by Zoe Wicomb
The back door bursts open and Tillie rushes in balancing on her palm a curious object, a priapic confection.
‘Look,’ she shouts, ‘look, isn’t it lovely? It’s the stale loaf I put out for the birds and they’ve pecked it really pretty.’
The perfectly shaped phallus with the crust as pedestal has been sculpted by a bird’s beak. Delicately pecked so that the surface is as smooth as white bread cut with a finely serrated knife. We stare wanly at the child and her find, then we laugh. Tears run down Moira’s face as she laughs. When she recovers her voice is stern. ‘What are you doing outside at this hour? Don’t you know it’s ten o’clock? Where’s Carol?’
Carol bursts in shouting, ‘Do you know what? There are two African men in the playhouse, in our playhouse, and they’ve got our sleeping bags. Two grown-ups can’t sleep in there! And I went to tell Susie but she won’t open the door. She spoke to me through the window and she said it’s time to go to bed. But there’s other people in her room. I heard them. And Susie shouldn’t give people my sleeping bag.’
Moira waves her arm at Carol throughout this excited account, her finger across her lips in an attempt to quieten the child.
‘Ssht, ssht, for God’s sake, ssht,’ she hisses. ‘Now you are not to prowl around outside at night and you are not to interfere in Susie’s affairs. You know people have problems with passes and it’s silly to talk about such things. Daddy’ll be very cross if he knew that you’re still up and messing about outside. I suggest you say nothing to him, nothing at all, and creep to bed as quietly as you can.’
She takes the children by the hands and leads them out of the room. Moments later she returns to carry off the little one sleeping on the bench. I start to clear the table and when she joins me she smiles.
‘Aren’t children dreadful? They can’t be trusted an inch. I clean forgot about them, and they’ll do anything not to go to bed. When adults long to get to bed at a reasonable hour which is always earlier than we can manage . . . Of course sleep really becomes a precious commodity when you have children. Broken nights and all that. No,’ she laughs, looking me straight in the eye, ‘I can’t see you ever coping with children.’
The dishes are done. There is a semblance of order which clearly pleases Moira. She looks around the kitchen appreciatively then yawns. ‘We must go to bed. Go ahead, use the bathroom first. I’ll get the windows and doors shut. Sleep well.’
I have one of the children’s bedrooms. For a while I sit on the floor; the little painted chair will not accommodate me, grotesque in the Lilliputian world of the child. Gingerly I lay my clothes across the chair. It is not especially hot, but I open the window. For a while. I lie in my nightdress on the chaste little bed and try to read. The words dance and my eyes sting under heavy lids. But I wait. I stretch my eyes wide open and follow a mad moth circling the rabbit-shaped lamp by the side of the bed. I start to the mesmerising scent of crushed gardenia when the book slips and slips from under my fingers. In this diminutive world it does not fall with a thud. But I am awake once more. I wait.
A TRIP TO THE GIFBERGE
You’ve always loved your father better.
That will be her opening line.
The chair she sits in is a curious affair, crude like a crate with armrests. A crate for a large tough-skinned vegetable like hubbard squash which is of course not soft as its name suggests.
I move towards her to adjust the goatskin karos around her shoulders. It has slipped in her attempt to rise out of the chair. I brace myself against the roar of distaste but no, perhaps her chest is too tight to give the words their necessary weight. No, she would rather remove herself from my viperous presence. But the chair is too low and the gnarled hands spread out on the armrests cannot provide enough leverage for the body to rise with dignity. (‘She doesn’t want to see you,’ Aunt Cissie said, biting her lip.)
Her own words are a synchronic feat of syllables and exhalations to produce a halting hiss. ‘Take it away. I’ll suffocate with heat. You’ve tried to kill me enough times.’ I drop the goatskin on to the ground before realising that it goes on the back of the chair.
I have never thought it unreasonable that she should not want to see me. It is my insistence which is unreasonable. But why, if she is hot, does she sit here in the last of the sun? Her chair stands a good twenty yards from the house, beyond the semi-circle of the grass broom’s vigorous expressionistic strokes. From where I stand, having made the predicted entrance through the back gate, she is a painterly arrangement alone on the plain. Her house is on the very edge of the location. Behind her the Matsikamma Range is interrupted by two swollen peaks so that her head rests in the cleavage.
