Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER.
She looks down at the baby sucking eagerly at her plump, blue-veined boob, his frantic action lengthening out at last into a steady rhythm that he barely keeps time with, like an awkward dancer who knows the moves but struggles to keep up with the music. Suck, swallow, breathe, suck, swallow, breathe, suck, swallow, suck, shit, didn’t breathe, suck, breathe, shit, squirm, kick. Shhh. Shhhhh. Shhhhiiiiiittttt. He’s off. He’s crying. A stream of milk beads land over his face, over the floor, the sheer curtains, the window.
She looks past the milk dripping down the glass and out to the plane lights flashing in the distant sky.
Where is that plane going, she wonders. Somewhere warm maybe? Somewhere far from here. Somewhere far from these four fucking walls that she spends so long staring at in the past two months. Is this life now? Isn’t this supposed to be fucking beautiful and natural? Where is the beautiful and natural? Why is it all screaming and squirting and squirming and shitting? Isn’t this is what these breast things were made for? Isn’t this what her whole body was made for? Making, growing and feeding tiny versions of herself and/or her lover, snoring loudly, blissfully unaware of the duct tape his wife is visualising being applied tightly over his mouth?
Her body was made for this, she tells herself, and it sucks at it. Well, at least someone is sucking here, she tells herself in a feeble attempt at humour or something. Here we go again baby, latch on, latch on, suck, swallow, breathe, latch off. Just keep sucking.
She looks down at the baby sucking eagerly at her flat, withered breast. There’s nothing much there any more, a few drops maybe. Hopefully something. Hopefully enough to keep him going until she can get some more food for herself and stop stressing about what has happened to her husband. They were separated when they ran as the bombs fell and the dust rose, sticking to their clothes and skin and invading their nostrils and eyes. The baby stayed strapped snugly to her chest, beneath her clothes and she ran, piss running down her legs as she hadn’t heeled properly in the weeks after a long labour and difficult birth. She couldn’t run for long, then she walked. And walked. And walked, the baby always sucking, sleeping, crying, sucking, sleeping, crying. He didn’t need his nappy changed often and she had just two cloth nappies with her. One doing it’s job while the other dried out hanging from her waist. The dehydrated babe had constipation. A lifesaver, she’d thought, as she’d shaken out his little stony poos and tucked the nappy into her skirt waistband to dry while they walked. They had made it to a camp. It was not home – that was gone. It was not safe. But at least it was warm there. This is what her body was made to do. It would keep her baby comfortable and loved and hopefully alive. Just keep sucking little baby, just keep sucking.t?’