Thula-Thula (English Edition), page 9
Did Abel and Sarah go to hell with no brains?
She checks the thought.
Slowly, as though scared she might find Abel sitting on her bed, she opens the door to her bedroom. The smell of vomit greets her in the doorway.
There was no tennis the Saturday before they died. The tennis club was playing a league match in a neighbouring town and league days were rest days for Umbrella Tree Farm’s courts and Sarah’s ovens. When Abel took out the brandy before lunch she knew from experience that this would be a day and a night inside the gates of hell. Not just for her, for her mother too.
On brandy days Sarah wasn’t just Sarah, she was her mother. As much as she pitied her when Abel got drunk and humiliated her, there were times when her mother made her proud. The only time her mother stood up to him was when he was drunk. But because he didn’t get drunk often, her mother’s opportunities for retribution were few.
The brandy kicked in during lunch on Saturday and Abel went into battle. It began with growing up without a mother and the love he’d so bitterly longed for and lacked his entire life. Grandpa Strydom was next. How proud he’d been that his son was a recce. That it was Sarah who’d made his father leave the farm to die in a old-age home in Hermanus. The wedge she’d always tried to drive between them.
He slammed his knife handle into the table. ‘It was you, Sarah, you who made my father …’
‘No, Abel, you’re the one who booked his place in the old-age home after you got it into your head he was going to remarry! You carted him off to the home, not me!’
‘That’s a lie, Sarah …’
‘If you wanted him here so badly why did he go?’
‘It was your constant nagging about the piss-pot in his room and his terrible table manners …’
By the time they had coffee her mother had started to reproach him about Anthony’s death.
She lay on her bed reading, detached, because she knew every nuance of every fight. At around seven o’clock Abel crashed into the half-moon table in the passage, knocking the family Bible, visitors’ book and Grandpa Strydom’s portrait onto the floor. He picked it up and shuffled past her bedroom door, the portrait clasped to his chest. Grumbled something about his swollen feet and working himself to the bone for his ungrateful family.
‘Come sit in the kitchen in the Morris chair,’ she heard her mother say, too sweetly. ‘Then I’ll massage your feet. You deserve it. I can’t think where we would be without you.’
When Sarah behaved in this bizarre way she was convinced her mother had also mastered the art of leaving her body to become someone else. Hansel and Gretel’s witch, for instance, or perhaps the wolf who ate the seven goats.
When she went to the kitchen to get coffee she found Abel slumped in the Morris chair, three-quarters asleep; the portrait lay on his chest, his feet rested on an old towel. Her mother was sitting on the kitchen floor. She was wearing rubber gloves and painting his feet with a ball of cotton soaked in green food colouring.
‘You’ll see, Abel,’ she coaxed, ‘green Amara will make the swelling go down in an hour.’
Then her mother wrapped the green feet in cabbage leaves, and tied them up with red florist’s ribbon. Abel’s head drooped; his lips quivered as he snored. She caught her mother’s eye and for an instant their shared disgust made a bond between them. They ran out the back door so he wouldn’t hear them laughing. But no sooner had they started laughing than her mother had to make a dash for the toilet.
Shattered, the intimate moment.
On her way back to her bedroom she picked up the half-moon table and replaced the family Bible and visitors’ book. It wasn’t long before she heard something fall in the kitchen. Grandpa Strydom’s portrait. Then she heard the fridge door slam. A loud bang. Ice cubes clattering in the sink.
Was he never going to stop drinking tonight?
She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when he shuffled past her bedroom door again, in his cabbage leaf shoes. Pants sagging. Shirt untucked. A brandy glass in one hand, Grandpa Strydom’s portrait in the other. And would you believe it, he toppled the half-moon table again. Refusing to let go of the glass or the portrait, he crashed face first onto the yellowwood floor.
She closed her bedroom door. This she didn’t want to see. Because he was her father.
And yet she hated him. Because he was Abel.
