Thula-Thula (English Edition), page 24
She looked everywhere for her house, but her house was gone.
On the morning of New Year’s Eve in 1999, while Abel was away in the vygie camp to put out salt licks and check the water troughs, she started menstruating. Not even that deterred him. She had to get away before he got back. She took her .22 and water bottle and tossed a few toiletries into her hostel laundry bag. She called Bamba and together they trotted down to the river; she stayed on the river rocks as far as she could. Beyond the almond trees she detoured to the eastern side of the mountain, so there’d be no risk of being spotted in the distance.
A troop of baboons barked at her from the cliffs. She would rather be a baboon than a human being. Even if she had the lowest rank in the troop, the troop would protect her. Unlike her human troop. When she was small she often asked her father to catch her a baby baboon. A brother for Lulu. Every time he said no, with an angry look in his eyes.
Twice on the way to the stone house Bamba warned her in time about a puff adder. She couldn’t shoot it or Abel would know she was in the mountain. She walked a wide circle around both snakes.
There was hardly any food in the stone house. Some soggy crackers. A tin of beans. She made a grass broom and brushed the thorns from the prickly pears before picking them with the wire hook. You had to stand downwind or the thorns blew into your eyes. She was grateful that the prickly pears grew close by because she was tired. She bathed and washed her hair in the mountain pool. Baked dry in the sun. Bamba lay on a pool rock, watching her. But not the way Abel watched her. The sun was making her drowsy.
She dreamed of her prickly-pear farm with its busy factory. She patented a cure for diabetes and became world-famous. Made a billion from a weight-loss tonic. She shipped containers of soap and shampoo to overseas companies that paid in pounds, euros and dollars. Mabel and the farm women ran a farm stall and a tea garden beside the tarred road. The parking lot was packed with cars bearing foreign registration plates; they were waiting in line to buy Mabel’s prickly-pear products.
Mabel and the farm women also grew rich.
Umbrella Tree Farm was no longer a sad, quiet place.
When the sun started to fade she and Bamba walked the short distance from the mountain pool back to the stone house. She drew the sheet of canvas across the doorway and lit a candle. Ate the crackers. Paged through the book about Leonardo da Vinci; she knew every word by heart. Crawled outside into the sultry night and listened to the crickets; kept an eye on the Southern Cross.
When she estimated it was midnight, she gathered Bamba in her lap. This was how the century turned for her. Alone in the dark mountain, with the dog held close. Nothing could make her happier at that moment. I am eighteen, now, she whispered to Bamba, and the time will soon come when I’ll run away. Even if it means living in the mountains and ravines and dying like an animal.
He licked her face.
They slept. She and Bamba.
In her sleep she longed for Braham.
She stayed in the stone house for four days. Gathered pulpy notsung berries and gooey blackberries and dug for roots to keep the worst hunger at bay. She tore off lumps of thorn gum caught in the setting sun. The gum made her stomach work, so she felt even skinnier.
On the third day Bamba caught a rock pigeon and placed it at her feet. The gas stove was empty and the wind was wrong. Impossible to make a fire to cook the bird. She buried it. Told Bamba he wasn’t allowed to dig it up.
Four days, then her period ended. She longed to get back to the tennis court; to Freesia and Mabel. Late at night she drew the canvas over the entrance and sprinkled water from her hip flask on the ground to say thank you. Then she walked home under the crescent moon. Because she had nowhere else to go.
She couldn’t get back inside through her window. Burglar bars. Abel had been threatening to install them for ages. She sat at the foot of the stone angel, tears streaming down her neck. How would she get out at night? Through the passage? No, the floorboards creaked.
Mosquitoes were biting her. The only place that wasn’t locked was the shed. She sagged down onto the still-warm cement floor, her back against the wheel of the John Deere tractor. Trapped, trapped.
On the way into town for her first day in big school, her mother said there were private matters one didn’t talk about to anyone. Not even Miss Robin or Matron or your best friend.
Like what?
Like if there’s fighting at home. You don’t talk about it, you just keep quiet.
What else?
You don’t tell people if we gossip about them at home.
