Mahalia Read Online Free

pulled the bottle gently from her mouth, wiped a drop of milk from her chin, and snuggled her down beside him. A gum tree stroked its branch across the window. A wind had come up, and it sighed through the trees. His room, which he’d had since he was a child, and was still full of his childish stuff, smelt of baby now, sweet and milky, a soft skin smell.
    The next morning Matt woke bleary-eyed to find Mahalia beside him, cooing, on her stomach for the first time. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you can roll over, can you? I’ll have to be sure you can’t roll off a bed from now on.’
    He changed her nappy, and she immediately rolled onto her stomach again, lifting up her neck from the bed and kicking her legs like a swimmer.
    â€˜Clever Mahalia,’ he said. ‘Clever, clever Mahalia.’

3
    It rained for two weeks.
    Mahalia noticed the rain, he was sure. She lay in her cot in the mornings and listened to it falling on the roof, babbling to it. ‘Goo,’ Matt said to her. ‘Ka,’ she replied. He picked her up and went out onto the veranda, and she blinked and looked at the stream of water falling over the edge of the roof. She could turn her head round now, and look at things she wanted to see.
    â€˜It’s bloody wet, that’s what it is, Mahalia,’ he said. ‘Still, better get used to it, this is what the weather’s like in this neck of the woods.’ He liked using phrases like neck of the woods . They made him feel connected to the old times. Matt liked old blokes; he liked sitting and having a yarn with them. Having a yarn . That was another phrase they used. And grub , and tucker . All good words. Old words.
    Mahalia coughed. It wasn’t a real cough, just the cough she’d discovered she could use to attract Matt’s attention. Not that she needed it at this moment.
    â€˜You’re a little bullshit artist,’ he said, and tickled her under her arms. She laughed and squealed, and jerked her body away from him so suddenly that he almost dropped her.
    â€˜How about a bath?’ he said. ‘I know it’s wet outside, but you pong.’
    Matt sat Mahalia on the floor, where she could hold herself upright by leaning forward and resting her weight on her hands. He gave her a plastic cup to look at, and she picked it up with one hand and put it to her mouth, experimentally. He warmed some water on the stove and tipped it into her bath, testing the temperature with his elbow.
    Mahalia loved a bath. She had learned that she could splash the water with the palm of her hand; it made her squeal with excitement and delight. She played with the soap, and squelched it through her fingers.
    When the bath was over, Matt towelled her, dusted her with powder, and dressed her in a clean jumpsuit.
    â€˜There you go – good as new.’
    She loved to crumple paper, so he sat her on the floor and handed her the one-page letter he’d written to Emmy. Mahalia crushed it and put it to her mouth and slobbered over it, as he’d known she would. It was one way of solving the problem of what to do with the letter. He couldn’t seem to find the right words.
    On Mahalia’s second day of life, when they were alone with her, Emmy and Matt unwrapped their baby from the sheet that swaddled her tightly and removed her clothes in order to look at her properly. They had both seen her when she was born, of course, but that had been a time when they were dazed and exhausted and unable to take in the miracle of her.
    Unwrapped, she became a squalling, red-faced bundle of jerking limbs. Her feet were tiny and wrinkled and untried against the earth. Matt cupped her face with his large, tender, wondering hands and massaged the side of her face gently till she stopped crying. He lifted her up and cradled her against his chest.
    â€˜Your mother came,’ said Emmy. ‘Thank goodness she didn’t go on like all the relatives visiting in the