Thula-Thula (English Edition), page 4
He got angry and shoved the rubber thing up inside her. She pressed her face into the mattress and became someone else. A faceless woman on a train to Avignon. Through the train window she watched the vineyards and linden trees covered with tiny yellow-green flowers slip by. She must take a jar of linden honey back home for Braham. Because he was the sweetest thing in her life.
When the faceless woman got off the train, she heard the bedroom door close.
She stood under the shower to wash away the mess. But the water couldn’t reach inside her unclean heart.
Braham would detest her if he knew. When he left her bedroom at night did Abel detest her too?
‘Hi, Braham. Sorry I’m late.’ She slid into her chair behind the maidenhair fern. ‘I had to go to the co-op for teat salve and laying mash. And there’s my mother’s endless shopping list …’
‘I’m glad you’re here. You mustn’t turn off your cellphone …’
‘I must.’ She took the menu from the waitress. ‘Or my father will keep calling about more stuff to get. White grape juice for me, thank you.’ She passed the menu to Braham who ordered a banana milkshake.
‘So, what was your week like on Umbrella Tree Farm?’
‘Terrible. Farming with my father is misery. Don’t ask why.’
‘I’m never allowed to ask why. You’re a mystery, Gertruidah.’
The ceiling fan hummed; she rearranged the sachets in the sugar bowl. Fingered the tiny bulge Grandma Strydom’s ruby ring made in her shirt pocket.
Moments later she shuddered when he slurped up the thick yellow milkshake. They hardly talked because her sense of her own filth choked the words back down her throat.
The afternoon turned out empty.
Leap year turned out to be just another day.
She fetches the flat rock she keeps on the kraal wall and rubs Freesia’s shoulders and back. All the way down to the rump, the haunches. Ribs, flanks, the curve of her stomach. Down, still further down. Then she puts down the rock and continues scratching Freesia’s stomach with her fingernails. The cow grunts.
‘I know you don’t like it when I scratch your legs and head, Freesia. And you don’t like having your teats pulled, I know.’ She picks up the milk stool and carries it round to the other side. Rubs. Scratches. ‘The funeral is over, Freesia. Umbrella Tree Farm belongs to me now. Here, have your biscuits …’ The cow eats the biscuits out of her hand. ‘Tomorrow I’ll clean your pen; it looks as if the rain has gone.’
She pours half the milk into a bucket for Mama Thandeka. It’ll be dark soon and it’s a long walk to the stone house. The chickens make low gurgling sounds when she pours the rest of the milk into the tractor tyre. Tomorrow they’ll peck holes in the sour white mess.
When she turns around to rinse the bucket under the tap, she sees Mabel standing at the entrance of the coop, holding a bread cloth tied with a knot. ‘Here, Mabel, take the milk.’
‘Wait, Gertruidah, I have something to say. Mama’s chest is better. I’ll come sleep in the house with you tonight if you’re scared. You don’t have to crawl inside a hole like a fox.’
‘I’m not scared and I don’t crawl inside a hole. The stone house is my home.’
‘The veld is wet, Gertruidah. And it doesn’t matter what sort of people your father and mother were, you must have had a bad shock. It’s not every day you bury your father and mother. Let me come stay with you, please?’
‘Then you’ll have to sleep in the stone house too. I’m not spending the night in this house until I’m done cleaning it.’
‘Then I’ll come help you tomorrow morning. But there are things you must tell me before I can close my eyes tonight.’
‘Then ask, it’s getting dark.’
‘Who’s going to take care of things on Umbrella Tree Farm from now on? Because you can say what you like about your father, he was a hard worker and he knew a thing or two about farming. And I want to know what’s the meaning of the sign on the gate. And how long you plan to keep sleeping in the stone house.’
‘Mabel, I want to clean the house on my own. Except for the little jobs Johnnie must come and do, I don’t want anyone in the yard. I will come and tell you when I’m done. Then you and I and Johnnie will run the farm. There’s nothing here we can’t do. For dipping and weaning the calves and the big jobs in the garden we’ll get contract workers. The sign means I don’t want anyone on my land without permission. You must stick to the short-cut through the lucerne paddock. If I catch you climbing over the gate I’ll shoot you.’
