The Promise Seed

by Cass Moriarty

  Water.

  Eager to be useful, the boy hurried out of the room and into the kitchen, and returned to the old man with a plastic tumbler of tap water. The old man tried to raise his head to drink but sank back onto the pillows with a moan. Even in the dim light, the boy could see the sweat shining on his forehead. He reached behind the old man’s head and lifted it to meet the cup. The skin beneath his hand was hot and slippery. The old man sipped and then sank back again. He was shivering, his teeth clattering. The boy rearranged the covers, pulling up the bedspread and tucking it under the old man’s whiskery chin. He hesitated, and then touched the old man’s cheek, feeling the warmth leach into his palm. The grey stubble was rough against his fingers. He must have knocked his head; a scab had formed on his scalp at the peak of a thin trail of dried blood. The old man’s swollen eyes opened a fraction before sliding shut again, as though it was too much effort.

  The boy perched himself on the chair beside the bed, willing the old man to wake up and give him an instruction. He sat there for over an hour, his eyes travelling around the dim room, lingering on the faded curtains, the faded prints on the walls, but always returning to the old man’s ashen face, his shallow and irregular breathing creating only the tiniest movement in the bedclothes.

  When a hacking cough disturbed the stillness, the boy’s fear solidified. He watched wide-eyed as the force of the old man’s coughing lifted his torso. He hunched over, struggling for breath, his thin frame wracked by shuddering spasms. The boy rushed to the living room, picked up the telephone and dialled triple-zero.

  21

  The day I escaped from that cesspit they call a hospital, I bought myself a lotto ticket. Told the boy I’d share the winnings with him, half and half, fair and square. Told him I was bloody lucky to live next door to a kid with such good sense. Couldn’t stop telling him how much I appreciated him coming in like that and phoning for the ambulance. Pneumonia takes no prisoners at my age, I can tell you. A few more hours with that fever and the chills and I might not have seen the next dawn. Even told the kid I was glad he skipped school that day. Not that I want him to make a habit of it. Now that I’m well, we can go back to our regular routine of him sitting out there with the chickens and me in here pretending I don’t know he’s there ’til three-thirty comes around.

  I couldn’t get out of that building quick enough. Hospitals are full of sick people. Terrible places. I read in the paper about all those superbugs they have now, so strong that there’s no antibiotics good enough to stop them, and where do you get infected with them in the first place? That’s right, hospitals. Nasty germ-incubating cesspits.

  Mind you, they did get rid of my pneumonia, so I suppose I should be grateful for that. Whacked me straight on the drip, gave me some drugs, and before I knew it I had stopped hallucinating about giant one-eyed jellyfish and was feeling more like my old self. Three days was long enough though. Couldn’t wait to get back to my own house and my girls. I needn’t have worried. The boy had fed them and taken real good care of them for me. They hardly even missed me, stupid chooks. But it was good to hear them clucking around my feet again.

  I’ve only had two experiences with hospitals and neither of them positive. I suppose that’s where my obstinate feelings spring from. The overnight I spent as a youngster wasn’t too bad, but the circumstances that sent me there soured the incident. The other time I was inside those sanitised walls was when Sarah Emily was born, when I was sitting in there minding Edith and marvelling at that baby girl. And I had the same feelings even back then. Seemed wrong to have such a beautiful, precious little life existing in that cold, sterile environment, with all those uniforms and charts and bad smells. And the twilight. Never fully black, never fully lit, always a dim sort of dusk.

  By the time her confinement was up and they condescended to allow Edith to leave with our baby, she was practically pawing at the door. Said she couldn’t breathe in that room and I didn’t blame her. So I took her home to Mrs E and Old Joe.

  Well, you’ve never seen such a palaver. Joe had balloons strung across the front porch, and a big sign Welcome home Edith and Bub in the window. Mrs E had cooked for a cast of thousands, though it was only us and a couple of neighbours who popped in to coo over the baby and tell us how pretty she was. As if we didn’t know.

