Bone Meal For Roses

by Miranda Sherry

  ‘It’s a start, though, hey?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Anyway, thanks again.’ She leans across him to press a button and the laptop screen goes dark. ‘You’d better head off. I have to study for the next final, and Sussie will get twitchy if there’s a boy in my room for too long.’

  ‘Right.’ Keegan feels his traitorous face pinking up again. ‘Of course. English lit on Wednesday.’ Keegan follows Sam through Sussie’s house and to the front door. ‘My mom says she’ll fetch you on our way to Robertson.’ Sam and Keegan are writing their final exams with a real invigilator from the Department of Education, sent out to make sure the home-scholars get a proper matric.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Urgh, I suck at English lit.’ Keegan pulls a face.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘My worst.’

  ‘Shut up, you’ll do fine.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘See you Wednesday. And thanks again for the brilliant site.’

  ‘Anytime, Sam.’ Keegan stops at the bottom of the steps and turns back, shading his eyes to look up at the girl with her lemon-pith hair and guarded expression. Ever since Sam’s grandpa died at the end of last year, and she moved in with Sussie and started coming to class again, she’s seemed lighter somehow, less remote than she was last year, but Keegan’s sure that Sam’s got secrets, hidden things she’ll never share. Not with him, anyway. He’s under no illusion that when they both go off to university next year, Sam’s going to be pounced on by some third-year guy brave enough to approach her long-limbed loveliness, and that will be that.

  ‘Bye, Keegan.’

  ‘Bye.’

  Sam goes back to her bedroom and sits down at her desk. Beside her laptop is a freshly made mug of coffee and a rusk on a plate. She loves how, in Sussie’s house, these comforting wonders sometimes appear as if by magic.

  ‘Thanks for the coffee, Aunty Sussie!’ she calls, and pulls her English notes closer.

  Someone is mowing the lawn outside her bedroom window. As the mower moves closer, Sam can hear little stones flying up and clattering between the blades.

  Sam opens her file and stares at a poem by T.S. Eliot, but she’s not seeing a thing. She’s thinking that the lawnmower had also been going that day, almost a year ago, when she’d ridden over here with her terrible truth lodged in her throat. Once she’d said the words at last, spilling them out onto the front steps, she’d felt like an empty husk, light and dry. Afterwards, she’d sat in Sussie’s lounge and somehow, all her insides had felt as if they’d relocated from her body to somewhere else, curled up in a dark corner, perhaps, where she didn’t have to see them. The only thing that had weighed her down and kept her anchored to Sussie’s couch was the mug of coffee in her hands. The curve of the porcelain handle was smooth, and the surface against her knuckles burning hot. She remembers lifting it to her mouth. Sipping, swallowing. A husk with a thin thread of hot coffee melting through its centre. Close to her knees, on the table, had been a plate of Sussie’s home-made butter cookies. She’d reached for one and placed it in her mouth, and for long minutes she’d been little more than dissolving buttered sugar and liquid warmth.

  ‘Right, I’ve spoken to François, and he’s spoken to Dr deWildt,’ Sussie had said as she strode back into the lounge. Her eyes were still rimmed with red, but the rest of her face had regained its regular colour, and now that she had something to do, something to plan and sort out, she seemed to be back in her stride. ‘Dr deWildt listened to your situation, and he says he’s willing to issue a death certificate. He owes Fransie a favour.’

  The last bite of Sam’s biscuit had stalled in her throat. ‘So we won’t have to…’ she swallowed hard, ‘to dig him up?’

  ‘No, child.’ Sussie came over and sat beside Sam. She gave her a tentative touch on the knee and then folded her hands together in her lilac lap. ‘We don’t have to disturb him. You chose just the right resting place for the old man, my dear.’

  ‘I didn’t know what else to do.’

  ‘Shush, child. I understand.’ Sam didn’t know what to expect when she rode over to Sussie’s house with her heart in her mouth. She thought there’d be anger and horror, and a trip to the police station. You’re going to be in big trouble, Sam. She’d imagined men stomping through the garden and ripping up the roses, coroners reports, a criminal record, questions to answer about using the money in Jem’s account. Even now, almost a year later, she’s still trying to process the unconditional understanding that she’d gotten instead, not to mention the lies that Sussie, her husband, and the favour-owing doctor have cheerfully told about the date of Jem’s death. All for her. All to protect me.

  Yolande, it seems, was right.

  ‘The thing is, Sam,’ Sussie had said next, ‘you need never have worried that Yolande would come and take you away. Your grandparents thought of these things, my child. In Anneke’s will, she stated that I was to be your legal guardian in the event of Jem’s death. I would’ve fought for you.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’ Sam had been numb in the face of all the things that she didn’t know. She’d placed her empty coffee mug on the table, and drew a big breath.

  ‘And there’s something else.’ Sussie had leaned forward and neatened up the tray, brushing crumbs off the linen cloth and stacking up the plate and the mug. ‘Before she died, Annie left the land to you in her will, so that if something happened to Jem, there’d be no doubt as to who had rights to it.’

  ‘So the house is mine?’

