Tree Palace (3 page)

‘Listen, girl. You got a baby now. Sleeping’s good for the baby to do. You go have a lie down if you want and that’s fine. But silly talk and pretending it never happened, that’s good for nothing.’

Moira rubbed her forearm where Zara’s elbow had connected. She put her hand in her pocket for a cigarette but thought that would make Zara want one. The girl would just sit there smoking and talking silly talk. Moira clenched her jaw, bit hard as she always did when angered. She winced at the electric shock it caused in her gum where a back tooth was missing. ‘You’re in your tent with Mathew where I’ve made it nice. You can go have a lie down and look after him. I’ll put the groceries away.’

She waited a moment for Zara to nod or say something or make a move to the tent. The girl did nothing, just sat there. Standing around watching wasn’t going to shift her so Moira went into the house where the blue glow was dimming and brightening according to the clouds moving across the sun. She picked items from the plastic shopping bags—margarine, instant coffee, canned sausages in spaghetti, bread, toilet paper, potatoes, corn chips, tubs of instant noodles, Coke, dish cloths. The margarine had leaked. She sucked it from her fingers. She left the Nescafé to one side because she wanted a cup. She lit the cooker for the water and refilled Zara’s spilt glass with cordial and took it to her.

The girl hadn’t moved. Moira put the glass at her feet, screwing its base into the pebbly sand so it wouldn’t tilt. ‘You want some chicken noodles, sweetie? I got water on.’

No, Zara indicated by shaking her head. Her eyes were closed. Her mouth was closed and smiling. Not a full smile, more a dreamy turn of lip.

It was late enough in the day for a carpet of sun to spread out in front of the porch, squeezing through a gap between the L of the house and caravan. Clouds took it away and put it back again like sleight of hand. It was a pleasant effect, the simplest magic, and always left Moira cheered. Maybe it had cheered Zara too, she thought. Had put that smile on her face. It was not something she would risk asking in case it broke the girl’s spell.

Life was measured in being cheered one minute and not the next but trying to stretch that good minute out longer. When she got new underwear for Zara for hospital she herself was cheered because it was so sensible. She was cheered at having the idea to use pantyhose for Zara’s Christmas stocking. Hanging from her ward bed full of underwear and chocolate, it would make the biggest sourpuss laugh. She had a reserve of coins to wash baby clothes. That cheered her. Zara’s smiling cheered her. She decided she better urge the girl into the tent before the smiling passed.

No good. Zara held her elbows in a ready position and would not be urged to her feet. She scratched at her breasts, at the sides and underneath them. She squirmed, as if getting bitten.

‘What’s wrong?’ Moira asked, kneeling down to her.

Zara kept scratching her breasts and then punched them. Three blows.

Moira tried getting her arms past the elbows and fists, saying, ‘Stop,’ using her bigger weight to hug the girl. Her own breasts and belly were hefty enough to smother Zara’s arms and keep her pressed close despite the wriggling and fury and the guttural sound.

‘Shh. Stop. Shh. Don’t. Shh. What are you doing to yourself! Shane and Midge’ll be here soon. You don’t want them seeing this.’

Zara was sobbing now.

‘Look up at me. Look in my face. You got a baby now. You got to love it. I’ll help you.’

‘I don’t want it.’

‘Well, you got it.’

‘Take it away.’

‘We’re not taking it nowhere. This is his home. It’s not hospital, all unnatural and cold. It’s home.’

‘Nurse said it must be a shame.’

‘What shame?’

‘At my age, having a kid.’

‘You forget about a stupid nurse. They’re meant to be educated, that lot. But she must be stupid. You know what she said to me? She said, Oh yes, it was an easy birth. No problems at all. Nature’s perfect age, fifteen. Okay?’

Zara nodded, okay.

‘When I had you I weren’t much older, so they can stick their shame.’

Mathew started crying in the tent. A little engine of crying that sputtered at first then got its rhythm.

‘There you go,’ said Moira. ‘Come on, he wants his mum. He wants you. You’re wanted. That’s a good thing.’

She took Zara’s wrists in a soft grip and made her lower her guard. Told her to put her hands at her sides and tilt her head back and let nature work on her body. She undid the buttons on Zara’s white blouse, bought from the Barleyville Salvos for this very purpose. It opened easily and had a sash of white lace that was dignified. T-shirts were not dignified when you had to hoist the entire front up to get at the nipples. The blouse splayed enough to let a breast come through but didn’t gape and ruin privacy. The bra was Zara’s normal one because she never was big in that department and didn’t need much extra size for baby feeding.