  I see now what a special time that was. There was a lot of love in that house that summer and into the autumn. That girl was a breath of fresh air. Nobody could get enough of her. And for the first few weeks, that applied to me more than anybody. I was proud as punch that I’d played a part in the creation of such an amazing little creature. Every compliment and murmur of adoration seemed to rub off on me, and for the first time in my life it seemed like I’d done something good. Something worthwhile.

  …

  It couldn’t last, that sunbeam feeling. I should’ve known and I should’ve prepared myself better. I didn’t. And it was a shock. But it seems that no matter how many setbacks and disappointments a person has in life, when that bit of sunshine arrives you greet it like the day ain’t never gonna end. You’re always surprised when the darkness creeps in.

  I remember clearly. It was after Christmas, and Sarah Emily was about a month old. It must have been a Sunday, ’cause I wasn’t at work. It was late morning and the day was heating up. I remember the stripes of sunlight coming down almost vertical through the branches of the old liquidambar. Edith and I were sitting on a couple of lawn chairs out in the backyard, trying to stay under the tree’s shade. That corner was the coolest spot during the summer, up until about noon when even that got too hot and the best option was to sit on the verandah with a wet towel and a fan. Edith was real fussy with the baby, adjusting the muslin cloth over her bassinet and checking that no bugs were hovering. We were quite contented there, the three of us. And then the bub started to fret, you know how they get when they’re hungry and angling for a feed. Edith lifted her out and tried to shush her against her shoulder, but she was rolling her little head this way and that and snuffling into Edith’s blouse. Edith was trying to stall her, muttering something about not wanting to feed her out there in the open for any man and his dog to see, and the baby was working herself into quite a state. And then she started up with that newborn wailing sound, and something in that sound stopped me dead. I was overcome, all dizzy-like, and had to shut my eyes. For a moment there I could’ve sworn that this was Emily, my baby sister Emily, making that noise. With my eyes closed, I could picture in my head, clear as day, my mother in front of me, holding Emily to her breast. That sound, that mournful cry, it did my head in. I must’ve let out a wail myself, and the next thing I knew I was up and out of that chair and making for the house, putting as much distance as possible between me and that sound.

  After that, it was like something had switched on somewhere deep inside my memory and for the life of me I didn’t know how to go about shutting it off again. Every time the bub cried or started fussing, my insides seemed to close in. I tried to hide it at first. I tried real hard. I couldn’t even understand how I was feeling myself, so I knew there’d be no chance I could explain it to Edith. At first it was gradual. Little things. Those mewing cries the bub made, like a tiny kitten, them I couldn’t cope with. Seemed to dredge up something from the past, something bubbling up inside me like black oil, and no matter how I tried, I couldn’t put a lid on it. Then it was the smell of her. Oh, I don’t mean only the bad smells, the dirty nappies and the stringy lines of sick down Edith’s back. I mean even the good smells: her skin, like slightly sour milk … her hair, sweet and tangy … her breath when I held her, so warm … the whole of her smelling like Edith when we made love and her breasts were full, dripping and sticky. When she first arrived, those smells had been like heaven to me; I could inhale so deeply and yet never get enough. But then, when the noises were starting to get on my nerves, the odours did too. I can’t explain it. She sounded and smelt … too much somehow, too new,
too fragile, too baby-like. Thinking on it now, I realise that doesn’t make a lick of sense, and in fact probably sounds kind of crazy. But at the time, the feeling was creeping up on me in this slow, insidious way, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

  I began avoiding her. Used to be I couldn’t wait to get over from work so I could sit with her awhile, just sit and hold her in my arms and watch her sweet face. But it got so I not only avoided that precious time, but I didn’t even want to do my duty. Edith would ask me to hold her while she took a shower or fixed us something to eat, and I’d come up with a hundred excuses why I couldn’t do that. My hands were dirty, or I smelt bad after work. I thought I was coming down with a cold and didn’t want to pass it on to her. I needed to go help Old Joe chop the firewood.

