Thula-Thula (English Edition), page 23
Mabel made her rooibos tea. And brushed her hair on the bench underneath the bare jacaranda tree outside the kitchen door.
‘Gertruidah, listen to what I’m telling you today. God will punish him; don’t you worry. Before I forget, I texted the teacher to say you weren’t coming to town because you and your father were patching wire fences and water leaks over in the back of the plantain field. You’ll only be coming to town next week. And phoning or texting won’t help because you’re in the mountains and you left your phone at home.’
In the end she never set the language paper.
The next Friday when she limped into The Copper Kettle she had a lie ready about a steep incline and stepping on a loose rock.
She sits cross-legged against the umbrella tree.
Her heart is filled with infinite relief that Abel and Sarah will never come back again.
But the same heart aches, because in time it became necessary to send Braham away from her darknesses.
He had kind eyes and hands
and was a friend of sorrow
In the shade of the umbrella tree she eats roast chicken, browned potatoes, yellow rice. Ginger pudding with custard. Wipes her hands on her tracksuit pants and reads Mabel’s note. I’m coming to see you at the house tonight. There’s something we have to talk about. Shoot at me if you have the heart to. You must turn on your cellphone, my texts don’t reach you. Mama sends her blessings. Mabel.
She pulls the tiny ballpoint pen out of the handle of her Victorinox. Thank you for the food, Mabel. I don’t want to switch on my phone. I’m going to the stone house to fetch something from the cake tin. I might sleep there tonight. Stop sneaking around near the honeysuckle, I can see you. Sala Kahle to Mama Thandeka. Gertruidah.
She drinks lukewarm coffee from the screw-top cooldrink bottle and spills a drop on her clothes. It was impractical, wearing a white tracksuit. The knees are brown from scrubbing the floor. Tonight she’ll throw it away. One of the few tangible memories that remain of her tennis days at school.
She spent almost the entire December holiday of her grade ten year on the tennis court. Tennis-ball machine. Practice wall. Evenings too, under the floodlights.
Abel had to pay.
She’d been pestering him about floodlights since the beginning of winter when it started to grow dark early. He almost had a fit. She cajoled, manipulated. Danced in front of the window in the moonlight. Carried the night rider over dark deserted plains. He refused. Stuck to his guns even after she moved the bed right up to Grandma Strydom’s dressing table mirrors.
He came back from town with a computer and printer he’d bought her. Had an Internet connection installed in her bedroom. ‘At the last parent-teacher meeting,’ he said, ‘they said a computer and Internet facilities gave learners an advantage. I feel I owe it to you.’
A computer wasn’t floodlights. She had to have floodlights.
She would have to invent better choreography for her concerts.
The rider dithered. Teeth gritted, Gertruidah traded.
As winter turned to spring she became attached to the computer and Internet. Because computer games and browsing the Internet offered an escape from reality. While Abel breathed into her face, she took aim at the yellow-red-blue Tetris squares; Pacman chewed his way through the maze, devouring the dots; she moved Solitaire buttons here and there until just one remained in the centre. It was possible to play computer games inside her head and simultaneously do what Abel ordered.
A long time ago, before she started school, she and Mama Thandeka were sitting on the wooden bench underneath the jacaranda outside the kitchen door. They ate oats porridge. A purple bell-shaped flower floated onto her porridge. She must swallow the flower along with her porridge, Mama Thandeka said. Then she could make a wish and the wish would come true.
She wanted to wish Anthony were alive but she didn’t feel like wishing. She couldn’t sit properly because her petermouse was sore. Had been since the day before yesterday. The blood had gone right through her pyjama pants again, and onto the sheet. In the morning when she got dressed, her panties stuck to her petermouse. She’d pulled them away slowly and swallowed her tears. Being Goldilocks hurt. In the evening she saw that Mama Thandeka had changed the sheet and washed her pyjamas. She wondered if it had all been a story she’d made up.
‘I don’t want to wish for anything,’ she said and tossed the jacaranda bell away.
‘Then tell me what you dreamed of last night,’ Mama Thandeka said, ‘or any other night.’