‘Your milk should be coming down, so just relax yourself.’

Zara started doing the buttons up. Moira touched her arm and tapped on it as an instruction for the buttons to be undone. Zara kept buttoning them.

‘No. Don’t, sweetie.’

She directed Zara to stand and come with her to the tent. She fended Zara’s hands from the blouse to prevent more buttoning.

They got to the flap of the door and stepped inside. There was gold-green dimness in there, of dark canvas and sunlight peering in through the back wall, exposing slits in the weave. Bubbles of sweat had formed beneath the clear plastic laid over the ground for a rug. The old canvas smelled like wet soil. Moira had burned an incense stick for a freshener that morning but the aroma was gone. It didn’t matter, she thought, as she walked Zara in. The tent was as spruced up as she could make it, with Zara’s bed folded down in a welcoming way and sprigs from the waxy red pot plants decorating the pillow.

Mathew was on his back on the bed. He was crying, one long breath of crying. Just as soon as Zara was settled Moira intended to bring the pram in and jam its wheels between two wooden boxes. That would have to do for a cot for now. She’d bought the biggest pack of nappies the supermarket had and wished she had a cupboard for them but leaving them in the wrapping would probably be cleanest. They’d be handiest beside the pram with a plastic bag of Salvos baby clothes.

‘Where are my posters?’ said Zara.

‘You don’t want posters.’

Pop-star posters. Handsome boys with sneers and sulky frowns.

‘Where are they?’

‘I put them in a box. And I put your CDs in a box.’

‘I want them.’

‘Forget them and feed Mathew.’

‘Where are they?’

‘Under your bed.’

Zara got on her knees and looked under the bed and pulled out a cardboard box. It jammed on the low metal base but she kept pulling despite the box tearing at a corner. The bed lifted, its frame lurched. Mathew tipped this way and that and Moira hurried and got him.

‘You don’t need posters and kids’ stuff like that. Sit down and feed him.’

Zara had the posters out and was unfolding them and smoothing them on her knees for hanging. There was tape on their edges but it was bent over, stuck down. She tried to peel a corner free. The corner tore.

‘Sit on the bed.’

Another corner tore.

‘I said, sit on the bed.’

‘I want them on my wall.’

‘Sit down.’

‘No.’

‘Take Mathew and feed him.’

‘No.’

‘Yes.’

‘There is no baby.’

Moira put Mathew in the pram and kicked the box away from Zara’s reach. She scooped up a poster and another poster and ripped them in half and then in half again. Zara snatched at one but Moira kept ripping and clenched her jaw, turning her shoulder to barge Zara away if it came to that. If the girl wanted trouble then let her have it. She was going to sit down whether she liked it or not. Moira’s arm muscles were starting to sag these days but they were still strong enough to deal with Zara. She took hold of her in a barging embrace and then softened her grip because the girl was tearful and shaking like a frightened thing. She kissed her head. She told her to sit down and do what Mathew needed doing.

She picked up the baby and made Zara take him across her lap. She unbuttoned and loosened the girl’s bra so a breast was free. A breast that had never seen the sun as the V of her neckline had been stained by it. It was transparent white even in this light. Moira lifted the breast with her fingertips and Mathew latched on and sucked. She stroked its underside and gave gentle squeezes to help Zara’s milk come down.

‘That’s right, sweetie. Close your eyes. Lean back and let it happen all natural.’

2

Midge wished they had thinner tape but they only had packing tape so he fixed the posters with that. A rough job—he couldn’t get the boy faces joined flush—but he did his best. He did it needing only one candle and no lamps because the night was so clear it was like a version of day with the moon a silver sun and so many stars crowded above you you couldn’t stare at them for long or you’d go star-blind. A typical summer night out their way: the sky’s electrics.

Moira said it was Zara who tore them and he was not to listen if the girl denied it. She didn’t want to seem mean for tearing them and thought it made Zara sound mature—tearing up posters that shouldn’t interest mothers. She thanked Midge. Said Zara did not need posters: she was a grown-up now.

