Thula-Thula (English Edition), page 6
She left while Abel was putting out salt licks and Sarah was away at the book club. She took no food. She didn’t care if she died in the stone house. All the way there she missed Bamba. The veld was lonely without him, with no one to warn her against a puff adder.
She tried to steer her thoughts away from Bamba. To forget how he’d died and the part she’d played in it. He was old and he’d been suffering. She’d had no choice.
In the stone house she found a bag of flour, some sugar, bully beef and a tin of peaches. There was mite in the flour and the sugar was rock hard, but if you can eat frog legs and pig’s brains you can eat mite too. The lump of sugar you could wrap inside your shirt and smash with a rock.
It was January, so there was plenty to eat in the veld. Sour figs. Broom cluster figs. Notsung berries. Guinea-fowl eggs. Roots. She could brew tea from wild-olive leaves. And all around the stone house the prickly-pear trees she’d planted in primary school were heavy with fruit. She’d still not forgiven Abel for destroying her make-believe house and her prickly-pear farm.
When she craved meat, she waited until Abel and Sarah left for church on Sunday morning and shot a pheasant. The next week, a dassie. The wild garlic and curry bush she added to make the meat taste less wild made little difference. But to get her bathroom she had to persevere. She ate sparingly because Abel’s gas stove, the one he used to make coffee in the veld until she stole it from the shed in grade seven, was empty. She could light a fire only if the wind blew in the right direction, away from the farmhouse, or Abel would follow the smell of cooking meat. If the wind turned she had to put the fire out. She couldn’t risk leading him to the stone house. Couldn’t risk him knowing what she’d carried there over the years. A tin opener. An aluminium kettle. Pot, pan and water canister. An axe. A spade. A hammer. A pick. The three-legged pot stand. A wire hook for harvesting the prickly pears.
Just before sunrise one Saturday morning Mabel came to the stone house.
She knew someone was coming towards her; she would never allow herself to be caught off guard.
At the point where the most accessible footpath to the stone house began, she’d made a trap by stretching fishing line across the path at chest-height. One end was tied to a berry bush, the other around a paint tin filled with ironstones she’d wedged into a fork in a cranberry tree. Only something as tall as a kudu or a human being could crash into the fishing line and knock the paint tin down. She’d stacked ironstones below the tin so the noise when it fell would be heard far away.
She froze with fear when the paint tin fell.
Then it turned out to be Mabel.
Mabel was the only one who knew where the stone house was. She’d been forced to take Mabel into her confidence when she fell pregnant in grade eleven and ran away to Auntie Lyla. There were things hidden in the stone house that Mabel had to know about.
Mabel brought news that the building material and the builders were expected on Monday. It was time to go back home.
‘I’ve been here almost a month, Mabel, why did you never bring me food? All the time you knew …’
‘Bringing you food would be the same as giving my consent for your staying in the stone house. One of these days a puff adder is going to bite you and then when you’re lying six feet under I’ll have to answer before the Lord for the food I brought you.’
She heard the truck on Monday morning and stole down to the river from where she watched the builders through the reeds.
That afternoon she went home. When she walked into the house the first thing she heard was the gurgle of Sarah’s stomach on the toilet.
No one was happy to see her, no one scolded her for having left. It was as if she’d never been gone.
‘It’s just another of Gertruidah’s whims,’ she could imagine her mother saying at tennis. ‘It’s a good thing she knows the veld and she carries the .22 with her. We should get her another Jack Russell, actually, but she was badly traumatised when Bamba died. Abel wants a boerboel for the yard but of course the legal requirements …’
She was grateful for the laws because Abel had threatened that the boerboel would sleep in her room at night, and told her exactly what he’d teach the dog to do. Disgusting things. So she was oddly relieved when a farmer in the district had to sell part of his land to pay compensation to an intruder his boerboel had ripped apart. The law required the dog to be restrained. The farmer argued that the intruder had broken the law when he climbed over his fence. The court found the farmer had been negligent because his dog hadn’t been tied up or under control. He was ordered to pay for weeks in intensive care, skin grafts, future treatment, crutches and counselling, and to compensate the paralysed man for loss of income following rehabilitation.