Her chair is uncomfortable without the karos. The wood must cut into the small of her back and she is forced to lean forward, to wriggle. Our eyes meet for a second, accidentally, but she shuts hers instantly so that I hold in my vision the eyes of decades ago. Then they flashed coal-black, the surrounding skin taut across the high cheekbones. Narrow, narrow slits which she forced wide open and like a startled rabbit stared entranced into a mirror as she pushed a wave into the oiled black hair.
‘If only,’ she lamented, ‘if only my eyes were wider I would be quite nice, really nice,’ and with a snigger, ‘a princess.’
Then she turned on me. ‘Poor child. What can a girl do without good looks? Who’ll marry you? We’ll have to put a peg on your nose.’
And the pearled half moon of her brown fingertip flashed as she stroked appreciatively the curious high bridge of her own nose. Those were the days of the monthly hairwash in the old house. The kitchen humming with pots of water nudging each other on the stove, and afterwards the terrible torments of the comb as she hacked with explorer’s determination the path through the tangled undergrowth, set on the discovery of silken tresses. Her own sleek black waves dried admirably, falling into place. Mother.
Now it is thin, scraped back into a limp plait pinned into a bun. Her shirt is the fashionable cut of this season’s muttonleg sleeve and I remember that her favourite garments are saved in a mothballed box. Now and then she would bring something to light, just as fashion tiptoeing out of a dusty cupboard would crack her whip after bowing humbly to the original. How long has she been sitting here in her shirt and ill-matched skirt and the nimbus of anger?
She coughs. With her eyes still closed she says, ‘There’s Jantjie Bêrend in an enamel jug on the stove. Bring me a cup.’
Not a please and certainly no thank you to follow. The daughter must be reminded of her duty. This is her victory: speaking first, issuing a command.
I hold down the matted Jantjie Bêrend with a fork and pour out the yellowish brew. I do not anticipate the hand thrust out to take the drink so that I come too close and the liquid lurches into the saucer. The dry red earth laps up the offering of spilled infusion which turns into a patch of fresh blood.
‘Clumsy like your father. He of course never learned to drink from a cup. Always poured it into a saucer, that’s why the Shentons all have lower lips like spouts. From slurping their drinks from saucers. Boerjongens, all of them. My Oupa swore that the English potteries cast their cups with saucers attached so they didn’t have to listen to Boers slurping their coffee. Oh, he knew a thing or two, my Oupa. Then your Oupa Shenton had the cheek to call me a Griqua meid.’
Her mouth purses as she hauls up the old grievances for which I have no new palliatives. Instead I pick up the bunch of proteas that I had dropped with my rucksack against the wall. I hand the flowers to her and wonder how I hid my revulsion when Aunt Cissie presented them to me at the airport.
‘Welcome home to South Africa.’ And in my arms the national blooms rested fondly while she turned to the others, the semi-circle of relatives moving closer. ‘From all of us. You see everybody’s here to meet the naughty girl.’
‘And Eddie,’ I exclaimed awkwardly as I recognised the youngest uncle now pot-bellied and grey.
‘Ag no man, you didn’t play marbles to
gether. Don’t come here with disrespectful foreign ways. It’s your Uncle Eddie,’ Aunt Cissie reprimanded. ‘And Eddie,’ she added, ‘you must find all the children. They’ll be running all over the place like chickens.’
‘Can the new auntie ride in our car?’ asked a little girl tugging at Aunt Cissie’s skirt.
‘No man, don’t be so stupid, she’s riding with me and then we all come to my house for something nice to eat. Did your mammie bring some roeties?’
I rubbed the little girl’s head but a tough protea had pierced the cellophane and scratched her cheek which she rubbed self-pityingly.
