Slights by Kaaron Warren

Mum.
      "Who?" She had forgotten the cat ever existed. I think she had that ability; things, people, vanished when they died. She wiped them from her memory so she didn't have to suffer. This helped me to understand all the fathers Mum bought home. The boyfriends, uncles. She wasn't being disloyal to Dad; she had simply forgotten him. She could have as many lovers as she wanted
      I wanted to tell Peter but he was busy and didn't deserve to hear.
      Peter gave me the jumper. I loved the teddy on it; he never woke up to yell and always stayed the same. And even at five I knew this would happen;
      "Peter! Isn't that the jumper I knitted you? Didn't you like it?" said Granny Walker. It was a great jumper.
      We had bowls and bowls of potato chips, nothing else at my fifth birthday party, though I think the adults ate sandwiches in the kitchen where I couldn't see.
      Auntie Jessie was there; we told jokes on the front step. She wouldn't come out to see my roads in the backyard; she would never go into the backyard. All the kids in the street were there, although I hated them. The little weak girl from next door, Melissa, and a little girl with red hair and pink ribbons who I only remember because she hit me for taking the last cake.
      I had four more birthdays like that, and then Dad was killed. Birthdays weren't the same, after that.
      On my eleventh birthday Eve gave me jewellery for the first time, and I found a new jumper folded by the swings. It was a black jumper, a colour much sought-after but often forbidden.
      "Black is nice, though," I said to my mother. "The fairies left it as a birthday present."
      "You had your birthday presents," Mum said, but I hadn't. All I had was my first present from Eve. Mum lost track of time after Dad died. She didn't remember things.
      "Anyway, it isn't a school colour," she said. She wore the softest colours, pale pink, mauve, baby blue. She thought it made her look younger. And after a year in mourning she would never wear black again.
      I wore my new black jumper to bed, to school, at home. It became encrusted, stiff with filth, but I would not let Mum wash it. Then, a month or so after I found the jumper, I tired of it. The boy who had left it in the park had already been punished for his loss, and did not want the ruined gift back. I didn't want it anymore. I was done with it. I left it where I had found it. It became a football, and a soak for blood, and a pirate flag. It stayed in the playground for two years, part of the playground equipment, unrecognised and left alone by adults.
      After my Dad died, Grampa Searle changed. He was lighter, and he'd lost his fear. Dad used to tease him, make taunts about his quiet life. His boring life. Mum would get mad, because her dad was dead, but my dad had never concealed his disinterest in Grampa's life. When my Dad died, Grampa became silly, he laughed a lot, talked and joked and everybody else loved him too.
      I had the fantasy that we were not popular in the suburb we lived in, which is why the families refused to come to our birthday parties. The other children in the street avoided us. Peter and I played together most often at school, and would fight anybody who wanted the exercise. That's what should have happened.
      This is what did happen; I played alone, elaborate fantasies, while Peter excelled at football. He had friends all over the place. We weren't friends. We rarely spoke, had nothing to say to each other. Peter, Mum and I sat at the table for every meal, but when we learned to read we brought books to the table and Mum allowed it, bringing her own magazine or book. Never the newspaper – she didn't want to know the news. My dad was the news bringer. He read it to her, analysed it, told her the opinion she should hold. With him gone she did not feel she had the filter necessary for the news. After he died, she never read it again. Peter and I did not bring newspapers into the home;