Sea i

   14^th June 1968

   I was born at sea. My father circumcised me, as he had my brothers before me, with the harpoon. I’m the fifth brother. I had two sisters but the ocean, immortal bitch who doesn’t care the sex of her lovers, took them one night from their rowboat. I watched them go down when I was sixteen, father standing beside me too. My youngest years I remember being closer to the decks, the ropes all coiled neat at the edges, the lady figurehead (who’s now gone leaving only the stump of her dress hem), and my brothers Donny and John and Hamish and Philbur all fighting and crashing against one another and pushing me out of it when I tried to join. I remember Susan’s long yellow hair and Pat’s long ugly nose and her frowns. She was most like Ma.

  Of course I didn’t think much about them after they’d gone. I grew and earned my place to scrabble from port to stern with my four brothers. The batch, Ma called us, and father too, so we’ve been called the batch. We were never slackers from work though, the ship filling itself finely enough. There were eleven of us: the batch of five with me in it, Father, Birch and Trip, Girlie, Isaac and Maude. Trip is Father’s brother. Broken old man. Birch helps him, she’s a skeleton of an old woman stalks about the hold hunting rats for fun. Girlie took his name from wearing Ma’s dresses, little sick in the head as he was. Didn’t deserve what the batch, save me, dealt him daily. Isaac’s fists are hammers, he’s brutish below deck, hardworking and built big, only one bigger than me. Ugly temper. Father always said Isaac never got kissed as a baby. That always made the rest of the batch crease up. Maude’s Isaac’s girl, named her himself. He stole her off a merchant ship. She’s got brown skin and cries loud some nights because he’s rough with her at night behind their door.

   

   So that’s eleven. It was fourteen when I was only waist high but after Ma passed it was thirteen and that was unlucky, Father said. He didn’t have to worry long though because Susan and Pat were gone soon after Ma. Trip likes to say something got them, dragged them down. Father don’t rise to such bald fight picking. Father might not have been the brains but he was the ship itself. He and Ma started it, with Isaac’s big brother too, who died crushed under looted cargo down below. John and Donny said they saw Isaac planing away the bloodstained in the hold with a file for hours one night. Blood soaked his fingers and he smelt for days. Sickened me. Nightmares still come. Speaking of night, it's that now - moon is waning. I'll sleep now.