She hadn’t dreamt but making up dreams was easy. ‘I dreamed a snake came into my room and bit me on my bladder. Then there was a tiny hole in my bladder where the pee ran out and a bit of blood from the bite also.’
‘Goodness me, Gertruidah, and what kind of snake was that?’
‘A mamba. I don’t want any more oats, it tastes of salt.’
‘You probably didn’t put enough sugar on.’
Then Mama Thandeka fetched the sugar bowl and sprinkled more sugar on her porridge. She still didn’t feel like eating. A purple bell dropped onto her head. Mama Thandeka sang ‘Siembamba’ and fed her just as if she was a baby. But the ‘Siembamba’ Mama Thandeka sang was different from the proper one: Sien die mamba, mama se kindjie, sien die mamba, mama se kindjie … Draai sy nek om, gooi hom in die sloot … trap op sy kop, dan is hy dood … See the mamba, Mama’s baby, see the mamba … Twist his neck, throw him in a ditch … stomp on his head and then he’s dead …
‘You’re singing it wrong, Mama Thandeka! It isn’t “sien die mamba”, it’s “siembamba”!’
‘I am singing it right, Gertruidah. It really is a mamba. That is why he must be thrown in the ditch and stomped on till he is dead.’
She lay against Mama Thandeka’s arm and waited for more bells to fall on her. Even though she didn’t want to make wishes.
‘Gertruidah,’ Mama Thandeka said, ‘the next time a mamba comes into your room, you must tell me. Then you and I will fetch guarri berries over in the fountain camp and boil them. Then we will use the soup to draw a line on the floor at your bedroom door. A mamba never crosses a guarri berry line.’
On the way back after the Easter weekend, the time when she walked to town in the night, Braham tried to make conversation but she had become mute.
‘I’m not angry or moody, Braham, I just don’t have anything to say.’
‘I think you have to get to a psychologist, Gertruidah, for your own sake. I don’t know what it is you have to sort out, but it’s clear there is something.’
‘I’ve already been to one, it didn’t help.’
‘How long ago was that?’
‘In grade eleven when I had the shoulder operation.’
They drove on. Ten kilometres. Twenty. She poured coffee and passed it to him. They didn’t speak.
Late on the Saturday night, when the house and his mother’s sick room were already dark, she’d stood by her window staring at the waning full moon. Her thoughts were in a muddle. A weakened sphincter muscle, Kipling’s ‘A Nativity’, the huge Internet bill Abel had been moaning about, and Braham who wanted to marry her.
She wanted to. But it would be doomed. A marriage had to be a marriage. The fear and bewilderment caused by his kiss at the cement table would do to keep her from destroying his life along with hers.
Thousands of flickering thoughts, like stars exploding inside her head.
Without Braham she would have nothing. Not even hope.
Then she lit the candle on her bedside table and took off all her clothes. Fetched wet wipes from her handbag, made sure she was clean. Put on her dressing gown and walked carrying the candle to Braham’s bedroom. Took off the dressing gown in the passage. Pressed down on the door-latch. Went inside. Locked the door. Walked up to his bed. He was asleep.
‘Braham,’ and she nudged his shoulder. Dazed with sleep he rose up on one elbow, reaching for his glasses on the bedside table. ‘Braham, I’ve come to lie with you.’
‘Gertruidah?’ He sank back slowly against the pillows. His arms, brown from hours on the tennis court, rested on the white top sheet. ‘You are so beautiful … The candle flame casts shadows over your body …’
She placed the candle on the bedside table. ‘Move up.’ She was standing right up against his bed, within reach of his hands. He reached out one hand to touch the outside of her calf. Stroked lightly, almost down to her ankle; up towards her knee; down again.
‘It’s a warm night,’ he said, ‘but you are shivering.’
She bent down and lifted the sheet to get in beside him. He held her wrist and flung the sheet away himself; got up and stood beside her. She could see his hard manhood inside his pyjama shorts. She started crying without a sound. He drew her closer, held her naked body against his.
‘As ready as I am for this, Gertruidah, that’s how unready you are. To take you while you were crying would amount to rape.’
