The Li t tle A s t ro naut Kelsey Claudius
My brother was always fascinated with the universe. He spoke of planets and stars the way you would a favourite book, the kind with a worn-out spine you could never put down. Some days I would listen to him for hours, his little freckled nose would scrunch up in excitement and his eyes would slightly bulge out of his head, words becoming quicker and quicker. He was always like that. He always spoke before he could even think of what to say. Other days when I was in a mood, I would pretend to listen. Which now I realise was a cruel thing to do, he always listened to me—even when it wasn’t interesting to him. His usual topic of discussion was other life that could be present on these planets. He believed we lived among aliens that lived on planets such as Pluto or Neptune. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that there was no way anything could live on them. These creatures would live a cold and lonely life. What a horrible way to live. He was very good at creating things from nothing, it was almost effortless for him. Me, however, I liked order, logic. I wasn’t very good at thinking outside my very small but reasonable box. My mother was always entertained by his big imaginative brain. She believed he was going to cure cancer, or discover a new planet. She once asked him, ‘Why don’t you fly up there yourself and discover all this?’ He loved that idea. He carried a blue hardcover journal where he wrote his thoughts and ideas down. The journal had seen better days: pages were ripped and scribbled on, the front cover had vegemite stains. But ‘it never bothered him; small things like that never phased him. As his older sister, it bothered me, like leaving the toothpaste lid off, or the lids off the jars, or eating toast with no plate.
*** Our old oak tree sat in the back corner of our backyard. It reached high into the air, with branches the length of my entire body. They curled around the air and stuck out in all places like they were stretching toward the sun. They were strong branches which only shook slightly when the wind would blow through. The thing that shook them the most was the wooden swing we had tied. Most days it would sit there swaying slightly, calling out for us to play. We fell to the grass, sometimes laying there for hours, where we would talk and murmur soft words and ideas about our solar system, but my brother did most of the talking on those afternoons. Sometimes, on the windiest nights, the branches would smack around. I could never bear the thought of that tree getting loose. I imagined it would fly around swinging, tearing through the picket fence. It would fly into the air and turn back around falling onto the house, smashing up windows and breaking through the walls. But we were lucky that never happened. Instead of the tree ripping the soil, the swing would be the thing to go flying from its home. Living on a hill meant we often got heavy winds, we were used to the thumping of branches and the scratching of leaves against our windows throughout the night. Some nights the scratching and thumping got so loud I was convinced it was trying to warn me. If only I could’ve understood.
*** 14
For the few years after mum told him he should fly, he believed that he would.
