Baby

by Annaleese Jochems

Gordon coughs and stops paddling. Anahera’s hands are up, suddenly at her hair, pulling it back so violently her eyebrows wrench up. One side of the paddle catches in the water, and they move in a slow, wonky circle.

  53.

  In the cabin, Cynthia just sits. She’s got the last of their food: one more Weet-Bix, and a can of peas. What she feels is almost boredom. She knows everything now; it can only go on as it is forever. The bedding’s still moist from the night before, and she can feel it getting wetter. She’s sinking in.

  She coughs like a dog coughing up a dog. He’s listening—she listens back. They don’t knock and ask for food, but still. She knows him, the way he lounges all over things and people with his big, ugly body, and she knows Anahera now too. They fucked. He slid his cock into her, and now Cynthia can’t let them live unwatched.

  She opens the door and finds Anahera at the table with her head in her hands. ‘Cynthia,’ she says in a pinched voice, ‘will you please join us for dinner tonight?’ Cynthia thinks they just want her peas, and she’s about to say Anahera can get stuffed, she already ate them, but Anahera says, ‘Gordon found some beans.’

  ‘Oh, Gordon found some beans. Wow.’

  Anahera nods dumbly, she’s got nothing else to say.

  A dead bird floats up against them. ‘A bird corpse,’ Gordon says. ‘Come look!’ Cynthia and Anahera stand at his sides while he pokes it with a broom handle. ‘What do you think?’ He turns between them. ‘Dead?’

  54.

  Rain falls in a continuous thud on the roof. They’re inside, at the table. Gordon’s philosophising and Anahera’s acting interested because, as Cynthia now knows, that’s what she does. He says, ‘I’m not the police, as you know. But I could have been.’ Anahera turns to Cynthia, probably expecting solidarity. Gordon registers the loss of her attention, and changes tack. ‘Alright,’ he says, ‘I have a scary story. It starts with a boy—’

  ‘You’re being lame,’ Cynthia interrupts him. ‘Honestly, neither of us feels bad about that anymore.’

  Anahera gives her a look.

  ‘What?’ Cynthia asks. ‘It wasn’t even our fault.’

  Anahera wipes her face, and when she removes her hand her expression is neutral again.

  ‘No,’ Cynthia says. ‘What?’

  ‘Well, it was a bad idea,’ Anahera says. ‘To take him.’

  Gordon’s head swivels, from Anahera to Cynthia and back again. Cynthia feels herself make a noise, and goes to stand outside on the deck. The sky and water are separate blues, then a ways away you can’t see the line between them. She cleans her ears with a pinky and wipes it off on her pants.

  She’s going to do it soon, and she won’t feel guilty. The sky’s heavy, deep and dark above her. She’s going to wipe her boat clean of fluff and spillage, and see clearly what she and Anahera are; really are to each other. She doesn’t need to talk to them anymore. She reads one of her romance books on the deck.

  55.

  Anahera calls the two of them to dinner. Cynthia sits, looks at it and says, ‘Gee, thanks a lot. This looks like shit.’ Anahera smiles anyway, and shrugs. Gordon says nothing. They’re the beans from his bag.

  ‘Cynthia,’ Anahera says. ‘We’re both really, really sorry.’

  ‘Oh, for what?’ Cynthia looks up, and pauses briefly from spooning them around. ‘I’m not into beans,’ she says.

  ‘It isn’t that I didn’t want to tell you. I wanted him gone, you remember, but then’—she looks at Gordon, and he nods—‘he knew about the boy, and my feelings changed independent of my control.’

  ‘Independent of your control?’ Cynthia slaps her spoon against her beans. A nice splat comes up, and some lands on her collarbone. Anahera’s mouth is open, she’s about to explain herself more, so Cynthia asks, ‘Have you been fucking often then, since he, uh, joined us?’

  ‘No,’ Anahera says. ‘No, only once.’

  Gordon shuffles quietly in his seat. Cynthia looks, and his face is a deep mauve.

  ‘Hmm,’ she says, turning to face him. ‘Not much luck then?’

  He looks down at his beans. His eyes are scrunched up, and his bottom lip’s pushed over the top one, like he’s sad and only ten years old. Cynthia chuckles at that, and leans over to slap-pat the side of his face. Her hand makes a good, sharp noise against his cheekbone. He looks up at her then, and says, ‘It’s your fault.’

