Mahalia (15 page)

There were photos of Mahalia, now, along with all the framed pictures of family and friends that covered the walls of the living room.

‘It was just a little birthday,' said Matt, embarrassed.

‘Just a little cake,' said Otis, grinning; he wasn't at all sad he hadn't been asked.

‘Just a little birthday.' Charmian was disgusted with him. ‘The first one! That's a big birthday! Only a little number but a big day!'

Charmian's family had had some bad luck. Her daughter's husband had got drunk and burned down the house they lived in (a big thing in a small city; it was in the local paper), so she and her kids were staying with Charmian and Alan and Otis until they could get another place. The house was overflowing with people, but houses were expandable, weren't they: there was always room for more. Charmian's normally placid face was weary. She'd come back after months in Kempsey with her relatives, and now this. But she'd met someone down there, and the thought of him brought a sly smile to her face.

‘I'm tired,' she said. ‘Think I'll go down south again, get me some lovin'.'

Matt wished he could get some loving himself. He might have a guitar again, but he also was lonely, and filled with weariness.

He hitched to his mother's that afternoon, the evening of his birthday, hoping that the place would not close in on him like a Venus flytrap. He dreaded being drawn back into it. It would be easy. It would be like reclining onto a bed of moss and letting it grow over you. It would be like finding yourself in a part of the rainforest where the lawyer cane (‘wait-a while'!) grows thick, its toothed vines catching hold of your clothing.

He was eighteen. Old enough to do lots of things. Old enough, now, to be a father.

His mother's house was filled with contradictions. It was in the middle of the forest, closed in, claustrophobic. And yet, perched as it was on the side of the mountain, there were places where you could look out and see over the whole forested valley, so that it was outward-looking and expansive. It was full of doors and windows, and yet, in places, there were no doors, just gaps where a door should be. He wanted to be independent, and yet his mother was always there.

His father had always been an unspoken presence. The fact of Matt's existence made him ever-present. As always, there was something from him for Matt's birthday. This year it was a cheque: a nice amount, two hundred dollars. Perhaps he thought Matt was too old now for other presents. Matt folded the cheque and put it beside him on the table. He could pay Otis back some of the money for the guitar.

He remembered other birthdays. The fun he and his mother had had.

‘Hey,' said Matt, smiling, ‘remember the year you gave me the bike for my birthday? And I persuaded you to have a go on it?'

She sat up and laughed at the memory.

‘You hadn't ridden one for years,' said Matt. ‘And you got on it and took off down the drive . . .‘

‘It sort of took off with
me
,' she said, ‘like some kind of animal with a mind of its own.'

‘And you yelled, “Help, help,” but you had to keep pedalling to stay upright, and you went out onto the road and halfway down the hill before you found the brakes. We both laughed so hard I thought I was going to be sick,' said Matt.

‘You made me learn to ride it again properly after that,' said his mother. ‘It kept me fit for a while.'

‘Matt,' she said, as if out of the blue, but it was obvious she'd been thinking about it for some time, ‘why don't you let me teach you to drive? You're eighteen now. You could've had your licence for a year.'

Matt scratched the back of his neck and shook his head. ‘I'll never get a car.'

‘If you could drive you could borrow mine.'

Matt sighed and shook his head. ‘Yeah, I know. But I don't know that I want to get around that way.'

‘Most young men can't wait to get their licence.'

‘I'm not most young men.'

‘Why are you so stubborn? And anyway, you
might
get a car one day.' His mother started to collect up the plates. ‘Think about it,' she said, not wanting to quarrel on his birthday. ‘The longer you put it off, the harder it'll get.'

Mahalia had been sitting in her highchair, watching them and laughing because they were laughing. But when the conversation took a serious turn she'd started to grizzle. Matt pushed back his chair. ‘Come on,' he said to her, ‘I'll take you for a walk outside.' She put her arms around his neck and he lifted her onto his hip.

In the garden, she walked along beside him, holding his hand, her bare feet curling up on the rough ground, her toes like pale grubs. He lifted her up and tossed her into the air and caught her. Mahalia loved that. He took hold of her feet and suspended her upside-down. Spatial development. She held on tight and swung like a monkey, and he carried her, still upside down, her body clasped securely to his chest, to the gap in the trees where they could look out over the valley. It was all space, and distance; only an occasional cleared patch and a dull roof showed where there might be other people.

