Desert Fish

by Cherise Saywell

  ‘Wait here, Gilly,’ she said breathlessly. ‘I won’t be long.’

  When she reached him I watched them tread water, and once or twice they turned and waved at me. Sometimes my father would dive down to where I knew the water was brown and opaque. My mother searched the surface and then disappeared after him. I watched and waited, wondering if they would resurface. They always did.

  After a while they headed for the other bank. I moved to the water’s edge and trailed my fingers in the shallows. There were willows shading the place where they had swum to and only paddocks and cattle beyond that. There was nothing of the town on that side.

  My father lay face down on the gravelly shingle, to rest. My mother smoothed her hands across his back and pushed her fingers into his wet hair and then lay down beside him. I knew they would stay there dozing until they were dry and hot and ready to swim back. Until then, her eyes would be closed. Behind them would be my dad’s face. When I dream, she told me, it’s always your dad I dream of. I pushed my feet into the coarse sand beneath the towel. I wondered if they’d forgotten about me.

  Remembering that now, I pressed my feet into the mattress, agitated. Outside the blue of the sky was hard and bright as a gemstone. I could still picture my mother pushing her hands into my dad’s hair that way she did. And then I saw her with the envelope that Pete had left, sliding her hand into it and pulling out the notes, telling me, ‘I’ll get your ticket, Gilly. It’s time you went to him.’ I was swelling by then. I was visibly changed. She knew how he should see me. She wanted to be sure he wouldn’t send me away.

  I shifted in the bed, sore between my legs and unable to get comfortable. I rose and went into the corridor. There were only a few babies in the nursery. Mostly in the daytime their mothers took them into their rooms, or into the courtyard where there was a tree and a shaded bench and the nurses would bring you tea.

  The bathroom was empty.

  I filled the sink first. I tested the water like they showed me, and I went and got her.

  A nurse found me again, like the first time. I can’t remember who it was. Not the one with the red hair. Maybe the one with the lipstick. The only clear recollection I have is of her sharp intake of breath. Then being pushed out of the way and the baby being snatched from the sink.

  ‘Go back to your room.’

  ‘But I –’

  ‘Just go back to your room.’

  ‘But … What’s the matter?’

  Someone else was in the room now, a midwife. She was mouthing words to the nurse. ‘Quick. Get her out of here,’ she said.

  Another nurse had come in. It was the one who’d asked me if I was pleased about my baby. ‘I’ll do this,’ she said to them, already leading me away. ‘Best you just rest for a while,’ she murmured to me.

  ‘But I need to make a call. I need to phone my husband.’

  ‘I think you need to stay in your room.’

  ‘Can I phone him after dinner?’

  ‘Alright,’ she said. ‘But you need to tell us when you do.’

  The call box was close to the nurses’ station. They would want to be sure I wasn’t going near the nursery.

  ‘I didn’t mean to hurt her,’ I said.

  The nurse put her hand at my elbow.

  ‘She’s not hurt, is she?’

  ‘I’ll take you back to your room.’

  I looked about, vaguely, for the baby, but they had taken her away. They didn’t want me near her now.

  I wondered if I was in trouble.

  The nurse still had my elbow cupped in her hand. I let her steer me along the corridor.

  ‘I’ll be okay when my husband comes,’ I said, thinly.

  She smiled and I saw that she didn’t believe me. She was looking about her, probably to see what was happening with the baby. I couldn’t hear anything from the nursery. I had no idea where they’d taken her.

  They said she was strong but what did they know? They didn’t know anything about her.

  Of course I didn’t go to phone Pete like I’d told the nurses I would. I didn’t have a number. I waited until after dinner, when the lights were turned down on the ward but bedside lamps were still on. When they said it was okay to use the phone I called Nora. I wanted her to come and get me. I thought if I could go back to the house I would get a clearer picture of what I should do next.

  But it was Pete who answered the phone.

  ‘Gilly?’ He sounded different. Less sure of himself.

