Going Away

The graduation party was starting to get out of control. Who knew we’d be soo excited about these holidays, I mean me and my friends weren’t even graduating this year, we had just tagged along because it was a party. A good excuse to sneak out and drink until we spewed. Things were starting to get blurry. The pool furniture was floating, half submerged, in the pool. There was music, noisy and muddled.

I pushed away from the palm tree I was leaning on and wobbled unsteadily towards the semi lighted house. It loomed up imposingly, but with no parents home to protect it, there was little it could do to stop us. It’s Only defence was it’s windows, like empty eyes, peering down disapprovingly at us while inside we raided the walk in pantry and spread the floor like a large sandwich, with peanut butter and whatever else.

Tanya appeared. I hadn’t seen Tanya for months, not since she’d left school to have her baby. I remember her uniform straining as her belly pushed out. She had been one of my best friends and I suppose I thought we would keep in touch, but after the first few times I visited, well, she just wasn’t the same Tans anymore. I had held the baby, Jacob. I held him awkwardly out from my body and said, ‘Here, you can take him back now.’ I remember he smelt like milk and honey, and she talked about the birth and how she was naked and thought she was going to poo herself! I think she wanted me to stay longer, but after that little gem of information, I told her I had already made other plans. Who wants to sit around and talk about birth and stuff on a Friday night anyway?! I felt so sorry for Tanya, and guilty, but I hadn’t thought about it for months. Anyway, we’d had end of year exams and stuff. Holidays coming up to think about. Planning where we were going to go away, all that.
And then she just reappeared, same old Tans, she didn’t look like someone who’d had a baby. I thought she might look more like a mother now, you know wearing some flowery tent dress or something. I was surprised she just looked like an old friend I hadn’t seen for awhile. Familiar to me, like seeing someone again who’d just got home after being away somewhere.
“Tans! I haven’t seen you in ages!” I gushed at her,

“I know, I haven’t been out anywhere for the longest time. Yanno now Jacob’s that bit older and sleeping better thought I’d come out”

“Ah Tans, I’m sorry I haven’t seen you guys for ages…I’ve been …yanno…but I love you yanno, I’ve missed you, what are you drinking? You sound so sober.” I obviously wasn’t, as I hung my arms around her in an over excited cuddle.

“Oh I’ve just put Jacob down for a nap in the bedroom upstairs, I’m not really having a big night of drinking…”

“He’s here?” I squeal, the thought of a baby here somehow charming, and annoying all at once. I look down at my hands and realise I’m in the middle of sprinkling someone’s sugar onto their kitchen floor, just for fun. I think I need another drink.
I bundle Tanya up somehow under my arm and grab out two drinks from the nearest esky, at this point it doesn’t worry me what they are or who they belong to. I shove one convincingly enough at Tanya, and if I could I would pour it down her throat, it’s too nice to have my friend back. I can easily forget the sleeping baby of hers, upstairs somewhere.
We talk boys, and cars, and drink more and then talk stuff that I don’t remember or care about. I’ve missed Tanya and I feel like I’ve discovered her all over again. I’m not sure who’s idea it was to visit the bathroom, but writing on the mirror in toothpaste seemed like a good laugh, this was just like old times.

It’s then we hear the baby cry. “Oh shit!” says Tans. “He doesn’t usually wake up anymore….” She looks panicked all of a sudden.
“Oh nooo, I’m really drunk!” she says and as if to prove it, she half smacks her head into the door trying to get out of the bathroom. I follow her as she heads toward the wail of her child, but I think she’s forgotten I exist.
We go into the gloom of a bedroom and there is a largish cube sort of shape looming up in the corner that seems to be shaking with a vibrating cry, I almost laugh as it seems absurd to me but tans is so serious I hold it in. there’s a bed in the room and I don’t notice at first, but it’s occupied, people are busy in it. ‘Get a room’ I think, but oh, they have and it’s this one, the one with Tanya’s baby in it.

Maybe they woke him up, but before I can say anything Tanya is in my face with a lumpy blue wrapped and squirmy sort of bundle of baby, he seems so big when she holds him but I see a little fist escaping from the blanket. It’s all curled up like seashell.
“He’s so hot. Is he hot? You feel him Kim, do you think he’s hot?” she thrusts him at me and I see his scrunched up face starting to wail again. “Uh huh yeah maybe, I dunno. You’re the mum Tans, don’t they teach you this sort of stuff when you have a baby? Maybe we should take him outside”
“Yeah good idea” pipes up the bed couple
“Get stuffed! Doncha know this room’s reserved can’t ya see there’s a baby here” I say to them, surprising myself with the protectiveness I am feeling.

