A stranger’s voice asks: “Hello? Is that Salena?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t know me, but, well, I know you. I’m Daisy.”
Daisy. The name means nothing to her. Why would anyone name their daughter after a flower?
“I … I want to talk to you. About Zain.”
There is no sinking feeling, just her right eyelid ticking like the hand of the clock she can see stuck at an odd angle on the wall. She’ll fix it as soon as the caller hangs up.
‘What about Zain?”
“I’m his … well, he’s made me pregnant. And we want to get married. But he says that you won’t divorce him, he says—”
Salena doesn’t wait for her to finish. “He’s never asked me for a divorce. But of course I know about his affairs. He’s hardly discreet.” Salena pauses, takes a deep breath. “I think we should meet. Do you have a pen? I’ll give you my address.”
Daisy hesitates before answering. “No, that’s okay. I know where you live.”
Of course she does. Salena remembers calling Zain from Zuhra’s home earlier that year. During the stilted conversation Salena had heard a subdued girlish giggle; she’d assumed it was the TV.
Again, Salena stops to examine her body, her emotions. Nothing, just the tick tick ticking of her right eye.
“Okay, shall we say midday?”
Salena smiles at the phone, then walks over to reposition the clock. The call is not a huge surprise. By the time she was pregnant with the twins, Zain’s infidelities had become commonplace, another of his character traits to which she adapted. After a brief hunt she finds the Yellow Pages nesting in the cupboard under the sink, and makes herself comfortable with the phone and another cup of coffee.
The woman who arrives on the doorstep is precisely what Salena expected. A young girl with yellow hair and a pinched, glum expression. Such a typically South African Muslim male thing to do. Marry a “fair” wife during apartheid and get a white replacement for her when it’s over. Salena almost feels embarrassed on Zain’s behalf.
She offers Daisy a glass of lemonade, but she refuses it, nervously twisting the fabric of her skirt in her slight hands with their pale pink polished nails. Ma would approve of her colour choice. She is wearing a white dress, ridiculously virginal. Perhaps Zain bought it. He never did have much taste.
As she invites Daisy to sit down, the locksmith arrives. She excuses herself, lets him in, and gives him her orders.
She goes back to the kitchen, where Daisy is tearing at a tissue and crying silently. Salena feels maternal towards this girl. She takes her in her arms and assures her she will not stand in the way of her marrying Zain. She’ll give him a divorce and he will be free to marry Daisy and live happily ever after. She hopes for Daisy’s sake that Zain is in her thrall, that he is prepared to give up his familiar comforts. He’s never liked change. Not that Salena will give him a choice about the divorce; she’s already made an appointment with a lawyer from the Yellow Pages.
Then she invites Daisy up to her bedroom and suggests she pack a suitcase for Zain while she checks on the locksmith.
After Daisy leaves, Salena stands next to the fig tree in the front garden, watching the sun play in its leaves. She catches a glimpse of a chameleon on one of the branches, trying to blend in with the green-brown of his surroundings. For the first time in her life Salena realises she can hang up her cloak.
Sacrifices
He says he won’t go down on me anymore; I smell fishy. For the love of Neptune, how else is a mermaid supposed to smell? When I think of what I’ve endured for him. Drinking the sea-witch’s excruciating potion, losing my tongue, giving up the gift of my dazzling singing voice, becoming mute with infatuation of him. My powerfully built tail bartered for puny powerless legs, which are okay for dancing, I suppose, but only you don’t care about the excruciating pain.
I never believed her when she said that each tread would be agony, that every step would feel like walking on sharpened swords. But she was right. Other girls got colourful, spongy petals strewn in their paths; I got a lifetime of intangible broken glass beneath my feet. Still, I thought the suffering would be worthwhile. When he married me, I would get a soul.
But now he’s got someone else. He calls her his little flower, and he wants to marry her. What’s special about flowers anyway? They can’t sing, they can’t swim, they wither without sunlight and they don’t have souls. Yet, it’s the decorative blossom he wants, not the mermaid who has surrendered everything for him: family, voice, the ability to breathe under water.
