by Zakes Mda
The morning after Christmas Eve Rachel is still locked in her room. On Christmas Day Nana Moira went to the Centre to clean up and found Jason waiting at the door, shivering in the cold. They talked about Rachel only when she wanted to know why she left her car at the Centre and how she got home.
“Maybe she was too wasted to drive,” said Jason. “Maybe somebody gave her a ride home.”
Nana Moira left it at that.
When Rachel was certain that her grandma had left, she went out of her room to the bathroom and took a long shower. She scrubbed her body with an exfoliating sponge over and over again. She didn’t care that it was adding to the pain. All she wanted was to remove the filth from her body.
When Nana Moira returned she had locked herself in her room again. Nana Moira was with Jason and they both knocked at her door, asking her to come out.
“Jason wanna talk to you, Rachel, open the door,” said Nana Moira. “Whatever you two quarrelled about it’s better to talk than lock yourself in your room like a spoilt brat.”
“I’ve brought you Christmas lunch, Rache,” said Jason. “I drove to Athens and got you a nice Christmas lunch from Applebee’s. You gonna like it, Rache.”
The voice sent Rachel retching, especially the “Rache” part. She would never want anyone to call her that again. She covered her head with a comforter, but the voices at her door continued. Until finally they gave up.
That night Nana Moira was too tired to wake up to find out what was happening when she heard Rachel running the shower even though it was after midnight. She wondered why she ran it for such a long time, but fell asleep before she could muster the strength to wake up and investigate.
Again this morning Rachel has not left her room, except to take a shower. She has not touched the Applebee’s food. She has not eaten anything second day running. She has decided that’s the best way to kill herself: just stop eating. But she will die clean. She sneaks back into the bathroom and takes another shower. And another. After every few minutes, a shower. She needs to take as many of them as possible because when Nana Moira returns from the Centre she won’t be able to go for another one. Until after midnight when she is certain that Nana Moira is asleep. So while she is away she scrubs her body incessantly. She does not spare the wounded vagina. Despite the pain she scrubs it, and she scrubs the wounded soles of her feet. She weeps at the piercing pain, but does not stop scrubbing.
After almost a week Rachel has not eaten and Nana Moira cannot get through to her. She swallows her pride. “I’m gonna get that floozie Schuyler to talk to her.”
5
She won’t open even for her best friend. Schuyler pounds on the door with her fist, calling her name. Rachel does not respond. Nana Moira paces the floor behind Schuyler. Schuyler has never seen Nana Moira displaying any sign of nervousness before. She has always been as tough as a crowbar and nothing could faze her, until now. Schuyler does not give a rat’s behind for her because of all the names Nana Moira has called her in an attempt to break her friendship with Rachel. She was therefore surprised when she saw Nana Moira’s GMC Suburban in her driveway. Though she was waiting for an instructor who was going to teach her how to drive her pick-up van – newly modified with adaptive devices – she did not hesitate to postpone the lesson. She got into Nana Moira’s vehicle and they sped to Jensen Township.
“Can you hear me, Rache?” asks Schuyler. There is no response.
Rachel can hear her all right. She is coiled into a foetal position under the comforter, whimpering, with Blue in her arms and a pillow over her face in a futile attempt to shut out the annoying sounds. She retches at “Rache”.
“Rachel, please don’t be like this,” says Schuyler. She would be saying “don’t be an asshole” if Nana Moira were not here. She would be ferreting her out with a slew of cusswords as only a close friend can. But she is a girl from the hills and was raised to respect old age even when it does not respect itself.
“I’m not going anywhere, Rachel,” she says. “I’m gonna sit here till you open.”
And indeed she pulls up a chair and sits right in front of the door. For a while Nana Moira does not know what to do with herself, and Schuyler ignores her. But later Nana Moira decides to go get busy at the Centre.
The clock ticks slowly for Schuyler. She should have brought a magazine to read. Occasionally she reminds her friend, “I’m still here, Rachel.” She switches on the television. Though she cannot see the screen from where she is sitting she will follow from the audio the daytime drivel of lovers caught cheating and being chased down the streets of American cities with cameras.
