Thula-Thula (English Edition), page 11
Nothing helped.
By the time it was New Year and Gertruidah turned five, she was back to wetting her bed and you’d swear she had swallowed her tongue. Trouble was it wasn’t just Anthony she had lost. She had lost her mama, too, to the crying sickness.
In that time of deep sorrow Missus Sarah and Abel lost each other too. But Abel lost more than anyone, I always thought. Missus Sarah cried all the time and not a day went by when she didn’t blame him for Anthony’s death. In the graveyard the tiny grave was still settling after the winter before Abel could put the headstone on. My own heart was grieving for Samuel who was also lying inside the wintry earth. After Anthony died Gertruidah was the only one in the yard who laughed or shared her love. But not for very long.
One day when I was in the kitchen peeling pumpkin, Abel came in from the dipping-pen to take Missus Sarah a cup of tea, to comfort her a little. I could tell he had been crying. Anthony had been his child too. Maybe he had come home looking for a little comfort of his own. But a man cries in places where other eyes cannot see him. Like at the dipping-pen. Abel put two shop biscuits on a saucer and walked to the bedroom. But the way Missus Sarah shouted at him, I could hear her in the kitchen.
‘First your father made you crazy, and then the army made you worse! Your child’s death is your punishment, because you cut off people’s ears!’
‘Please, Sarah, it was …’ He was speaking too quietly to hear.
‘God never sleeps, Abel Strydom, and He is not done with you!’
From that time onwards it seemed as if Nkosi was holding back His mercy. Or maybe it was just that they didn’t take His mercy into their hearts.
After Abel’s brothers came out of the army they went away to get their education. Later on one became a man who plans the way the streets must run in big towns. The other one became a doctor who operates on knees and bones. Rich men. It wasn’t long before they stopped coming to Umbrella Tree Farm with their wives and children. There were big fights about the old man’s will. And the grandchildren weren’t allowed to run inside the house or leave a scrap of food on their plates.
The brothers even stayed away from the funeral when the old man was buried in Hermanus.
But that’s their business. My business is here on Umbrella Tree Farm where Samuel and the donkeys that brought us here lie buried.
Abel was in the army for four years. Then he came back to farm on Umbrella Tree Farm. When I think back about those years, I can still see the blisters on his hands; the way his head nodded as he battled to stay awake to eat his supper. Worked himself to the bone to try and claim a place inside his papa’s heart.
But my thoughts remember that something about Abel was different. Sometimes his eyes became wild, for no reason. As if inside his head he saw things that frightened him.
In the old man’s eyes, almost nothing Abel did was ever good enough. When the old man became too old to go to cattle auctions, he sent Abel instead. And then Abel got a girl from East London pregnant.
Missus Sarah.
They got married in the courthouse in East London. Then he brought her home on a day when the August wind was turning the yard into dust. Her stomach was still flat; just a child-woman. When Samuel and I carried her things from the truck, I could tell from her suitcases that she was used to money, and I smelled a fight coming. Because the old man was close-fisted when it came to Abel; paid him a weekly wage, just as if he was a cowherd.
Missus Sarah would need a mama, I thought to myself, and I was right. Because the old man walked all over her. Too much salt in his porridge; the meat was tough; the bread not baked through. Or the house was filthy and his church shirt was starched wrong. He never said the raisin bread she made was delicious or thanked her for mending his suspenders. It must have been hard for Abel, caught between his wife and his papa and wanting a place in both their hearts.
A young girl like Missus Sarah doesn’t want to spend every weekend listening to the radio and knitting booties. The first Saturday night, when she got all dressed up to go to a dance in town, the old man said it was just a waste of money for dance tickets and petrol and brandy. He took the keys to the truck and went to his room. It meant taking off her dance dress. Another evening of listening to the radio.
That was what she told me on Sunday when she walked over here after the old man went to church. We sat on the front steps and drank tea from the pink-rimmed teacups Samuel bought me with his Bonsmara money.