Well, two can play at this game. My grandmother always used to tell my sisters and me, when we were hungry, “There’s plenty of seaweed in the sea.” My sisters, my lovely kind-hearted siblings, have renegotiated the contract with the sea-hag. In exchange for their striking tresses, she’s given me a few days to find another man. She says any man will do, they’ve all got souls. I’m not so sure about that.
I was scrutinising the waves the next dawn, after another night spent alone, watching them change shades from the silvery sleekness of my eldest sister’s scales on the tip of her muscular tail to the sapphire of my grandmother’s sparkling eyes. He was standing behind me, fishing rod slung over one shoulder, but he looked in my eyes when he asked me if I was unwell, unlike Prince-jerk, who never raised his gaze above my cleavage.
He married me and willingly offered up part of his soul. He bought me bottles of sparkling mineral water and topped them up with sea-salt whenever I looked a little dehydrated. We swam together every evening. He wasn’t blind to my pain. He purchased a motorised wheelchair, and one of those computer-operated voices. I was no longer inexpressive. He listened to my words, as if they were the pearls my granny cultivated in her secret oyster garden. He said my stories were his treasure. He reminded me I was a princess; I could do as I pleased. And I did.
Free Strokes
SALENA HAS NOT BEEN TO THE BEACH OR NEAR A POOl since Makeen’s death, twenty-three years ago, although often she has dreams in which she is drowning. The salty smell, the crashing waves, remind her of sadness and darkness, of waiting on Woodstock beach for her mother or brother to tell her it was safe to come home.
Now she sits surrounded by sand, sipping iced water from her flask, covered in lashings of Factor 60, watching David, her driving instructor cum lover, swimming out beyond the breakers. Already the sand is creeping into her bathing costume, and she shifts uncomfortably, envisioning the sandy residue that will be left in her washing machine after she’s done the laundry. She wonders what her mother would think of her sitting in a backless bathing costume at her age, waiting for a man who is not her husband. She thinks about Ma often, more so now that she’s dead than when she was alive. Zuhra says Ma is doing fine; she’s probably torturing Papa and haunting Aunty Polla every Thursday night.
It is midday and the white beach stretches in front of her toes for a hundred sandy metres before joining the sea. She watches David stand up in the water, shake the excess drops from his curly hair like a puppy and search out the spot where she is sitting, with a slight frown. His eyes find hers and he gestures for her to join him.
At the water’s edge, she hesitates, walks in carefully – a cat who does not wish to wet her paws. A wave surprises her, rushes up to her knees, licks at her costume. David puts his steadying arms around her, hugs her to his wet body, and she shivers with cold and pleasure.
The driving lessons had begun horribly. What was the difference between first gear and reverse? The Golf would shudder and jerk, backwards and forwards, reminding her of sex with Zain. The night after her first lesson she dreamt she was perched in the Golf at the top of a steep hill. The car began to roll down the hill, gently at first, then picking up speed. She could not stop it. She had forgotten which foot went on the brake, the clutch, the accelerator, but before she could crash, her instructor appeared in the seat next to her and stopped the car.
Although embarrassed, she told David about the
dream, and he took her for a drive up a steep road in Bo-Kaap and taught her to juggle, to balance the clutch and the accelerator so that she didn’t roll back.
Three lessons later, Salena had learnt to drive a manual car, hills and all. She was elated. At the end of the lesson, she invited David in for a Coke. In the kitchen, she offered him some date biscuits. He stood next to her. She could smell the scent of his skin, see the brown down on his arms, and when his hand accidentally touched hers, she felt a jolt of electricity surge through her body – like a computer booting up.
She felt the slippery ice cube in her hand melting as she rubbed it over and up and down his arm. Salena, who, over the years, had perfected the art of motionless sex, became the predator, pushing him up against the silver double-door fridge. Her body taut from decades of scrubbing shower floors and vacuuming responded with glee to David’s intelligent fingers as they explored her skin. She was slick with excitement as his penis pressed up against her belly, probing. He slid in with accuracy, and there was none of Zain’s huffing and puffing.
