Thula-Thula (English Edition), page 12
The red basin is filled with food from the fridge; she drags it down the passage. She grabs the egg basket first. Carries it onto the stoep and, taking one egg at a time, hurls them at Grandma Strydom’s dressing table. Aims for the drawer with Abel’s toys. With every egg that drools down the wood another Sleeping Beauty night is discarded. Once she has disposed of every single pain-filled night, she will be clean.
That’s a cheap lie, she says out loud and pushes the basin over the threshold.
In the three-and-a-half months she spent with Auntie Lyla in East London before the baby was born she saw the psychologist every week. For Auntie Lyla’s sake more than her own. But although she didn’t want to admit it, the hours she spent with the psychologist did offer a temporary release from countless tortures. Tiny splinters of understanding about the agonising hell she lived in.
She liked the woman; liked her consulting room with its cream-coloured couches and peach-yellow walls; a fish tank to gaze at when she didn’t want to answer; the woman’s quiet, tranquil voice. But still she remained sceptical, convinced that nothing could make her forget – not ten thousand therapy sessions, not every book or article ever written about what went on behind closed doors, not the testimony of hundreds of healed victims; not if you prayed until your knees were raw. The fear and distrust would remain part of you till the end of your days.
You could arrive at a clinical understanding of what caused the distortion that drove a monster to devour your life. You could learn to concentrate, to limit and manage your obsessions. You could be reminded a thousand times of your own innocence. A psychologist could help you find answers on the surface. But forgetting and becoming completely whole, reaching a point where the destruction ceased to be a factor in your life, was impossible. The victims who testified to the contrary were merely singing a lullaby. That wasn’t what the psychologist told her; it was something she worked out for herself.
But perhaps the effect could soften. Recede further into your memory and be replaced by conditions of safety and self-esteem.
Auntie Lyla arranged the therapy sessions and paid for them. On condition her parents weren’t told.
‘Why not?’
‘Gertruidah, your parents would do anything to keep you from talking. If they knew you were going for therapy they’d take you away from here out of fear that you’d tell the psychologist the truth. Remember, as long as you remain silent, they’re safe.’
It remained a miracle that Auntie Lyla believed her.
Believed every word.
For the first time she knew what it was like to have a mother, someone for whom her well-being was a priority. Auntie Lyla fetched a bowl with warm salt water to soak her swollen feet. Rubbed her aching back with Germolene. Lit a candle in the bathroom. Of all the kindnesses she received from Auntie Lyla in those months none mattered more than being given a key for her bedroom and bathroom.
So Gertruidah Strydom was allowed to make choices after all.
‘The only reason your parents are allowing you to stay here is that it’s safe – for them. At a home for unmarried mothers there would be forms to complete, social workers and psychologists who’d want to talk the matter over; visits from doctors. Those are the things your parents want to avoid at any cost.’
‘What does it matter what I tell a psychologist? She’d be bound by confidentiality and …’
‘Yes, Gertruidah. But the law also has another side. Someone in a position of power who knows about a case of incest must report it to the relevant authorities or face serious consequences.’
‘Then I won’t go. All I want is for the whole business to end. I don’t want to be reported to the authorities and stripped bare in …’
‘Don’t be afraid, Gertruidah. Please, do it for my sake. I’ll go to the police and report it …’
‘No, never. Then I’d rather endure the hell until …’
‘Wait, Gertruidah, reporting doesn’t have to mean court cases and prosecution. Even if I report it, the onus rests with you to make a statement. If you don’t, the authorities won’t have a case to prosecute. But at least it will have been legally reported and provided I can get written proof from the police that I have reported it, the psychologist is indemnified …’
‘No.’
‘Please, Gertruidah, please?’
She was nearly mad with fear the morning the police knocked on the door. But she refused to tell them anything. They left having accomplished nothing.
Then came twelve sessions of hope and despair.
She learnt a great deal from the psychologist. At first she answered every question evasively: I don’t know; I don’t remember. But with every session she grew more grateful for the chance to talk. And the more she talked, the more memories unfolded before her.
