Page 79 of Birds of a Feather

‘Go easy on her,’ she would have said. ‘You know what she’s like.’

And she would have been right. Of course.

I readied myself to apologise – not a grovelling soliloquy, but an acknowledgement that she was hurting too and my last comment was uncalled for.

But Jarrah spoke first. ‘Besides,’ she said coolly as she crossed her arms over her chest. ‘Not all of us had the opportunity to go on a nice little trip to London with her in her final weeks.’

It was my turn to recoil.

‘Well, it’s true,’ she continued. ‘Did you ever think that I might have liked to come along too? I’ve spent my whole life watching you and Gran with your special bond and your trips to the bush. You’ve never thought to invite me along.’

‘It’s not that we excluded you, Jarrah,’ I retorted, feeling the heat from my chest rise up my neck and radiate across the lower part of my face in angry red welts. ‘It’s that you showed zero interest in what we were doing.’

‘That’s not true.’ Her voice carried a whine that stoked my irritation.

‘Jarrah, Gran and I shared an interest in the natural world and nature conservation. Those “trips to the bush” were field trips, where we volunteered to collect plant specimens and propagate seedlings. The closest you’ve ever come to anything like that is going to a bush doof with your friends.’

‘Well, it might have been nice to be invited to come along from time to time,’ she replied, picking at her fingernails.

‘Why? So you could tell us about all the other “like, way more fun” things you had to do instead?’ I imitated her delivery, hamming up her ditziness for effect.

‘It’s not just your trips to the bush, or to London,’ she said. The fire inside me was now threatening to jump containment lines. ‘I was always left out of your special little duo.’

I stared at her incredulously before laughter erupted from my core.

She started backwards.

I tried to quell my laughter, but it felt like my body was necessarily expelling decades’ worth of repressed feelings into the ether.

Mum poked her head around the doorway.

‘Everything okay in here?’ she asked cautiously, her eyes surveying the room for clues of what was transpiring.

‘YOU’VE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME!’ I screamed at Jarrah. ‘You honestly have no idea.’

‘No idea about what?’ she asked, her eyes wide as if assessing whether to activate her fight or flight mode to escape the wrath of a sibling who appeared to have finally lost the plot.

‘EXACTLY,’ I yelled so loudly the word scratched at the inside of my throat. ‘Now you know how I have felt … MY. ENTIRE. LIFE.’

She looked shocked, which enraged me further.

‘I have felt left out of literally everything in this family,’ I spat. ‘You all share your music, and your art, and funny stories about wild nights and loads of friends. None of that involves me. You all have each other. I had Gran. And now she’s gone.’

I was so furious I was breathless.

‘Oh, Bethie,’ Mum said, having sidled into the room. ‘We never left you out intentionally.’

I snorted loudly. ‘My whole life, it’s felt like it’s been “the Dwyer family”, and “Beth”.’ I used my arms to depict the chasm of distance between our two entities. ‘I’ve felt like I’m some sort of appendage that you’ve had to drag around with you; like you’re the headlining band, and I’m just … a roadie. I mean, just look at our names, for God’s sake. Jarrah, Elijah and Beth.’ I accentuated the plainness of my single-syllable moniker.

‘It’s Elizabeth,’ Mum said quietly. ‘Your name is Elizabeth.’

Her calmness, which was in complete contrast to the fury that was raging inside me, shocked me into a moment of silence.

‘You know,’ she continued, her voice hushed, ‘from the moment you were born, you were such a little individual. You had wise, knowing eyes and a staunch, unwavering tenacity. Even the midwives in the hospital commented that you didn’t suffer fools and that you would give the world a run for its money.

‘As you know, we didn’t have the easiest start as mother and daughter,’ she continued. ‘I had been on bedrest because of complications while I was pregnant, and your entry to the world was dramatic, to say the |least.’

I had been told about my birth in snippets over the years. Mum had never been very forthcoming because she said she didn’t want to dwell on it. But, from what I had managed to piece together, I had been delivered by emergency caesarean section, which ended with me in neonatal intensive care, and Mum gravely ill.

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