Little Bird Page 10

  ‘Sounds like you’ve got it all worked out,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah. I do.’

  Mum sighed. ‘Well, you don’t have to decide right now, anyway.’

  I couldn’t win! Last week she’d been nagging me about the future, and now she was telling me I didn’t have to worry about it. What did she want from me? I slammed the car door when I got out. Mum didn’t even seem to notice. She watched me walk across the road. And then she drove off, looking disappointed, as if I’d just told her I was planning on being a junkie when I grew up.

  I could hear Maisy crying from the bottom of the stairs. As I got closer to Colette’s door the sound got louder and louder.

  Colette was sitting on the steps outside her closed front door, smoking a cigarette. She looked like crap. She was wearing faded trackies and a shapeless white long-sleeved T-shirt and no bra, looking like she’d just crawled out of bed. She stared straight ahead, as if she couldn’t even hear Maisy crying.

  ‘Is Maisy all right?’ I asked.

  ‘She’s fine,’ Colette said. ‘She’s in the cot.’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘We’re not having a very good day is what’s going on.’ Colette drew in another lungful of smoke.

  ‘I’ll go and get her, shall I?’ I asked.

  ‘Knock yourself out,’ said Colette. She didn’t budge.

  I went inside. Maisy’s howls filled the flat. She was standing in the cot holding onto the bars, howling. When she saw me her cries grew louder. Her face was red with rage.

  ‘Maisy, come on sweetie, come here. Come to Ruby-lee.’ I kept talking to her as I picked her up. She arched her back, screaming, and grabbed a fistful of my hair as I tried to cuddle her.

  ‘Come on sweetie.’ I made a shushing sound.

  Maisy pricked up her ears, and her crying subsided. I turned and saw Colette standing in the doorway watching us. ‘Colette, are you okay?’

  ‘I’m fine. I’m getting changed.’

  Seeing Colette set Maisy off again, and then she wailed even louder when Colette disappeared into her bedroom.

  I took Maisy out into the lounge room, joggling her up and down as I walked, and she calmed again, but as soon as I put her on the floor she belted up the hallway on all fours towards Colette. Man, that kid could move. She pulled herself up to standing at Colette’s bedroom door, and I realised she’d been standing in the cot when I arrived.

  I followed her along the hallway and scooped her up. ‘You clever thing. Can you stand now?’ She shrieked as I carried her into the lounge room, lunging back towards Colette’s room. ‘Do you want a biscuit? I brought some yummy snacks with me.’

  I’d come prepared this week, with a packet of milk arrowroots, some jars of baby food and a couple of bananas. I sat on the couch to open the biscuits and Maisy crawled up.

  ‘You want one, huh?’

  Colette looked at the biscuits when she came back into the lounge room, but she didn’t say anything. You’re welcome, I thought.

  ‘What time will you be home?’ I asked.

  Colette shrugged. ‘I don’t know. We might run late again today.’

  ‘Maisy’s a bit upset,’ I ventured.

  ‘Yeah, well, maybe if she slept more than three hours at a time she might stop being such a drama queen,’ Colette snapped. She closed her eyes. ‘Sorry,’ she said abruptly. ‘It’s just when she doesn’t sleep, I don’t sleep.’

  ‘We’ll be just fine, won’t we, Maisy?’ Maisy had pulled herself upright and was standing next to me, her little hand clutching my leg to steady herself. ‘I can’t believe she’s standing!’ I said to Colette. ‘She looks so much older. Like she’s not really a baby anymore.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Colette said. I felt annoyed by her lack of interest. ‘Well, bye Maisy.’

  Maisy looked up. As Colette opened the front door, Maisy’s bottom lip wobbled. She sat down, bump, on her bottom. Her whole face melted into despair and she began to cry again. It was the first time she’d reacted like this to Colette’s departure; usually she barely noticed Colette leaving. I offered her a biscuit. She pushed it away angrily, turning her back to me. I couldn’t help but take it personally – I felt rejected.

  ‘Maisy, I’ll be back later, okay,’ Colette said impatiently.

  Maisy shot across the room and clung to Colette’s leg.

