Little Bird (5 page)

‘Bathroom,' Colette was saying, pointing at a peach tiled room with a comforting Pine-O-Cleen clean smell. ‘My bedroom. And this is Maisy's room.'

Colette pushed the door open. I hovered, worried about disturbing Maisy, but Colette stepped into the dim room.

‘Change table. Nappies,' said Colette, continuing the tour. A paper bird mobile hung from the ceiling, wings outspread. Colette blew a little puff of air at it and it bobbed and fluttered. She gestured at some neat plastic tubs lining the walls. ‘Clothes. Toys. Books. She likes stories. She likes everything really. If she cries take off all her clothes and her nappy and let her kick on a blanket on the floor. Or hold her and sing. She doesn't cry much,' Colette added hastily, like a salesperson trying to seal the deal.

Maisy let out a loud moaning sigh and shifted in the cot. I tensed. What if she woke up? Would Colette leave if Maisy was awake and crying? But Maisy stayed asleep. I followed Colette back up the hall to the lounge room where Shandra was perched on one of the low seats, flicking through a
Vogue
magazine.

‘Can we go?' Shandra asked, putting the magazine aside.

Colette bit her lip, lingering, as if she wasn't ready to leave yet. ‘Oh! Let me show you the bottle.'

Colette explained how to sterilise the bottle and mix the formula and test the temperature, and I tried to listen, despite a dizzying, panicked feeling. I was sure the instructions would leave my head the moment Colette closed the front door, that I'd end up burning Maisy's poor baby mouth or that I'd give her some kind of bacterial infection and she'd wind up in hospital. Shandra huffed and puffed impatiently in the lounge room.

Then there was a flurry of movement as Colette added some last-minute touches to her make-up, found her purse and phone, and ran through the nightly routine once more. Then, all of a sudden, Colette and Shandra were gone, and the flat was silent and still.

I sat on the edge of the couch, listening for Maisy. I was too nervous to turn the television on in case it disturbed her, so I studied the lounge room instead. There was a huge print on the wall directly opposite the couch. It seemed weird to arrange the furniture around art instead of pointing the couches at the television. The picture was by someone called Klimt: a woman holding a baby, her long hair covered in flowers. I said the name softly. It sounded like a paperclip hitting a tiled floor. I don't know much about art, but the image was absorbing and tranquil. I allowed myself to relax a little. At least I wasn't at the movies with Dougal tonight, making awkward conversation with his left shoulder while Tegan and Blake sucked face.

I crept across the room and put the television on, with the sound turned down so low I had to strain to hear it. Every five minutes or so I stood outside Maisy's room, afraid she may have woken and cried out and that somehow I hadn't heard her. Each time her breathing was slow and regular.

On about the tenth time, I actually ventured into the room and peeked inside the cot, and I got the shock of my life. Maisy was on her back, quiet, but awake, eyes wide open. When she saw me she smiled, a wide-mouthed, gummy, utterly disarming grin. I swear I've never seen anyone so happy. I couldn't help but smile back.

Maisy was a classic baby shape, with a round head covered in soft curling fuzz rather than hair, big Spence-blue eyes and a small rose-petal mouth like Colette's. Though she kept smiling, a slight scowl puckered her forehead and for a moment she looked uncannily like her father. Then her forehead smoothed out and she looked like a baby again. She made a happy noise that matched her grin, a pleased ‘
aii!
' sound, as if greeting a long lost friend.

‘Hi, yourself,' I said. I bent over the cot and scooped Maisy up in my arms. It was at that moment, as I lifted her, bearing her full weight, warmth seeping from her body into mine, the sweet biscuit-mix smell of her filling my nostrils, that it hit me. I felt a warm trickle in my belly, and an electric tingling sensation shot right through my bones. And I knew, with sudden certainty.
This
was love. Love at first sight. Or first touch. Maisy's hand crept up to rest trustingly on my neck, her fingers finding a curl of my hair, which she gently held. She was unexpectedly heavy, and I slid one hand under her soft, nappied bottom to heft her up. She rested her head on my shoulder, and gazed up at my face. It felt like the most natural thing in the world, loving Maisy, her smooth pink cheeks, her glittering eyes, her soft, spidery lashes.

