Mahalia

by Joanne Horniman

  ‘You’re starting to look sharp,’ said Matt. ‘You after someone or something?’

  ‘Let’s go for a walk,’ said Otis, giving Matt a smile that told him he wasn’t going to let on. ‘Won’t be long, Auntie!’ he called, and they let themselves out the front door.

  ‘My life is shit at the moment,’ said Matt. ‘Ever since Emmy left . . .’ He shoved his hands into his pockets, wishing his jeans weren’t stiff with grime. I have to go to the laundromat, have to get things together, have to stop wasting my time, get a job, write to Emmy; got to make it all WORK!

  The night dog, Voucher, came along the street and ran up to Matt, tail wagging. ‘Hey,’ laughed Otis. ‘This dog knows you! Where you live, eh, where you live?’ he asked the dog. Otis had a way with dogs; he swore they talked to him.

  Eliza’s ad for the room had said friendly household. And Eliza was friendly. She picked Mahalia up and crooned to her, and told Matt to help himself from the veggie garden that she’d also mentioned in the ad.

  The veggie garden was a raised bed in the middle of a concrete space at the back of the building, and contained mostly herbs, plus a few frilly lettuces and a single tomato plant.

  After a long day at the Con, Eliza dumped her bag on the kitchen table and waltzed on her bare feet out to her plot, where she squatted and weeded and watered until dark. She had a compost heap in the corner that she cared for as tenderly as the garden itself.

  But, friendly as she was, Eliza wasn’t often at home. Matt felt at times that he and Mahalia inhabited the entire dark building on their own. The shadows sometimes spooked him. It was tedious looking after a baby, and he thought of Emmy, often. He thought of her mouth as it was when he first met her: generous and smiling. He refused images of her as she had become after Mahalia was born, when her forehead creased into a frown and she didn’t smile much at all. But memories were relentless, and sometimes he just had to get out of the house, so he walked, not really caring where. The movement made him feel better.

  One day, late in the afternoon, he found himself at the place where Eliza was a student. It was a former high school in the centre of town, two tall ramshackle brick buildings in an asphalt car park. Fig trees and camphor laurels provided shelter, so Matt sat on a seat underneath them. Graffiti on a wall of the building asked the passer-by to SUBVERT THE DOMINANT PARADIGM. It also said EJACAYSHUN FOR ALL, NOT JUST THE RICHÉ, and WHY SO MANY POOR? Mahalia chewed on her fist and grizzled; she was getting her top front teeth.

  Young people dressed in glitzy ragbag clothes, clothes like Eliza’s, greeted each other and bounded up and down the stairs. With their coloured hair and jewellery they made Matt feel dun-coloured. They were as casual as birds, but they had purpose.

  Crows gathered in the fig trees and squabbled, dropping fruits to the ground. Their voices were harsh and lonely. Matt looked up to the top of the building and saw fig seedlings growing in the gutters. It felt as if the end of the world had come and Nature was reasserting herself. The students were the bright, feral remnants of a society that had destroyed itself.

  From inside the building he heard the beat of a drum, and then someone starting to sing. It sounded like Eliza’s voice. Tired of sitting and listening to Mahalia grizzle, Matt carried her stroller up the steps at the back of the building.

  Inside, the walls were painted in bright colours, hung with artwork. A grey metal tray for smokers overflowed with plastic drink bottles and lolly wrappers. Matt couldn’t hear the singing now that he was inside, but he wandered up stairs and down corridors, wheeling the stroller over a coarse old blue carpet that flowed like a river through the building, up and down staircases that linked various mezzanine floors. It was a labyrinth, with coloured glass windows throwing eerie light over the floor. The bones of the old school building it had once been were there, but it looked like a place that had been settled by gypsies.

  Matt saw a young man with a shaved head striding along a corridor. ‘Hello!’ the man called. ‘Hello!’

  ‘Hello!’ A voice came from inside a room somewhere. Eliza’s voice. Matt recognised it, and something inside him leapt with happiness that at last there was something familiar to him in this strange place.

  ‘Hello!’

  ‘Hello!’

  The voices continued trying to locate each other, while Matt followed along the corridor.

  And Eliza emerged from a classroom, almost bumping into the man with the shaved head, a wide smile on her face. She hugged him quickly.

