After Nothing (27 page)

Wake up. Pain. Wait.

Joey awake. Change his diaper, get him a bottle.

Pain.

Get Joey dressed and read him a story.

Pain.

Feed Joey breakfast, comfort Joey, play with Joey. Change Joey’s diaper. Wrap him up against the cold and take him for a walk in the Drummonds’ old stroller.

Change Joey’s diaper, give Joey a bottle, put him down for a nap.

Prepare Joey’s lunch.

Pain.

Joey awake. Change his diaper. Feed Joey lunch, play with Joey. Change his diaper, get him a bottle, cuddle him, put him down for a nap.

Prepare Joey’s dinner. Pain. Pain. Pain.

Joey awake. Change his diaper. Play with Joey, comfort Joey. Feed Joey dinner, bath Joey, dress Joey for bed. Cuddle Joey. Give Joey a bottle. Put him to bed.

I’m allowed the night.

I go into Reverend Joe’s study, which has been set up for Joey and me.

Joey is sound asleep, his breathing steady.

I lie down on the single mattress laid out beside Joey’s portable crib, and every torment I’ve fought off during the day comes rushing back.

Why did he do it?

Why did he kill Reesey?

How could he do this to Joey?

How could he do that to himself?

Oh God, Reesey.

I want Kane.

It hurts so bad.

I want Reesey back.

How could this have happened?

I can’t believe this has happened.

I’m tired.

I’m angry.

I’m fucking furious.

I rage, I rage.

It hurts, it hurts.

Why did he do it?

My pillow is soaked through.

The coffins were placed apart on either side of the altar.

They were both a shiny white.

Kane stood beside me, silent, simmering.

I held Joey in my arms. Aunt Sarah had said I shouldn’t take him. But Julie said it was up to me.

The church was full.

People I didn’t know. People I’m sure Reesey and Beyden didn’t know.

There were a lot of tattooed men. Some wore suits. Some wore colors.

Reesey’s friends were there. They’d been calling in to the Drummonds’ all week wanting to see Joey.

Some I let see him. Some – like the woman who’d ignored her toddler when Joey was brand new to the world – I didn’t. I told her Joey was sleeping, although he was actually two rooms away being read a story by Aunt Sarah.

I could hear people’s grief throughout the service; sniffing, blowing noses and, at times, the sound of women sobbing.

Joey spent most of the service looking over my shoulder at the sea of mourning behind us.

My eyes were dry.

Kane’s face was a blank, but I could feel his anger.

Like me, he didn’t think the services for Reesey and Bey should have been held together. In the absence of any family coming forward for either of them, though, Reverend Joe had made the decision.

It was just another thing that didn’t make sense. Every time Reverend Joe said Bey’s name, Kane’s body would tense, as though he was waiting to start a race; as though he was waiting for a gun to go off.

The park was empty. It had rained earlier, and the sky seemed closer than normal, with low-hanging dark grey clouds. The benches were damp, the wet soaked in to the timber. Kane and I shook the droplets of water off the swings and sat on them instead.

We didn’t say anything for a while. Eventually Kane spoke. ‘Say what you gotta say.’

I looked over at him, but he was staring into the distance. I nudged at the ground with my foot, causing my swing to sway. I didn’t speak.

‘God damn it, Nat,’ snapped Kane.

‘He’s our godson.’

‘That don’t mean shit.’

‘They’d want us to take him.’

‘The Drummonds will take him.’

‘Kane, they’ve got six kids already, and a whole heap more that come and go.’

‘They’ll take him.’

‘No, they won’t, because we’re going to.’

Kane turned his head and stared at me.

‘You seriously think you’re gonna decide that shit for me?’

‘We’re talking about Joey. He’s just a baby. He needs us.’

‘He doesn’t need us. You just want him.’

‘How could you say that?’ I said, standing up off the swing. ‘What I want is Reesey to come back. What I want is for your stupid fuckhead friend to not have shot her. What I want is for Bey to have killed himself and left her the fuck alone. That’s what I want. I don’t feel like I have a choice, Kane.’

‘Of course there’s a fucking choice. You just say no, Nat. We can look in on him.’

‘I’m not going to look in on him, Kane. If you don’t want to help me then don’t. Take me home.’

‘Home?’ said Kane, his voice loaded with anger.

‘The Drummonds’.’

That night Joey woke four times. In the morning, when we entered the Drummonds’ kitchen later than usual, we were met with the sight of all their kids sitting up at the long wooden kitchen table eating bowls of oats for breakfast. There were Reverend Joe and Julie’s four biological kids, Lainey, Isaac, Samuel and Michaela, and their two adopted daughters Deezyah – who they called Zyah – and her sister Truth. Lastly there were the three kids they were currently fostering: the same twin boys, Brandon and Bos, who they’d had for a while, and the recently arrived Liyah, who was three, and repeatedly told everyone they were ugly.

