Mahalia (14 page)

Matt saw her turn and catch sight of a cane basket close by; he held his breath because he could tell what she was about to do. She let go of the barricade and walked a couple of steps (very wobbly and unsteady: her first steps!) to the basket, which was just the right height for her to grasp the top of once she got there. She chuckled to herself at her prowess. It was a private achievement; she hadn't noticed Matt watching her.

Then she found that by pushing herself forward, she could use the basket as a support and follow it along the floor. Matt watched, amazed, as Mahalia and the basket made their way across the floor. Then she caught his eye and laughed.

Matt went closer to her and crouched down immediately so that he was at her level. She let go of the basket and tottered, on unsteady legs, across the floor towards his outstretched hands. She made it into the safety of his arms without falling, and they both laughed and laughed as Matt rolled onto the floor with Mahalia clasped to his chest.

13

Eliza cut Mahalia's hair for her first birthday.

‘I was always good with kids,' she said. ‘They usually hate it – it's real hard to get them to sit still.' She sat Mahalia in her highchair out in the back yard and snipped away at the soft dark curls.

‘Thought you said you were never going to cut hair again,' said Matt lazily, watching from the door of the kitchen.

‘That's for a living. Friends are different.' She gave Mahalia a small plastic mirror to hold. ‘Whatever you do, don't chuck it,' she told her. After sucking on it for a while, Mahalia noticed that she could catch small glimpses of herself in it.

‘Hold still – just a few more snips. There – now you look lovely. All those long straggly bits trimmed off. Now . . . look at yourself.'

Eliza held a larger mirror up to Mahalia's face. ‘That's
you
, Mahalia!'

Matt would always remember her grave apprehension of herself for the first time.

Next morning Matt was woken by Mahalia standing in her cot rattling the bars and talking about the ‘hor'. She pointed with her arm to somewhere that meant outside and yonder. The books that Matt put in her cot every night after she'd fallen asleep, hoping they'd amuse her in the morning, had already been looked at and thrown out onto the floor. ‘Hor,' said Mahalia, urgently. She saw that Matt was awake and that she almost had his attention.

Matt groaned. ‘Okay, Mahalia. We'll go and see the horse this morning.' He threw back the sheet and got out of bed. ‘But first,' he said, with his biggest smile, ‘happy birthday!'

Mahalia giggled when he lifted her from the cot and covered her in kisses. And she looked delighted and amused when Eliza sang her an elaborate ‘Happy birthday' at breakfast and presented her with a parcel. She tasted the wrapping paper for a long time till Eliza showed her how to unwrap it. It was a book – an Aboriginal legend called
The Giant Devil
Dingo
. When Mahalia saw the giant dingo on the cover she pointed to it and said, ‘hor'.

‘Oh, you, everything's a hor, isn't it?' said Matt. ‘That's a dog. A big dog.'

Virginia sauntered her thin leggy way into the kitchen. ‘Mahalia!' she said, and held out her arms wide. Mahalia looked up at her and smiled. ‘Happy birthday!'

Virginia plopped a parcel onto the tray of Mahalia's highchair. Mahalia was a fast learner; she knew now how to unwrap a parcel to find what was inside. It was a horse, made of solid moulded plastic.

‘Hor!' she said immediately. And then put the head straight into her mouth.

On the way to the horse paddock afterwards, she urged the stroller to go faster with back-and-forth movements, pushing against the safety strap. ‘Hor! Hor!' she said, and pointed up the street. They came to the dogs. ‘Hor!' said Mahalia, pointing at Teg.

‘That's a dog. That's Teg. And that's Tessa.'

They walked on to the horses. Mahalia leant forward in Matt's arms to smell them, wrinkling up her nose and showing her teeth with the pleasure of it.

‘Do they pong, Mahalia?'

She looked around at him at the sound of her own name and pointed to the horse. ‘Hor,' she said, as if she were revealing a remarkable fact to him.

On the far side of the paddock was a brown cow with a circle of white ibises standing all the way around it. The cow ate unconcernedly, but the ibises seemed to be worshipping the cow, paying homage to the cow.