Minutes after the clock in the passage struck midnight, her doorknob turned. A room with no key. Keyless Gertruidah denied the right to decide what was good for her.
He struggled with the door because she’d wedged a shoe underneath it even though she knew it wouldn’t keep him out. The cabbage leaves flapped around his feet. He was piteously drunk. Halfway across the room he tripped over the wastepaper basket she’d placed there on purpose, and crashed to the floor. Crawled the rest of the way to her bed.
‘Put your arms around me and give me a goodnight kiss.’ She turned her face away from the alcohol fumes. ‘A long one, with your tongue.’ She backed away. ‘I said: give me a long, wet …’
She couldn’t. His fist crashed into her ribs, making her gasp. So he wasn’t too drunk for that. He punched her again. Shivering she reached for his shoulders; leaned forward, repulsed.
Then she slipped away and became an innocent little girl playing in the wood with her golden ball.
Once upon a time there was a king who had a beautiful little daughter. Near the king’s palace there was a big forest and there, beneath a linden tree, was a well. On some days the princess sat on the rim of the well and played with her lovely golden ball, tossing it up and catching it in her little hands. One day when the princess tossed her golden ball into the air, she failed to catch it. The ball bounced on the rim of the well and dropped into the water down below …
Why did she always have to unfasten his belt?
When the golden ball was gone, the princess cried and cried and couldn’t stop. Then she heard a voice behind her. ‘What is the matter, Princess? I could hear you crying all the way at the bottom of the well.’
She mustn’t cry. If she cried, he slapped her.
She looked down and saw a frog stretch his slimy head out of the water. ‘Stop crying,’ he said, ‘I will help you. But what will you give me if I bring back your golden ball to you?’
‘Anything you wish for, dear Frog!’ the princess said happily. ‘I’ll give you my pearls and my golden princess crown and everything that’s precious to me.’
Abel took it all from her, shamelessly, years ago.
‘I don’t want them,’ the frog said. ‘What I want is for you to love me and be my companion. I want to eat with you from your golden plate, drink from your golden cup and sleep with you in your little bed. If you promise me all that, then I’ll go down to the bottom of the well and return your golden ball.’
‘Oh yes, Frog, I promise,’ the princess said.
The frog disappeared into the well. He soon came up again, holding the golden ball in his mouth, and spat it out onto the grass. The princess was overjoyed. She picked up her beloved golden ball and ran back to the palace.
Umbrella Tree Farm was her palace. And her well.
‘Wait for me!’ the frog croaked. ‘I can’t run that fast!’ But the little princess hurried away.
Where to? For how much longer?
The next day while the princess was eating dinner with the king, the frog came plish, plosh up the palace stairs. He knocked on the door and cried: ‘Princess, open the door, let me come inside!’
When the princess opened the door and saw the frog she was terrified and ran back to the royal table. The king saw she was frightened and asked: ‘What are you afraid of, my child? Is there a giant at the door that wants to carry you away?’
‘No, Father, it’s a frog. Yesterday when I was playing with my golden ball at the well it fell …’
Playing has never meant the same thing to her as it did to other children. The only game she knew was building words and sentences. The more she built, the longer she could remain someone else.
While the princess was telling the king about her promise, the frog knocked again and said: ‘Daughter of the king, do you remember your promise yesterday at the well?’
The king said: ‘If we make promises we must keep them. Open the door and let the frog come inside.’
Because the king insisted …
She didn’t want to. But he grabbed her head and forced it downward. Used his thumb and middle finger to force her jaw open. Her lips were covered in slime.
‘Push your golden plate a little closer so we can eat together,’ the frog said.
The princess couldn’t swallow her food. It felt as if a greasy potato was sliding up and down her throat. She threw up but the vomit got stuck behind the potato. When the frog had eaten enough, he said: ‘Now pick me up and carry me to your bed so we can go to sleep.’
The princess cried and cried. She didn’t want a slimy frog beside her in her bed. But the king was adamant. ‘My child, never despise anyone who helped you when you were in trouble.’