  And then she saw Matt, and Mahalia, and she hugged Matt, too. She squatted down to say hello to Mahalia, who stopped her grizzling and lunged with delight at Eliza, straining against the stroller’s seatbelt, patting Eliza on the face with her damp little hands.

  But despite Mahalia’s charms, Eliza went off with the man with the shaven head, whose name was Brent, or Trent, or Kent, who had bright dark eyes like raisins, and an echoing black mole on the side of his face. Matt was surprised to find himself left with a strong feeling of disappointment. He watched as they walked away, saw Eliza shove her friend playfully and laugh at something that he’d said.

  Matt looked down at Mahalia, who sat playing with her toes. He felt desolate. There wasn’t much fun in his life. He couldn’t simply stroll off with someone and do whatever he felt like.

  Matt pushed the stroller back home, over the bridge with the metal walkway, past the trendy pub where gay people hung out, and down their street of peeling timber houses, the front yards littered with discarded chip packets. He bought a loaf of bread on the way and ate it while he walked. Matt was often ravenous, and bread filled him. Mahalia chewed on the crusts, biting down with her almost-through teeth.

  Matt threw himself onto the bed. He longed for his guitar – he could always do that, and satisfy some itch in himself – but it was gone, locked away in the hock shop, waiting for him to find the money to get it out again.

  Mahalia rolled about on the floor. She was good at rolling – front to back, and back to front again. She could sit well now, as long as Matt sat her up first.

  ‘You’ll be crawling soon, Mahalia.’

  She turned to his voice and smiled.

  A letter arrived from Emmy, addressed to his mother’s place. She brought it round one day but he didn’t want to open it in front of her, so he dropped it onto the table. To Matt, it seemed to burn there.

  ‘Is there anything you need? Any way I can help?’ His mother had taken Mahalia onto her hip, and jiggled her up and down as she spoke. Her offers were always too casual. He felt like a horse she didn’t want to frighten. He knew this was because he’d been so insistent that he care for Mahalia by himself, wanting to show everyone, himself included, that he could do it.

  ‘No thanks,’ said Matt. ‘We’re right.’

  ‘Aw, Matt,’ said his mother, in an exaggerated pleading voice, trying to make a joke of it, ‘Let me have her for a couple of days – I’d love to look after her, give you a break, everyone with a baby needs a break!’ She addressed the last remark looking into Mahalia’s eyes, who smiled at her and giggled.

  Matt smiled, and pretended he hadn’t heard her. He could be stubborn, and proud. Alone at last with Mahalia, he opened the letter.

  Emmy hoped they were well. She thought of Mahalia. Knew Matt would be looking after her. She couldn’t come back just yet. She was sorry.

  Emmy always put a circle for a full stop and over the letter i. She used a little i instead of a capital when she meant herself.

  8

  Virginia came back at a time when Eliza was there and Matt agreed for her to join them. Eliza was democratic. There weren’t a lot of takers anyway for the empty room, despite the friendly household and the veggie garden and the optional singing lessons.

  Virginia was warm and easy-going and idealistic, but talkative. She raved on about everything. (Man! said Otis, after he’d met her. She sure goes on!) She went on about politics, about the drug problem, about how all she wanted to do was to make document
ary films about the way kids lived on the streets, shaking her head in bemusement at the shortcomings of society. She laughed and smiled just as readily though, and Matt didn’t mind having her around at all.

  Mahalia had entered a shy stage, aware that she was a distinct person from everyone else around her. She was wary of this new person at first, turning her head away if Virginia spoke directly to her. But soon she allowed Virginia to feed her, laughing so hard at the faces she pulled that mashed vegetables spilt from her mouth and splattered onto the tray of her highchair.

  The house didn’t spook Matt so much now that Virginia was there. He doubted that she ever did go to the TAFE course she was meant to be doing. She hung about the house all day. ‘Mind if I come in?’ she’d say, standing tentatively at the doorway of Matt’s room, then coming in with two cups of coffee, and lowering herself onto the floor. Mahalia could push herself about on her stomach now, and she moved over to where Virginia sat and thumped her with a fat hand. ‘Ow,’ said Virginia, pulling a face, and Mahalia laughed, and hit her again.