‘Maybe it's the cow's birthday, Mahalia, and they're wishing it happy birthday. Look. See the cow?'

Mahalia knew cows from the book Eliza read to her. ‘Moo!' she said.

They held a small birthday party. Just a cake, with Matt and his mother and Eliza and Virginia. Matt hadn't wanted a fuss. He wasn't in the mood for it, but his mother said they must have
something
and offered to make the cake.

Mahalia blew out her own candles, with help from Matt and a great deal of spitting. She leaned forward from Matt's arms and sucked the icing off the slice of cake that Matt's mother held out for her. ‘Hey, you lazy little bugga!' said Virginia. ‘Hang onto the cake yourself!'

They gave her a slice to hold and she squished it several times between her fingers before shoving the mush into her mouth, laughing with her mouth wide open.

Matt's mother and Eliza cleaned the kitchen together afterwards. They got on remarkably well: had a matter-of-fact way of looking into each other's eyes, and didn't get under each other's feet.

Matt only overheard snatches of their conversation as he moved from the back yard, through the kitchen, and back again, attending to Mahalia:

‘. . . is just the best thing . . .' said Eliza (she must be talking about singing).

‘. . . I'll never make a living from it . . .' (his mother's mask-making).

‘. . . Mahalia's his project now . . .' (they were talking about him!).

Kent arrived, and Eliza tossed her teatowel over the back of a chair. She crammed a bike helmet over her head, pulled on her boots and a jacket and roared off on the back of his bike.

‘She's beautiful, isn't she?' said his mother. ‘She's getting to that age . . .'

‘What age?' asked Matt.

His mother looked up, as though she had forgotten he was there. ‘Oh, when young women are really beautiful,' she said, vaguely. ‘What is she? Twenty-five?'

‘Twenty-two,' said Matt. It seemed that the whole world was older than him.

When she was almost ready to go home, his mother brought out a present from Emmy (Matt had sent her a letter with his address on it but she always assumed he wouldn't be there long and sent everything to his mother).

‘I didn't want to interrupt the party,' she said.

Matt didn't know a present could be so painful. He thought of Emmy, how she had once gazed at Mahalia, and knew it had been painfully chosen. He put it aside for later.

‘One year old,' said Matt's mother, wistfully, as she prepared to leave. ‘It seems no time since you were that age. And now look at you . . . You're doing so well with her, you know. She's a great kid.' She put her arm round Matt's shoulder.

Matt looked at her in amazement. He thought he'd been struggling, always. The sleepless nights. Those times when he could kill for sleep. The times he just wanted to make her
shut up
. The struggle with money. The vulnerable, sometimes nebulous feeling he nearly always carried with him, that he was struggling to simply exist in the world.

And he'd needed so much help, in the end. He'd wanted to look after Mahalia on his own – to show he could do it. But he'd had help all along the way. From Charmian, and Eliza, and Virginia. Otis, even, in his way. And his mother, even his mother had helped, just by always being there, even though he'd refused most of her direct offers of help.

‘Make sure you make the most of her, won't you?' she said. ‘They don't stay this age forever.'

‘I will,' said Matt, surprised. ‘I do.'

In the long months before Mahalia's birth, Emmy and Matt had lain together, limbs entwined, and talked of the mystery of it all. They somehow envisaged their baby born under a tree somewhere, a broad tree with a canopy of sheltering branches, a vast, maternal fig, perhaps, and the mystery and wonder of the world would bless them all.

The idea of the tree had been a dream, really, because they knew for a long time that their baby would be born in a hospital. Emmy had wanted a midwife but had been told she was too young, that a hospital would be safer. (And even a midwife would have drawn the line at a tree!)

Emmy had looked around at the gleaming labour room, a place of white sheets and stainless steel. There was a forest mural covering one wall, a laughable attempt to make the place look natural.

‘It's . . . so
ordinary
, really,' said Emmy softly, looking around her.

‘It
is
ordinary,' said the nurse briskly. ‘Just a natural ordinary thing.' She pulled a curtain across and bustled about with equipment.

Matt squeezed Emmy's hand and smiled. He'd known what she meant. It was far removed from their tree.