‘Thandeka, the old man is causing trouble between Abel and me. I’m not going to stand by quietly and watch the old miser humiliate him. And I’m sick of looking at that dusty old yard. I’m going to plant a garden.’
‘You must watch your step, Missus Sarah, or you will step on a snake.’
The next morning she walked up to the big road and hitch-hiked to town. Missus Margie of Sweetwater was first past the gate and she stopped and gave her a lift. And would you believe it, when Missus Sarah got to town she bought a car, brand new out of the box. I saw the old man clench his fists inside his pockets when she pulled up under the wild olive tree. It looked more like a flower garden than a car. She carried everything off, and watered it with the hose. Then she drove back to town. Brought back more plants and the white stone angel, almost as tall as a man. When Abel and Samuel knocked off work they had to drag the angel on hessian bags to where she wanted it.
The old man grumbled. She would have to do her own digging and planting, he said. He needed his workers to dig over the melon field and take out the potatoes. That was when she fetched Littlejohn from where he was sitting in the shade of Johnnie’s prickly pears, picking and eating his scabs. My heart has always gone out to Johnnie over that child. Born with the cord around his neck. Just a few weeks old when his mother went off with a man from the shearing team. There was poor Johnnie, stuck to this day with this man-child. Never went to school. Even Missus Margie gave up trying to teach him to count to five. But he could hold a spade and he liked the songs Missus Sarah taught him. And there wasn’t a thing the old man could do because she paid Littlejohn out of her own pocket.
Soon the garden was beautiful. Littlejohn worked hard and laughed all the time. He got sweets every day and after a while he was so spoilt, he wanted nothing but jelly babies. His wages went to Johnnie because if you gave Littlejohn a ten-rand note he was likely to use it to blow his nose.
The white garden angel was a boy angel. He was her soldier, Missus Sarah told me one day when we were rolling out flaky pastry. She poured tea into the chipped cups that were left over from when the old woman was alive.
‘Thandeka,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to drink from the tin mug or take your tea and bread outside. You’re my mother here on Umbrella Tree Farm.’
‘Where’s your real mama?’
‘I’ll tell you some other time, someone is eavesdropping.’
I looked around and saw the old man leaning in the doorway. I put my cup down behind the salt tin or he’d start shouting again that on Umbrella Tree Farm you didn’t gossip with maids, and maids had their own tin mugs. I didn’t want another kitchen fight like the time she told him she liked my company better than his. That fight ended with her coming back from town with three new cups and saucers. For her and Abel and for me, she said. The old man could drink from the chipped cup, she said. If he was too stingy to buy new cups, then at least she was used to drinking from decent ones. And she didn’t want his spiteful company in her kitchen.
Your kind is used to any old company and your lips drink from any old cup, he said, his eyes fixed on her stomach.
Late that afternoon when I went to rinse out the milk cloths at the tap outside the old man’s office window I could hear him and Abel arguing inside. Because his papa was treating his wife badly. It was Abel’s fault, the old man said, for sticking his thing in everywhere when he was supposed to be at the auction. That was how they got saddled with a piece of trash in the yard.
I didn’t understand why the old man was lashing out at Missus Sarah every chance he got, I told Samuel by the fire that night. But Samuel said no, it was Abel the old man was really getting at.
‘And I foresee the day when she’s going to take her car and leave and not come back.’
Hearing him say that made me shiver.
‘And there’s something else you’re overlooking, Thandeka. Maybe her father was a hard man too. Maybe it’s her anger at him that she’s taking out on the old man. You must ask her about her father and mother. Maybe you’ll hear something you ought to know.’
I prayed that the boy angel would watch over Missus Sarah and Abel. And that he’d keep the tip of one wing over the old man too, because somewhere in his childhood his papa, or maybe his mama, damaged him badly; that had to be the reason he was hurting Abel now.
Samuel was right, I found out early one evening when Missus Sarah and I were out gathering chicken eggs. Her time was near, she leaned backwards when she walked.
‘I’m scared of the birth, Thandeka.’
