First published by Modjaji Books in 2017
www.modjajibooks.co.za
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© Barbara Boswell
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying and recording, or any other information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-928215-24-0
ISBN e-book: 978-1-928215-25-7
Edited by: Alison Lowry
Proofread by: Lauren Ellman
Cover art work and lettering by: Jesse Breytenbach
Cover and book design by: Louise Topping
For Nina, the little girl behind the door.
For Jesse, for whom I write.
Saturn Street
Her whole life it had been drummed into Grace that every living thing had its cross to bear and no matter how hard she tried to shake it, the house on Saturn Street was her cross. Although she’d left home at fourteen, it was always with her. It didn’t matter what she did to banish it or lay it to rest, it was there; constant as the rise and fall of her breath or the steady, rhythmic beat of her pulse. Not large or small; neither looming nor ominous. Just there, like the scar on her left wrist she fingered every night as she drifted into sleep or the mole on the side of her face, part of the geography of skin. Some days it poked and taunted her, and some days it was a light cloud floating above, invisible to all but Grace, but always, always present.
On winter nights, when the cold that had gathered all day long in the crevices of the bedroom came rushing out, she would find herself returning to the place, a ghost haunting the past. On these nights, no matter how she tried to shake it – looking into the mirror to solidify herself in the present – the house would come at her with a force that threatened to knock her off her feet. She’d open another bottle of wine and, alone, drain it, to stave off the memories tumbling from behind the simple brick façade. And she’d tilt into the past, still enraptured by the special brand of pain that lurked behind those long-abandoned walls. On such nights, distance and time dissolved; the now became muddied with the murky ink of the past, and it was as if she’d never left.
Grace saw Mama again, a small smile flitting about the corners of her mouth. Mama – lost in that faraway world, pondering some private joke, or doing her hair and make-up. Suspended in youth, about Grace’s age now; happy, glowing, alive. At other times, she flew back to the house to find Mama petrified, immobile with fear, like that night he came knocking, the night that marked the beginning of the end.
Part 1: 1985
1
“Mary, please open the door.”
His voice echoed from behind the locked front door, plaintive, lost – the voice of a man adrift. “Please, my darling, just open the door, one more time. Let me in for five minutes. I just want to talk.”
He sounded close to breaking. His careless confidence had deserted him. Gone was the aura of certainty that came with the knowledge that as he had ordained it, so it would be; that here, in his personal universe, he was king. All of that God-ness in him just gone. Here he was, locked out of his own home, reduced to begging to re-enter his kingdom.
And just when Grace, cozily ensconced inside the house with her mother Mary, thought he could go no lower in this self-abasement, the voice rose again, soft and pliant: “Mary, Mary... I am begging you...”
In the warmth of the living room the two of them sat quietly. Grace looked back and forth from her mother’s face – clenched jaw, flared nostrils – to the glass front door. The end of the day silhouetted her father in slanting rays of light as he paced the tiny front stoep just outside the door. Through the speckled glass his shape shifted, diffused and distorted, his body a blur, at odds with the pleading voice rising through the keyhole. Through the frosted glass panes of the door, he was somehow insubstantial – more apparition than man. Grace shivered as she took in his form.
The divorce was made final yesterday. He hadn’t been living with them for a while but, just as Mama had predicted, the end of everything had sparked a new fight in him. Until yesterday, Patrick had believed Mary would take him back, as she always did after he’d performed a suitable penance. A lengthy act of contrition followed by a persistent, enthusiastic re-wooing of his wife: these were the well-rehearsed steps in the dance that was their marriage. Grace had seen it many times before.
Mary had always followed where Patrick steered, leaving when she could take no more, then missing him; wavering between leaving him for good and giving him the ubiquitous last chance; basking in his renewed attention and finally succumbing to his promises. He would stop drinking, hold down a job, bring home his money on Fridays instead of spending it at the shebeen. He would go to church with them and take care of them and they’d be the family they were meant to be. Mary would believe him with a fervour that surpassed anything they’d seen in the evangelical tents that mushroomed around the place – the churches where Patrick had sought salvation and sobriety – until he lost his temper or got drunk or both, and hit her again.
But Mary, weary, had finally opted out of the dance. She had gone through with it, taken all the steps needed, and had gotten a divorce. And now here was Grace, fourteen, listening to her father begging outside. She willed her mother to keep her nerve and not reopen that door.
“Mary, I love you, let’s talk, please.”
Grace wished he would shut up. Then an unexpected sympathy settled over her. If she could see him on the other side of the door, could he see them through the blurred glass? Was it cruel for her to be sitting there right across from the door, where her fuzzy outline must be visible? The red lampshade behind her cast a warm glow across the furniture. In this light, the living room seemed cozy and comfortable, not threadbare. She felt bad – for the warm circle of lamplight from which he had been cast but could surely see from outside, where the wind was picking up as night settled. She tried not to move, to minimise attention to herself.