Abel was among those who contributed to help the farmer with his legal costs and afterwards there was no more talk of a boerboel for the yard.
All the time the builders built, her mother sewed. The white curtains and white toilet set. White crochet edges for the facecloths. White satin appliqué flowers on the towels.
‘Come look and tell me if you like this, Gertruidah. I’m making extra of everything so you’ll never be without clean things for the bathroom. Should I embroider the facecloths as well?’
‘I don’t care, Ma, you do what you want.’
At times she wondered about the thoughts her mother was stitching into the fabric. Who her mother really was. Why she pretended to be deaf. Why she didn’t leave to go live in Auntie Lyla’s garden flat. Auntie Lyla belonged to a book club and a music society and went to the theatre. The book club and music society in town were nothing more than a gossip clique. At Auntie Lyla’s her mother wouldn’t have to lead a wretched existence under Abel’s fist.
But no. If her mother went away she’d be left alone with Abel. Then she’d have to endure her mother’s share of blows and bedroom things as well.
Still, the business with the needlework made her feel closer to her mother. They drank tea together, ate jam tarts. The woman behind the sewing machine was her mother – not the hearing-impaired judge or a silent witness to the horror.
On Monday, 3 February 2003, the day that would’ve been Anthony’s birthday but was now a sombre commemoration of his death, the bathroom was completed. A bathroom without a key. With transparent shower doors so Abel could sit in the white cane chair and watch while she showered.
Within days of the bathroom being completed, the bed-wetting era ended. The torture of sleeping on a plastic sheet and sneaking to the laundry room with her sheets and pyjamas in the morning was over.
When she woke up in the morning she couldn’t stop running her hands over the dry sheet. She stared up at the ceiling between narrowed eyes and in her mind wrote on the ceiling. The rider traded, Gertruidah aided.
Somewhere inside her she’d always known that she would make it across the bridge some day. If in the months with Auntie Lyla, when she was pregnant, with constant pressure on her bladder, she could wake up in a dry bed every morning, then it was possible to cross the bridge. But in the house on Umbrella Tree Farm fear had stood between her and the bridge, the same fear she would take with her to the hostel on Mondays.
Fear that Abel might be woken by a creaking floorboard. Fear of rolling down the toilet paper or flushing the toilet, of turning on a light. Fear that if she woke him by making the smallest sound he would come harass her there as well. And in the spooky hostel corridors, fear that the leguan might be lying in wait.
Up until the end of grade seven, before she grew too old for domestic work, Mama Thandeka would lean her mattress against the outside toilet wall to dry in the morning sun. But with Mabel, although she was like a sister, she felt shy. So she stole the sheet of plastic her mother used to protect the dining table when she was cutting out fabric, and folded it over her mattress. It kept the mattress dry but she always ended up lying in a cold puddle at night.
Abel was clever. He always made his appearance while the night was young.
‘I’m going to put your granddaddy’s chamber pot and a roll of paper under your bed, Gertruidah,’ Mabel told her. ‘Then at night when you dream you’re peeing, you must wake yourself quickly, and then you pee in the pot instead. Just shove it under the bed, and I’ll empty it in the morning without anyone knowing.’
That night she dreamed she was peeing. She jumped up; her pyjama pants were still dry. She pulled the cold metal pot out from under the bed and squatted. She could hear the stream hit the bottom of the pot. Just then the doorknob turned. She couldn’t stop the flow. It splashed onto her feet.
Abel thought it was beautiful, her peeing in the pot. Sickeningly beautiful. Twice afterwards he made her squat over the pot and pee on his hand. Then she buried the pot inside an anthill in the plantain field.
The new bathroom was hers alone. It meant she would never have to leave her room if nature called at night. It was her free pass across the bridge.
Down by the river the weaver birds start their morning racket.
