𝙾𝚌𝚎𝚊𝚗 𝚘𝚏 𝙴𝚖𝚘𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚜

𝚃𝚎𝚗

𝚆𝚎𝚍𝚗𝚎𝚜𝚍𝚊𝚢, 𝙼𝚊𝚛𝚌𝚑 𝟸𝟸𝚗𝚍

I submerge my hands into the soapy sea that is the kitchen sink. They act like forks entering a power socket, causing the rest of me to heat and my back to shiver with the immediate temperature change. By a chain, the sink plug attaches to a rubber whale which bobs about the bubbles. Into the fever water I dunk the glasses Mum and I drank our juices from this morning.

Through the kitchen window, with the patio lighting illuminating, I view the deck and veggie patch that is the backyard space. The deck is barren besides the barbeque we haven't used since my fourth birthday. The barbeque is covered by its fitted black sheet, now a mecca for dust, dirt and dead bugs. The veggie patch exists in a similar state as the plants are few and far between but overgrown with their fruit ravaged. Sometimes, when Mum stands in my place, she mutters how she can't look after it and then that she wishes it would look after itself.

Mum still isn't home. She normally works back but not this late.

Has Mum been in a car accident?

Did she swerve to miss a kangaroo?

Did a car not swerve to miss her?

I think these thoughts; unlikely scenarios.

Scenarios are what I increasingly struggle to reach in my maths book. They are the final test of my understanding on a topic chapter. But well before, my ability is put to the test. I get stuck on the examples. I'm meant to see a pattern of numbers but I just see an assortment. I find no correlation nor sense to be made from Step 1 to Step 2. I need a couple more steps in between. If those steps were stones in Banksia River, I would belly flop trying to leap between them. I instead plop water onto the example; hot tears stained the page. I'll talk to Mrs Millar before school. Almost every day now, there's a subject teacher I meet before the bell.

I hear the sound of the garage door opening and a car pulling in.

The familiar sound of mum arriving home. She's okay.

Having submerged the breakfast bowls, I wipe one of them with a dishcloth below the surface. Mum walks past the kitchen window to the sliding door. She opens it and turns her head to the kitchen. With pursed lips, she observes the task. I place a bowl on the drying rack and open my mouth to ask Mum about her day.

"Not the bowls first, the cutlery!" she blasts.

I let the second bowl fall to the bottom of the sink. My knees bend and become rigid.

"What dishes are these anyway?" Mum continues, "Didn't you bother to cook yourself dinner?"

In a small voice, I muster, "I thought you would cook it."

"Do I look like your slave?" Mum retorts, "You're lazy. You've always been lazy. I have no idea how I managed to get a lazy daughter when I am the furthest thing from it!"

Now my body doesn't need the water to be warm. Lazy?! I am washing these dishes out of my own consideration. How am I supposed to know what to wash first? It's not like she's taught me! I begin the walk to my bedroom.

"Now you're sulking off to your room," she commentates, then continues her rant, "I never get any help around here! I have to do everything myself!"

I shut my door on her final word. Not a slam, but with intentional silence. No need to aggravate the shark further.

It doesn't matter what I do, at school or home, it isn't enough.

I take my phone from my desk and lie upon my bed, doing my scroll of social media for the day.

Beyond my closed door I still hear Mum muttering. Then she has an occasional outburst: "I wish I'd never had a child!"

I can tick that box for the month. I'll hear it again on the next calendar flip.

At the top of my feed is a picture of Seraphina at the beach. She wears a chilli red bikini and appears kneeling upon a towel; school books in front of her, beach umbrella above her. She smiles. Her caption communicates a beach study session with her best friend, Jade. Even kneeling, Seraphina has a gap between her thighs. I click on her Instagram profile to see her collection of squares. Almost all of them feature the beach and her perfect body and her perfect life.

I think of my own body. Flat. Rectangular. Unnoteworthy.

Seraphina somehow has it all; boobs and a butt and a thigh gap – how? If Seraphina isn't pictured at the beach, she's pictured at a party. Arm around a friend, in a short dress. Sitting on the lap of a guy, his arm around her. She's good friends with all the surfer guys at school. Meanwhile, I don't know how to navigate a conversation with a dorky one.

And Cooper doesn't count. Not when I may as well be his triplet sibling.

Returning to my feed, is the most recent post from my favourite surf brand. Although, it isn't lost on me that the model posing with a surfboard is at a beach with no swell. What's also flat is her stomach. Her abdominal definition is the definition of what I want. She has lines either side of her torso that run from her ribs down to her bikini line. No lower belly fat in sight.

I save both pictures to 'Body Goals'.

Then continue to scroll my feed; an assemblage of perfect bodies.

A knock on the door sounds. Mum's anger has simmered. I know because if it hadn't, she'd have skipped the knock and ripped the door off its hinges. It would take a death wish to cover my ears but the sound wave from her shouting would flip my desk, dominoes my surfboards and shatter the window. Until every piece of furniture was in shards and scrap timber. Then the ceiling would collapse, the walls would tip over, and when I look outside, I know the native fauna would have updated their status on the Red LIst. They'd have heard the war cry of the local real estate tycoon and dispersed.

But this doesn't happen. Not now. My mum has calmed. She has opened my bedroom door as though it is the front door to her workplace. She stands there in her pencil dress, high heels and bob curled into loose waves. Plus, a folder in hand. The standard of professionalism.

"I wanted to show you something," Mum begins, "Tonight, whilst you were..."

Mum purses her lips again, widens her eyes and gazes mid-distance. Her face then returns to normality.

"...I went to a scrapbooking class."

Mum pulls the sheet from her folder and admittedly, I'm surprised to see the photographs used aren't pictures of us. But Mum did live forty years before my existence. The pictures are of my mum and some old friends holidaying somewhere tropical. Back during a time when Mum had a perm. "It looks good," I say.

Mum drops the sheet to her thigh. "You sound really enthusiastic," she says in a tone that isn't.

"No, it does," I reaffirm, taking note of the green and white stripe card, "It looks really good. Where did you go on holiday?"

"Cairns," Mum says as she grasps the door knob.

But before she fully exits, my voice box pipes up, "I got 86% for my latest maths test."

"Why wasn't it 90%?" Mum replies, "If you were focusing on grades and not kissing a pig, 90-something is what you would have gotten."

With that, she closes the door behind her with the slam I never gave it.

She's been reading my journal for sure. Not that it's a shock. I'll just cut my losses and move my journal elsewhere.

The squeal of pipes sounds through the cottage. All is over for tonight; Mum is running herself a shower and routine be known, she won't leave her room until the morning.

My stomach rumbles from the lack of dinner but I like the feeling. I exit my social media app with a flick of my thumb and raise myself from my bed. Before my bedroom window, the black glass reflects me. I pull down my pyjama pants and push them to the side with my foot. Hoisting up my top, my feet together, I look at the reflection of my legs.

A gap.

A sure, still small, gap.

I smile in silent euphoria; an achievement fulfilled.

Keep going.