Colostrum
When I was five I had an imaginary friend called Colostrum. Well, to adults she was imaginary, an infantile illusion. But to me she was completely real. I still remember her long golden hair that glowed like sunlight soaked sand.
Colostrum was my best friend. She played Barbies with me, slept in my bed, shared my food and protected me from things in my world I didn’t understand. She was braver than I was. I was scared of everything, especially the rain. If we got caught outside in a rainstorm, she would laugh and jump in the puddles while I would run home crying and make Mum have a hot shower with me.
We were so alike that we both had a lisp. I hated how Mum made fun of my lisp when she had friends over.
“Say scissors.”
“Thithors”, I would reply, to fits of laughter.
“Say slippery dip.”
“Thlippery dip.”
“Say sausage.”
“Thauthage.”
They would have gone on all night laughing at me had Colostrum not grabbed my hand and said, “C’mon, don’t listen to those stupid heads. How we talk is our business.”
Mum took me to a speech therapist and a psychologist. The speech therapist made me say a whole lot of annoying words. It was really boring, but Colostrum would entertain me by making fun of him. The psychologist asked me stupid questions that made him look crazier than me, because the answers were plainly obvious.
“What colour hair does Colostrum have?”
“Oh DER!”
“Leigh!” Mum would reprimand me. “Answer the doctor properly.”
“But Mum, she’s sitting right there! It’s blonde, obviously.”
Mum would sigh and shake her head at the psychologist.
“What’s her favourite food?”
Colostrum turned her eyelids inside out and micked him with his pen and notebook, pretending to write notes.
“Why don’t you ask her for yourself. It’s rude to talk about someone as if they’re not here you know.”
The psychologist looked worried. He slowly took his glasses off and told me in a serious voice that Colostrum wasn’t real; she was an illusion. Someone I had made up to help me feel safe and not so alone in the world.
Colostrum and I looked at each other and burst out laughing. We found it strange how adults couldn’t see things that were right in front of them.
I came close to losing Colostrum one day. We were walking through a heavily forested park on our way to school with Mum and my brother Danny. There was a tree we always stopped at because to us kids, it was clearly haunted. Its twisted, gnarled branches gave it a spooky appearance unlike any of the other trees, and we believed an evil witch lived inside it. She waited there for children to walk past and then pulled them inside the tree and ate them. The more children she ate, the bigger the tree grew.
To prove it, Danny had the previous day stuck a Batman sticker on the tree to see if it would still be there the next day. Sure enough, it had disappeared, stolen by the witch!
Unafraid of anything, Colostrum decided to climb the tree and get the sticker back.
“No Colostrum, come back!” I shouted.
I was terrified the witch would get Colostrum if she kept climbing, so I put my own fears aside and climbed after her.
“Stop! Get down this minute!” yelled Mum.
The further Colostrum climbed, the more she disappeared into the tree. I kept climbing, higher and higher.
“The witch is getting her!” I screamed through my tears. “I have to save her.”
“Who?” shouted Mum.
“Colostrum!” I cried.
Mum ordered Danny to climb after me and get me down, which only made me climb faster.
Colostrum disappeared just as Danny grabbed my foot. I lost my balance and we both fell.
I woke up in hospital, my head bandaged and throbbing, my neck in a brace, my arm in a sling. Mum was beside my bed stroking my face.
“Ssh, don’t move too much sweetie, you had a bad fall,” she said.
“Where’s Colostrum?” I asked.
“She’s right there, in the bed next to you darling.”
The nurses had made up a bed beside mine and Colostrum was there asleep, her arms bruised from where the witch had grabbed her, and her head also bandaged.
“She wanted me to give you this,” said Mum.
It was the Batman sticker.
Colostrum and I stayed in hospital for three days. The nurses brought her the same meals as me, except the green jelly, which she hated.
The night we came home from hospital Mum made Colostrum’s favourite dinner: roast lamb and vegies with baked rice custard for dessert. When we’d finished Mum even put a second helping of dessert on Colostrum’s plate. Danny poured Colostrum’s juice and we all played Monopoly before bed. Colostrum and I fought over the top hat, and I eventually took the iron. Danny always got the battleship and Mum had the thimble.
That night I dreamt Colostrum and I had died when we fell from the tree and had gone to heaven. It was a pink Barbie world, with every Barbie imaginable, plus the Barbie house, campervan and even the Porsche and the Palamino horse. Colostrum said she wanted to stay there forever. It was a better world for her. She said I could stay too.
“I have to go home, Mum and Danny would miss me too much. They need me,” I told her. “Besides, if I stay here Danny will hang all my Barbies by their necks from the light.”
She said she could see I didn’t need her anymore.
We both cried as we hugged goodbye.
The next morning I took Mum breakfast in bed – toast with Vegemite, a cup of tea and a sweet smelling gardenia.
“How’s Colostrum today?” she asked.
“Mum, don’t be upset, but Colostrum has gone to live somewhere else.”
“What? Why?” asked Mum.
“Well, Colostrum is a bit of a baby really, she wants to go and live somewhere else where she can play with Barbies all day. I’m a woman now, I don’t have time for that. I need to learn how to talk properly. And frankly, I think it’s time I started spending more time with boys, don’t you?”
Mum raised her eyebrows and then laughed.
“We’ll see about that. I’ll miss Colostrum, I was just getting used to having her around. Will you miss her?”
“Yeah, but she’s not gone forever. I think I’ll see her again one day. Besides Mum, there’s this boy at school called Adam…”