He taped them anyway, just in case. He had no decent present for Zara and her baby but if she wanted some decoration she at least had these to fall back on. He used the fold-out Formica table in the caravan for the job and kept the hair from his eyes with his old jockey helmet. It made his scalp sweat, which he liked because wet hair stopped the grey from showing. Zara might not call him an old fart so much if he kept his hair wetted. Just as she stopped calling him chicken legs once he took to wearing long jeans instead of the knees cut off. He kept his front false tooth in all the time so she didn’t call him gummy.

Shane thought about the poster issue and nodded that Zara must be growing some common sense: if you’re old enough to have babies you leave childhood behind. He nodded again like an authority then stopped being so clever, expecting Moira would say, ‘What would
you
know?’

He sat on a deckchair and rolled a cigarette and lit it. There was a fizz from the flame singeing his goatee. He rubbed at it. The whiskers had got too long, he’d have to snip them back—his top lip was too bushy for safe smoking. ‘So, she set to sleep right past tea?’

‘I thought I’d leave her,’ said Moira. ‘Mathew woke up before. He didn’t get enough to drink. I’ll have to give him some formula.’

‘What formula?’

‘Stuff you buy.’

‘Expensive?’

‘Not very.’

‘It is when he can get it from her for free.’

‘Just give her time. She’s still getting used to everything. Formula’s good. Lots of vitamins.’

There was a gargle noise, an infant cough from in the tent. Moira went over and lifted the door flap so the sky shone in. The noise stopped and in she crept to make sure Mathew’s blanket wasn’t hot and bunched around him. He was fine, and Zara was breathing a slow, quiet snore.

Out she went.

‘You get the Tatts numbers in, babe?’ Shane asked.

Moira said yes and rubbed her hands together as if giving Shane some good news. ‘And I thought up a beaut new syndicate name.’

‘You what?’

‘Just for a treat.’

‘You don’t change the syndicate name. It’s bad luck.’

‘Did you ever win with the old one?’

‘That’s not the point. You don’t change the name Midge and me been using for years.
Brothers SM
. Shane and Midge. It’s tradition.’

‘I wanted to include Mathew. It might be lucky. I got the lady behind the counter to write down the first bits of all our names for our Tatts card:
Momaza Shami.
’

‘What?’

‘That’s all the first bits of our names squashed up.’

‘You didn’t change the numbers, did you?’

‘No.’

‘Give us the change. Should be five bucks fifty.’

Moira rubbed her hands again. ‘I spent it.’

‘Half that belongs to Midge.’

‘Midge, you won’t mind?’

Midge was still patching posters in the caravan but always had his ear cocked and put his face in the doorway and said no, he didn’t mind, in his co-operative manner.

‘I spent it on a raffle ticket. Bought it for Zara before I picked her up. It was one them ladies’ stalls.’

Shane flopped back in his chair and groaned and laughed in the one breath. ‘Ladies’ stalls.’

‘It was a whim.’

‘Like mother, like daughter. She has a whim and gets potted from it. You have a whim and buy tickets in some Mickey Mouse raffle.’

‘The Ladies’ League.’

‘Mickey Mouse.’

‘You get a crockery set and a fifty-dollar voucher to use in shops around town.’

That made Shane sit up and stop his mocking. He took the rollie from his mouth and let the smoke curl from his nose.

‘Fifty bucks,’ he said, pinching his lip hair and rolling a dag of it in contemplation.

‘And a crockery set.’

‘Fifty bucks. Not bad.’

‘I bought eleven tickets at fifty cents each.’

‘You’ve covered the field then. Probably only a dozen tickets in the draw in a Mickey Mouse raffle. Fifty bucks—not a bad divvy for five-buck-fifty invest.’

‘It’d be in vouchers. The crockery set looked lovely. If we win it how about you get fined for every chip or breakage you cause.’

‘Says who?’

‘Says me. Come on, that’s fair. It’d be fun.’

Moira fished in her pocket for a cigarette, lit it and had a deep draw to quell the excitement of winning crockery. She had the idea of winning already in her, which was stupid until you actually knew you’d won. Midge came out of the caravan and she said, ‘It’d be fun, eh, Midge? Getting fined?’

‘Yeah, yeah, sure,’ he said. He’d combed his wet hair back and it made a ducktail from being too long for combing neatly. He shook his asthma puffer and made its canister rattle. He sucked a deep breath of it, and another one, and held the breath. Then he coughed to get his gluey windpipe clear.