All the while, an unasked question was pounding in my head – a question that I never had the guts to ask.
Would we, or would we not, be invited to live with our father?
CHAPTER # nine
I met Michelle at our bus stop the next morning, and we talked about Eloise. Michelle was very excited. She kept wondering aloud why no one had heard the baby, whether anyone had been arrested and put in gaol, whether it was the mother who had found Eloise after she died – that kind of thing. The kind of thing I didn’t want to think about. Then the bus arrived, with Bettina already on it, and we learned something new.
‘Mum let me put a cup of formula in the room, last night,’ Bettina informed us, ‘but she drank it all herself. She couldn’t help it.’
‘Your mum drank the formula?’ I exclaimed.
‘Every last drop. As well as a whole packet of rice crackers, and all the cheese, and –’
‘She slept in your room, then?’ Michelle wanted to know.
‘Oh, yes. And I slept in hers.’ Bettina’s forehead was creased. She looked tired and worried. ‘My mother didn’t sleep well. Auntie Astra didn’t sleep well – she cries a lot …’
I felt instantly guilty.
‘… and I didn’t sleep well either,’ Bettina confessed. ‘I was worried about Mum, in that room.’
‘Is she going to call Community Housing?’ asked Michelle.
‘Oh, yes. As soon as she can.’ Bettina chewed at her bottom lip. ‘She’s very upset.’
I wasn’t surprised. I was pretty upset myself. For the first time, I wondered if Matoaka’s Sioux purifying ceremony might do some good, but then I remembered my mother’s Chinese Feng Shui purifying ceremony.
Feng Shui hadn’t got rid of Eglantine. Why would a Native American ritual get rid of Eloise? Eloise hadn’t been Native American, as far as we knew.
‘Maybe we should get a bottle,’ I remarked, as the bus chugged to a halt at Peter’s stop. I could see him surging through the door. Heading down the aisle.
Michelle and Bettina stared at me.
‘What?’ said Michelle.
‘Maybe we should get a bottle,’ I repeated. ‘A baby’s bottle. Maybe the formula didn’t work because it was in a cup.’
‘Or maybe Eloise just doesn’t like formula,’ Peter suggested, throwing himself into the seat behind me. ‘Some babies don’t.’
‘How would you know?’ Michelle said sceptically, and Peter shrugged.
‘My nephew wouldn’t drink formula,’ he explained. ‘Not until he was nearly one. Only, you know …’ He went a bit red. ‘Breast milk.’
‘You have a nephew?’ I couldn’t believe it. ‘You mean you’re an uncle? You?’
‘Yeah.’ He sounded defensive. ‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘You’re too young!’ Michelle exclaimed.
‘My oldest sister is nineteen. She’s married. She has a baby.’ Peter was obviously put out. ‘What’s so strange about that?’
‘Nothing,’ I said hastily. It did seem strange that Peter had never mentioned his nephew before, but then again, maybe it wasn’t so strange. Boys aren’t much interested in babies. And you don’t always tell your friends everything.
I hadn’t told my friends about Dad, for instance. I knew I would have to, very soon. I just didn’t want to be answering certain questions, like: Are you going to move in with him?
‘My nephew wouldn’t touch formula until he was eleven months old,’ Peter was saying. ‘Maybe Eloise wouldn’t either.’
‘Or maybe she won’t drink from a cup,’ Michelle declared. ‘Like Allie said. How old do babies have to be, to drink from cups?’
She was asking me, for some reason. I shrugged.
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘Neither do I,’ Bettina added.
We three girls turned to Peter, who went red again.
‘It’s no good looking at me!’ he protested. ‘How should I know?’
‘Well, does your nephew drink from a cup?’ I inquired.
‘No. Just a bottle, now. But other babies might be different.’
‘If only we knew how old Eloise was,’ Michelle sighed, and I nodded.
‘The trouble is that we don’t know enough about her at all,’ I said. ‘All we have is gossip from Mrs Fanciulli. We don’t even know if she really existed.’
‘My mum will find all that out,’ Bettina assured us.
