Thula-Thula (English Edition), page 8
‘No, there’s only the dark of the moon, the half moon and the sickle moon.’
Mama Thandeka wiped her tiny hands with a wet cloth and told her she was a good girl who ate her egg and all six pieces of toast.
‘How do you say “egg” in your language, Mama Thandeka?’
‘Iqanda.’
‘Show me how you make your tongue click like that, won’t you please?’
Mama Thandeka bent down towards her. ‘Like this, Gertruidah: you place the tip of your tongue against the back of your front teeth, like so …’
She looked inside Mama Thandeka’s mouth and saw for the first time that black people’s mouths were pink on the inside.
‘Pull your tongue back quickly, as if you’re trying to suck it back. Now you try …’
They laughed and said it over and over: ‘Iqanda.’
Despite the cold and wet, it was a red and yellow day.
‘Go play with your dolls in your bedroom. I must peel onions for supper and they’ll make your eyes sting. In a little while I’ll bring you some coffee in your red mug.’ Mama Thandeka placed the onions on the sink. ‘Remember to wash your dolls and tidy their clothes because there are only isine sleeps,’ with four fingers in the air, ‘before your mama comes home.’
She wanted to remain in the kitchen. The stove was warm and she loved to listen to Mama Thandeka sing while she cooked, and to hear her talk about months and the half moon and the month of July. The clicking words were like firecrackers at Christmas: beautiful. She didn’t feel like playing with her dolls; she’d have preferred to play in the tree house with the rope ladder her father had built in the cedar tree. There were cups and a teapot; curtains her mother had made. Pot holders, pots and pans. She pretended she was a member of the Women’s Agricultural Union. Sometimes she pretended the garden was her shop, and she picked leaves and flowers to make play-play asparagus quiche and cream puffs for tennis.
Or she played church with the bluebells from the garden. Mabel said bluebells were the church bells of fairies and elves; some people called them cup-and-saucer bells. She pretended they were real cups and saucers and poured Communion tea for the fairies and elves.
But she couldn’t play outside because it was raining.
She wished that Anthony hadn’t died so she could page through his school books. Or think of big words for him to look up in the dictionary. Like banana bread. Lollipop. Tennis ball. Drumstick. Firefly. She loved big words. Once he found the word, he had to show her what the letters looked like.
‘Anthony, how do you know it says “pumpkin fritters”?’
‘Because I can read.’ Then he used his pencil to point at the letters and said: ‘Pump-kin frit-ters. In two or three years’ time when you go to big school …’
‘I wish I could go to big school tomorrow …’
‘You have to wait until you’re six.’
His finger kept pointing at ‘pumpkin fritters’. ‘Teach me now, Anthony, please!’
‘No, it takes too long. Let me rather show you how to write your name.’
Except for the baby geese swimming in line behind their mother, she’d never seen anything lovelier. Her name. It was magic.
G E R T R U I D A H.
‘Show me every one of the letters with your pencil, Anthony, please?’
She slept with the paper underneath her pillow. Took it with her to the tree house. Read out the letters to Bamba, and to the pigeon nesting in the lemon tree. Mama Thandeka clapped her hands over her mouth in astonishment.
‘Heavens, Gertruidah, what a clever girl you are.’ Mama Thandeka gathered up a bundle of green beans. ‘Seems to me you take after your mother who loves her crossword puzzles so.’
One day she was sitting under the table in the breakfast nook, studying the piece of paper that had her name on it. One’s eyes soon grew accustomed to the semi-dark. She practised her name letters with her pencil crayons on typing paper she’d found in her father’s office. Then she heard her mother say to Mama Thandeka: ‘Gertruidah talks so much she drives me crazy. Sometimes I feel like sticking a piece of Elastoplast over her mouth. But she’s such a loving little girl, she never sulks or fusses …’
At night when story time ended she asked her mother what adult words meant – such as ‘loving’ and ‘passionate’ and ‘sulk’ and ‘subterfuge’ and ‘hysterectomy’ and ‘uterus’. Then her mother hugged her and told her she was too darling for words. What did ‘darling’ mean, she asked.