‘But I want to give myself to you …’
‘And I want you. But not tonight. You need more time.’ He picked up the candle. ‘Come, I’ll walk you to your room.’
He turned the key; picked up her dressing gown and slipped it over her shoulders. Walked ahead of her down the passage. Wiped away her tears with the nightgown that lay on the end of her bed. ‘Come, get dressed, then I’ll sit with you until you’re asleep.’
She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the bulge inside his pyjama shorts. She understood nothing. All she knew was that she could never lose him. He would take her to Avignon. Wherever Avignon was.
Thirty kilometres. He passed the coffee cup back.
‘You’re lying about the shoulder operation, Gertruidah.’
She had to watch her step. ‘Why would I lie about that?’
‘How about you tell me why.’ Gently. He wasn’t looking for a fight.
‘There’s absolutely nothing to tell, except that I had a shoulder operation and during that time saw a psychologist against my will.’
‘Come let me tell you the truth as we both know it. While you were in East London your parents also went away and I went to Umbrella Tree Farm. The old mama wouldn’t tell me anything. But when I left I found Mabel walking beside the road with bags of groceries. With the telephone number she gave me, I traced your address and drove all the way to East London. You didn’t see me, but I saw with my own eyes that you were heavily pregnant.’
Her head might burst. ‘Whom did you tell?’
‘No one. Because I’d already fallen in love with you.’
‘Alright, so now you know.’ Don’t let Goldilocks freeze in the icy woods. ‘I was raped and all my bloody parents could think of was what if people found out, so …’
‘Raped by whom?’
‘I don’t know. It was dark and the man was wearing a balaclava …’
‘I think you’re lying again, Gertruidah. Who are you protecting?’
‘I’m protecting no one. I just told you I didn’t know who the man was.’
‘And the child?’
‘Please, Braham, let’s leave it. One day I’ll tell you, maybe. It’s a time I’d rather forget.’
‘I want to marry you, Gertruidah. Don’t forget that. Please don’t.’
‘I won’t.’
She wanted to be dropped off at the turn-off to Sweetwater. He refused. ‘I’m taking you all the way home. If it means losing my job, then that’s fine by me. Maybe your father will be doing me a favour because I grow more disillusioned with the education system every day.’
Her mother came out onto the stoep, wringing her hands. Abel had gone to the plantain field to shoot a cow with a broken leg, she said. Braham left her suitcase at the front door. When he drove off and waved, she remembered the day underneath the jacaranda and purple bells falling onto her oats porridge.
But by then it was far too late to make guarri berry soup.
She wouldn’t stop until she had the floodlights. At some point she knew Abel would give in. An unforeseen consequence of the foul mess was the power it gave her over them.
‘Good God, Gertruidah!’ Sarah exploded during one Sunday lunch. ‘Stop manipulating your father and me! What could be snotty about buttermilk pudding? Or are you constantly looking for something to bait us with?’
‘You’ve just come out of church, Ma. Surely you know that to take the Lord’s name in vain …’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, will you shut up! You treat us like we were children!’
She scooped the pudding Sarah had placed in front of her back into the bowl. Ere Gertruidah gagged, Gertruidah gauged the threat. Sneered at them. Their eyes were angry. Their eyes were frightened. It gave her a false sense of power.
That afternoon when Abel pulled up his pants and walked out of her bedroom, she looked up the exact meaning of ‘manipulate’ in the dictionary. ‘To handle or manage. To give a false appearance to something. To turn to one’s own purpose or advantage.’
When Auntie Lyla came to visit during the September holiday of her grade ten year, and she knew there wouldn’t be much fighting, she wrote the letter. Sealed it and wrote the minister’s address on the envelope. Left it along with the money for stamps on the wall stand with the rest of the post office items. She asked Abel to post it when he was next in town; asked him to put on a stamp. He said yes without realising what he was agreeing to.
Dear Mr de Villiers
There’s something terrible I must talk to you about. I’m ashamed to, but I must. For years now my father has raped and sodomised me. He took my bedroom key so I cannot lock the door. I’ve told my mother but she says I’m accusing my father falsely because he won’t let me have my way about everything. She says he’s a church elder who would never do anything like that. I swear I’m telling the truth. The next time you come to our house on a pastoral visit you must come on a weekend or during the school holiday, so I can tell you my side of the story. My parents will say I’m lying. Thank you that I can count on you to help me.
