Baby

by Annaleese Jochems

  He coughs, he thinks he’s thought of something. ‘You could never be on television,’ he says, excited again and gesturing with his knife. ‘You are not flirtatious.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Cynthia says, ‘and I lack practical skills.’

  ‘It’s more than that,’ he says.

  ‘Yeah, I lack other things as well.’ Having observed the repetitive swell of the water, Cynthia turns back inside, to the table. ‘I’m not always good at following through on stuff, and sometimes people think I’m boring.’ She sits down again, where she was.

  He follows her, and sits too. ‘It’s not boring, exactly,’ he says. He looks at her thoroughly, trying to think of a word more precise. Then, thinking harder, his head shifts slightly so he’s looking out the window behind her head. His fingers flex around the knife. ‘Hmm,’ he says, then he gets up, and takes it with him to the toilet.

  She hears him in there, loud like a horse and humming. Then he stops. ‘Cynthia?’ he says.

  ‘Yes?’ she answers, sweetly. She gets up and moves the slat back in the ceiling. Standing on the table, she struggles to lift herself up, and inside. The first time she doesn’t make it, and twists her ankle when she lands back down on the table.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ he says. He recommences peeing, and after that, humming. He’s lost the tune and he stops and starts. ‘Cynthia,’ he says again.

  The second time she struggles harder with her fists and wrists, and gets herself rested midway through the hole on her elbows and belly. She wriggles her hips and struggles forward. ‘Yes, Gordon,’ she says when she can breathe again. Her voice is muffled and echoing. There’s not much room in there, or light. She can only lie on her belly, and see nothing, but she throws her hands out and forwards.

  He stops peeing.

  ‘Yes?’ she answers again, puffing, in case he didn’t hear her.

  He hums, deliberately ignoring her. She wriggles her hips forward, and throws her hands around, then hits them. The weights. She clutches them, but they’re tied together and the rope is nailed down.

  The toilet door opens. He says nothing, but she can hear him breathing, standing in the doorway. She pulls her feet up, out of reach.

  ‘What are you doing, then, Cynthia?’

  ‘Sorry,’ she says.

  ‘What?’

  The nail won’t budge. She can’t see the knot to untie it.

  ‘Cynthia, how safe do you think it is up there? That is frail wood.’

  She doesn’t answer. She’s chewing on the string, but she can’t get through it. She should have taken a knife from the drawer.

  He knocks on the wood under her. ‘Excuse me, what are you doing?’

  She feels where the string’s tied around the weights, it’s tight. ‘Gordon,’ she says down at him. ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Oh, good, for sure.’

  Then his hands are pushed up, through the hole in the ceiling. One of his blind fingers hits her thigh. She’s careful not to move it, as if she hasn’t noticed. She grabs a weight and pulls as hard as she can. It feels like something’s about to snap, but that might be her arm. She stops, and touches the nail and the string around it. It’s hammered in at the centre of the knot, not all the way in—the nail doesn’t hang through the bottom of the ceiling, but enough that she can’t pull it out. She takes one of the weights and bangs it against the nail, from one side then from the other.

  ‘Cynthia!’ he yells, and whacks the ceiling under her so it shudders.

  ‘Yes?’ she says, still banging at the nail. It’s loosening. She hits it from each side, trying to enlarge the hole. Soon, she can take it between her fingers and tilt it in different directions. The wood’s old. She spins it in circles, each time pushing it further outwards so the circles grow. Then, she can squirm it up and down.

  It comes out smooth. She lifts the weights up, the big tied-together mass of them, as carefully and quietly as she can, and shuffles to reorient herself, so her head’s at the ceiling-hole.

  ‘Gordon,’ she says.

  He looks up. His teeth are bared, and his good eye squints meanly. ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘you are unhinged.’

  She lifts them, and plonks them onto his face. He falls with a thud to the floor. He’s won’t be dead, not that easily. She half falls, half clambers onto the table, and lands on her knees and chest. On the floor, his neck’s bent and his head’s propped up against the table-pole. One side of his face has collapsed completely, and only his bulged eyeball looks as it did earlier in the morning. Cynthia doesn’t waste any time, she gets on her feet, squatting above him. Then takes his knife and stabs him three times in the chest.

  The blood doesn’t gush, it seeps. Twice the knife doesn’t seem to go in properly, it just hits bone, but the third time she feels it move past that, into something soft.