Anthony had to be dead. Dead forever, because he didn’t come home from school on weekends. His school bag and dictionary were gone from his bedroom. And her mother cried every day. She no longer sat at the dining-room table with her crossword puzzles. When she came back from the WAU conference in Cape Town, she got back into her bed, crying. And she would keep crying no matter how long her father sat on the side of the bed and rubbed her back. Even if he gave her tea or marshmallows, she wouldn’t stop.
She recalls hearing the rain on the roof while she arranged her dolls on the carpet. Mama Thandeka put her red coffee mug down on the carpet beside her.
The next thing she remembers is sitting between her father and Mama Thandeka in the front of the truck and watching the windscreen wipers sweep the raindrops away. They stopped outside Mama Thandeka’s house and watched her run to her front door through the rain.
The next thing she sees is her father walking to the kraal through the rain; he was wearing his wellingtons. While he milked, she rode her tricycle up and down the stoep.
Cape Town was at the furthest end of the stoep, around the corner where the wooden barrel with yellow and orange nasturtiums stood below her bedroom window. Her mother said nasturtiums were a garden’s little soldiers. ‘The round leaf is the soldier’s shield and the flower is his helmet, just like the soldiers in the Junior Bible. Mommy will plant them in the barrel outside your window, so they’ll be your little soldiers.’
The WAU conference was in Cape Town. She rode all the way to Cape Town to tell her mother Anthony was alive again and he said he’s hungry. Her mother said she must cut Anthony some of the gooseberry tart in the fridge.
Right by the stairs, in the middle of the stoep, was Hermanus where Grandpa Strydom used to live in the old people’s home by the sea. Grandpa Strydom was also dead. She didn’t know when he died and she couldn’t remember what he looked like. A long time ago he lived here on Umbrella Tree Farm in the room with the genet skin on the floor. His tobacco pouch and pipe and his gout bangle and false teeth were still at the old people’s home in Hermanus. She wanted to fetch them and take a few pockets of potatoes for the grandmas and granddads at the same time. Because of their false teeth they ate a lot of mash potatoes.
Heaven was at the far end of the stoep, near the garden table her mother won with a crossword puzzle. Anthony was a boy angel and she took his bucket and spade to him there where he was playing on the silver sand next to the silver river. Then Jesus grabbed his staff and jumped from his throne and shouted at her because she had entered through heaven’s gate before she was dead. The crown of thorns on his head scared her.
She raced back to Cape Town to hide with her mother. When she was riding past Hermanus as fast as she could go, she looked around to see if Jesus was chasing her. Then she had an accident and rode her tricycle down the stairs.
Her lip was bleeding and there were cuts on her hands and knees. What hurt the most was her petermouse, which knocked against the red bar of the tricycle on every step. It hurt so much, she thought it must have broken or burst. She couldn’t breathe. Then she caught her breath. The blood on her fingers had to come from her petermouse because her petermouse hurt more than her lip.
Through the tears she saw her father running towards her. He was calling: ‘Daddy’s coming, Truidah!’ The water splashed beneath his boots. He picked her up, cradled her head against his shoulder. ‘There, there, Daddy will make it better. Shhhh …’
One summer’s Friday one year after she’d finished school, she and Braham were in The Copper Kettle. The Christmas decorations irritated her. Quakers didn’t celebrate Christmas. The real truth was that she was longing to celebrate Christmas. She longed for a tree with presents and the scent of roses filling the church. She longed to sing ‘Oh come all ye faithful’ along with the congregation and to hear someone say: Merry Christmas, Gertruidah, and a Happy New Year. But no one could know it was what she longed for.
‘Come with me to the carol service on Sunday evening, Gertruidah!’
‘Not if you dragged me there. I even refused to go to Bible study in high school, remember?’
He laughed. ‘Please come, even if it’s just for the magic. One of the matrics is going to recite “A Nativity” by Kipling.’
She’d gone with him in the end. She would’ve stayed away had she known her father would be Joseph of Nazareth in the Nativity play, or how much the poetry recitation would upset her.
