It was all the permission I needed and Maggie held me while I shuddered, the tears shaking me to my core. She stroked my hair and held me close to her chest so my face was shielded from the inquisitive stares of other library patrons. She didn’t shush me once, not even when my wails echoed across the bookshelves and into the foyer.
Eventually the sheer force of my sorrow made my nose bleed, something that hadn’t happened before. I pulled back from Maggie’s embrace and cried out at the crimson patch that was spreading obscenely across her cream blouse. Maggie interrupted my apologies with instructions to lean my head back and pinch my nose until the tide subsided. Once I could stand up without triggering a bloody waterfall, I followed her with my head thrown back as we wound our way out of the library’s common areas, through a corridor and into a bare room.
“The ceiling needs dusting,” I said in a small, muffled voice.
Maggie laughed and suggested I lie down on the floor to keep my head back. She brought me a few tissues, and I twisted them into points and stuck them up my nostrils. She asked me for Edith’s phone number and then our address after I explained about the phone being off the hook. Maggie covered me with a jersey while she set about making me a sweet cup of tea, claiming it was an antidote to just about everything. I was asleep within minutes, and it was the most soundly I’d slept in weeks.
I woke up later as I was jostled about. I felt like I’d been asleep for years. It was dark outside; the moon painted orange and hung low enough to touch over the tops of the buildings. I struggled to free myself and turned to see that it was Edith holding me, and she was straining with the effort of carrying me to her car. She shushed me when I tried to speak.
“Everything is going to be okay. Go back to sleep now,” she whispered.
I could see in the moonlight that Edith had been crying. I reached for my pocket and was only able to relax once I felt the reassuring shape of my mother’s mascara nestled there.
I never found out exactly what happened between Maggie and Edith, or how she got Edith sobered up and to the library that evening. All I ever knew for sure was that it was Maggie who brought Beauty into our lives and that after that day, everything changed.
Twenty-eight
ROBIN
1 AUGUST 1976
Yeoville, Johannesburg, South Africa
When the knocking returned, knuckles connecting with wood, louder and more aggressively than before, it made my pulse quicken. Bang, bang, bang. Bang, bang, bang. It seemed that only policemen and social workers—people who wanted to take you away—announced their arrival in that way.
I started to rise from the couch, but Edith touched my knee and winked, indicating that I should sit down again.
Bang, bang, bang. “Ms. Vaughn! Open this door at once.”
Edith smiled and put her finger to her lips.
“I will break this door down if I have to. I have a right to be here and I will not be kept out!” Bang, bang, bang.
Edith slowly rose from the couch, and sashayed to the door where she waited a few beats before suddenly yanking it open to reveal a startled and red-faced Wilhelmina with her fist raised in midair.
“Good grief, it seems that someone should have attended finishing school. This is not the way guests announce their presence. Their uninvited presence, I might add, but please, do come in since it seems you’ll assault me otherwise.”
Wilhelmina lowered her fist, glowered at Edith and pushed her way past as though suspicious that the invitation would be revoked. She’d barely crossed the threshold when Elvis started flapping and squawking from his cage. “Devil in disguise. Devil in disguise!”
She spun around to find the source of the insult, and after she’d spotted the parrot, she turned around again and addressed Edith. “My magtig. I have been calling and calling, but the phone has constantly been engaged. I know you took it off the hook, don’t deny it.”
Edith nodded at the phone. The handset was in its cradle and it looked perfectly benign sitting there, as though it couldn’t possibly understand all the fuss that was being made about it.
“As you can see, the phone is not off the hook. Perhaps you’ve been dialing the wrong number the whole time?”
“I have not! And I’ve visited twice but you wouldn’t answer the door.”
“Might it not have occurred to you that we were out? My goodness, it seems that you’re rather used to people running and hiding when you come to call or why else would you think that?” Edith turned to me. “Wouldn’t we have opened the door if we’d been home? Isn’t that what well-mannered people do?”
“Yes,” I said, nodding emphatically and trying very hard not to catch Cat’s eye.
“You saw me when I came the one time and you ran away from me,” Wilhelmina accused.
Edith raised her eyebrow. “Robin, is that true?”
“No.”
“You see? It must have been another poor child terrified at the sight of you. Would you care to sit down? Can I get you some tea or coffee? A biscuit perhaps?”
Wilhelmina waved off Edith’s offers and craned her neck as she peered around the apartment, eyes narrowed in suspicion. Everything sparkled from Edith’s earlier cleaning frenzy. The sink full of moldy dishes had been washed, the floor and furniture cleared of books, albums and clothes, and the apartment aired of its stale and smoky smell. Even Elvis’s cage glistened from Edith’s ministrations.
“Wilhelmina, are you looking for something? A pentagram? An altar for human sacrifice? Pornography, perhaps? I’m not into that kind of thing myself, but don’t be embarrassed if you are. I won’t tell anyone.”
Wilhelmina flushed and horrible blotches of color climbed up her neck like obscene ivy. “I’m within my rights to do a home visit to ensure that this is a safe environment for the child. The child is my only concern here.”
“Good gracious,” Edith said, looking perplexed. “I’m assuming then that you didn’t speak to your boss before you foisted yourself on us today?”
