F I CT I O N
“Mia” is an excerpt from Emily’s Cavanagh’s novel, “Mother, Can You Hear Me?” It tells the story of estranged twin sisters, Franci and Lottie. Published courtesy of the author.
Emily Cavanaugh — Mia The Beginning
I
once heard that memory doesn’t develop in a child until three. But I remember this: sleeping in the crib with Franci, our faces turned to face each other. Sun shone in through the white curtains with the tiny yellow flowers that Mother had embroidered. The light sluiced across Franci’s face, bathing her pink skin in yellow. I watched Franci sleep as if watching my own reflection in a mirror. Franci’s thumb was tucked tightly between my lips, and I was vaguely aware of the warm wet feeling of my own thumb in Franci’s mouth. A light wind ruffled the curtains. We slept, we breathed, our arms woven to share thumbs. Whenever someone asks me what it’s like to be a twin, this is the memory that comes back to me. The light refracting through the slats of the crib, the quiet swell of Franci’s body as it rose and fell in the same rhythm as my own, the milky scent of breath, our bodies wound securely together, two halves forming a whole. I always wished I could pluck the image from my mind like a slide and hold it up to the light. “This is what it’s like,” I would say. “This is what it’s like.”
* * *
We were born twelve weeks early, our squirming two-pound bodies already grown tired of sharing such a small space. I started it, I’m sure, always eager, always needing to be first, not even born and already tired of sharing. I can picture myself, flexing my limbs, all two pounds and four ounces, arching my back in the warm cramped space of our mother’s womb, and deciding, Enough. I can see myself beginning the long descent into the world, like an animal burrowing through a tunnel, trying to find the light at the end. And then I can picture Franci. Two pounds one ounce, and perfectly content to spend another three months curled up beside me. Someone should have told me that there was no hurry. Things would be no different outside of that safe warm space that we shared. We would share tight spaces all our lives. We weren’t ready. Oh, our bodies had formed. We had fingers and toes and hearts and lungs and kidneys. We had brains. But Franci wasn’t ready. And maybe I wasn’t ready either. Later, I would wonder if things would have been different if we had been allowed those extra three months, those three months that should have been ours. I began the slow and awful labor, and then Franci had no choice but to follow, out into the cold and gaping world, the
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white light of life already blinding. Oh, I was so certain that I was ready until I met that piercing white light, a harbinger of the White light that would follow me for so much of my life. I was born six minutes before Franci, and I waited patiently for her to arrive. In our separate incubators, we drank oxygen, and plastic tubes were secured to our translucent skin with tape. I must have been so pleased to have my own bed, inches of empty space surrounding me, no elbows crammed into my face, no feet squashing my stomach. In those crucial minutes, I was surviving on my own, and I held on to that knowledge so many times later in life. But Franci’s heart was beating too fast, her breath coming in short and jagged gasps. Put me back, her body screamed. I’m not ready. Did I feel guilty then, for what I had started? I wonder if she ever forgave me for it. It was one of the first stories I remember hearing from Mother. The rest of the story goes like this: Franci was dying. Or, not dying yet, but not coming into life, either. Her heart rate was too high, and she was having trouble breathing. I, meanwhile, was already thriving. In the two days after my birth, I put on an extra two ounces. Hearty Lottie, they all thought, ironically as we would discover later. But they didn’t know that then. And they didn’t know how to save Franci. Then some bright nurse suggested putting her in the same incubator as me. They placed her at my side and immediately she calmed down. Her heart rate began to beat at a normal rate, and she started to breathe more regularly. And though I imagine I relished the unfamiliar feeling of all that space to myself, I also imagine that I felt more comfortable once Franci was beside me again. In our new shared bed, I coiled my body around Franci’s, encircling her in a cocooning embrace. There’s a picture of it in one of the musty yellow photo albums. Two tiny black-haired babies in only diapers, tubes stuck to our splayed legs and the one on the left curved around the one on the right, shielding the other baby from…what? From life? Not even two days old and I’d saved her life. It was not until I was older that I wondered: Why would you repeat such a tale to children, a tale of failure and inability that was present at negative years? A tale so filled with powerlessness and dependency that it seemed innate. But Mother told the tale because she thought it explained our twinship, how close we were even then. How different the rest of our lives turned out to be. In the end, Franci would be the one to save my life over and over again. And then one day, she couldn’t.
>> Unofficial website: www.mvpcs.org/Home/teachers/junior_high-school/emily-cavanagh