‘Tell me about your toys when you were small.’
‘I can’t really remember anything about toys.’
The question reminded her of Abel’s toys.
‘Did you have a doll?’
‘Yes.’
‘What was her name?’
She stared at the fish tank. ‘Lulu.’
‘Tell me about Lulu, anything …’
She kept staring. The child kicked against her bladder, her feet tingled. Still she stared. ‘Lulu has been in the stone house up in the mountain since my primary school days. I wanted to keep her from getting hurt so I took her away. I made her a little bed from red grass …’ She listened to herself talk about Lulu as if she was hearing someone else. She’d had no idea how much was stored in her subconscious.
Halfway through the session she started to cry. The detail was irrefutable; she couldn’t have invented it. Often afterwards she would hold the smaller Gertruidah and comfort her – the little girl who cowered in a corner of the tree house with her Lulu child in her arms, and who still lived somewhere inside her pregnant body.
But she didn’t learn enough, or maybe she was too worn out to co-operate properly, because after the birth she couldn’t twist her foot free from the trap. Barely a month after she was back on Umbrella Tree Farm, Abel started again. She became a lamb to slaughter all over again. Suicide was the only thing that would release her for good. And yet she was grateful when Mama Thandeka’s singing and pleading kept her from leaping from the windmill.
Because somewhere inside you hope never stops beating. Even though it may be slow and faint.
On New Year’s Day 2004 she turned twenty-two. There was a phone call from Braham, who was still on holiday with his parents. But she was too sad to feel pleased because on Christmas Eve Auntie Lyla committed suicide.
‘I’m coming back early,’ he said, ‘because I miss you. Can we meet for coffee the Friday afternoon before school starts?’
The corner table behind the maidenhair fern was occupied and they waited at another table for half an hour, telling the waitress she should bring the menu once they moved across. It seemed as if everyone around them could hear what they were saying. Being surrounded by chattering people and unable to see the open door made her feel stricken. She didn’t want to ask Braham to trade places because she wanted to avoid having to explain her obsession with open doors.
Open doors offered the possibility of escape. Door keys meant she could barricade herself in. The contradiction no longer confused her, because the psychologist had helped her understand. And yet she was endlessly relieved when they could at last move to the corner table.
‘You’re a strange one, Gertruidah. I must’ve left twenty messages on your phone during the holiday but you didn’t reply once. Why do you keep your phone turned off?’
She drew patterns on the tablecloth. He placed his hand lightly on top of hers. ‘I want to be a hermit, Braham. To live in the mountains and live off the land; to never talk again, that’s my dream.’ Sometimes she was surprised by the number of sentences she could string together in his presence. ‘My cellphone is an irritation. I don’t reply to any messages, but I always read and listen to yours.’ He mustn’t think she didn’t value him.
‘Long-term isolation is destructive, Gertruidah. Why do you want to be a hermit?’
‘To get away from my father.’ It slipped out, unguarded. Erase it, quick! ‘We disagree about the farm all the time. He wants to breed Bonsmaras and I want to turn Umbrella Tree Farm into a prickly-pear farm. Turn the shed into a processing plant; the possibilities are endless. But he thinks it’s far-fetched and foolish.’
‘What is his reasoning – why does he think it’s far-fetched and foolish?’
‘Probably because it’s labour-intensive and he says over his dead body will he bring a lot of labourers and their families back onto the farm.’ The waitress brought their coffee and flapjacks. ‘It concerns me, Braham, that ever since Auntie Margie had to close down the farm school in 1997 because of dwindling numbers and a lack of government funding, hardly a child in the valley is going to school. It’s a guarantee of a pointless existence, a recipe for crime. I wish I could start a small private primary school on Umbrella Tree Farm …’
He leaned back and smiled. ‘Then I’d resign on the spot and become your principal.’
‘And where would the learners come from and how would I pay you, Mr Fourie? And would you be content to live in a renovated labourer’s cottage?’
‘It all sounds so appealing. Perhaps we should consider it?’
‘Forget it, my father would have a stroke.’