  Cynthia laughs, harder, spitting some beans on her shirt. ‘Where are you from?’ she asks him.

  ‘Palmerston North.’

  They sit, waiting, as if sense is going to arrive to them on their boat in the post.

  Cynthia sleeps in the cabin that night, because it doesn’t matter. She’s ready to destroy herself to sink him. She only needs to wait for the decision to move from her mind to her body.

  56.

  She lies all day in the cabin listening to splat after splat of bird shit fall on the roof. At five o’clock he shoves his monstrous head through the door. ‘Peas and corn,’ he says. ‘I found some cans.’

  They all sit at the table in front of their portions. ‘We’ll be hungry after this,’ Cynthia says, although they all know. Tonight the water’s rough, an aggressive mass moving beneath them, so they eat their peas first. There’s rain on the roof. One pea rolls from Gordon’s plate and off the table, and he doesn’t move to pick it up. He finishes first, then Cynthia. ‘Well,’ she says. ‘Do you have more up there?’ He looks right back at her, with his mouth closed. His eyelids blink, slowly, three times.

  Cynthia checks in the cabin, and her peas were the ones they just ate—he must have taken them last night, while she used the toilet. She has a look through the cupboards. There’s nothing, and they swing closed loudly.

  ‘Cynthia, go easy on those,’ Anahera says.

  ‘Why?’ Cynthia asks, not turning. ‘They’re my cupboards.’

  ‘We all have to live here.’

  ‘Oh? Do we?’

  Anahera and Gordon get up and look too. Cynthia sits back down to watch them. The answer is simple: his death. He squats to look in the lower cupboards, and she notices him being as rough with the hinges as she was. He finds a chip packet she missed, pinches some crumbs in his fingers, and lifts them to Anahera’s mouth. Anahera ducks her head away and steps back, then puts out a hand for him to place them on.

  ‘You need to shop, Gordon,’ she tells him, after swallowing.

  ‘Yeah,’ he says, not looking away from the empty hole of the cupboard. ‘We have porridge.’

  Cynthia was thinking that.

  ‘That’s morning food,’ Anahera says. ‘We need it in the morning.’

  He looks at her hands, near the handle of the cupboard with the porridge. Cynthia knows what he sees. Anahera’s fingers are purposeful and quick. Coloured like copper, strong and elegant. ‘Tomorrow,’ Anahera says. ‘Tomorrow, before you get groceries.’

  Gordon nods without looking up at her face.

  ‘This is shit planning,’ Cynthia tells them.

  ‘What should I get?’ he asks Anahera in a dreamy voice, ignoring her.

  Anahera turns suddenly, and smiles. ‘Get whatever Cynthia wants.’ Cynthia stares at the wall and nods, pleased.

  She goes to bed early with a dry, hungry mouth. There she waits, for an hour, or hours, holding her hands up in the dark above her face and letting them touch each other. Anahera never snores, so there’s no way to tell if she’s sleeping. Cynthia’s hands tire, and she lowers them to her face. She’d like to know what expression she’s making. She touches her lips, but they only feel mouthy.

  Anahera stays silent, but Gordon wheezes. The door opens gently. Their cabin’s lighter than hers. The curtains are thin, and shifting gently. She waits in the doorway for the right feeling. She should know what to do before she moves, she thinks. But then she doesn’t know, and she moves anyway.

  Anahera’s beautiful with her body so still; the blankets rise at her breasts, and dip in at the gap between her legs. Her eyelashes fan ou
t towards her cheeks, and her nose has a smoothness Cynthia never noticed before. Beside her, Gordon’s face twitches in the forehead, but otherwise he’s still too, like calm water. She wants to touch both of them.

  All their knives are blunt, she’s heard both Anahera and Gordon say it. She looks around, and considers the kettle. She can’t see anything else. When she lifts it from the stove it makes a metal noise against the element. Anahera moves, but doesn’t wake. Gordon’s still. It’s filled with water. If she tips it in the sink, they’ll hear it, and if she tips it outside, they’ll hear that too?