Mabel laughs. ‘You won’t shoot me, Gertruidah.’
‘Don’t test me. I’ll probably sleep in the stone house until Sunday night, or else in the truck in the shed.’
Mabel holds out the griddle cakes, tied up in the bread cloth. ‘Mama sends these. Every mealtime until Sunday I’ll leave food at the kissing gate in the lucerne paddock, under the umbrella tree. Take it or leave it, it’s up to you.’
‘Thank you, Mabel. You can fetch Johnnie’s things and your mother’s medicine from the shopping bag at the water tank.’
‘Johnnie will be glad. He’s been peeling resin from the trees for Littlejohn, because that child is impossible without his jelly babies. He’s been singing right through the night: “Someone’s in the kitchen with Dina, someone’s in the kitchen I know, I know, playing the old banjo …”’
‘Do you realise he’s already in his forties, Mabel? How are we going to take care of him if Johnnie dies?’
‘Lord knows but I’m not going to be the one looking after him. And another thing: When are you going to turn your cellphone on? The teacher has been calling me to ask about you. I told him you’re at the stone house and I don’t know when you’re coming back.’
‘Tell him to stop bothering you.’
‘Heavens, Gertruidah, his heart wants you. He’s a good man …’
‘I never want a man near me again. Let alone in my bed. Now go.’
She watches as Mabel walks away towards the shed. Stands with her middle finger hooked through the knot in the bread cloth. Closes her eyes. Sees the letters in her name slide past.
G E R T R U I D A H
The habit of many years, of stringing words into sentences using only the letters in her name, makes the words slip out.
Did Gertruidah guide the dart? Dare Gertruidah trade her heart? Dear Gertruidah tried.
She must stop making up words. There are things she has to think about.
She rinses the bucket and tips it over the coop tap. It’s too late now to walk to the stone house: darkness will overtake her. You should never underestimate the fog. It sneaks up on you like a thief and makes you lose your way. She washes her hands and face at the water tank, rinses out her mouth. Stows the bread cloth with griddle cakes inside the shopping bag. Places a rock on one corner of the bag so it won’t blow away. Walks down to the river to tell the frogs and the water that the funeral is over.
By the time she’s back it’s ten past eight. She strips off the wet funeral clothes and hooks them over a nail in the shed wall. Puts on the overall she was wearing when she painted the sign the day before. Over it, her parka jacket that was lying in the truck. Crumples up a hessian bag for a pillow and lies down on the seat of the truck.
Tired Gertruidah retired at eight. Dare the dead rider hurt her here?
Thula, thula. Shhh, shhh. Go to sleep now.
As she drifts into sleep she hears Mama Thandeka sing, like when she was small and Mama Thandeka tied her to her back inside a towel while she washed the floors. She falls asleep with one ear against Mama Thandeka’s vibrating lungs.
Thula baba, lala baba, ndizobanawe … Hush, my baby, go to sleep, I’ll be with you counting sheep. Dreams will take you far away, sleep until the break of the day.
◊◊◊
The night has arrived here in our house on the mountain ridge. I sit on the chair in front of the inside fire to get warm. It is cold and wet outside in the veld, but cold and dry inside my heart. Abel gone to the Other Side, gone before I could say goodbye, has knocked the breath out of this old black woman. Missus Sarah gone too. And when I think of Gertruidah it seems my thoughts get stuck inside my skull. Nkosi alone knows what will happen now.
It was He who sent the kudu. Now it is He who must keep watch.
When Mabel came home with the half bucket of milk she covered my legs with the red blanket and pushed the chair closer to the fire. ‘Mabel, does Gertruidah look sad, does she look like one who has cried?’
‘No, Mama, Gertruidah doesn’t cry. But she did remember to get the things for Mama’s chest. I’m going to rub the Vicks into Mama’s chest, then Mama will sit by the fire so Mama won’t go to bed feeling cold.’
Then she warmed her hand over the fire and I felt it slide down inside the front of my nightgown. ‘What’s going on in the yard, Mabel? Does Gertruidah have the gun?’
