Flowers of Winter

Roo woke up that morning feeling ill. Twice she ran to the toilet to throw up. She realised too that she hadn’t had her period in a while. She gripped the white flesh over her stomach like a balloon. Was it possible a tiny being was growing inside her? As a girl she watched her mother’s belly swell three times, at first Roo thought her mother had eaten too many watermelons that summer and one had wedged itself in her stomach.

“How does the doctors get the watermelon out of your belly?” she asked as she pulled on her mother’s shirt.

At first her mother didn’t understand, and then she laughed, “oh Ruth, that’s a baby in my belly. A little girl just like you, only smaller, she’s growing inside me like you once did”

Now Roo dug nails into her skin. Roo didn’t have a womb for a child to grow in. She wasn’t a mother.