Read Little Bird for Free Online Page A

half-frozen Spaghetti Bolognese.
    A slow, wet, blurting noise rumbled from Maisy’s lower half. Her expression was thoughtful, and she didn’t seem at all bothered, but panic surged in me again. Poo! Could I deal with poo? Colette hadn’t told me anything about poo.
    As I carried Maisy into the bedroom, a distinct smell wafted around her (not entirely unlike the smell of Spaghetti Bolognese, which grossed me out a little). I laid her down on the change table. Her outfit had buttons everywhere, to get at her nappy without completely undressing her, I assumed. I unsnapped the buttons at her crotch, but I couldn’t see how to get her pudgy legs out without bending them the wrong way. I undid more and more buttons, until I may as well have just taken the whole stupidly complicated suit off her anyway. She kicked her legs in the air and laughed at my distress.
    â€˜Oh, help!’
    There was poo everwhere. Somehow, by the time I got the nappy undone, Maisy managed to put first one foot into it and then the other. It oozed out of her nappy onto her back and all over her clothes. I armed myself with a wad of wipes, and dabbed gingerly at her private parts, making little impression. Clearly the only way to deal with it was with firm vigour. As I grew more confident Maisy didn’t seem to mind me hauling her from one side to another; she grinned up at me through her legs when I folded them over her head to wipe her bum and back. Every time I thought I was done, I found another sneaky crevice that needed cleaning.
    In the end I gave up. I bagged up the dirty nappy and the used wipes and ran Maisy a bath. I lowered Maisy’s body into the shallow warm water, her legs curled up to her chest. She poked at the water experimentally with her toes and then stuck her feet in. She slapped the top of the water with her hand and solemnly swished her tiny fingers back and forth like little fish.
    I soaked a flannel and squeezed it, dribbling warm water onto Maisy’s back, and Maisy grew quiet and thoughtful and still. ‘You like that?’ I asked and did it again.
    Being with Maisy made me feel wonderful, and it also made me a little sad, but I didn’t know why.
    All I had known about babies before was that they cried, fed and slept. Maisy hadn’t cried once. She was full of joy, like her little life was an endless series of happy possibilities.
    When Maisy was dry and snuggled into a soft all-in-one pyjama suit, looking like a teddy bear, I held her in my arms and fed her a bottle of formula. Maisy gazed up into my face as she drank the milky concoction and the expression on her face mirrored the utter bliss I was feeling. As Maisy drained the bottle her gulps slowed into a shallow suckling, and her eyes blinked dreamily. I tried to remember a lullaby and the only one I could think of was Silent Night . It felt a bit weird singing a Christmas carol in April, but the familiar tune sounded magical in the quiet of the apartment. Maisy watched me as I sang. All my life I’d felt transparent, as if people saw through me – even the people I loved, like Shandra or Tegan. But Maisy saw me. She looked at me as if I were full of possibility too. As if I were as amazing to her as she was to me. And then she drifted off to sleep, her eyelids blinking heavily closed.
    I carried her to the bedroom and lowered her gently into the cot. I watched her sleeping face for a while in the dim light. Then I curled up on Colette’s couch and drifted off too, under the Klimt print of the mother and the child and the cascading hair and the flowers.

6
    Apparently Colette and Shandra had had some kind of argument over the bridesmaid dresses. I gathered, blearily, that they’d more or less made up by the time they got to Colette’s flat. Still, Shandra said no to a cuppa and propelled me, still half-asleep, down the external staircase. Stepping into the cold air was like being slapped awake, though my skin still