Little Wing

by Joanne Horniman

  They spent a week living in the van. In that time, Emily felt that they were isolated and alone. Perched up there above the world didn’t feel like paradise. It felt like exile. She was alone with the baby in a hostile, unforgiving world.

  It had been a relief to stay with Matt’s mother. Julie had come to visit, saw at once how impossible it was with a baby, and insisted they come to live with her.

  Her place was on the side of a mountain covered with rainforest; the only sounds were the cries of whipbirds, or the soft booming coo of native pigeons.

  They had a whole huge bedroom and the use of the rest of the house. There was a washing machine and a proper kitchen; things that Emily had once taken for granted. When she’d first met Matt, she’d thought the place where he lived was strange after the suburban brick house she’d been raised in, because it had been built out of second-hand materials, but it had all the comforts you needed.

  The house had a wonderful bathroom with bright, handmade tiles. Emily would lie in the bath and look out a door and see bush, and sky. Most of the time they spent there was bliss. Matt was a most attentive father; he picked up the baby when she stirred at night and brought her to Emily, and the look on his face when he gazed at both of them made Emily feel cherished.

  But her parents never visited. Her mother knew that Matt lived far out in the hills in what some people in town called a hippy house, and it was the sort of place her mother would never set foot in. Even though Julie offered to take her and the baby into town to visit them, Emily was too proud. And she was happy up there in that house; she didn’t feel the need to go anywhere.

  It was Matt who’d wanted to move into a place on their own. ‘We can’t live with my mum forever,’ he said.

  And so they moved into town, to the flat at the back of an old house, into what Emily later thought of as the white room.

  The room was very white. It was an enclosed verandah, and had a length of frosted glass windows along the front. In the morning it was so bright it was like being in the glare of a spotlight. And in the afternoon, when the sun shifted away, the room shaded into near-darkness, speaking to her of loss and loneliness.

  She spent almost five months in that room. At one end was a small kitchen; at the other a shabby bathroom. The laundry they shared with the old woman whose house it was in – it was under the house, and had an unsavoury odour of damp soil.

  Emily rarely went out; she let Matt do all the shopping. Her few friends had drifted away. If she did go out, there was the sense of everything being different. There seemed to be no skin, no protection between her and the rest of the world. She felt no connection with anything.

  There was only a profound sense of loss. She would lie for hours and listen to Matt play softly on his guitar. The baby would at least grow up with music. Blues is the music that heals, he’d lettered on the side of his guitar case. She wondered if the music might heal her. It was a bass guitar, its notes low and thrumming, its rhythm like a heartbeat.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Matt would ask, nestling down next to her on the bed where she spent nearly the whole of each day.

  ‘Me? I’m fine,’ she’d tell him. He seemed to believe it, and she longed for him to say something to indicate that he knew she wasn’t all right at all.

  She’d hear the locks of the guitar case click shut. Snap. Snap. Matt would pick up his guitar and escape, off to jam with his friend Otis.

  Her father came to visit, by himself. He seemed to enjoy sitting on the sofa with the baby on his lap, a cup of tea going cold on the floor beside him. After that, he often popped in to see them on his way to golf, or meetings of his car club. Emily felt sure her mother knew nothing of these visits.

  Then one day she was there at the door beside him.

  She came into the kitchen and stood while Emily made them cups of tea. Emily was able to remember that they both took milk. She removed the teabags, searched for a saucer to deposit them on and settled for the edge of the sink, where they sat leaking mud-coloured liquid. Emily’s mother looked around. ‘I wanted more for you than this,’ was all she said.

  The baby was asleep that day in a basket in the living room, and they sat around her and talked softly and awkwardly. The baby was often asleep; she was a good baby. Emily had been astonished by the strength of her purity and calmness. It scared her, the responsibility of looking after such a precious creature.

  Emily’s father peeped into the basket and turned back the edge of the blanket. ‘They say you should never wake a sleeping baby,’ he said softly, with an impish twinkle, ‘but it’s hard to resist, isn’t it?’

  That day Emily, too, wished the baby wasn’t asleep – it might give them something to look at and talk about. But she didn’t wake, and Emily’s parents left after a while. She felt for a long time the cool kiss her mother gave her on departing.

  Emily found that she was good at pretending. She could get dressed up when she had to, and go out, and pretend cheerfulness and competency. ‘Yeah, in the end I decided that I couldn’t be bothered with breastfeeding,’ she said to Matt’s mother, on a visit to her place one day. ‘With a bottle, Matt can feed her, and I don’t have to worry about having enough milk.’

  She energetically chopped fruit for a fruit salad, tossing pineapple skin into a pile. She laughed (she could still laugh!). ‘I’m thinking of taking up belly-dancing!’ she lied. ‘Can’t do that with boobs full of milk.’

  Matt’s mother looked at her with concern, and later asked her, ‘Are you sure you’re coping okay? I mean, it’s all right not to, you know.’

  ‘God, yes,’ said Emily. ‘I mean, she’s so good – haven’t you noticed? And Matt does heaps.’

