Thula-Thula (English Edition), page 2
She must take him to the doctor for a check-up, and Mama Thandeka too.
The other labourers who came to the farm were all contract workers. Fencers, pruners, cattle workers, dam-scrapers, soil-diggers. Abel shipped them in as he needed them. Aside from Johnnie it was she who’d been Abel’s right-hand man. There was nothing she couldn’t do. Irrigating, milking, placing salt licks, checking fences, setting traps for the genets. Slaughtering sheep before Abel sold them all. He was being robbed blind and it was cheaper to buy meat at the butcher, he said.
Abel taught her well.
‘We have to keep her busy somehow,’ she’d hear him tell visitors. ‘Seeing as she’s not independent enough to go to university or get a job overseas. But Sarah and I don’t mind, we love her from the bottom of our hearts.’
No one would believe her if she told them how well he’d taught her another kind of manual and physical labour.
Only Mama Thandeka and Mabel knew who Abel and Sarah really were. But no one would believe them either.
At least Mama Thandeka and Mabel had each other and unlike her and Sarah, who were locked in endless battle, they loved each other. She’d be alone in the house from now on. But not lonely. For the greatest part of twenty-six years she’d longed to be alone. To never hear a floorboard creak or a doorknob turn. Maybe the kudu saved her from a prison sentence because she’d been nearing the stage where she would shoot them both in their sleep.
She hears the phone ring inside the house. Let it ring. She doesn’t want to talk to anyone.
She hears the marsh frogs, hears her stomach rumble. She hasn’t eaten anything all day. Not even a cup of tea after the funeral. She’d kept trying to evade the pitying hands rubbing and stroking her upper arms. People touching her made her shudder.
In her haste to put up the sign and lock the gate, she pulled the truck into the shed and left the shopping bag with bread, tomatoes, bully beef, oranges and Tennis biscuits on the front seat. Mama Thandeka’s medicine and Johnnie’s sugar and jelly babies too. She’ll fetch it later.
She wants her own food. The food in the house is dirty. Maybe she should go ask Mama Thandeka for a griddle cake.
Mabel was in a hurry when she came to the yard this morning carrying the laundry basket with wild chestnut flowers. She had to get home, she said, she had dough rising.
‘Is your mother’s chest better, Mabel?’
‘No. Must be rain on the way. Mama started wheezing last night. I was up half the night, rubbing Vicks into her back. You must remember the chest drops, please, there’s less than a quarter bottle left. Raw linseed oil and Turlington too. And Johnnie wants sugar and jelly babies. He says since Littlejohn ran out of sweets the day before yesterday he hasn’t stopped singing “This little light of mine”, not even in his sleep. Says it’s driving him to drink.’
‘Won’t you change your mind about coming to the funeral, Mabel? I’m only leaving at ten, so there’s plenty of time to …’
‘Forget it, Gertruidah. You won’t catch me in the house of our Lord crying false tears for a man I don’t respect. I’m glad I won’t have to put on the face you’ll have to wear today.’
‘Please come.’
‘No. I must fetch wood before the rain starts. I just wanted to pick the flowers to scatter on the coffins, and only because I loved your mother. She taught me a lot.’
‘You’re lucky, Mabel. She never took the trouble to teach me …’
‘That’s a lie, Gertruidah. She gave up because you kept pushing her away. You never wanted to learn anything from her. She taught me,’ and Mabel nudged the basket with her foot, ‘that where too many wild chestnuts bloom you’ll find nothing but false riches. Fat wallets and lean hearts. Your mother was a good woman, Gertruidah, but your father …’
‘At least he had it in him to give you and your mother life interest in your house, and he …’
‘Life interest? Yes, Gertruidah, he did give me life. When Mama was already on the wrong side of forty and he a whipper-snapper of twenty-six. He owes us that life interest, Mama and me. I’m going now. Don’t forget the chest drops and the sugar and jelly babies.’
