Echo Location (Short Fiction)
07th September 2025
In: Short Stories
It’s said that every mother knows the cry of her own child, and can pick it out unerringly from a crecheful of others. Eventually, I proved this to myself, finding I was able to home in on my own newborn’s yells, even in the crowded nursery of the hospital where I gave birth to her. This gave passing credence to the story my mother told me, only once, many years ago.
She told me this quite dispassionately, as though it was a folktale — some curious urban myth — and not a piece of family history. I took it all in, never questioning its veracity until decades later.
I knew from photographs, the type of large baby carriage I was wheeled around in. Much too large and cumbersome to be taken into shops. It was therefore common for these gleaming perambulators to be lined up outside, drowsy occupants left to their own devices, while mothers made their purchases. All this was long before the advent of folding baby buggies or back-breaking baby hammocks strung around parental shoulders.
This, as far as I recall, is the jist of the tale my mother told me. She left me parked in my pram outside Denby’s, which was a medium-sized department store in King Street — a busy part of town. There were other prams there, as was usually the case. She wasn’t gone for more than a few minutes, but when she returned, the pram and contents — me — had vanished. Never one to let emotion cloud her thinking (I can never remember my mother panicking about anything) she scouted the area.
No sign in the nearby streets, so she checked the quieter pathway down by the church, leading to the river. Then she heard me crying, and soon caught up with the woman — a rough-looking didicoy type was how she described her. Threatened with the police, the woman broke down, saying she was only trying to pacify me because I’d been so distressed. Having retrieved what was hers, my mother took no action. End of story.
Although I try not to dwell on it, three things bother me:
1) My mother was never expected to have children after four miscarriages, which no one, even my gossiping aunts, ever talked about.
2) Her complete lack of panic when she discovered I was missing.
3) I don’t, in any way at all, resemble either of my parents.
She told me this quite dispassionately, as though it was a folktale — some curious urban myth — and not a piece of family history. I took it all in, never questioning its veracity until decades later.
I knew from photographs, the type of large baby carriage I was wheeled around in. Much too large and cumbersome to be taken into shops. It was therefore common for these gleaming perambulators to be lined up outside, drowsy occupants left to their own devices, while mothers made their purchases. All this was long before the advent of folding baby buggies or back-breaking baby hammocks strung around parental shoulders.
This, as far as I recall, is the jist of the tale my mother told me. She left me parked in my pram outside Denby’s, which was a medium-sized department store in King Street — a busy part of town. There were other prams there, as was usually the case. She wasn’t gone for more than a few minutes, but when she returned, the pram and contents — me — had vanished. Never one to let emotion cloud her thinking (I can never remember my mother panicking about anything) she scouted the area.
No sign in the nearby streets, so she checked the quieter pathway down by the church, leading to the river. Then she heard me crying, and soon caught up with the woman — a rough-looking didicoy type was how she described her. Threatened with the police, the woman broke down, saying she was only trying to pacify me because I’d been so distressed. Having retrieved what was hers, my mother took no action. End of story.
Although I try not to dwell on it, three things bother me:
1) My mother was never expected to have children after four miscarriages, which no one, even my gossiping aunts, ever talked about.
2) Her complete lack of panic when she discovered I was missing.
3) I don’t, in any way at all, resemble either of my parents.