That was easy. She didn’t want to think about fighting or gossiping, she wanted to think about the things inside her suitcase. Crayons. Stickers. A drawing book. Blue ruler and pencil case. Blue lunch box and cooldrink bottle. Everything in Anthony’s suitcase had also been blue.
Stop fiddling with your suitcase and listen to me, Gertruidah … The most important thing is, you must never tell nasty stories about your parents. Parents work hard to give their children the best they can. And everything we do for you, we do because of the love that is in our hearts. You must never talk badly about Mommy and Daddy at school. You’ve heard what the minister says in church about the Ten Commandments: Honour your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. Do you know what it means?
It means if I don’t say anything nasty about you and Daddy, then I can live on Umbrella Tree Farm until one day I marry a farmer who has a farm of his own.
You are a clever girl. Remember, what happens in our house stays only between us. Promise?
She held her suitcase tightly on her lap. Practised keeping her lips shut tight.
Do you hear me, Gertruidah?
Yes, Mommy, I promise.
The John Deere wheel was hurting her back. She blew her nose on her shirt.
Before the end of the first term of grade six she joined the town library. Because she didn’t want to wander alone through town during free time on Wednesdays, and because she wanted to find a book where she could read everything the clinic sister had said, for herself. That was where she saw Mr Williston up close for the first time. The man who looked like Peter from the Bible.
It took three Wednesdays to find the book. What Every Girl Should Know by Dr Jan van Elfen. She shoved it into her pants and held the other books in front of her. Because she was shy to let Mr Williston see she was taking it out.
Fright, fright, fright. Not about anything in the book. But about all the lies and pain she had to endure.
The dog snuggled up to her leg and licked her ankle. She cried. She told the dog what no one knew. About her savings in the cake tin up at the stone house that were growing too slowly because she was spending all her pocket money on panty liners and wet wipes. Bought from different stores in order to be inconspicuous. The thin brown line of excrement inside her panties was disgusting. She didn’t want to smell of diarrhoea.
You cannot catch me … sis, you smell of poo-hoo … stinky Gertruidah Strydom …
Tennis clothes were white and short and easily blown up by the wind.
How long before she lost complete control over her sphincter muscle? Could a sphincter muscle be repaired with surgery? What would it cost? She would have to change her tennis outfit. Black Lycra shorts. Black socks. Black sweatband. Black laces. Make everyone believe it was a fashion craze.
And there had to be a way to make the cake tin money grow faster.
There was a lot of money in the tin but it was still not enough. Pilfered money she found lying around the house. Money earned by lying about items she pretended to need for school, and which Abel gave her willingly. Birthday money that Auntie Lyla slipped inside her gift-wrapped book. Also inside the cake tin, Abel’s gold cufflinks and Grandma Strydom’s ruby ring, the one Abel and Sarah had the row over when Abel was drunk. The pearl earrings and necklace Abel gave Sarah when Anthony was born. Irreplaceable. When Abel asked about the pearls Sarah said they were in the safe deposit at the bank in town, because she was afraid of being robbed.
‘Liar!’ Abel shouted and the brandy glass slipped from his hand.
It was better for the pearls to be in the safe deposit, Sarah shouted back, so they couldn’t remind her of the child he stole from her.
‘Where is the safe-deposit receipt?’
She stormed off to the bedroom and shoved the receipt in his face. ‘The bank stamp, can you see it? Can you see it’s signed? That it’s certified? Now stop calling me a liar!’
How on earth had her mother got her hands on the receipt? Perhaps it was a fake and he was too drunk to tell. It made her suddenly feel sorry for her mother. To what lengths did a woman have to go to protect herself? How many lies must she invent and live with in order to have a roof over her head?
When she left Umbrella Tree Farm she wanted to be travelling light and fast. Everything she took with her had to be easy to carry and expensive.
Once when she asked her mother why she didn’t leave the farm for ever to live with Auntie Lyla, her mother said it was because she wanted to be close to her child’s grave.
And because Gertruidah still had to finish school.
‘I can finish without you, Ma.’ With a sneer. ‘I can do lots of things without you.’