  ‘Brute! You’re a little brute!’ said Virginia, rolling her over onto her back and lifting up Mahalia’s singlet to kiss her on the belly button.

  Matt looked away. Emmy used to rub her pregnant belly with olive oil. It was a graceful, heavy shape, like a droplet of water, but with a tracery of blue veins. Her belly button had popped out, an untidy knot of skin.

  ‘You know, I’d like to have a baby,’ Virginia told Matt. ‘Someone of my own to look after. I reckon it’d be all right, you know?’ She shrugged. ‘But . . . it’ll never happen.’

  ‘You never know,’ said Matt.

  Virginia shook her head. ‘Nah,’ she said. ‘How old you reckon I am?’

  Matt shook his head. Twenty-five, he thought, but didn’t say. Sometimes he thought Virginia seemed seventeen, same age as him, she was so shy and goofy and young-looking. But she had tiny wrinkles round her eyes.

  ‘I’m thirty-four,’ she said. ‘And I’ve never met anyone yet I’d want to have a baby with. It’ll never happen.’

  Matt recognised the phrase. It’ll never happen. Sometimes he thought that about himself, about lots of things. About getting a job. About playing bass in a band. About Emmy coming back.

  It’ll never happen.

  But Mahalia had happened. He was still sometimes astonished at her existence.

  Life in the house was often a series of random meetings that took place in the bathroom or kitchen. ‘Just a minute, Matt, I’ll be out of the shower in a minute!’ Eliza and Virginia were very different. Eliza was all curly hair and womanly curves and lacy frocks she’d found at op shops and Virginia was narrow-hipped and boyish and sauntering. Eliza tore through the house on her way to or from various obligations and assignations, and Virginia at first peered warily at her from under the visor of her cap, trying to figure her out, but soon came to like her.

  ‘There’s half a cheesecake from my coffee shop in the fridge. It’s still perfectly all right, just a bit old to sell, but I told them my gorgeous flatmates would scoff it!’ Eliza would call out as she let herself out the front door, on her way to somewhere in a hurry. Or: ‘I found this at the op shop, thought it looked like you,’ handing Virginia a fleecy top. ‘No, don’t bother,’ waving away Virginia’s offer of money. ‘It was only a buck.’ Virginia, because she was more often at home, thought to do things like bring Eliza’s washing in when it rained, and Eliza appreciated it. One night, when Eliza sat, exhausted, with her head on the kitchen table, Virginia quietly brought her a cup of tea. ‘You know, mate,’ she told Eliza gently, ‘you should seriously think about not burning the candle at both ends.’

  They were good at annoying each other, too. ‘D’you think that Virginia could find any more stray people than she does?’ Eliza asked Matt grumpily one morning, after a shy girl with long dark hair had made her way out of the bathroom. When Eliza was annoyed it was always that Virginia.

  ‘I reckon I’ll just chuck the lot out!’ said Virginia with disgust one day, looking at the festering, half-empty cartons of Eliza’s yogurt that cluttered the fridge.

  Matt simply watched the two of them, bemused. He caught snatches of conversations that he could never be part of: ‘. . . because I’ve got an itchy fanny!’ Eliza called to Virginia, disappearing into the back yard to tend her herb garden.

  They all put in money for ‘basics’, but apart from that they mostly looked after themselves. Because he had Mahalia, Matt was the only one who cooked properly all the time. Virginia appeared to live on baked beans, sometimes straight from the tin (‘Ya don’t notice what ya eating when ya hungry’), or went to the pub on the corner for a cheap meal when she had the money. Eliza often ate on the run whatever she found in the fridge, cramming food into her mouth with her fingers, standing at the kitchen sink.

  When Eliza was at home she was never still. She strode quickly with heavy footsteps down hallways and stairs, making the treads shudder. She whooshed the taps on in the bathroom as she washed out her underwear in the hand-basin, singing all the while, and accidentally squirting water everywhere. She ran out with handfuls of dripping cloth to the back yard where she hung her knickers on the line that stretched across the small space. She chopped vegetables with great vigour on the kitchen table, often neglecting to use the chopping board, so that the laminex surface was feathered with tiny cuts. She whizzed up fruit smoothies in the blender and slurped them down, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Matt became used to the sight of her long back whisking round corners, her lace dress flapping round her ankles and feet.