  She drags him by the feet through the door and onto the deck. His head lifts and falls, banging against the floor the whole way. He’s heavy, but she doesn’t rest. Anahera will be back any moment. She pulls him up to the side of the boat, then lifts him over the edge so he’s face-down and his head’s hanging towards the water. His knees are crimped up, and his feet are set on the floor. She pulls his shoulders over, and from there the work is easy. She gets a knee between his legs, and hoists the rest of him off the edge and into the water. One of his bare feet kicks out when he falls, and he floats. His head, hands and legs sink lower than the rest of him, so his back seems to balloon up and curve down into the water. It settles around him, and gains colour. His centre discharges a hazy red cloud, brownish and disappearing.

  She can’t have Anahera swimming through his blood, so she gets in after him, and grabs him by the arm. It’s twitching. He’s half sunk and hard dragging, the water’s against her, but after minutes and minutes she gets him around the side of the boat.

  61.

  There’s blood on her shirt, so she takes it off and uses a clean patch to smear around the red on her arm. She throws it out the window, and sits down for a breather in her bra. Anahera will be back soon, and Cynthia would like to be doing something relatable. Gordon’s gone, so she skips putting on a new shirt and gets breakfast. Nutri-Grain. Before pouring it, she remembers the knife on the floor. She stops, and takes it outside to drop into the sea.

  Anahera’s only metres away, treading water and staring. All that’s visible of her is her head, and where her hands push the water away in ripples. Cynthia shouts, ‘Hello!’ as brightly as she can, and bends casually to slip the knife into the water, where it can stay.

  Anahera doesn’t reply, or come closer, but Cynthia can feel her eyes. She wishes she still had the knife in her hands, so she could stay bent, and drop it again. ‘Hello!’ she yells a second time.

  ‘Hi,’ Anahera says back, and when Cynthia looks up she’s swimming forwards, but slowly, not even kicking her feet.

  Cynthia’s plan was to be sitting down, with a spoon on its way to her mouth when Anahera arrived. Then she wanted to look up, as if surprised. Now that’s all ruined—before even touching the boat, Anahera says, ‘Where is he?

  Cynthia stands, still waiting, with the tendons stretched in her legs, before realising that the question’s already been asked. ‘What?’ she says.

  ‘He said not to worry, he was going to make it okay with you.’ Anahera grips the ladder, and begins climbing up.

  ‘I think he ran away,’ Cynthia says. ‘Before I woke up.’

  ‘He had a knife.’ Anahera’s standing beside Cynthia now, damp and smooth in her togs. ‘I thought it would be alright.’

  ‘Did he?’ Cynthia remembers his blood, and the wet noise of his mouth when she dragged him and his head banged on the floor. ‘Maybe he’ll go back to his girlfriend in Germany.’

  Anahera doesn’t shift or blink. After a long moment she shoves Cynthia aside and dives back into the water. It’s still brown with his blood, and the murk reforms quickly after her body’s cut through it. Cynthia waits, but there’s nothing. The air’s windless
and the water stills. There’s no sound but her own breathing.

  Then in the distance, screaming. Anahera’s head’s bobbing up and down twenty metres away. She stops and sobs, then she’s silent. Cynthia can’t make out her eyes or nose, just her hair hanging wet over her face like a curtain. Her head’s small and isolated, lifting and falling like a toy in the water.

  She shifts to face away from Baby, and after twenty minutes Cynthia goes into the cabin and finds the bear in his bag, to comfort herself. She tears the plastic away gently and touches her nose to its soft face. She’ll give it to Anahera later, maybe tomorrow. The heart on its belly is made of silk, which Cynthia thinks is real. She reads the words sewn there, Forever and ever, trying to forget Anahera’s head, silent and caught in the water’s moving.

  After a while she sits the bear down and goes back out to stand on the deck. Anahera’s spreadeagled on her back now. Her arms lift while her legs fall, each wave moving under her body in parts. Cynthia stands there, looking sometimes at her, and sometimes at the ocean or sky. The blood vanishes, and the water’s clean again. Then, Anahera swims back.

  After climbing the ladder, she wipes the hair off her face. Her eyes are red, and her teeth bared tight. She says, ‘We got Nutri-Grain. He wanted Nutri-Grain.’ Her hair drips.

  ‘Cool,’ Cynthia says.

  ‘He was good to me when I was your age.’ Anahera pushes past and lays out two bowls on the kitchen bench. She takes up the whole kitchen and doesn’t even let Cynthia pour her own milk. Cynthia holds her bowl and looks into it. All the pieces are floating. Some aren’t wet, because they’re sitting on top of other floating pieces. She lays her spoon on them, and applies the tiniest amount of pressure so they absorb fluid. Then she spoons a single piece into her mouth. She sucks the sweetened milk out of it, and lets it soften into mush. ‘I saw him looking at you a lot of times,’ she tells Anahera, ‘in a way I didn’t think was appropriate. A sexist way, actually.’