Across the room, Mary stubbed out a half-smoked cigarette in an overflowing ashtray and reached for another. Her movements were sparse; just the minimum effort required to pull a fresh cigarette from its box, lift it to her lips with one hand, and light it with the other. Around her neck a gold cross glittered. Her body remained motionless, her head angled towards the door. Every fibre in her calibrated itself to the task of anticipating Patrick’s next move. Mary always had an intuitive feel for when he was about to go crazy, but tonight Grace couldn’t read her. Unnerved by this new paralysis in her mother, Grace closed her eyes and cloaked herself in a protective mantra. Don’t open the door, don’t open the door.
“Mama, why doesn’t he just go?” she whispered.
Mary didn’t answer. They both knew that Patrick did what he wanted, when he wanted.
“Can’t we phone someone to come and make him go away?”
Mary remained quiet.
There was no one to call and they knew it. Even if there had been a police station in the area, the police were more interested in enforcing the latest State of Emergency and locking up schoolkids. Not that they’d want him locked up, not by this police. Even though Grace had heard Mary threaten to call them countless times, she knew her mother would never do it. To send Patrick straight into the hands of those who were unafraid to murder would be unforgivable.
Outside Patrick started pacing again, tracing an invisible, tightly wrought path on the small front stoep.
Again he tried. “I love you, and I’ll always love you. That’s all I want to say. I’ll never give up on us!”
Definitive and strong: that was the father Grace knew. Through the glass his head was held high and proud. Mary must respond – a love as strong as
the one he’d just declared could not go unrequited.
But in the armchair her mother remained motionless. Short puffs of smoke billowed out around her head like a halo. Her eyes were alive with a look Grace had never seen before. She was not going to answer. For the first time in her life, Mary was bowing out from her part in the choreography of his destruction. Silence settled on the room like an eternal night.
“Well, fuck you, then, Mary! Fuck you!”
The door-frame shuddered under his boot as he unleashed his fury against it, each kick punctuating the fucks flying around. A familiar knot of fear tightened Grace’s stomach.
“Don’t think this is the last of me. Don’t you dare fucking think that!”
And then he stopped. Mother and daughter exhaled. At least the door had held. Grace watched the grainy figure as he bowed down and plopped his head into his hands.
“Oh God, Mary, I’m so sorry. See what you made me do?”
The shift – the inevitable blame – fell to Mary with reassuring familiarity.
“I don’t want to be like this anymore, Mary. Why didn’t you just open the door?”
Tormented sobs escaped his body. Mary and Grace remained motionless throughout, frozen in fear, long past caring what the neighbours may have heard or what they might think. Grace looked at her mother with a steady gaze, willing her to stay put. For Grace, the act of contrition was always the most dangerous part of this dance. This was the moment her mother would crumble. Mary stared, unblinking, as her left hand delved for another cigarette in the little white box. She lit it, inhaled deeply, and exhaled the smoke in a sharp arrow. Her eyes lingered on Grace but looked right through her.
The sun’s rays, which had allowed them to track Patrick’s movements, slowly died and gave way to night. Darkness brooded around the house, pressing its face up against the big front windows where the curtains were not yet drawn. Grace could no longer see Patrick through the glass, but soft sobs confirmed his presence on the stoep. They dared not move, not yet.
After minutes that seemed like hours, the sobs faded to nothing. Yet another eternity passed before they heard the short, scraping noises of his footfall receding into the night. Mary and Grace sat together in silence for a while longer in the dark living room. When they were sure he’d left, Mary released a long sigh and crushed the empty cigarette box with her hands. She lifted herself out of the old white chair and briskly drew the curtains. After shuffling down the long, wooden-floored passage, she turned once to look at her daughter as if to say something, but then retreated into her bedroom.
Grace stood in the dark hallway, wondering if her mother would reappear to at least say goodnight. Seconds later, the shard of light underneath Mary’s bedroom door died down. Grace stood for a while, a cavernous loneliness spreading through her chest. She wanted to feel her mother’s arms around her. Instead, she went into the kitchen and made a peanut butter sandwich, which she ate over the sink.
In the quiet house, she padded on her white socks to the bathroom and brushed her teeth, checked that all the lights were out and all the windows closed, and crawled into bed, still wearing her blue school uniform with the red piping. Next to her, a little bedside lamp stayed on through the night to keep some of the house’s darkness at bay.
2
Patrick crouched down outside the door, defeated. He was not a man who cried, but the anger had tugged at his core until a silent, unknown part of him dislodged and spilled out in an embarrassment of sobs. Hunched forward, rocking on his haunches, he succumbed to the tears he had tried hard to staunch. Why had he kicked the door? He’d come here with good intentions: to talk, sit down like a reasonable man, make it right with Mary. He knew he was wrong, knew things could not go on like this. He had rehearsed the sequence of supplication, earnest declaration of change, and grateful relief to be given another chance. Yes, the divorce was now final, but papers are just that. Could a piece of paper dictate the stirrings of a heart? Could the simple stroke of a pen render love obsolete?