  ‘I’m already late. I don’t have time for this.’ She picked Maisy up, gave her a perfunctory hug. ‘Believe it or not, Maisy, Mummy’s got a life.’ She passed her over to me. ‘I’ll go quickly,’ Colette said, apparently immune to Maisy’s desperate wailing. ‘It’ll be easier that way.’

  Easier for who? Colette left and Maisy continued to wail. I carried her to the couch, chatting in a bright tone. I tried again to distract her with a biscuit. I shook a little felt ball with a bell in the middle. She pushed the biscuit away, and wrenched the ball out of my hand and hurled it. She wriggled out of my arms, slithering to the floor. She crawled to the front door and pounded on it, looking back pleadingly, her face bright red and slick with snot and tears. It was as if she thought Colette going away was some kind of terrible magic trick I’d performed and I had the power to bring her back. I had gone from being a trusted friend to being a stranger, or worse, an enemy. It was all I could do not to start blubbering myself. And besides, said a tiny voice in my head, why would she want Colette back so badly anyway? The way Colette is acting lately, Maisy is better off with me.

  ‘Come on, Maisy. Please stop crying.’ I picked her up and sang to her, but she arched her back and screamed, refusing to relax into my arms. For the first time since I’d met Maisy, I felt utterly hopeless, incompetent. I put her down. I knew I was being weak and indecisive, but I didn’t know what else to do. Where had little baby Maisy gone? Suddenly she was something else, something powerful and angry and destructive. I was a little frightened of her.

  She cried for ages. I tried everything I could think of: nudey time, television, music, milk, water, several different snacks, all of which she refused. Even when I ran the bath and popped her in, she struggled in protest. Once in the water she kept screaming, her whole body purple with fury. So I lifted her out, dried her aggressively with the towel, fought her into her clothes and let her loose in the lounge again. The room was littered with the debris of my attempts to calm her – a banana skin and a bowl of browning, soupy mashed bananas, biscuits, spilled water cups, toys everywhere, the television playing a constant loop of Loony Tunes cartoons. And still she wailed.

  Finally I lost my temper. I stood over her and shouted, ‘Maisy, what do you want? Just tell me what you want me to do!’ I could hear the crazy in my voice. Asking Maisy, a baby who couldn’t speak, to tell me what to do was about as useful as telling her to grow up. Suddenly I was worried if I stayed there, looming into her personal space, I might grab her and shake her or something.

  I stormed out of the lounge room and down the hall. I sat on the edge of Colette’s bed, rigid, trying to calm myself, listening to Maisy cry. I let my head fall into my hands and squeezed back my own tears. Maisy’s crying reached a feverish pitch. I pressed my ears closed, trying to block out the sound. This was too much for me to handle. I couldn’t be expected to cope with this on my own. And I wasn’t even getting paid. I counted to twenty, took a deep breath and went back into the lounge room.

  This time Maisy wanted to be picked up – her crying had taken on a new, accusatory, abandoned tone – but in my arms she continued to wail. I carried her to the phone and dialled Colette’s mobile, jostling Maisy up and down, trying to shush her. Maisy lurched forward, trying to hit the phone’s buttons, forgetting to cry for a moment. A burst of music blasted in the kitchen. It took me a second to realise it was Colette’s mobile ringing – she hadn’t taken it with her. I swore and slammed the phone down hard, making Maisy jump, and the wailing started up again.

  ‘Oh, Maisy. I’m sorry. Here’s the phone. You can push the buttons, see?’ But Maisy continued her desperate cry
ing.

  I was ready to howl too when someone rapped hard on the door. I wondered if it was a neighbour, coming to complain about the noise, or someone who thought I must be abusing Maisy to make her scream like that. Maybe it was Mrs Spencer, stalker incorporated. Well, it would serve her – and Colette – right if I just dumped Maisy in her arms and walked out.

  I opened the door without even glancing through the spyhole. I was ready to hand Maisy over to anyone, even a passing burglar.

  It wasn’t a burglar. It wasn’t even Mrs Spencer. It was Spence.

