Doubled-orphaned. Our uncle used the past tense. It stands out to me, now, as a superfluity. The noun, orphan, and verb, orphaned, already encapsulate it. I look into it. It turns out it’s the name of a social security payment: double orphan pension.  

~~

I think of the early days. My sister and me in the backseat, our brother in the front. The car locked, our uncle across the road at the laundromat. It must have been at the beginning, or close to it. No washing machine yet. Next to the laundromat was a bakery. The quintessential small-town variety, selling bread loaves and rolls and a small selection of sweets: meringues, pink-iced finger buns. He’d bring back three giant Anzac biscuits – one for each of us. Something to keep us quiet while he finished up with the laundry. Nowadays, you couldn’t leave three children under seven in a locked car in summer. I remember the steep slope of the road, the tilt of the car – parallel parked – and the worried feeling that the parking brake would fail, and the car would start to roll backwards. The lambswool seat covers. The sweat.  

~~

Four years later. Summer. Hot air rising. Inside, the hottest air coalesces near the ceiling, making my top bunk unbearable. The bedroom’s sliding window has been nailed shut, retribution for my sister’s attempted escape one night. There is nowhere to go. I take a face washer, turn the cold-water tap, hold the washer under the bathroom faucet. I lay it out over my face until the cool-wet becomes warm-wet. Repeat until sleep finally arrives. In the morning, I wake with a damp mattress – the washer having slipped off in the night.  

~~

At the house before that one, I remember sitting at the dinner table for hours. I wasn’t allowed to leave until I cleared my plate. A boyfriend once told me this was normal. We all had to do that, back then. Waste not want not. I didn’t tell him about the dog’s collar: the carefully placed strikes along my buttocks or the back of my upper thigh. Or the way the buckle-shaped bruises – like sunsets in reverse – seemed to hold every colour, before eventually fading. The violence will never leave me. It will show up again and again, shapeshifting into self-hatred at midnight.  

 ~~

Now, an adult – two children of my own – I unconsciously leave something on my plate every night. It pains me the first time it is pointed out, and every time I notice if for myself afterwards. If she’s there, my mother-in-law will finish it. It is her way of loving me.