At the Centre Jason is sitting at the table, silently staring at the floor. The quilting women tease him: how come he has not mopped the floor since Christmas Eve? But he does not respond. Does not participate in any of their banter either, which is quite unusual. They try to find out if he is not feeling well. He responds curtly that he is fine. As soon as he hears Nana Moira’s GMC Suburban park outside he rushes out to meet her.
“How’s Rachel? What’s she say is her problem?”
“She don’t talk to nobody, not even to Schuyler.”
Nana Moira stings Jason with her eyes, and demands that he tells her what happened between them. He fidgets. His eyes dart from one place to another, and then rest on the concrete paving. Not once do they even try to work their way up to Nana Moira’s face.
“Why you think it’s got to do with me, Nana Moira?”
“’Cause I’m a grown-ass woman, my boy. You was with her on Christmas Eve all by yourself when everbody else was gone. You left with her and Schuyler. She tell me you dropped her at her house and drove away. So, what did you and Rachel get up to?”
Jason realises that his shifty eyes render him suspect. He attempts to re-establish eye contact with Nana Moira. But he cannot outstare her, so his eyes seek refuge on the paving again.
“Okay, I’m gonna fess up,” he says. “Me and Rachel, we got wasted and high and did stuff we shouldn’t of done.”
“So you turned my Centre into a whorehouse? That doesn’t account for the awful bad state she’s in right now.”
“We quarrelled afterwards,” says Jason.
It was all about Skye Riley. Now that they had consummated their relationship he felt entitled to express his objection to her liaison with the coal miner from West Virginia. She, on the other hand, was insisting that she would not cut ties with the man. Jason then brought up an incident that he witnessed that day Skye had graced them with a visit. An incident about which he had told no one until then. He had seen through the window Rachel “doing the dirty” with Skye on Nana Moira’s own unfinished quilt. Hoping to blackmail her into breaking up with Skye he threatened to tell Nana Moira about it. That’s when she threw a tantrum and then dashed out of the Centre, running all the way home, leaving her car parked where Nana Moira found it later that morning. Perhaps that’s why she does not want to talk to anybody. She is ashamed of what she did with Skye, and then with Jason on that Christmas morning after leading him on.
At that very moment Rachel is telling a different story.
She had to open finally. It was midday already and she wanted to pee so badly. She couldn’t hold it in any longer. She also wanted to take a shower. It had been hours since she took one and already the filth of Christmas morning was building up on her body, and especially on her vagina, rendering it unlovable. So she got out of bed and tiptoed to the door. She stood there for a while, contemplating the door as if it was something to be feared.
“Schuyler,” she whispered. Her voice was hoarse.
“I’m still here, Rache,” said Schuyler.
“Please, leave me alone. I just wanna be alone. I’ll be fine, promise.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Rache.”
She opened the door, and Schuyler was shocked at how emaciated she had become in these few days. She was covered only in a towel. Her eyes were red and puffy as she glared down at her.
“Don’t you fuckin’ call me that ever again,” she said.
“Say what?”
“My name is Rachel. Rachel. Not anything else but Rachel.”
She walked past Schuyler’s chair and went straight to the bathroom. She was there for a long time. Schuyler could hear water running as she tried to push the door open. But Rachel had bolted it. Schuyler gave up and sat on the couch. She watched endless daytime talk shows and TV judges passing judgment on petty cases until Rachel, all red as if she had been cooked, walked out of the bathroom. Schuyler reached for her to embrace her, but Rachel cringed and gave one long yelp.
“I don’t give a damn what you say, I’m taking you to the hospital,” said Schuyler.
“I just need to get high on something,” Rachel said. “Then I’m gonna feel better.”
“Like a reefer or something?”
“Like a reefer or something,” Rachel whispered back.
“What the fuck!” Schuyler stood back to give her a long look. It was no secret that her late boyfriend was a stoner and she was the enabler. She knew all the places where one could score weed, but she was not about to indulge this obviously very sick woman with any such stuff. Instead she insisted that she was taking her to the hospital, and if she didn’t cooperate she was going to call the Sheriff.