The babe was laid in the manger
Between the gentle kine
All safe from cold and danger
But it was not so with mine.
Her father sat on the edge of the bath and held her on his knee. When he ran the tap, it made her want to pee.
‘Come, Truidah, let Daddy rinse the blood from your little hands.’
‘I want to pee but my petermouse is broken …’
The water felt like tiny bees stinging her hand. ‘Daddy, can you fix my …’
‘There, there, Daddy is going to clean your lip with a piece of cottonwood. Shhh …’
He was her father. Her big strong father.
He could kill a kudu with a head shot from a .303. Take a ram by its horns and drag it to the slaughter. Clear an anthill in just one stride. Toss her in the air and catch her again without her getting scared. He could build a tree house and swim through a swollen river. He would know what would make the hurt go away.
He ran her bath and told her to call him once she was dry and in her pyjamas. Then he would come and read her a story. She didn’t wash herself; just sat in the bath because she was afraid the soap would sting her scraped knees. Got out and wrapped the towel around her because she was cold. Then she sat on her bed and waited until she thought she was dry before she called him.
She didn’t feel shy when he put on her pyjamas. She can still see the purple-blue ink from the wool stencil on his thumb when he buttoned up her pyjama top.
‘Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor,’ he said the buttons’ names. ‘Say the last two buttons with Daddy. Soldier, sailor … See, you’re going to marry a sailor one day, the buttons say so!’
He told her to sit on the edge of the bed and place one foot inside the leg of her pyjama pants.
‘I can’t, it’s too sore.’ The tears were back. Her sore lip talked funny. ‘It’s Jesus’ fault my petermouse is …’
‘There, there, it’s just four sleeps, then Mommy will be home. Then you and her and Mabel will pick snowdrops and sow zinnias for …’
The sobs became heavier until she was gasping for breath.
‘Lie back on the bed, Truidah, let Daddy have a look …’
Would things have turned out differently if her mother hadn’t gone to the conference? Or if her imagination hadn’t tricked her into thinking that Jesus was chasing her? Or if she’d never had a tricycle in the first place? Or if it hadn’t rained and she’d been able to play in the tree house?
Can your life turn on a knife’s edge in the second when you look over your shoulder at Hermanus, and slowly disintegrate? Can one second last twenty-two years? After twenty-two years can your degradation be so complete that when someone offers you a wild chestnut flower you crush it under your feet?
Yes, it can. She can testify to that.
Her father fetched the Vaseline from the medicine drawer. ‘Lie still, then Daddy will tell you the story of the Three Bears while I rub on Vaseline.’
She was lying across the bed and he lay down next to her.
‘Once upon a time there was a little girl with golden curly hair. Her name was Goldilocks. One day she got lost in the woods and couldn’t find her way home.’ With his right hand he rubbed in the Vaseline. It helped. ‘She knocked and knocked but there was nobody home.’ After a while her sobs subsided. ‘The porridge was too hot.’
When he got to the part about the baby bear’s porridge, it felt as if ants were walking across her bladder and between her legs. They weren’t biting; she could just feel the tickle of their tiny feet. She shivered even though she wasn’t cold.
‘The Mommy Bear’s bed was too soft.’
Her father must’ve forgotten a screwdriver in his pocket because the handle jiggled against her hip. It hurt. Her petermouse stung, but it wasn’t ordinary stinging.
Now he was rubbing faster, going round and round.
‘Then the Daddy Bear growled at Goldilocks: you naughty little girl, what are you doing?’
The screwdriver knocked against her hip. She felt her bladder contract. Her legs shot straight. It felt as if she was peeing through the soles of her feet.
‘And that’s how the story ends.’
Afterwards she couldn’t remember how she’d ended up under the duvet or whether he’d kissed her goodnight. She felt too weak to move.
Goldilocks has been running through the dark woods ever since.
Endlessly running, with no direction, no suitcase and no shoes.
An exhausting journey. Its only consolation was that she’d been little. Too little to realise Abel was big. And somewhere in Abel’s grown-up mind he’d forgotten how little she was.