Matt turned Mahalia the right way up again and plopped her down onto the ground. When Mahalia saw her grandmother come out to join them, she waved her arms and staggered across the grass towards her.

‘Gosh, you're a little grub,' said his mother. ‘You've got lunch all over you. Do you feel like a bath?'

‘Ba,' said Mahalia, gesturing towards the house.

Matt's mother ran some water into the big bathtub and Mahalia was so keen to get in she helped her grandmother remove her clothes by lifting her arms and legs at the right moments. Matt's mother knelt beside the bath and steadied Mahalia's slippery body in the water.

Matt came inside and leaned in the bathroom doorway and watched, a rueful smile on his face. Once, he'd said to his mother, ‘I'll bath her. She's
my
baby, okay?' As if his mother, by merely doing something for Mahalia, could alter the fact that she was. There was such a thing, he thought, as being too independent. And he was eighteen now.

‘Thanks for the offer to teach me to drive,' said Matt, surprising himself. ‘I think I'll take you up on it. I'll go to the RTA and get the learner's book, yeah?'

Mahalia had her first visit to Emmy's mother on her own, for a whole day. She left cheerfully, strapped into the car seat, waving to Matt through the side window as the car pulled away. He felt her absence. His arms were empty. He was used to hefting the weight of her, taking her everywhere. He was childless for the first time in over a year.

Virginia and Eliza had gone out already. He lay on his bed and listened to the silence in the house. He picked up BLUES IS THE MUSIC THAT HEALS and strummed a few disconsolate notes, and the sound only made him sadder. It would have filled up his day if he could've jammed with Otis, but he'd be at school. For a moment Matt thought of school with something close to nostalgia: there were always people there to talk to, at least. He wished Eliza were in the house, singing – when she belted out a song it wasn't a lonesome sound. It filled up the world with expectation.

‘Arr, shit!'

Matt hauled himself up off the bed, and set about tidying the room. He took in yesterday's clothes and nappies from the line on the veranda and folded them. The sheets hadn't been washed for ages, so he stripped his bed and the cot and shoved it all into a garbage bag to take down to the laundromat.

In the street he saw the dogs, Teg and Tessa. ‘Hi, Teg! Hi, Tessa!' he said, in the high voice he used when saying something for Mahalia's benefit. He stopped, feeling stupid. They wagged their tails at him anyway, and panted, their blue tongues hanging out.

He found himself, in the slow, hot, childless afternoon, bumping into Elijah, who was just about to knock on his front door. He'd got the address from Matt's mother. Elijah was back from fruit-picking, and he had a dog, a fierce-looking dingo ridgeback cross. ‘This is Jess,' said Elijah, ‘And it depends who you are, how she likes ya.'

Jess wagged her tail at Matt.

Matt was pleased to see Elijah, who looked at him speculatively. ‘You've had ya hair cut, mate!' he said, nodding his head cynically. Elijah's hair was also shorter. He looked older and more muscular, and his eyes had a defensive, challenging look.

They wandered down Matt's street to where paddocks led to their old school, and they sat on the edge of the oval, sharing a durry that Elijah took from a back pocket.

‘Remember nicking off from there?' said Elijah, nodding towards the timber, high-set buildings of the school. ‘Best thing we ever did.'

‘Did you go fruit-picking?' said Matt. ‘Make any money?'

‘Went all the way to Shep,' said Elijah, ‘Shepparton. In Victoria. Got a job as a farm labourer for a while. They work ya, those blokes, I tell ya, ten, thirteen hours a day, eight days without a break. Got to the eighth day I collapsed in the heat.' He laughed bitterly. His mouth turned down. ‘There was this guy, a
pen-pusher
from Bondi, started working there. Did three days and collapsed. This bastard of an owner says to him, “I downed you after three days. Took me eight to down Elijah.” '

He took a sour kind of pride in this. ‘And then, when they don't want ya, when the weather's bad, it's back to Centrelink. Those bastards know not to muck me and Jess around now. After the few go-ins I had with 'em. They see me comin' with Jess and they're all politeness. I say to Jess, “We're goin' down to Centrelink . . .” ' When she heard the word ‘Centrelink', Jess turned her orange head and growled.