They stayed a long time. Ordered more coffee. She enjoyed being in his company, even though all the time they were together she was struggling to silence something evil inside her. The evil kept whispering to her: buy arsenic and poison Abel and Sarah. Or loosen the wheel nuts one Saturday night so they’ll crash when Abel races to church on Sunday. Then you can run Umbrella Tree Farm the way you want to. You and Braham.
When she glanced at the open door, she saw Abel striding into The Copper Kettle.
‘Good afternoon, good afternoon!’
His greetings were jovial as he approached their table but she could see the storm gathering on his face when he flattened his palms against the table, leaned forward and hissed. ‘I’ve been waiting for the gun oil like a bloody fool while you’ve been sitting here wasting time with …’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Strydom, it’s my fault she …’
He reached for the bottle of Balistol oil she took from her handbag and turning towards Braham hissed again: ‘This thing between a teacher and a schoolgirl is an embarrassment and you’d better see to it that …’
Braham rose to his feet. ‘She’s no longer a schoolgirl, Mr Strydom.’
‘Don’t argue with me, I’m old enough to be your father. Listen carefully, from now on you’ll never set foot on my tennis court again. You’re keeping Gertruidah from her work and you’re shaming our family. Do you understand?’
‘No, Mr Strydom, I don’t understand.’ He scraped his chair backwards. ‘But if that’s what you want I’ll stay away from Umbrella Tree Farm.’ He extended his hand towards Abel. ‘Gertruidah and I will play on the school tennis courts.’
Abel ignored the extended hand. Walked out.
‘I hate him with a passion,’ she told Braham when he’d gone. ‘Maybe some day I’ll tell you why. Or maybe never.’
The beautiful afternoon was shattered.
She got home around dusk. Abel was sitting on the stoep with the cleaning rod, the oil cloth and brush, cleaning his .303. He ignored her. When the house was dark and Sarah’s sleeping pill had taken effect, she heard her doorknob turn. He shoved the ice-cold gun-barrel up inside her and told her to imagine it was Braham’s little pink thing.
‘Please, Pa, I am …’
‘Yes, I know you’re hard-up.’ The sights grazed her when he pulled the barrel out. He spread her open; shoved one knee between her legs. ‘Come, let me give you something decent.’
Cinderella put on her glass slippers and ran through the night to the river. She washed the frog prince’s slime out of her hair, and wondered how you could brick up a well so it would stay sealed forever.
She heaves the red basin onto the stoep wall. A jug of custard. Slimy peaches in a jar of syrup. Blue cheese. Strawberry yoghurt. Noodle salad. Mayonnaise.
Perhaps if her mother could see her she’d smile at the reminder of the hilarious Saturday with the mayonnaise. Merciful heaven, Abel had been furious. That Sunday morning she thought he was going to rip her mother’s scalp from her skull. But by then it was anything but funny.
The lapa’s thatched roof had been leaking for some time. The weekend before there’d been a thunderstorm after tennis. Embarrassment when water dripped onto the lasagna. The next Saturday was league day and since there was no tennis Abel decided to fix the leak. The job done, he got out the brandy. There were bird lice in his hair, he said, they came from the thatched roof. He scratched and scratched, and drank and drank.
Her mother announced she was going to put flowers on Anthony’s grave because she missed her child.
So they argued about Anthony, and about Grandma Strydom’s ruby ring her mother had lost. Abel said the bird lice and Sarah were both driving him insane.
‘The light is brightest in the kitchen. Come sit in the Morris chair so I can see what’s going on on your head,’ her mother said sweetly.
Abel sat slack-jawed from drunkenness. Anticipating a performance she didn’t want to miss, she pretended to look for fruit juice in the fridge.
‘Abel, your head is crawling!’ Her mother winked at her.
‘Tomorrow I’m on duty in the vestry.’ He was slurring. ‘Do something! Don’t pretend to be stupid. It’s for you I fixed that thatch …’
Ten minutes later he lay slumped in the Morris chair, while her mother massaged mayonnaise into his hair. She kept adding more and twisted his hair into horns so he looked like the devil. They giggled. By the time he resembled Medusa, she covered her mouth with a dishcloth to stifle her laughter.