“You wouldn’t,” said Rachel, feebly defiant. “I didn’t do any crime.”
Schuyler dared Rachel to stop her. She would tell the Sheriff that Rachel was on the verge of killing herself, and he surely would send a deputy. When Rachel broke down weeping, Schuyler gently led her to the couch.
It is here that she is telling her story, drastically different from the version Jason is telling Nana Moira. It comes in jerks and sobs. For almost a week she has refrained from talking about this. She has even tried to avoid thinking about it. Just as she tried to avoid thinking about it even as it was happening. But the nightmares have continued to intrude, replaying the rape in grotesque dramas. In some of them she attempts to rape Jason. He is screaming and running away from her all over the quilting room, and then poof! he just disappears. In another one that recurs only when she is not sleeping with Blue it is just the boots that are chasing her. Jason’s boots, she surmises, although she has never paid enough attention to the man’s boots to be able to identify them. At first she doesn’t understand why she is able to see the fine details of the hiking boots, including the grain on the leather and the thick black soles, even though she is running away from them. Then she realises that she can also see herself running away naked, as if she is her own spectator. She wakes up screaming, switches on the bedside lamp and looks for Blue. She finds Blue lying on the floor, having been pushed out of the bed by her kicks and swings as she battles with the demons of her nightmares.
Rachel does not tell Schuyler about the nightmares. Just what happened that Christmas morning. The parts that she can force herself to remember.
“And you did nothing about this? You didn’t call the cops?”
Rachel tells her she does not want to involve the police because people will talk.
“Who the fuck cares what people say?” asks Schuyler. “You’ve been raped, Rachel. You don’t just sit there and let this guy get away with it.”
She should have called the Sheriff immediately, says Schuyler. She shouldn’t have taken a bath until she’d been seen by a doctor. After a week she has washed away all the evidence.
“I am not going to call the police, Schuyler,” she says emphatically.
“Oh, yes, you will,” says Schuyler, just as deliberately. “If you don’t, I will.”
“It was my fault,” cries Rachel. “I led him on. People are going to talk. I don’t wanna have anything to do with this any more. Please Schuyler, leave the law out of this.”
Schuyler finds a telephone directory and phones the Sheriff’s office in Athens. If it is something that happened almost a week ago there is no urgency about it, the receptionist says, especially with a number of emergencies today and the staff shortage due to budget cuts. They always make it a point to tell the callers that, hoping they will put pressure on the politicians. The receptionist assures Schuyler that she will send a deputy later in the afternoon.
Schuyler cajoles Rachel to drink some milk. She retches and runs to the bathroom. When she returns Schuyler tries again, just a small sip at a time. Then she leads her to the bedroom and helps her put on her clothes. It can’t be pants or anything tight. It has to be a very loose dress, and Rachel has none of those. So Schuyler goes to raid Nana Moira’s wardrobe and returns with a floral dress that droops on Rachel’s shoulders. She looks ridiculous but she doesn’t care. She will have to do without any underwear.
Nana Moira returns later that afternoon and is shocked how her granddaughter looks. Clearly she is sick and needs medical attention, but she decides not to create any drama about it, lest she retreats to her room never to emerge alive again.
“Why are you in my dress?” she asks.
This question annoys Schuyler so much that she hisses straight at Nana Moira’s face: “Is that all you care about, your stupid dress?”
“Yeah, ’cause she looks like a scarecrow in it,” she says. “Her own clothes are more nicer than an old woman’s gingham.”
Then she breaks into her cackling laughter. But no one joins her. Her laughter is stopped by the arrival of a deputy. She demands to know why the law is at her house and who called it without consulting her. Schuyler curtly tells her to shut up because Rachel was raped and she doesn’t even know about it even though they live in the same house. The deputy suggests that he talks privately with Rachel in the car. Schuyler fears that Rachel will renege and not press charges; she insists that she has to be there because Rachel is so sick that she needs her assistance. The two women and the deputy repair to his car.