‘Come get your baggage now,’ and as we waited Aunt Cissie explained. ‘Your mother’s a funny old girl, you know. She just wouldn’t come to the airport and I explained to her the whole family must be there. Doesn’t want to have anything to do with us now, don’t ask me why, jus turned against us jus like that. Doesn’t talk, not that she ever said much, but she said, right there at your father’s funeral – pity you couldn’t get here in time – well, she said, “Now you can all leave me alone,” and when Boeta Danie said, “Ag man sister you musn’t talk so, we’ve all had grief and the Good Lord knows who to take and who to leave,” well you wouldn’t guess what she said’ . . . and Aunt Cissie’s eyes roved incredulously about my person as if a good look would offer an explanation . . . ‘she said plainly, jus like that, “Danie,” jus dropped the Boeta there and then in front of everybody, she said . . . and I don’t know how to say it because I’ve always had a tender place in my heart for your mother, such a lovely shy girl she was . . .’
‘Really?’ I interrupted. I could not imagine her being described as shy.
‘Oh yes, quite shy, a real lady. I remember when your father wrote home to ask for permission to marry, we were so worried. A Griqua girl, you know, and it was such a surprise when he brought your mother, such nice English she spoke and good features and a nice figure also.’
Again her eyes took in my figure so that she was moved to add in parenthesis, ‘I’ll get you a nice step-in. We get good ones here with the long leg, you know, gives you a nice firm hip-line. You must look after yourself man; you won’t get a husband if you let yourself go like this.’
Distracted from her story she leaned over to examine the large ornate label of a bag bobbing by on the moving belt.
‘That’s not mine,’ I said.
‘I know. I can mos see it says Mev. H.J. Groenewald,’ she retorted. Then, appreciatively as she allowed the bag to carry drunkenly along, ‘But that’s now something else hey. Very nice. There’s nothing wrong in admiring something nice man. I’m not shy and there’s no Apartheid at the airport. You spend all that time overseas and you still afraid of Boers.’ She shook her head reproachfully.
‘I must go to the lavatory,’ I announced.
‘OK. I’ll go with hey.’
And from the next closet her words rose above the sound of abundant pee gushing against the enamel of the bowl, drowning my own failure to produce even a trickle.
‘I made a nice pot of beans and samp, not grand of course but something to remind you you’re home. Stamp-en-stoot we used to call it on the farm,’ and her clear nostalgic laughter vibrated against the bowl.
‘Yes,’ I shouted, ‘funny, but I could actually smell beans and samp hovering just above the petrol fumes in the streets of London.’
I thought of how you walk along worrying about being late, or early, or wondering where to have lunch, when your nose twitches with a teasing smell and you’re transported to a place so specific and the power of the smell summons the light of that day when the folds of a dress draped the brick wall and your hands twisted anxiously, Is she my friend, truly my friend?
While Aunt Cissie chattered about how vile London was, a terrible place where people slept under the arches in newspapers and brushed the pigeonshit off their brows in the mornings. Funny how Europeans could sink so low. And the Coloured people from the West Indies just fighting on the streets, killing each other and still wearing their doekies from back home. Really, as if there weren’t hairdressers in London. She had seen it all on TV. Through the door I watched the patent-leather shoes shift under the heaving and struggling of flesh packed into corsets.
‘Do they show the riots here in South Africa on TV?’
‘Ag, don’t you start with politics now,’ she laughed, ‘but I got a new TV you know.’
We opened our doors simultaneously and with the aid of flushing water she drew me back, ‘Yes, your father’s funeral was a business.’
‘What did Mamma say?’
‘Man, you mustn’t take notice of what she says. I always say that half the time people don’t know what they talking about and blood is thicker than water so you jus do your duty hey.’
‘Of course Auntie. Doing my duty is precisely why I’m here.’ It is not often that I can afford the luxury of telling my family the truth.
‘But what did she say?’ I persisted.
‘She said she didn’t want to see you. That you’ve caused her enough trouble and you shouldn’t bother to go up to Namaqualand to see her. And I said, “Yes Hannah it’s no way for a daughter to behave but her place is with you now.”’ Biting her lip she added, ‘You mustn’t take any notice. I wasn’t going to say any of this to you, but seeing that you asked . . . Don’t worry man, I’m going with you. We’ll drive up tomorrow.’
