Anaru girl came out of the thunder on to our front porch when I was pulling the curtains.
Before that I was in our kitchen. There was lightning shivering across the whole place, rain, thunder crashing. The twins were on the settee with a blanket over their heads. TV was on. I wanted to be under the blanket but I was in charge.
Mum got this other job. She already had one job, sweeping, clearing tables, wiping down at the Food Court, ten till four, enough to pay the rent and not much food. So, she got this second job, five to eight, cleaning offices. Had to get a bus downtown for that one. At first she took us with her, got us takeaways, but Lloyd and Lionel wouldn’t behave, running off, fighting, crying, getting in the way. And it was wasting money us all going on the bus and buying takeaways.
Mum said, ‘Andy, can you look after your brothers at home?’
‘Yes, I can.’
‘They can watch TV.’
So now I take Lloyd and Lionel home after school every day and make toast. If there’s butter we put it on, Marmite we put it on. After that we go outside and play until five, then go in and lock the doors.
Two days a week I do sausages and bread, one day pasta and one day baked beans on toast. On Fridays, Aunty Sandra comes with a humungous packet of fish and chips up against her whole chest with her arms crossed over it, and a bottle of red wine in one of her crossed-over hands. We put our biggest cutting board in the middle of the table and Aunty puts the parcel there. Flap open the four sides and we’re into it. She puts two pieces of fish away for her and Mum. Saturdays we go to the supermarket for neck chops, pumpkin and spuds, and Mum does a big boilup to last for the whole weekend. We get watercress from the market if they’ve got any. If not, we use silver beet.
‘Shut up,’ I called to the twins, ‘it’s only a storm,’ and I started pulling the blinds down in the kitchen so I could block out the lightning. I shut the bedroom doors and went to the front room to pull the curtains across. That’s when I saw the wet girl come out of the thunder on to our porch. She had a wet bag.
We’re not allowed to let anyone in, but sometimes you have to use your brains. Anyway, it was one minute to five. Mum always rings at five and asks if everything’s okay, are the twins behaving. I unlocked the door and the wet girl came in, stood on the welcome mat and the phone rang.
‘Mum,’ I said, putting my hand up by the phone and having a quiet voice so the girl wouldn’t hear, ‘there’s a girl here on our mat.’
‘What girl?’
‘A girl from school. She’s got shopping. She’s dripping. Her teeth’s stuck together.’
I waited for Mum to say something. ‘Mum?’
‘How old is she?’
‘Little, like the twins.’
‘Get her shoes and socks off, Andy, and her jacket. Take her in the kitchen, sit her down, put the blanket round her.’
‘The kids are crying under the blanket.’
‘I’m ringing Sandra. She’ll be there fifteen minutes.’ Mum hung up.
I said to the girl, ‘Mum said you have to take off your jacket and shoes.’ She was wearing jandals, no socks. ‘You have to come in the kitchen and sit on a chair with a blanket.’
I grabbed the blanket off the twins. ‘There’s a girl here,’ I said.
‘Aunty Sandra’s coming.’ Their crying stopped straight away when I said Aunty was coming. Aunty Sandra’s hard-out bossy, don’t matter who to — kids, adults, Uncle Lionel, relations, friends, randoms.
The thunder and lightning had moved off, but it was still raining. The boys looked sideways at the girl, rolled their eyes at each other and grinned their gaps. They went to watch for Aunty Sandra, sticking their heads under the blind at the side window.
I should put the sausages on. So, I turned the oven to 160 and put them in. First, stabbed them with a fork.
Aunty’s car pulled in and the boys ran to open the door. She came up the steps wearing Uncle Lionel’s wet-weather viz jacket. He’s a drain-unblocker, got his own gear, his own mean-as truck. Aunty keeps the books, gets the jobs. It’s their own business.
Plenty of work. People’s drains, the Council’s drains get stuffed up all the time. Three more years — two-and-a-half actually — I’ll be fifteen and getting a job drain-unblocking. Get a lot of money, buy Mum a house.
Aunty had a tin of Milo and a three-litre milk. She handed these to Lloyd and Lionel while she took off her coat and shook off her gumboots. They went to the table with the milk and Milo and sat clutching as though Milo and milk might run off.
‘What’s your name, Sweetie?’ Aunty asked the girl.
‘Natalia,’ she said between her bitten-down teeth. Flash name, I thought.
‘Get you warm and take you home. Where do you live?’ she asked, holding out her hand for Natalia to go with her to the bathroom.
‘Three Lansdown,’ she said.
‘It’s down past our school,’ I said.
‘I’m Aunty Sandra.’
Not long after, Aunty came back out with Natalia dressed in Lloyd’s rocket pyjamas and someone’s socks. Aunty sat her on the couch with my duvet over her, and came and put milk on to warm up for the Milo. ‘A Milo and I’ll take you to your mummy.’
But guess what? By the time the milk was heated up, Natalia was fallen over in the cushions, asleep. And guess what else? Just when Aunty had finished pouring the milk into the cups, she looked down into Natalia’s shopping bag and got a shock: a tin of baby milk and a packet of nappies is what she saw.
‘Holy crap,’ she said.
Aunty always says something crap or crap something when she gets wild or a fright: holy crap, crap almighty, all crap, load-a-crap, cut the crap, crap for brains, crap food, crap job, crap TV, Warehouse crap.
‘I gotta take this,’ she said, picking up the shopping, ‘tell me how to get there.’ I told her. ‘I’ll come back straight away and get her.’