Nana Moira will not be bullied by Schuyler, not at her house, and not about her own granddaughter. She shuffles with her cane to the car and taps the window with it. The deputy opens.
“Who raped who?” she asks.
“I don’t know; I’m still taking the statement.”
“Jason raped Rachel,” says Schuyler.
Rachel retches. Schuyler is quick enough to open the door and Rachel spews the milk on the driveway.
“You gonna send Genesis’ boy to jail?” asks Nana Moira, hovering over Rachel’s head as it hangs out of the car. She continues to retch without anything coming out any more. “What did he do to you that you didn’t do with nobody else?”
“No, I don’t wanna make a statement,” cries Rachel. “I just wanna go to my room.”
There is no stopping Nana Moira once she gets started.
“She knows what she done with Skye. On my unfinished quilt too. I ain’t gonna touch that quilt no more.”
Schuyler helps the rest of Rachel’s limp body into the car and the deputy drives away with the two women. He says the priority is to take Rachel to O’Bleness Hospital for urgent care. They can see about laying the rape charge later.
As the car drives away Nana Moira yells after it: “You done ended up a biggety hussy, Rachel!”
New Year’s Day. Jason is the only one at the Centre. He has come to tend to the compost. He has been postponing this for some time and fears that if he neglects it any further the system will not survive the winter. He needs to keep it warm so that it stays microbially active.
But it is more than just the compost that has kept him skulking in this neighbourhood. He has to be here on the off-chance that he spots Rachel. He wants to settle things with her, to explain that he loves her too much to mean her any harm. He can just drive to her house, but Nana Moira has advised him to stay away because Rachel gets hysterical at the mere mention of his name. The Centre is the closest he can get to Rachel.
The building is locked because Nana Moira and the quilting women will not be working today. But Jason has no need for anything inside. He has brought with him everything he needs. The compost is only about one cubic y
ard; he has enough corrugated cardboard for insulation. He lines the bin with a few layers and adds more cardboard between the outer wall of the bin and the insulation layer. On top of the bin he spreads a bedding of old clothes that have been donated for the poor but didn’t have any takers. The women usually use some of these as batting for their quilts. He remembers that there is something he needs in the building after all: the scraps from the Christmas dinner. Nana Moira had put them in a bucket next to the stove. It is the fresh waste he needs to keep the system chugging for a month or two before he adds more waste.
He walks to the front and contemplates the door. He tries it. It is indeed locked. He’ll have to wait until Nana Moira decides to open the Centre for business again.
“Jason de Klerk?”
He turns around and faces two deputies, a male and a female. He had not noticed their car parked outside the gate. They read him his Miranda rights and handcuff him.
Nana Moira does not hear of Jason’s arrest until two days later when Genesis comes bumbling into the Centre and demands to talk with her privately. It is the first day at work after the New Year festivities and only two other members of the Quilting Circle have pitched up. They noticed at once that Nana Moira was not quite her boisterous self. Instead of being up and about she just sat on her chair brooding. One of the women offered to brew some coffee for her and she is sipping it as she hobbles out to the porch with Genesis.
“My boy has done landed in the slammer for something he didn’t do,” says Genesis. “And you didn’t tell me nothing about it.”
“I didn’t know nothing about it,” says Nana Moira.
“They arrested him right here at the Centre and you tell me you didn’t know nothing?”
Nana Moira tells him that it is the first day the Centre has opened since Christmas, so if Jason was ever here before today she knows nothing about that. All she knows is that she was with Rachel and Schuyler when the law arrived in the form of a deputy from the Sheriff’s office and left with the two “girls” after they had accused Jason of raping Rachel. She has not seen Rachel since, and is worried out of her mind. It would not be that big a deal because sometimes she does visit with that floozie Schuyler for a couple of days, but she always says where she is at. She’s been calling her cellphone and no one answers. She can’t bring herself to call Schuyler’s house after the insulting way she behaved towards her that day.