  ‘It always has been.’

  *

  When Sam and Sussie climb out of the SUV, the late-setting sun is fat and gold in the western sky. In silence, carrying a bucket and a small basket of gardening tools between them, they walk to the graveyard that sits in a pool of shadow at the base of a low hill. Sussie wears a new pair of gumboots in a shade of powder blue that makes Sam smile. Hers, as they always have been, are olive green, workmanlike, just like Jem’s.

  Together, they clip and snip and weed and water, Sussie following Sam’s whispered instructions, until the light is almost gone. The roses and dahlias around Anneke’s grave look like dim dots of colour against the coming night.

  While Sussie sits in the car and wipes the mud off her powder blues with a pack of wet-wipes that she carries in her glove compartment for such occasions, Sam stands and looks out towards the humps of the surrounding hills. The landscape seem to soften, melting into sky as the twilight deepens. On evenings such as this, when Sam was little, she, Jem and Anneke would often wait in the kitchen, with all the lights off, staring out through the window.

  ‘Hush,’ Anneke used to whisper, ‘let’s see who comes visiting tonight.’ After sunset, the garden ceased to belong to them. It was now a world for the elusive little creatures that only came to life at night, stalking between the tame plantings on ash-soft feet.

  ‘Ah look, it’s the Cape genet.’ Jem lifted Sam close to the window so that she could catch a glimpse of the spotted cat-like creature creeping across the stoop. Sam still remembers how it felt to have that shy genet turn its serious, foxy-face in her direction. The blotches of white on either side of its snout seemed to hover in the darkness. Above them, its eyes were a glossy, impenetrable black.

  All three humans held their breath and watched as the animal sniffed the air for a moment before turning tail and darting off into the dark.

  ‘So beautiful,’ Sam breathed.

  ‘See what can happen if you’re still and quiet?’ Jem whispered, hugging her against his chest. ‘The wild things aren’t afraid to come up close.’

  ‘It’s true,’ Anneke added. ‘That’s how it was when we got you, Sam.’

  ‘It was? Was I wild?’

  ‘And afraid,’ Anneke said. ‘The most interesting kinds of creatures often are.’

  Sam absorbed this, then clambered down off the kitchen counter and dashed towards the light switch. ‘Is it time for hot cocoa, yet?’

  ‘Yes, dear heart,
’ Anneke had laughed, blinking in the sudden electric blaze. ‘It’s time.’

  Sam shuts her eyes and breathes in the scent of roses on the wind.

  Despite the funeral that Sussie organised here a year ago, and the fact that his name is now carved beside his wife’s on this granite headstone, her grandfather rests at the bottom of another hill.

  ‘Are you ready to go, Sam?’ Sussie calls from inside the SUV.

  Sam thinks of the bed of roses that gave rise to these ones. She can picture them bowing and dipping their blowsy heads beneath the same darkening sky. If she waits, and stands very still, she’s certain she can smell their rich fragrance mingling in alongside the smell of the ones here beside her.

  ‘Yes,’ Sam says. She makes her way back to the passenger side of the vehicle, and opens the door. ‘I’m ready.’

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  Yesterday, Sally was living in an idyllic South African farmstead with her teenage daughter Gigi. Now Sally is dead, murdered, and Gigi is alone in the world.

  But Sally cannot die. She lingers unseen in her daughter’s shadow. When Gigi moves in with her aunt’s family, Sally comes too. When Gigi’s trauma stirs up long-buried secrets, Sally watches helplessly as the family begins to unravel.

  Then Gigi’s young cousin develops an obsession with African magic, and events take a darker turn. Now Sally must find a way to stop her daughter from making a mistake that will destroy the lives of all who are left behind.

  Can’t wait? Buy it here now!

  Before

  I had just put the coffee on the stove when they came.

  I remember washing out the mugs at the sink. I paused when I caught the whiff of something strange slice through the coffee-scented warmth of the kitchen. The smell was bitter, a waft of pungent onion mixed in with alcohol. I stood for a moment with the washing-up gloves still on my hands and tried to place it.

  ‘Morning, Monkey,’ Seb said, drawn from his bed by the friendly morning bubble of our old Italian-style coffee pot. He scratched his stubble and yawned widely.

  ‘Morning. You sleep OK?’

  ‘Not too bad. I’m getting better at being alone in that bed, but not much.’

  ‘Simone will be back in a week, Seb.’

  ‘I know,’ he said and grinned. ‘I’m pathetic, aren’t I?’

  ‘Please, I bet she’s waking up in her icy bed in Scotland right now and missing you just as much.’

  I turned back to the sink just in time to catch a dark spot of movement in the yard outside the window. ‘That’s strange, this must be the first Sunday in living memory that Phineas and Lettie didn’t set off to church at dawn.’

  ‘No, they left,’ Seb said through another yawn. ‘I heard them take the bakkie out early this morning. I think the world would have to end before Lettie would permit them to miss a Sunday service.’

