Mahalia (5 page)

Matt had noticed her earlier, but now, embarrassed that she might have seen him watching her out of the corner of his eye, he could barely look at her. She'd been trying on an assortment of clothes in front of a mirror, and had not needed to go into a dressing room because she'd merely put the clothes on over whatever she was already wearing, so that there was layer upon layer. But she'd shown a noticeable quantity of leg and bare brown midriff: she managed to combine black stretch leggings, a short purple silk skirt, a white net petticoat like a ballet tutu, a pink singlet over a green T-shirt, and a silver cardigan embroidered with rosebuds.

She tugged off the cardigan and the net petticoat and knelt down beside Mahalia's stroller. ‘Don't you want to wear a hat? The sun will burn you if you don't.' She looked into Mahalia's face as she spoke.

She got up and rummaged in the baby clothes for another hat. Mahalia merely stared at her with round-eyed dumb awe as the girl placed a terry-towelling hat on her head and tied it under the chin with strings. Mahalia put her hand to the crown of her head, touched the hat, and brought her hand down again, a look of wonder on her face.

‘That's a
good
hat. A
very
good hat,' the lion girl told Mahalia firmly, smiling at her so cheerfully that Mahalia smiled back, despite her dubious feeling about the thing that had been placed on her head.

‘See?' said the girl to Matt. ‘Isn't that just what you're after? I'm an ace op shopper. Call on me any time.'

She flashed him the smile that had charmed Mahalia, a smile that had as much to do with a sudden upward glance full of humour as it did with teeth and mouth. Then she backed away a couple of steps, almost bashfully, and turned sharply and walked to the counter. Matt was left with an impression of bare brown feet and a lion's mane and a smile that reminded him acutely, and painfully, of Emmy.

On the way out of town to hitch to the beach, Matt stopped at the health-food shop for some carob buttons. He looked at the notices on the board and found one that interested him:

L
ARGE ROOM WITH BALCONY IN SHOPFRONT HOUSE
F
RIENDLY HOUSEHOLD, VEGGIE GARDEN, CHILD WELCOME
O
PTIONAL FREE SINGING LESSONS INCLUDED

Matt tore the address (
sorry, no phone
, it said) from the strip at the bottom and put it in his pocket, and made his way out to the main coast road to hitch.

The wheels of Mahalia's stroller sang along the concrete paths of Lismore; they rasped and whirred across the blue metal roads, whisking right past the used-car yards, where Matt had spent too many boring hours in his youth with Elijah, who drooled over what he called the
beasts
. And the crappy wooden houses of Lismore leered and beckoned, for Matt had known many a person who lived in them; the flat he and Emmy had shared before she went away was up that street there. And high above the old part of Lismore, the part that flooded, with its three bridges crossing its two rivers, and its pubs and clubs and the most deadly boring main street in the entire universe, nestled the houses of the newer suburbs, the houses with trim gardens and views. Emmy's parents lived up there, watching television and vacuuming the wall-to-wall carpet and washing up three times a day. And there was the cathedral, with the squat date palm and the tower that he and Emmy had climbed, and there were the camphor-laurel trees they had seen from the tower, and here was the road that led out of town and here was a kombi van stopping for him.

He arrived at the beach that day with a joyful heart, despite (or perhaps because of) the smile of the girl in the op shop that reminded him of how much he was missing Emmy. Emmy had a way of looking at him, of lifting the corners of her mouth and lighting up her eyes somehow at the same time, so that her whole face was surprised and joyful. She made him feel that he was the only person in the world she ever looked at like that. ‘Hey!' she'd say to him, grabbing an apple from the fruit bowl, her face alight with mischief, ‘Catch!'

Down on the sand he took Mahalia's nappy off and carried her down to the water. The hat the girl had found for her shaded her stern little face. She was solemnly aware that a new experience was happening to her and she was ready for it. He dipped her toes in the water and she curled up her feet and wrinkled her face and exclaimed. Then, when she was used to the feel of the cool water, he held her under the arms and bounced her up and down at the edge of the sea, and she flexed her legs and took her weight on her feet, digging her toes into sand for the first time in her life.

