You're Not the Only One

I opened the dusty draw full of old family memories, ones forgotten and some mentioned at random moments. I looked through mum’s neatly organized stacks of family videos; “A-Z” was her style. “Birthday’s 1-10” and “Bike riding” were the front row. I looked further back, to where I couldn’t see unless I unhinged the draw and pulled it from the cupboard. I felt my hand drag over a spider web and I withdrew my hand immediately. I gasped as a tiny spider scuttled across my hand, and into my arm hairs, like they were a forest of skinny spruces. I flicked it away with my middle finger; to somewhere that I could not see, but I didn't I bother to look. All I cared was that the spider was gone.

I reached back into the draw, back from where the tiny spider had come from, and tugged at the video wedged in between my ‘8th Birthday’ and ‘Ashleigh’s first bike’ video’s. I tugged hard at the plastic case, until a video popped out of its case. The case I had been wanting came free then and sat in the darkness, defeated. I picked it up and sat on the puffy leather lounge suite with it.

I looked at the words, scribbled handwriting filled the spine of the case, and this video hadn’t been in alphabetical order. “Halley’s first birthday.” Who was Halley? I stood up and made my way to the video player; checking mum wasn’t around when I pressed play.

The lush green grass and pink polka dot dress stood out. It was a field, a park almost. A white fence full of horses was in the background as a one year old toddled around with a bunch of balloons tied to her arm.

“Halley! Halley come back here, baby!” Mum’s voice called, but it sounded younger, more rejuvenated.

The little girl turned around and giggled at the camera, looking straight in the lens. A horse neighed in the background. The balloons floated high off her arm, looking like any minute soon a gust of wind would come by and carry her off to the moon.

“Halley Jane Rosetta!” a gruffer voice called playfully, one I noticed as my dad’s.

Next minute dads’ legs were jogging across the screen after “Halley.”

The camera jostled a bit and was put down on the grass, as the long blades became all that was seen other than the green tint.

“Halley…” someone else called, I didn’t recognise their voice, it was strangely familiar, but I just couldn’t put my finger on it.

“Ashleigh…” a voice said sadly from behind me, making me jump about a meter in the air. “Baby girl…” mum stepped around the wall so I could see her tear-streaked face properly.

“Mum, what is this?” I asked dumbstruck.

“Go and get your father, tell him that it is time to explain to you…” she said, her voice sounding like it was coming from meters away and not from her mouth.

I turned away from my mother and onto the hallway; I walked out the front door and tapped lightly on the garage roller door. Dad appeared after I had increased my fist force five times.

“Cupcake, what’s up?” he said, rubbing his oily hands with a dirty rag.

My throat was closed up, like I was going to cry, and yet I had no reason, I didn’t know anything about this “Halley” but I felt like it would change my life.

“Mum says it is time to explain ‘Halley’ to me.” I said, my voice sounding like a cat when it had been strangled continuously for five days straight.

His mouth popped open in an ‘o’; I knew right then that this would change my life.

“Come on, let’s get it over with.” He said, as he put his rag down and took a swig from his bottle of Smirnoff beside him.

I followed him up the hallway, as he met mum they looked at each other as if it would kill them both to give their daughter a little explanation on something so unclear. Dad caved first.

“Ashleigh…” he put his hand on my shoulder and held mum’s hand with the other. “There is something you need to know about Halley.”

I nodded, as if to agree to the fact that, ‘yes, I do need to know, and yes, you do need to explain.’

“Halley died when she was one and a half. We were so devastated; we tried to get rid of everything that reminded us of her. She was born three years before we even thought about you. She was a miracle, so were you. We never thought that she would die, but” I cut him off before he could finish.

My voice was loud and boisterous. I wanted them to tell me how she died. “How?”

“You were a miracle for even being born...” mum said nodding to me.

I was getting restless; they were sending me around in circles, knotting my legs and annoying me. “Not that! How’d she die?”

Mum slipped her arms around dad’s waist and buried her head in his shirt; dad wiped his hands over his face like he was getting annoyed with me. I couldn’t stand this secret they kept from me for more than ten years. “Sudden infantry death syndrome. SIDS.” Mum’s muffled voice blubbered.

My ears swallowed this, but my brain didn’t comprehend any of it. I didn’t know how to feel, I wasn’t sad, so I felt like a jerk because my parent were both in a weeping heap. And I wasn’t happy, and I had no reason to be. I was numb, sort of. I didn’t feel sorry for finding the old video tape, I felt angry. Angry of all emotions I could be feeling; I felt anger! Hot searing anger coursed through my blue veins, sending me reeling.

“So I am technically not your only child, Halley was too. So I am not the eldest like you always say.” I didn’t say it as a question, because I knew the answers. “So what does that make me?”

“Special.” Mum said defiantly. I wasn’t going to argue. I don’t know how I felt about Halley; the aspect of having someone beat you to the punch bites a little.

I wondered a lot that night; I wondered whether she would be nice, whether she would like me, whether she would look like me now that she would be grown up. All questions I didn’t know that answers to.

I just guess I wasn’t the only hope at the Rosetta’s family tree. I wasn’t the only one.