  15

  ‘Here,’ I said. ‘Take her.’ I thrust Maisy, still howling, into Spence’s arms and stormed down the hallway to the bathroom, shut the door and locked it. I stood, breathing sharply, in the centre of the room. I caught sight of myself in the mirror. I couldn’t quite put us together, me and the girl I saw reflected back. I felt all quivery inside, but she looked hard and as cold as stone. In fact, I rather admired her; there was something immovable and unyielding about her. It gave her an edgy attractiveness I’d never seen in my own face before. I studied her with interest. Maybe I could be the kind of girl Spence might be interested in. I wondered which one of us would be going back out there.

  At the thought of Spence the icy façade slid and the girl in the mirror looked less certain. Yeah, yeah. It was the same old disappointing me. I looked away. Outside, through the little high window, I saw a flock of birds pass over the grey sky. I wished I could climb out the window and join them, fly far above all of this, higher and higher until the whole of Hobart was just lines on a map, till nothing was real anymore.

  That was when I heard the quiet. Maisy wasn’t crying anymore. Suddenly a flutter of panic swept over me. Had Spence abducted her? Had she choked on her own sobs?

  I opened the bathroom door, dread and guilt surging upwards from the pit of my stomach. I crept up the hallway and listened. All I could hear was a low humming sound. I stood at the entrance to the lounge room. Spence didn’t notice, he had his back to me. He held Maisy and she examined his face with undisguised curiosity, a little frown furrowing her forehead. I realised the low hum I could hear was Spence. Spence was singing.

  I closed my eyes and listened. He was singing words, but they weren’t English; the song sounded Russian or something. I opened my eyes. He was gazing down at Maisy as he sang. Her frown was gone. They seemed captured together in a moment – a moment I was not a part of. Suddenly, irrationally, I felt jealous. I knew Maisy belonged to him in a way she would never belong to me, but it was me who had changed her nappies and fed her and bathed her, who had held her while she screamed. I was the one who had loved her. To Spence she was a mess, an accident, a mistake.

  Like an uninvited guest at a party, I crashed their moment.

  ‘What are you doing here anyway?’ I asked Spence.

  The song died in his throat. I waited for Maisy to cry again, or to reach for me, but she didn’t. She didn’t even notice I was there. She lifted her hand and with her fingertips brushed the stubble on Spence’s chin experimentally.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Spence asked me.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I snapped. So not fine.

  ‘Why was Maisy crying like that?’

  You tell me and we’ll both know. ‘Um, because she’s a baby?’

  ‘Oh. Does she cry like that often?’

  I stared at him. ‘Why? What do you care?’

  ‘Look, I can see you’re upset. I should go.’

  It struck me that Spence always did this. As soon as there was any hint of confrontation, his face would take on the tired, browbeaten expression I’d seen him wear with his mum and he’d back away.

  ‘What are you doing here anyway?’ I asked again. ‘Sneaking around behind Colette’s back? You’re going to get me into trouble.’

  ‘I don’t want to get you in trouble.’

  Spence offered me Maisy, who was very quiet and small now, compared to how enormous and loud she’d been earlier. I gathered her into my arms and she curled into me.

  I gasped. ‘Does Maisy feel hot to you?’ I asked Spence. She felt alarmingly hot, her whole body radiated heat.

  He touched her forehead tentatively. ‘I guess.’

  Suddenly Maisy’s mouth opened slightly and out spilled warm, clear vomit, splashing over my arms and to the floor. Maisy was sick! I felt even more guilty for losing my temper with her, but it was a relief to know that she hadn’t turned against me, that there was a reason for all those tears.

  The next hour passed in a blur. Maisy threw up again, three more times. I expected Spence to scuttle away at the first opportunity, but to his credit he stayed. He scrubbed Maisy’s vomit out of the beige and brown flecked carpet, while I looked after Maisy in the bathroom, sitting on the floor with her, and trying to hold her over the toilet to vomit. When she seemed to have finished, I ran the second bath for her that day. This time she was happy to be in it. Despite all the vomiting, she was remarkably cheered up.

  ‘Shouldn’t we ring Colette?’ Spence asked when I came back in with Maisy, in fresh, clean pyjamas.

  ‘I tried. She didn’t take her phone.’

  ‘Should we take Maisy to the after-hours service?’

  ‘It’s just vomit,’ I said doubtfully. ‘She seems okay. Feel, she’s not so hot.’

  Spence lay his hand on her forehead. ‘She does feel cooller. Better out than in, as they say in the classics.’

