Mahalia

by Joanne Horniman

  He remembered how she used to whisper to him in the night, in the dark, when she thought he was asleep. Her mouth against his back. So soft that she thought he didn’t hear. I love you, she’d said, so faintly the words were like an expelled breath. When he was with her he’d become as transparent as glass. The words had drifted onto his back and fogged it up, like a warm breath on a cool window.

  Having her so close again was almost unbearable. He remembered things he’d tried for months not to think of.

  The first time they’d made love (the sky through the trees, a twig against his buttock, an ant crawling along his arm, but who was noticing?), Matt had stopped suddenly and looked at Emmy, and said brightly, ‘Hey, do you want to have a baby?’

  He’d meant it as sarcasm, as a warning, as a hint that perhaps they should use something, but Emmy’s face was serious when she said, ‘I don’t mind.’

  Emmy’s face, when he was close to her like that, was different to the face he’d known before. It was her original face, the face she’d had before she’d even existed, before there was any world for her to exist in.

  ‘I don’t mind,’ she’d said, and from then on, though they didn’t speak of her, Mahalia was searched for beneath their questing fingers, underneath their skins. Mahalia was something they could do with their bodies that no one else (or no one, not even themselves) had any control over.

  Once Matt found his body patterned with the imprint of grass, he had lain so long with Emmy asleep on top of him, her head on his shoulder – a whole afternoon. A tick wandered along her thigh, drawn perhaps by the whiteness of her skin and the warmth of her naked body.

  They were both so thin that their hip bones clashed. Emmy tasted saltily of the sea that he felt sure she must come from in another life, and when he stroked her freckled back he imagined colours playing beneath her skin, rose pink and sky blue, moving in waves, and a silvery iridescence pulsating in time with her breath.

  He was relieved when she slid away from him and off the bed, to stand in the doorway of the caravan. She went outside, and he followed a few moments later with Mahalia and found her looking out towards the distant hills. The rain had cleared the air and made everything sharply defined – the hills, the high wisps of white cloud, and the leaves on the trees. Even Emmy’s face in profile was so clear against the blue of the sky that Matt felt he could reach out a finger and run it down the outline that separated Emmy from the rest of the world.

  When they lived here in the van, Emmy had rubbed her expectant belly with oil; he remembered the shape of it, heavy, like a raindrop about to fall. Or like a piece of fruit, her bellybutton the place where the stalk had come away. They had both been expectant then, expectant with hope and full of idealism.

  Now, against the clarity of the sky, she said: ‘I was too young. We were both too young. We shouldn’t have had her.’

  Tears spurted suddenly and unexpectedly into Matt’s eyes, blinding him. ‘Don’t say that,’ he cried out, ‘Don’t say that!’ Mahalia, startled by the anguish in his voice and the sudden tension in his body, started to wail. Matt turned his face away so that Emmy couldn’t see him; his nose was dripping suddenly and he wiped it away with the back of his hand.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Emmy. ‘I’m really sorry.’

  Matt said, ‘I’m not. I’m glad we had her.’ His love for Mahalia was so pure and heavy that he thought he’d faint.

  He caught hold of one of her feet; she stopped crying and her toes curled up with pleasure as he grasped her foot firmly. The weight of her in his arms reassured him. ‘Let’s sit down,’ he said.

  He and Emmy sat cross-legged on the ground, facing each other. Mahalia squirmed out of Matt’s grasp and went away to explore.

  ‘There’s no chance of us getting together again, is there,’ said Matt. It wasn’t a question.

  Emmy shook her head. ‘It’s gone past that.’

  ‘I know.’ Still, Matt felt sad. He glanced across to where Mahalia was picking up stones and looking at them. She was the one he had to think of now.

  ‘You should have seen her, the first time she walked,’ he said. ‘I might easily have missed it, but I was there.’ He smiled at the memory. ‘She was holding herself up with this bloody washing basket and pushing it along. And then she saw me and let go . . .’

  He felt the beginnings of tears in his eyes but he blinked them away. He refused to cry.

  ‘I’m sorry I missed all that,’ said Emmy. ‘But I’m back now.’

