‘I don’t know what to do,’ she whispered. She was angry and heartbroken and scared. She turned to the baby and yelled, ‘I don’t know what to do!’
The baby paused, stunned. Then its face creased with dismay. It began wailing louder.
Through her tears, Maylie looked at the door. She remembered what she had heard earlier that day – what she had not stopped thinking about since.
She stood up.
Then sat down again.
Still the baby screamed.
Maylie retied her dress and crossed the room to the cupboard by the sink, wiping her damp face on her sleeve. There were a few oats left in a cup and a bit of goat’s milk from yesterday. Maylie mixed them together in a bowl, fingers trembling, and carried it to thescreaming baby. Manhandling the child into her lap, she scooped up a spoonful of mush and tried to drop it into the dark hole of the baby’s mouth.
The infant coughed and cried more.
Maylie tried again, teeth clenched with the effort.
Finally, it took the mush. Then sucked hungrily at the edge of the wooden spoon.
Maylie managed to push some more into the baby’s mouth before its gaze started to drift. Its eyelids flickered and its limbs slackened, exhausted from the fight.
With its tiny belly full of something at last, the baby fell asleep.
Maylie breathed out.
In the sudden hush, thuds and rumbles sounded from the neighbours. She thought she might have heard one of them banging on the wall earlier, while the baby was screaming. Initially they had been full of sympathy – poor girl no more than a child herself left alone with a newborn baby – but their compassion had dwindled as the days passed and the baby would not stop crying. They just wanted peace.
Maylie wanted peace too, but she knew it was not what she deserved. This baby was a punishment. A penance for her transgression. She had done an awful, terrible thing and now she was paying the price.
She looked down at the sleeping infant. Smooth button nose, twitching lilac eyelids and tiny pink lips. All was calm now, but Maylie knew it would not last. Before sunset the baby would awaken, starving and desperate for milk.
The whole thing would start again.
Maylie gulped back the panic already clawing up her throat. She could not go on like this. Something must be done.
Again, she remembered what she had overheard that morning as she carried the screeching baby up and down the street, rocking and jiggling it in her arms. Above the roaring howls, she had listened to the women who leant out of shack windows, chattering and sharing gossip with one another. They were all aflutter with the latest, shocking news, discussing it in husky, scandalized voices.
The Queen was looking for a baby. A girl. To raise as her own.
Of course there would be no shortage of options, they all said with a smirk. Every whore in the Pits would proffer their child, desperate to rid themselves of a mouth to feed. One lucky baby would be chosen, and the rest would be sent back to poverty and despair. How distressing. It was like something from an old, brutal ballad.
The woman living in the shack opposite had remarked loudly that it was a terrible, unthinkable thing for a mother to do – if she was willing to give up her baby, then she should not be a mother at all.
And everyone had nodded in agreement.
Maylie had nodded along too. And yet the possibility had lodged itself in her mind, buzzing and humming, refusing to go away. A tantalizing proposition that she could not help but feel drawn to. An opportunity to escape the dark, relentless terror of her circumstances. The more she tried to push the thought aside, the more it returned like hunger.
Perhaps itwasa terrible, unthinkable thing to do.
Or perhaps it was the only way they would both survive.
Maylie looked at the curled hand resting upon her breast, pale fingernails like shells. The baby was thin, small and always hungry. From the moment it had arrived, it had needed what Maylie could not give it: milk, safety and love. She had tried, but her body was weak, her cupboards empty, her heart hollow with fear.
She could almost hear two voices inside her; one was sharp and scolding, the echo of the shack-woman and the nodding heads: ‘A mother does not abandon her child.’ The other voice was quieter, but more persistent: ‘A mother does what she must to keep her child alive.’
For a while, Maylie did not move.
The buzzing thoughts in her head only grew louder, thrumming through her bones until stillness became impossible.