Splinters of pain in her mother’s eyes. ‘I know, Gertruidah, but all the same …’
‘All the same what?’
Then her mother took two pain pills and withdrew to her dark bedroom.
The cake tin money had to grow. Maybe she could sell a Bonsmara when Abel was away at the stock auction and tell him it’d been stolen. The cost of panty liners and wet wipes couldn’t get in her way.
She shifted her weight against the John Deere wheel. Wiped her nose on her arm. She had to retaliate for the burglar bars: this was incarceration. ‘Stay here,’ she told Bamba. ‘Thula, I’ll be back now.’
She made three trips to the river under the sliver moon. Carried the paint tin there and back. Shaped a funnel from newspaper. Worked by the light from her Victorinox torch. Poured sand into the John Deere’s diesel tank. Took her revenge.
Gertruidah gathered the dirt, dragged it hither. Gertruidah dared the rider.
Daybreak. Sunrise.
When Mabel arrived for work, they walked through the kitchen door together. As if she’d never been away. As if a new century hadn’t begun. As if she hadn’t turned eighteen in the dark mountain. As if she’d hadn’t even noticed the burglar bars.
Abel punished her tenfold. For running away and for the John Deere.
When she drove the white Corsa to school at the start of grade eleven she felt elated. The brownest white child in the school. Thin and sinewy; toned. Catching sight of Braham during assembly made her feel faint.
Her tennis progress astonished him. By the middle of February she won the play-off for the number one position, wearing her black-and-white tennis gear. No one would see a brown line. She wiped the court with her opponent. Braham shook her hand. Electric shocks throughout her body.
‘Brilliant, Gertruidah. Keep playing like this and you’re bound to make the provincial team.’
Thanks to the tennis-ball machine, the floodlights, the expensive racquet for Christmas.
The next morning she threw up noisily before the morning bell. Sunstroke, probably, from a match played in scorching heat. Nothing but slime in her stomach. Her eyes felt as if they were bulging out of their sockets. She gripped the basin. Rinsed her face with cold water. Her stomach heaved.
It became a daily occurrence. Nausea, dizziness.
Don’t let it be true, Lord, I beg you, please.
She’d seen it coming at the end of January when her period stayed away. Her breasts were tender. Her bladder stayed full. Nausea. Headaches. An aversion to food. She wore her school jersey every day; played tennis in a tracksuit top.
Perhaps if she ran around the rugby field ten times every day and bathed in almost boiling water, she would miscarry.
◊◊◊
I sit at the kitchen table with my coffee. My stomach is satisfied. The chicken was tasty and tender and it has been a long time since Mabel made ginger pudding. When she came back from spying on the yard she said Gertruidah was sitting with her back against the umbrella tree, her eyes closed. Mabel thought she was sleeping.
‘It isn’t sleep, it is longing.’
Mabel looked at me as if I was mad. ‘Mama must have gotten sunstroke in the rocking chair. Who would Gertruidah be longing for?’
‘For the man from the school. But let it go. Write iron drops on the shopping list. My blood feels thin.’
‘I’m not going to the store today, Mama. I’m going some place else and I won’t be back until late afternoon …’
I could tell Mabel was uneasy. ‘Where are you going, Mabel?’
‘I’ll tell you when I come back, Mama. It’s something to do with Gertruidah.’
Back in the days before Gertruidah’s baby was born, I sometimes helped out in the lapa kitchen. Jobs I could do sitting down because my legs kept wanting to give way under me. Chopping parsley, slicing celery. Making cocktail sticks with asparagus and baby tomatoes and smoked-tongue cubes. Polishing the glasses. I found it strange that Gertruidah was helping in the lapa kitchen. It wasn’t like her to mill around Missus Sarah. She was always one for taking the dog into the veld or swimming in the river, tapping aloe syrup or shooting among the dassies. Never a kitchen child.
But there she was week after week, arranging tea trays and setting out date biscuits. Fetching cooldrink and glasses, wiping the outside table. Almost as if she was converted, somehow.
