Mahalia

by Joanne Horniman

  It wasn’t like the time when Matt couldn’t sleep, the time he walked her through the streets, walking off his demons, the time when the black dog followed them. Now it was Mahalia who didn’t want sleep, and Matt longed for it.

  He would kill, he thought desperately, for sleep.

  Eliza appeared, exhausted and rumpled, at his door one night, and said, ‘Do you think she’s going to sleep, ever?’ and then went off again, to put her head under her pillow.

  Sometimes Mahalia woke and didn’t cry. She could pull herself upright using the bars of her cot now, and she stood there and called out to him until he answered, and got up and took her into his bed. But she wanted to stay up and play. Their light was on and off all night.

  During the day he was like a zombie, staring at nothing, not hearing what people said to him. He shopped for food in a daze. Sleep obsessed him. His body ached for it. When Mahalia slept, finally, sometimes during the afternoon, Matt lay on the bed and willed the world not to make a sound that might wake her. He hated any outside noise with a passion.

  Though it was spring, the world threw cold, wet, windy mornings at them. With Mahalia awake and grizzling, Matt tore himself from the black warmth of the blanket covering his head and took her downstairs for breakfast. The house was dark and silent and damp, the worn lino gritty with dirt. Food was short. Matt discovered an egg in the door of the fridge and made some pancakes with powdered milk and the rest of a packet of wholemeal flour he found at the back of the cupboard. They were heavy and flat and chewy, but Mahalia picked them up in her fingers and ate them with great hunger and enjoyment. Her exclamations of delight did little to cheer him up in the grottiness of his morning.

  Later, he picked up all the spare change he had lying around his room and decided to get the last ten bucks from his account to buy food for the rest of the week. He dressed Mahalia in a green nylon jacket with a hood; it was still too big and the long sleeves annoyed her. As he fastened the clips in the front she tried to squirm out of it. ‘You want to stay dry, don’t you?’ he said. ‘Come on, you’ve gotta stay dry’, roughly tugging it down and pulling the strings of the hood closed so tightly that her little face looked trapped.

  The pleasure Mahalia had felt at her rubbery pancake breakfast had gone; she started to grizzle as he strapped her into the stroller and continued to whine as they went out the door and down the street towards town. Wind blew a light spray of raindrops across their faces; Matt tried to shut his ears to her grizzles by concentrating on everything else around him. A car with a faulty muffler burbled along the street; a bicycle whizzed past, its wheels spraying water. Matt put his head down against the rain and watched his feet pound the dirty footpath, and Mahalia’s pathetic cries became a monotonous complaint inside his head, reminding him of his deficiencies as a father. They had rotten food and lived in a grotty old place. He had to wheel her out through wind and rain to flatten his bank account in order to eat. Matt’s foot slipped on a dog turd. He scraped the soles of his sneakers off on the wet gutter but the stench followed him down the street. A red apple with several bites taken from it lay in his path and he kicked it aside. The footpath ended at a laneway and Matt jolted the stroller down into the roadway so violently that Mahalia began to wail.

  ‘Shut up, Mahalia! Give us a break!’ Matt gripped the stroller and the handles bit into his fingers. He lurched the stroller to one side and shook it.

  Mahalia was crying softly now, a pitiful sound, lonely and bewildered. Matt knelt down in front of her and stared into her face with dismay. A line of clear snot ran from her nose onto her upper lip. Her face was damp from tears and the rain; he wiped it gently with his sleeve.

  Mahalia stopped crying and stared into his face. Her eyes were round and dark and steady. We’re in this together her look said.

  ‘Yeah, mate,’ he said quietly. ‘Let’s get this shopping out of the way.’

  10

  Virginia looked after Mahalia one night so that Matt could get some sleep. She slept in his room, so that Mahalia would have the familiarity of her own place.

  Matt crawled into Virginia’s bed and conked out.

  He awoke in the night when he heard Mahalia’s voice, wakeful and happy, talking to Virginia, babbling, imitating the sounds Virginia made, having a conversation with her. He went back to sleep.