Gertruidah Strydom
She didn’t take much trouble over the contents; she knew Abel would tear it up. It was her final manoeuvre in the struggle over floodlights.
A month later tennis could be played on Umbrella Tree Farm at night. Whenever she watched the women gossip in the gazebo, she recalled a day long ago when her father had been in the shed sawing planks for the gazebo and she’d taken him a marshmallow mouse with a liquorice tail.
The start of the December holiday meant it would be ages before she saw Mr Fourie again. By the time school reopened in January she wanted to be thin as a reed and nut-brown.
She ate dry toast with black coffee for breakfast. Raced to get her yard jobs done. Johnnie and Littlejohn had left on the bus to visit their people until after New Year. She had to feed the chickens, fetch the eggs. Sweep Freesia’s kraal. Cut lucerne. Water the vegetables. Move the sprayers. Spray weed killer on the paved garden paths.
Then straight to the tennis court to do combat with the tennis-ball machine. Forehand. Backhand. Smash. Lob shots, drop shots and groundstrokes. Sliced the ball to send it spinning down the tramline. On and on. Serving until her shoulder ached and she could place almost every single ball securely in the corners or on the service line.
The needle on the scale dropped. Her legs tanned a coppery brown.
When she walked into the veld with Bamba in the afternoon, she took the image of Braham with her. They walked arm in arm. She pointed out the pack of meerkats who were tipping over dung-beetle balls to look for insects. The plug at the entrance to a trapdoor spider’s tunnel. Perched on top of the mud in a mountain pool, a citrus swallowtail drinking water. Crushed twigs in the taaibos that betrayed a bushbuck’s sleeping place. They sat in the shade of a wild gardenia, listening to a white-eye’s piping. They swam in the mountain pool; she dived down and brought him a pool stone up from the bottom. He rubbed her hair dry in the sun. They slept in the stone house.
She was a virgin.
She missed him so.
At night in the milk kraal she told Freesia everything. Then she turned on the floodlights and hit the balls with fresh rage. She avoided the house for as long as she could. Because until the week after New Year Sarah was in East London to help Auntie Lyla after a hysterectomy. She’d wanted to go along but in East London there was no tennis court, no mountain and no stone house.
Although she tried not to think it, in the back of her mind she knew it was the perfect time to shoot Abel in the veld. Under the chin, with the .303. She would arrange his body to look as if he’d been getting out of the truck and reaching for his gun behind the seat. When he pulled the barrel towards him the shot must have gone off. She’d have to wear gloves and thick clothing so the police wouldn’t find gunshot residue on her.
No, she’d have to wait until he was drunk. Put some of her mother’s sleeping tablets in his brandy. Wait till he was asleep and pour baboon poison down his throat. Serves him right for feeding the baboons oranges injected with a syringe of poison.
She hit the balls with every ounce of her might.
Thinner. Fitter. Browner than Mabel was.
‘You’re more beautiful than ever, Truidah,’ Abel said. He punished her with cruel toys that arrived from China.
I must kill him, she told Freesia. I’m going to put the carving knife under my pillow and stab him in the heart. Until the right moment arrived, she had to play Solitaire and Tetris. Or turn into Goldilocks.
Goldilocks ran through the dark wood. The tree branches tore the clothes from her body. She’d lost her suitcase and had no coat. In the distance she saw a tiny light. It was the house where the three bears lived. She ran towards the light. There was no one home. She warmed her hands by the fire. Ate a sausage that hung from a string by the fire. It tasted salty; she spat it out. She was tired and blue from the cold. The baby bear’s bed had a soft mattress and a feather blanket but his pyjamas were too small for her. When she was sleeping deeply, the daddy bear growled next to the bed, furious because she’d spat out the sausage on the floor. He ripped the feather blanket off her and raked her stomach with his claws. She jumped up and climbed through the window before the daddy bear could devour her.