No one had helped her. She’d hoped that Braham would.
With a shudder the princess picked up the frog and carried him to a corner of her room. But while she lay in bed, he plopped closer. ‘I want to sleep in your bed. Pick me up or I shall tell the king.’
The king had known for ages, and so had the queen.
At this the princess became furious and threw the frog against the wall. ‘You disgusting frog!’
When the frog hit the wall he turned into a handsome young prince. Then the prince became her husband, as the king had ordered. They fell asleep and lived happily ever after.
When the frog turned into a prince for the third time, Abel became a drunken, unconscious weight on top of her. Then he threw up on her pillow. Lukewarm vomit splashed against her cheek and in her hair.
Gertruidah reared at the dirt.
She rolled him off her. His slack body hit the floor. She switched on the light and used her nail scissors to cut the florist’s ribbon. Dragged him by his ankles into the passage. She arranged the cabbage leaves and red ribbon on his face.
Then she stayed in the shower for a long time. Regret tired her. The harder her heart, the greater her rage at the rider. Gertruidah gritted her teeth.
Deodorant, powder, clean pyjamas. Pillow and blankets from her white linen cupboard. She made a bed inside her white bath. A cradle for an adult.
Please let him die before she kills him.
When the police knocked on the door it was ten minutes to ten: the hands on her watch were perfectly aligned.
The rider dead. Did Gertruidah hide the truth? Ah, Gertruidah guarded her heart.
She turned away from them so they wouldn’t read the relief on her face.
She’ll get rid of the vomit first and then shower.
She tosses the pillows and bed linen aside. There are stains on the double mattress. Blood stains. Urine stains. Frog prince stains. There’s no way she’ll ever sleep on the mattress again. And while she stares at it something inside her soul declares war on the last twenty-two years.
She drags the mattress down the passage and tosses it over the stoep wall. She doesn’t care that it lands on Sarah’s rosemary bush. A milkweed butterfly flutters out of the torn rosemary. Sarah loved plants that attracted bees, birds and butterflies. Mabel was right: she’d refused to let her mother teach her. It’s impossible to learn anything from someone you hate because hatred makes you deaf, and dumb.
‘My mother has sent another box with home-made buttermilk rusks,’ Braham said one Friday in The Copper Kettle. ‘She’s always sending something. When I tell her it isn’t necessary, she says …’
She barely heard him. In her mind she was laying down prickly-pear leaves on the slope behind the stone house.
The more prickly-pear trees, the more inaccessible the area. A month earlier she’d gone to the stone house to hide the money she’d got for a Bonsmara cow inside the cake tin. The day she made her escape, whether to Avignon or the Sahara Desert, she wouldn’t have to beg Abel for money. She would simply disappear, without a trace.
She stayed at the stone house for two days, nursing her rage against Sarah.
‘Your father says he hears you’re in The Copper Kettle with Mr Fourie every Friday. Gertruidah, you’re barely out of school.’
‘His name is Braham, Ma. And you forget I was twenty by the time I finished school. I’m twenty one now and I can make my own …’
‘It isn’t proper. You must have respect for your teachers. What will people say if …’
‘What will people say, that’s all you worry about. Like when Pa made me pregnant …’
‘Watch your mouth, Gertruidah! Don’t you dare accuse your father of something he didn’t do! It’s one thing for you to go whoring around but to blame him …’
‘Rather than call me a whore, Ma, why don’t you come see what goes on in my bedroom when you’re alone in your bed at night?’
‘You’re sick, Gertruidah! You want attention, that’s all! And the day will come when your father and I will have to pay for your lies!’
She could feel the rage throbbing in her temples. ‘I hate you.’ She turned and walked away.
Her mother voice followed her: ‘And what makes you think you deserve my love, you bloody little liar!’
She escaped to the stone house to calm down.