As Joey and I came further into the room and I greeted everyone, Lainey knocked a gallon of milk off the far corner of the table.

‘Sorry, Mom,’ she said to Julie, as she hurried to find paper towels.

Julie didn’t even pause as she cut sandwiches in half for nine lunchboxes.

‘That’s fine, darling, just clean it up.’

Lainey’s efforts seemed to result in the milk spreading further, so I placed Joey in his playpen to help her.

‘I’m so stupid,’ she said to me with an embarrassed smile, as we soaked up the mess.

Lainey was twelve, and she often seemed a bit embarrassed around me. She had a real connection with Joey, though. He absolutely adored her; whenever she gave him any attention, he would light up with smiles and chuckling laughter.

‘You’re not stupid, Laines,’ I said.

‘I meant clumsy,’ she said, flustered.

‘You’re not allowed to cry over spilt milk, Laines.’

She looked up from the milk, saw I was teasing and giggled.

Joey’s cry of pain immediately had my attention. I was on my feet and over at the playpen in less than a second.

Liyah was leaning over one of the walls of the playpen. I hadn’t even noticed her get down from the table, let alone approach Joey. In her hand was a wooden toy hammer, and she was about to hit him on the head with for it the second time. I moved my hand in front of his head just in time, and the hammer hit the back of my wrist. I quickly picked Joey up before she could try again.

Joey was beside himself. Before each loud cry his little ribs expanded beneath my hands. Then he released cries so wrought with pain they were close to a scream.

‘Liyah, we don’t hit,’ said Julie, crouching down in front of the three-year-old and forcing the hammer from her hand. ‘We play with our toys; we don’t hit anyone with them. Look, Joey’s crying because you hit him.’

Joey was taking another deep breath in my ear before letting forth with another loud wail.

I went through into the lounge and sat down on one of the two oversized couches that filled the room to inspect his injury. I’d already ascertained there was no blood. But there was a red welt rapidly swelling into a bruised bump on his forehead.

‘She really got you one, didn’t she?’ I said, cuddling him against me.

I felt like crying myself. He was so upset, tears streaming down his face. I knew it was the first time he’d ever been hit. Reesey never would have allowed another child the opportunity to hurt him.

Julie came into the lounge, a cold compress in one hand, and Liyah’s hand in the other.

To look at Liyah you would have thought she was two, not three. She was small – malnourished, Julie said – and she had inflamed eczema on her face and arms, which she constantly scratched at despite the different treatments Julie was trying to give her some relief. She wasn’t interested in saying sorry to Joey.

‘He ugly,’ is what she said.

I tried hard not to reveal any reaction, although my arms tightened a little around Joey. Julie’s response was to draw Liyah closer to her and say, ‘Joey’s a beautiful baby, same as you’re a beautiful little girl. It’s very important we take good care of each other here, and if we hurt each other, we always say we’re sorry.’

Liyah stared at Joey. ‘He got no hair.’

‘No, not much,’ I said, running a hand over the top of Joey’s head. ‘It’s growing, though.’

Joey’s cries had lessened. He was just making intermittent unhappy sounds, while returning Liyah’s gaze.

I saw her eyes shift, and the change in her expression. I just knew what was coming. I turned my body so that when her little hand made contact it hit my arm rather than Joey’s face. Then I stood up so Joey was out of her reach altogether.

‘Okay,’ said Julie, her expression concerned as she studied Liyah’s face. ‘I can see what’s going on here.’

Persecution. That’s what was going on. And it continued. Every time Liyah and Joey were in the same room, she made a beeline for him.

Even though it had only been a week since Reesey and Bey had died, Harold demanded I return to work. Once I was back, I hated it. I didn't want to be anywhere but with Joey. Every day at work, when three o’clock came round, and I knew Liyah was being picked up from preschool, I began to worry, and I didn't stop until I was at the Drummond’s and Joey was in my arms.

Nothing major happened to him. Julie and Aunt Sarah made sure he and Liyah were never alone together. But I just didn’t like even the idea of Joey being around the threat of violence.

Kane had pretty much stopped talking to me. I mean, we talked, but never for long, and he never had anything much to say. He even ignored some of my phone calls, and just straight out didn’t reply to some of my texts. He wouldn’t come over to the Drummonds’, because he didn’t ‘feel like it.’

I knew he was hurting. And I knew he was unhappy about me being at the Drummonds’, and looking after Joey. But he was making things even worse. It was hard enough that we weren’t living together: the least we could do was talk every night.

On the Saturday after my first week back at work, Joey and I took the bus into Kane’s work. The main front doors were locked, but there were mechanics working overtime in the auto repair workshop, and one of the big roller doors was up.