  Matt nodded his head grimly, staring at the ground as he spoke. ‘I just want you to explain,’ he said slowly, ‘why you went away.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ said Emmy.

  ‘Going down to stay with Charlotte – you know – my godmother – really helped me. I could tell her things I couldn’t even tell you.’

  Matt looked up at her. ‘Like what?’

  A defensive expression appeared on her face; Matt was startled to see that she was afraid to tell him.

  ‘What?’ he repeated gently.

  Emmy’s expression became determined. ‘Well, like when Mahalia was born I felt really ashamed because I didn’t fall in love with her the way you did. She was just this little bundle that cried and ate and pissed and wanted too much from me. And you’re supposed to love your baby, aren’t you? Everyone says so. But Charlotte reckons that’s just a myth. She said she didn’t fall in love with her second baby till he was about a year old. Lots of women feel like that, she says.’

  ‘And now you feel better about her and you want her back,’ said Matt hoarsely. Emmy didn’t reply.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry you got depressed and couldn’t handle having her. And I’m sorry I couldn’t help you more at the time but you never really said what you were feeling. I don’t know. I thought you were just tired from looking after her or something, and I tried to do my bit.’ He got to his feet and went over to look out at the valley laid out below.

  ‘So what will you do with yourself?’ he asked, turning his head. ‘Any plans?’

  ‘Yeah!’ Emmy came over to him, her hands in the pockets of her jeans. ‘I want to go back to school. Do Year 12.’ She swept her arms out wide, embracing the whole valley that stretched below them like a model landscape. ‘And then – the sky will be my limit – I could go to uni, become a vet, or a famous racehorse trainer . . .

  ‘I’ll live with my parents for a while,’ she said, more soberly, ‘while I finish school. Staying with Charlotte – my godmother – was great. Helped me work out a lot of things. Do you know what? I was wrong in thinking I was adopted. Charlotte says that Mum and Dad tried for ages to have a baby, and then finally, when Mum was forty-two, and had given up all hope, she got pregnant. Charlotte says that’s why they always fussed over me too much and made me feel stifled. I always hated how old they were compared with everyone else’s parents . . .’

  She caught sight of Mahalia, who was sitting on the ground putting stones into an old plant pot she’d found.

  ‘Hey, Mahalia!’ Emmy called. Mahalia looked up, and Emmy ran across to her and crouched in front of her. With a mischievous look on her face, Emmy began to tickle Mahalia’s bare sole, and then walk her fingers up Mahalia’s leg. ‘Incy-wincy spider, coming to get you . . .’

  Mahalia watched, smiling, mesmerised. Matt felt the familiar wave of pain pass through his body and reach the top of his head. Emmy could charm anybody. And if she thought she could just come back and take Mahalia away from him . . .

  His world swung in an arc.

  Blue. Green. Brown. The red of Emmy’s shirt.

  He swooped and seized Mahalia, holding her tightly against him. She squawked with surprise. Her breath was sweet and intoxicating.

  Emmy’s face. Dark sprinkling of freckles. Eyes, looking into his.

  No crying. His breath shuddered. Emmy’s cool fingers were against his cheek. Her white pale slender fingers.

  ‘Don’t look like that,’ she said, sounding frightened.

&
nbsp; ‘Like what?’

  She didn’t reply, just kept looking at him. Mahalia wriggled to get free and he released her onto the ground.

  Matt stared into Emmy’s face earnestly, willing her to understand how he felt. ‘I am sorry you went through a hard time after she was born. But I was the one who looked after her when you went away and I did a good job of it. I’m good at looking after her. It’s one thing I do really well. I won’t let you take her away from me!’

  Emmy laughed, embarrassed by his vehemence.

  ‘Well, I am. I know your parents think I’m hopeless, but . . . look at her.’ He gestured towards Mahalia. ‘She’s healthy . . . and happy . . .’

  ‘But I’m her mother!’ Emmy put her hands on her hips.

  ‘So? Nothing will change that.’

  ‘I could take it to court!’