Matt was careful of her pale defenceless skin, and had left her shirt on, and after a short time he bundled her up in a towel and carried her back up into the shade. Then they walked down the beach to search for shells.

Reality
, he told Mahalia,
is that nothing happens
. But he looked out at the sea, squinting at the curve of the coast from the lighthouse to where it disappeared into infinity in the north, and was quite content, at the moment, for nothing to happen.

He and Emmy had been on this beach once, with sand stretching forever, no one much around apart from strolling couples and a lone person doing yoga on the sand near the sea.

And there came a horse from behind them, a horse with a rider crouched low, and as it got closer, they saw it was a man with a bare chest, riding bareback, and wearing a long feathered Indian headdress.

He swerved to avoid the walking couples, and the yoga person, who didn't budge, and as he thundered past Matt saw his face, bright with war paint, mouth pulled into a grimace, teeth sharp as a fox's: it was like staring into a mask. As he went past he looked down at them; it seemed to Matt that he looked particularly at Emmy. But he shot past them in a moment, and all they could see was the rear of the horse, its speckled rump, its hoofs kicking up sand.

He stopped a little way up the beach and led the horse into the water, and soon they caught up with him. He appeared ordinary off the horse, just a man with a painted face and funny headgear and a bare brown chest.

Emmy paused to stroke the horse, talking to it all the while, and the man asked her if she'd like to get on it.

Once she was up on the horse's back holding the reins, Emmy looked out over the sea with an expression on her face Matt had never seen before. Without a word she dug her heels into the horse's flanks and took off. Matt heard the sound of hoofs and saw the sand kicked up in their wake, and stood helplessly, watching her go. The Red Indian grinned to himself. He didn't look at Matt at all. He was the sort of
dude
who thought it was cool that some girl had just taken off on his horse.

And just when Matt thought Emmy would never come back, just keep going along that infinite beach until she became a speck and disappeared, she wheeled the horse around and returned, and he watched her coming closer and closer, crouched low over the horse's back.

When she reined it in she was so close that Matt could see the sweat glistening under her nose. The Red Indian grabbed the reins, and she slid off.

Matt put his face into her hair. All he could smell was horse sweat, and Emmy sweat; she pushed him away after a moment, and looked up at the horse with love, her face bright with exertion.

5

‘The Bluebird Cafe,' said his mother, as they pulled up. She was dropping him off at the address he'd torn from the advertisement.

‘What?'

‘This place used to be the Bluebird Cafe. Years ago. Oh, when you were only a bit older than Mahalia. It didn't last long. It was one of those early hippie cafes. Fresh orange juice and veggie burgers. I don't think I ever went there. But I always remembered the name.'

The place was a double-storeyed shopfront, with a veranda. The shop windows had been painted over to stop people peering in, in ochre and aqua paint, with a design of an arch and latticework.

A man answered the door, a pale man with a long ponytail. He had the look of someone who spent a lot of time in record shops flicking through old records, a look of shy fanaticism. ‘Yes?' he said. He had a flat, expressionless voice.

‘I've come about the room?' said Matt, shifting Mahalia to his other hip. She was too big for the pouch now, and her fold-up stroller sat beside him on the footpath.

‘The room? Oh. Yeah.' It took him a long time to register what Matt had said.

‘Er – come in. My name's Dave.'

Matt picked up the stroller and took it inside with him. ‘Mind if I just leave it inside here?'

‘What? Oh, sure.' There were people who simply didn't notice babies, or strollers, ever, and Dave was one of them. He hadn't even glanced at Mahalia, let alone said hello to her, as many people would have done. Was this the place that advertised
child welcome
?

Once Matt's eyes had become accustomed to the darkness he saw that they were in a large empty room with a few cardboard boxes stacked up around the edges and two sagging sofas. A timber staircase at the side led to the second storey.

‘Yeah,' said Dave, ‘Well, we never seem to use this room. There's only Eliza and me here now and we congregate in the kitchen or stay in our own rooms. But come up and see the room that's for rent.'

