always talked like that.
‘Let it go, stupid fucking bitch!’ the harsh voice broke in, impatiently. ‘The dice are cast. Leave the bastard be. Tell it to fuck off!’ Now he was talking to me – definitely.
‘We want you to come home, darling…’ she added incongruously, ‘…it’s your time to open like a lovely flower, to flourish like a glade of flowers, to…. grow beautiful for fuck’s sake!’ Well, she clearly was talking to me now.
‘Tell it to fuck off!’ he said. But I had already done that, and they both knew it, however much she pretended on the phone.
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