three fifty seven

ache¹ before she became ache¹ (still talking): don’t forget because if I can’t... If you get the wrong one I can’t, I can only use the one with the joystick.

Mother: I know. I know.

becoming weary and irritated by this near-constant mantra while simultaneously trying to correct jotter after jotter of mostly misapplied formulae.

ache¹ before she became ache¹: It’s just to save you time because if it’s the wrong one with the buttons those little arrows it’ll have to go back to the store and get

Mother (giving the child her full attention): I know.

and ending it on a smile.

Mother: Now go on, I’ve still all these to do, and then I’ll fix dinner. Why don’t you go out back, or or

with a shrug.

ache¹ before she became ache¹ wandered off out into the backyard. There was something implicit in her mother’s absolute certainty which prompted in her the notion that her birthday present was already purchased and no doubt salted away from her somewhere in this very house. The one with the joystick too.

The following day in that time after school when the house was her own, she executed a surreptitious going-through of all the compartments in her parents’ room, quickly yielding up a discrete package casual amongst the shoeboxes that cluttered the bottom of their walk-in wardrobe.

Catching her breath, she carefully extricated it from out its hiding and unfolded the wrap of pale paper, her heart kicking fast and clumsy at the sight of the blue box inside.

The foam packing whined long to the pull. She sprang the tiny joystick, the smell of fresh plastic over everything making her giddy and light-headed; the sudden lights of the display lit up at her incredulous finger and the sweeping theme tune rendered here in an astonishing volume of pinched electronics.

She switched it off and spent her next minutes amongst the illustrations and instruction of the accompanying booklet, the pages of which exuded a similarly intoxicating perfume of pristineness as the unit and its box.

Now shaking with the illicit thrill of circumstance, she again took up the game, this time attempting to apply her newfound rudimentary fluency in the what and what-not to do to guide Elliott’s bicycle and its extra-terrestrial passenger through the landscape of bright and shining diodes.

Even before her sister’s return from school the floor of her parents’ wardrobe was as it was, everything carefully repositioned into its original recognisable disorder.

The days prior to her birthday brought not just the excitement of as much time as could be stolen closed in the wardrobe, its semi-darkness enhancing the game’s display and drama, but also returning menstruation, back after an illusory prologue three months before, this combination arousing an odd blend of immaturity and womanhood, a sense of imbalance in that the blood she lost she knew should be more important than crouching brushed by her parents’ coats and longclothes with one E.T. on guard at the door, and the tiny illuminants of another reflecting on her skin. But it wasn’t.

Without recourse to the feigning of surprise or delight on her birthday morning, and with the stimulant of deceit itself now gone, still she fought to rein her breath as the paper fell away from the beautiful blue box.

ache¹ before she became ache¹: Oh thanks Mummy. Thank you thank you

sliding the unit from the packing and wiggling the little joystick already guilty with her fingerprints.

ache¹ before she became ache¹ (laughing): and you got the right one too oh thank you

kissing both her parents before thumbing on the machine, tilting it slightly from the sunlit kitchen windows to better view the screen; the theme tune sounding its skinny and digital fanfare for her resolute intention of proficiency on today-of-all-days, and gone before Elliott’s bicycle could move at all.

It took repeated futile flippings of the switch for her to understand, and at that moment the mild cramp in her gut ceased to be her habitual birthday jitters, became instead the harbinger of monotony, of sanitary towels and tampons, and the regular schedule of inconvenience.

She failed to swallow back the thick and rising heat that flushed her face, but the tears she held until safely fled and slammed into her room, where they warped and cracked the vinyl back of her little companion.