Across the blue kitchen table, Patrick stared at his wife. Grace held her breath. In those few brief sentences lay a world of potential hurt, a number of triggers to a range of explosions. He could be mad that she’d employed someone, spending his money, without asking. The mask of suspicion could settle over his face and he could accuse her of something with the boy. He could twist her words about trying to get a job into a slight, directed at his last six-month stint of unemployment, now thankfully over. He could take it as a dig at him for not doing the man’s work of cleaning the yard. Grace looked down into her chicken curry, her appetite gone. She scraped bits of meat around in the rich, fragrant sauce, praying for this cup to pass.
When they came Patrick’s words were low, filled with a building malice.
“I thought he was dirty, one of the rats. Not to be trusted.”
Mary wilted. She had contradicted herself, and Patrick was seizing the gap between her stated stance and her actions today. More grievously, she had made a decision concerning the house and their lives without consulting him. Grace started silently to curse her mother. She should really know better by now than to do such things.
“Well, I thought it would be good, Patrick….”
“You thought, Mary?”
A crooked sneer contorted his face. Mary stiffened and placed her fork on her plate. His words were a direct challenge, a test of his dominion which she would have to pass in order for any of them to have the long, looming night be a peaceful one. Grace’s silent prayers turned into a chant. Let it go, Mama, just let it go.
“I’m sorry, Patrick. I should have waited for you. I just thought, better than being idle…. The devil finds work….” Her voice trailed off.
Grace fixated on her plate, sliding rice onto her fork without making any scraping noises. She had gotten a hiding for that before. Relief washed over her. Thank God Mary was making an effort to sound contrite.
“I’m really sorry, Patrick….” Her voice was tinged with desperation.
It struck the right note. Patrick sighed, nodded knowingly, and continued to eat his curry. The rest of the meal passed in silence.
After Grace cleared the supper dishes, Patrick went outside the back door to inspect Johnny’s handiwork. He stayed out there for a long time, and when he returned, he leaned over the bottom half of the split back door, sun-kissed and smiling.
“The boy did a good job, Mary. We should let him come again.”
Mary turned from the sink, smiled, and nodded. She had won his approval, had done something good. And there he was, smiling at her now, the light of love in his eyes reserved just for her. She had done something right and he’d seen it, acknowledged it. Mary blushed. Grace rolled her eyes. Her mother was too easy sometimes. Leaning across the door with a cigarette dangling from his lips, Patrick bantered and flirted with Mary as she and her mother finished the dishes. Buoyed by his mood, mother and daughter relaxed. The walls around them expanded a little, the house let out a sigh; the evening became lighter, and soon jokes were flying while Patrick, glowing, made the embers of the dying sun linger for a touch longer than usual. He called them his girls. This was the father Grace loved, the husband Mary adored. This Patrick was why she could not leave.
As he leaned over the bottom half of the door, it struck Grace again how handsome her father was when he smiled like this, how much she loved looking at the dark, smooth skin, the even features, and the strong jaw sprouting day-old stubble. He came inside, strode over to Mary, and scooped her into a firm embrace as she giggled coyly. On evenings like that, when the tensions between them ebbed away, life tasted sweet like the overripe peaches hanging from the tree in their back yard.
Johnny worked his way into the De Leeuws’ lives, quickly becoming a fixture. At first he appeared once a week with his bare, cracked feet and downcast look, waiting patiently for Mary to issue instructions. Then he’d set to work, methodically making his way through the back yard, pruning, weeding, and watering in silent concentration. He never asked for anything. He was content to do his work, shuffle to their back door when it was done and, always keeping his eyes to the floor, stretch out his palms to receive his fifty cents. So much like a beggar, Mary had mused aloud. She wondered if Johnny felt her mother’s disdain. As the weeks gave way to months, his visits to their house became more frequent. Grace watched her mother soften toward the boy.