She opens the teak door and walks down the passage to the kitchen. On the table is a grocery list and a pen. Phyllo pastry. Mint jelly. Caraway seeds. Rye bread. Cherry tomatoes. Blue cheese.
Sarah must have left it behind in the rush. It was customary for Abel to become angry and impatient before church on Sunday morning.
At one end of the table there’s a half-empty mug of stale coffee, a moth floating on its skin of mould. Abel’s sand-coloured mug. She was in primary school when she ordered it from the potter in town for his birthday. Umfama, the big boss, it said in dark blue ornamental letters on the side.
Why was no one but him allowed to drink from his mug? Why did he always say: If his umfama mug broke his heart would break too? Or once say in front of guests that coffee tasted best from the mug she’d given him because the ear was big enough for two fingers? Had he loved her in two different ways? Had he loved her at all?
So he never finished his final mug of coffee. The big umfama never made it to church.
She pulls out a chair, sits down and stares at the moth. Why is it up to her to deal with the mould? Did she drown in his mould like the moth? Out of the moth wings the letters of her full names seem to float into her head. She draws the grocery list and pen closer and starts scribbling on the back.
Honour her mother. Honour him too. His name is Cain; it is the rider’s name. The sins are his, the hurt is hers. It costs too much: the court resumes and the judgment is harsh.
Stop, please stop.
She crumples up the paper and shoves it into the mug. Coffee splashes onto the table. She wipes her fingers on her overalls and carries the mug onto the stoep where she tips the coffee and the moth and the paper out onto Sarah’s fuchsia plant. Drops of stale coffee run from its deep purple bells. She smashes the mug against the edge of the stoep wall and tosses the ear, through which Abel could fit two fingers, beside the ruined gypsy roses.
Back in the kitchen she glances at the red clock above the fridge. It’s twenty past eight. Where to begin? And why not right here, in the red, white and green kitchen?
Sarah had a kitchen with marble surfaces before any other woman in the district. White marble. Everything in the kitchen was white, red or green, from the curtains to the table mats and the soup ladle handle.
One day, when she was still in Aunt Margie’s playschool and Anthony was still alive, Gertruidah watched her mother prick watermelon rinds to make her prize-winning preserve and asked the riddle Anthony had taught her.
As green as grass
as white as snow
as red as blood
as good as gold.
‘I think I know this one … It’s a watermelon!’
‘Is not! It’s a watermelon kitchen!’
Her mother laughed and pinched her cheek, pretended she was going to stab her with the pricking needle. ‘I’ll tell you what, let’s call it a watermelon kitchen. Because it now looks like a watermelon to Mommy too.’
After Anthony died her mother lay in bed all day, crying. One day when she wanted her to stop crying she went to lie down beside her and asked her the riddle again.
‘I’m not in the mood for riddles,’ her mother said through a blocked nose. ‘It’s a watermelon, or a watermelon kitchen.’
‘Is not, it’s death. Guess why.’
Her mother sniffed. ‘Please, Gertruidah, run outside and play. I have a headache.’
‘It’s because Anthony got a green Springbok cap for his birthday, and his skin was white, and his blood was red, and he’s as good as gold with Jesus in heaven.’ She couldn’t understand why a play-play riddle made her mother cry so.
That evening when her father went to milk the cows he told her to come along and bring her little red mug, so she could have some of the warm milk. That was before she started hating milk, before her mother went away to the conference in Cape Town.
She shouldn’t talk about Anthony, her father said while he was milking, it made her mother sad. She shouldn’t talk about Anthony until Christmas.
She didn’t try again to stop her mother’s crying after that. She didn’t know how long it was until Christmas and she was afraid another play-play thing about Anthony might slip out and make her mother even sadder.
Before she gets started on the kitchen, she wants to shower.
Her last bath had been in the mountain pool on Tuesday. The soap sliver on the rock had been tiny, the water icy.
Did Abel shower before he left for church? Or did he take something of her to his grave? How do undertakers wash a dead body? Is it true the brain is removed during an autopsy and then swells up so it can’t fit back inside the skull? Do they just sew it back inside the stomach cavity and bury you with an empty skull?