While she was warming her back against the sun-baked wall, she heard someone sing. ‘Fighting soldiers from the sky; fearless men who jump and die …’ Abel. Inspecting the boundary fences on foot and pretending he was still a recce. She crawled inside and drew the canvas across the opening. Peering out, she watched him walk past the turn-off. She had to plant more prickly-pear trees to cordon off her hiding place.
‘Gertruidah, you’re not hearing a word I’m saying. I said I want to go plant a lemon tree outside my mother’s bedroom window this Easter and I want to take you with me. Will you come?’
‘No. My mother says it isn’t proper, me sitting here with you. According to her I’m already a whore. Imagine what she’d call me if I came with you …’
‘You? A whore?’
‘Forget it. My mother and I don’t see eye to eye. In fact, Braham, I despise her.’
Two years later she finally went home with him for the Easter weekend. On the way there he told her about his mother. Crippled by multiple sclerosis, she’d been bedridden since he was a boy. The thought scared her: she didn’t like beds or bedrooms.
‘She has a full-time minder during the day and at night my dad looks after her.’
That frightened her even more. A man to watch over her all night long? What about a full bladder? Being bedridden meant you were forced to stay in one place, with no chance of escaping to the stone house.
But her fears soon vanished. It was her first time in a house with almost no material wealth but one that was filled with love. She was amazed by the gentle way Braham and his father spoke to each other. And the way he picked up his mother when the moon came out on Friday night and placed her in the wheelchair.
‘Gertruidah and I are going to show you the full moon, Ma.’
‘Thank you, my child, you know how your Ma loves the moon.’
In the afternoons he sat by her bed reading poetry or helping her with a crossword puzzle. They ate cheese sandwiches and pumpkin soup. His mother smelt of rose powder and Dove soap. On Easter Sunday everyone went to church. When the congregation sang the Easter hymn ‘Come let us with our Lord arise’, she felt a lump in her throat. She recalled seeing her father cry in church a long time ago; she could feel the rough fabric of his Sunday suit against her cheek. The palm cross. Bobby socks.
For five days she experienced a household that was not dysfunctional. Saw the difference between a bedridden mother and Sarah lying in her bed. And started finally to trust Braham, and to believe he could teach her to fly.
To Avignon.
And back.
The scent of rosemary fills the air. The butterfly disappears in the clump of dragon trees growing beneath the cedar tree.
Gone, gone.
Why had she never spread her wings to fly away from Umbrella Tree Farm? To a different school. University. Even working and living in town would’ve been an escape.
Why hadn’t she flown to the shelter Braham offered her?
Because they’d tried to convince her she didn’t have wings.
Until eventually she believed it too.
The only person in the town who could see her wings was Mr Williston in the town library. Sitting in her stone house she often imagined he was her father. Hours of blissful dreaming.
While she was pregnant and everyone in town thought she’d gone to East London for a shoulder operation, Mr Williston moved away. No one could tell her where he’d gone. She’s still troubled by the knowledge that she never thanked him for lending her a pair of wings.
Small wings, for short flights.
Better than nothing.
The sheets and pillows with their crust of vomit land on top of the mattress. Back in the bedroom she turns the bed base on its side and slides it along the smooth wooden floor towards the stoep. Raises one end and jiggles it onto the stoep wall. Then a big shove. One corner crashes into the creeping Jennies, then it tips slowly onto Sarah’s sacred York and Lancaster rose. Sarah used to say that when this pink rose with its sweet, sharp scent was in bloom, it meant a war was coming.
Now her war was here.
She drinks from the tap at the water tank. It’s a pity about the coffee.
Goes back inside.
Out goes the white cane chair. It’s light and travels a long way. Out goes the buckskin where his feet had stood. She fetches a broom to lever the curtain rods off their brackets. Rods, drapes and wooden rings clatter onto the floor. Out, all of it, it’s all tainted with his breath. From all the times she had to open the curtains so he could look at her in the moonlight. Stand this way, sit that way, bend over like this.