Before she went to bed she wedged Grandma Strydom’s dressing table behind the door even though she knew he’d push it out of the way. The townspeople would never believe the absurd things that took place on Umbrella Tree Farm. Sarah dusting the toilet seat with itching powder. Putting salt into the sugar bowl. Placing a chicken foot underneath Abel’s pillow and making him believe it was witchcraft. Spilling hot apricot jam on his new Farmer’s Weekly, pretending it was an accident.
Dysfunctional, that’s what they were. A family whose role-playing had gone drastically and tragically wrong.
Abel, the wealthy community leader. Abel, the ruthless recce. Abel, accused of killing his own child. Abel, the little boy desperate for a mother’s warmth. Abel who used Gertruidah to stoke the fire of his destruction.
Sarah with the many faces.
And she, Gertruidah, convinced she was the glue that kept everything together. Never mind the cost. Gertruidah who wanted to shoot Abel in his sleep. Gertruidah with her morbid devotion to her father, who couldn’t risk losing the goodness he gave her.
And the world saw nothing. Because they swapped masks so effortlessly that even God didn’t appear to notice.
That night Abel slept with a shower cap covering his mayonnaise head. Woke up that way when Sarah was already in the kitchen cooking sausages for breakfast. She sat in the breakfast nook eating cornflakes with water and sugar. When he walked in she moved the pot with sweetpeas in front of her so he wouldn’t catch her smiling.
‘What is this shit?’ He waved the greasy shower cap around. ‘You know perfectly well I’m on vestry duty and I must be early …’
‘It was you who asked me to … the lice …’
He slapped her. As the shower cap hit her face, drops of mayonnaise hit the sausage pan with a hiss. ‘Are you crazy to cover my head in mayonnaise?’ He swung the shower cap at her mother again. ‘I bloody well stink of vinegar!’
‘But, Abel, you said any remedy was fine, as long as …’
She looked away and was about to place a spoonful of cereal in her mouth when she heard the crash. Her mother lay on the white tiled floor. Abel was kicking her in the ribs. ‘You’re bloody pathetic!’ and he kicked her again. Her mother gasped. ‘Get up on your feet!’ Her mother rose to her knees. He kicked her from behind, between the legs. She fell face down onto the tiles, a yellow puddle forming around her. ‘Get up!’
She could tell he was getting ready for another kick.
How she got out of the breakfast nook so fast, she had no idea. Before he could land the kick she caught hold of his foot and jerked him off balance. He lay on the floor with his liverish eyes and mayonnaise head. She was the buffer between them; she held onto his foot. ‘Get up, Ma, and lock yourself in the bathroom.’ He jerked his foot. She held on.
‘I’ll call you, Ma, when you can come out.’ She twisted his ankle. ‘Today I’m going to give this pig a bloody hiding.’ Her mother shoved her knuckles in her mouth and cried.
‘You? Are you going to raise a hand against me, your own father?’
‘If I have to, yes. Go, Ma!’
Her body was strong. Not as strong as his, but still. He was unsteady, it counted in her favour. Her mother walked out of the kitchen with stooped shoulders. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted the fly spray on the window sill above the stove. She grabbed the hem of his pyjama pants and twisted it into a knot; with her other hand she reached for the fly spray. Emptied the can on him. Yellow drops dangled from his chin and earlobes. He coughed. When he opened his mouth to shout, she aimed the nozzle at his mouth.
‘You hit or kick Ma again, I swear I’ll go to the police. About Ma and about me.’
‘Let go of my pants, or I’ll …’
‘Or you’ll do what? Careful, or I’ll walk into the church today and tell everyone how you kick and hit Ma. And how you made me pregnant!’
She let go of his foot, let it drop to the floor. Walked to the telephone and phoned the minister to say her father couldn’t come to church, he was busy with a Bonsmara cow that was struggling to calve. Then she fetched her mother from the bathroom.
