Lilian's Story (34 page)

A Life in a Bag

Jewel joined Frank and me in our storm-water channel when she came across us there.
Jeeze but you have got
yourselves a good spot
, she admired, but would not drink out of the bottle that Frank waved at her.
I am expecting
, she said primly.
I do not drink while expecting.
Jewel had been expecting God's baby for as long as I had known her, but now she was certainly expecting something from the bulge under her dress.
Jeeze, I like it here
, Jewel said with satisfaction, and became part of our household, bringing with her a dowry of her belly and a plastic bag full of stolen baby bootees.

This is my life
, Frank told her with pride, and held up his gunny-sack, which held all that he owned. Jewel stared with her mouth open, breathing audibly in the way she did when she concentrated, then crowed suddenly.
And this is mine!
patting her gigantic stomach.
Ah,
but Jewel, can you wear your life?
Frank asked, winking at me and pulling his boots out of his bag.
Or shave with it?
He held up his razor, for Frank was still fastidious about his face, and shaved after a fashion from time to time up at the hostel. Jewel frowned in silence, but finally thought of her answer.
Your life will not be able to talk back to you
, she cried,
but mine will, and will be famous!
Frank winked at me again but had no answer for Jewel, because it was true that his life would never grow up to be anything very much now.

All Happy Families

It is a funny kind of family, Frank said, but seemed to enjoy it. In the nights we built fires from wood frayed by the tides, and invented a few hard names for the stars. Like the others of long ago, we who sat on this dark beach had been slowly transported, by the nature of our lives and the choices we had made, to the stern lip of another land. The privilege of the first ones has always been to impose names of their own invention on the new world.
Hebdomedary
, Frank would say after a long silence.
How
about that, Lil? Or concupiscence.
When the flames reached in and singed the wood it spat salt embers that pulsed on the sand before dying.

Those autumn nights were the times when we told the stories of our lives, either the ones we had or the ones we would rather have had. Jewel and I watched by cool starlight and hot flames as the tears slimed down Frank's cheeks.
The wife
, he'd say and look for the bottle leaning against his leg.
Me little girl
, he'd say, and the cork would make a hollow mocking sound. Those who spent their days smiling and worrying at each other, and their nights behind walls and windows, would claim that Frank had never had a wife or a daughter and had never wanted anything but the loving boy he had never quite had. But we listened and threw another stick onto the flames, and later I held him as he shuddered and hiccupped under the dew.

Across the water, as black as the inside of an ear, the yellow lights of those in the old country winked feebly at us. When our memories or inventions failed us we watched the yellow semaphore.
Snug as a bug in a rug
, Jewel said. She could just as easily have meant the three of us by the fire, or those secure in their houses and beds around the bay.

Mother and Young

Jewel was close to her time now, she thought, and had stopped being sick every morning, and moved slowly, like a cart.
No hospital
, she always said.
I will not have no
hospital where they lock you
up. On those occasions when I tried to reason with her
—But, Jewel, if there are complications;
whatever
complications
were, I knew them only from
Gone
With the Wind—
her eyes began to roll and her breath came faster. If I persisted—
Jewel, we must be realistic
, I would say, wondering at myself for the words—she would run down to the beach and sit among the rubbish, threatening to drown herself, baby and all.
Won't catch me
locked up again
, she said, and hissed.
Incineration, that's what
it is.
Her face as she sat among the rotting oranges was anxious but determined, her chin very pointed.
It is mine
, she said, shielding the lump under her dress.
Mine.
When I tried to come closer, saying something that was meant to soothe, she stood up, stumbling on rubbish, and waded out heavily into the water until she was standing up to her thighs in it, and I turned back.
It is mine
, she tried to explain more calmly later,
and they are all jealous because it
is me that will have God's baby.
She stared down at her belly and made round gestures with her hands.
It is mine, see?
was finally all she was able to say.

No Humbug in a Baby's Bottom

Some women have babies and others have stories. I would have liked to have both. Nothing in my experience equipped me to be a midwife, but as a student of life I knew it was never too late to learn, and I wanted to add all experiences to my store. It was necessary to prepare for Jewel to become God's mum, because her bulge was getting bigger by the day. She still insisted that God would not be born in any hospital, but would emerge into the world on our beach, among the orange peels and lost sandals, where the storm-water channel deposited its gifts. I could not imagine this, but life had astonished me before now, so I did what I could to prepare myself.

I read books, spending days in the library, and the librarians looked twice when they saw what kinds of book Lil Singer was asking for.
I am a student of life
, I told them with dignity, Jewel's secret safe with me, and they were silenced, these young librarians who knew nothing except how to whisper. The books had not been quite as specific as an earnest student of life could have wished, but I learned what I could from them, and then went out into the streets, where I had always learned so much, and looked for some practical experience.

When a baby dribbled at me invitingly, up at the Cross, I decided it was time to begin to learn.
I would like to hold
it
, I told the man, barring his path. The passage of years had not made me any less monumental, and this was a small man.
I am on my way home
, he said, but I only moved closer. I saw his fear in his eyes. He was afraid that I would rip the baby from his arms and gallop down the street with it, or squeeze its round head like an orange.
She needs changing,
you see
, he tried once more, a male animal defending its young, but I was already reaching for the thick padded bottom and the swaddling chest. This father was graceful in defeat.
Here,
get a hold of her like this
, he said, and in a moment I had a baby in my arms for the first time.
She is Dianne
, the father said, and blushed with pride in spite of everything.
She is our first.

