Heat and Light by Ellen van Neerven Read Free Book Online Page A

shut the kitchen window. The heat was immediately trapped. She got a handful of face washers out of the linen cupboard and ran them under the tap. Irma, who had been playing in the yard, came inside, her face flushed. She presented in front of her mother, opening her palms to a lady beetle, which flew up, grazing the girl’s nose. The beetle went towards the closed window. Marie stuck a washer on Irma’s neck. They heard a tapping, a prodding.
    ‘Don’t open the window, dear,’ she said.
    Irma nodded. They both looked outside at the same time. Pearl was staring straight at them with a sickening glare. One hand on her back and one on her stomach, she was huge and hurting. Her dress flipped up in the wind and her stomach demanded viewing. Marie quickly moved away from the kitchen. She walked upstairs to Pete’s room. He was sleeping, his hands under his cheek. She got in beside him and pushed the cold washer on to the dent of his back. It was like throwing an ice cube into a fire. She hugged him to her, the clammy warmth of his arms and the drowsy muffle of the bed. She wasn’t sure if she was sleeping.
    She was rattled by Irma’s voice at the door. ‘Mum, you gotta come. Aunty is havin’ a baby out the front.’
    *
    Pearl was in the currents of contractions outside the house. She was kneeling directly in line with the front door, facing the street. Marie and Irma got her down on the ground, one hand on either of her shoulders. Her breath was citrus and smoke. The water on the ground sizzled from the sun. Pearl’s eyes widened and Marie held on to her. No cars went by and no one saw them, but at the same time the valley saw them. The open sky fingering their skin.
    This was where the sisters had been born, in the shadows of the ironbarks, the spot where their women had given birth for a continuum of years. Pearl made little sound as she pushed. She didn’t cry out. Sweat broke across her back. She leant forward, her head on her arms, her legs swaying from side to side, her toes clenched together. Above, the leaves stirred with wind. She moved back to her hands and knees, head up. A fierce whisper escaped her lips but no words were understood.
    For Marie, it was quick and there was nothing to be done. A few minutes and a few tries and it was Irma that had her hands where they needed to be. She took the baby from Irma’s arms, the wet blood shared across their arms. He made a sound that imprinted on her.
    A while later, they sat in the kitchen on the chairs, eating the remaining pie out of the dish. Pearl was newly energised and talkative. Irma was proud. Marie tried to feel relief. The baby was solid and soft. She had weighed him on the kitchen scales, 4.6 kilograms. She sat with the baby wrapped in a white blanket, his eyes opened when she looked at him. He had a thick grey casing of hair on his head.
    Pearl moved through the kitchen and opened the window near the sink, looking out into the bush. Her hair moved a bit as she turned.
    She spoke. ‘You said you would look after him.’
    Marie slowly shook her head. ‘He is your child.’
    ‘You can understand why I can’t take it with me. It would be good here. A brother for Irma and Peter. A gift. A birthday present.’
    Marie shut her eyes for a moment.
    ‘Of course,’ her sister said, smiling. ‘I wouldn’t forget your birthday.’ She leant forward and gave her a kiss on her cheek.
    Marie looked down at the baby in her arms. She didn’t move as Pearl bent her knees and pushed her body through the sun-lined window. She could hear her sister’s feet touch the ground and her firm, wet steps as she went back the way she came.
    ‘A decent size, this little bloke,’ Griffin said when he got home. ‘Well done.’
    They named the baby Charles, after Griffin’s father, and Jack, after her father. He was Charles Jack Kresinger, for all her children kept their grandfather’s name. He wasn’t painted up proper way, and there was no ceremony, the clapsticks had