Salena felt like an athlete, each inhalation and exhalation of breath charging the cells of her body with greater power. Her skin tingled, and when he pulled away there was a squelching noise from where the sweat had glued their stomachs and chests together.
After their swim, she sits on the sand, her feet in the water, David idly rubbing her back. She watches the waves as they shift backwards and forwards, and for a moment she sees Makeen moving floppily in the water, smiling back at her.
When they leave, David hands her the keys to his car, a sporty Golf GTI. She hesitates, but he assures her it’s easy to drive.
The route curves, winds, dips and then rises through the hills. Salena keeps going straight, her eyes fixed on the road ahead, which appears to be melting in the summer sun, a seductive pool, all-absolving, filled with promise.
Hafsa removes Faruk’s clinging hand from her neck, and wraps him in his blanket. He moans once and then snuggles deeper into its woolly warmth. She reverses off the bed, silently, hoping the springs won’t creak, holding her breath. He opens one drunk-on-milk-eye, then shuts it again with a murmur.
Salena left a few minutes before, with her daadi, for their morning walk to the park, so she has at least an hour. That should be long enough, according to the woman she’d asked for help. So far, the castor oil and hot baths have not worked. Nor have the carbolic soap douche or the wonderkroon, a Dutch remedy. But she has been assured that this will do the trick.
She’s prepared. Everything she needs is hidden under her bed, and she reaches for the blue enamel bowl, the soap, Vaseline, the already unwound metal hanger. She has written down the instructions on a small piece of white paper and she carries this along with the other things into the bathroom, before locking the door behind her.
She places each item on the floor next to the toilet. She reaches for the hanger and rubs the Vaseline over its frame, then positions the bowl on the floor. She shuts the toilet lid, puts her left leg on the seat, and with her right hand inserts the pointed hanger deep into that nameless region of the body, one she has never looked at, never touched before, and twists the hanger. Her eyes water. She will not cry out.
She thinks she hears Faruk, listens, but the house is silent. After Faruk was born, Hanif was adamant. No more children. He had his son, and two children were enough.
She struggles to stand over the blue bowl on the floor. Her legs feel crumbly, and she lies down on the cold floor of the bathroom, pain splitting her in unequal portions. There is a popping sound, a burst clot of blood dribbles from inside of her. She calms herself with the belief that she has missed only a single cycle; the Angel Jibreel has not blown a soul into her womb as yet.
Of course, she was right about the absence of the soul. I’d been loitering around her, waiting for the one-hundred-and-twenty-day milestone to be reached so that I could be fused with my body. Hafsa had removed that option; all that was left for me was to stay on as an observer, to watch Salena and Faruk grow up, and, most surprisingly of all, witness Zuhra smile at me and shrug philosophically as she crawled into a space under our mother’s skin.
So here I am, with stories of my own, ready to take on the challenges of life. This time I’ve taken root in more amiable surroundings. This time, Zuhra won’t need to cast a magic spell.
My thanks to:
Anne Schuster, luminous writing guide, and her mighty monthlies, especially my first gentle readers, Anne Woodborne, Maire Fisher and Nella Freund. xxx
Fourie Botha who saw plenty in scribbles and said, “Thank You!”
Bronwyn McLennan and her soft (ha!) suggestions on how to make those scrawls legible.
Gabeba Baderoon, friend-gem, for enthusiastic encouragement and clotted cream memories.
Azhar: inspired insights and R5 massages.
My inimitable mother, for her enchanting evolution.
SB for funding my indolence, with elasticity.
The R11 gang, Peter Korasie, Moya Paterson and Engela Erasmus, for sunshine in the winter of that particular year.
Zubeida Gierdien for listening lightly to stories about snags.
Katija Kazie, for initiating the culture of reading in our household.
Nurul-Ayn for sketches, Shibnum for pmt-cds and Aliyah for Coke Float – love you lots.
Word-Gobbler, blessings for your existence in the woods.
And, of course, to mislaid you.
Not a Fairytale Page 13