Matt watched as Emmy's concentration centred itself somewhere in the middle of her being, so that he, and the nurses, and the labour ward, weren't there at all. She had been like this often in the last few weeks: concentrated, thoughtful, far from him.

When she had pushed Mahalia into the world Matt had been struck by how much
work
it had been. It required every bit of concentration she possessed. Her breath was heavy. A film of sweat slicked her face, and Matt wiped it away with a cool washer. It was all sheer effort and will, more work than toiling all day in the hot sun.

Matt was woken by Eliza coming home in the early hours of the morning; he listened as the motorbike idled in the street while she found the key to the door. Then the bike departed and Matt heard her Blundstones hitting the floor of the front room. He imagined her bare feet creeping up the stairs, as she tried not to wake anyone. (Virginia, last week, said, ‘Do you have to sound like a baby elephant? Some people need their sleep, you know!')

There was a faint scent and a rustle of clothing as she passed his room, and the sound of her door closing.

Matt turned over in bed and listened to Mahalia's breathing, slow and even. She was one year old. He'd got her this far. It was an achievement, he supposed, but anxiety still gnawed at him. His doubts beat in his head like a drum. He got up abruptly and walked out onto the balcony, feeling sure that he wouldn't sleep tonight. The streetlights shone onto him, making an artificial twilight. He heard the faint voices of people walking up the street on their way home from somewhere, and the sounds of human life soothed him. Their laughter wrapped the night in comfort. The black dog, Voucher, trotted along the pavement opposite, looking purposeful, the way dogs do when they're on the move.

Suddenly he felt blessed that Mahalia was healthy, and alive, and with him. He went back to bed and pulled the sheet up over himself. Matt laughed aloud in the dark. A whole year! She'd been part of his life a whole year! He lay listening to Mahalia's merciful, light breathing. The house was so silent he thought he could hear the tick of her heart, the swoosh of blood through her veins, and the slow, certain growth of every cell in her body.

14

Matt's guitar appeared in the front room one day. BLUES IS THE MUSIC THAT HEALS said the case, white letters standing out in the gloom. The house was still cool; it had the tranquil, composed calm of a place remembering the night. Through the door the street shone in a bright square of light.

The guitar had been hidden from view of the street by a cardboard box. Matt saw it immediately as he came down the stairs in the morning. He put Mahalia down onto the floor, and she staggered away at once into the kitchen, where she could hear Virginia making breakfast. ‘Hey, Mahalia,
babeee
!' Virginia called. Mahalia ran to her, her arms waving in the air to steady herself, all the better to be scooped from the floor and into the air.

Matt rubbed the dull, textured surface of the guitar case. He hefted the weight, and clicked open the catches, half-fearing that it would be filled with something else, that the weight would be something other than guitar. It wasn't. The white body of the guitar gleamed.

Matt smiled.

It was his birthday.

Otis was at home, in bed. ‘Don't get me up! It's the weekend.' Matt wrestled him off the bed and onto the floor. ‘You shouldn't have done it, man.'

‘Done what?' Otis stood up and wiped his eyes, which were filled with tears from laughing and trying not to. Matt hooked his foot round Otis's leg and brought him down again. Otis regained his feet at once. Matt grabbed him by the shoulders and head-butted him, and this time Otis fought back.

It was a satisfying tussle. Matt hadn't wrestled with Otis for a long time, not since Mahalia was born. He'd always had her strapped to his chest or clinging in his arms, but at this moment she was in the kitchen with Charmian.

‘But,' said Matt, when they were both sitting back on the bed, panting with the exertion, ‘I'm paying you back for it as soon as I get some money.'

‘If you like,' said Otis. He knew about pride. ‘But only some of it. It
is
ya birthday. I got sick of you playing Alan's old heap of shit. That guitar of his is crap,' he said happily. ‘And you can try out for that band now. You want to, don't you?'

Matt pushed his hair away from his forehead and widened his eyes at the possibility. ‘Don't know,' he said.

In the kitchen Mahalia was playing hide-and-seek with Charmian from underneath a towel, her face alive with delight every time Charmian ‘found' her.

‘Hey, this baby had a birthday and you didn't ask me?' said Charmian, her face reproachful.