  I didn’t hesitate, or improvise. I felt myself unfolding, the decision making itself. ‘You have to come and get me now, Pete.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ he asked.

  ‘There’s only me,’ I told him. ‘I’m in the hospital, but I need to go now.’

  ‘Nora told me,’ he said.

  ‘Did she?’ I was genuinely surprised.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Just now.’

  I fingered the faintly lined paper Nora had given me with her number on it. ‘Where have you been, Pete?’

  ‘Working at a mine. In the desert.’

  We paused for a moment: the yawning silence was frightening. There were too many things it was dangerous to say.

  ‘Well anyway,’ I said, ‘you have to come get me now. And you mustn’t worry, Pete, I’ll be on my own.’ I almost felt his relief in the silence. On my own, I thought, he would want me again.

  ‘Are you sure about this, Gilly?’ he said. ‘I have to go back to my job. It’s a long way away. It’s in the desert. I can ask Nora to come and get you.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ve taken care of everything, Pete. But the thing is, I have to go now. Today. I can’t explain. But I think …’ I felt my heart begin to skip. ‘It’s just, I have to go quickly.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

  I rested my head in the hand that wasn’t holding the receiver and I thought of the desert and felt a wave of relief. ‘My things are still there, in my room,’ I told him. ‘They’re in the blue suitcase under the bed. You should bring them for me.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘And Pete, you should come quietly,’ I said. ‘Come late.’

  ‘Gilly –’

  I didn’t give him a chance to interject. ‘After midnight is best. I’ll be ready.’

  I told him where to find me, and then I listened to him there, breathing quietly down the line. ‘Okay, then,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you soon.’ It felt safe then to hang up.

  Soft laughter came from the desk along the corridor where the nurses sat. Everything will be fine, I thought. If they’re laughing, that baby must be okay. They wouldn’t be laughing if I’d done anything really awful. The best thing was just to get away.

  The night lights painted a yellowish glow across the ceiling that seemed to colour rather than illuminate the hall. Even though it wasn’t dark, I felt I couldn’t really see what was around. Along the hall I heard a baby whimper and somebody hushed at it, softly, in the bleach-bright night.

  thirty-four

  Pete stares out at the red flats, the saltbush and the dust. He breathes noisily and his breath smells strong and stale.

  My hands are splayed across my thighs. Even though my nails are bitten close to the quick there’s a rim of dust lining them above the pink varnish. It looks so foolish now, that pink – my girlish optimism. I’ve not had my hands in the dirt and I’m surprised that it has managed to find me, to embed itself beneath my nails, to spread itself against my skin.

  I’ve still got all those things from the bag in my lap, the toothbrush, the notebook, the shaving cream and the envelope. The key.

  ‘Put them away, Gilly,’ Pete says.

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Please put them away.’

  ‘I want to keep them here. They make me feel stronger.’

  ‘Don’t make me say it, Gilly.’ Pete rubs his hands along the tops of his legs and then folds his arms across his chest. The heat
in the car is suffocating but at least it’s not too bright. He leans back and when he sees I’m not going to put them away, he speaks.

  ‘Thing is,’ he says, ‘I left the toothbrush because I needed a new one. The shaving cream was nearly finished. It wasn’t worth taking. I bought some more. The notebook: I had nothing written down that I wanted to keep, so I left it. I’m sorry, Gilly. It’s as simple as that. And that money – I don’t know what your mother told you but I left it to cover the rent arrears. For leaving without giving her notice. When I went, it was because it was time to go. And if I’d had any idea you were going to follow me, I’d have told you not to. I’m sorry about the baby. I didn’t mean to leave anything behind.’

  ‘But why did it happen with us?’ I ask him.

  ‘Oh Gilly. I thought … It was just one of those things. I don’t know what I was thinking. Whatever it was, I wasn’t seeing us like this.’

