Pier Pressure 
Pier Pressure
by Cally Taylor
Jamie was in the school musical. He was in the chorus; one of Joseph's non-technicolor brothers. You would have been proud of him, Billy. You would have laughed at the way he sang to his own rhythm and stomped to his own beat; his coat of grey tweed swinging around him as he played up to the audience and beamed into the darkness.
Or maybe you would have scowled. Maybe you would have kicked teenaged feet against the legs of a battered, orange school chair and cracked the knuckles of one black finger-tipped hand against another before miserably picking at the Marilyn Manson logo on your T-shirt. I would have scowled at you and muttered under my breath, but I would have loved you. Of course I would have loved you.
We told Jamie about you. We told him as soon as he was old enough to understand what a brother was. It was important, we thought. Important that he never forget, that we never forget, that he wasn't the only one. That he should never have been the only one.
'Up there Mummy?'
Jamie looked from the photograph in my hand up to the expanse of blue above, littered with clouds.
'Billy up there?'
I nodded and watched as his grey eyes widened with awe under the spread of the sky before flickering back to the photograph in my hand.
'And not come back?'
The plump rosebud of his bottom lip jutted and glistened. I shook my head and his dark eyelashes fluttered, perplexed, as he watched me.
'I get 'nuther brother?'
I shook my head again, curled my fingers under toddler-soft armpits and scooped him up, against my chest.
'Just you and Billy. But he'll always be there for you, just as long as there's sky beyond the clouds and the stars.'
He pressed his face into the warmth of my neck, uncomprehending but satisfied, and he spelt out the shape of your name with the wet pressure of his lips.
'Billy in the sky.'
After that day, Jamie often waddled over to the bookcase and pulled out the album that celebrated your short life, in even shorter pages. He'd examine the photos, the two of them, and reject the wire clad body in the Perspex box for the other, the one where you were free, the one where you were wrapped in a blanket and cradled in my arms. You, minute and perfect, framed against the cropped torso of my desperation.
'No mummy face?'
No mummy face in the photo. No mummy face, because Jake and I couldn't bear to immortalise the torment that stained us. We couldn't pose and smile at the tight, scarlet frailty of our beautiful son. Our first son, our little old man dressed in crochet; our too newly born.
The sun was shining when I finally held you; it streamed through the painted windows of the SCBU ward and cast mottled hues over your tiny form. The nurse gently removed the pads, the wires and tubes from your palm-sized body and placed you in my inept arms. Jake slipped his hand from my waist and wrapped us both in a trembling embrace as I traced a feather light finger across your cheek and your silently mewing, pink, puckered lips. I made you a promise then. I made you a promise as your sparrow chest trembled, fluttered and the sun dropped from the sky.
'I'll never forget you, Billy.'
Jamie loved the brother that he never knew. He insisted I read to you both at bedtime; that I sing the same lullaby twice, once for each of you, as I held him to the bosom that you never suckled.
When he grew old enough to use the adventure playground in the park he stubbornly attacked the climbing frame.
'Higher up. Closer to Billy. Coin' to say hello.'
And he grew. He grew and blossomed; growing stronger and healthier under the blue canopy of you. And I let him. As the seasons passed and you beat azure and blustered with ivory above us I stopped moving anxious hands around, under and over him. I watched in awe as my child, my second child, shook off the memory of my frightened tears and attacked the world with the vigour of the unafraid and the new.
He started school and as I sobbed at the gate he charged into the playground, bowling over other children with his fervour and his friendship. He would charge into my arms, 5 hours later and fire names, new names into my face in a volley of excitement and enchantment.
I didn't notice. Billy, I didn't notice that as he tripped through years, catapulting us along with joy, he stopped mentioning your name. And I didn't have the heart to remind him.
Sometimes I forget too. Sometimes the sun beats down and I close my eyes and let her beams stroke my face, lulling me into a state of warm contentment. Jamie laughs and squeals in the background, showering himself and the garden with rainbow streams of water as Jake wiggles the hose from the tap. The flowers burst from their beds, painting the garden in rich shades of summer and the grass glows with viridian health.
I shade my eyes and peer at my family, screaming and laughing under the sun. My promise pauses between heart beats and I glance upwards, peering from under closed fingers, dazzled by the cobalt cover above us and then, just for a second, the sky is just the sky.