“My boss?”
“Yes, Mr. Groenewald. Lovely man, rather attractive, too, if I do say so myself. I’m sure with him being an eligible bachelor and you being a single woman—I’m assuming you’re single based on, you know . . .” Edith flicked her wrist dismissively at Wilhelmina’s navy pantsuit and court shoes. “Anyway, you’d be forgiven for having a little crush on him.”
Wilhelmina’s blush deepened further and I felt an unexpected pang of sympathy for her.
“I saw him on Friday,” Edith continued, “and dropped off a whole ton of paperwork that I thought he might need. Keith and Jolene’s will indicating their desire for me to be Robin’s guardian, their death certificates, character references from various people, my financials, proof of Robin’s school registration and so on.”
“But,” Wilhelmina stuttered. “You don’t even have a job. Without employment, you can’t possibly—”
“Oh, but you see, I do, in fact, have employment. Rather well-paid employment too in my new position as the secretary to the branch manager at Volkskas bank. Mr. Groenewald has all that paperwork as well, but if something’s missing, please tell him to let me know and I’ll give it to him next week. When we’re meeting for dinner.”
It seemed that all at once, Wilhelmina’s bluster and fury abated. Her fighter’s stance drooped as she went from being a contender to an opponent who’s already been defeated. She didn’t even put up any resistance when Edith ushered her out two minutes later, nor did she turn around when Elvis piped up again from his cage. “Up your big Dutchman arse! Up your big Dutchman arse!”
I told myself that no good could come from feeling sorry for a person who’d wanted to take me away from Edith.
• • •
Later that same day, Edith emerged from the bedroom and clapped her hands. “Okay, kiddo. I’m going to have to ask you to put that away and com
e sit over here.”
Edith patted the seat on the couch next to her, and I closed my coloring-in book and returned my pencils to their tin case. Cat remained seated at the table, her bottom lip caught between her teeth as she concentrated on the picture of a dragon she was working on.
Elvis was perched on Edith’s shoulder. The red of his tail feathers perfectly matched her blouse, and he nuzzled her jade earring as he relished the affection she’d been lavishing on him for the past hour. He was clearly over the moon that his mistress had returned to her former self and that her terrible silence had been replaced with the alternating loud bickering and whispered crooning he was used to. She gave his beak a peck and scratched his head with her index finger before she stood up and returned him to his cage.
“Don’t be cruel to a heart that’s true,” Elvis griped as she closed the door.
“Ah, my sweet, don’t be that way. You know I can’t stand whiny men.” She went to the kitchen and returned with a wedge of cheese. She shoved it through the bars and crooned, “How’s that? You happy now?”
“Thank you, thank you very much.” Elvis hopped from the perch to the floor and started feasting on his windfall.
The sun had just set and the room was cast into a gloomy darkness. Edith switched on the lights and drew the curtains before she returned to the couch, this time sitting across from rather than next to me. She cleared her throat and looked down at her hands, opened her mouth to speak and then closed it again.
She stood, said she was thirsty and offered me a cold drink. I accepted even though I didn’t really want one. I knew that it was best to give Edith time to compose herself and gather whatever thoughts she’d need.
While I waited for her to return, I studied all the pictures and art on the opposite wall, my gaze lingering on a brightly embroidered wall hanging from Mexico. It depicted various domestic scenes: two adults and a child standing outside their house; a mother and father working in their garden while their child played with a ball; the sun encircling a couple who were holding hands. It was my favorite, not only because it was done in vivid oranges, reds, yellows and blues, but because it showed a family.
The past few days had been emotional ones. Speaking to Maggie that day in the library had been like lancing a boil; all the infected emotions—the sadness and the anger, the grief and the loneliness—were all finally coming out. They drained through my tears, and when I wasn’t crying, I was tipping my head back with toilet paper shoved up my nostrils to stop the nosebleeds. It seemed as though my body didn’t feel the tears were enough; it was mourning with blood as well.
It was on one of those days, while riffling through Edith’s record collection, that I came across the Dolly Parton album with the song about my mother, “Jolene.” I’d only ever heard it once (my father was a staunch Beatles fan and hated country-and-western music, so he would never have played it at home), and I remembered how my mother had blushed as one of the men drunkenly serenaded her with it at a mine braai while his wife stonily looked on.
At first, I listened to the song just to remind myself of the lyrics. Then, once I knew the words, I played it repeatedly, my voice rising in crescendo with the chorus as I sang my heart out with Dolly.
It didn’t matter that the song was about a woman who didn’t look like my mother at all. It also didn’t matter that it was about a woman taking another woman’s man. I was enthralled with it and relieved that I could get to howl my mother’s name over and over again in a socially acceptable context.
Mourning my father left a more permanent mark on me. Literally. I found a purple marker in Edith’s bedside drawer, and then sat at her dressing table staring at my reflection. After I’d conjured up the memory so I could be sure to get the shapes right, I re-created the constellations that my father had found hidden among my freckles: the Big Dipper (looking like a kite trailing a piece of string), the Southern Cross (the easiest to draw) and Orion’s Belt (requiring the most freckles of all). I didn’t know then that mirrors inverted everything, nor was I aware that the marker was a permanent one. All I knew was that I made a terrible mess that took two days of incessant scrubbing to remove from my face.