‘I need a favour, Mabel. Will you go inside the house and bring me my black pants and my white long-sleeved blouse? My black shoes?’
‘Heavens, Gertruidah, can’t you fetch your own clothes?’
‘I don’t want to go inside the house.’
‘So where’ve you been sleeping the last three nights if you didn’t sleep in the house?’
‘You who’s always spying on everyone, you know perfectly well I’ve been sleeping in the stone house. Bring a clean bra and panties too. And my hairbrush.’
‘Heavens, Gertruidah, do you imagine the house is haunted?’
‘No, it isn’t haunted, it stinks.’
‘I cleaned last Friday, what can it stink of already?’
‘It stinks of Abel and Sarah. Won’t you fetch my things for me please?’
Mabel had brought her things. ‘You must wash your hair, Gertruidah. You can’t go to the funeral with it all greasy. I’m going now. You must be strong today.’
At the far end of the lavender hedge Gertruidah caught up with her. ‘Thank you, Mabel. For the flowers. And for …’
Then Mabel reached out her arms. The scent of bruised lavender wrapped itself around them where they stood, half-sisters from the seed of the same man.
‘Drop a bloody big rock on his coffin, Gertruidah, and tell him I say thank you for the life interest.’
She sits upright. Her hands are blue from the cold, her wet pants draw a black outline for her thin body.
Down by the river the frogs have become a massed choir. For years now the river has been her church. After she discovered the Quaker book in the town library she stopped going to church or Sunday school. On Sundays when it was time to leave she’d run away. Then Abel would chase her, catch her and bundle her into the car. On the way there she’d be sick on his best suit. During the service she’d kick and kick against the pew in front of them until Sarah gave her leg a sharp rap. Then she’d cry blue murder while the minister recited the Ten Commandments. Or she’d deliberately pick her nose. Insist on going to the toilet during every service. Cling to the pew in front of her when it was time to split into groups for Sunday school.
She didn’t want to. She wouldn’t. She hated both the church and God. He left her alone in the dark, even if she prayed all night long. He allowed her father to sit in the elders’ pew and made her mother an important woman in the parish. Why didn’t He punish them if He was so clever and could see everything? What was the use of wedging the toe of a shoe underneath her door and asking God to keep it shut? What was the use of telling her mother about the ugly things if Sarah just slapped her shoulder and told her to stop making up stories?
The library book said Quakers didn’t believe in ministers or churches. So maybe being a Quaker was better because being a child of Jesus didn’t help one bit. The book said Quakers just sat quietly and waited; for what, they didn’t know. That was what she wanted to do: sit by the river and wait for the noise inside her head to grow silent. But it never did, it just got more muddled every day.
One sports day at school she went to hide under her father’s truck. She didn’t want to run in the relay race. Her petermouse hurt because the night before her father had wanted to pretend her petermouse was a stew pot and he was cooking a baby marrow in the pot. Then he stirred and stirred the baby marrow. It felt a little nice and a little sore. In the morning when she peed her petermouse stung so badly she pinched off the stream. Now her petermouse itched, and she wouldn’t run in the relay. From underneath the truck she could hear the women talking on a blanket beneath the blackwood tree.
That child’s behaviour must be the bane of Abel and Sarah’s lives, they said. Abel says he can’t chase after her in his best suit every Sunday. It’s easier to leave her with the maid, she’s so disruptive in church. Sarah says she’s safe wandering in the mountains because the Jack Russell looks after her. But I’m not so sure … Here it’s time for the relay and she’s vanished without a trace. What a life she must lead Abel and Sarah. She was such a cute little girl too, but after Anthony was killed she changed overnight …
She didn’t preach to the frogs, just sat on the sand and listened to the voices inside her head. Sometimes they sounded like horses’ hooves or dry leaves. Sometimes she heard a clock ticking inside her head even though there wasn’t one for miles. Then she cried. And cursed. Scrubbed her hands with sand until they stung and she thought at last the smell of fish was gone. Or she wrote words in the sand with a reed and erased them again.
