Taking Baby For A Walk

Sunday-2

Bree-Anna nods. She shoves the stroller out of the dirt hole it’s in. She can’t see how to get past the car.

‘Where you going all on your own?’

‘A party,’ she says, her voice croaky.

‘Oh! I’m going to a party. Is it the same one?’

‘Rachel’s?’ The sun burns on the back of Bree-Anna’s neck.

‘Yes, Rachel’s party. Why don’t we go together?’ he says, opening the car door and climbing out. He holds the door open for her. ‘You can sit in the front with me. I’ll do it as a favour, for your mum. She wouldn’t like to see you out here all hot and pushing that doll.’

Bree-Anna wipes the sweat from her upper lip and checks on Baby. She wishes Baby would say something about the man and the froggy car.

‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Your mum won’t mind. She told me I should look out for you. You don’t want to miss the party.’

She takes Baby out of the stroller. Baby is boiling hot. He picks up the stroller and grins at Bree-Anna. She crawls in the front seat, clutching Baby, and before she can think or look, he slams the door closed.

He gets into the driver’s seat and takes off, car wheels skidding in the dust. She sits up on her knees and looks behind them. Baby’s stroller is still on the side of the road.

‘Rachel’s present,’ she says.

He grips the steering wheel, stares straight ahead.

They fly past the school and the right past the turn he should take to Rachel’s street.

‘Go back,’ she says.

But he doesn’t.

Petrol fumes plunge like a fist into the back of Jake’s throat. He swallows them down with thick saliva.

Today is the last day he should have let himself have a hangover.

He thumps the pump nozzle into the tank, his fist clenched. His eyes squint against the searing light. Petrol gushes into the empty tank and tar-thick vapour punches him again. He turns away and leans his head against his dust-caked car. His head throbs. A bulldozer moves his brains about.

Heat pummels the pitted bitumen. The town is a dump. He understands now why Carla hated the place. Stinky Gully is nothing but a crappy little highway town, good for nothing except cheap petrol. Well, less expensive petrol. That b***h didn’t know what it cost him to visit. Five hours driving and another half hour to go. Then back again for the midnight shift. Casual workers like him got all the crap shifts.

She better not give him trouble today. Who was he kidding? She always gives him trouble!

In the paddock next to the petrol station, mangy cattle whack flies with their tails. Cheap brick houses litter this part of town. They are silent today, like tombs baking in the heat.

Jake wipes sweat from his upper lip, glances at the l****s ticking over, the dollars mounting up. The highway grumbles, vacant and broiling.

A little girl wanders along a rutted track between the petrol station and the paddock. In Jake’s school days, they would have called her fat. But these days you see fatter. She’s about the same age as La-Li.

La-Li. He smiles to himself. His girl, sweet and sugary, like spearmint lollies.

The girl stops to pick her too-tight pink shorts from her bum. She has a toy stroller, the plastic legs of a doll twisting out of it toward the sky. The girl looks behind her, as though for a lagging parent. Then she bends and coos over the doll. Stands. Tugs her pink T-shirt over her pudgy belly and pushes the stroller through a pothole in the path.

The pump clicks, finished. Eighty-two friggin’ dollars.

The girl in pink turns off the path and weaves her stroller through the dirt alongside the highway. Jake looks back up the empty path behind her. No one is there.

Inside the cool of the petrol station, Jake ignores the tongs and uses his hands to toss two sausage rolls in a paper bag. He stands a while in the open door of the icy fridge before he gets a Coke.

‘Gonna be a hot one,’ the cashier says, lifting himself from against the wall near the cash register.

‘Hot already, mate,’ Jake says. He searches through the large window, between the advertisements for Cadbury chocolate and firewood. ‘Did you see that little girl? The one with the doll?’ he asks.

‘Nah.’ The cashier swipes the Coke. Sparse hairs, like struggling seedlings, grow on his upper lip. ‘Cash or card?’ He holds out his hand.

Back in his car, Jake blasts the air-con onto high and bites into a sausage roll. Flakes of pastry fall on his lap. He sucks air through his mouth and rolls the too-hot food off his tongue. Just what the doctor ordered. Food in one hand, steering wheel in the other, he bumps over the ditched driveway onto the highway.

A few hundred metres ahead of him, a lime-green station wagon has pulled over, its arse-end hanging skew-whiff half on the road. Dickhead. Jake manoeuvres around the vehicle. Who would own a car that colour? He glances in the rear-view mirror.

The little girl in pink is climbing into the passenger seat. The clock on the dash tells Jake he is late. Carla will have his balls for breakfast. He peers back in the mirror, but he can’t see the lime-green car for the bend in the road. He accelerates, turns up the volume: the Chilli Peppers, Californication. His fingers twitch to the beat. The rear-view mirror reveals empty road. The station wagon isn’t following.

Bree-Anna shrinks back in the seat and hugs Baby close to her chest. She talks to Baby, the quiet Magic whisper with her mind. Now, Baby, don’t you be a scaredy-cat. Mr Randall will take us to the party. Mummy and Declan will get your stroller back. No one will steal it, I promise and promise, cross my heart and hope to die. She crosses her heart with her fingers.