Can she ever learn to like herself? Can you wash away the filth if you scrub hard enough? Or will it wear away slowly, one layer at a time?
In Biology they were taught that human beings shed their skin every thirty days, a layer of skin so thin it’s transparent. How many layers deep does her hurt lie? Stupid Gertruidah, whom the children mocked at break time, chanting their rhyme until she wanted to murder them: … You can’t catch me … You can’t deny it … stupid Gertruidah Strydom … When she chased them, they scattered and continued mocking from a distance: You can’t catch me … sis, you smell of sardines … stinky Gertruidah Strydom.
At night the mocking tune echoed in her dreams.
With a twig she starts writing her name in the damp sand.
For the first time since grade eleven, when she used her full names to write a sonnet for Braham Fourie, she wants to write them all out: Grandma Strydom’s names, old-fashioned and ripe for ridicule. As if she wants to acknowledge all of her.
G E R T R U I D A H S U S A N N A H J A C O M I N A
As soon as she draws the line across the final A in Jacomina, the words start to flow.
Making sentences dulled the pain while the rider took his time. When she was younger Tertia and Rita and Gerard and Dieter sometimes came down from the mountains to help her build sentences, even though by then she knew they were just make-believe friends.
She concentrates hard so she’ll use no forbidden letters.
I can get through this. Erases it. I can see ahead. Erases it. Did I drench the mattress in shame to hurt another or injure me? Erases it.
When the sun fingers the top of the mountain, she dusts the coarse sand from her overalls. And walks home.
Under the umbrella tree by the kissing gate there’s a glass jar with lukewarm black coffee. She drinks half and saves the rest to have with her next meal.
Up ahead the stairs lie waiting like rows of shark’s teeth, the pliers still on the bottom step where she left them. The moment she bends down to pick them up, the sun breaks free above the mountain ridge. In the same instant she swings the pliers. A single blow shatters the pot with gypsy roses. The next blow and the next send the clay shards flying. She hears her own screams echo in the mountains. Damn pot that Sarah painted! Damn staircase where her hell began twenty-two years ago! She hardly notices when the jar with coffee slips from her hand and shatters against the step. She keeps hitting until nothing is left but the clay bottom and a little soil mixed with tiny waxy bulbs. Damn Abel Strydom who stole her life! She knocks the clump of roots from the top of the column and with a kick sends it flying across the lawn.
She screams until she starts to cough and the pliers slip from her hand. Until she can no longer hear the marsh frogs or the birds: nothing but the roaring inside her head.
◊◊◊
When I woke up this morning my joints were stiff and I struggled out of bed. It is terrible when old age gets its teeth into you. Mabel says the wood is wet and we mustn’t make a fire inside or all the clothes in the cupboards will smell of smoke. That is what the stove is for, she says. I tell her I want an inside fire but I don’t tell her the reason: it is because I am longing for my mama.
With the fire burning she helps me to the kitchen table. ‘Ikhepu liyanyibilika, the snow is melting,’ I say, lost in thought.
Mabel brings my coffee. ‘Mama is confused. Yesterday it rained, it didn’t snow.’
‘It is the snow in Gertruidah’s heart I am thinking of. Did you hear her scream from deep inside her throat when the sun came out?’
‘I worry about her, Mama. She says she’ll shoot me if she finds me in the yard.’
‘Stay out of the yard, Mabel, don’t go looking for trouble.’
‘She says she wants to be by herself to clean the house. She says it stinks of Abel and Sarah. She’s even talking about burning the bed linen. Times like this, I don’t know what to do about Gertruidah.’
‘You will see, one of these days Gertruidah is going to marry that teacher. And have little babies too.’
‘Really, Mama, you’re not thinking straight. Gertruidah will never marry.’
One day, about three years ago, Gertruidah came here with a bag of pickling onions. She said her mama said I must make onion pickle and see that Johnnie gets half.
‘Have you grown to love the teacher yet, Gertruidah?’