  ‘Then who was—’

  ‘Jesus!’ Seb yelled and I spun around to see a strange man hurtle through the open doorway. For a second, my eyes locked on the intruder’s. They were very wide open in his dark, sweat-streaked face, the whites yellowed like the sweat patches in the underarms of an old T-shirt. His gaze flicked from mine to the thick splintered plank of wood that he held in one hand and before I could even draw breath to scream, the yellow-eyed man had slammed the wood into the side of Seb’s head and sent him sprawling across the kitchen floor.

  And then two more men came through the door.

  And then I screamed.

  1

  When I was alive, I had hair that was white in summer and the colour of dead grass in winter and long, too-skinny fingers that, early on, earned me the nickname ‘Monkey’. Now, I no longer have fingers of any kind, or nails to break when helping Johan and Phineas fix the wire fencing around the perimeter of the farm, or any fences to fix, for that matter.

  But something seems to have gone wrong with my dying.

  I always thought that when the moment came, I’d follow the light or join the stars or whatever it is that’s supposed to happen, but I have been dead for three sunrises, and I am still here.

  I try going as high up away from the ground as possible to see if I can pass a point where things will suddenly snap into place and a tunnel will open and there will be a big glossy sign saying ‘Afterlife. Exit ahead’. From way up here, Southern Africa looks like a creature that’s rolled over to expose the vast curve of a mottled brown belly with a grey tracery of veins. Far off in one direction, I can see the white frill of surf that borders the dark turquoise of the Indian Ocean.

  But there’s no sign, no snap, no tunnel. Nothing.

  I go higher; high enough to see where the layer of blue above me turns into black, but the only thing that changes is the noise. It gets worse.

  The noise. It has taken me a while to work out what the whispering, humming, singing, screaming awfulness comes from, but now, on my third day of not being Sally any more, I think I have it figured out. The noise comes from Africa’s stories being told. Millions upon millions them; some told in descending liquid notes like the call of the Burchell’s coucal before the rain, and some like the dull roar of Johannesburg traffic. Some of these stories are ancient and wear fossilized coats of red dust and others are so fresh that they gleam with umbilical wetness, and it would seem that, like me, they’re all bound here, even the stories that are full of violence and blood and fury, and there are many of those.

  At first, I couldn’t distinguish one story thread from another within the solid roaring wall of sound, but now one of them seems to have separated itself from the rest. It is a pale, slender thread with an escalating alarmed tone, like the call of a hornbill looking for love. This small story has my living blood still in it: I can sense it pulsing through the body of my sister (who now sits weeping at her dressing table) and fluttering alongside the tranquillizers in the veins of my daughter as she lies between the white and blue sheets of a hospital bed.

  It’s just one story amongst millions, and yet it has become so loud now that it drowns out the others. It is howling at me, raging, demanding my attention. I look closer to find that this small, bright thread of story weaves out from the moment of my passing and seems to tether me to this place. Perhaps this is why I have not left yet. Perhaps I have no choice but to follow the story to its end.

  Yes, it screams, follow me. Listen to me.

  It does not stop screaming.

  And so I look for an opening, a beginning to grab on to… I try Gigi first, but my daughter is lost and floating on a chemical sea and is not, it would seem, present in the story herself right now. In the hope that she’ll be back soon, I stay and watch her chest rise and fall beneath the ugly hospital gown they have given to her to wear.

  But Gigi remains absent, and the story howls at me again, even louder. It is unbearable. I have to move on.

  I try my sister, Adele, but regret, like a too-thick synthetic blanket on a sweltering day, is wrapped tight around her. It reminds me of the ones that the women waiting for taxis by the side of the road in Musina would use to tie their babies on to their backs. It is olive green with blotches of brown and the occasional sharp starburst of ugly red, and it prevents me from getting close.

  Liam?

  I find him sitting in the exquisite moulded leather interior of his latest Mercedes. The car sits stationary inside the closed-up garage and its solid white doors are locked. The keys are not in the ignition, they have fallen to the carpet beneath Liam’s feet and rest beside the clutch pedal like silver puzzle pieces waiting to be solved. Liam’s head, with its eve
r so slightly thinning spot on top, is pressed into the steering wheel and his whole body shudders as if it is trying to climb out of itself. He is weeping. His grief is a sharp, raw shock and I recoil. Fast.

  Not Liam.

  Just then, Liam and Adele’s daughter, Bryony, steps out of her bedroom and on to the sunny upstairs landing. My niece is barely recognizable. The last time I saw her she was a tubby two-year-old with shiny cheeks. She is eleven now, and her skinny legs poke out from beneath the skirt of her freshly ironed school uniform.

  Bryony is so filled up with the urgent desire to be part of a story that I can feel it like heat radiating off her skin. I am startled to find that I can feel right inside her too: I can touch the raw ends of all those tender-vicious young-girl thoughts. For a second I pause, uncertain, but Bryony is my way in, and the story is demanding that I follow.

  I do.

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  About Miranda Sherry

  MIRANDA SHERRY was seven when she began writing stories. She then spent time as a puppeteer, a bartender and a musician, before becoming a full-time writer. Her first novel, Black Dog Summer, was published in 2013 and highly acclaimed. She lives in Johannesburg with her partner.

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