Taking Baby For A Walk

Sunday-1

Sunday

Baby wants to go for a walk.

Bree-Anna, hands on hips, tells Baby, ‘You just have to wait.’

Baby wails and whines. Bree-Anna sighs, picks Baby up from her cot, wags her finger and says, ‘Shut up, or I will give you something to cry about.’

She walks the small circle of her bedroom and rocks Baby, back and forth. Baby’s eyes click open and closed. One of them gets stuck, and Bree-Anna unsticks it with her finger. Click. Open. Click. Close.

‘Rock-a-bye baby on the treetop, when the wind blows, the cradle will rock, when the bough breaks the cradle will fall,’

Bree-Anna drops Baby.

‘…and down will come baby…’

She catches Baby just before she hits the ground.

‘…cradle and all.’

This is their game. It scares Baby, but being scared makes you braver.

Baby’s big painted eyes stare back at Bree-Anna. Her mouth, stuck smiling forever, smiles at her. Bree-Anna’s belly rumbles like a train. She dangles Baby by her arm and lets Baby’s face bang onto her leg as she wanders into the kitchen.

On the table, on Mummy’s plate, last night’s chicken nuggets and chips sit globby and cold. Mummy hardly ever finishes her food. Bree-Anna pokes it, moves a nugget around on the plate, wondering how it will taste, but then sees the red blobs of chilli sauce. Chilli sauce makes her tongue burn fire. It might be funny to make Baby eat it, but she won’t be mean today. Not like Declan. Declan put chilli sauce all over her hotdog and told her it was special tomato sauce. Then he said, Here, drink this, and gave her water. That was wrong, wrong, wrong and even meaner. Mummy laughed too and said she should have milk; water just makes it burn worser. Bree-Anna wanted to pinch Declan. Squeeze his skin between her fingers and twist it.

Declan only cares about Pokémon. Pokémon is more stupider than vegetables.

In the cupboard, she finds an open packet with two biscuits, the sort with orange icing in them. She plops onto the floor, Baby on her lap. Baby doesn’t like the orange icing, so Bree-Anna eats them both.

The special thing about today is Rachel’s party. The hands on the clock point with the big hand to the three and the little hand to the number with two ones. She counts all the numbers until she gets to eleven to remember its name. The invitation stuck to the fridge tells the time of the party. She stretches to reach and pulls the invitation down, touches the wings of the pretty pink fairies, bumpy with glue and glitter. She opens it and tries to read the time, but it is written in letters instead of numbers.

Declan’s in the loungeroom (as usual) playing Pokémon (as usual). She climbs onto the couch and sits Baby between them. The Christmas tree’s lights blink, blink, but she can hardly see their colours for the bright sun shining through the window.

‘What time is the party?’

Declan’s fingers fly all over the buttons. Bree-Anna wants to be fast like him, but not with a stupid game like Pokémon. At the shopping centre she asked Santa for an iPad for Christmas and she said—just to make sure he knew—no Pokémon.

Bree-Anna’s thumb pops into her mouth. One minute she is talking, the next minute she is sucking. She’s not a baby. She’s five now. Too big for sucking thumbs, but sometimes her thumb has a mind of its own. Lucky Mummy is not here to slap her hand, and her fingers smell good, better than Declan. He stinks bad, dirty clothes bad.

Her thumb pops when she pulls it out. She likes that noise, pop, pop, pop.

‘Stop making that stupid noise,’ Declan says.

‘What time does it say?’ She waves the invitation in his face.

He twists away and swings his game and knocks Baby over. ‘I’m in the middle of a battle… If you make me lose…’

‘You stink!’ Bree-Anna jumps off the couch and pulls Baby by her leg. She tries to stomp across the carpet, but it’s squishy and doesn’t make angry noises.

They stop outside Mummy’s room. Bree-Anna puts on her extra good hearing ears. Sometimes when Mummy wakes up, she stays in bed and does f*******: with her phone. She touches the doorknob. She turns the knob without opening it, moving it just a little so maybe Mummy might see and call out to come in. She doesn’t.

‘Mummy,’ Bree-Anna whispers.

Being scared makes you braver, so she turns the knob all the way. The door opens a tiny crack. The air-conditioner hums quietly like a sleeping bear, and cold air tickles her feet. She goes tippy-toe through the gap in the door. The closed curtains make the room dark, almost like night, but she has eagle eyes. Mummy says she always finds the lost things in the house.

She creeps closer. Her heart does a frightened jump. There are two shapes in the bed.

The man’s shoulder sticks up like a mountain. She can’t climb over it to get to Mummy. Mummy’s jammed right up against the wall. The man takes over the whole bed. She doesn’t know where he came from, but then the mans turn up like that sometimes, especially after Mummy has a ‘night out’. Sometimes they are nice.

Baby and Bree-Anna kneel at the end of the bed. She pushes her chin into the hard edge of the mattress. Her tummy gurgles loud and the man moves. Be quiet, Baby, she tells Baby, but only with her head, not with her tongue. Special Magic Powers let her talk with Baby like that.

Mummy’s feet are little lumps under the sheet, though she can’t tell which end are her toes. She reaches toward them. If Mummy gets angry, Bree-Anna will blame Declan because he won’t tell her the time and she doesn’t know when to get ready for Rachel’s party.

‘Mummy, wake up,’ she whispers with her mouse voice. She wishes she had Magic Powers to talk with Mummy with her head instead of her mouth, like she does with Baby. She taps Mummy’s foot. ‘Rachel’s party is today.’

