Mahalia (4 page)

Then came the outraged bellow, and his relief was so great that his anger reignited. ‘Now look what you've made me do!'

He was shocked to hear himself speak to his own baby that way. She lay on the floor, crying at the unexpected pain the world could inflict on her. Gently, gingerly, he put the pin in place. He picked Mahalia up and hugged her against his shoulder. ‘I didn't mean it, Mahalia, baby,' he said. ‘I didn't mean it.'

When Mahalia was first born, it had been sheer wonder, waking to her each day. Every part of her was a miracle, and when she woke at night he was immediately at her side, soothing her and gazing at the impossibility of her tiny fingers and toes, her astonishment of spiky black hair (which she entirely lost soon afterwards). They waited to name her, waiting to see what name attached itself to her, until finally, when she'd been in the world a week, Matt said shyly to Emmy, ‘I think Mahalia would be a nice name.'

‘Mahalia,' she said. ‘That's unusual. I've never even heard it before.'

‘She was a singer. A gospel singer. One of the best.'

And Emmy had agreed. Still sleepy and sore and milky, she said, ‘Okay. If you like.'

Now, there was always the routine.
Change Mahalia, feed
Mahalia, keep Mahalia clean, wash the nappies, clean the bottles, boil the
water for the formula
.

Mahalia started to teethe, crying angrily, and gnawing on her fists. She kept Matt awake at night with her wails, but he held her and sang to her in his tuneless voice till she slept. He gave her hard things to chew on, bits of celery and crusts of bread, and she gnawed on them with desperation. Finally they were through, two sharp white buds in her lower jaw.

Matt found that you could spend all day playing with a baby. Mahalia laughed and chortled with excitement when their play got wild, but Matt was astonished how quickly her squeals of delight could turn into an annoyed scream.

His mother loved to be with her. She sat and played with Mahalia for ages when she had time, and Mahalia showed her grandmother how strong she was becoming: when she was held up, she could bounce up and down and take her weight on her legs.

A friend dropped in: Elijah, who'd left school the same time as Matt, but hadn't burdened himself with a baby. He hadn't found a job either, but drifted from friend to friend, staying for days at a time sometimes. He lived at home the rest of the time.

Matt had tried to write a song about Elijah once, but all he came up with was a list of stuff that described Elijah, and he could never fit any of it together so that it satisfied him.

The list went:

He

has a skinny wiry crafty body

He

has eyes that dart about, missing nothing

He

is always nervously moving,

always off to somewhere

He

wants to be the hero of his own story

only he isn't sure what it is yet

He

always says
What a hero!

when someone is being tough

not really meaning it

He

is short

but acts tall

He

is tough in his own way

but tender in a way that he'll never let other people

know about

He

is too soft for his own good

When he gave up trying to finish the song, Matt just plinked along on his guitar, thinking of the notes as words that he couldn't quite find.

Matt was ashamed of the way that he and Emmy were so exclusive after they got together. They were a little band of two. Matt had neglected Elijah. But now Elijah had come to see him, and Matt was grateful.

Elijah was full of plans. ‘Think I'll go up to Stanthorpe, do some apple picking,' he said. ‘Get myself some money together to buy a car. Then I'll be set! Get about all over the place, go where I like. Buy a wagon, live in the back of it. I'll get a dog too; a dog's the best friend in the world. Hey, you could come too. Leave the baby with ya mum, she'll look after it. A few months' picking, you could set yourself up.'

Matt didn't answer. ‘Hey, look at this!' he said, as Mahalia rolled from her back onto her front and pushed the front of her body up with her arms. ‘I reckon she'll be crawling soon. You're a regular little athlete, you are,' he told her. ‘Hey, mate, look! She's got teeth!' Matt showed Elijah Mahalia's latest achievement. ‘They're as serrated as steak knives!‘

Matt strapped Mahalia to his chest and they wandered down to the creek, just as they used to do, Elijah raving and waving his arms, his dark eyes darting to Matt's face to suss out what he was thinking about.