“He’s not like all the others next door,” Grace overheard her saying down the line to Aunty Joan. “His clothes are always clean; his mouth too. He doesn’t swear or talk back, and he knows his place. Works hard.”
This tenderness bemused Grace. It wasn’t done for people like hers, the De Leeuws, to mix with people like them: country bumpkins, coloureds from the farms who didn’t speak English, who didn’t even own shoes. Mary had always prided herself on the shoes they all owned and maintained, despite the scarcity of money. You judge a man by his shoes, she was fond of saying. But Johnny loosened something in her, and Grace watched with amazement as Mary’s rigid rules about who was fit company for whom relaxed. On days when she arrived home early enough, she made the boy sandwiches while cooking supper. For Mary, this was a generous gesture, bold even. Although he was only a boy of thirteen, it still wasn’t appropriate for him to come inside the house, so it fell to Grace to serve her mother’s culinary gifts to Johnny in the back yard.
At first he’d say thank you and leave the food untouched until Grace went back inside, but as weeks passed, Grace began to linger in silence, sitting somewhere close to him but never making eye contact, tracing figures in the sand under some tree, or reacquainting soft fingers with steely blades of grass. At first Johnny ignored her, but one day, overcome with hunger, he could no longer play the game. He picked up the plate of sandwiches, moved under the shade of the apple tree, and crouched down on his haunches as he bit into the cheese and tomato snack. Grace watched him slyly. He closed his eyes for a few brief seconds after the first bite, then slowly devoured the food in giant bites, not once pausing to look up or around. Nothing else existed in the few seconds it took Johnny to eat the sandwich. When he was done, not a crumb was left. He got up and offered Grace the empty plate with a muted thank you. Grace stayed outside longer and longer on these errands to take Johnny his late lunch. Careful not to interrupt his culinary reverie—his pleasure in food seemed almost holy—Grace waited and waited until one day she was brave enough to ask him a question. Did he like school? His answer was curt, but once the ice had been broken their chats lengthened, becoming a ritual to which they both looked forward. By now, Johnny was doing yard work three times a week; for Grace, they were the best days of the week.
Patrick took a shine to Johnny too. He got into the habit of stopping to chat with the boy when he arrived home from work, demonstrating this technique for pruning a bush or that way of softening a hard patch of earth. Some nights he lingered for up to half an hour before stepping inside to take off his work overalls, smoking one cigarette after the other as he talked to the boy. On these nights, Grace brooded behind the lace curtains, watching with an odd mix of repulsion and delight, as the man and boy unfolded toward each other. They were similar in stature. Both were muscular, but where Patrick was compact, Johnny had a leanness that belied his physical strength. At thirteen, Johnny was nudging past Patrick in height. Both had deep brown skin, polished to a high gloss. Johnny’s manner remained deferential; most often his eyes stayed on the ground as a sign of respect to the older man. In turn, Patrick’s stiff, pent-up manner relaxed with each encounter. Each time they spoke, he moved a little closer, gestured a bit larger, stayed outside a bit later with Johnny. From her spot behind the lace curtain Grace watched them, thrilled at first by their closeness and witnessing the firm affection she’d develop for Johnny transfer to her father.
Until Johnny, Grace and Patrick had had few things in common. She stayed out of his way, speaking only when spoken to, waiting for him to talk to her, ask her about school, her friends. When she was y
ounger he’d tell her stories—wonderful, phantasmagorical tales of animals who talked and commandeered their own ships out at sea; his swims as a young man out to Seal Island; his encounters with great white sharks. There were walks in the green swathe of land between the airport and their house where they picked flowers, examined chameleons, pulled out long reeds and sucked on their sweet, white ends. But as she grew older, Grace could not hold her father’s attention. Whatever demons lived in him started turning on her too, with increasing venom, and she slipped from his affection and he from hers. She could tell when he was drunk, at first by smelling his breath, later on by mere sight of the eerie, veiled glow that enlivened his eyes when he’d had too much. She had come to anticipate the inevitable violence that would follow most bouts of drinking. She learned to steer clear, become invisible. In that state, the very sight of her could set Patrick off.