  There was silence. The whole world seemed shocked. Then cicadas started a rhythmic thrumming in the trees. Matt looked over at Mahalia; she had filled the plant pot with stones and now she was tipping them out onto the ground again.

  ‘And you’d probably win,’ he said, quietly. ‘Just because you are her mother. We both know the way things are set up. But you don’t want to do that, do you?’

  ‘No,’ said Emmy defensively.

  Matt felt that they’d made a mess of things. From now on he could only salvage something. He thought of his father and the long trail of uncertainty that could be drawn through a life. ‘I want Mahalia to grow up knowing both of us,’ he said. ‘Spending lots of time with both of us. That’s what a kid wants. But you went away and she’s used to living with me,’ he said. ‘She’s too young to go chopping and changing now.’

  Emmy looked squarely into his eyes.

  ‘So that’s why she should stay with me,’ said Matt.

  ‘Emmy?’ he said, trying to get through to her. ‘Let her keep living with me. For now, anyway. I don’t want to take her away from you – I’d never do that . . . But she’s her own person. Getting more that way every day. Maybe one day she’ll want to go and live with you. I think that’s quite likely.’ A lump filled his throat. ‘I could handle that.’

  ‘Could you?’ said Emmy, and laughed bitterly.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Matt. Not having Mahalia with him was as unimaginable to him as his own death.

  Emmy looked at him steadily. ‘Well, I suppose you deserve her more,‘she said. ‘At least, a lot of people would see it that way. But I can’t just go away and forget about her, you know. I’ve thought of nothing else for months. I need to be able to have her sometimes. More than just sometimes. I want her to be a real part of my life.’

  The words hung between them. Some words, like music, require space to make themselves felt.

  ‘Yes,’ said Matt at last. ‘I know. But can we go on as we’ve been doing, for now?’

  ‘Okay,’ said Emmy. ‘For now. But I want to work out something we can all live with.’

  Matt nodded. For now. That would have to do.

  Mahalia’s cries interrupted them. She’d fallen over, and she wanted attention. Matt strode over to where she sat wailing on the ground and, scooping her up, returned to Emmy. All three of them sat down on the ground together.

  ‘She likes horses, too,’ Matt said. ‘Don’t you?’ he added, addressing the last remark to Mahalia.

  ‘Horse!’ she said bouncing up and down on his lap.

  Emmy grinned reluctantly at him. ‘Remember’, she said, ‘when you held her for the first time? The smell of your armpit was her first experience of the world.’

  Matt felt for a long, optimistic moment that even though he and Emmy mightn’t be together they could somehow do the best for their baby, somehow make it all work. He knew this was just the beginning of years of compromise and negotiations and juggling their time with her, but he wanted to make it work, for Mahalia.

  He reached out quickly and took Emmy’s hand. It was fine and weightless and pale. He glanced briefly at the constellation of freckles across her nose, and without passion, but for old time’s sake, he kissed the top of her hand quickly and laid it against his cheek for a moment before letting it go again.

  Because Matt had loved Emmy, with her freckled, luminous, magical body; he had loved the way she hadn’t given a damn for anything, the way she had climbed onto the roof of the church tower and kissed and kissed him. The way she’d fallen into the river just to know what it felt like. He had loved the way she’d said to her parents, ‘We’ll just love it, okay?’

  He remembered how they had believed that loving Mahalia would be enough.

  19

  Matt packed up their things, glancing round as he did so and imprinting the place on his memory, for he knew he’d never return. Then Emmy drove them back to town; she said she wouldn’t stay, but would come and see Mahalia tomorrow. Matt stood and watched her drive away, Mahalia on his hip. Mahalia waved until the car was out of sight. Then Matt found his key, picked up their meagre belongings, and opened the door. When it swung shut it echoed with a comforting familiar sound.

  No one was at home. Inside was cool and dark and quiet. Matt made his way up the stairs to his yellow room and set Mahalia down onto the floor. He made up her cot, ready for bed (soon she would be needing a real bed, and her own room). He opened the door out onto his balcony and leaned over the railing; he could see Virginia way down at the end of the street, recognising her familiar shambling gait before he noticed her face beneath her hat. She saw him watching and waved. Matt waved back, then noticed the tangled windchimes he’d thrown into a corner of the veranda. He hung them up again, where they resumed their bony pensive sound.