  They will, she decides. It’s heavy, but how much of that is liquid? Should she just whack him with it full? Would the extra weight help her? No, she bends down and pours the water into the carpet. She’s careful with the angle, so it runs out slowly, and she doesn’t hear a thing. When she stands back up there’s a noise from one of her knees. They both shift in bed, just a little, and she stands back and waits for them to settle. The kettle’s too light now, and she wonders briefly—should she go outside and fill it again with sea water?

  The skin of his eyelids looks incredibly soft, and his eyes form perfect mounds beneath them. The edges of his nostrils, too, appear extremely delicate. Perhaps she could lift him, so quickly he’d not have time to wake, and slam his head against the wall? She’d have to knock him unconscious with the first hit, then slam him five or so times more to kill him. It seems improbable. The moon moves and the light in the cabin lessens. She’s standing in the water from the kettle, and her toes are wet. She struggles to think harder. There’s nothing of the necessary weight on their boat, she thinks, but—there must be?

  The anchor. She opens the cabin door carefully. It’s dark in there, completely. She knows the spare anchor’s on the floor, tangled in a lot of rope. She’s careful picking it up, but still, it scrapes a little on the wooden floor. She doesn’t think it’s loud enough to rouse him, but Anahera? She turns, slowly, with her feet gentle on the ground. There’s rope coiled around the anchor, and it tangles with her hands and hangs on her feet. She moves back through the door so she’s positioned above him, then looks down. His eyes are open, and they open wider.

  She slams the metal down on his face. He moans, and pushes her back with a big, meaty hand. The anchor drops, and hits her hip as it falls. There’s still rope caught around her arms, but she limps as quickly as she can to the back deck, dragging it. It scrapes along the ground, banging at the step before the doorway. He’s in the cabin behind her, moaning and moving. Cynthia pauses, and thinks she hears Anahera cooing to comfort him. The dinghy’s adrift, tied to the boat with a long, white rope. She pulls it as fast as she can, and gets in.

  She’s struggling with the knot in the dark, and in panic, when she hears him clear his throat. He’s on the deck, smiling, just behind where she was a moment ago, with his hands on his hips. She can’t see his face well, but she thinks his lips are hanging oddly, and that one of his eyes is shut. His nose looks weirdly flat. He’ll raise a hand soon, she feels, to wave her off. He knew all of this would happen. But he doesn’t, and something moves in the shadows beside him. Anahera’s hand reaches up. Her face is there too, only slightly behind his, with its mouth hung open slack, and her hand continues to reach up, so slowly, to touch her cheek. Unable to settle, it drops back down, to swing limp and graze his hip.

  The knot comes undone, no one says anything, and Cynthia uses the paddle to push herself away from the boat. The moon’s strong, and the water pulls her out of Baby’s shadow. Water ripples between Cynthia and her home, and she feels herself leaving faster and faster.

  57.

  Because of the rain, the dark and her own drifting, Cynthia can’t see Baby anymore. She doesn’t want to. She curls up, and hours pass. The rain stops and the sky lightens. She looks around and sees nothing but water. She’s got dandruff. She scratches her head and watches pieces of scalp twirl in the new light before her eyes. It’s because she hasn’t been shampooing often. She digs her nails in hard, as if peeling an egg. He’s better than her. He fucked Anahera, and she couldn’t kill him. Now she’s alone.

  Anahera could never have loved Cynthia, or made any serious love to her at all. She’d never have seriously touched Cynthia’s so, so white body, with its pale stomach and pink elbows and knees. Cynthia remembers her own smugness at first imagining herself small under the older woman, squashed. Now she’s left only with her shame; her desire’s run forward and away from her, as helpless and dumb as a bug.

  There are hours and hours, marching past like ants. The sun arrives, and quickly there’s too much of it. Cynthia leans, slowly at first, one way then the other. The dinghy shifts, gently then violently, and water slaps both its sides. The sun’s up now, on her back, watching her curiously, and Cynthia feels she’s watching herself as she tips the dinghy. It flips easily, it’d been waiting to all along.

  She’s only under it a moment. The water moves. All of it shifts aside in a tide past her, and she’s in the sun again and breathing. She holds its side and it settles. The water sparkles, wet and blue like an eye, wanting her. If she softens, it says, it will be soft against her. She only needs to breathe in three times, relax, and accept that Anahera doesn’t love her, and never did. It’ll be kind. She sees every curve of Anahera at once, but not her eyes, not their colour or anything at all behind them.