‘Then why don’t you ask your mama to come here and be with you?’
She sank to the floor of the coop and cried so hard that it hurt to hear it. Then she told me about her papa and mama. The chickens were already starting to roost when we were still sitting in the evening warmth. I listened but longed to put my hands over my ears so I wouldn’t hear how her mama ran away overseas with another man. Left her twin daughters behind with their papa. Never came back again.
Her papa bred rams; that was the reason they grew up around the stock auction. And when she and her sister started to grow breasts he broke them in like ewes being readied for breeding. Two babies her sister had with him, both given up for adoption. But they were deformed and no one wanted them. In the end they were placed in a home for disabled children. Then one day her papa collapsed next to the ram shed, dead from a heart attack. She and her sister inherited a lot of money. And a house in East London too.
And deep sorrow in their souls.
Right there in the chicken coop I knew I would have to be her mama. But that was long before I knew about the pain and sadness that would some day find us here on Umbrella Tree Farm.
When she came back from the town hospital with her baby, she wrapped him up and offered him to his grandpa to hold. But the old man kept his arms folded; he wouldn’t touch a piece of trash, he said.
It is hard to mend the edges of a frayed old heart.
One Sunday when Abel and the old man had gone to church, Missus Sarah arrived at our house with the child on her hip. Anthony could already sit up on his own by then.
‘My car is packed,’ she said. ‘I’m going back to East London, to my sister.’
I felt the earth spin.
She held out an envelope to Samuel. ‘Samuel, on weekends you must buy jelly babies for Littlejohn. Forget about the garden, let it go to hell. Here’s more money,’ and she held out a deposit bag from the bank, ‘so you can leave if you want to. Come to me if you have nowhere else. My address and telephone number are on a piece of paper inside the bag.’
‘Good heavens, Missus Sarah, can’t we talk …’
‘There is nothing to talk about. If the old man dies, phone me from the house phone. Maybe then I’ll come back.’
A cloud of dust in the distance.
Gone.
Exactly one year after Missus Sarah left, Mabel was born. Another year later when the mfundisi paid a church visit to Umbrella Tree Farm, the old man had a stroke when I brought the white child to the yard and asked the mfundisi to baptise her. Afterwards he couldn’t speak; could barely get around with his walking stick. That was when I took out the piece of paper and phoned the number in East London. The day Anthony turned three her car pulled up under the wild olive tree, with all their suitcases. That same year Abel took his papa to the old-age home in Hermanus.
Gertruidah was born almost four years later, on New Year’s Day.
Another two years later the old man went to the Other Side and Missus Sarah came back from Hermanus with the seashell full of sea urchins.
One year later Anthony and Samuel went to heaven together.
Altogether ten years of dark spirits.
And as if enough was never enough, the devil got his claws into Abel for another twenty-two years.
All those years Missus Sarah never stopped running from the truth. She looked for false truths at the Women’s Agricultural Union, in countries overseas, in her ladies’ clubs. She buried herself in church activities and the garden. She ate like a caterpillar to silence her hunger, then purged her stomach. She took headache pills constantly, but her pain didn’t thula. She invited crowds of people to Umbrella Tree Farm and put on her smiling face, pretended she was happy. But the hunger kept eating at her, because right behind her smiling face was her crying face.
And when the devil got loose around the house, although it was a devil she recognised because of her own devil papa, she didn’t chase him away. She went to lie in a dark room instead, with a compress on her head, while down the passage Gertruidah had to answer for everything that had become twisted inside everyone’s heads.
And let me not forget to include my own head.
When Mabel came home after lunch she said it looked as if Gertruidah was going to break down the house. There were clothes and mattresses and bedding all over the garden. Hangers and loose drawers. Gertruidah had even smashed the mirrors of her grandma’s beautiful dressing table against the stoep pillar.
‘Mama should’ve seen Gertruidah push her poor dead grandma’s dressing table off the stoep with one end of a crowbar so it crashed down the stairs.’