Sharing her words with other people was a struggle because there seemed to be a raw sausage stuck inside her throat. To forget about the sausage and because she didn’t want to be a stew pot, she wrote more words and sentences in the sand.
Erased them.
Wrote.
Erased.
One Friday afternoon after matric she and Braham were sitting at the corner table in The Copper Kettle, hidden behind the maidenhair fern. If the corner table was taken, she waited until the people left. Only the corner table would do. She didn’t want to feel surrounded or trapped, she wanted to sit so she could see the restaurant door. She needed to know where the door was in case she had to escape.
‘People are talking about us, Braham.’
‘In a small town everyone’s always talking about everyone else.’
‘They say you used to be my teacher and you must be crazy to …’
‘Let them say what they like.’ He stroked her knuckles. She yanked her hand away. ‘I want to sit with you. Other people don’t bother me.’
She took the pen out of the plastic bill folder and scribbled on the back of the bill in tiny, barely legible letters. She used only the letters in her name. Tired. Gathered. Tirade. Drag. Tried. Daughter. True. It was an escape. She crossed out every word after it was written.
‘Gertruidah, if you’re not wiping the table with a napkin ten times over, you’re writing on the bill. Look at me, Gertruidah …’
He placed a finger below her chin to tilt her face towards his.
‘Don’t touch me, Braham.’ She pushed his hand away. ‘You know it gives me the creeps.’
‘Let me see what you’re writing.’
She pushed the bill towards him; nothing on it was legible.
‘What is written underneath the ink, Gertruidah?’
‘That I want to love you.’
‘Then love me, won’t you? Come with me to the hospital fundraising dance next Friday night.’
She crumpled the napkin into a tiny ball; wiped the table again. His hand on her wrist. She felt her bladder contract from the shock and tickle. She hated feeling the tickle in her bladder. ‘I don’t own a dress. I can’t dance. And I’ll run away if I have someone so close to me an entire evening.’
‘Where do you want to run to, Gertruidah, and why?’
‘I’ll never stop running.’ With a toothpick she drew circles on the table. ‘I have to go, Braham. My father’s waiting for the lawn-mower blade and it’s almost milking time.’
She placed the right amount inside the plastic bill folder but he took out the notes and held them out to her. ‘It’s my turn to pay. Won’t you stay a little longer, please?’
‘Not today. And I won’t come to town next Friday so don’t wait for me.’
She slipped the notes underneath the vase with wild chestnut flowers. Once on the dirt road she wound up the window to keep out the swirling dust. She seemed to be sitting on something slimy, something that seeped out of her lower body over which she had no control. She beat her hands against the steering wheel, her voice echoing around the cabin. Abel Strydom, what have you done to me! What are you still doing to me! I wish you’d die! I wish I was dead!
The next time they met at The Copper Kettle she wrote on the plastic tablecloth with her finger so her words remained a mystery to Braham.
The first letter she learned to write was A. For Anthony. It looked like a house with a high-pitched roof and no chimney. She used to see it on Anthony’s school books on weekends when he was home from boarding school. Anthony didn’t mind if she paged through his school books. He was six years older than her. He and Mabel were in the same grade but he went to the town school while Mabel went to Auntie Margie’s farm school on Sweetwater. Coloured children weren’t allowed at the town school until 1992, and by then Anthony had been dead seven years. Mabel became Gertruidah’s guardian angel both in the hostel and at school. Because Mabel could always be counted on to fight for her.
Leave Gertruidah alone, you bitch, or I’ll smash your face in!
What, you hit me, you bloody common kitchen maid? That Friday Mabel sat detention because she’d called the white child a bitch. And the white child went home although she’d called Mabel a common kitchen maid.
There were many incidents like this, but Mabel always stood her ground.