  It was all so ordinary. So ordinary and familiar and good.

  He went downstairs and looked in the cupboards at the food situation. There were dried lentils and pasta and potatoes and baked beans in the cupboard; milk and cheese and yogurt and a squeaky fresh half-cabbage in the fridge. He was in the kitchen making dinner when he heard the front door bang shut.

  Every one of her footsteps resounded in his head as she strode from the front door, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and down the tiny hall to the kitchen, eight, nine, ten.

  The footsteps stopped.

  Matt turned around from the stove.

  Eliza smiled, staring at the floor, not at him. She grabbed a scrap of raw cabbage from the chopping board, crunching it between her teeth. ‘So you’re back,’ she said.

  Weeks later, on a cool sunny day, Matt and Eliza set out on their bikes. Even though he’d got his permit at last and started to learn to drive, Matt had brought his bike in from his mother’s place. With Mahalia in a baby seat on the back, they rode out of Lismore the hard way, up the steep hill that led to the coast.

  They rode to a rainforest remnant for a ‘small forest walk’, that Matt knew of. There was a grassy park outside the forest, and the rainforest was tiny, not big enough to get lost in, not really big enough to even walk in for very long. It wasn’t like the rainforest where Matt had grown up. It was a tame forest, a forest for tourists, to give them a taste of what the ‘big scrub’ that once covered the north coast had been like.

  When they arrived in the car park with their bikes, Matt saw a man and a boy getting out of a car. The boy was about fourteen or fifteen, and they were obviously father and son, they looked so alike. The car was an old sports car, a single man’s car, and something about them made Matt feel that perhaps the two didn’t live together, that they were on a visit with each other. Matt took Mahalia out of her bike seat and unstrapped her helmet as he watched them walk away into the forest.

  There was a playground in the park, and instead of going off on a walk straight away, he and Eliza decided to rest and let Mahalia play there.

  ‘You’re thoughtful,’ observed Eliza, narrowing her golden eyes against the sun. She lay on her back on the grass, lolling like a big cat.

  ‘Am I?’ said Matt. He sat beside her, cross-legged, and tore a leaf into strips. ‘What did you mean when you sa
id that you thought we’re all a long way from home?’

  Eliza looked astonished. ‘I must have said that ages ago! Fancy you remembering that!’

  ‘I remember lots of things.’

  ‘When was it?’

  ‘That time in the kitchen when I played the guitar and you sang. What did you mean?’

  ‘You do have a good memory.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It’s just this feeling I have that lots of people aren’t in the place where they really feel at home. You can spend a lifetime searching for it. I never truly felt at home with my family – I was always way different to them, even though I love them. Maybe for lots of people the only place they’ll ever be at home is in heaven. But I like to feel that I’ll find a home somewhere here on earth.’

  Mahalia, who had been playing a little way off, came over to them and flopped onto Eliza’s lap. Eliza reached into her bag and took out an orange and peeled it with her fingers, giving a segment to Matt and one to Mahalia.

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Eliza, ‘I feel at home for brief moments, in a particular place, at a particular time. Like now. Maybe that’s all you can hope for.’

  Matt smiled across at her. ‘I feel at home when I’m playing with the band,’ he said. He thought of the other night when he’d played his first gig with them at a pub. He thought he’d be nervous in front of a crowd of people, but once the music started he’d flowed right with it.

  The father and son had come back from their walk now, and sat together on the grass under a tree, cross-legged, next to each other but not facing. Like Matt, they had each picked up a leaf and were tearing them to bits, perhaps as an aid to concentration. There was an intimacy between them that Matt envied.

  It hadn’t been great, that time he’d seen his father. But Matt felt that he was old enough now to make overtures he couldn’t make before, be the first one to make a move, even if his father couldn’t. Just as long as he didn’t expect too much. It was the gesture that was important. In his head he composed the letter he’d write to his father, telling him about Mahalia, sending him some photos, perhaps.