Mahalia by Joanne Horniman

My parents were dead.’
    Matt formed a sentence in his mind that he thought he could speak if he got up the courage. Something had been worrying him for some time. ‘They couldn’t – you know – take her away?’
    It was something he dreaded. Such things, he’d felt up to now, were better not voiced. But he’d known all along that there were other people who might make a claim on Mahalia, and he needed to know the possibilities.
    â€˜Of course not,’ she said. ‘Emmy left her with you. And you’re her father, you have the most claim on her – you and Emmy. You’re not neglecting her, so they’d have no grounds to take her. Anyhow, I don’t think they’d want to. Raise a baby. At their age?’
    After a while he said, ‘And what about Emmy? If she decided she didn’t want to be with me but she wanted Mahalia back?’
    His mother hesitated, looked down at the surface of the table and then back at his face. ‘That would be more difficult,’ she said. ‘She’s Mahalia’s mother.’
    Eliza bought herself an old bicycle. Matt would see her riding round town in shorts and Blundstone boots, with shopping bags full of vegetables over the handlebars. She rode effortlessly and quickly, bike wheels whizzing over the roads, unaware of anyone looking at her. People were drawn to her look of careless confidence, and then they looked at her long legs and clever, dreamy, lion’s face.
    Matt got used to the bicycle in the front room. He looked forward to seeing it there. He would come through the front door, dragging Mahalia’s stroller over the threshold and think, Ah! Eliza’s home!
    In the kitchen Eliza sat at the table and shelled peas. She sat with her legs apart, using her skirt as a receptacle for the shells. Her neck, bare because her hair was caught up in a knot on top of her head, bent forward over the task.
    Matt washed dishes.
    â€˜It’s probably none of my business, but,’ said Eliza, ‘I can’t help wondering . . . did you intend to have a baby so early in your life?’
    â€˜Not really,’ Matt replied. ‘It just sort of happened.’
    He thought, then, that a lot of his life had just sort of happened to him. But now that Mahalia was here, he wanted her – the part of his life that concerned her, at least – to be deliberate.
    â€˜Anyway,’ he said, ‘Don’t most people just let things happen to them? Do you think your parents meant to have you?’
    â€˜I don’t know,’ said Eliza. ‘I was the last one. Maybe . . .’
    She shrugged. ‘I haven’t asked them. They never seem to speak to each other, and I don’t have a lot to say to them either. I think I was a final thought. Or as people say, “a mistake”.‘
    Matt turned back to the sink. He didn’t like to think of Mahalia as a mistake . It was true that she was unintended, but they’d decided to keep her, hadn’t they? They’d said that they’d just love her, okay ?
    As he worked Matt listened for Mahalia, in case she woke. He finished washing the dishes and sat down at the table. Eliza handed him a pod that she’d split open, and he took it and licked the peas out with his tongue. She watched him, and handed him another, just like that, casually, as though they’d known each other for years and didn’t need to talk. The peas were sweet and cool on his tongue, and some were so tiny and unformed that they popped in his mouth. It was like eating pale, green fish eggs, flavoured like grass.
    Once, Emmy jumped into the Richmond River fully clothed. She was there, beside him, on the grassy bank, and then suddenly she was in the water. The water she’d jumped into closed over her.
    And then she was coming up for air, her mouth gasping like a fish, her hair streaming out behind her.
    The Richmond River was a treacherous place, old and dirty.