Page 16 of The Vanishing Place
After taking a bowl through to Mum and stacking it on the messy bedside table, Effie returned and sat next to her sister. She couldn’t eat. She just stirred it, then set the bowl aside.
Together, she and Tia spent the morning trying to work out what the baby wanted. It was exhausting, worse than grinding a million sedge seeds into flour. They didn’t know how to wrap a baby, or how to tie a nappy properly, and neither of them had dared touch the dirty cloths. But the baby was mostly clean. And he slept and he drank, a bit anyway, and pooed, which seemed to be it with babies.
Effie stood at the sink, the ache in her eyeballs impossible to blink away, and tried to wash the pile of dishes, not wanting the mess to make Mum angry. But her head kept dropping forward and her eyelids wouldn’t stay open. Tia was snoring on the sofa, her mouth wide, and the baby was sleeping beside her in his floor bed. Effie splashed water over her face to try to shock the tiredness from her eyes. The first palmful did nothing. So she did it twice more, spilling water down her top and over the floor. Her lips quivered as she dipped her hand back into the bucket, and she wanted to cry. There was barely any water left.
“Stupid shitty water.” Effie kicked the bucket. “Stupid shitty bucket.”
It was Dad’s job to check the water. But her stupid shitty dad wasn’t there. Effie kicked the bucket again. Maybe he’d drowned or fallen or been shot by a hunter. Not that she cared. She dug the heels of her hands into her eyes, refusing to cry.
All her life, they’d worked as a team—Mum and Dad and the kids. Growing vegetables, collecting and boiling water, baking bread, hunting deer, fixing the hut. The bush was too big for just her and Tia, and now the new one. The bush was an unforgiving thing that would eat them up. Effie bit into her lip until the pain shrunk all the other thoughts away, then she reached for the bucket and headed to the stream.
For hours, she sloshed back and forth from the stream. She relit the fire and boiled liter after liter of water. Not boiling it meant a gutted-out stomach, like Dad’s stag knife rummaging through her insides, and three days spent on the compost toilet. Twice Effie stopped to help Tia with the baby. They gave him more sips of milk and piled up more soiled nappies, but his body had gone a weird gold color, and the white bits in his eyes looked like yellow butter.
“Shouldn’t he cry more?” asked Tia.
Effie didn’t know. She didn’t know anything about babies.
“Aiden cried loads when he was tiny.”
Effie stroked two fingers over his little head. His hair was light red—not like the young ones. Tia and Aiden were all Mum—thick black hair and dark eyes. But not Effie. Effie was a double of Dad.
“He’s probably just tired,” said Effie. “Babies need lots of sleep.”
She set him on the floor and tucked the blanket over him. Then she squished onto the sofa with her sister.
“When will Mum be up?” asked Tia.
“Soon.”
“I don’t like looking after a baby,” she said. “It’s hard.”
Effie stared at the small creature on the floor, muted by it. By everything. She didn’t know how to be a mum, and definitely not to something so new, but she couldn’t tell Tia that. Tia was only six, and six was a lot less than almost nine. Almost nine was a big age, Dad said, filled with big responsibilities.
“I think we forgot to eat lunch,” said Tia.
“I’ll make us something soon.” Effie’s eyes wouldn’t stay open. “We can have dinner early.”
Her stomach growled and her body ached and drooped. Her bones felt heavy and empty at the same time, and her arms and legs had glued themselves to the sofa. There was nothing she could do but lie there and close her eyes.
It wasn’t until later, when a scream pierced through the fog, that she willed her eyes open. But it wasn’t a baby’s scream. Effie rubbed her face, trying to bring her mind back to her body. The scream vibrated through her again, the fear and desperation in it flooding her chest.
“Effie!” Tia burst from their parents’ room, her face a mess of tears. She fell to the floor, the crack of her knees making Effie wince.
“Tia.” Effie rushed over and huddled next to her. “I told you not to go in there.”
“Mum’s bleeding.” Tears choked Tia’s words. “There’s blood everywhere.”
“I know.” She pulled her sister into her. “I know. That’s just baby stuff. That’s just…”
Tia’s head shook violently against Effie’s chest. “No,” she cried. “Something’s wrong. She wouldn’t wake up.”
“I told you not to go in there.”
“I had to.” Snot and tears drowned her sister’s words. “I had to go in.”
“Why?”
Tia sniffed and wiped at her eyes. “I thought Mum might have taken it.”
