Mankind & Other Stories of Women by Marianne Ackerman

Author:Marianne Ackerman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781550719888
Publisher: Guernica Editions
Published: 2016-12-03T16:00:00+00:00

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The ceiling of my bedroom was covered with a popular wallpaper chosen by my mother just before I was born, sky blue background with huge cumulus clouds. I was sitting on the bed, wearing slippers. My feet didn’t touch the floor. Hart reached over, took my small hand and whispered: “Can you keep a secret?”

People rarely answer that question with a no; at the age of five, I wondered anxiously: will it be hard to keep?

The season must have been summer. He was dressed in shorts. One knee bore a thick, grubby bandage and the other a purple welt. Hockey injuries, as I recall, although why they would have lingered is a mystery, since the teams played on outdoor rinks that must have melted weeks before. My father often took me to games at Murray Hill Park on Saturday afternoons. I loved to sit on his lap and keep my eyes on Hart, who wore a fearsome mask and tended goal. Whenever the puck came his way, he dropped to his knees and I cried: “Ouch!”

While Hart expanded on the importance of keeping his secret, I focused my attention on his wound, waiting to ask if he’d let me touch it. He must have noticed my mind wandering, because he squeezed my hand and said: “Okay, here it is.”

I forced my eyes away from his knees.

“Remember when they brought you home from the hospital? Right after you were born?” “Yes,” I lied.

“Well, up until that time, there was someone else living in this room. He had to leave, to make space for you.” “Who was he?” I asked.

“Bill.”

“Bill who?”

“Bill Granger, our older brother. See, there can only be two children in a house like this ‘cause we’ve only got two kid bedrooms. So when Mum and Dad conceived you, they had to make a choice. I offered to leave, but they were adamant. They said I was too valuable to the team. That’s why it had to be Bill.”

“Where’d Bill go?”

“No idea. They wouldn’t say.”

I wanted to ask what he meant by “conceived me.” And what was “adamant”? My brother had an impressive vocabulary. He hardly ever came to the dinner table without a new word. Mother was convinced Hart would some day become a famous writer. Dad, who was a doctor, favoured science. He said he wished he’d taken that path himself instead of devoting his life to the practical cause of treating illness. Hart was Daddy’s great hope.

A precocious child, he taught himself to read at three and excelled at everything he touched. He was sociable and smart and funny, too. But as soon as school tests identified an IQ near genius, our ever-cautious parents panicked. Fearing he’d be spoiled, they stopped drawing attention to his wit or rewarding him in any way for showing off. Looking back on it now, I wonder if their decision to ignore his gifts might not have had something to do with what happened, or at least offered a clue to the mystery of why Hart never followed up on his many talents.

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