They sat on a rock, and Elijah fished in his pocket for the makings of a durry. Matt hadn't smoked for a long time, but he took a few puffs to be sociable, making sure he blew the smoke away from Mahalia. When he felt mildly stoned, he waved the rest of the joint away. He had to stay on top of things.

‘You do much fishing these days?'

Matt shook his head.

‘Hey, you know what makes good bait? Get a green tree frog, wrap 'im in a bit of paperbark and roast 'im.'

‘Yeah?' said Matt. Inside, he was cracking up. ‘Anyway, aren't they protected or something?'

Elijah was always full of bush wisdom. Matt used to admire that once, used to listen to him. Once they'd made a bark hut together and stayed in it a couple of nights in the bush, but that was years ago, before Matt had shut him out.

‘What happened with Emmy?' said Elijah softly and cannily and out of the blue. ‘She piss off on ya?'

‘Yeah, mate,' said Matt, still laughing inside about the tree frog. He didn't mind Elijah's question, or the way he put it. It was just his way. ‘Well,' he said, ‘she got a bit unhappy and confused. She's sorting herself out.'

Elijah nodded. ‘Anyway, I reckon you're a saint, looking after the kid.'

Matt shook his head. ‘No, I'm not. I
want
to look after her. Anyway, I'm no saint. I get really angry and pissed off with her sometimes.' He remembered the time he'd jabbed the nappy pin into her. Mahalia was at this moment behaving like an angel, sitting on his knee watching the sparkle on the surface of the water. He bent down and kissed the top of her head, smelling the distinctive, sweet odour of her scalp. He'd heard somewhere that sniffing the top of a baby's head could make you feel high, that you could get addicted to it.

On the way back, Elijah found a tick on the back of his neck and pulled it out and ate it. ‘Makes you immune to ‘em,' he said. ‘Or so they reckon.'

‘Yeah, well, I don't think I'll try it,' said Matt, laughing.

Elijah left soon after they got back, to drop in on someone else he knew. Matt was thankful he hadn't wanted to stay. It was good to see Elijah, but there was a gulf there, as well.

You're getting too serious
, Matt told himself, when Elijah had gone.
Thinking about babies all the time. No wonder your old friends
don't want to talk to you.

4

The only friend Matt hadn't drifted away from was Otis, and Matt visited him and his family often. It was easy-going. They were easy people to be with. ‘Family' to them meant a shifting population of relatives, and Matt and Mahalia were accepted as just another couple of people around the house. No one asked nosy questions about where Emmy had gone, or why. They considered that wasn't their business. If Emmy had gone away, well, then she would come again, perhaps. They were people of few words, and at that time Matt didn't want words or explanations, just laughter, music and acceptance.

Otis planned to be a teacher. Otis's father, Alan, thought he should be a blues guitarist. The guitar was Otis's passion, but he wanted a real job. They bickered about it in a good-natured way.

‘Let ‘im be a teacher!' said his auntie Charmian, gesturing magnanimously with a marshmallow biscuit.

‘That's not on your diabetes diet, Charm,' said Alan sternly. He was Charmian's brother; she lived with them most of the time, when she wasn't off down south visiting relatives or staying with her daughter and her family nearby. She was like a mother to Otis because his own mother had died when he was little.

‘This? It's just a little biscuit. Not much sugar in this.' Charmian's voice lilted on the words
little biscuit
, making it sound completely innocent. Her round brown face and sleepy eyes caught Matt's glance and she raised her eyebrows in a good-humoured gesture that said
How do I put up with him?
She always said that Alan was a big tease.

Matt wished he had a father who wanted him to be a blues guitarist. Alan was so certain of Otis's ability and talent; he didn't care, as Otis always told him, that most musicians struggled for years to make a living.
But you'll
make it in the end
he always said, and
Who cares about money?
Matt noticed him watching Otis play sometimes with such a look of sweet loving longing on his face that Matt felt envious.

Alan was a handsome man, with a strong jaw, a long hooked nose, and flashing eyes. He was fit and young-looking; he made sure he jogged every day and he kicked a ball around the oval with Otis and his mates when he could. Yet he'd rarely had a job; no one employed Kooris in country towns except the government.