  Her tears disappear into the sea. It shifts at her hips, appreciative. She closes her eyes and tips her head back, giving the nape of her neck to the water. It licks, cooling her. Cynthia doesn’t mind, she doesn’t mind anything. She stops kicking and lets her arms go still. She holds her eyes open while she sinks, to see the blue and the blue getting darker. Her toes are cold, numb, then her knees, her hips, and her whole body.

  The water doesn’t end. She stays loose, with her fingers hanging from her hands, and her hands from her arms like string. There’s no bottom, only quiet. She can’t remember how long she’s been sinking, or feel her toes. Water presses her ears and nostrils. Her lips will quiver open soon, she feels, suddenly, and it will all come in.

  His laughing, a deep noise in the murk like he’s about to choke, but he won’t—she will. She’s going to die—that’s the cold certainty at her toes, what she’s sinking to. She panics, her mouth opens. Water floods down her throat and she can’t close her lips against it, her body’s sucking the liquid down. He laughs on and on, all around her in the water, burning her inside. He’s alive, still so alive. She coughs and she’s sucking in more.

  She kicks, but can’t feel herself moving. There’s too much weight above her. The water’s still, down low. She slaps at it with a hand and fingers herself in the eye. Cynthia kicks, and kicks harder. Then her hands, she remembers them and cups them to pull water down beneath her.

  The water thins, the blue becomes lighter. Her toes return to her feet, and her feet are attached to her legs. She struggles higher and higher, towards the sun. There’s warmth at her head and she moves through it.

  She arrives—slows her limbs and breathes. The water’s shifting gently, and Cynthia can look around and see the surface of all of it. Light and warmth are incredible all over again, and she throws her hands up in the air so the water falls off them and rolls down her arms in droplets. She’ll survive.

  The dinghy hasn’t floated far, and it’s hardly rocking in the water. She swims slowly, and slowly her survival becomes humiliation. They fucked. She’s only moving, like food in bowels. She gets near the dinghy and it’s upside down and still nowhere. There’s going to be a long time waiting, she knows, and after that she doesn’t care what happens. She rests against the dinghy, then tackles it the right way up.

  The paddle’s floated a few metres away, and she settles in to watch it move further. It doesn’t, hardly. She waits hours and it only moves three metres. After a while she’s sunburnt. She’s only got a shirt and a bra on, and there’s no way to lie properly, so she’s red all over.

  Of course, Cynthia knows that else
where there are bellied and pimpled girls who love themselves and are right to; girls who are perfect and enough just as they are. She tries not to think of them. Her stomach’s cooked, searing hot, and she squeezes it tight between her fingers.

  They’d have eaten together. She imagines him with one of his cans in one hand, spooning spaghetti into her open mouth with the other. In Cynthia’s mind Anahera lies supine and he puts more and more in her mouth so it spills all over her, and heaves up and down on her chest as she wriggles—loving it—with her breasts shifting, and her lips spreading wider as if her mouth could hold more.

  Cynthia remembers a noise from when she used to have sex: the wet unsticking of two sweaty bodies coming apart, and the feeling to that sound; the disappointed satisfaction of it being done.

  Anahera and Gordon would have overexerted themselves every time, both being so into sports, and what was Cynthia doing? She was in the boat, waiting, watching nonsense on her phone and dreaming of Snot-head, who was almost certainly dead, even by then.

  After resting they’d have walked back to the beach together, and looked at Baby moving on the waves. He’d have touched Anahera’s arm to send her home, and, sated, she’d have swum through the water Cynthia floats on so glumly now.

  58.

  The yellow boat settles not far away, under the sun, and rocks patiently for several moments, thinking. Gordon’s friend peers through his window at Cynthia in her dinghy, then vanishes and reappears on the deck. The guy shouts something, and waves his arms, then revs his motor and putts closer. ‘What are you doing?’ he yells again, a hand alongside his wide-open mouth.

  Cynthia shrugs, what does it look like.

  ‘Do you want some sunscreen?’

  She doesn’t answer, but he gets some, and throws it at her. It hits hard against her burnt thigh. He’s waiting to see her squeeze and apply some, so she turns away, scraping her raw torso on the bottom of the dinghy.