  At first, no-one seemed to notice. Mrs E was always hovering around in the wings, and she never tired of nursing the little one. But one day, when she was out shopping for groceries and Joe was in his workshop, and Edith and I were alone with the bub, my reluctance stuck out like a sore thumb.

  It was one of those rainy days you get where the clouds have been gathering all day without doing very much, until suddenly they decide to let loose a deluge. The bub had been fretful and Edith reckoned she was developing a fever. Edith didn’t feel that good herself actually, complaining about sore breasts and a headache, and Mrs E was worried she’d got herself a dose of milk fever, which was one of the reasons she’d gone out to the shops, to get some cabbage leaves. Anyway, Edith handed me the baby like it was the most natural thing in the world and said she was going off to have a lie-down, and before I could open my mouth to protest, she’d gone.

  Now I don’t hold much by all the doctors nowadays talking about anxiety and depression and all the modern ills of the world, but what I felt that day was akin to a panic attack, or what I’ve heard about them anyway, and I haven’t experienced anything like it before or since. I sat there in the chair like I’d been struck dumb, that baby girl gazing up at me like she was placing her entire trust in me, like I was the one person that stood between her and the rest of the trouble in the world.

  My breathing started getting faster. I could hear myself almost panting. My heart was racing and I could feel the blood pulsating through my body. Sweat started beading on my forehead, and my hands and feet went real cold and clammy. My breathing got so hard I thought I might hyperventilate or even pass out. I couldn’t tell you what it was that was having this effect on me – Sarah Emily was lying there calm as could be; she wasn’t even fretting anymore. But it was the whole look of her, her smell, the weight of her in my arms. I began to feel that I couldn’t stand to be near her one minute longer. Plus I was shaking so bad I was worried I might drop her. I got up, real slow, and put her down on the floor. Simply put her down on the cold, hard floor. I backed out the door and down the stairs and caught a bus back to my bedsit and got under the covers. And that was it. I just left.

  It wasn’t good, I can tell you.

  ’Course, it was worse, much worse, when Mrs E arrived home with the groceries to find the bub thrashing about on the floor and not a parent in sight. She dropped her bags right there on the doorstep – broke a good number of the two dozen eggs she’d bought – and rushed in thinking that we’d all been kidnapped, with the little one left to fend for herself. Apparently Edith had put earplugs in to get some shut-eye, and Old Joe’s hearing wasn’t all that great, as I’ve said, so God only knows how long the poor thing lay there. According to Mrs E, she was so red in the face from screaming she almost couldn’t breathe, and her limbs were all uncovered from squirming about. Mrs E told me later that it was a wonder she didn’t catch her death.

  Once she’d quieted the baby and calmed herself down enough to think straight, she was mighty frustrated with Old Joe for being out there in the yard and not hearing a damn thing, and she was none too pleased with Edith either, for going off to bed with earplugs in (What if there’d been a fire? she kept shouting. You’d all be burnt to a crisp!), but the person she was angriest with, of course, was me. Not that I blame her, not one little bit.

  But as bad as Mrs E’s reaction was, and let me tell you, it was pretty bad, Edith’s manner was even worse. She didn’t yell or scream or tell me off for leaving the way I did. She didn’t even cry. When I finally saw her the next day, she only gave me this blank look of incomprehension, almost of resignation. As if she’d been expecting something like this from me all along, and now I’d fulfilled her low expectations. Or like she’d suspected there was some flaw in my character, and so she wasn’t at all surprised when I revealed my true self. She accepted what had happened with an inevitability that was heartbreaking to see.

  It had taken all my willpower to go back the next day. Mrs E’s threats got the better of me and I went back to face the music. I got off the bus at Edith’s stop, and I tell you, walking along that road towards their house was about one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. You know how when you put two magnets together the wrong way, and they repel each other? That’s how I felt. Every step was an effort against an invisible force trying to push me back in the opposite direction. By the time I got to the stairs, I practically had to haul myself up by the handrail as if I was climbing a mountain.

