Thula-Thula (English Edition), page 19
Riderless nights to cherish.
Who had Sarah been really?
A dignified woman whose thoughts were filled with delicate pictures; who patiently stitched the finest embroidery. An admirable woman who could raise and lower her public mask with precision. A pathetic wretch when outside eyes weren’t watching. Powerless to control what took place inside her home. A neurotic woman who gobbled up laxatives; who mocked her drunk husband; who turned a blind eye to her daughter’s abuse. What had been her dreams and fears? What devils and angels had she sheltered? Why had the kudu horn pierced her heart and not Abel’s. Why had she died that way? Impaled. Dead at the stake. On the way to the Lord’s house with the man she’d once loved, and later despised. Or had she never really loved him? Perhaps she had hoped the day would come when a man’s body would no longer fill her with naked loathing. A desperate longing for love and acceptance. Dreams of being happy.
A loveless death at the end of a lonely journey.
Without removing anything, she closes the doors of both guest rooms.
The ice-cream container with maize porridge under the umbrella tree feels lukewarm. A spoon lies on top of the lid. When she removes the lid the steam forms a rivulet that drips onto the soil. A layer of melted sugar floats on top of the porridge. Inside the dishcloth there’s a note.
It’s time for you to start eating maize porridge. And to realize that sugar syrup is just melted sugar. And there’s something else. The last time Miss Lyla was here she asked me to find the key for the little suitcase your mother keeps under her bed. But she said I shouldn’t tell you until the day your mother was no longer with us. I almost forgot about it. Whether you want the key or not, is your business. I’m just telling you it is stuck with Prestik to the bottom of the hallstand.
She replaces the lid. The crumbly texture, along with the transparent stickiness, will make her throw up. When she’s hungry she will eat the bread that’s left inside the bread cloth at the water tank. The tomato. The orange.
Back at the house she clears a path to the hallstand. A ball of rusted steel wool grazes her fingers when she tips the hallstand onto its side. She pulls the key free of the browned putty. Walks down the passage to Sarah’s bedroom and slides the old-fashioned little suitcase out from under the bed.
The key fits.
What went on inside the head of the child who carried this little suitcase to school?
One Saturday in February when she was in grade ten, and still sulking about the dark moon dance, she and her father were out with sickles to cut the lucerne before it could wilt and poison the milk cow. Then Johnnie came hobbling along to say there was something the matter with Littlejohn. He was throwing up and his one hand was puffed up and shiny. Her father said it must be a spider bite. Within minutes he’d left to take Littlejohn to the doctor.
She was convinced her father loved Littlejohn more than her. He was always bringing him a steel comb or jelly babies or bubbles.
While she had to perform rotten fish favours on the way home from the hostel. Had to swallow it too. Because he told her to. The one time she wound down the window to spit out the salty mess, he’d pulled off to the side of the deserted farm road, pushed her out of the truck and grabbed the sjambok from behind his seat. Beat her mercilessly with the handle. Ribs, back and buttocks. Where no one would see.
‘Jeez, Pa, ouch!’
‘I am sick to death of your cheeky attitude. Today I’ll knock it right out of you!’
She tried to protect herself with her hands and arms. Then a blow landed on her brachial bone. ‘Pa, stop!’
‘That’s what you get for not listening!’
When he stepped on a loose stone and lost his balance, she ran away, but he chased her down with the truck. In the end she had to kneel in front of him, while he peed on her face.
That evening after milking time she went to sit on the three-legged stool beside Freesia and told the cow that was what a recce was. Someone with no conscience or feelings. He cared no more for her than for the terrorists whose ears he’d cut off.
For Littlejohn he would abandon the lucerne and race to the doctor.
‘Finish cutting and pack the shed,’ he told her. ‘I’m leaving right now.’
At teatime she went to find bread and jam. It was Mabel’s Saturday off and her mother wouldn’t cook if Abel had gone into town. It was a league day; there was nothing to pilfer from the tennis trays. On the way to the house, as she was walking past the stone angel in the garden, she heard her mother scream. Screaming blue murder. Had someone come in through the back door and attacked her?