‘Are you hungry?' I asked her, feeling golden and dizzy. ‘Let's get you something to eat.'

Maisy was very patient as I clumsily buckled her into her high chair. Her wide blue gaze followed me around the kitchen as I retrieved an ice-cube tray and struggled to pop out a colourful assortment of the cubes. I microwaved them for ten seconds at a time, nervously poking the icy lumps around with a spoon. Microwaving wasn't a natural gift with me.

The feeling of love hit me again as I sat down in front of Maisy and offered her a spoonful of food. Something about the trusting way she opened her mouth wide, like a baby bird, flooded me with a sense of peacefulness. It was a feeling I recognised from when I was little, lying in front of the heater on a wintry night, listening to the wash of my parents' voices and the background hum of the television.

After dinner I lifted Maisy from the chair and took her into the lounge room, where I laid her out on the rug. Maisy smiled up at the light fittings and kicked her legs joyfully while I gobbled hastily reheated, but still half-frozen Spaghetti Bolognese.

A slow, wet, blurting noise rumbled from Maisy's lower half. Her expression was thoughtful, and she didn't seem at all bothered, but panic surged in me again. Poo! Could I deal with poo? Colette hadn't told me anything about poo.

As I carried Maisy into the bedroom, a distinct smell wafted around her (not entirely unlike the smell of Spaghetti Bolognese, which grossed me out a little). I laid her down on the change table. Her outfit had buttons everywhere, to get at her nappy without completely undressing her, I assumed. I unsnapped the buttons at her crotch, but I couldn't see how to get her pudgy legs out without bending them the wrong way. I undid more and more buttons, until I may as well have just taken the whole stupidly complicated suit off her anyway. She kicked her legs in the air and laughed at my distress.

‘Oh, help!'

There was poo everwhere. Somehow, by the time I got the nappy undone, Maisy managed to put first one foot into it and then the other. It oozed out of her nappy onto her back and all over her clothes. I armed myself with a wad of wipes, and dabbed gingerly at her private parts, making little impression. Clearly the only way to deal with it was with firm vigour. As I grew more confident Maisy didn't seem to mind me hauling her from one side to another; she grinned up at me through her legs when I folded them over her head to wipe her bum and back. Every time I thought I was done, I found another sneaky crevice that needed cleaning.

In the end I gave up. I bagged up the dirty nappy and the used wipes and ran Maisy a bath. I lowered Maisy's body into the shallow warm water, her legs curled up to her chest. She poked at the water experimentally with her toes and then stuck her feet in. She slapped the top of the water with her hand and solemnly swished her tiny fingers back and forth like little fish.

I soaked a flannel and squeezed it, dribbling warm water onto Maisy's back, and Maisy grew quiet and thoughtful and still. ‘You like that?' I asked and did it again.

Being with Maisy made me feel wonderful, and it also made me a little sad, but I didn't know why.

All I had known about babies before was that they cried, fed and slept. Maisy hadn't cried once. She was full of joy, like her little life was an endless series of happy possibilities.

When Maisy was dry and snuggled into a soft all-in-one pyjama suit, looking like a teddy bear, I held her in my arms and fed her a bottle of formula. Maisy gazed up into my face as she drank the milky concoction and the expression on her face mirrored the utter bliss I was feeling. As Maisy drained the bottle her gulps slowed into a shallow suckling, and her eyes blinked dreamily. I tried to remember a lullaby and the only one I could think of was
Silent Night
. It felt a bit weird singing a Christmas carol in April, but the familiar tune sounded magical in the quiet of the apartment. Maisy watched me as I sang. All my life I'd felt transparent, as if people saw through me – even the people I loved, like Shandra or Tegan. But Maisy saw me. She looked at me as if
I
were full of possibility too. As if I were as amazing to her as she was to me. And then she drifted off to sleep, her eyelids blinking heavily closed.