He didn’t think so. He knew his wife well, better than anybody. He was certain that if he saw her he’d be able to talk his way back into her affections, make her see that he really knew how wrong he’d been. She’d see in his eyes that he wanted to make things right, wanted to leave all of the old ways behind this time. He would come back to his family. A fresh beginning awaited them all in this dreary old house. He would paint it, fix it up; maybe even buy the new lounge suite Mary always wanted with the money he’d save. Everything could be remade anew.
But Mary wouldn’t open the door. There he was, at the threshold of a new life. She had it within her power to open up, invite him back in to find a new rhythm, but she had refused. He knew instantly, from the hollow reverberation of his voice into the unfamiliar emptiness that was his house, that something big had shifted within her. He knew she was inside, could sense her, smell her; but there was something between them not even his sweetest pleas could soften. From outside the door he saw no movement. Her silence, her not even bothering to chase him away, was more ominous than any threat or argument she could spew.
There had, of course, been lots of talks during the separation. He understood that her leaving was necessary, respected it even. He had been wrong. Repeatedly. Driven by a subterranean force he barely understood himself, he had hurt and humiliated her beyond the bounds of even his scant personal code. Early in life he had decided that morality was a ruse inflicted by those in charge – and it mattered little what they held sway over – to stay in charge. Rules, whether they were the laws of the country or the sacred covenant of marriage, were to be obeyed only to avoid punishment. Flouting rules and getting away with it, stirred in him a defiant pleasure. He took a perverse pride in his ability to belch a fearless “fuck you” into the face of the establishment. Sometimes that face was Mary’s.
If he were to sit down and think about it, he might have found that beside that impulse to defy, there was also an inner voice so faint it was almost inaudible. If he’d been able to hear that voice, kept still enough to heed it, he would have found in his nature a simple moral code waiting to be lived: do unto others, protect the weak, grab joy where it’s offered and give it in return. But life had deafened this voice.
He’d heard its echo when they’d met. He recalled seeing Mary that first time. Him, walking through a soft drizzle to his aunt’s house, where the family was gathering for Sunday tea, soaked by a sudden cloudburst, just a few steps away from her door. Rain had built up from a trickle to a sluice and icy sheets sliced into him, filling his eyes and slanting the houses crouched in his vision. He reached the veranda of his aunt’s house, head down. Then, as abruptly as it had started, the rain stopped and looking up, his eyes, still smarting from the rain, met hers.
Mary. Flying black tendrils etched against the stark white of Aunt Lydia’s house. Black eyes, two large pools of darkness, made even darker by the drab Cape winter. Skin the colour of milky tea. A dark, tailored jacket covering a white ruffled blouse buttoned to the throat.
Him. Suddenly at a loss for words, looking down at his shoes, saying a silent prayer of thanks that he’d polished them that morning before church. Him. Looking up into those unwavering eyes shining like coal, drawn by a magnet out of his carefully constructed self. A memory fluttered to the surface of his consciousness and retreated, stillborn. He had an odd sensation of recognition, an echo reverberating from another place or time; yet he knew he’d never seen these features before. He stood staring at her while rivulets of rain streamed down his face and body. Had she seen him running? Had he looked a fool, losing composure by running from a bit of rain? He felt embarrassed, vulnerable in front of the piercing eyes that saw everything but gave nothing.
“Good afternoon, miss.” He stretched out a hand, hoping his voice, at least, sounded firm.
“Hello,” she replied.
Her arms remained folded around her slight body. He returned his untouched hand to his side.
“I’m Pa
trick de Leeuw.”
“Mary. Pleasure to meet you.”
Her voice was cool as rain.
“Shouldn’t you be inside, drinking tea with the ladies? Why you out here on your own, in the cold?” he asked, gaining confidence.
“Could ask the same of you,” came her reply. “At least I have the sense to stay out of the rain. You should go inside and dry off.”
He went inside then, leaving her on the veranda. He wasn’t used to women speaking to him like that. She hadn’t flirted, fluttered or acted coy. She hadn’t even smiled at him.
Inside the house he greeted Aunt Lydia and the rest of the family, toweled down and changed into one of his uncle’s old shirts.
He saw her again, when he went to get tea from the dining room where the women had congregated around a groaning table. She looked up at him, eyes burning with what looked like contempt, then averted them just a second too quickly, betraying herself. Caught looking, she blushed. Patrick knew then that the inscrutable façade was just that: a face put on for the world, armour that could be dismantled with the right combination of patience and skill. Emboldened, he moved to the corner in which she was sitting, choosing a biscuit from the plate closest to her. Standing over her, he again extended his hand. “Patrick de Leeuw.”
This time she’d have to reciprocate; it would show up her rudeness to his entire family if she didn’t shake his hand.
“I’m Mary, Mr and Mrs Klein’s daughter.” A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.
He remembered her now, in a much younger incarnation. The gangly, morose youngest daughter – hair plaited and ribboned, clothes always a shade less pristine than those of her immaculately clad older sister, mouth that could shame a gutter. That was a few years ago. She’d been sent away somewhere, he couldn’t remember the details. Now, it seemed, she was back, being reintroduced to the community in a smart suit that hugged a filled-out frame, her hair in loose curls about her face, skin polished to a translucent glow.
Grace Page 1