She did, too – and she passed it on – but not until later. Not until after school. Bettina called my house when my whole family was sitting in the kitchen, eating lamb cutlets – and since we have a rule in our house about how phone calls during dinner have to be kept short, I wasn’t able to discuss all the details with her. She did have time to tell me that Eloise Amirault had been three months old when she’d died, and that it had happened in Bettina’s house. Twenty-two months previously.
‘They didn’t want Mum to know anything about it,’ Bettina revealed. ‘I don’t think they would have told her, if Mum hadn’t got so mad at them. Now she wants them to move us to another house, but of course she can’t say why. They’d think she was crazy.’
‘I know,’ I said, remembering my experience with Eglantine.
‘They wouldn’t tell her anything else,’ Bettina continued. ‘Like what happened to the mother or who found the baby or anything.’
‘Okay. Thanks, Bettina.’
‘The mother was a heroin addict, by the way. Mum found that out.’
‘Oh.’
‘Awful, isn’t it?’
It was. When I returned to the dinner table, I didn’t feel hungry. Mum said: ‘Who was that?’
‘Bettina.’
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Ray, and I saw that he was looking at me the way he does sometimes, calmly but intently.
‘Oh …’ I began to push my mashed potato around. ‘She found out something.’
‘About the ghost?’ Bethan mumbled, through a mouthful of food. ‘Is it a baby or a dog?’
‘A what?’ Mum exclaimed, and I sighed.
‘It’s a baby,’ I admitted. ‘Mrs Berich found out that a three-month-old baby called Eloise Amirault died of starvation in Bettina’s house. Nearly two years ago.’
Mum winced. Bethan kept shovelling food down his throat. Ray said quietly: ‘That’s not good.’
‘No. It’s awful.’ I rearranged the vegetables on my plate. ‘Its mother was a heroin addict,’ I added.
Mum frowned. She wiped her lips with her napkin. ‘This is the same room that Delora had trouble with, I take it,’ she said.
‘Yeah. The one that makes everyone hungry.’
‘Oh, right.’ Ray began to nod. ‘I recall, now – you mentioned it.’
‘Yes. And no one wants to sleep in that bedroom any more. And Mrs Berich wants to move.’
Gazing around the table, I realised what a relief it was to discuss a ghost with grown-ups who didn’t laugh or sneer or get cross. Suddenly I felt as if I could talk about Eloise, at long last. The words just came tumbling out.
‘Bettina’s mum and sister have both slept in her bedroom, and ended up eating everything in sight,’ I explained. ‘They tried leaving food in there, too – last night they left a cup of baby’s formula – but it didn’t work. Mrs Berich drank the formula.’
Mum made a face. ‘That stuff?’ she said. ‘Yuk.’
‘I was thinking that maybe Eloise wasn’t satisfied because the formula was in a cup instead of a bottle,’ I went on, ‘but Peter thinks maybe she doesn’t like formula. “Some babies don’t,” he says.’
‘So you think you have to find out what this baby wants?’ Ray said. ‘And if you do, and you give it to her, then she’ll go away?’
‘Like Eglantine,’ I agreed. ‘This baby’s hungry, so we figured she must want food.’
‘Why don’t they just make that bedroom a dining room?’ Bethan demanded. ‘Then it won’t matter if people feel hungry in there.’
‘It’s more complicated tha
n that,’ I replied, trying to be patient with him. ‘Bettina’s family aren’t just worried about being hungry in there. They hate the ghost being in there. You would, too. You know what it was like with Eglantine.’
‘Can’t Delora do something?’ Ray was slowly cutting up his eggplant (which Mum hadn’t bothered giving to Bethan and me: we hate eggplant). ‘Surely Delora would be able to help? She helped with Eglantine.’
‘I dunno,’ I mumbled. ‘Maybe.’ I was thinking about the money that Delora might charge, and the tone of her voice when she’d said, ‘A force like that could cause a lot of damage.’
And then Mum spoke. She put down her glass of wine, folded her napkin beside her plate, and said quietly, ‘Well, it’s perfectly obvious, isn’t it?’
We all stared at her.
‘There’s one thing that all babies want. All the time,’ she announced, her gaze moving from face to face. ‘They want their mothers.’
I blinked. Bethan chewed. Ray nodded again.
‘Yes, of course,’ he said.
