Only Child - Sally Xie (book club recommendations TXT) 📗

Only Child

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I used to always associate babies with a sickly-sweet odour. It wasn't a pleasing mixture, like lavender and peppermint – something strange that still managed to agree with your senses – but a bizarre mishmash of diapers, rotting flowers and dishwater detergent.

It started when I was five years old: my family had just immigrated to Canada, and we were living in a grungy apartment downtown.

The walls were so thin we could often catch snippets of our neighbours' conversations, smell their food burning, and communicate simply by raising our voices a few volumes louder. My neighbour was a single father struggling to raise his two toddlers. They were practically considered family to me and my dad, in the sense that we shared everything: sleepless nights, the pleasure of being woken up by a bawling baby at four A.M., and the smell of bleach and baby wipes permeating the air. Every time I entered our apartment, I caught a whiff of the same nauseating scent that would later haunt my nightmares – and vowed to never live with a baby (let alone conceive one!) as long as I was of sound and conscious mind.

Life was simple back then. A few years later, my mom came to live with us, and strange things began happening around the flat.

There was talk of my dad getting a steadier-paying job. My mom often paced back and forth, rambling on about having an immigrant visa issued for my grandmother. At the dinner table, real estate became their primary source of discussion, and they pored over newspapers and catalogues with matching glints in their eyes and determined sets to their jaws.

Whenever we visited the superstore, whereas I would immediately dash for the toys aisle, they always seemed to gravitate toward the furniture department. Although I didn't understand much at the time (being the kind of preschooler who would casually entertain thoughts about becoming the Queen of England), I clued in on what was happening when my parents suddenly announced that they would be buying a house – something a bit cozier and further up north – and asked, bright smiles on their faces and nonchalance laced through their words, how I would feel about having a little brother.

Clearly, there was only one logical course of action: fierce, vehement protest. It was purely out of self-preservation. What would've happened to my status in the family if a new kid came along? For so long, it had been I who held the so-called dictatorial clout, I who single-handedly ruled the family with my Iron Wails of Tyranny. My word was law – anyone who decided otherwise would have to brave my ear-splitting shrieks, scientifically proven to cause chronic deafness in the ears of any individual within hearing range. But what would happen once a louder, shriller, needier baby came along? The very foundations of my stature would be shaken, the household dynamics would shift. No, there was no room for compassion: there could only be one, and I

was she.

I voiced this belief to my parents in the form of reasonable, persuasive and well-constructed debate: "But mom! Dad! If you have another kid, you'll like him better than me!"

Instead of taking my argument seriously, they started cooing over how adorable I was for wanting to monopolize their attention. "It'll be fine," they chuckled reassuringly. "We'll always love you both in equal amounts."

This I did not believe one bit, but as it were, I was stumped for a rebuttal – there was something about the way they smiled, the way they seemed to radiate happiness that temporarily quieted me down.

Of course, two trimesters into my mom's pregnancy, I was once again struck with fear for my future. My parents had already unpacked boxes of my old stuff – toys, books, clothing and the like – and were weeding through my sweaters and jackets, trying to find a few unisexual pieces they could hand down to my brother.

I met this expedition with mixed feelings: on one hand, it felt as if they were replacing me, giving my things to this new baby – but on the other, he would be getting my

things, the same articles of clothing that I had once worn while sitting in classrooms, or goofing around in playgrounds. I couldn't really identify what I'd felt back then, as "vegetable" had been the most complex word in my limited vocabulary. Now that I'm older, I realize that I had started to consider my baby brother as another human being. For some reason, I felt the first inklings of a connection for my soon-to-be brother.

My mom went into labour a few months later. She stayed at the hospital for a few weeks before it was considered safe enough to bring the newborn home.

According to my parents, I'd actually wanted a sibling when I was very, very young – old enough to string two words together, but too young to form any sort of comprehensible sentence – and wanted one to the point where I made up nicknames for any future siblings I might've gotten. Though I don't recall ever having done such a thing, my parents still remember the hilariously juvenile nicknames I came up with – "Man-Man", which from Chinese roughly translates to 'slowpoke', and "Ben-Ben", which means 'idiot'. They gave the less glaringly offensive one to my brother. I hadn't even met the bouncing baby boy yet, and already, we were tied to each other by some sort of freak incident of the past.

I think I came to terms with having a younger brother the first time my mom brought him home. Seeing him cradled in my mom's arms, I felt a sort of nauseous concern for him – he was a tiny, slimy thing, really rather ugly-looking, yet looked so fragile I was afraid he would break if I stared too hard. I slowly approached them to get a better look, the air punctuated with his faint coos and the creaking floorboards under my feet, and I had expected the same permeating stench of bleach and diapers I so clearly remembered from my downtown days.

But there was nothing – none of the saturating sickly-sweetness I had come to associate with babies, none of the rotting flowers and spoiled diapers.

There was just the smell of baby powder and fresh, clean laundry.

Text: Copyright: Story and Cover Photograph (c) 2009 by the Author, All Rights Reserved.
Publication Date: 01-09-2010

All Rights Reserved