She ran. Grabbed the .22 from the gun-rack. Rushed to the kitchen. Her mother was in the pantry, on top of the flour chest. Between her and her mother a Cape cobra stood half a metre high. Shiny yellow, its head a wide bowl. Poised to strike like lightning. Deadly. Deadly.
‘Keep still, Ma!’ she shouted. ‘Don’t get down. Stay where you are!’
For an instant she was tempted to close the door between the pantry and the kitchen, prodding her mother to get down and walk past the snake. Slowly, slowly, while she watched through a crack in the door. It would bite her, for sure. She’d be dead by the time Abel got back from town.
The adder triggered the idea that the guard … While she was composing the sentence, she got the snake’s head in her sights. The shot split the air. The earthenware jug with ginger beer exploded into pieces. She came closer, until she stood in the puddle of ginger beer. Pointing the gun at the dead snake’s head, she squeezed the trigger four more times so the bullets entered the wooden floor, to shock her mother into silence. The screaming stopped.
It was no longer her mother who stood on the flour chest. It was a wailing little girl who had peed on her shoes. ‘Come, Ma, I’ll get you down.’ She turned her back towards the flour chest. ‘Put your arms around my neck, let me carry you past the snake.’
‘Truidah, my little Gertruidah …’
‘It’s all right, Ma, it’s dead.’ Her mother’s legs gripped her hips. Her trouser legs were wet and cold. ‘Come, Ma, I’ll run you a bath.’
She snaps the lock and raises the suitcase lid. It feels like spying on a naked person.
Dainty pearl-white ballet slippers, tied together with the satin ribbon. The castanets with which she used to practise up and down the passage before there was such a thing as the night leguan. Yellowing milk teeth inside a small jewellery box. A stack of letters addressed in Auntie Lyla’s handwriting and tied together with packaging string. A copy of Auntie Lyla’s will. A letter from the school, dated 15 November 1991, confirming that Mabel had been accepted at the formerly whites-only school and hostel with effect from 1992.
Anthony’s funeral letter with the purple praying hands. A sheet of paper with GERTRUIDAH written at the top. Covered in writing and smudges by a clumsy child’s hand. Hat. Get. Rat. It. Did.
A letter from Matron. Dated Thursday, 5 May 1994. The bed-wetting situation is serious … consider taking her to see a urologist … Her parents never took her. Whenever she did see a doctor, when she had tonsillitis or chicken-pox, her mother went in with her. If the doctor asked questions, her mother answered them. So there’d be a watch before her mouth.
There’s a copy of her parents’ marriage certificate inside a plastic pocket. Proof that her mother was pregnant when they were married. She was just eighteen … Also in the pocket, a standard eight certificate. Her brain reels at the thought that she knew almost nothing about her mother. Except what Auntie Lyla told her.
A letter from Miss Robin: … signs of molestation … keep an eye on what’s happening among the children on the farm … the hostel Matron must exercise better control over cleanliness …
She can’t bear to read any more. How on earth did no one put two and two together, how did no one grasp what was going on? Now that she’s no longer a child she knows Miss Robin couldn’t have written the letter without the school principal’s knowledge. It would’ve been discussed in the staff room: the problem with Gertruidah Strydom a matter for speculation and concern. And Matron, now a respected resident of the retirement home in town and chairperson of the reading circle, surely she’d been no fool?
Or had everyone been afraid of Abel Strydom? Former recce, who climbed to the top of the church steeple without a safety harness to repair the clock. Whom everyone called to remove unwanted beehives. Who responded to an emergency call from the town council office by racing into town to fearlessly rescue a child from a collapsing well. Who, when fire destroyed half the black township, rushed into a burning shack wrapped in a wet blanket to carry a blind grandmother to safety. Who hunted jackals, broke in horses, could follow the trail of a wounded buck for miles. Risk and danger: these were Abel’s natural habitat.
You didn’t mess with a wealthy recce. You clicked your heels; said yes and amen.
Besides, where would his accusers have found their evidence? Why stick out your neck if you knew your head would roll in a defamation suit?
Thula, thula. Shhhh, shhhh.
Or you might step on a snake with bare feet.