  Emily called it her big front, the way she was able to fool people. She felt that nothing was real any more. And above all, she was not real.

  She worried that something would happen to the baby. There was so much that could go wrong. Car crashes, house fires, drowning. She feared her child would get caught up in some disaster, if not now, then at some later time in her life. Or she could simply die in her sleep – some babies did – or become ill. Emily felt helpless in the face of all these imagined catastrophes. She was inadequate, a bad mother.

  She cared for Mahalia mechanically. She changed nappies, wiped pink goo onto her bottom, made up bottles, in ceaseless repetition. Nothing gave her any joy. Always, there was the knowledge that she’d wanted more for her baby than she was capable of giving her.

  Then she became afraid that it was she who would do harm to the baby. She put all the knives in a drawer and tried to pretend they weren’t there. She threw Matt’s Stanley knife, which had such a tempting deep, sharp blade, into the bin and then retrieved it and hid it under the sink cupboard.

  She first cut herself on the arm one day when Matt was out taking the baby for a walk. Alone in the house, she felt drawn to the cupboard where she’d hidden the Stanley knife. In the dim afternoon light in the kitchen it looked so harmless at first, with its red plastic handle and short, sloping blade. Staring wonderingly at the knife, she felt that nothing she did would matter. She wondered whether any action she performed would have a real, tangible result.

  The first cut had been the most difficult, and the most thrilling. It had taken ages for her to steel herself into drawing the blade across the pale skin of her inner arm, just heavy enough to make a fine cut a few centimetres long. The sting of it had exhilarated her, and she’d stared at the thread of blood that had appeared. When it began to spill into drops she took a wad of tissue and mopped it up, her heart beating rapidly, afraid that she might have cut too deep.

  By the time Matt came home she was on the bed, feigning sleep. He was used to her sleeping in the afternoons, and excused it because everyone knew that babies tired you out.

  Afterwards, on other days, she cut herself again. It was winter, and she was able to cover her arms with long sleeves, and managed to conceal the marks on her arms from Matt. Each time she gave in to temptation and damage
d herself again she hated herself even more.

  Finally, in August, after days of wind had buffeted the house so relentlessly she thought she would scream, she decided that she would go. Matt and the baby would be better off without her. Matt did most of the care of the baby anyway. He did it with love, smiling and talking to her and looking into her face with adoration. And the baby smiled back at him, squirming her body with pleasure. The closest Emily came to happiness was when she saw them together.

  She packed her bag when Matt was out one afternoon. She’d already rung Charlotte and asked if she could stay with her.

  It was better if it was done quickly.

  Matt looked shattered when she told him that she was going. But he walked her to the bus station, holding the baby in a sling on his front. She tried not to think of the expression on his face as the bus pulled away.

  12

  The Indian family were packing up their picnic. It was almost nightfall. Emily watched them depart, lugging their baskets and empty pots, the women reaching out for the hands of the children, the men smoothing back the sides of their hair and dusting off the seats of their pants. A lingering child zipped down the slippery slide one last time and ran to catch up with the others.

  A figure appeared through the trees. It was a silhouette, lit up round the edges from the rays of the setting sun and dark in the middle. As it got closer Emily thought it looked like the man she thought of as the shark man, but she didn’t take much notice. The figure seemed to hover, uncertain, hands in pockets, and then veered off to one side, only to reappear a little later. She saw him pause and regard her, rather like a dog unsure of its welcome, and then he disappeared from her line of vision as she was staring steadfastly ahead, refusing to acknowledge his presence.

  She only noticed him again when he landed like a large, clumsy bird on the end of the seat she was on, making the wooden slats shiver with his weight. She didn’t want to get up and go straight away; she would rather not have to react to him. She thought he might just leave anyway.

  And then he was right next to her, having slid somehow along the seat. He sighed, a soft, resigned sound. She caught his odour, which was sweetish and sickly, rather like musk sticks.

  His hand, heavy and meaty, fell on her thigh, as though by accident. All this time he had said nothing, and Emily had not looked directly at him. She had a feeling of disbelief; that she must be imagining it.

  In one swift movement she got to her feet and flung his hand from her leg. She stood rigidly, unsure of what to do next, holding up her hands stiffly next to her shoulders in a gesture that said, Enough!

  And still without looking at him she walked steadily away, out of the park, and up the suburban street, where there were at least signs of life and safety. Occasional families were arriving home in cars from which fractious children were emerging with arms laden with gifts.

  Emily had no idea where she was going; she just walked, aware that he was following her some way behind.

  13

  When Emily had boarded the bus the night she left Matt and the baby, she’d shut all thought from her mind. She couldn’t afford to think, or to feel.

  She found a spare seat halfway along the bus and shoved her shoulder bag into the overhead locker. It was nightfall and the tinted glass in the window was close to black. Emily stared through the window. There was a blur that might have been Matt’s face, and then thankfully the doors swung shut and the bus slid out of the station. She retreated to a place inside herself, aware only of the glare of the overhead lights and the irritating beat of old pop songs on the driver’s radio.