“Aw, sorry, is that you tans?” pipes up the other side of the bed and I see its Emily and Bradley, ‘high school sweethearts’ who make me sick with their constant making out at school.
Tans doesn’t answer and I realise she’s halfway down the stairs, I see her gripping the rail and I try to add up how much we have had to drink. I stop counting at five cans, after five cans it’s always a blur.

Jacob doesn’t seem to be crying so loudly now, at least it’s hard to hear as we move through the house where the music is. I follow Tans, some people move aside when they see her carrying a baby, If they see her carrying a baby, a lot of people don’t seem to notice, they are dancing, making out, or yelling intently at each other above the music.

I get a bit caught up in the music, it’s distracting, I like this song and I find myself bopping along watching Tan’s silhouette ahead of me as she jiggles her baby up and down outside. Her face is a bit indistinct in this low lighting until I hear her scream. I think I hear her, or maybe I imagine it as I see her face, terrified and anguished and scared. I forget the song and start bolting outside. I am pushing people out of my way. They fall like skittles or domino’s knocking each other over and there is a tide of swear words at my back but I am focussed on Tanya and Jacob. I can see that something is not right, Jacob is moving in a way that sends my hands fumbling for my mobile phone. He jerks and I think Tanya is about to drop him, but now I am catching up I can see she is holding him tight. His eyes have rolled back in his head and Tans is yelling at me, or the night, telling us her baby is dying and the scariest thing is, I believe her. I tap the number into the phone, the one you always wonder what it’s like to ring, and whether you ever will need to ring it and the voice on the other end asks me which emergency service I need. “Ambulance” I say, and I do not slur the word at all.

“He’s not breathing!” Tanya yells and she thrusts Jacob toward me. He is light and limp in my arms, “Do CPR!” I yell back at her in a panic, dimly noticing the crowd that is forming around us. The voice on the phone wants an address.
“I don’t know CPR” Tans is wailing.
“What!….Here!” I push the phone at her and take Jacob. My memory is fuzzy but I briefly remember some of our school lessons on resuscitation. I lie him down and check to see if he is breathing. He is, I can feel his little breaths, he opens his eyes and I am stunned by the little pools of blue looking up at me, as if he has just awoken from a dream.
I see that Tanya is still panicked. “It’s ok Tans, he’s breathing, he’s breathing” I say, breathless myself with relief.
She takes him, gathers him up, and still sobbing hands the phone back to me. An ambulance is on its way.
I feel very official as I shoo the crowd of onlookers away, “It’s all fine, nothing to see here” I tell them in my drunkenly sober new found responsibility.

Tanya is still talking quick, wanting me to look at Jacob, telling me something is wrong, I can see the worry in her eyes and her body, the way it is curled around her baby. I look at him, but he looks to me like a sleepy baby, fine and not sure why he is awake in this dark night with this wildly anxious mother.
“Let’s go wait for the ambos’ out the front” I say slowly, hoping that my super calmness will help my friend. We sit in the gutter and I watch the two of them cradled into each other like a figure of eight, or the infinity symbol. Almost mistaken for separate circles, but totally interlinked when you really look.

The flashing lights are easy to see as the ambulance prowls up through the sleeping suburb. The officers check Jacob over and manage to reassure Tanya that he is ok. Her babbling of worry slows. It’s obvious they still want Tans to go with them though, just to be sure, they want her to go to the local hospital to have him looked at.
“Well, we should catch up.” she says, as she is about to climb into the ambulance.
“Sure, its holidays now, heaps of time yanno.”
“Are you going away with your family?” she asks me.
“Yeah, but I’ll look you guys up when we get home…..we can hook up”
“Yeah” replies Tanya, but she looks away, quick, and I feel like she’s caught me in a lie.
“Are you going away with your family for the holidays?” I ask her
“Nah, holidays don’t really mean much when I’m at home with Jacob, just another day really.”
The blue and red lights are still spinning into the night, and without a siren, they seem to amplify the silence around us. I watch Tanya get settled into the back of the ambulance with Jacob. The doors are shut.

The ambulance starts to move off slowly and as I wave goodbye to my friend Tans, I realise, she is going away. She is moving away from me, going to a place that I cannot get to. A far off and slightly mysterious destination that I am not ready for yet, not this holiday.
Suddenly, I feel all the alcohol I have drunk over the night rush upwards inside me until I have to puke into the gutter while my world spins.