I carried her to the bedroom and lowered her gently into the cot. I watched her sleeping face for a while in the dim light. Then I curled up on Colette's couch and drifted off too, under the Klimt print of the mother and the child and the cascading hair and the flowers.

6

Apparently Colette and Shandra had had some kind of argument over the bridesmaid dresses. I gathered, blearily, that they'd more or less made up by the time they got to Colette's flat. Still, Shandra said no to a cuppa and propelled me, still half-asleep, down the external staircase. Stepping into the cold air was like being slapped awake, though my skin still felt gluey with sleep and my brain was tight and grumpy.

‘What
about the dresses?' I asked, blinking as I climbed into the car.

‘Colette wants to
make
them. She wants to adapt some vintage fifties sundress pattern.'

‘Like the dresses in
Grease
?' I yawned, trying to remember if
Grease
was fifties or sixties. Or was it seventies?

‘I don't want a homemade wedding. I want to do it properly. I want everything to be perfect.'

I nodded, yawning. I tuned out again. The night blurred past, the dark streets and the pooling streetlights.

I wasn't thinking about weddings. I was thinking about Maisy, the weight of her in my arms as she snuggled into me and drifted off to sleep.

On Monday at recess I was standing in line at the cafeteria, waiting to buy Tegan a Coke. Tegan was still barely on speaking terms with me. I hated myself for being such a suck, but life was easier when Tegan was talking to me.

‘Hi,' a low male voice said close to my ear. ‘Rosie-lee, isn't it?'

I turned around. It was Spence. He wasn't that much taller than me and his blue eyes looked deeply into mine. He smiled at me. My heart beat faster. Behind him, the overheated, airless cafeteria began to spin.

‘Ruby-lee.'

‘Right, Ruby-lee. I heard on the grapevine that you looked after my princess on the weekend.'

I nodded.

‘Isn't she absolute perfection?' Spence asked.

My tongue was dry in my mouth. I'd got the impression from Colette and Shandra that Spence wasn't interested in Maisy. ‘She's adorable,' I croaked, as if I hadn't used my voice for months. I struggled for something interesting to say, but my mind was a whirl. The faint syrupy scent of Spence, like Maisy's anzac biscuit smell, clouded my head.

He pulled out his wallet and flashed it open.

‘You'll appreciate this. I don't show many people.'

I looked down at a photograph of Maisy as a sleeping newborn. She looked different, all curled up and pale like a witchetty grub, but her face was the same, her closed eyes, her puckered lips, like she'd been born with a kiss on her mouth.

‘Oh,' I breathed.

Spence had stepped around beside me to look at the photo, and my blood quickened when our shoulders touched.

‘That's my girl,' he said in his husky voice, and the hairs on the back of my neck rose and fell at his breath.

We reached the front of the queue. The woman serving handed Spence a coffee in a paper cup. ‘Here ya go, Darls. For my best customer.'

‘Thanks, Mary. You're the only one who can give me what I want the way I like it. When are you going to throw all this in and marry me?' Mary giggled. I'd never seen her so much as crack a smile before. Spence took his coffee and sipped. ‘Gotta run.' He winked at me. ‘See you again, Ruby-lee.'

‘
You're
not going to have his baby too, are you?' Tegan said, after I'd stupidly told her about the photograph.

‘Get stuffed,' I said, but a rosy blush crept over my cheeks.

‘You fancy him!' Tegan shrieked.

‘No!'

‘Good. He's fully old and creepy. Teachers shouldn't hang out with students – it's so wrongtown.' I didn't say anything. I was remembering him brushing up against me, and the Maisy-sweet scent of him. ‘So are we wagging English, or what?' Tegan asked. ‘Did you do that memory piece yet?'

‘Oh crap. I forgot.'

‘Let's go into town. Come on, I'll be your best friend.'

‘Why not?' I was just thrilled that Tegan was talking to me again.