And all that time I watched her eyes follow the man with the glasses. Not too handsome, he, and slight of shoulder. When her eyes followed him around like that, a smile went to sit in the corners of her mouth and she became busy in the kitchen. I buttered the date loaf and prayed to Nkosi to make the man take notice of Gertruidah. But Mabel said the man was a teacher at the school, and a teacher mustn’t run after a schoolgirl.
I waited and waited, because love grows at its own pace. At the same time love is like a river. If there is a rock in the river, the water will find a way around it. I knew that when I said goodbye to my mama and tata all those years ago and got onto Samuel’s donkey cart. Because love was telling me: Get on the cart, Thandeka, and go with this man. Wherever he is going.
And then came the terrible day when they carried Samuel’s dead body up from the valley.
That morning when the mfundisi from the town church stood beside the grave with his Bible, and they lowered the coffin, I cast my eyes up towards the mountains of Umbrella Tree Farm. I had to hold on to Johnnie or I would have jumped into that grave to sail away with Samuel. And without Mabel who needed caring and raising, I would have lost my mind that day.
The afternoon of that same day I stood beside Anthony’s grave. The wind lifted the mfundisi’s black cloak and turned the pages of his Bible so he had to hold them down with his hand. He read about Job who was a wealthy farmer until Nkosi took everything he had. Sheep, oxen, camels, donkeys and all ten of his children. About how Job lay on an ash heap grieving, but he got up again and the sores on his body were healed. Later he got back everything he lost, got it back double, new children too. That afternoon I wanted to act like I was drunk and shout over the heads of the people to ask if Job then stopped longing for his ten children who were dead.
I couldn’t look at Missus Sarah. Her eyes looked the way a cow’s eyes look when the calf is stuck. I will never forget the way she cried out when they lowered her child’s coffin. It is a sound you never forget.
Abel stood like one who was already dead. Teeth clenched; lips trembling just like a dog that is cold. And Gertruidah in her white dress holding on to his leg and stroking her father’s knee with her dimpled hand. Tapping his leg with her tiny hand as if to say: Thula, thula, there there … Abel stroked her hair and drew her little head closer. I thought my heart would break seeing them like that.
Nkosi who is my shepherd, it is a time I want to forget.
But you cannot just carve out parts of your memory and think that you won’t bleed. Although sometimes you don’t bleed to death, you just bleed yourself clean. That is probably the way it was with Job too.
Now Gertruidah is dreaming beside the umbrella tree in a white tracksuit. And my head has lost its way. But I am old and I can send my thoughts where I choose.
There was a big party the day Anthony turned ten. It was a Sunday, the third day of February in 1985. Anthony got a penknife and his .22 gun, and after church his friends and their papas and mamas came to Umbrella Tree Farm for the birthday party. There was swimming, and a lamb on the spit. Missus Sarah showed off with salads that looked like flower gardens and drinks with mint leaves and tiny paper umbrellas. Samuel and the other farm workers chopped wood and packed the fires. Back then there were still lots of people on Umbrella Tree Farm. It was only about ten years later that Abel got fed up with the law and the houses became empty.
Anyway.
I was on my feet from the Friday on, cleaning the house. Missus Sarah baked Anthony a birthday cake that looked exactly like a John Deere tractor.
Back then I could see that things were turning straight for Abel and Missus Sarah. The old man’s poison was slowly seeping out of their veins. Umbrella Tree Farm never looked more beautiful. The old man would break out of his grave if he could see the garden with its rippling streams and wooden bridges. A sea of nasturtium soldiers grew around the feet of the white stone angel where Missus Sarah lit a candle inside a glass lamp on wind-still evenings. Instead of whitewash, the house wore a rich brown cloak that Missus Sarah called terracotta.
On top of everything, Abel and Missus Sarah opened their hearts to their children, not like the old man. They played ludo and snap at the kitchen table. Swam in the river, wrestled on the lawn. Abel and Anthony rode slippery butter-brush trees and Abel built a tree house for Gertruidah. Missus Sarah sewed pretty curtains for it, and knitted jerseys for Gertruidah’s dolls.