“Oh my God. You look like the purple people eater from that song,” Edith exclaimed when she first saw me.
“I was making constellations like Daddy showed me.”
Throughout all of this, Cat remained dry-eyed and silent and either hung back in the shadows or sat next to me holding my hand, depending on whether or not I felt like company. While I cried, Edith made tea, and with each tear I shed and each cup she drank, she was brought back from her own precipice. The daytime drinking stopped and she started taking her friends’ calls again. Her grooming rituals resumed. The shock of seeing the old Edith was enough to dry the tears. It seemed that while I’d been leaking sorrow, Edith had been damming the flood of her self-pity.
She took me to visit my parents’ graves, but only after she sat me down and asked me if I wanted to go, explaining that we’d be visiting the site where my parents were buried in their coffins. She obviously wanted to avoid another scene and needed to be sure that I was up for it. When I said I was, we climbed into her car and took the fairly short trip to the Westpark Cemetery where she’d insisted they be buried near my grandparents.
The graves were marked by small wreaths without their names on them; it would take another year for the sites to settle and for headstones to go up. I thought I’d feel closer to them where they were buried since that’s where their physical bodies were, but I didn’t feel their presence at all as I crouched atop the fresh mound of dirt. I wanted to cry, especially after what Maggie had said about crying being a way of showing them how much I loved them, but I couldn’t muster any tears there. Cat was surprisingly stoic as well.
Edith returned with a glass of Coke and placed it on a coaster on my side table. She sat across from me, holding a lit cigarette in one hand and a half-filled glass of wine in the other. I eyed it warily.
“What? It’s after dark. I’m perfectly entitled to a glass of wine without you giving me the hairy eyeball. Also Noah in the bible had wine. You heard what that minister said during that miserable excuse for a eulogy.”
When I didn’t reply, she pointedly took a sip of the wine and carried on. “We need to have a talk, you and I, and I think I’ll start off with an apology.”
I waited.
“I went off the rails a bit and I’m sure that must have scared you, and I’m sorry about that because I know how difficult the last few weeks have been for you. It’s just, you know, I don’t really have all the answers. I know when you’re a child, you think that adults know everything, but we don’t. Not really. I know it’s your parents who died, kiddo, but your mother was also my sister, and though I wasn’t all that fond of your dad, he was my brother-in-law and I didn’t want him to die, especially not like that.” Now that the words were coming, it didn’t seem that Edith could stop them. “That was bad enough, but also having to give up my job, my freedom—”
“You don’t want me.” The words slipped out. I hadn’t intended to say them, but they were a part of the festering pain I’d been working through. It seemed impossible to resolve my despair over my parents’ death without resolving my immense feelings of rejection.
Edith reddened. “What gave you that idea?”
“You’re only taking me because I have no other family. If there was someone to give me to, you would.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is. I heard you say it to Victor.”
She took a drag from her smoke, fingers trembling, and her expression changed, hardening into what looked like resolve. She rammed her cigarette into an ashtray, muttered, “Fuck it,” picked up her glass and went to the kitchen where she topped it up. “Do you want some more Coke?” she called to me.
“No thanks.”
She returned and took a length
y sip of her wine. “Okay, since we’re being honest, I didn’t really want you.”
There, she’d admitted it. I thought I’d feel better hearing the truth and knowing that I was right, but I didn’t. Edith saw my lip start to quiver and moved to come and sit next to me. She took my hands and waited until I looked up at her before carrying on.
“Well, actually, that’s not totally true. It’s not you I didn’t want. I didn’t want the responsibility of a child or the responsibility of being a parent. I never wanted children at all, not even children of my own, and suddenly finding myself having to act like a mother and having to take care of a child? God, that was my worst nightmare come true, and that’s what I didn’t want. But you . . . you, I want. Can you see that difference?”
I thought about it. I could sort of see the difference. “Do you mean like wanting to eat lots of candy floss at the funfair but not wanting to vomit from it afterwards?”
Edith laughed. “It’s a tiny bit like that, I suppose. In all honesty, I’m scared to death that I’m going to mess you up. That I’ve been given this amazing child, this bright and funny and wonderful child, and that I have no idea how to raise you without breaking you, you know? You haven’t exactly come with a set of instructions.”
I smiled. “Daddy never read the instructions of anything anyway. He said it was more fun to figure it out himself.”
“Christ, typical of your father. He waits to die before letting me know we have something in common.”
“You have me in common.”
“That’s true, that’s very true.”
We sat in silence for a while and I could hear Elvis ruffling his feathers as he groomed himself.
Edith spoke again. “Here’s the thing. In order for me to raise you properly and minimize the damage I’m undoubtedly going to do to you, I need two things. One, I need an income. And two, I need my sanity. Now the first thing shouldn’t be that hard to come by, but it seems that I’m not qualified to be any kind of office worker. And to be honest, I’m actually relieved because I just couldn’t do those jobs without dying a little inside every day. Can you understand that?”
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