*
As soon as I got to the door of 3 Lansdown, I could hear the baby yelling. The mum opened the door, jigging the baby against her shoulder. ‘Where’s Natalia?’ she said with her voice cracking.
‘She’s okay,’ I said, ‘she’s asleep on my sister’s couch. Give us Bubby while you make up the bottle.’
She handed me the angry baby, and I gave her the shopping.
She went to the bench, jacked open the tin, measured the powder, and put it into the bottle with the water and shook it all up. On auto. My guess was Baby was not much more than a couple of weeks old, holy crap. I walked up and down.
‘I’m Sandra,’ I said.
She said nothing, took the baby from me, tried to get the teat into its mouth but it wouldn’t stop screaming. She squirted some formula into the open mouth. Baby choked, spluttered, sneezed and took a while before settling down, poor little thing.
‘It wasn’t raining when I sent her,’ the woman said.
‘It came on sudden,’ I said.
‘I ran down the street looking for her. Stephania was home asleep. By herself.’
‘I’ll go and get Natalia now,’ I said.
‘Can you stay? Can you stay? Please? Please stay?’ she said. ‘I didn’t know what to do. I went next door and rang the police, so they’re coming. They’ll question me. They’ll say I’m unfit. They’ll take my kids.’
‘No they won’t,’ I said.
I rang my husband. ‘Get over to Chrissie’s,’ I told him. ‘Look after the boys.’
‘Wha—? I just polished off a bottle of red.’
‘Get a cab.’ I hung up. The police were here.
‘It’s all right, we found her,’ the mum was saying.
‘We need to get a few details.’
‘She’s asleep.’
‘Won’t take long.’ They followed her in. Man and woman, baby-faced, doing their job. I took the baby while they began their questions. Her name (Maitland something), address, details,
her daughter’s name and details. Where to? What for? What was she doing out in the storm? It wasn’t raining when I sent her. Did you think of going yourself, to the shop? Don’t have a pram. Yet.
But . . . And . . . my sister . . . my sister . . .’ She was shaking. They began asking about the baby then. Name, date of birth, father’s name. She hesitated at this last question. I thought she might not want to answer it and almost stuck my nose in to ask why the question was relevant to the present situation.
‘Brendan. Brendan Smith-Willis,’ she said, ‘but he’s a kid. A college kid . . .’
‘Ahh, mmm.’
‘I . . . I . . . I’m not the birth mother but . . . But I’m keeping her.’
‘Well, who . . . ?’
‘My young sister. She’s fifteen. She was meant to be here to do shopping, meant to be helping me. But I’m keeping her, Stephania.’
‘Things aren’t going too good, are they?’ the policewoman said.
They asked where the girl was, the one missing, the one asleep.
‘At my sister’s place,’ I said.
They began questioning me then. Name, details, relationship to the girl. I kept calm and changed Stephania’s nappy. Maitland brought me a damp cloth and a plastic bag. I lifted the baby — now asleep. Put her against my shoulder where she draped all over my fat, breathed feathery on my neck, her fluff hair touching up against my baggy chin. ‘And that’s enough for you lot, for your report,’ I said. ‘You can push off now. Give the woman a break.’
‘Well, ah . . . We need to have a look at Natalia.’
‘Fair enough. I’ll go and get her while you wait in your car.’
*
By the time Mum was home, Natalia was awake and we had a table full of pizzas Uncle Lionel had sent for. Mum put a jacket on Natalia, and Aunty carried her out to the car because she had socks and no shoes.
‘Grab one of those pizzas, Andy, and come with me,’ Aunty Sandra said. So, I took one of the unopened boxes and went out to the car.
Natalia went crying to her mum when we arrived, and they cuddled together on the settee by a cute-as, wrapped-up baby.
The cops followed us in but they only stayed a minute. The mum and Aunty had a conversation.
What I found out was, Aunty was taking Natalia’s mum to WINZ in the morning to get an emergency benefit, but the mum was scared because they’d ask questions. But Aunty was going to help her sort it out, and they were going shopping for baby stuff: clothes, bed, blankets, pram, car seat, food, credit on her phone. Aunty was going to get the car seat before she arrived so they could put baby in it. And she said Natalia could come too.
Bossy. She didn’t even ask Natalia’s mum if Natalia could go with them instead of going to school.
On the way home, Aunty said to me, ‘You know it’s crap, Andy, a mum bringing kids up on her own.’
‘Like Mum?’
‘Mmm. At least she’s got us. At least she’s got you, Andy. Especially a new baby. Yeah, nah. It’s crap.’
Then — far out — Aunty went: ‘Don’t you go getting any girl pregnant, Andy.’
‘Wha—? I’m twelve.’
‘You better listen,’ and she went on about all this far-out stuff. Faa-aar . . . And she took the long way home, talk, talk, talk, all this stuff. Stopped off at the supermarket for a red. Got back in the car and kept on going, blah, blah, ‘And when you have kids you don’t up and leave them. Okay? Or I’ll kill you. Hear me?’
Ma-aan.
Not the next day, but the one after, I saw Natalia swinging on the bars at school. Thought I’d say something to her, Hi, or something, but when she saw me she looked away, flipped herself round, dropped down and went off somewhere.
Taken with kind permission from the new bestselling collection of short stories Bird Child and Other Stories by Patricia Grace (Penguin Random House, $37), available in bookstores nationwide
