Her Name;

For as long as I can remember, Daddy was my hero. He held the umbrella over my head, when the rain started to pour. He picked me up and carried me on his shoulders when we walked on the beach, and the sand would burn my toes. When maths became too hard, he would show me how to do equations the easy way. I would scoff at his cheating methods, and secretly memorise them for tests. When my heart was broken, he would tell me I was too beautiful for them anyway. When a new boyfriend walked in, he would smile and say hello – when inside he wanted to punch them every time they touched me.  Daddy protected me, when no one else could. He listened to me when I fought with Mum; he made my skin tougher to snide remarks, by teaching me to laugh at myself. There was something inside his dark eyes that made me know he would always be there for me. When he held me, I knew nothing could touch me.
Mum stared at me, as I sat silent. I couldn’t tell him. I couldn’t tell him that his little girl wasn’t so little anymore. That she’d been lying to him for a year. I couldn’t shatter the relationship I had with him. He was what held me up when I wanted to crumble.
My skin grew hot underneath my cotton cardigan; I could feel my cheeks growing warm and red.  My jeans itched on my legs; they felt too tight – too constricting. Everything was constricting. The underwire from my bra felt like it was digging into my skin, making breathing an effort. My throat tightened, I didn’t think I’d be able to muster a whisper in this state.
They say animals have two instincts when confronted with a predator or difficult situation. Fight or flight. I knew what I was. Every instinct in my body was screaming for me to run. Run to my room, pull the knapsack with a change of clothes and food I’d prepared hours earlier, grab my wallet and run from the house.
It took all of my willpower just to sit in that chair and open my mouth to tell the truth.
I gaped for a minute. No sound came out whatsoever.
Mum stared at me. I looked at her. My expression begged her to start for me. I wanted her to tell him and for him to look at her with disappointment, and not me.
Instead her eyes remained emotionless, and my gaze dropped from her imposing figure in the doorway and onto my lap.
“Dad.” I began, finally finding my quaking voice. “I’ve done something. Something bad.”
He was silent. His eyes stared into me. And I lifted my face, to look at his worried expression.
“I’m pregnant.”
He looked apathetic for a moment. Then I saw it sink in.
For the millionth time in the last ten minutes, I wished he was sitting further away. So that maybe the hurt in his eyes would be harder to decipher, or maybe the disappointment in his voice would be harder to pick up.
“Who?” he asked fiercely, a fire behind his eyes – searching for something to focus on, someone to blame.
“Daniel.”
“I didn’t even know you had had sex – did he make you?”
“No Daddy, I said yes.”
“You weren’t safe.” It was a statement, not a question.
“It broke.”
“Oh.”
We were silent. I couldn’t bear to see the tears of anger in his eyes and looked down at my lap again, where I noticed tears of my own had been falling.
We sat there. Mum leant on the doorway, her eyes closed. Daddy looked at his hands, as if the answers might be inscribed there, and I stared into my tear stained lap, and wondered if he’d ever look at me the same.
After a few minutes, my weak voice broke the silence.
“Daddy;” He looked up at me. “Daddy, please help me.”
“What do you want me to do?”
I broke down then. Tears that felt as heavy as stones cascaded down my cheeks, and my hands started to shake.
I sobbed violently, my body aching with fear and desperation.
“I don’t know.” I managed between sobs.
“Where’s Daniel now?”
“Gone.”
“Does he know?”
“No.”
The sadness I felt with Daniel leaving, was nothing – compared to what I felt losing the two constant support people in my world.
Daddy stood up, and I hoped he would pick me up – like he used to. Hold me in his arms, and kiss my forehead. Or that at lest he’d place a hand on my shoulder, showing me he didn’t hate me. He did none of those.
He walked away into his room and slammed the door behind him.
Mum walked over to me, sat on the arm of the chair and pulled me into her chest.
“You did it baby. It wasn’t so bad. He didn’t yell.”
“It was worse. So much worse.” I whispered, unsure of whether she heard me or not.
Either way, she didn’t respond. She just stroked my auburn hair softly and let me cry into her, my tears saturating her blouse.



I stared in the mirror Saturday morning. I touched my lips. They were the same shape as his. I looked at my hands; they had the same bumps in them. Daddy was so much of me, and I had disappointed him. I had broken his heart, Mum told me. He had been such a major part of my life, he had made me who I was – and it crushed everything inside of me to know I had done that to him. That I had been the one to make him retreat into himself, like a turtle into a shell.
I held my stomach as a cramp ached its way through my system. Suddenly vomit came up into my mouth, and I reached for the bucket I had kept in my room since the pregnancy test had been positive at the clinic.
I retched violently for a few minutes.
I wanted to swear. I wanted to scream and shout and hurt myself for doing what I did. I had torn our family apart because I wanted to have fun. The repercussions had taken over my life.
Mum didn’t look me in the eyes, unless she had to. Two days later, Daddy still didn’t talk to me.
I felt inadequate. I had failed them.
The only people in my life who I could ever be myself with, and I had let them down so severely, they couldn’t look at me with the same passion and love that they had for the past sixteen years.
The kitchen was deathly silent when I walked down the stairs and into the room. Chris sat at the bench, slurping on his juice noisily, the innocence his eight years gave him made me instantly jealous. He was so unaware of the tension between me, Mum and Daddy. It made me strangely angry.
“Morning Sara.” He grinned up at me.
“Shut up Chris. For Christ’s sake!” I snapped at him, immediately regretting it when I saw his hurt expression. I had already hurt everyone else in the household; I didn’t want to push him away too.
His bottom lip wobbled, and from his curly mop of hair – his blue eyes, like Mum’s, glistened with tears.
“Aw, baby – I’m sorry. I’m just tired.” I consoled him.
He shrugged me off.
“Everyone’s being tired today!” he shouted and jumped nimbly off the stool.
I assumed he meant Mum. When Mum was in a bad mood, ‘tired’ was the excuse.
It killed me to disappoint her, but I had had to tell someone. I was so scared, and I trusted her to help me. To clasp my hand and pull me through the haze of confusion I was in.
When I had told her about Daniel and mines predicament, she wasn’t able to look at me without her lip wobbling and her eyes misting over for a period of time. Then she announced it was time to tell Daddy.
And so I did.
I glared at her from across the table, and she looked down at her cereal. She knew I was angry. She knew what Daddy meant to me. She took away the one person who made me feel normal, so as to ease her guilt.
She made me so frustrated.
I buttered my toast, the scraping of the knife seemingly louder in the freakish silence of a usually hectic kitchen.
As I lifted the toast to my mouth, I looked through my eyelashes at Daddy’s face. I tried not to make it obvious, but I knew he would be able to feel my eyes on him. He sat straighter in his chair, pushed out from the table and rose to leave. As his footsteps pounded away, and he slammed the door yet again – my heart ached for him.