  ‘God, you’re so weak,’ I spit. ‘You’re all over the place. You don’t know what you’re saying. If you didn’t see us like this then why did you come and get me from the hospital? I told you I was on my own. There was no need to do it. What was I supposed to think?’

  ‘That’s a bit rich coming from you, Gilly,’ Pete counters angrily. ‘It’s not like I set out to deceive you. I left a few bits and pieces that you made too much of. But you … what have you left behind? At best, you’ve left that baby there, with no-one. And at worst … well I don’t know what the hell you’ve done. You won’t say.’

  ‘Why did you come for me, then?’ I ask. ‘Why did you bring me away with you?’

  My head hurts, my forehead is slippery with sweat and I know I’m sick. Really sick. The ache I felt earlier has settled into a sharp crawling pain, like a contraction, low down and gripping me now. It’s not going to go away, it’s only going to get worse.

  Pete says nothing.

  ‘Pete?’

  ‘Does it matter, Gilly? I got you, didn’t I? I came and got you, and now we’re here, where you wanted to be.’

  I keep my eyes to the front, looking out at the rusty landscape, the sharp outlines and the hard sky. There’s nothing but the truth now. There’s no place left for anything else. I have to be ready. ‘Just say it, Pete.’

  He sighs and rubs at the knuckle of one hand with a dirty thumb.

  ‘It’s too late to change anything,’ I say. ‘What’s done is done. You might as well just say it.’ I turn my head to him without lifting it because my neck hurts. I rest my eyes on him, squinting to bring him into focus. ‘Why did you come and get me from the hospital?’

  He whispers. He sounds like someone else. ‘Because of Nora. When she registered you in my name, I knew she wasn’t going to back down.’

  I picture the hospital bracelet. I remember how I felt, having his name.

  ‘I came home hoping you’d be gone. And when I got there Nora said she’d named me as the father of your baby. She was angry with me, see, for leaving her in the middle of my mess,’ Pete says. ‘She wasn’t going to let me run off. I came to get you because if I didn’t, Nora would have. She wouldn’t have left you there. I suppose I felt like I owed it to her.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And then, when you said you had to leave, I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know what you meant, Gilly, or what you’d done. I came and got you because it felt …’ He searches for the right thing to say. ‘It felt more dangerous not to. Either way, I didn’t really have a choice. I didn’t want you, and I didn’t want the baby. I came to get you, Gilly, because I didn’t feel I had any other choice.’

  It’s said now and our baby is there between us. He has acknowledged her and abandoned her at the same time.

  Pete turns and stares out the window. His fingers are curled tightly into his palms, knuckles bursting under the skin. He trembles.

  I’m too hot and dry and spent to cry. I press my fingers at the soft empty flesh of my stomach and I fill up with a feeling for my baby who truly belongs to no-one now. I can see her when I look out at the untidy red sand, the flat sky, I can see what she was like the last time I put her down and the milk rises in me, drying my mouth and dampening my shirt.

  ‘I did it for you, Pete,’ I say, quietly. ‘I left her there so I could be with you.’

  ‘I know.’

  With his head down, jaw tight, I can see that we have reached the same place, but he is far away from me. I feel sorry for him. He can’t bear the sort of attachment I promise. But I can’t help the way I’ve hung on to him. I am heavy with the things I want, coated in a film of something I can’t wash away.

  Pete runs his thumb back and forth over his knee and says nothing.

  After that we just sit there. There are no moments to savour. No threads to hang on to. There’s no going back. A fly buzzes about me, hovering over the place where the milk has dried and soured on my shirt. At first I flick at it, but then another one joins it and I give in and just let them crawl there.

  thirty-five

  I’ll tell you something I know about dying. After your breath is gone, your heart retreats until it sits high up in your chest, almost in your throat. Like it’s trying to reach your mouth. It would like to speak now that it can rest, but how to get the words out? It’s as if it’s tired from all that beating, stretching and pushing, all the work of staying alive. I don’t know where I learned that. In a book, I suppose, or a magazine. Something I happened to pick up, like the one with the fish. It’s not something that ever worried or haunted me. It’s just something I know.