  In the morning Virginia staggered into the kitchen with a rueful expression. ‘Boy, that kid can stay up. I think we should try and change her sleeping pattern or something. She just doesn’t want to sleep at night, that’s all. Just where does she get her energy from? – that’s what I want to know.’

  And yet there were times on balmy nights when the house was still and Mahalia slept solidly and certainly, when Matt felt that the house bellied out and contained them all in a firm, floating globe.

  He thought of the way his hands would cup Emmy’s pregnant belly in sleep. It was a natural object: a pear, an egg, a drop of water grown heavy and about to fall. It was architectural: a vault, a dome, a container filled with promise.

  So the old shop held them and rocked them. He imagined the walls curving outwards, the building becoming so globular and light that it could float. When the wind blew it rocked and groaned and stretched its timbers like a ship at sea. He would see it from outside at night, the lights shining out like beacons. Inside it was filled with light and shadows, and Eliza’s purposeful footsteps, and Mahalia’s soft, milky breath.

  Eliza watched him. He could feel it. She watched him through the back door as he hung out Mahalia’s clothes on the line, sitting at the kitchen table, her feet on the rungs of a chair next to her, her hand stilled in the act of pulling back the heavy weight of hair. She turned her head away at his approach and got to her feet, disappearing up the stairs.

  ‘Do you want to take Mahalia up to the swings?’ she said one day, her head in the fridge, rummaging for food.

  ‘Okay.’

  The park was at the end of a narrow street near their place. Mahalia kicked her legs eagerly and rocked the stroller back and forth as they went. She had grown out of the sunhat Eliza had originally found for her, and now she had another one, ferreted out at St Vinnies by Matt this time. It was securely held by a tie under her chin: he had learnt a thing or two about buying clothes for a baby by now.

  They walked down the street slowly, enjoying the rambling country feel of the place. Inhabited almost entirely by people like themselves, it was a place where untidy lives were lived temporarily and happily.

  The timber houses had ancient, flaking paint and stood high off the ground to keep out of floods, for the river was close by. They’d been filled in underneath just anyhow with old doors and windows, to use the extra space. For months after a flood the underneath of the house would stink of river mud. The gardens surrounding all the houses were wild and there were no fences between them.

  Eliza paused between two of the houses where there was a path leading into the garden. ‘Do you want to come in and look?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Matt. ‘Wouldn’t it be intruding?’

  ‘They won’t mind.’ Eliza shook her head and smiled at Matt’s hesitation. She unstrapped Mahalia from the stroller and carried her up the tangled path, ducking her head to avoid branches.

  ‘Permaculture, right?’ said Matt.

  Everything grew in this garden, all mixed together. Paths rambled round beds filled with flowers and herbs and vegetables, all heavily mulched with straw. There were fruit trees growing amongst the vegetables, citrus and mangoes and pawpaw, and rainforest trees as well. Eliza bent down to pick a cherry tomato from a bush, and she squeezed the juice into Mahalia’s mouth.

  ‘Yum, eh, Mahalia?’ She turned her head to say to Matt, ‘I used to live here – for a while.’

  ‘It’s like the Garden of Eden,’ said Matt. ‘Why did you leave?’

  Eliza grimaced. ‘Luurve,’ she said, in an exaggerated way, as if that explained everything. ‘I mean, I was in love here. It didn’t work ou
t.’

  ‘Aren’t you afraid . . .’

  He was about to say, of running into him here. But she understood, without him needing to finish the sentence.

  ‘He left too.’

  ‘Oh.’ Matt found himself not wanting to run into an old love of Eliza’s, even if it was over.

  Eliza smiled and waved to some people in the garden behind the house next door, which was a continuation of the garden they were in, and led Matt around the house and out onto the street again. The park was only a short stroll away now.

  They were the only ones that day in the dappled park. Mahalia was still too small to sit on a swing by herself, so Matt took a seat and held her on his lap, pushing it gently forwards and back with his feet. Mahalia laughed, and urged him forward with pushing movements of her body. It surprised him how strong she could be. She willed things; knew what she wanted to do.

  ‘I’ll probably feel sick in a while,’ he said. ‘I’ve never been able to take swings.’

  ‘Oh, then I’ll take over,’ said Eliza. ‘Just say when you’d like me to take her.’