  ‘I guess you should go,’ I said, not really wanting him to. ‘Colette’ll be home soon.’

  Spence was reluctant to leave too. ‘Maybe I should wait. In case Maisy gets sick again. You might need me to drive you both to emergency or something. Can I . . . ? May I . . . ?’ He put his arms out tentatively, as if worried I might say no.

  ‘She might vomit on you,’ I warned him.

  This time I felt no jealousy when Maisy nuzzled against Spence’s chest. I remembered how, when I was a little girl, Dad would sleep in my little kid-size bed with me when I was sick. I’d forgotten about it till then. His body had curled around mine, his warm breath tickling the wispy curls at the back of my neck.

  Spence sat with Maisy on the couch and I sat next to them. He began to sing again. Maisy drifted in and out of sleep, not quite closing her eyes for good.

  ‘What is that song?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s called By the Wayside Stands a Tree. It’s a Yiddish lullaby. I learned it when I was studying to be a music teacher. It’s about a little boy who wants to become a bird and comfort a tree that’s been abandoned by the other birds in winter. The mother cries and begs him not to because he’ll freeze. He tells her not to cry, that soon he’ll be a bird. And then she dresses him in so many clothes that he’s overburdened and he can’t fly, so the tree has to be alone after all, and the little boy feels betrayed by his mother’s love.’

  ‘You speak Yiddish?’

  ‘Only in song. A friend translated it for me.’

  ‘It’s sad.’

  ‘I always thought I was that boy,’ said Spence, dreamily. ‘That I could have flown further without my mother’s love.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘And then Colette, and then Maisy . . . Sometimes I feel like there are all these women, clipping my wings. Even you,’ he added.

  ‘Me?’

  Spence leaned his head back on the couch and closed his eyes. ‘Sweeping in with your big-eyed, lofty ideals. You’re the reason I’m here.’

  My heart pounded. Suddenly I wished Maisy wasn’t between us. Spence kept his eyes closed, but I could feel warmth passing between us. If I’d been brave I would have reached out and touched him.

  ‘Will you sing that song again?’ I asked. I leaned against the couch and closed my eyes and let his voice travel through me, deep into my bones. I breathed it in, his lullaby, listening to words I didn’t know, filled with longing and disappointment and little birds and love.

  16

  That was how we were when Colette and Ed walked in some time later:
sitting together on the couch, chatting amiably, Maisy drowsing against Spence’s chest, me stripped down to my black woollen singlet, while my long-sleeved top, which I’d hand-washed after Maisy had vomited on me, dried in the bathroom. I admit, it probably looked bad.

  I didn’t even hear the door. To me, Colette was simply standing there, as if she had materialised from nowhere, the air crackling around her. Ed hovered in the background, car keys in hand, waiting to drive me home.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ She turned to me. ‘What is he doing here?’

  ‘Maisy threw up. I asked Spence to stay—’

  ‘What do you mean to stay? Why is he even here?’

  ‘I . . . I don’t know.’ I said. Because of me, I whispered inside.

  Colette stalked over to Spence. ‘Give Maisy to me.’

  ‘She’s almost asleep,’ Spence said.

  Colette took hold of Maisy firmly and wrenched her away from Spence. ‘She’s mine. You didn’t want her, remember? You don’t get to . . . you don’t get to do this.’ She wheeled around to face me. Maisy started to whimper, clinging to her mum. ‘Why didn’t you ring me?’ Colette demanded, ignoring Maisy.

  Her anger made me defensive. ‘I tried. But it’s a bit hard when your phone is in the kitchen!’

  ‘Did you ring my mum and dad? Did you ring any of the numbers on that list?’

  ‘No! I was busy looking after Maisy. And Spence was here.’

  Colette stormed out of the room, Maisy in her arms. Spence, Ed and I glanced at each other nervously.

  ‘We should go,’ Spence said.

  ‘But what about Maisy?’ I said.

  Colette came back without her. Maisy’s quiet, tired grizzle echoed down the hall.

  ‘Seriously, Colette, Maisy’s been sick. I don’t think she should be left on her own.’

  Colette brushed my words away like a whining mosquito. ‘Get out,’ she spat at Spence. ‘And take your trained puppy with you.’