‘But – but –’ I couldn’t believe that Mum was serious. ‘But the mother killed Eloise. She left her in the house, all alone.’
‘The baby wouldn’t know that,’ Mum said. ‘How old did you say she was? Three months? A baby that age wouldn’t know anything. Just that she wanted her mother.’
I swallowed.
Mum’s eyes, I could see, were suddenly full of tears. I suppose it was sad, that a baby should have wanted the mother who neglected her.
In fact, it was so sad that I didn’t really want to think about it.
‘The trouble is, we don’t know where to find the mother,’ I pointed out, after a long pause. ‘She could be in gaol. She could be anywhere.’
‘You could look in the phone book,’ Ray suggested. ‘Or on the internet,’ said Bethan.
‘Or you could check the local rag,’ Ray continued. He sat with his fork poised over his meat. ‘Local newspapers always run items on things like that.’
‘But it was two years ago,’ I objected.
‘So? They’ll have back issues at the library.’
‘Really?’
‘Bound to. Or you can try the newspaper office. Someone will have kept copies.’
‘I’ll take you tomorrow,’ Mum offered. ‘I’ll pick you up from school, and I’ll take you to the library, and you can check.’
‘Oh.’ I was astonished – and pleased. ‘Thanks, Mum.’
‘There’s nothing worse,’ she concluded, ‘than a troubled spirit in a family bedroom.’
I reported all this to the Exorcists’ Club the next morning. Michelle was envious; she wished aloud that her mum was as helpful as mine, when it came to ghosts. Bettina was relieved; she and Mrs Berich had spent the previous night in the same double bed, and Bettina wasn’t used to sharing.
Peter nodded thoughtfully.
‘So we’re going to search for the mother, is that it?’ he asked me.
‘I guess.’
‘And then what? I mean, suppose she’s in gaol?’
It was a good question. I looked helplessly at Michelle, who shrugged.
‘Maybe Delora will have an idea,’ she said.
‘Maybe.’ Suddenly I remembered Delora’s forty-dollar fee. ‘You still owe me ten dollars, by the way. Both of you.’
‘Oh, yeah.’ Michelle fished around in her bag. Peter dug into his pocket. We had just got off the bus, and were standing in front of the school gates.
‘The formula only cost five dollars,’ Bettina said awkwardly, as I collected everyone’s share. ‘But if you want me to buy a baby’s bottle, too …’
‘Buy the bottle,’ I decided. ‘You might as well.’
‘Not if I can borrow one from my sister,’ Peter offered. ‘She has plenty. She wouldn’t mind. I’ll ask her, the next time she comes to our place.’
‘When will that be?’ Michelle inquired.
‘Oh, I dunno. This weekend?’
There was a pause. Then Bettina said, in a small voice, ‘It would be better if we didn’t have to wait until the weekend.’
So it was decided that Bettina would buy a baby’s bottle and try it out in her bedroom. If that didn’t work, she could give the bottle to Peter, who would give it to his sister, who might even give Bettina her money back. By the time the bell went, it had all been settled.
What’s more, at lunchtime I sorted something else out. I was on duty in the school library, and it occurred to me that Mrs Procter might know if the public library kept back copies of the local newspaper. When I asked her, she looked at me with her head cocked to one side, like a bird, and said: ‘What makes you think you have to go to the public library?’
I didn’t understand, at first. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that I keep my own copies,’ she answered, with a little smile.
‘You do?’
‘Since I came here. For school projects. Local history projects, and that kind of thing.’
‘Where are they?’
Mrs Procter clicked her tongue, but she was still smiling. ‘You should know, Allie,’ she scolded. ‘You’re supposed to be my best library monitor.’
‘Reference section?’ I hazarded.
‘Let’s have a look.’
They were in the Reference section – four big red books, each containing fifty-two bound copies of the local newspaper. I looked for the volume covering the month when Eloise died, and Mrs Procter helped me carry it to a reading table. By this time, Michelle and Bettina were both hovering around, excitedly.
‘Okay,’ I said, leafing through the crackling pages. ‘Twenty-two months ago. That would be October …’
‘Here!’ Michelle exclaimed.