Now I lie here worrying that her anger will grow too big. Didn’t that letter she left under the rock at lunchtime say something about burning? What if she gets it into her head to burn down the house? All these years Gertruidah’s anger has been growing slowly and silently. What if that anger explodes?
Like on that terrible afternoon when she climbed to the top of the windmill; it was about a month after she came back from East London, after the baby was born. She wanted to dive from the windmill, head first. Like a madwoman she screamed that she would blow the head off anyone who tried to climb up the windmill ladder. That she didn’t want to be brought down; she wanted to die.
I had to chase everyone away, that day, and stay with her on my own. Pleading and singing till after dark to get her down from that windmill.
Thula thu, thula baba, thula sana. Thula umamuzobuya ekuseni … There, there, little child, there, there, my child … Tomorrow your mama …
It could so easily have turned out differently.
With the windmill. And with the baby.
It is good that Mabel spies on the yard. My gouty legs won’t carry me there. If things turn ugly I will send Mabel to try and stop them. Because if the tunes inside your head get mixed up, you end up doing things you can’t turn around and fix later.
Like the things Abel did. And the things Missus Sarah didn’t do, because she was always looking the other way.
The way I did. Because I told myself it was better to thula about the business of people I depended on for my daily bread.
So here I lie with a heart that is filled with shadows. Outside Mabel is slaughtering the chicken even though he’s still thin. Down in the yard Gertruidah is tossing out her anger into the garden. Almost as if she is throwing those things in her mama’s face.
And all I ask for is mercy.
◊◊◊
The last load of washing is on the line.
Her body feels soft and virginal in the white tracksuit. To shower knowing that Abel will never sit in the cane chair again is liberating.
The paint-stained overalls and the bundle of funeral clothes are lying on the Christ’s thorn.
The devout Sarah used to weave a crown of Christ’s-thorn branches every Easter. On Good Friday she and Abel went to church with home-made unleavened bread for Easter Communion, arriving early, in time to arrange the bread on the silver vestry plates. Her refusal to join them invariably led to a fight.
‘You know I don’t celebrate Easter or Christmas! Leave me alone to work out my own …’
‘Gertruidah,’ Sarah placed the Bibles and hymn books on the wall rack next to Anthony’s picture. ‘We celebrate the crucifixion with respect; now stop with your blasphemous Quaker nonsense. You’re making us the laughing stock.’ Abel came out of the bedroom, still knotting his white elder tie. ‘Your father feels exactly the same way.’
‘You lot go celebrate Easter,’ she snarled. ‘You, who are God’s born-again disciples. I suppose that being God’s disciple gives Pa the right to come to my room at night …’
Sarah paled. ‘Gertruidah, that’s slander …’
‘Or isn’t it a sin when a father rapes his daughter …?’
Abel slapped her face with the back of his hand. ‘You’re insane, Gertruidah! Don’t you realise the damage your scandalous fabrications can do?’
‘Ma?’ The blood roared in her ears. ‘When are you going to do something, Ma? Or are you happy with the things that are going on in this house?’
‘What things, Gertruidah? The only things I’m unhappy about are these horrible stories you invent. After everything your father and I have sacrificed for you …’
Turn around. Walk away. Don’t think about what lies ahead. Stop wishing deep down that you could go to church and take part in God’s covenant of grace. Instead, calculate how much money has accumulated in the cake tin. Choose what next you’ll take from the pantry and the shed to the stone house. Build sentences.
Their dart hit her heart. Hurt, Gertruidah retreated.
While they sat in church she went to the river and drew a large cross in the sand. Picked up three Egyptian goose feathers and planted them where the lines intersected.
Father. Son. Holy Spirit.
Then she knelt at the foot of the sand cross and cried. Because she didn’t know if God existed. And if He existed, why He was ignoring her. He won’t let a hair on your head be harmed, the Bible said. So why had harm come to every part of her?
Now the funeral clothes are fluttering in the Christ’s thorn, as if God has finally noticed her despair.