‘She was busy at the chicken coop, her funeral clothes are sopping wet. The gun is on the stoep by the front door. Heaven forbid the police should come here and see the gun was just left lying around, it’ll be prison next. But Mama mustn’t worry, I’ll keep my eye on what’s going on there.’
I feel the cold leave my back as she rubs me and the Vicks fumes rise and clear my head a little. This head has been confused for a long time now, because I’m already seventy-three years old. Sometimes it thinks in the ways of my yellow-brown husband, Samuel, dead long ago. Other times it thinks in the ways of the white people of Umbrella Tree Farm. But there are times, like now when the sadness takes me and I can see the black angel waiting in the doorway, when my head remembers the way my mama talked. The things of your mama, they keep stirring somewhere inside you, they are never far away.
My mama was buried a long time ago, in a place many mountains away. Where the dappled cows graze in the long grass and the women carry bundles of firewood home on their heads in the afternoon. I could be walking with them now, that’s how clearly I see them. I can hear the hadedah calling out from the orange and purple evening clouds saying somewhere a baby has been born. I see my mama adding potatoes to the pot with our evening meal. Or on her knees beside the river. Rubbing the clothes so the foam runs off the washing-stone and floats away on the shallow water. As clear as the present.
I become more and more like a child as I grow older, or like a firm-breasted ntombi, sometimes, and inside my mouth my tongue speaks the language of my mama and tata. At times I am frightened because I cannot remember all the words. Then I tell my heart, it is only because you have been away from your people a long time. You are not that ntombi any more, Thandeka – you are someone else.
This is true.
It is fifty-three years ago that I came to Umbrella Tree Farm, far away from the round house of my childhood. The house with the beautiful patterns my mama painted around the doors and windows, with berry juice, yellow river mud and nightshade extract. She told me a hadedah left me under the sweet thorn at sundown and she wrapped me in her red blanket and ran inside the house before the tokoloshe could get me.
My mama, my mama …
I can smell the cow dung she rubbed on the mud floor, hear her voice fill the yard with a song while she crushes the corn. But it’s all a long way away and some things have grown dim. There are many things you forget in fifty-three years but you never forget how to pray in your mama’s tongue. And when great sorrow overtakes you, then you cry in the language of your childhood.
Many twists on the road of life have brought me to this place, where I sit by the fire with a heart that bleeds because a white man has died.
When I took Samuel Malgas for my husband, my people were unhappy because he was a coloured man. They were unhappy even though they knew he had been to school and was raised in a good home on white people’s land, the farm where my people went to buy food from the trading post on Saturdays. When the shop was busy, Samuel helped out behind the counter, a pencil stuck behind his ear. Quick he was, with adding and subtracting. That was where he and I started looking at each other. Times were different, then; people didn’t just pay court to this one and that. And everyone knew that when Samuel Malgas was a child with the mumps the swelling in his neck went to lie in his groin. My people said I would be a poor woman one day, with no children to look after me when I was old.
Samuel was such a beautiful biblical name. I could tell that the tawny man had a clever head and that his eyes saw the world differently. They seemed to see further than where the mountain ended. And even if he could give me no children he could take me over that mountain and show me new things. When his donkey cart and his donkeys were ready, he said, he would be on his way to see the world.
On the reed mat in my mama’s round house I cried about Samuel who was leaving to see the world. And I stopped going to the store.
But one Sunday afternoon he came all the way to find me.
‘Thandeka, why don’t I see you at the store any more?’ he asked. ‘And why are you crying?’
I stood up and picked up the water bucket. ‘Let’s go fetch water from the river.’
At the river I broke off a reed and told him to make a whistle and think of me whenever he played it.
‘Won’t you come with me, Thandeka? We can get married out of your tata’s house. There’s enough money in my bank book for three lobola cattle … Then together we’ll go see what lies on the other side of the mountain.’
So I took him, because he wanted me. And because I wanted to see the other side of the mountain.
I did have one child, from Abel. And she has taken good care of me all these years.