  There was a woman sitting next to her. ‘You going far?’ she asked Emily.

  ‘Yes. Sydney.’

  ‘All the way! Holiday?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m going down to my daughter. Just as far as Coffs.’

  Emily smiled politely and stared out the window. Then she got up and pulled a fleecy jacket from her bag, folded it, and put it against the glass and pretended to sleep. She did fall asleep, for when she next came to, the woman who’d been sitting beside her had gone.

  It was a long night. Emily shuffled off the bus at various stops, splashing her face with water in anonymous rest rooms and bowing her head in front of the mirror so that she wouldn’t be confronted with her own face. She preferred to imagine that she didn’t exist, that this wasn’t happening to her. In the bright glare of a fast-food outlet she unexpectedly caught sight of herself reflected in a plate-glass window and was shocked by how okay she looked. She had to look again to make sure that it was actually herself, and not some other curly-haired, short-skirted girl.

  There was a boy watching her. She saw him as she moved away from the window. He was dressed in jeans and a hooded top, and had the hollow-cheeked gaze of someone perpetually hungry. He devoured a hamburger with absent-minded ferocity; when he’d finished he screwed up the paper and shoved it in the bin.

  Emily returned to the bus and as she sat down noticed him coming up the aisle. He disappeared into a seat further up. After the bus pulled out, someone plonked down into the empty aisle seat beside her. He sighed, and said, ‘What’s your name?’

  Emily’s body stiffened. She didn’t reply, ignoring him, hoping he’d go away. He said nothing more, just settled in and sat beside her in the darkened bus as it rushed through the night, occasional car lights appearing like searchlights and illuminating their faces.

  After a while the boy sighed again and settled down as if to sleep, his head falling onto her shoulder as though by accident. She pushed it gently away, but it fell sideways again.

  With the weight of his head against her shoulder, Emily wondered what to do. She couldn’t bear the thought of having to do anything – of confronting him, making a fuss, risking some kind of scene, having the lights come on, being the centre of attention. She sat dully and stared out of the black window. The boy started to snore, lightly and evenly. He smelt of sweat and cigarette smoke and fried onions. When she leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes he settled more solidly against her, sliding over to accommodate her new position.

  He reached out and took her hand.

  And Emily let him hold it. It was a soft, trusting, needy hand, and she found it strangely comforting. She left him like that, with his hand in hers. She didn’t know if she was comforting him, or if he was comforting her. Perhaps they were comforting each other. Resting her head against the shuddering windowpane, she closed her eyes.

  She woke at dawn and he was gone. She sat up and adjusted her clothes, as though people were watching her. And then they reached the city, where Charlotte stood waiting to take her to her daughter’s place for breakfast and a shower before going up to the mountains.

  14

  Emily walked through the streets with the shark man following at a distance. She turned and caught a glimpse of him from time to time.

  She rounded a corner and a church reared up in front of her. It was as imposing as only a Catholic cathedral can be. Cars were parked all about it, in the street and car park. A few latecomers hurried through the doors, clutching the hands of their children.

  Christmas Day Mass.

  Emily stood in front of the building and stared up. Behind it the sky was navy blue – not quite dark yet. Emily took a breath, and exhaled. She had not been inside this particular building but she knew exactly what she would find inside.

  It would be all light and dark. Pools of light and the candles throwing shadows. The brown polished wood. Splashes of colour like jewels. Everything shiny and burnished – the people too. Children slicked down with comb marks in their hair, dressed in their best. She saw it all: the shuffling, the rustle of hymn books, the discreet throat-clearing, the music swelling and receding, the scuffle of people kneeling for prayer. The sign of the cross. There would be teenagers smirking, surreptitiously making fun of the proceedings, secretly disbelieving.

  And it occurred to her that she could walk right in and b
e a part of it. She could belong. She could go into the church, stand in line for communion, shuffle forward, put out her tongue and swallow. She could steal into the intimacy of the confessional. She could do it all.

  For a moment she wanted to. She wanted to find the child she once was, the girl in the white frock with scratchy lace, and the pure white never-before-worn socks and the shiny black court shoes. If she could go back to then and start it all again . . .

  But starting again wasn’t possible. She wasn’t even sure she did want things to be different. She didn’t want to regret anything.

  She walked quickly away down the street the way she had come. Stopping in front of the shark man she said to him loudly, ‘If you keep following me I’ll call the police.’

  She walked back to Charlotte’s place. The car was back in the drive, and the lights were on in the house.

  Emily quickened her step. ‘I’m home!’ she called, as she let herself in.

  Four

  1

  Emily cannot tell where the process of getting better started. Perhaps it was the day she felt trapped in the shopping centre, the day Charlotte helped her buy the toy horse for Mahalia. Or it may have begun further back, when she met Martin and Pete, and slowly started to feel part of life again. Or when Charlotte came into her room with the logbook that her father had posted up to her. Or the evening she stopped in front of the shark man and told him to stop following her.