Teaching would suck, Matt thought, but Otis worked hard at school. He had goals, something Matt had never had. Otis's ordinary, stolid, pudgy face, what the Americans would call
homely
, was as familiar to Matt as his own.
An ugly
black bastard
was how Otis had once described himself, his voice light and quick and careless, lifting his eyebrows to show he didn't give a shit what he looked like.

As he tried out a few chords on his guitar, he leaned over it in a way that was both tender and modest. ‘Hey, Matt, listen to this,' he said, ‘I got this off that Muddy Waters record I picked up the other day.'

Charmian strode across the room to where Mahalia sat patiently on the floor, looking up in awe at all the big people in the room. Charmian moved majestically, like a sailing boat. She made plumpness a graceful asset. ‘How's my beautiful baby
girl
?' she said. She picked Mahalia up. ‘My God, this kid's heavy. She grown like crazy since you was here before. What you been feeding her on, Matt?'

Mahalia put her hand experimentally into Charmian's mouth, and Charmian nibbled on her fingers for a moment. ‘I could eat you up!' she told Mahalia.

Matt and Otis tuned their guitars. Even when Matt had been so exclusively with Emmy he'd found time to see Otis occasionally, their music the glue that kept them together. The other friends Matt used to have all liked partying too much, and with a baby to care for, he didn't go to parties any more; he didn't drink and hang out like they did, with one day sliding over into another unnoticed and unregarded. He had Mahalia to look after, and the routine of caring for her was his life now.
Millstone
, he sometimes whispered to her,
Ball and chain
. He didn't know whether he meant it or not. He didn't know whether he minded, not yet, for it was all still so new, and difficult, and he knew that he had no choice.

‘I love this baby!' said Charmian, with a wicked look towards Matt. She was a
big tease
too. ‘Can I keep ‘er?'

Matt smiled and plugged his guitar into Otis's amp. He strummed a few notes, his ear cocked to the vibrations of the instrument. He loved the thick bass notes it produced, like a drumbeat almost. A lot of guitarists found playing bass boring, but not Matt. He could even practise without playing along to a record, enjoying the steady thunk of the strings and getting right into the rhythm of it.

Otis's face transformed itself when he played. It responded to the music he pulled from the guitar, each note affecting the muscles of his face: one made him wince in pain, the next softened and relaxed him. The sound affected his body: this note made his shoulder twitch, that one caused his elbow to squeeze against the side of his body, with the next his back hunched over. Matt was absolutely motionless when he played, his fingers the only part of his body that moved. His rhythm provided the steady brown thread that Otis's notes wove around and through, fizzing with colour, soaring and warbling like a bird, then squeaking like a bat.

‘Man, that was beautiful,' said Matt when they'd finished.

‘Yeah!' said Alan, interjecting from the next room. ‘And he tells me he wants to be a teacher!'

Matt dreamed in blue. He dreamed the blue of the room in his father's house, and he dreamed the blue of the Mediterranean Sea, which he'd never seen but only heard of. He dreamed of the blues, which he and Otis played together, and the blue of his mother's eyes.

He woke, and lay and watched Mahalia as she surfaced from sleep. She cooed to herself, gazing at the shadows that danced on the walls. Kicking off her bedclothes, she caught hold of her toes and stared at the mobile of fish that her grandmother had made for her, watching as they swam through the early morning light. She reached out to touch the light but it escaped through her fingers.

The light had seeped into Matt's dreams, dreams of distance and warm blue sea. He'd woken with the blue still with him and he'd thought that it would be a good day to take Mahalia to the beach. It was spring.

He got a lift into town with his mother when she went to work. He needed to get Mahalia a hat. At St Vinnies Matt found several cotton hats for babies, and tried them on her. As each hat went on her head she reached up, pulled it off, and dropped it on the floor.

‘You'll have to find one that ties under the chin.'

Matt saw the girl who spoke as beautiful, though many would have found her ugly. Her long tawny hair curled around her head in a mane, and her eyes were just a bit too close together and somehow centred on her nose, so that, with the hair, her face was altogether like a lion's: questioning and clever and sure of itself.