  The river gathered gently around my feet and then my ankles as I stepped into it. When I was in deep enough, I lowered my body and began to glide. I felt strong. I could swim a whole length of the pool. And this was my place, this river with its rock pools and sandy beaches where I found the best places to swim and brought my mother and father to them.

  Soon I was far enough out to see where the water was drawn downstream, to the weir, and to the rocky shallows beneath. There was a slipway there, for canoes, and a series of tiered pools – fish ladders – descending like hollow steps, from the bulkhead of the weir to the rapids below. At the bottom of each one was a hole through which the water was sucked, quick and furious. They were there so that fish could make their way from the rapids to the deeper pools upriver. Eels and cod. Trout, even. All the fish I’d never seen.

  Swimming like that in the cool brown water felt easy when I could see the weir to my left and the bridge upstream. The bank where my mother and father lay looked so close. I had even been able to see my mother’s fingers stroking my father’s hair. But when I got into the middle I felt the tug of a colder current at my feet. I stopped to tread water, my arms making busy arcs each side of me. But it’s so hard to keep moving in one place. I turned onto my back but you have to keep things going in the water, don’t you? To keep yourself there. You don’t just float. You can’t really rest. As soon as I stopped moving there was a wash of water over me. I felt myself slipping into it.

  I began to swim again but my limbs dragged me down, the bank felt further and further away. I could see them there, my mother and father, lying on their stomachs, facing away from the water, towards each other, perhaps dozing. I couldn’t tell. I knew now that it was too far for me to reach, but I did not call out. Instead I tried to turn back, crawling across the current, swallowing water when I turned my head to gulp air, my arms flopping against the surface of the water.

  I must have tried to shout at some point, I remember how feeble my voice sounded. My father didn’t hear me; nor did my mother. A breeze grazed the tops of the rushes that reached out of the water to my left, where the sandy beach gave way to rocks. As I began to sink beneath the surface I felt the weeds about my feet. I tried to push my hand into the air like drowning people do. I called again and again but soon I felt the river in my hair, and the ghosts of the weeds gathered around my legs. It was not dying I was thinking of, even though I knew I could go no further. Instead, I wondered how I w
ould swallow all that water. Would I breathe it through my nose and ears? And would it hurt the first time I did?

  The last time I went under somehow someone noticed me. He was on an inflatable raft, one of the teenagers from upriver. He grabbed a handful of my hair and then got hold of my arm, hoisting me onto the raft.

  I had my breath back by the time he got me to the bank, even though my legs were trembling. I thanked him and made my way over to where my mother’s towel was, exactly as she’d left it. On the other bank, my parents were rising now, brushing the grit from their thighs and stomachs, calmly making their way into the water. Even where I sat, I could hear their laughter drift when they stopped and tussled with each other in the water. I decided I would not say anything about what had happened. I let the air come into my lungs, I put my fingers against my chest and felt the rise and fall of it, recalling the sensation of the water pressed hard as hands against it. The sky was bright and sharp and there was no breeze now. The river slipped by quietly, as if nothing had happened.

  I think about that now, as the last of the day’s sun draws the moisture from me. How the things that we couldn’t say before must rise to the surface and leave us before we stop working altogether: memories, feelings, secrets, like living things, bursting with air.

  Pete reaches over in front of me where the water bottle lies. He takes the cap off and pushes his tongue into the thread for the drops that might be clinging there, that he might have missed before. He sobs then. But I don’t care. I don’t care about the water or the heat. Or about whether anyone’s going to come and find us.

  I think about that picture in the magazine. I reach for it, smoothing the image out in front of me. I imagine the shrunken pool like a salty pond, then the rush of rain, washing away the sand, hollowing out the flats between the waterholes to make a river. And then the fish rising: gills opening to the fresh new water. Moving again. I wonder how this can be a true desert when rain can come and make a river out of a few pools, and fish can live there.