Only crying

Look, is there anything I can do? Laura asks.

They are driving through the endless Melbourne exurbs, through rolling valleys of prosperous properties on generous sections, each more stunning than the last. Gardens and gardens.

No, ignore it, and don’t make eye contact, it’ll only make her cry harder, Erin says. Should fall asleep soon.

Laura isn’t familiar with tiny humans. All she knows is: she wants one. The baby screams and they keep driving.

It had been so long since they’d seen each other in the flesh that Laura had half-expected to encounter Erin’s polished Instagram façade: pouting lips, blurred skin filter-perfect, glossy hair. And beside her, a perfect wee babe, chubby and beaming, sleeping under a blanket with a tiny penguin. But reality is a lot louder.

The baby screams, a siren of tiny rage rising and falling.

Erin keeps talking, raising her voice to be heard, a reliable monologue about old friends with hardly any space allowed even for agreement. As if she were worried that Laura might say something that would break the spell of her enviable life, successful husband, new house, new baby, new job, new friends and new Aussie accent.

The crying sucked but she was so lucky, lucky, having a nice house to drive to, in Berwick, which would take about an hour from the airport, but had such a low crime rate, and ignoring the baby, if you took the baby out of the picture, everything was fine and there was no reason to be upset.

The crying gains greater urgency, choking on sobs, and she still says ignore it, ignore it, as the misery fills the small car, making Laura’s ears tingle with gooseflesh and her gut churn, as if nothing will ever be okay again.

What do you think she wants? Hungry, thirsty, lonely, not feeling well, needs a change?

Just ignore it.

I don’t mind if you want to stop.

It’d take ages to get going again.

What’s the rush?

Erin looks out the car window, and the steering wheel drifts to the right along with her gaze, toward the centre line and briefly across it, so that Laura wonders whether she needs to seize the wheel, wrench them back out of oncoming traffic.

It’s so hard to know, Erin says.

Know what? Laura shifts upright in her seat, but Erin steers the car gently back into the right lane.

What the best thing is, Erin says. What to do, really.

She guides the vehicle into an empty space by the curb.

This is how they end up sitting in the car on one of these nice suburban streets for a good forty minutes as Erin breastfeeds. But the inner wail continues, a lonely unvoiced sound, even as the baby feeds contentedly, and Laura realises it’s an adult cry that’s been bothering her all along, but she still can’t figure out whether it’s hers, Erin’s, or both.

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Sharni Wilson

Sharni Wilson is an Aotearoa NZ writer and literary translator. Her work appeared in Landfall and WLT, among others. In 2020 she was a finalist for Lunch Ticket’s Gabo Prize. In 2023 she won the At the Bay | I te Kokoru award for her hybrid collection, One to Many.