‘That's right, isn't it, Jess?
Centrelink
!'

Jess growled again.

‘Jess is the
scourge
of Centrelink. This woman says to me, “I'd appreciate it if you left your dog outside. We don't permit animals in here.'' ' ‘

“Listen,” I said. “This dog goes where I go.” You've got to call the buggers' bluff. They're happy if you don't want a job. But when you
want
a job, when you
demand
a job, when you want to know why the bastards who'll employ you on a day-to-day basis like, won't give you any
permanent
employment, when they hire and fire you just like that . . . Anyway, me and Jess are
real
well known at Shepparton Centrelink.'

Elijah laughed again. He was older, harder.

‘Did you make any money?' said Matt.

‘Made it, and spent it.' He sighed. ‘Made just about enough to keep me and Jess alive. Still got your baby?'

Matt nodded. ‘She's visiting Emmy's parents today.'

Elijah nodded and pulled a face. He had an almost constant downwards turn to his mouth now. ‘You could get them to look after her all the time, probably,' he said.

‘But I don't want them to,' said Matt, amazed that Elijah could suggest such a thing. ‘She's mine.'

The truth was that when Matt was without Mahalia he felt that something was missing. It was an uneasy feeling, a sense that he'd left something behind, that there was something he should have remembered that he'd forgotten. It was too
easy
to walk down the street without a baby in tow. No getting together all the stuff you had to take, no unfolding the stroller or folding it up again, manoeuvring it through doors and over kerbs, no talking constantly, soothing and reassuring. You just stood up and you . . .
went
. It was unnatural.

With Mahalia still not due back till later in the afternoon, Matt, in his aimlessness, ended up at the Conservatorium, waiting for Eliza. He sat under a fig tree, watching people come and go.

S
UBVERT THE DOMINANT PARADIGM
said the graffiti on the wall.

This annoyed Matt because he didn't even know how to pronounce PARADIGM, let alone what it meant. Maybe he should go back to school (go to TAFE, like Virginia!), learn some big words,
make something of himself.

At last Eliza emerged, wheeling her bicycle down the steps because she had no bike lock and always took it inside for safe-keeping. Kent was with her. They saw Matt and came over to him.

‘What's that mean?' Matt said, indicating the graffiti with a movement of his head.

‘Why so many poor?' said Eliza. ‘Good question, when the country's meant to be so prosperous.'

‘You mean “paradigm”?' said Kent, knowing at once what Matt was getting at. He said it so it rhymed with ‘dime'. ‘It means a way of looking at things. The concept that dominates this society.' His dark bright eyes looked keenly at Matt.

‘Which is?' Matt wondered why people had to use such difficult words.

Kent grinned. ‘How about:
Work
.
Consume
.
Die?
No, but really, you tell me what it is.'

‘Something like that,' Matt grunted.

‘It comes from a Greek word meaning a pattern.'

‘You just know that?'

‘Nah, had to look it up in a dictionary when I saw that graffiti.' Kent grinned at him.

Matt laughed. ‘It could be
paradiddle
. Subvert the dominant paradiddle. You know, that hand pattern for drumming . . . right, left, right right, left left . . .'

‘Or right, right, right, right . . . maybe that's the dominant paradiddle?' interrupted Kent, laughing.

‘Oh, what are you
on
?' said Eliza, impatient with the conversation. She got onto her bike. ‘I'll leave you blokes to it!' she yelled, her head turned to one side so they'd hear her as she rode off.

‘Hey,' said Kent. ‘A little bird told me that you had your bass back. How about coming for a jam with us? See how you go. We're meeting on Saturday afternoon, shed in the back of my place. Eliza'll give you the address.'

The shed backed onto a laneway and they left the roller door open to let in light and air. Matt brought his guitar, and Mahalia, and toys to keep her amused, and food, and a bag of nappies and spare clothes. He was used to packing up all that stuff now.