Easter weekend in 2006 was the second she would spend with Braham’s parents.
When she announced it during Sunday lunch, Abel was furious.
‘I don’t pay you to run around with a man …’
‘You don’t pay me anyway, Pa. I work like a slave from morning till dark, without a wage. And I sell my own cattle …’
‘Where do you get the calves from? And who owns the land they graze on? Who dips …’
She pushed her plate away and got up from the table. ‘Or perhaps you think that sex is a form of payment?’
Her mother’s fork rattled onto the plate. ‘Gertruidah! Watch your mouth! You father isn’t your playmate …’
‘He thinks he is. I’m going away with Braham for the Easter weekend and that’s that. And I have a good mind to never come back.’
She walked to the milking kraal. Dropped down onto the milking stool next to Freesia. Rubbed her with a stone. Whispered. I’m tired, Freesia. I’m broken and confused. I will never be healed, no matter what. I’m going to give the money in the cake tin to Mabel; she must buy Littlejohn jelly babies every Saturday until he dies. She can have what’s left. I don’t need the money to run away any more. I’m in too much pain to run. I should’ve jumped from the windmill, I’m sorry I didn’t. Next time I will.
She put down the stone. Dropped her head against the white patch on the cow’s flank. I didn’t bring any biscuits, Freesia. And even if I saw a psychologist every day for the rest of my life, nothing could fix me. No one could cut my wounds away. I don’t know how to carry on with my life, Freesia, because I’ve never really lived. Only survived. The little girl inside me is lying on the ground like Humpty Dumpty who fell from the wall and was smashed to pieces. Impossible to put together again. All my anchors destroyed.
Humpty Dumpty sat on the ground
Humpty Dumpty looked all around
Gone were the chimneys
and gone were the roofs
All he could see, was buckles and hooves …
She said goodbye and put the stone away. Walked back home. In her mind she was already packing her bag for the weekend.
The days leading up to the Thursday before Easter were among the longest she could remember.
At night Abel humiliated her with pencils and a tube of lip ice; made her pretend it was Braham’s tiny little thing. On Tuesday night he taunted her with a birthday candle, and said by the way he’d taken both sets of keys for the Corsa; she wouldn’t be going anywhere for Easter.
He fiddled again with the candle. Tell him you’re used to a big piece of meat. Say it now …
She said the words. But she was really busy trying to figure out where he’d hidden her car keys. Or she was in the pharmacy in town, buying a foot spa as a present for Braham’s mother.
Tell him he must pull out his feeble little thing because you can’t feel anything. Say it now …
She said it. The next moment he forced her knees apart with brutal strength and rammed himself inside her. Then something happened over which she had no control. Her body started moving together with Abel’s. She groaned, gripped his shoulders; raised her pelvis, pulled him towards her. Now it was Braham who was here with her. She felt the pressure build inside her, her throat was raw from gasping. The explosion when she felt it come was different from ever before. When the eruption began, she instantly came to her senses. Pushed Abel away, crawled out from under him. Ran naked to the door. Down the passage. Ran out the front door, into the warm night.
The frogs grew silent while she lay crying on the river sand. About Braham’s image, which she had sullied. If the river had been deep enough, if she’d worn a coat with pockets she could fill with heavy rocks, she’d have walked into the dark water just like Virginia Woolf did, and quietly drowned.
Because she knew she could never now become one with Braham without Abel lying between them.
She sat in the shallow water and washed herself. Scoured her body with sand. Rinsed the sand away. Then she walked through the kissing gate to Mama Thandeka’s house. She tapped on Mabel’s window. Tapped again. Mabel peered through the curtain.
‘Good heavens, Gertruidah,’ Mabel whispered and opened the window wide. ‘Why are you walking around naked in the middle of the night?’
‘Lend me a jersey and tracksuit pants, please, Mabel? I want to go to the stone house.’
‘Heavens, Gertruidah, it’s midnight … and my clothes are too small for you …’
‘It doesn’t matter. Mabel, when my father drives to the veld tomorrow, you must pack my bag for the weekend. Hide it among the big-leaved dragon trees underneath the cedar tree. I’ll fetch it tomorrow night.’
