Lioness
I look across the bridge that leads out of the park and onto the street, then down at my sister’s pregnant belly. Once we cross the bridge danger might come from anywhere. I check behind, shade my eyes and scan the street ahead. My skin prickles, alert to any change in the air. We go on, me slightly in front. I shield my sister with my body. My sister peers over the bridge rail, leaning, to look at the stream below.
‘Careful.’ I let out. I wish she’d get away from the edge. She frowns, her soft, light eyes wondering at me. I join her at the rail and beside her I feel the calm that encircles her body.
‘They found that prostitute somewhere around here. Beside the stream,’ she says. Her eyes crackle with light. I look away, speaking in the low drawl I use when emotions are high.
‘Sex worker,’ I correct. ‘Did they? Which one?’
The banks of the stream are steep, mucky. Chip packets and McDonald’s cups are twisted and smothered by cables of flattened reeds.
‘One here. One further up.’ She gestures upstream.
‘How many were there?’
My sister’s hand rests briefly on her huge belly. ‘Police say there are more.’
She walks on silently. A savage on a bike whooshes out of nowhere, careening toward her. Nudging her to safety, I nearly tread on her toe.
‘Idiot!’ I hiss after the kid.
On the other side of the bridge piles of cardboard, a shelfless pink bookshelf, broken TV cabinets, and brown stubbies scatter the curb. A fence has fallen, flattening the verge grass, nails spiking the pavement. The power poles are tagged with fuzzy Gs. A swarm of mosquitoes aerials above a wild lawn.
‘Should we go back?’ My heart is pinging. I can’t stop looking around, checking for imminent danger. I am a lioness prepared to kill for my pride.
‘No, I need to walk. I’ve been cooped up all day.’
My sister’s voice is calm. It has a cadence like lapping water, so soft and slow that it holds its shape in the air. With this baby she’s calm all the time, as if what’s growing in her is not a greedy little being but immense, eternal harmony.
Behind a short white fence a Jack Russell is outraged. I startle, press my hand to my chest, calming my breathing, and guide her to the other side of me, away from the fences. Her jandals click like crickets.
‘Should you be wearing jandals?’
She smiles, the grin breaking hard across her face. She lowers her head and laughs. ‘You sound like Mike.’
For years I’ve been trying to find good things about my sister’s husband. He loves her, that’s one. I picture Mike with his feet up on the couch commanding dinner, his son, their plans. His lips are stained purple from his cask wine. He squeezes the last drop out of the bladder like he’s wringing a chicken’s neck.
We approach a four-lane highway. My vision turns white. My blood surges. A bee buzzes across my body toward my sister. ‘Jesus!’ I say, swatting it away. When we were little a bee stung my sister’s hand and it swelled to become a glove full of air.
‘I’m okay.’ She blinks at me.
‘Dinner soon.’ I stand side-on to her, looking back the way we came.
‘Okay then.’ She sighs, smiles and links her arm in mine. ‘You’ve never been maternal before?’
‘It’s not that. It’s you. I’m worried something will happen to you. It feels almost unbearable.’
‘That’s what having kids is like.’
We wait to cross the road. She wants to loop back, the long way, but I’m not sure my heart will hold out. She glances back at the rush of traffic on the highway.
‘The houses on the other side are worth triple. We tried for ages to get over there and then Ben came along.’ She spreads her hands, shrugging.
‘It’s so strange that a highway could make that much difference.’
‘School zones, house prices, better council, close to transport. Here …’
Behind us a door opens. A hacking couch, an asphyxiating wheeze, followed by a hoick, sounds. On a paint-chipped veranda an old man steadies himself against the doorframe. I watch as he turns an oxygen tank in its little trolley and parks it by the door. He removes his nasal prongs, hobbles to an armchair, falling heavily into it, and lights a cigarette.
‘Jesus,’ I let out, looking back, hurrying, but my sister carries on talking.
‘People always say it’s just a first home. What if it’s not?’
My sister’s house is a two-bedroom with a cramped lounge and courtyard. The kids have to share. We shared as children. At least they have a space. I wish I could help but I can barely afford a push bike. I consider telling her that, wonder if she’d laugh.
‘What about Mike’s parents?’
‘He won’t talk to them.’
Back in the park a plastic bag on the grass is being gutted by three crows. One hops away on twiggy legs with a latex glove in its beak.
‘I can’t stop thinking about those girls. Like, what were their mothers doing when they found out?’ My sister’s voice catches. ‘How is it possible to bring a child into the world when things like that happen?’
‘Don’t cry,’ I say. ‘Isn’t it bad for you?’ I wrap an arm around her shoulder, try to smile. ‘Too late now anyway.’ I glance over her bump. She gives a sad laugh.
Across the park, behind the acacias, the sky is high and clear. Two starlings rummage under the lip of purple bougainvillea that hangs over the train track verge. We stroll the last stretch with her arm around my waist and mine loose over her shoulders. Left feet together, right, we lumber. I study her belly. The huge bulge has made her body into an S. I want to lay my hand on the bulge, but I don’t.
‘Don’t worry,’ I tell her. ‘We just have to add more love to the world.’
‘That’s what we’ll do,’ she smiles and looks down at her belly.
Tina Cartwright (she/her) grew up in Oamaru and now lives in Melbourne on Wurundjeri lands. Her manuscripts were longlisted for the Michael Gifkins Prize in 2023 and 2024. In 2025 she was a finalist for the Tasmanian Writers’ Prize, longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, and Highly Commended in the Boroondara Literary Awards. She read at the closing night of the Footscray West Writers Fest and ran a panel at the 2025 EWF.