  Anahera hasn’t touched her own breakfast. She says nothing.

  ‘He always turned to face you. He’s like a dick you only saw when it was hard. But I saw him all droopy and evil, from behind.’

  Anahera swallows in a way similar to choking. Then, ‘What do you want to do?’ she says.

  ‘Go back to the island.’

  Anahera can’t have any spit left to swallow, but her throat’s still moving.

  When Cynthia was younger, only months ago, she wanted to become an animal, eating, fucking and wild. Now, though, it seems she is one, and wild isn’t it. Animals move as slowly as humans when they’re comfortable. She stands and goes to find a sweater.

  The pink one. She sits wearing it with the last few Nutri-Grains in her mouth, sucking milk. Her dream again—barer now—Anahera licking her forever in a way that will give her something better than cumming, and Cynthia licking back, again and again till it isn’t even tiring. On the island.

  62.

  Cynthia watches the distance between them and the land. She feels Anahera propelling them, against the water and through it, and she says, ‘You know he’s just a silly old thing that escaped from the meat factory.’ Anahera looks sideways, away from her, and keeps paddling. Cynthia looks that way too, but there’s nothing there.

  If Gordon climbed out of the water, and appeared again, she’d leap on him with her mouth wide open and chew right down his body, starting at his head. She touches Anahera’s arm. ‘Someone wants to buy your thong. The pink one.’

  Anahera looks back at her, like she can’t remember.

  ‘The pink one.’

  Anyway, might they not make love? Cynthia looks up and watches the clouds moving. It’s not hard to see two merging into one. Anahera might lie down on the beach, and Cynthia will crawl along the sand to her. If the wind blows and she gets grit in her mouth, Cynthia will swallow it. She’ll arrive to Anahera with a clean, smooth tongue. The clouds continue to merge. Cynthia looks away from them, to Anahera, and when she looks back they don’t seem to have shifted.

  Anahera’s hair is mostly settled in the calm air, and her shoulders are soft like the hills behind them. Her eyes are dewy and glinting, deep. Water surrounds and lifts them, shifting through blues into greens, and now Cynthia knows how far down it goes. Anahera looks past her, over her shoulders, and paddles in regular, strong strokes. The bones and muscles in her face are unmoving, set.

  There’s only a short slice of sand at the edge of the island, and at either side of it are sharp rocks and trees balanced precariously on cliff edges. Closer, and the water lightens. The tide pulls them in.

  63.

  Anahera forgets to shift the dinghy from the water, and Cynthia follows her into the bush. The air glows green with leaf-filtered light, and fades into moss and darkness lower down. Sun pierces through the canopy, falling on Anahera as if God’s just opened his eyes and noticed her walking through Cynthia’s love. She moves in deeper, quickly. Cynthia watches her step easily over roots and trees, away and into the centre of the island, to where Toby must still be.

  How must it feel to be in her body? The trees are high and noisy with birds, but in her new way Cynthia doesn’t feel below them. ‘Forget him!’ she shouts. ‘We both know he’s nothing.’ Anahera doesn’t hear, and walks faster.

  There’s a damp earthy smell, and Cynthia stops to breathe and touch the bark of a tree. Her throat had been feeling taut, but it’s okay now. Soon she’ll push forward. If the bush hurts her it doesn’t matter, she only needs to reach Anahera’s body with her own.

  For now, she sits on a log to rest.

  Encircled by gently leaning trees Cynthia is in her own small room of dappled light. The log is covered in dewy, airy mounds of moss. Cynthia thinks of Snot-head with his wet little nose. Wherever he is he’ll be loved. Cynthia is giving Anahera space, which is what she needs, and while waiting she feels beautiful. Blond. She’ll give Anahera time to tire herself out, then catch up with her. They’ll go back to the dinghy together.

  For now, she shifts her head from one side to the other, resting it. Time passes and the trees are silent. A small winged bug lands on her wrist then flies away. She doesn’t notice.

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you Nick, for every draft you read and every tangent you waited to hear the end of. Thank you so excruciatingly much to my class (2016!), for talking about Cynthia as if she were a real person before she was even a proper character, and for being such a team. Thank you very much to my teachers: Emily, Pip, Anne, Robert and Ellie. Thank you very much also to my earlier teachers: Beth, Ms Evans and Jill. Thanks enormously to the people at VUP, Holly in particular. Thanks Fergus and Tracey. Thank you Verna and Denis Adam. Thanks James Daly! Thanks Jona and Danielle. Thank you Kirsti, for helping me grow up, and thank you everyone I studied with at MIT. Thanks Huntleigh. Thank you to my family. Thanks Mum, and thanks Dad.