Who gets the bracelet?

I visited my mother last night as I do most weekend nights
to a terrible stink.  She had used
the toilet after dinner and something must have got inside her and died, for the
smell in the room was acrid.
 
I held my breath to speak for the first fifteen minutes and
then the smell faded and we were able to chat free of the stench.
 
My brother had been by a few days earlier and left photos of
his new granddaughter with my mother. 
They were large photos, which I had needed to ferret out from underneath
a pile of books.
 
My mother had remembered when I asked her about the new baby but she
could not find the photos without my help.  I thought I might help further by spreading the photos
around her room in front of her on the pot plant stand so
that she might be able to admire them.
 
But it seems she has lost interest in the births of grand children or
should I say great grandchildren except as a number and a sign of her vast
progeny and even then she cannot remember the numbers.
‘I don’t like the photos there,’ she said.  ‘Put them away.’ 
My mother took off her cardigan and unbuttoned the brooch
that held the top button fast. ‘Who gave that to you?’  I asked.
‘Your brother and his wife, your brother the one whose
daughter just had a baby.’  My
mother thought this was so but she could not be sure. 
The brooch reminded me then of my mother’s bracelet, the
one I have long coveted and I drew courage when I dared to ask her if I might
have that bracelet, ‘when you are gone’.
My mother looked puzzled.  She too loves this bracelet.  It was a gift to her after her mother had died.  It once belonged to a great aunt.  A gold bracelet with a golden guilder attached
and dated 1912, with the image of Queen Beatrix, the then Dutch queen on one
side.
 
‘Perhaps I can give it to you before I die,’ my mother
said.
Yes, I wanted to say.  Why not now? 
But my mother hesitated and something in her hesitation left me saying,
‘Perhaps it would cause trouble with the others.’
Then I saw in my mother’s eyes some
irritation.
‘My stomach is not feeling right,’ she said.  ‘Just a bit uncomfortable.’ 
She needed to revisit the toilet.
We speculated later whether my mother might have the
beginnings of gastro and if so I needed to tell the staff as a precaution.  My mother might need to be
quarantined.  
She’d like that I
thought.  No need to make the trip
to the dining room which she resists these days.
Walking tires her out.  She prefers to stay in her room on her own reading her
beloved books, watching TV or day dreaming. 
My mother grew sleepy and I left her to her thoughts. As I closed the door I heard her switch on her television.  Perhaps my mother resented me for reminding her of her
death, of the idea that she soon might not be here.
And I resented her, too.  Even after I had asked her directly, she could not bear to give in to me.  Perhaps she had another in mind.  

The word, ‘no’.

At the river in the morning I took off my shoes and socks,
brown school shoes and dirty socks and I plunged my feet into the water.  
Mud oozed between my toes, twigs
scratched against my legs.  There
was a light current, not enough to push me off balance but enough to make me
want to stay close to the edge, close enough to be able to reach out to the
thick tufts of grass that sprouted there.
I was on a mission. 
I had taken my bike out that morning.  I had cut myself a sandwich, filled it with butter and jam,
wrapped it in greaseproof paper and dropped it into the bike basket at the head
of my bike.  
The bike basket
signified my bike was different from my brother’s bikes.  Only girls had bike baskets.  Boys did not need baskets.  They carried their belongings in their
pockets.
That Saturday morning I had decided I would ride to
Sydney, an entire state away.  A
bike ride to Sydney all the way non-stop. 
I told no one.  No one need
know.  And I took off with the
energy of any self respecting ten year old, full of confidence that I would be
there by late afternoon and back by nightfall.
Uphills were the worst.  Burke Road past the turn to Doncaster, a good run down to
the Yarra River, and then I elected to stop.
 
I ate my sandwich and found a drink tap next to play
equipment in a park, carved out of flat land near the river.  I was thirstier than I had imagined,
and my legs had taken on that jelly like quality that comes out of too much
exercise.  Even in a ten year
old.
 
The sun was mid sky and I had learned enough from nature
study classes to know that it would only get hotter, but in the shade of the gum
trees and with a slight breeze skipping over the river I cooled down. 
My feet in the ooze and all I could imagine were dangerous
creatures underneath, creatures that might drag me down if I stayed too long.  It took a huge effort to drag myself back onto the shore.
A cow in a nearby paddock looked up from chewing on
grass.  Even the cow had an ominous
look in her eye as if she were unhappy that I should be there.
 
That’s when I saw the man at the top of the hill, the man
who stood looking down at my bike, sizing up the basket, as if he were looking
for a rider and her belongings, as if he were looking for me.  
And what could a man alone on a hill
top near a river want with the rider of a small girl’s bike, one he would know
belonged to a girl  because it held
a basket?
The man’s silhouette on top of the hill, a black shape
against a blue sky left me with a feeling I had broken rules. 
There were no signs around that said
not to trespass.  The river was
free or so my brothers had told me, but this man reminded me of the word
‘no’. 
I have met many such ominous men in my lifetime, in
reality and in dreams, silhouettes against the sky.