‘Get down,’ Mr Randall says, his teeth tight together. Bree-Anna hugs Baby closer and Baby’s stiff fingers stab into her chest. Mr Randall twists his hands around and around the steering wheel. His knuckles stick up, pointy and white.

‘You want to surprise your friend?’ He smiles, but his voice doesn’t sound excited like a surprise is coming. ‘Well, get down!’ He grabs her shoulder with his fingers digging in and shoves her down. She crumples down onto the floor. Fat tears come to her eyes, but she keeps them in so as not to worry Baby. The floor smells like a wet bath mat and makes vomit come up in her mouth. Her heart thumps and probably even Baby can hear it. We’re going the long way around, she tells Baby in her silent voice. We’re going to give Rachel the biggest surprise ever.

Mr Randall drives fast, the car skids around a corner, and they roll around on the dirty floor, bits of yucky things sticking to her legs. They might have an accident, she thinks, and she’s not wearing a seatbelt. Mummy always makes her wear a seatbelt. Mummy says you might die in an accident if you aren’t wearing a seatbelt. Mr Randall might have an accident. She might die!

The car slows down, and she hears stones spit up under it like they are on a dirt road, like the road when they go to visit Grandma. The car stops and Bree-Anna smashes her head. The bang knocks out her tears. She tries to drag them back inside, but they have escaped. What will she tell Rachel about the present? This is Rachel’s house. She squeezes Baby. Stop saying it isn’t.

She wants to get off the floor, away from the dirt and yuck sticking to them and the smell of old wet. Baby wants to get out of the car and find out where they are, if they are near to home, or at Rachel’s house. This is a different way to get to Rachel’s. She smacks Baby’s bottom, but not hard. We are on the floor so we can surprise Rachel. Jump out. Happy Birthday! Surprise!

Mr Randall looks down at them. His eyes pop out of his eye-holes like balloons squeezed tight in a fist, going to burst. ‘Shut your eyes,’ he says, and she does and she hopes Baby does too. She squishes herself tight in the corner. She works hard to keep her eyelids closed. Tears squeeze out the gaps she can’t close up. The car door opens and bangs shut and she flicks her eyes open. Her breath runs in and out like when she races at school, but they have just been here on the floor, not moving at all.

The door next to her opens, and she closes her eyes again and tells Baby, Close your eyes.

‘Don’t look,’ he says, and she’s glad she told Baby that already.

She forces her eyelids down tighter and tighter so they don’t snap open. She doesn’t know what will happen if she opens her eyes. She doesn’t know why she keeps them closed. She feels his hands on her tummy, yanking, trying to pull her out of her corner.

‘Come on,’ he grumbles, and his breath smells eggy. He jabs his thumbs into her sides and she lets him lift her out of the car. Her thongs fall off, and her knees bang on something hard, and he doesn’t care. He isn’t careful. A sob comes out of her mouth. He holds her against him, Baby pressed between them. He twists his arms around her, pushes her face into his shoulder and holds her head there, her face jammed right into him, and she can feel the sticky sweat on his neck and smell his dirty clothes. The car door slams and his feet crunch over the ground. Bree-Anna feels the scratchy of Baby’s hair on her chin. He carries them up long stairs. There aren’t any stairs at Rachel’s house. She wants to kick her legs to get down, but she is too scared. She hears keys rattling and the crunching of the lock. She peeks and sees a door, green paint peeling, and he opens the door, and she closes her eyes again.

Inside, he drops her onto something soft. She bounces. A lounge, she thinks, and she makes herself small in a ball and puts her thumb in her mouth and sucks hard, crying, but quiet so he doesn’t hear her. The cushion smells like sick and scratches her cheek. Baby presses into her and says I told you so, but Bree-Anna already knows, and Baby can’t help.

She can hear him stomping back and forth, back and forth, and saying bad words like s**t and worse words like the one that is the f word. She curls up smaller than a centipede.

He stomps back and forth and back and forth and then he says, ‘You hungry?’

She was a long time ago, but now she can’t eat anything. She shakes her head.

‘Speak up,’ he says and pulls her up to sit and her eyes pop open and she wishes they didn’t. She huddles back into the cushion, sucks her thumb and smells the familiar of her own skin, fights the fresh tears in her eyes.

‘Cat got your tongue? You hungry or not? You want eggs? I got eggs.’

She shakes her head again.

‘Speak.’ He wraps his knobbly hand around her wrist and yanks her thumb, pop, out of her mouth. ‘Speak.’

‘No,’ she says. The tiny word gets stuck in her throat and she can hardly hear it at all.

‘No what? Where’s your manners?’

‘No, thank you,’ she chokes out louder.

He stands up and cracks his knuckles, crunch, like a branch breaking apart, and says, ‘Don’t move,’ and leaves. She hears clanging in a room behind her and she knows he is in the kitchen making eggs. She hates eggs.