‘And then, Gertruidah …?’
‘Pa’s hidden my car keys. I’m going to walk to town tomorrow night, from the Sweetwater end, so I’ll be at Braham’s house at dawn. Bring my tackies as well, please. And keep my cellphone on you …’
‘Go round to the front door. I’m going to close Mama’s bedroom door, then I’ll let you in.’
While she warmed herself by the dying fire Mabel fetched clothes that would stretch to fit her. Packed a bag with griddle cakes, meatballs and a tin of pickled fish. Two oranges. Crackers.
‘Here’s a pair of Mama’s worn-out slippers. I washed them yesterday and put them by the stove to dry. They’re still damp but you can’t walk barefoot to the stone house in the middle of the night.’
Shortly before midnight the following night she snuck down to the yard to fetch her bag. Mabel stepped out from behind the cedar tree like a ghost. ‘Your black tracksuit and your tackies are right at the top. Get dressed. We’re going to have to go down by the river until we get to the Sweetwater turn-off. Your father is waiting for you at the causeway.’
They took turns to carry the bag through the dense vegetation on the river bank.
‘Gertruidah,’ Mabel said when they drew close to the Sweetwater turnoff. ‘In your bag in the side pocket there’s an envelope with money for the weekend. Your mother sends it. It was she who asked me to tell you your father’s waiting at the …’
‘Mabel, you’re lying!’
‘See for yourself, it’s her handwriting on the envelope.’
In the light of an almost full moon she walked to town. The church clock struck five when she opened the gate outside Braham’s house.
‘Pull your car into the garage so long,’ he said and placed a cup of black coffee on the stoep table. ‘I’m just locking up.’
‘My car isn’t here. I walked from Umbrella Tree Farm.’
‘Gertruidah, you can’t be serious …’
‘I am. Don’t ask. Just know it was you I was walking towards.’
It felt strange being so close to someone for such a long time, trapped inside the car. The sun rose. The past two days seemed no more than a dream. He asked her to pour coffee. A bump in the road. Coffee splashed onto her tracksuit pants.
‘Dammit, sis!’
‘There are wet wipes in the cubby-hole.’ He slowed down and took the cup from her. ‘It’s nothing, Gertruidah …’
‘I hate it when my clumsiness makes me spill things.’
At a picnic spot demarcated by a row of pepper trees, he stopped the car so she could clean up. They sat at the mossy concrete table; he drank his coffee. ‘Watching you spill that coffee was lovely, actually,’ he said.
‘How can you say that? I overreacted and …’
‘Precisely. I so seldom see an emotional response from you, Gertruidah. The times when you do become emotional I can’t take my eyes off you.’ She didn’t dare explain that being emotionless and detached was Sleeping Beauty’s only means of survival. ‘Marry me, Gertruidah?’
The wind stirred in the pepper trees. She felt nauseous from fear. ‘I never want to get married, Braham. Not to anyone.’
‘I love you, Gertruidah. I’m thirty, you’re twenty-four …’
‘Forget it, Braham, I’m not marriage material.’
‘Then tell me, Gertruidah, if you love me too. I have to know.’
Wind in her face. Misty mountains in the distance. An eagle circling way overhead. ‘Yes, Braham, I do love you. If I could I would get married to you right now. But I can’t.’
‘Why not, Gertruidah? Why not?’
She licked her finger, picked at the moss on the concrete surface. A labyrinth inside her head. Being naked. The smell of rotten fish. Anal sphincter damage. Vibrating toys. An unwanted embrace. Self-loathing after an involuntary climax. Never. Ever. ‘Because … I … still have to think about it …’
‘May I hold you and kiss you? In the four years since you left school I’ve never once held you or kissed you. I’ve wanted to, but you …’
‘I don’t kiss people, ever.’
‘But will you kiss me …?’ He sat down beside her on the moon-shaped concrete bench.
‘Yes, I will. Lips only. If you’ll take me to Avignon some day.’
‘I promise I will.’
His warm breath on her face. Braham’s breath. Soft, dry lips. Braham’s lips. Shock waves in her lower body. Then she began to cry bitterly against his face.