  She sat on the swing next to them, her long legs pushing her higher with each arc, till Matt thought she might go right over the top of the swing. It made him dizzy to watch.

  Emmy had always swung like that, too.

  Eliza finally stopped and came to take Mahalia on the swing with her. She held the baby firmly across the chest with one arm and with the other held the chain of the swing. Higher and higher they went, till Matt feared for Mahalia’s safety, but she was squealing with pleasure.

  ‘What is it with girls and swings? And girls and horses for that matter?’ he said, when Eliza finally touched ground and propelled a laughing Mahalia back into his arms.

  ‘Oh well, if you don’t know that . . .’ said Eliza. She was panting, and beads of sweat stood out on her upper lip. She licked them away.

  Next they went on a whirly thing, a flat disc of metal that someone had to push, then leap onto at the last moment as the whole thing spun recklessly around like a top. Eliza did the pushing, and Matt sat in the middle and held onto the bar with Mahalia in his arms, but he was dizzy far sooner than either of them were. When it had slowed down enough they staggered away and collapsed together in a heap on the grass.

  Eliza challenged him to an arm wrestle. Although she was strong, he could have won if he’d made the effort, but then something in him simply gave out and his arm collapsed onto the ground. Perhaps it was her lion’s eyes, their slight concentration towards the middle of her face that did it. They never left his, willing him to defeat.

  When they arrived back, Matt took Mahalia to have a bath. She was big enough to sit in a proper tub now, if he stayed beside her and propped her up. She loved to suck on the washer, pushing her face into it the way a dog wrestles with a bone.

  They were nearly finished when Eliza came to the door of the bathroom. ‘You’ve got a visitor,’ she said.

  Matt wrapped Mahalia in a towel and went downstairs. Mahalia was naked and pink, and sucked on her rubber duck. She clung harder to Matt when she saw the stranger there.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me calling in,’ said Emmy’s mother, ‘but you said I could, and you didn’t say whether you had the phone.’ She looked anxious.

  Matt came forward with a smile. He’d never been sure how to address Emmy’s mother so he didn’t call her anything. ‘Would you like to come in?’

  He took her to the kitchen where Eliza was making pizzas. Matt introduced them, hesitating over Emmy’s mother’s name, Mrs Wood. He wasn’t used to calling people ‘Mrs’. He called all his mother’s friends by their first names.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ asked Eliza. ‘It’s no trouble!’ she added brightly.

  ‘No, thank you. I’m only staying a moment.’ Matt offered Mrs Wood a chair and she sat down, smiling quickly up at him.

  She sat awkwardly opposite Matt at the table. Mahalia sucked on her rubber duck and looked at her grandmother gravely, overtaken by Matt’s serious mood.

  ‘I wondered . . .’ said Emmy’s mother, ‘. . . I came to see if Mahalia could visit us some time. On her own. She could stay the night, if you liked.’

  Matt hadn’t expected this. He felt dismayed. He hadn’t minded visiting them, but this was unexpected. He looked towards Eliza, but her back was turned to him; she was tactfully rolling out pizza dough at the bench near the sink.

  ‘I’d rather she didn’t stay overnight,’ he said. ‘She’s not used to being without me.’ He frowned, thinking about it, trying to sort out his feelings, weighing them up against what he supposed was reasonable. The truth of the matter was that the thought of Mahalia going somewhere without him made him panic.

  ‘But I suppose you could take her for a few hours if you liked,’ he said. He thought he could live with that. ‘She’s at the stage where she’s scared of strangers though, and . . . she doesn’t know you very well.’

  Emmy’s mother reached her hand across the table towards Mahalia, who turned her face and hid it against Matt’s shoulder. ‘If she comes to visit us she’ll soon get to know us,’ said Emmy’s mother. ‘Won’t you?’ she added, smiling at Mahalia, who had turned to stare at her with wide eyes.

  ‘Well, I suppose it would be all right – just for a short time,’ said Matt.

  ‘Would later this week do – Friday?’

  ‘Okay.’ Matt felt like a traitor, for Mahalia was sitting on his lap, warm in her rough towel, trusting and innocent.