The baby pouted up at me like a tease, grinned gummily, frowned. Her hand waved up and down at my face, a finger brushed into my laughing mouth, and she laughed a small wicked laugh.
Aaaah
, she crowed, and I crowed back,
Aaaaah!
A man in woman's clothes stopped and looked with a hand up to his mouth; two ladies of the night waved across the street at me and called,
Pretty as a picture, Lil!
I asked,
Were
you at the birth?
and this man, who would never parade his baby down the street again, blushed fiercely as he said,
Yes.
I held Dianne high in the air, my thumbs hooked in her tiny armpits, and said,
I need to know.
This father, whose pride in his daughter was more powerful than any fear, said suddenly,
She popped out just like a pea out of a pod
, and nodded around at the small crowd that had gathered.
Lil Singer
, I heard voices whisper at each other.
With a baby.

This was a father not used to crowds, it was easy to see, but he nodded at the man in frills, and at the lady of the night on his left, whose black eye was at the yellow stage.
Just popped out like she'd been doing it all her life
, he said, and everyone laughed, even the policeman who had decided to stand on the edge of the crowd and
keep an eye on things.
I knew that little Dianne would grow up listening to the telling and retelling of the story of the day she was dandled by Lil Singer, and might tell it herself at last.

What Is Needed

I was anxious, but Jewel was serene, knowing she was prepared to become the mother of God.
I got all the necessary
, she said haughtily when Frank had had a bottle or two, or began to screech that she was loony, thinking she could have a baby on our beach.
Look
, Jewel said, and held up her plastic bag of bootees.
I am ready, see?
But Frank sprayed spittle in his derision.
It's nappies you need, Jewel
, he cried.
Use
your loaf, Jewel, think of all that shit!
His laugh made Jewel cup her belly with her hands,
Nappies for its bum, nappies for its
bummy bum bum
, Frank sang lustily. Only his cough stopped his song going on until dawn.

Frank was scandalised, too, that Jewel was not preparing a name for her baby.
Got to think of a few names
, Frank said.
It's just a thing till it's got a name.
Jewel looked frightened, as she always did when called upon to act.
What will I do,
Lil?
she appealed, and although I did not feel strongly about names, I disagreed with Frank.
For years you were only F.J.
Stroud to me,
I reminded him, and he smiled so that I could see how grooved and stained his teeth were from the years of smoke and drink.
Yes, Lil
, he said, and Jewel watched as if to surprise a secret.
Those were the days, eh?
Jewel continued to stare, but what lay between Frank, or F.J. Stroud, and me was opaque to anyone but us. But something in the way we smiled at our memories made silent Jewel speak:
Was youse two sweethearts, then, was that it?
and our Jewel was preparing to become sentimental over sweethearts of long ago.

Leaving the Nest

No one came for Jewel, but she left in any case. She had become much more silent as the nights in the storm-water channel became colder, and her belly became an unmanageable size, and things began to fall apart.
We are
gunna go north, Lil
, she said at last one morning, her eyes crazed now with the idea of the north and how it would be warm there, and mangoes falling off the trees.
They will
not find us up there, to lock me up.
She could not stop herself glancing over her shoulder, and jumping at small sounds.
I
will change my name
, Jewel said cunningly.
Then we will be right.
She winked at me and nodded.
I have got it all worked out,
see.
Frank woke up with a snort and a fart and waved the bottle at her.
What do you mean
, he shouted,
change your name?
Jewel looked sly and pursed her lips, but could not resist telling us,
I will call myself Ruby
, she said.
Get it?
She began to wink at me as if she intended never to stop.
We will be right
as rain,
she said, and picked up her plastic bag of bootees and left for the north.
Bye-bye, Lil
, she called from the fence where Frank and I stood watching and waving as she laboured away up the street. When she had disappeared Frank burped and put his arm around me so suddenly that he knocked the wind out of me, and said,
Well, Lil, it is just
me and you now, like a pair of old farts
, and we both laughed so loudly the birds flew up in fear out of the trees.

The Last Loss

Frank took good care of me in our home by the water, tucking my feet into the newspapers at night, combing my thin old hair for me by the hour as we sat like a pair of baboons in the grass, grooming each other in peaceful silence. He took good care of me, but he was a sick man. He was yellow in the morning, yellow and trembling until he had sucked long enough at the bottle in the brown paper bag.

We are gunna die, Lil
, Frank told me one dank night when the tankers mooed to each other like full udders in the fog.
And you will be the lucky one, Frank, and go first
, I said, and we both let slide some cool tears, thinking of how lonely I was going to be without Frank.
You will go first, and quickly,
Frank, but I feel my death will come at me slowly
, I told him, but I did not try to resist, because if my death wanted to come at me slowly, that would be what happened.

Frank was planning his death, one step ahead of its arrival, and lay shivering and coughing by our fire with a few last tales to keep him warm. He was once a wealthy man, he said, and had written a will, he said, and left his estate in its entirety to me, he said. Another bottle, and he would claim to be the lost scion of the podgy House of Windsor.

I thought of my own death while Frank fended off his. Every third thought, on such cold nights, was my grave. There were noises in my head, too, rushing and roaring noises from time to time, and a feeling of birds massing behind my eyes, getting ready to fly somewhere. I would have liked to go like that, on the sand, with Frank making noises in his sleep beside me. Stars had never frightened me, even the black spaces between them had never frightened me. But Frank went first, as we had guessed. It was not in my arms, as we would both have wished, but on some street somewhere, staggering into the gutter with a last cough, or in some cold hospital bed with the screen drawn around him, because they had picked him off the street only to give him a bed to die in, or on some stretcher with the wailing of the ambulance filling his last moments. I had held his sick old hand, and embraced his thin old body, and watched him walk up into the city, and when at last it had been clear that he would never return, I wept long tears, but regretted nothing, because Frank and I had given all there was to give, and no love had ever been more true than ours had been.