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8. Iggy and Me and the New Baby
My name is Flo and I have a little sister called Iggy. I am nine and Iggy is six. We are each other’s only sister.
One morning, when we were walking to school, Iggy asked Mum a question.
She started with, “Please may can…”
I know that when Iggy uses all her polite words at once, she is really hoping for a ‘yes’. She says, “Please may can we have an ice cream and a biscuit?” and “Please may can we go on a bike ride and a picnic and sleep in a tent?”
“Please may can we have a baby?” Iggy asked, with her sweetest good-idea smile.
Mum slowed down, just a little bit.
“No, Iggy, I don’t think so.”
“How come?” said Iggy, and she looked a bit deflated, like an old balloon.
“Just because.”
Iggy said that wasn’t a reason.
“True,” said Mum. “You’ve got me there.”
“So why not?” Iggy asked, and then she added another, “Pleeease,” with extra ee’s, just to be on the safe side.
“I’ve had my babies,” Mum said, and she took our hands, mine and then Iggy’s. “You, and you.”
“You can have more than two children.” Iggy smiled, like that solved it.
“I know that.” Mum smiled back.
Iggy told her, “Thomas Wilkes’s mum has got eight.”
“Nine,” I said.
“Nine?” said Mum.
“Yes.” I counted on my fingers. “Thomas, Ruby, Emma, James, Sophie, Will, Patrick, Sarah and Ben.”
“Wow,” said Mum. “Nine.”
“James is in my class,” I said, “and Thomas is in Iggy’s. That’s how we know. When they go to the supermarket, they have to buy nine of everything.”
Iggy counted, “Nine toothbrushes, nine pairs of pants, nine packets of lemon drizzle cakes.”
Iggy loves lemon drizzle cake.
I said, “The Wilkes’s house is full of people and noise all the time, even when it’s just them.”
Mum frowned. “Well, Mr and Mrs Wilkes might have wanted nine children, but two is enough for me and your dad. That’s what we decided. One under each arm in an emergency.”
“What emergency?” I said.
Iggy was quiet for a minute. “You and Dad have got four arms. There’s room for two more.”
“Good maths,” Mum said, but she didn’t tell me what the emergency was.
“Will you and Dad change your minds?” Iggy said.
“No,” said Mum. “Absolutely not,” and she ruffled my hair and gave Iggy her school bag and kissed her goodbye on the nose.
Iggy doesn’t do ‘absolutely nots’. In Iggy’s ears, an ‘absolutely not’ is always a ‘maybe’.
When Mum says, “Absolutely not,” about a thing, Iggy goes and asks Dad. And when Dad says, “Absolutely not,” she double checks with Mum. Iggy thinks there’s always a chance she’ll get lucky. Sometimes she does.
So later, at suppertime, Iggy asked Dad the question too.
“Please may can you and Mum please have one or two more babies?”
Dad’s mouth fell open. It was a bit full of supper.
“Ewww!” Iggy said, looking away and shielding her eyes with her hands. “Manners!”
Dad finished his mouthful. “I thought you were going to ask me to pass the salt or the butter. I didn’t think you were going to ask for babies.”
“Can you?” Iggy said. “Have one or two?”
“No,” said Mum.
“We can,” Dad said, “but we might not want to.”
Iggy huffed with confusion.