“You!” he would scream. “Why you? Why not my son?”
This rant, unfathomable to Grace, was often the trigger to violence. Grace was an occasional target for beatings, but the full might of his blows were reserved for Mary. Grace never witnessed them. Even in supreme states of drunkenness, Patrick made sure that no one saw, not even Grace, who followed Mary around like a puppy, and who found the bouts of violence all the more terrifying for hearing but not being able to see them.
The sounds of her father’s fists landing on Mary paralyzed Grace, while Mary’s screams were an agony ripping through her chest. What was he doing to her? Where was he hitting? She heard every note of this warped symphony play out in grotesque detail. First Mary’s plea—“Please no, please don’t”—his voice raised, his fist striking flesh. A fresh cry from Mary, another and yet another blow. Violent, electrifying. Charging the air. A thud. Her head against the cupboard, or his body against the door? A crash. Perhaps a table falling or a chair hitting the floor after imprinting itself onto Mary’s body? Silence. Then a series of pathetic sobs, the sound of a soul breaking, and after that a fading into nothingness. Snoring. Her mother venturing to move, creeping out of the room. Water running in the bathroom. Mary’s footsteps at Grace’s bedroom door; her body slipping gingerly in beside Grace’s rigid one. Grace regulating her breathing, pretending to be asleep, pretending not to have heard.
On nights Patrick wasn’t home, Mary drew the night around them like a soft, velvet cloak. Huddled together under the covers of her queen-size bed, she plucked stars out of the sky and spread them before Grace in a glittering private feast: the daintiest chocolate squares squirreled away for such occasions; candied oranges dipped in chocolate; toast triangles, crusts removed, topped with slivered avocado; sweet, milky tea in fine china cups, warmed milk frothing against dainty rims. Decadent treats, hidden from him during the days and nights he was present, brought out on lace-covered trays on nights he forgot about Grace and Mary and found the lure of drink and women stronger than the need to be home. It was part of the warped economy of the house. They could not afford to paint the outside, but locked away inside was the best china Mary’s money could buy. No one had money to fix the sagging gutters or broken bathroom window, which was papered over with plastic, and yet on Friday when she got her pay packet, Mary brought home tinned oysters and fine chocolate. On nights she laid out these feasts they gorged on treats while Mary threw her own personal handfuls of stars—her stories—back into the breathless sky. There was something about the dark intimacy of night, the drawing of curtains and the warmth of a bedside light that made Mary come alive. Her voice became low and seductive, her eyes sparkled, her pinned hair came cascading down her shoulders, free, as she regaled Grace with tales of her childhood.
“Did I tell you about that time, I was about your age…?”
“No, Mama, you didn’t,” Grace would lie. “Tell me now.”
“Well, I had already discovered boys. I wasn’t shy like you. Now one boy in particular had his eye on my friend, or so we thought. But all the time, it was really me he was after. And one day, there he was, standing outside our door early one morning, waiting for me with a bunch of flowers in his hands, picked from the neighbors’ gardens. Can you imagine the sight? Lovelorn, he was, completely silly-eyed!” The pleasure of recollection brought a smile to her face. She smiled coquettishly, as if flirting with Grace.
Stories like these made Grace feel inadequate, like a colorless, watered down copy of her mother. Suitors were not exactly lining up outside their door for her. There were other stories, too, not of Mary’s legendary beauty or the folly it inspired. These were about the priceless trove of oil paints that had been bequeathed to Mary by the white madam of a neighbor, how each fat tube had contained an entire universe of color. Mary had sat with them for hours at first, just taking them in, getting to know them. Then she had worked up the nerve to shoplift a set of brushes at an art supply shop in the city and scavenged some leftover rolls of paper outside a paper warehouse. All by herself, she had learned the properties of the oils applied in different strokes, with different sized brushes, and had moved on to mixing them to form new colors. With her paints and brushes Mary had created entire worlds, private worlds of delight born out of nothing but her imagination.
