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Phosphorescence

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“Look, Mummy, there’s a plane!”

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Planes had always captivated her. The idea of being free, of soaring high in the sky – so high that even when you looked down and strained your eyes as hard as you could, you still couldn’t see the sparkling blue sapphire called the ‘ocean’ – had always appealed to her.

She longed to sit in one, even see one up close, with its great big wings and nose that reminded her of Scruffy’s. But when she’d politely asked the man (with her bestest manners, of course) behind that big, important looking desk at the airport – the one they’d picked Aunty Joyce up from, back when she lived really far away, in Illyland (or was it Sillyland? She could never remember) – that mean old man had laughed in her face.

So she’d thrown her Beach Going Barbie at his head. It had been a tragic loss, and Mummy had scolded her dreadfully, but even now, she could still see that awful man’s face as she firmly told him that when she was ‘growed up’, she was going to be an aeroplane driver.

An aeroplane had taken away her Daddy. She’d cried and cried, and sobbed a bit more, but even when she’d begged the nice looking lady in the doorway to please, please let her Daddy come back out – “Please? He’ll be good from now on, I promise!” – she’d shaken her head and told her no, she couldn’t do that, but would she like a lollypop?

So she’d told her, in all her intellectuality, that she most certainly did not want a lolly, and that if she didn’t let her see her Daddy right now she was going to scream until she was blue in the face. The lady hadn’t seemed so kind after that, but Mummy had laughed almost until she was blue in the face. She’d laughed so much that she’d forgotten to tell her off.

Her Mummy had never liked planes after that, but whenever she saw one, or heard one – she’d heard what they sounded like as the plane stole her Daddy away, and the noise was so loud that it had drowned out Mummy’s laughter, and covered up her crying until it looked like she was a clown, with her red cheeks and open mouth – she ran to the window, eager to see if this time, the plane would be the same one that Daddy left in.

And each time, Mummy followed her to the window and said quietly, “Daddy’s not going to be coming home, baby,” followed by the sound of her Mummy crying. She’d have to retreat to her favourite place in the garden, where Mummy couldn’t fit through the hole in the fence and see all the photos she’d kept of Daddy, even though Mummy had told her to give them all to the nice man collecting the rubbish.

Mummy had told her she wasn’t allowed to go to Daddy day at kindy, either, but she’d stamped her foot until Mummy had let her have her turn, and when she’d stood up in front of her class she’d announced proudly, “I’m going to be a aeroplane driver so that I can drive my Daddy’s aeroplane back home.” She hadn’t understood why all the adults didn’t clap, or why her Mummy had cried so hard.

It was on a clear, sunny day that four-year-old Katie Reynolds ran to the window and shouted, in all her enthusiasm, “Look, Mummy, there’s a plane!” She’d pointed at it excitedly – it looked just like the one that had taken her Daddy – and her Mummy came over and opened her mouth to say the same phrase that Katie knew by heart, but then she stopped.

“Mummy?”

“Quick, Katie, go to the bathroom, I’ll be there in a minute,” she’d said hurriedly, and then she’d rushed over to the kitchen, and Katie was left looking out the window.

The plane was flying away, but she could just see it drop something white – her Daddy liked to wear a white suit to church, even though Mummy always told him it looked ugly, and that he should buy a new one – and she craned her neck higher to see. There was a tree branch in the way-

“Katie!” Her Mummy screamed at her. “Get in the bathroom, now!”

Katie jumped. Her Mummy had never spoken to her like that, not ever. She started to run towards the hallway, but hesitated at the entrance. She wanted to see the plane…

Suddenly, she felt the ground shake and the floor beneath her moved. She looked out the window to see a huge, white cloud appear over the hills, near where she knew her kindy was. “Look, Mummy,” she’d yelled excitedly; “it’s a cloud! It’s a mushroom cloud!”

She heard her Mummy drop something, and she heard it smash and break into a thousand tiny pieces, but she paid them no attention as the ground shook a second time, this one a lot harder, and for one tiny second all she could see was light.

A wave of bright, white light washed over her and she heard her Mummy scream her name, but she kept her eyes firmly fixed on the pretty white light. Her Daddy had always said that she’d look beautiful, like an angel, when all the light covered her…

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Phosphorescence: 1. The property of being luminous at temperatures below incandescence, as from slow oxidation in the case of phosphorus or after exposure to light or other radiation.