  On one of the rare occasions that he found her still, sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of herbal tea, she said, ‘Hey, get your guitar, let’s have a jam, you play, I’ll sing.’

  Matt said, ‘I can’t. I’ve pawned it.’

  Eliza looked at him for a moment, then finished her tea in a long gulp and scooped the herbal teabag out of the bottom of the cup with her fingers.

  ‘That’s a shame,’ she said. But she was used to people resorting to desperate measures. She’d have pawned her own voice sometimes if she’d been able to.

  ‘Pawned it?’ said Otis. ‘Shit, man.’ He handed Matt an old acoustic belonging to his father. ‘This is a crap guitar, but it’s something to play on.’ It wasn’t a bass, but it would have to do. Matt tuned it.

  Charmian stood smoking, holding her cigarette out the window between puffs, pretending she wasn’t smoking inside.

  ‘Hey, Matt,’ she said, ‘You ever read the Bible?’ Charmian had a sincere and unswerving belief in the capacity of the Bible to help people.

  ‘No,’ said Matt.

  ‘It’s the Truth, that book,’ she said seriously. ‘You betta read it, boy. You should bring that baby girl of yours up a Christian.‘

  Matt smiled and strummed a few chords.

  Charmian’s grandchildren were visiting. They roughed around with Mahalia on the floor. Mahalia loved it: she came up panting for air and then hurled herself forward on top of them again.

  Alan came in and Charmian threw the cigarette out the window. He sniffed, suspiciously. ‘Who’s been smoking in here?’

  ‘Now I’m going to pick up my baby,’ said Charmian airily, ignoring him and plucking Mahalia out of the scrum of children. Mahalia didn’t like strangers now, but Charmian was no stranger, and she smiled at her and reached out to tug at her hair.

  Matt hitched up to his mother’s place, because he wanted to escape from town for a bit, and because he knew she liked him to visit. He got lonely for someone he was connected to. Otis and Alan and Charmian were good to visit but they still weren’t his family.

  It was that day, watching her grandmother drink a cup of tea, that Mahalia decided she would like to drink from a cup. She reached towards it, grunting and stretching out her hands. Matt’s mother got up and fetched an old plastic cup of Matt’s that had been in the cupboard all this time, and gave her some water in it.

  Mahalia put her
mouth to the lip of the cup eagerly, and Matt tipped it up. Water ran down her chin, but she managed to swallow some. She looked up at Matt and smiled, thumping her hand on the table, she was so delighted with herself. Later, when Matt offered her milk in a bottle she waved it away, so he offered her the cup with some milk in it, and she drank, licking her lips and lifting her eyes up to him, showing that she wanted more.

  Now that she could drag herself across the floor it was impossible to keep her clean, for the floors at Matt’s place were ingrained with dirt. The pink singlet that she wore was covered with black grime, and so were her hands and face. She was happy and filthy.

  While Matt was outside wandering in the garden his mother bathed her, and dressed her in a new playsuit she’d bought. As she was doing up the buttons she saw Matt leaning against the doorway, watching. She sat Mahalia in the middle of the floor with some plastic blocks, and took her dirty things out to the laundry, where she soaked them in a bucket.

  ‘I think you should take Mahalia to see Emmy’s parents,’ she said briskly and conversationally, when she returned. ‘I’m sure they’d like to see her.’

  Matt thought about what she’d said. ‘Well, you’re probably right,’ he said after a while. ‘After Emmy had her they only saw her once or twice. Emmy never wanted to go to them.‘

  ‘There could be lots of reasons for that – Emmy was always fighting them, wasn’t she? And, okay, I know they were hard on her too. But you know, it’s not just for them, but for Mahalia. Children need grandparents.’

  ‘You could have done with some,‘she added, looking half-ashamed. ‘But I didn’t have any say in the matter. My parents were dead.’

  Matt formed a sentence in his mind that he thought he could speak if he got up the courage. Something had been worrying him for some time. ‘They couldn’t – you know – take her away?’

  It was something he dreaded. Such things, he’d felt up to now, were better not voiced. But he’d known all along that there were other people who might make a claim on Mahalia, and he needed to know the possibilities.