“What happened to your paintings?” Grace asked one night.
“He threw them out, my father. Told me to stop wasting time with such silly nonsense.”
“But why?”
“He wanted me to learn something useful, something that would make a good job until I found a husband.”
They’d giggle at the mention of said husband. Things hadn’t worked out the way Mary’s father had planned.
“Why don’t we do that now? Paint?” Grace tried.
And Mary would exhale the wordless sigh of a woman who had surrendered her dreams to the world too soon.
On Patrick’s absent nights, Mary’s stories could entertain Grace for only so long. On these nights, there would come the inevitable hour when silence dropped over the house, and they pricked their ears for his footstep long before his key turned in the front door lock. When stories dried up and treats were gobbled, Grace would be dispatched to bed, lights out. Mary would wait in the bedroom, not yet asleep, since that, too, could trigger his fury no matter how neat the house or how warm the supper.
Sometimes their preemptive measures were enough, and he would fall asleep after wolfing down some food. At other times, seeking an outlet for his rage, Patrick would stumble into Grace’s room, wake her on the pretext of her not having completed this or that chore, and scold her: for being lazy, for being careless, for being awake, for being alive, for daring to live when his precious firstborn son could not. As if her coming was something she had planned, as if it had taken up the very air her dead brother was meant to breathe. On those nights, Grace was the valve Patrick needed to let off the bitter steam of grief and rage. And once he had awoken his fury, he would take it into the next room and vent it upon Mary.
He apologized the next day, every time, blaming his violence on drink. But sober, too, he could be violent, though in a much more controlled way. Grace learned to stay out of his way then as well, perfecting the calculus of being present in a room without having that presence felt, of speaking without being heard, of living without interrupting the threadbare cloak of respectability Mary stitched out of nothing to hang around her family. Father and daughter became strangers. Grace stayed out of his way; hated him. And yet, she yearned for him and the love he had once shown and that still lingered in her memory. She longed for him to pick her up and embrace her, even though she was too big for all of that now. She wished for the times when he would hold her hand when they crossed a street. She longed for another extravagant story. She wanted him to lean into her when he spoke, the way she now saw him leaning in toward Johnny as she watched them through the window as the light faded.
Patrick rested his hand on Johnny’s shoulder and something ripped inside of her. In that instant, she hated Johnny; wanted him to get away from her family and out of her life. Why had they ever
let him in? They had been fine, just the three of them, even with their problems. At least her parents had been hers and hers only. Grace went to bed nursing horrible thoughts, hating both Johnny and her father, who seemed especially cheerful when he finally came inside that night.
She could never hold a grudge against Johnny for too long, though. The next time she saw him, he smiled as he held a peach out to her, the best one from the tree. His shy smile melted her, and soon she was laughing and teasing. Johnny pulled her braids, pretending to sweep her feet with the yard broom. They sat down under the plum tree, and looking at his open lovely face, still childish but revealing the features of the man he’d become, Grace forgave her father for loving Johnny. Who wouldn’t love him, this Johnny? She realized then, with an unfamiliar tremble, that what she felt for him was love; that she thought of him as hers. Her Johnny, now gone.
It was well after midnight and people were still coming and going next door. Johnny must not be home yet. The smell of petrol clung to the air, and the night sky held an unnatural orange glow, which meant the fires the students had lit earlier in the day were still burning.
Grace was looking at the troubled sky when a figure took shape outside her bedroom window. Petrified, she froze, unable to scream. A man was creeping toward her. A soldier—coming to finish the work of today. One of those who were at the school and who had taken Johnny away, had teargassed them and shot everyone. Grace felt certain she was about to die, in her bed, the one place that was supposed to be safe. The figure grew larger as it came closer. A hand reached out. Grace found her voice and unleashed a siren-like, unearthly scream at the same time as the features of the shadow figure came into focus. It was her father.
Unmaking Grace Page 5