‘Okay. You take the left side, and I’ll take the right side.’
‘What about me?’ Bettina piped up.
‘You keep an eye on Scott McLoughlin,’ Michelle ordered. ‘He’s going to start making trouble, I just know it.’
From over near her desk, Mrs Procter suddenly asked us what we were looking for. It was an awkward moment. When I finally told her that we wanted to find out about someone who’d died, she advised us to check the obituaries. Down near the back of the paper.
Of course, we weren’t looking for the obituaries. We were looking for a news story, like the one that this same newspaper had run about Eglantine. My eyes ran down the columns of print, past Council Loses Court Case, Arrests in Warehouse, Local Ballerina Hits Big Time. We turned the page. Development Gets Green Light, Health Department Raid, Local Business Owner Up in Arms. There were five newspapers to read, and we had to do it as quickly as possible, not bothering with more than the headlines and first paragraphs.
We didn’t find what we were looking for until we reached the third newspaper.
‘There!’ Michelle cried. ‘Look!’
I looked. Baby Dies in Tragic Circumstances, I read. A twenty-two-year-old woman has been arrested after the death of her three-month-old daughter in what a DOCS representative has described as ‘tragic circumstances’ …
‘This is it,’ I croaked, and started to read aloud. ‘… The child’s body was discovered by two other occupants of the house when they returned from an interstate trip. It doesn’t give any names, or anything, but the mother was arrested.’
‘The question is, did she go to gaol?’ Michelle remarked.
‘I don’t know. It doesn’t say.’
‘Maybe in the next edition. Maybe there was a trial, or something.’
‘Let’s just photocopy this article, first.’
We split the cost of a photocopy, and then continued to flip through the volume of newspapers. We tried the next issue, and the one after that, and the one after that. We scanned three months’ worth of newspapers before the bell went – without finding a thing. It was very frustrating. We had to tear ourselves away, even though we were desperate to know whether Terri Amirault had gone to gaol or not.
When we told Peter at the bus stop that afte
rnoon, he offered us an explanation.
‘These things can take months and months to come to trial,’ he said ‘Either you missed the story, or you never even got to it.’
‘Or it’s not even there,’ I added gloomily. ‘Maybe they never followed up.’
‘How do you know so much about trials?’ Michelle asked Peter, who shrugged.
‘I just do. From my mum’s work.’
‘She’s not a lawyer, is she? I thought you said she was a nurse, or something?’
‘A lot of her clients are loonies,’ said Peter. ‘A lot of them end up in court.’ He adjusted his backpack, ‘Why don’t we call the journalist?’ he asked, with a nod at our photocopy. ‘Why don’t we call Ned Sandstrom?’
‘The man who wrote it?’ I frowned. ‘Do you think he’s still working there?’
‘Why not? It was only two years ago. And he’ll know the inside story.’
‘But will he talk to us?’
‘He will if we tell him about the ghost,’ said Michelle.
I glanced at Peter, who glanced at Bettina, who glanced back at me. For a while, no one said anything. Around us, kids shrieked and chattered and punched each other. Bethan, I noticed, was staggering around with somebody’s schoolbag pulled down over his head.
‘I don’t think we should tell Ned Sandstrom about the ghost,’ I volunteered at last.
‘Neither do I,’ Bettina chimed in. She looked scared. ‘My mum would kill me.’ All at once her eyes widened, and she put her hand over her mouth. ‘I mean – I don’t mean –’
‘We know what you mean,’ said Peter.
Michelle seemed to be pondering.
‘If we don’t tell him about the ghost, what are we going to tell him?’ She leaned towards the rest of us, lowering her voice. ‘We have to have a reason for being interested in Eloise.’
‘Bettina has a reason,’ Peter pointed out. ‘She lives in the same house.’
‘Oh, but I couldn’t – I mean, I don’t want to –’
‘It’s all right, Bettina.’ I patted her arm. ‘I’ll call him, and I’ll say I’m you.’
At that moment Mum arrived, all dressed up in her bank clothes. As I helped her to round up Bethan (who had discarded the schoolbag, and was doing stupid things with somebody’s striped sock), I told her that I wouldn’t have to go to the library after all. I’d already found what I wanted.