She was four and Anthony ten when he died. All she remembers about the funeral is a sheet of paper with light purple Jesus hands, and the A in his name just below them. She knows she must stop brooding about Anthony; he’s been dead for over twenty-two years. She never even really knew him. All she knew was the sense of disillusionment that covered Umbrella Tree Farm like a dark blanket after he was dead.
Still, she sometimes dreams about him with disturbing clarity. Dreams about the tiny birthmark on his forearm or the time his toenail fell off after his toe got caught in the mouse trap; dreams about a birthday cake shaped like a tractor, with the icing in John Deere green and yellow. When she wakes up, her eyelashes are wet and her heart heavy. But even in the wasteland of her most distant memory she knows it’s not Anthony she’s sad about. She’s sad about something inside herself.
No one ever told her how Anthony died. But she heard all about it all the same, whenever Abel and Sarah fought. Especially if Abel was drunk. He was seldom drunk out of his mind but when he was, he was uncontrollable, mad. His rage lasted until it gave way to sorrow; only then would he grow calm.
No matter how it started, every fight ended up being about Anthony’s death, which was why she knew far more than they realised.
Stupid Gertruidah.
If they only knew how clever she was.
The rain has gone; the wind has died down. The mountainside lies wrapped in a thin skin of fog. Aside from the frogs there’s a holy silence, as if the earth is holding its breath. The smoke has gone at Mama Thandeka’s house.
She walks to the shed to fetch the shopping from the truck. Water sloshes inside her shoes and her funeral blouse clings to her breasts. She won’t take the food inside the house. She’ll store it on the shady side of the water tank and cut the bread with her penknife. The penknife has often come to her rescue in the veld.
Her father brought the knife back from an agricultural tour to Switzerland in 1992, when she was in grade four. The date is written under the flap of the leather pouch. It was the same year she asked her teacher if she could take the class’s dictionary back to the hostel for the afternoon. She wanted to look up the meanings of allergy, therapy, genetic, trauma and masturbation because they’d been milling around her head for so long.
‘Why are you looking for those words, Gertruidah?’ the teacher had asked, her eyes wide.
‘Because.’
‘Don’t lie to me, Gertruidah, why those words?’
‘I dreamed about them.’
She could tell the teacher wasn’t going to leave it at that but she didn’t want to talk – her dad said she mustn’t talk. So she imagined there was a slime sausage in her throat and threw up on the teacher’s feet. Throwing up was easy if you thought of a slime sausage. Then the teacher got all concerned about you and let you have your way. Someone being concerned about you felt good. Being allowed to take the dictionary to the hostel made you seem important.
Allergy. Sensitivity to allergens.
Therapy. Treatment for illnesses, disorders.
Genetic. Regarding the genesis of something.
Trauma. Injury, scar.
Masturbation. Sexual self-gratification.
She understood little of it. It made her think of when her father branded the Bonsmaras. Although she felt sorry for the cattle she wished she were a cow so she wouldn’t have to sleep in her bedroom at night. The mark from a branding iron healed after a while but the things that took place in her bedroom made her sick.
When she opens the door of the truck, the smell of oranges hits her nose. She feels light-headed from hunger, and from thinking in circles, calling up images of the past. From uncertainty over whether the things she remembered were the truth. Could they have happened differently, or in a different order? How was she able to retain such big words for such a long time? Could she really read when she went to school? Was her memory shaped by a child’s understanding or had she coloured in her childhood with the knowledge, insight and skills of an adult?
What difference does it make, the when and where? Because nothing and no one can clear the fog of memory from her mind. The fright things. The night things. Moving shadows like tree branches against the dull curtains of her most distant memory. Or like giant hands. Sometimes there are smells and sounds. Could she have imagined it all?
No. Thinking that she was imagining things was what her parents had wanted her to believe.
Despite being washed by rain her arms feel dirty where the people at the funeral tea touched her. When she places the shopping bag on the base of the water tank, the phone rings again. What if it is Braham? She remembers his whispered words beside the grave: Let me know if you need me …