Even in a ponytail, Dave's hair reached to his waist. Perhaps that's where all his energy was, for he barely used a muscle in his face, and he led Matt up the stairs with a walk so languid that he appeared to begrudge the effort required to move.

‘This room's been vacant for a while. We didn't bother getting anyone in. The thing is, I'm moving in with my girlfriend as soon as I can get someone to replace me. So when I leave there'll be another room vacant as well. Eliza and whoever rents this can decide whether they want a third person.'

Matt stared at Dave's heels as he climbed the stairs. Mahalia was in his arms, and he put his nose near the top of her head. The sweet smell of her soft bald scalp masked the musty dark odour of the house.

Dave led him into a large front room that was filled with light. It was painted yellow. The walls had become grubby and it was bare except for a small cardboard box with scraps of cloth in it. Matt liked the room immediately.

‘Gets a bit of noise from the street,' said Dave, opening the door that led to the veranda.

Matt went out. It was a deep veranda, partly closed in by peeling latticework. ‘What do you think, Mahalia?' he said. ‘A veranda!'

In his imagination he had already moved in.

He looked up approvingly towards the roof, where a red nylon rope was suspended from the rafters. ‘With a washing line.'

The front door downstairs slammed.

Dave had followed Matt out to the veranda. ‘That sounds like Eliza,' he said.

There were energetic footsteps on the stairs. Then someone walked briskly around the top floor.

‘Eliza! Come out to the veranda!' called Dave.

Footsteps came through the yellow room. Bold, striding footsteps on the bare boards. A face appeared, the face of the lion girl.

She grinned at Matt, but it was Mahalia she spoke to. ‘How was that hat, eh? Keep the sun off you all right?' She was one of the people who noticed babies.

‘Do you know each other?' said Dave, but his voice was devoid of surprise or curiosity.

‘Not really. But we've met. Kind of.' Eliza's almost-crossed-eyes met Matt's.

‘I'm Matt,' he said, holding out his hand.

‘Eliza,' she said. ‘And this is?' She looked at Mahalia with a quizzical look.

‘Oh. This is Mahalia.' Matt positioned her so she could see Eliza better.

‘Wow! Mahalia! After Mahalia Jackson?'

‘Yeah.'

An awkward silence followed. She'd expected him to say more.

Matt finally found his voice.

‘Who gives the optional free singing lessons?'

‘I do,' said Eliza.

Eliza had given him a key, and there was no one home when he moved in. Matt noticed that his mother tactfully made no comment about the darkness and the sparse nature of the furnishings in the front room, the former shop, which was so obviously used as a kind of dumping-ground for junk rather than a living room.

‘Our room's up here.'

He opened the door onto the veranda to let in some air, and his mother looked around.

‘Needs a sweep,' he said, anticipating her feelings about it.

‘Oh, it's nice,' she said warmly. ‘A good room. Big. Lots of light.'

They set up Mahalia's cot first and put her in it while they moved Matt's things. (His mother had bought the cot second-hand and painted it mauve. ‘You think I can't buy my own granddaughter a cot?' she'd said, when Matt protested.) Mahalia sat on the bare mattress, rattling the bars, looking as if she might cry at any moment.

Matt squatted down to look at the box of things that had been left behind in the corner. There were some pieces of bright fabric and a few tubes of glitter.

‘You want?' he asked his mother, showing the box and its contents to her. She nodded happily. It was exactly the kind of stuff she collected.

‘Visit me!' she said sternly, as she left him to settle in. He stood on the balcony and watched her car pull away. He thought of the emptiness of the house on the mountain that she was going back to. She loved the quiet, she had chosen it, but he'd heard her tell people it could be too quiet. They had lived there together all his life, and Matt knew she'd loved having him and Mahalia stay with her the past few weeks. He found it lonely too, bringing up a baby by himself. The flat had been unbearable after Emmy went, and that was one of the reasons he'd gone back to stay with his mother.

But he needed to strike out on his own again.

On the veranda floor he found a set of bamboo windchimes lying abandoned like a collection of old bones. He picked it up and fixed some of the strings and hung it, and that night it sang them to sleep with its diffident music.