Six by Karen Tayleur Read Free Book Online

lettering glinted in the afternoon sunlight. Then she placed it on the fridge, stuck there by a magnet that read ‘PJ’s Plumbing — no service too big or wet’.
    ‘He will be earning much more money now.’ My mother nodded again. ‘All that hard work has paid off.’
    I don’t know why she didn’t just take a sledgehammer and knock me over the head. As if she needed to remind me to keep working hard at school.
    ‘That’s nice,’ I said.
    I don’t remind her of the great catastrophe when Michael came out two years ago. The sisters gathered in our kitchen and there was much wailing and rattling of teacups. My father stayed in his study pretending to work on the computer.
    I tried to stay out of it, but the one time I ducked into the kitchen to get something to eat, I was grabbed and stroked and pinched on the cheek as the aunts said hello. Although my mother was wearing her woeful face, there was a glint in her eye that told me she was enjoying the misfortune of Elya, her elder sister.
    ‘I will never be a grandmother,’ wailed Aunt Elya, which was
r
idiculous, because she had three other children, all straight as far as we knew. And there was always the possibility of adoption.
    ‘And how is school?’ asked Lili, the youngest aunt, trying to change the subject.
    ‘Sarah is going to be a doctor,’ my mother said, as if they hadn’t heard this before.
    The aunts nodded their approval, and Aunt Elya, aware that the focus had shifted from her troubles, burst into a fresh set of tears and declared, ‘My son will probably be fired from his job and become a hobo…maybe even a drug addict.’
    This led to more patting of her back and a fresh brew of tea. The sisters’ favourite show was NCIS and they gathered at Aunt Aisah’s to watch it every Tuesday evening. To them, danger lurked in every shadow. They were obsessed with good girls who turned bad, men with guns and the D word — drugs. I know for a fact that my mother checked my room for drugs when I wasn’t at home. I know this because one day when I got home she was sobbing at the kitchen table, convinced a sprinkle of talcum powder I’d left on my bedroom floor belonged to the D word.
    At times my family was ridiculous.
    And yet…
    I didn’t want to disappoint them.
    So there I was, the centre of attention among my aunts, when my little brother marched in, demanding something to eat. The aunts then turned their attention on him. They cooed and petted him and told him how big he was growing, even though they had only seen him the day before.
    ‘And what will you be, Jefri, when you grow up?’ asked Aunt Lili.
    ‘A soccer player,’ he announced. ‘And I will have a big house in America and a sports car.’
    The aunts tittered. Aunt Aisah asked if she could visit him when he was a star soccer player, and Jefri tilted his head in consideration then finally agreed. He stuffed his mouth with cake then marched out of the room again.
    ‘Soccer?’ said Aunt Elya.
    There was a moment’s silence in the kitchen as the sisters looked at my mother.
    ‘David Beckham,’ she said.
    ‘Ahhh.’ There was more nodding and the kettle was filled and put on to boil again.
    So my brother was allowed to be a soccer player while I had to be a doctor.
    If someone asked me what I wanted to do when I left school, I’d say I want to be a doctor. It was automatic.
    But I didn’t want to be a doctor. I was tired of the idea. There were so many other things — so many — that it made me dizzy sometimes, just thinking about it. When I woke each morning I could feel the blood just fizzing in my veins with the possibilities.
    In dreams I remembered that I could fly. Like it was a natural thing that I had just forgotten I could do. I would fly over snow-capped mountains — no plane, just me — with outstretched arms, soaring and dipping over a foreign landscape. Below me were people I knew, and some I didn’t, so small they looked like ants scurrying about their