THE IDENTITY PARADE

The glass is cold. Wet where it has stopped my breath. I place my hand on the moisture. I can see them, but they can’t see me. I recognise them of course – my husband, lovers, father and grandfather – they were summoned here just for me. They must, surely, know that I am here.

No sound passes between us; it couldn’t. There are no signals, no messages I can send. I can only look at them: five men behind the glass, standing in a row. Black lines run horizontally on the wall behind them, recording the heights they have reached. The men are shuffling and look preoccupied. They are waiting to be accused.

I stand alone to identify the guilty.

First in line is my father, hunched and grey. He would want to look younger than he appears here. More precisely, he would want to look like the man he would have been if I hadn’t been born. I was an accident and he married my mother quickly.

I wasn’t the last. My sister came later and he loved her more. She was smaller and he didn’t associate her with things he had lost. Through the glass my father rubs his forehead with his thumb and third finger. I see the reflection of my hand in the glass. I am doing the same.

He did his best to provide for my mother and she did her best to make us – her girls –