The red blanket warms my knees and legs. But the cold never seems to leave my backbone, those tiny bones that cradle my marrow, and it stays cold inside my heart. Because Samuel died a long time ago.
And now Abel is dead.
Soon it will be my time. Abel always said if my time came he would lay me to rest on Umbrella Tree Farm, right next to Samuel. He would have a headstone made that would run from my end of the grave to Samuel’s. And he would have my name and my years written on it.
Thandeka Malgas.
Born 30 March 1935, until the day Nkosi our God came for her.
Abel was still a strong man, fifty-eight years old. I am fifteen years older, and almost blind. I should have gone first.
That Gertruidah had them buried in the town cemetery, that I understand. But time passes. Your anger mellows, and your sorrow grows. Then it is too late to open the graves and dig fresh holes. Maybe the wind will carry my breath to the town cemetery so he will hear me when I say: Have a safe journey, Abel …
No one but Thandeka Malgas knows who Abel Strydom really was or how the bones fell for him.
Samuel and I travelled many roads in our donkey cart. How those roads brought us to Umbrella Tree Farm I no longer remember. The donkeys were tired and Samuel said it was time to settle down and make a home.
Abel was only about five years old, a beautiful child. Except for his clothes you had to look closely to see he wasn’t a girl. I cooked the food and rubbed the floors. Did the washing and ironing. There were beds to make, windows to wash, the stoep to sweep. And lots of other jobs Abel’s mama gave me to do.
She was a good person. She always said, take half the eggs or the leguan will eat them. That is what a leguan does; he sneaks around the chicken coop once he has sucked out the cow with his blue and yellow tongue. Don’t tell the old man, she said. Because he was a difficult one. Not an old man in years but with a heart that was old and black. Left deep marks on Abel, I will swear before God to this day.
I helped keep an eye on the children. Three boys and I had a soft spot for Abel because he was the smallest. With soft little feet so I had to give him a piggyback across the devil’s thorn. Then one day a cobra came into the house and bit his mama who was busy in the kitchen with a bowl of green figs and the pricking needle. No matter how hard we sucked to get the poison out of her, by sunset the cobra poison had squeezed out her final breath.
It is hard growing up without your mama.
It is even harder if your papa pushes you away. It can twist a child’s eyes, so the world squints back at him. There were many mornings when I dragged the wet mattress to the back of the pit lavatory where the old man wouldn’t see it. Because if he saw, his tongue would become sharp as a knife blade, ready to draw blood. Time passes and the child becomes a soft-bearded young man who trembles before his papa. By the time that man has grown, everything inside his head has become twisted.
The next time Gertruidah comes here I must tell her what her father and I agreed. That she must tell the headstone people to write Samuel’s name and his years on his end of the stone. And that on my side they must write that my name means ‘good person’.
There are times when I’m good.
Times when I’m bad.
Times when I’m in the middle somewhere between good and bad.
My name is easy to say, but my surname feels uneasy on my tongue. Malgas. It doesn’t click like Noqobo, the clan name of my tata. But it is the name Samuel gave me and I must honour it like I honour his memory.
Samuel and Anthony died on the same day, the day the truck went over the cliff. Anthony was ten years old. If Mabel had not gone to fetch kindling, she would have gone over the cliff with them. Just thinking about it makes my blood run cold. Today she is almost thirty-two years old, and I thank Nkosi for His mercy. It is He who decides which child goes and which one stays.
That is the reason I prayed for Miss Sarah every evening under the stars when I could still see in the dark. Anthony’s dying made her go blind – that was the reason she did nothing to stop Abel when she saw things were becoming ugly with Gertruidah. Anthony’s dying twisted and broke her, of that I am certain.
Another thing of which I am certain: There never was an angel to fly around with Abel. Nkosi gives everyone an angel to help them push Satan away but the only angel Abel got was his black mama, Thandeka. The same mama whose body pushed him into a bad thing. And then there was Mabel, growing up in his house and his yard, with a heart she kept filled with stones to hurt him. More blood of his blood, pushing him away. It must have been hard. He was only looking for love, from someone, somewhere, the way we all do.