I had told Daddy about being pregnant when I was finishing my first trimester, and knew he wouldn’t be able to force me to have an abortion. I was starting to grow, and even though I believed I could have held it off a little longer to tell him – or have run away – Mum pressured me. I had a terrible guilt complex, and I hated the thought of leaving her while she felt so betrayed by me.
I walked into the bathroom, feeling hurt that my parents couldn’t even pretend to forget about it. It was too late now anyway, and I’d read somewhere a negative environment was bad for a baby’s development. Whether that was just hippie crap or not, I was sick of being in a place where it was near impossible to locate a smile in anyone’s expression.

Weeks passed, and as my stomach grew – so did the conversation between my parents and me. Mum couldn’t hold back her maternal nature, and took it upon herself to locate any old baby stuff from mine or Chris’ younger years. The garage became a war zone, cluttered with pink and blue memorabilia – and although the silences were still awkward, we now had a topic of conversation.
Daddy would talk to me now. About the weather, how sick I was feeling, or what I was reading. Nothing was substantial. But I could pretend we were okay, for a few minutes.
It was strange. I was the eldest daughter. I had a position of trust in the family. I got what I wanted because my track record was perfect. But even angels have a tainted side. What I didn’t understand was that I had lost that trust, by telling the truth. Sure, it was delayed – but that was from fear.
Fear of everything I was going through now.
Fear of becoming isolated from the pro-honesty and open family I had grown up in.
All I could do was fake it, until things fixed themselves.
I couldn’t erase what had happened. Nor did I want to.
This now quite big bump in my stomach was a part of me. When it kicks – I question how I ever felt whole before it was in my life.

My third trimester came slowly but surely. My hospital bag was packed, and Mum often slept in my room with me – tensed for the first sign of my labour beginning.
I remember the first contraction, clearer than anything. It was like a cramp, but bigger. Like my whole stomach was tightening, clamping my whole system together and then releasing it all in a big wave of pain.
They continued, whilst I lay in bed – Mum totally oblivious to my moans.
I sat up, when my third contraction had finished.
“Mum” I whispered, shaking her awake.
“Yeah baby?”
“It’s coming.”
“Shit. Get up. Come on. I’ll wake up Daddy –“
“No.” I stopped her.
“Why?”
“Just me and you. Daddy doesn’t want to come. He has to watch Chris anyway.”
“He’ll want to be there.”
“No.” I was firm. If the thought of me having a baby, had made it hard for us to communicate for just a little over eight months, I wasn’t even going to consider him being present when it happened.
She saw my expression. I guess the tension and exhilaration of the moment, and my determination to only let her come to the hospital let her give in more easily than she would have.

The contractions continue on the way to the hospital. Mum drove quickly, with a quirky smile on her face.
“Mum?” I asked her, starting to smile through the pain myself. She knew I was questioning her happiness.
“I’m going to be a Granny.” She giggled, and I shook my head with disbelief.
“Drive faster.” I groaned, and the smile was whisked from her face.
Ever since we were little, she couldn’t stand us being in pain. A sneeze constituted a visit to the doctor. Now, she knew exactly what I was feeling – and her brow furrowed a little deeper as we pulled into the emergency.

“Push!” The midwife instructed, as if it was a new command. She had been telling me to for the past hour.
“I know!” I shrieked, every part of my body aching. My forehead was dripping in sweat, and tears of fatigue streamed down my face.
“Push!” She told me again; oblivious to the abuse I’d been giving her.
“No. No more!”
“Come on baby.” Mum encouraged
“It’s crowning” Announced the doctor.
I yelled in pain as I felt the shoulders of my child sliding out from me.
“One more push. Just one more” The midwife smiled.
I focused all my muscles, and pushed again.
A cry was heard, and my daughter was lifted into view. Crying and screaming she was beautiful.
Then I fainted.

A hand with bumpy fingers slid itself into mine. That was what I woke up to. The whimpers of my daughter beside me and the warm touch of someone’s hand in mine.
A deep voice, friendly and familiar whispered in my ear.
“Good morning sweetheart.”
It was Daddy.
My eyes fluttered open, and he kissed my forehead.
I looked in his eyes, curious at the change.
His eyes moved over to the cot beside me, where a tiny human being lay.
He smiled.
“What’s her name?”