Coralie had found her first birth more shattering than bestial. Her mind had fragmented the instant she’d felt pain. This time, sheprayedfor bestial. She wanted to howl at the moon. It would be all about her body! Her mind wouldn’t even come into it! She’d breathe, in a yogic way. She’d stay at home for twice as long, three times as long as she did with Florence. When she got to the hospital, being examined wouldn’t hurt or embarrass her, and would reveal that she was extremely dilated, possibly even six centimeters, and everyone would be excited, not cutting their eyes away in dismay. Rather than screaming at Adam to stop eatingfucking crisps, she’d let him cuddle her and be nice to her and bring her water and cups of ice. Afterward he’d be grinning, ecstatic, and bragging about his wife being a warrior, instead of going off in private to be sick in a plastic bag. All she wanted to do was to be able tolet go. Buh! Buh! Loose lips up the top, loose lips down below!
•••
All summer Coralietalked nonstop about “big nursery,” the new nursery Florence would go to for “big kids.” Florence scooted (Coralie walked) down Malvern Road, practicing the new route. They journeyed to Westfield Stratford to pick out a lunch box, a water bottle, a rucksack, and some lilac Crocs for slippers.Florence W, read the extra-adhesive dishwasher-safe name tags they put on everything. Once, when she was talking about “big nursery,” and Adam muttered, “Query: What was wrong withold nursery?” Coralie rushed up, cornered him in the open pantry, angled the door so Florence wouldn’t see, and hissed, “Get on board or shut the fuck up!” Andbecause she was so pregnant by then, and he was a largely absent deadbeat dad in thrall to his mistress, Journalism, he backed away, looking sheepish. “Sorry, sorry, okay? Sorry.”
Anne and Sally kindly offered to drop Florence off for her first day, but Coralie said she’d do it herself.
“Florence.” Miss Sarah, the Montessori teacher with the acorn hair, reached for Florence’s hand to shake it.
Coralie cringed as Florence slapped Miss Sarah’s hand, clearly presuming it was some kind of “side five.”
“So, you’re going to be a big sister,” Miss Sarah said. “Do you know if it will be a boy or girl?”
“It’s a brudda,” Florence said. “What’s in that?” She pointed at a large fish tank.
Miss Sarah looked coyly over her shoulder. “An axolotl. Have you ever seen one? He looks like he wears a crown, or a headdress. But they’re really his feathery gills. Shall we go and meet him?”
And Florence, tiny, dwarfed by the smallest Kånken rucksack, walked in happily without saying goodbye.
•••
Back at home,Anne and Sally had set up camp in the sitting room.
“Staggeringly hypocritical,” Anne scoffed at the television.
“Tea?” Coralie offered. “Coffee?”
“Oh, I’ll make the tea,” Sally said. “And what’s that you have? Sourdough? I’ll make you some toast with it. You sit down and enjoy some rolling news.”
Coralie collapsed on the sofa next to Anne. “What’s the latest?”
“Crunch time,” Anne said. “Parliament’s prorogued from the endof the week. Will they have the time, and the numbers, to outlaw a No Deal Brexit? Some senior Tories might cross the floor. Boris will expel them all if they do. Hypocrite! He’s obviously the only one who’s allowed to rebel.”
Coralie remembered getting the train out to Croydon to take the compulsory “Life in the UK” test in order to stay in the country. How seriously the UK took itself as a nation, historically and in the present day, as the center of civilization and the world, the mother of all parliaments and the inventors of “the rule of law.” “Who built the Tower of London?” was one of the simpler questions on the test. (It was William the Conqueror, after he became king in 1066.) And, confusingly:
What isNOTa fundamental principle of British life?
? Looking after the environment
? Driving a car
? Treating others with fairness
? Looking after yourself and family
And, almost satirically:
On his escape from the Battle of Worcester, Charles II famously hid inside what?
? A cellar
? A forest
? An oak tree
? None of the above
God! Like, who cared? Who the fuck cared? Talk about self-obsessed! How long had Indigenous people inhabited what becameknown as Australia before the British gave them smallpox? In which episode does [redacted] die in the classic Australian TV dramaLove My Way? What’s the acceptable ratio of blue-sky days to desaturated white or gray? Because, you see, Coralie also came from somewhere! Somewhere that was, in some ways, shit—and, in others, really good? Why did she have to learn all these so-called facts about the UK, when the only thing British people knew about Australia wassnakes?
