And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom. Luke 2:40

When I was with Kelly, before we went down the birth canal, we were just waiting in a safe place, ready to be born. And now I’m waiting again, in this in-between place. I don’t know where I’m going yet. I’ve asked the others, but they don’t know either. They’re waiting too. Mrs Prakash, next to me, says I don’t sound like a baby. That will become clearer as I explain. At least I’ve got someone to talk with.

My first memory, well perhaps I should say my first sense of awareness that I was an entity, was when I was conscious of something sticking into my back.  I couldn’t see, but I had the feeling that I was not alone, and I heard and felt some other being. I was turning, trying to get comfortable.

‘Get your foot out of my back,’ I said.

‘Get your back out of my foot,’ she replied.

And then she laughed. 

And so, did I. Her name was Kelly. 

‘You’re Katrina,’ she told me. ‘You’re my sister. They like ‘K’ names, our mum and dad.’

I know,’ I said. ‘There’s not a lot of room in this womb, is there?’

From the beginning, we were friends. There won’t be any sibling rivalry after we’re born, she told me. Friends for life, I said. We held hands and tumbled in the fluids, giggling, and playing games. I always knew that Kelly was the intellectual one, and I would be the one who excelled at girls’ soccer and whose room would be full of sporting trophies. It didn’t matter. She knew things I didn’t, but I taught her a thing or two as well. Kelly explained it to me like this: When babies are in the womb, they soak up everything from the outside world. Osmosis, she called it. But when they are born, things go back into the default position. They know nothing.  As soon as they see that light at the end of the tunnel, all is forgotten, and they have to learn it all over again. She said we’d be a tabula rasa, a blank page. Kelly has picked up some Latin terms from listening to mum while she studies. She said that what we learned is in our consciousness and that would become our destiny. 

‘You love it when he’s watching soccer or listening to that heavy metal, so you’ll like sport and rock music when you’re born and grow up, but I like it when she’s watching documentaries, and when she plays Debussy on the piano, so I’ll like both of those.” 

I remember the first time I was scared.  There was a thumping on the roof of our womb.

‘It’s raining,’ I said. ‘We’ll be drenched.’

‘No,’ Kelly replied. ‘She’s having a shower. It’s all right.’

And we laughed and laughed about how dumb I can be. But when the World Cup Soccer was on, and dad was cursing all through the game when Australia didn’t make it, I had to explain the rules of the game and the umpire’s decisions, and Kelly never quite got it. We both agreed that Dad needed to help mum round the house a bit more. He still had to be told the most basic things at times. Every Friday night, mum had to say, ‘Paul, can you take the garbage out. It’s overflowing, for God’s sake, do I have to ask, and you know I shouldn’t be lifting in the second trimester.’ And he’d say, ‘Oh, is it garbage night?’

And Kelly and I would roll our eyes and giggle.

A few months later, when I was sleeping, Kelly woke me up. 

‘It’s time,’ she said. ‘The waters are breaking.  It means we have to start the journey.’

‘I don’t want to go,’ I said.  ‘I’m scared.  It’s dark in that tunnel, and I don’t want to hurt her.’  All that stuff we heard in those prenatal classes, remember, they said she would be in pain.’ 

‘Yes,’ said Kelly, but remember all those breathing exercises we all went through, all that role-play about pushing. They said she’ll forget the pain as soon as we’re out. Come on. Do you want me to go first?’

And I was supposed to be the strong one, the sporty one, and I let her go before me. 

‘Hold on to my foot,’ She said.  ‘Just follow me.  Don’t let go.’ 

And so, I held her foot, and she pushed her way through the tunnel.  But her foot slipped out of my grasp and I was alone in that dark space, gasping for air, drowning. 

‘Come on, where are you?’ I could hear her calling. 

‘I can’t get out,’ I screamed. ‘Something’s wrong, and I’m stuck.  Go on ahead. Get born, just do it. Get born! Go! Go!’

And so, she entered the light. They held her up, smacked her and she screamed. All babies scream, but I knew she was screaming for me. And then there were voices, urgent and loud and I could hear her screeching. I remember strange, sharp metal objects, something pinching my head and then I passed out. 

When I woke again, it was not the same awake as Kelly was experiencing. I knew I had not made it. I still had memories I was not supposed to have; soccer scores, Friday night is garbage night, a Prius is a hybrid car, mum can’t eat soft cheeses. 

I heard Father Michael reciting Ecclesiastes 3:1 to the congregation: For everything, there is a season, a time to be born, a time to die. And later at home, my dad sat with the priest and cried and said, ‘Yes Father, I know, but there is supposed to be a bloody big gap in between the seasons with a life to be filled in.’ 

Mum stood at the sink and washed a cup three times.

‘But where has she gone?’ dad kept asking. And father Michael sat with him for hours and talked about souls and the day of resurrection and all of us being together one day. I didn’t understand any of it.

Mum was the strong one, throughout the whole awful thing. She had to be strong, for dad and for Kelly. She was struggling with breastfeeding. Kelly wouldn’t suck properly, and a nurse had to come to the house and show her how to expel, no, not expel, express milk.

I miss Kelly. I miss our time together, the way we’d laugh at the rain on the womb roof, the way we’d grimace when Nanna came over and put her hands on mum’s stomach and declared that the twins would be boys. She was my best friend. The only friend I ever knew. They buried her bunny rug with me.

I hope that what Kelly told me isn’t true about the blank page. I’d like to think that she remembers something of the time we spent together. Maybe later something will stir in her memory, some small seed of a past life before life began. Rain on the roof. The off-side rule. A heavy metal song. A phantom pain in her soul because the other identical half of her is missing. I need to sleep now. I’m still a baby, and we sleep a lot. Mrs Prakash will sing me a song to lull me to sleep. It’s in Hindi, and I don’t understand it, but it sounds beautiful. Good night, everyone.

Good night. Sleep tight.

A friend lost a twin many years ago and it made me think about loss.