‘I meant what did she say to Uncle Danie?’
‘Oh, she said to him, “Danie,” jus like that, dropped the Boeta right there in the graveyard in front of everyone, she said, “He’s dead now and I’m not your sister so I hope you Shentons will leave me alone.” Man, a person don’t know what to do.’
Aunt Cissie frowned.
‘She was always so nice with us you know, such a sweet person, I jus don’t understand, unless . . .’ and she tapped her temple, ‘unless your father’s death jus went to her head. Yes,’ she sighed, as I lifted my rucksack from the luggage belt, ‘it never rains but pours; still, every cloud has a silver lining,’ and so she dipped liberally into her sack of homilies and sowed them across the arc of attentive relatives.
‘It’s in the ears of the young,’ she concluded, ‘that these thoughts must sprout.’
She has never seemed more in control than at this moment when she stares deep into the fluffy centres of the proteas on her lap. Then she takes the flowers still in their cellophane wrapping and leans them heads down like a broom against the chair. She allows her hand to fly to the small of her back where the wood cuts.
‘Shall I get you a comfortable chair? There’s a wicker one by the stove which won’t cut into your back like this.’
Her eyes rest on the eaves of the house where a swallow circles anxiously.
‘It won’t of course look as good here in the red sand amongst the thornbushes,’ I persist.
A curt ‘No.’ But then the loose skin around her eyes creases into lines of suppressed laughter and she levers herself expertly out of the chair.
‘No, it won’t, but it’s getting cool and we should go inside. The chair goes on the stoep,’ and her overseer’s finger points to the place next to a tub of geraniums. The chair is heavy. It is impossible to carry it without bruising the shins. I struggle along to the unpolished square of red stoep that clearly indicates the permanence of its place, and marvel at the extravagance of her gesture.
She moves busily about the kitchen, bringing from the pantry and out of the oven pots in advanced stages of preparation. Only the peas remain to be shelled but I am not allowed to help.
‘So they were all at the airport hey?’
‘Not all, I suppose; really I don’t know who some of them are. Neighbours for all I know,’ I reply guardedly.
‘No you wouldn’t after all these years. I don’t suppose you know the young ones at all; but then they probably weren’t there. Have better things to do than hang about airports. Your Aunt Cissie wouldn’t have said anything about them . . . Hetty and Cheryl a
nd Willie’s Clint. They’ll be at the political meetings, all UDF people. Playing with fire, that’s what they’re doing. Don’t care a damn about the expensive education their parents have sacrificed for.’
Her words are the ghostly echo of years ago when I stuffed my plaits into my ears and the sour guilt rose dyspeptically in my throat. I swallow, and pressing my back against the cupboard for support I sneer, ‘Such a poor investment children are. No returns, no compound interest, not a cent’s worth of gratitude. You’d think gratitude were inversely proportionate to the sacrifice of parents. I can’t imagine why people have children.’
She turns from the stove, her hands gripping the handles of a pot, and says slowly, at one with the steam pumping out the truth,
‘My mother said it was a mistake when I brought you up to speak English. Said people spoke English just to be disrespectful to their elders, to You and Your them about. And that is precisely what you do. Now you use the very language against me that I’ve stubbed my tongue on trying to teach you it. No respect! Use your English as a catapult!’
I fear for her wrists but she places the pot back on the stove and keeps her back turned. I will not be drawn into further battle. For years we have shunted between understanding and failure and I the Caliban will always be at fault. While she stirs ponderously, I say, ‘My stories are going to be published next month. As a book I mean.’
She sinks into the wicker chair, her face red with steam and rage.
‘Stories,’ she shouts, ‘you call them stories? I wouldn’t spend a second gossiping about things like that. Dreary little things in which nothing happens, except . . . except . . .’ and it is the unspeakable which makes her shut her eyes for a moment. Then more calmly, ‘Cheryl sent me the magazine from Joburg, two, three of them. A disgrace. I’m only grateful that it’s not a Cape Town book. Not that one could trust Cheryl to keep anything to herself.’