I walked in, and approached a brown Pontiac. I knew the mechanic under its hood: Kane had introduced me to him the last time I’d been in at his work. He told me Kane was in the custom workshop out the back, and to go on through. I kept to the yellow lines, skirting Joey’s stroller around patches of oil. When I got to the heavy grease-marked door that led through to the custom workshop, I awkwardly maneuvered the stroller through it, ignoring the sign on it that said ‘Unauthorized Persons Keep Out.’

Customizing cars was more of a side business for Kane’s boss: the workshop was only about a third of the size of the auto repair workshop. It had better light though, and the cars were more spread out. Two guys I didn’t know were working on a sedan that was on a lift above them. Even when the door closed loudly behind Joey and me, neither of them shifted their attention from the belly of the car.

Kane’s focus was the same. His back was to us as we approached. He was standing at a bench studying a diagram on a large sheet of paper. The make and model of the closest car was unrecognizable to me. It had been completely stripped inside and out. I only knew it was a Lexus because Kane had told me that’s what he was working on.

I said Kane’s name and he turned, taking in Joey and me.

‘Hey,’ he said, frowning. ‘What are you doing here?’

I walked around Joey’s stroller to give Kane a kiss.

‘We came to say hi.’

Now that I was so close to him, I was filled with longing for him. I stretched my arms up round his neck and hugged him tight.

‘I’ve missed you.’

His arms flexed around me.

‘I’ve missed you too.’ He released me far sooner than I would have liked to crouch down in front of Joey.

‘Hey Lil’ J.’

Joey grinned at him.

‘He looks good,’ said Kane. ‘Happy.’

‘Do you think? Sometimes I think he isn’t, but I guess that’s to be expected.’

‘Yeah, guess so,’ said Kane, standing.

‘Do you want to go get some lunch?’

‘Can’t. I got, like, no time today. Client’s coming in an hour to talk about this,’ said Kane, glancing at the Lexus. ‘And I gotta get started on the Escalade.’

I followed his gaze to the SUV parked the next bay over, its black paint job so shiny it was reflecting every detail of the work cart near it.

‘Is that the same one you had a while back?’

‘Yeah. Client’s decided to give it to his son for his eighteenth. He wants some art on it.’ He paused. ‘If you’d called I could have arranged things differently.’

‘If I’d called you might not have answered your phone.’

‘What?’

‘You’re avoiding me.’

‘It ain’t like that.’

‘It feels like that.’

‘Well, it ain’t,’ said Kane sharply.

I glanced down at Joey, who was doing a good job of chewing on his shoe – while still wearing it.

‘I need to talk to you about Joey.’

Kane’s eyes narrowed. ‘What about him?’

‘I met with his caseworker, Penny. She thinks I’ll be able to get approved as a foster parent for him. She said I’m younger than she’d like – some states wouldn’t give me custody at eighteen, but they do here. I’ll have to do some paperwork and some foster training, but she said with the Drummonds backing me, she doesn’t see a problem.’

‘Cool,’ said Kane.

He wasn’t looking like it was cool. In fact his jaw was clenched, and I could tell he was angry.

‘The Drummonds have offered me the apartment. Penny said that she’ll be able to approve Joey living with me there even before all the paperwork’s through because it’s considered part of the Drummonds’ house or something. There are some students in it at the moment from Bible College, but they’re leaving in a few days.’

Kane turned his back on me. He went back to his car diagram and stared at it.

‘Kane?’

He didn’t reply. Just kept staring at the diagram.

‘Are you going to say anything?’ I asked, drawing closer.

He shook his head.

‘I think you want to say something, Kane.’

He looked at me. I don’t want to say there was murder in his eyes, but if he’d had a baseball bat in that moment I would have been standing well clear of the Lexus.

‘Okay, Nat. How about, “Fuck you”?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘You just gone ahead and decided that’s what’s gonna happen?’ said Kane, his voice increasing in volume.

‘No.’

‘So, I tell you not to take him on and you won’t take him on?’

‘Kane, he needs us.’

‘So now you’re making the decision for me as well?’ said Kane, not bothering to contain the rage in his voice.

‘I want to talk to you about it.’

‘It’s too fucking soon for this shit.’

‘This shit? You mean taking care of Joey? Well that “shit” can’t exactly be put off, Kane, because he needs looking after now. But if you want to hide here with your stupid cars rather than be a man and take responsibility, go ahead. I’ll do it without you.’

‘You already are. You and me, we’re supposed to mean something to each other. But you don’t even –’

Kane’s voice cut off at the sound of a loud cry from Joey. My head swiveled toward him.

‘What’s wrong?’ I said, softening my voice as I undid the stroller’s safety belt. His little chest stuttered outwards as he gasped for air, and then he let out a loud, distraught cry.