  ‘All right then. I’ll pick her up. Would ten in the morning suit you?’

  Matt nodded.

  Emmy’s mother got to her feet and said goodbye to Eliza, and Matt walked her to the front door. Afterwards, he took Mahalia upstairs to dress her and, with a heavy heart carried her back down to the kitchen where Eliza was putting the toppings on her pizzas.

  Eliza said nothing to Matt about the visit, but for Mahalia’s benefit, looking into the baby’s face and smiling, she named the ingredients aloud as she placed them on the dough. ‘. . . some tomatoes,’ she said, ‘some capsicum, some mozzarella cheese and – ,’ said with a flourish ‘– a little bit of salami for happiness!’

  Matt tried to see some connection between Emmy with her wild ways and slight, slim body and the plump, staid woman who’d sat in his kitchen; but he couldn’t. Maybe Emmy was adopted, as she’d suspected.

  Then again, Matt couldn’t see any similarity between himself and his own father either. His father hadn’t disclaimed his parentage of Matt, but had never wanted to be a father to him. If Emmy had been adopted, Matt felt his father had un-adopted him.

  Matt’s father had three cacti on his windowsill: a hairy one, a small one like a button, and a double-headed one.

  He put them where they would get the most sun. He’d been told cacti need at least four hours of sunshine a day in order to flower. Matt wasn’t there long enough to see that happen.

  Matt had known his father for exactly a week.

  At least, that was the way he thought of it, for it was the total time they spent together.

  When he was fourteen he’d started asking about his father again. He hadn’t asked since he was five. This time his mother arranged for them to meet.

  On the way down the coast in the train, Matt looked out at the country rolling by and wondered why his mother had never taken him to meet his father on one of their almost annual trips to Sydney to see her friends. He wondered if he should have a name badge so his father would recognise him.

  He was surprised by his father’s soft American accent. His mother hadn’t told him about that. His mother hadn’t told him much at all, mainly because she felt that it was his father’s business to tell him. But his father wasn’t good at doing that. Anything Matt knew he had to gather for himself.

  His father was neat. That and his accent were the most noticeable things about him. He was smaller than Matt, too, and even though he wasn’t very old his hair was grey. He wasn’t a suit-wearer
, he didn’t have to be because he taught at a university, but he wore neat pressed trousers and neatly ironed shirts, with small blue checks mostly. He didn’t do his own ironing; he paid someone else to do it.

  He drove a small flash car – a Saab, but an old one. The plush seats and the swift clean handling of the car through the city streets was unlike the bumpy progress of the old cars along dirt roads that Matt was used to and he felt alien. I hate cars, Matt told himself. I’ll never drive a car, especially not one like this.

  His father’s voice was so soft it made Matt feel loud. He felt loud and awkward and too tall, next to his neat, small father. Matt swallowed his loud, Australian-accented voice in shame and embarrassment.

  His father worked a lot in his study, marking papers and preparing classes; even though Matt was on school holidays, the university didn’t seem to be. So Matt crept around the flat or stayed in his room, trying not to make too much noise.

  The room Matt stayed in was blue, with a neatly made bed, and framed pictures on the walls. He was the loneliest he’d ever been in that room. He lay on the bed and ticked off in his mind the days he was to stay.

  Everything in the kitchen had its place. His father cooked neat meals, and was as fastidious as a cat. The breakfast toast had crumbs so dry they stuck in Matt’s throat.

  They had absolutely nothing to say to each other. Because his father was an academic, learning stuff from books was his thing. He’d asked Matt about school, and Matt had answered politely, hesitantly, but school wasn’t really his thing, and it showed.

  Matt remembered sitting next to him in a coffee shop in Glebe, a place full of smart city people. His father read the Saturday papers. He smiled at Matt when he turned the page, and slipped him some money to go off and get something of his own to read. Matt bought a copy of Modern Guitarist and when he came back with it his father looked at the cover and raised an eyebrow. ‘Do you play?’ he asked, and Matt nodded. ‘That’s great!’ said his father, nodding. Then he went back to his paper, not in an unfriendly way, Matt thought, but because he couldn’t think of anything else to say. And neither could Matt.