Mummy is a sleepy head duffer. Last time, when Lauren had a party, they got so late Bree-Anna missed the pizza and pass-the-parcel. The pass-the-parcel prize was a whole block of chocolate.

The man rises up, and she sees he is the troll man! He grins at Bree-Anna with crooked teeth and his hair like a dirty, ugly mop. Bree-Anna snatches Baby up by her hair and crawls on her hands and knees, dragging Baby, bump, bump, along the carpet.

She crawls all the way down the hall, across the kitchen lino and into her room. She pushes the door closed and leans up against it so the troll can’t get inside. The troll came into her room once. That’s how she knows he is a monster who pretends to be a man. Not like Shrek. He’s an ogre. Like the troll under the bridge that eats little girls all up.

She hugs Baby close. ‘Don’t cry, Baby. I’ve put a force field on the door. See?’ She holds her up and shows her the door. Baby keeps crying and if she keeps crying the troll will hear her and the force field isn’t real. Just pretend.

‘Shush,’ she says with her voice like Mummy’s when she’s mad. Baby stops crying and Bree-Anna leaves her on the floor to think about what she’s done.

Bree-Anna’s tummy rumbles, still hungry. She leans heavy as she can on the door. At Rachel’s party will be lollies and chips. Then Bree-Anna has a bright idea, like a lightbulb going pop in her head—just like in cartoons. ‘Let’s go for a walk. To Rachel’s house!’ she tells Baby.

She drags her dollhouse in front of the door to keep out the troll and dresses in her pink shorts and the new pink T-shirt. Mummy got it for her yesterday. The T-shirt says ‘princess’ in silver letters.

‘See,’ she shows Baby the princess words, ‘P for princess. It matches my doona cover.’ She points to the bed. Baby can’t see the princess on the doona because of too much mess, but talking takes Baby’s mind off the troll.

She puts Baby in her stroller and she doesn’t even complain. Bree-Anna tries to tuck a blanket over Baby, but Baby tells her it’s hot outside and remember yesterday was hot as Hades. That’s what Mummy said. She said Hades is where Bree-Anna’s dad is.

Rachel’s present fits in the basket under the stroller’s seat. Mummy didn’t have time to help her wrap it because she had to do her make-up for her night out. Bree-Anna wrapped it all by herself, but not very well. The wrapping’s corners stick out crooked. Inside is a necklace and a bracelet. Mummy helped her pick them. They are pink because Rachel loves pink. Bree-Anna loves pink too.

Bree-Anna drags the dollhouse away and opens the door real slow and peeks down the hall. Her heart thumps and she hopes Baby can’t hear it. The troll is nowhere in sight.

She wheels Baby into the kitchen and calls to Declan. ‘I’m taking Baby for a walk.’ She doesn’t really want him to hear her because he will say they can’t go, but she will get in trouble if she doesn’t tell him. She leaves fast out the back door before he can say stop. Outside, her new pink thongs are waiting for her. They have plastic yellow flowers on them. She puts them on her feet and they make her smile.

Baby was right about not needing the blanket. The sun goes bang, bang, bang on her head. She pushes the stroller through the long grass at the side of the house and stops on the footpath. Sweat sticks between her legs and under her arms.

She looks back at the house, up the street and then down at Baby. ‘Let’s go,’ she says, and they set off down the footpath.

Everyone must still be in bed or in their houses because it is too hot to come out. Even the birds are quiet today. ‘It’s like everyone is dead,’ she says to Baby, and then she wishes she didn’t because Baby gets scared again.

At the end of the cul-de-sac, she lifts the wire fence and they squeeze under. She pushes the stroller along the old track toward the cow paddock and the service station. Sometimes Mummy sends her and Declan down the track to buy milk and bread at the servo, and lollies or ice-cream if there is change left over.

They stop near the cows. Baby likes to say hello to them. She won’t touch them because they are big and brown and dirty and it’s good they are on the other side of the fence, but she likes to watch them chomping on grass. The sun blasts off the servo’s driveway and Baby says, Keep walking, it’s too hot to stop. Bree-Anna looks behind her because she thinks maybe Declan might have followed, but he isn’t there. She wheels the stroller down the track and turns onto the highway. Sweat runs down her back and her hair sticks to her head like glue. Her tongue feels like she ate a sandpit. When she gets to Rachel’s, the first thing she is going to do is get a big cold drink!

Pushing the stroller beside the highway is a hard old slog, as her grandma would say. She stoops lower and heaves through the deep dirt and big rocks that turn the wheels the wrong way. If she pushes all the way to the school, they can use the crossing and that will be safer. Bree-Anna hopes it will be easy to find Rachel’s house with the big red letterbox. It will probably have balloons on it too. Pink ones.

Dirt gets into her thongs and the new stiff plastic rubs between her toes. She wipes sweat away from her eyes. Maybe she should have waited for Mummy to drive. You dumb cow, Bree-Anna. You are the dumbest thing ever born. You should have waited. Baby doesn’t say that. Bree-Anna says it to herself. She doesn’t need Baby to tell her and Baby just clucks her tongue. A truck swoops by and almost knocks her over with its wind. The prickly grass scratches her legs and she wonders if there might be snakes. She looks behind her, the servo hidden by the curve in the road. No Declan.

The car comes suddenly and stops right in their way so they can’t keep walking. It’s the froggy car. Baby and Bree-Anna call it the froggy car because of it being green like a frog.

The froggy car man crawls over to the passenger side, winds down the window, leans half his body out of the opening, and says, ‘That looks like hard work.’