To get something out of Gertruidah, sometimes you have to get straight to the point.
‘Yes, Mama Thandeka, I love him.’
‘Then what is keeping the two of you from getting married? Then you pack up all your things and go live with him in town, and the two of you have little babies.’
She was silent next to the wood bin, winding her hair into pigtails around her forefinger, the way she always does when she’s thinking deeply. Then all you can do is wait, her words will come.
‘No, Mama Thandeka,’ she said at last, winding another pigtail. ‘I would throw up if a man had to kiss me. Let alone lie next to him naked …’
‘Gertruidah, you must get away from Umbrella Tree Farm. Find yourself a job in town before …’
‘Before I shoot them. If I do, Mabel mustn’t show the police where the stone house is. I’ll be there, living in the mountains like a baboon. That’s to say if I don’t shoot myself as well.’
‘You mustn’t talk that way, Gertruidah. You make my heart uneasy.’
‘Ma put condensed milk with the onions to make onion jam for Littlejohn. Sala kahle, Mama Thandeka.’
‘Sala kahle, Gertruidah.’
‘I’m not looking for trouble in the yard, I’m just keeping an eye on things. I left Gertruidah a jar of coffee under the umbrella tree. But I’m going to write her a letter to say if there’s cleaning to be done in the garden I’ll do it.’
Mabel has a soft heart, for everyone except Abel. She has no more time for him than for the dirt under her broom. It wasn’t always this way, only since the time Gertruidah, she must have been eight years old, showed Mabel her privy was blood red and said she couldn’t pee because it stung. Back then Mabel was already fourteen years old but I didn’t want her to know about these things. Ugly things. I was afraid she would talk about them at school and next thing they’d say she was making up stories about an important man and kick her out.
A sip of coffee. ‘Mabel, Gertruidah has years of anger inside her. Her screaming means the snow in her heart is starting to melt. Then she will get better.’
‘Does Mama want maize meal or oat porridge?’
‘Just a piece of bread with some of the honeycomb Abel brought last week.’
Then I can chew the honeycomb until there’s just a ball of wax left that I can keep in my mouth all day long. To remind me of all the sweet things Abel gave me. And all the bitter ones too.
‘Today you must slaughter a chicken so there’ll be enough meat for Gertruidah too. You must look after her until her loudest screams have left her. It could take many days.’
Back when I was carrying Mabel I saw the way snow could collect inside a man’s heart. Inside Samuel’s heart. Show me the man whose heart won’t turn cold if his wife lies with another man. And a rich white man on top of that, one whose word was your command.
‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Thandeka. You ought to be stoned, like the wicked woman in the Bible. Fancy lying with a white man in my own bed while I’m wearing out my shoes rounding up his cattle!’
It was terrible to see Samuel so angry and know I was the one who had made him that way. ‘It is over, Samuel. Abel and I talked it over on the bench underneath the pepper tree …’
‘And the child that’s going to be born? And how can I be sure he won’t come crawling into my bed again?’
‘It was just the one time, Samuel. And there won’t be another time, you can take my word for it. Abel says he will see the child has everything it needs in life …’
‘Heavens, Thandeka, it’s as bad as lying with your own son.’
‘I know it, Samuel, and I humble myself before our Lord.’
‘And expect Him to just forgive you? What happened to your common sense, Thandeka? What was going on inside your head when you took off your clothes and lay down on your back so he …’
‘My head wasn’t thinking, Samuel. But when it was done, that was when my head started to think.’
How do you explain something you don’t understand yourself?
It was Miss Sarah’s birthday and she was in East London. It was the time she left the farm and took Anthony and all her suitcases with her. That afternoon the old man had gone to a meeting of farmers. Abel was lonely and when he came to sit at my kitchen table his eyes were red from crying.
‘I miss her and Anthony, Mama Thandeka.’ A heavy sigh rose from his chest. ‘I feel like taking the gun to the back of the plantain field and blowing my brains out.’
‘Don’t be a fool, Abel. Give her time, she will come back.’
