Kissing

"Kissing" is this week's prompt at Sunday Scribblings. This is a piece of fiction which might be a short story, except that I'm not really sure how it should end. I feel the ending lacks a little oomph. Feedback would be appreciated.

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Jenny didn’t think much of kissing. She liked to cuddle up on her mummy’s lap when she was tired, and she didn’t mind a hug in the morning, but mummy tried to kiss her sometimes and that was just… icky.

“Uck, it’s all wet” she would say, and wipe her cheek. Mummy didn’t try so much any more. The aunties still did, though. They weren’t Jenny’s aunties – mummy and daddy only had brothers. They were mummy’s aunties, and they were quite old. When mummy took Jenny to visit them, they always said “What a big girl you are getting” and planted a wet sloppy kiss on her cheek before she could wriggle away. Besides, they gave her lollies, so she couldn’t wriggle too far away, or she might miss out.

Lately, mummy seemed a bit different. She still let Jenny curl up in her lap before bedtime, and she still read her stories. But she didn’t seem to want to play tag and hide-and-go-seek in the garden so much. And they weren’t visiting the aunties on Sunday afternoons quite so often. Instead, mummy would go and lie down for a nap.

“We’re going to have a baby” mummy told Jenny. “But not for a few months yet, and I’ll still have plenty of time for my big girl”.

To tell the truth, Jenny wasn’t all that sure what a baby was. Her parents would have been very surprised if they had realised this, but it was true. The new subdivision where they lived was an expensive one, and full of executive families with older children. Jenny was the youngest there, and she wouldn’t start pre-school for another few months. Her best friend was David-next-door who was six months older than her. Jenny’s cousins were older than her too. The only time she had heard about babies before was when they told her,
“Oh, don’t be such a baby”. Apparently it had something to do with complaining.

Jenny did know that mummy’s tummy was getting bigger. After a while it was harder to curl up in her lap. Mummy said the baby was growing in there. She told David-next-door.

“Mummy says there is a baby growing in her tummy. How does it get in there?”

David-next-door seemed to know a lot of things.

“The daddy puts it in there” he said. “It grows from a special seed that the daddy puts there”.

“How does he do that?” Jenny wondered.

“Dunno” he shrugged.

Jenny thought about it some more. When she ate dinner, her tummy felt full. Food gets in your tummy through your mouth, she thought, so that’s how the baby gets there too. If daddy put the baby in there, it must be something to do with kissing. Mummy and the aunts kissed her on the cheek, but Daddy and Mummy kissed on the mouth sometimes. Usually when they thought she wasn’t looking. He must have been putting a special seed in mummy’s tummy.

The next day Jenny said to David-next-door “Kiss me”

“Kissing’s ucky” said David.

“Yes”, she said, “but you have to.”

“I won’t”

“If you don’t, I’ll tell your mummy who trampled her flowers”

“Well…” He gave her a quick peck on the cheek.

“No, you have to do it on my mouth, like mummy and daddy do”.

“Yuckkkk!!! No way!!!”

“I’ll tell!”

David gave in. Fortunately Jenny seemed to be satisfied with a very quick kiss. And just then she heard her father calling “Jenny!” and it was time to go home. She had left toys on the living room floor.

“Time to pick up your toys before dinner” her father said.

“No” said Jenny.
“No?” her father was astonished.

“I can’t” said Jenny. “Mummy doesn’t pick things up any more, you do it for her. I can’t pick up my toys, you have to do it for me”

“Mummy gets tired, and she can’t bend easily because of the baby” said Daddy.

“That’s why I can’t”, said Jenny.

Daddy didn’t quite understand. “Because of the baby” said Jenny. “David kissed me. I have a baby in my tummy so I don’t have to pick up toys any more”.

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