  The feeling got stronger, worse, when I went inside. I stood there in the living room, staring at the faces staring at me. I couldn’t speak. How could I begin to explain what I didn’t even understand myself? Mrs E was jabbering on and on about the poor bub and my irresponsible actions, and how now we were parents we had to put the bub first, and all the time Edith was sitting there silently on the sofa, with Sarah Emily in her arms.

  I didn’t say much. I don’t even remember much of what I did say. I know I said sorry. I apologised to Old Joe, even shook his hand. Shook his hand! Like we were in a meeting or sealing a business deal. He seemed a touch shell-shocked himself, poor guy; must’ve been the ear-bashing from Mrs E. She was still yakking away, and I was so embarrassed I stared at the floor mostly and said yes ma’am and no ma’am. And then she delivered me an ultimatum. I looked up at her, finally. She had her hands on her hips and she was obviously waiting for my response. I expect she thought I was going to fall on my knees and beg, or sob into Edith’s shoulder and ask to be forgiven. I can’t even recall now what she was demanding, but I knew, with a certainty in my bones that was chilling in its ferocity, that I couldn’t stay in that room, in that house, one moment longer. Every fibre of my being was telling me to get as far away as humanly possible from the house, from Mrs E, from Edith, but most of all from that baby.

  And so I mumbled some meaningless tripe, stole one last glance at Edith, sitting stony and resolute as she held our daughter, and I walked out that door.

  And I never went back.

  Now that I’m older, I see that I was absolutely terrified to love that child. Frightened to allow her to stoke that flame in my heart. Seeing that trust in my own child’s eyes, I remembered Emily, and how loving my sister had ended so badly. How I had lost her.

  I told myself I was shielding my daughter. Or was I shielding myself?

  22

  The black chick, half-grown, its feathers a scrawny mixture of downy fluff and scraggy pinfeathers, followed the boy around the yard like a small dog. Every so often he would squat in the dirt and gather her into his arms. She would sit like this for minutes at a time before the stirring of some insect in the grass would claim her attention and she would flap her wings and struggle to be free. The boy petted the few smooth, glossy feathers coming through; her claws tickled his skin. He dug into the soft ground under the mess of the abandoned turkey mound, unearthing a buffet of wriggling brown worms and black beetles. His chick couldn’t peck fast enough, her head bobbing up and down in an attempt to catch the bugs before they escaped back into the soil. He liked bringing her into his own backyard; he thought of it as a mini hen holiday. Different ground to peck at, new territory to expl
ore. He was careful to watch that she didn’t stray too far.

  The boy sat under the shade of the verandah awning, his legs extending into a patch of sunshine beyond the steps. Although spring had begun, the house still held the chill of winter. He focused on the columns of numbers in his homework book, chewing his pencil until the tip was in stringy shards. He’d decided he disliked maths. He didn’t like the way there was only ever one answer. Even when he knew the correct answer, he hated having to show how he had arrived at it. He much preferred to read. But his teacher had finally had enough of him losing his homework and not completing tasks in class, and she had phoned his mother and spoken sternly to her about his lack of application. The boy had crouched behind his bedroom door, listening. He could hear his teacher’s voice echoing through the line, and his mother’s equally forceful responses. He had a bad feeling as she hung up the receiver. He made a dash for the open back door but she was too quick for him, grabbing his ear so hard he thought she might pull it off.

  You listen to me. Who is it that pays for that uniform? All those goddamn school books? Who goes out to work to put food on the table? Me, that’s who. So you’d better pull your socks up, do ya hear me? Start fucking listening in class, all right? And do your bloody homework! I don’t need some jacked-up teacher with a stick up her arse balling me out and telling me how to raise my own kid, got it? Now piss off and finish whatever it is you’re supposed to be doing.