I brushed away the tears, refusing to let her see how much she’d scared me. “It’s fine. I didn’t even notice you weren’t there.”
I went in search of King George then, not because I particularly liked his company but because Beauty disliked him. She said he was an alcoholic and a drug addict and I was to stay away from him. I knew that seeking him out would irritate her, especially since the smell of his sweet cigarettes lingered on my clothing afterwards leaving little doubt as to where I’d been. When I got home after visiting him, I ignored Beauty for the rest of the evening even while I made sure that she was always within sight.
The next morning, I woke up with a sore throat, but we were making puppets in art class so I ignored the pain and went to school. By that afternoon, the mild discomfort I’d been feeling spread to the rest of my body. I was hot and it was difficult to swallow.
Beauty took one look at me as I came through the gates and rushed over. “What is wrong?”
“My throat is sore.”
Her hand was blessedly cool against my forehead. “You feel very hot.”
I wanted to cry. Beauty took my case and slung it over her shoulder and then she took my hand. “Come, we will walk home very slowly and then you can lie down.”
“I’m not going to get into bed.”
Except, I did.
Thirty-two
BEAUTY
1 SEPTEMBER 1976
Yeoville, Johannesburg, South Africa
The child is being colonized by a rash. It migrates from her face and neck, over her chest and around her back, dipping below to her navel and then journeying down to her legs. It is rough to the touch, like the bark of a tree, and has the reddish-purple hue of the protea flower, especially in the valleys of her groin and armpits.
Her face is flushed and the only part of it that is not red is a circle that has formed around her mouth. She is hot to the touch, too hot, and her swollen tongue is coated with a white substance. She cannot speak or eat. Swallowing causes her pain. The tears run down her cheeks, but she does not make a sound. My heart is heavy for her.
I cannot help thinking that she is a child without her mother, and I am a mother without my children. I am learning how love wells up and causes great pain when it has nowhere to go. Like breast milk, it has to have an outlet; it can only be nourishing if it is directed away from its source. Does it matter if the child is not mine? Does it matter that she is white? Does it matter that her tongue cannot wrap itself around my language when I can wrap my arms around her? I do not think so.
There is a sunrise of infection dawning across her skin, but I cannot take her to seek medical treatment. A black woman arriving with a white child at a white hospital will raise alarms and invite unwanted attention. The same would happen if I tried to take her to Baragwanath in Soweto. My hands are tied by our secret.
My first thought is to contact Rachel Goldman. She is in the building and will be able to take Robin to a hospital without causing raised eyebrows. It is only as I am dialing her number that I remember they have gone to Cape Town for the week to celebrate her nephew’s bar mitzvah. I put the phone down and try not to panic. Rachel is my emergency contact, and with her out of the province, I am at a loss to think of who can help us. Robin needs to see a doctor. Her temperature is almost as high as that boy’s in Soweto and he breathed his last breath two days later.
Think. I must think.
Edith has left a number for me to contact her, but it will go through to a person at the airline as I cannot reach her directly. All I can do is leave a message and then wait for Edith to phone me back. Who knows how long that will take?
There is a pitiful moan from Edith’s bedroom where Robin is sleeping and I rush to her side. Her hair is damp with perspiration and her eyes roll in their sockets. She wears nothing but her panties and yet she still kicks out at imaginary blankets as she tries to cool herself down. The weight of the air is too heavy against her skin and I fan it, trying to make the air lighter so it will tiptoe over her.
In the kitchen, I pour cold water into a pot and then empty ice from the deep freeze into it. I carry it through to the room and use a white facecloth, dipping it into the water and then gently holding it to Robin’s face. She sighs. I repeat the process over and over again, a dozen times, a hundred times, pressing the wet cloth to the sandpaper of her skin. After two hours, she is hotter than she was before.
I must think. What is the best thing to do?
And then it comes to me. Maggie. Why did I not think of her before?
I dial her number with a trembling finger and then have to start again when I fumble the last digit. My breath catches as I listen for the connection and I only exhale when I finally hear the first ring. The phone rings twice and then a third time; I keep count as my panic rises. After the eighth ring, I lower the receiver to its cradle, defeated by my certainty that no one is home.
Who can I turn to now?
A voice echoes across the line just before I break the connection and I snatch the phone back up.
“Maggie? Maggie, is that you?”
“No, I’m afraid Margaret’s not in. May I ask who’s calling, please?”
I recognize the voice as belonging to Maggie’s husband. “Andrew! It is Beauty Mbali. I know I should not call there, and I am sorry to disturb you, but I desperately need to speak with Maggie. It is Robin, the child. She is sick, very sick, and I do not know what to do. Please, I—”
“Beauty? Is that you? Goodness, I couldn’t make any of that out. Who did you say is ill?”
I repeat what I have said, forcing myself to speak slowly, and Andrew listens until I am done. He asks questions about Robin’s symptoms and his calm tone is reassuring.
“Maggie’s just popped out but please don’t worry. She should be back in a short while and I’ll make sure she calls you as soon as she steps inside. Just keep doing what you’re doing because it sounds like you’ve got it all under control. We’ll send whatever help you need.”
I have just sat back down on the edge of Robin’s bed when the phone rings and I run to snatch it up. “Hello? Maggie?”
“Beauty?” The voice is a man’s but it is not Andrew’s. I do not recognize it.
“Yes, can I help you?”
“I know where Nomsa is. I will give you the address, but you need to come right now.”
Nomsa. The shock of hearing her name renders me speechless. Nomsa.
Finally, after all this time.
I reach for a pen and paper and am about to tell him to proceed with the address when I remember . . . Robin. I cannot leave her.
“Who is this?”
“You do not need to know that. Just come now. The address is—”
“I cannot come now. There is an emergency here and—”
“I thought you loved your daughter. I thought you wanted to find her.”
“I do. I do, but—”
The line goes dead.
I cannot believe it. After all these months of silence, finally there is news and yet there is nothing I can do. I have just replaced the phone in its cradle when it rings again. This time it is Maggie and she says that someone is on their way.
“It sounds like Robin has scarlet fever, the symptoms seem to match up, and she’ll need penicillin. The doctor I normally use is out of the country, but I know someone with a nursing background. Sit tight. She won’t be long.”
I go back to the room and pick up the facecloth once again. I do not know if it is helping the child, but it gives me something to do so that I do not give in to the madness of thinking about Nomsa and how I have just given up my only chance to find her. Instead, I move the cloth back and forth, again and again, between the cold water and Robin’s feverish skin and I pray.
Finally, there is a knock at the door.
Thank you, Jesus, help has come.
&
nbsp; I rush to the door and fling it open. A white woman stands at the threshold. She has a strange expression on her face as she peers past me, but she takes my hand as I step aside for her to enter.
“You must be Beauty. Maggie sent me.”
The tears on my cheeks surprise me.
“Ag, please don’t cry. Everything is going to be all right, okay?” She squeezes my hand.
“Thank you for coming,” I say. “Thank you.”
“Where’s the child?”
“In the room.”
The woman rushes past me directly to the bedroom and stands at the threshold looking at Robin.
“Yes, that’s definitely scarlet fever,” she says and I detect it now: the Afrikaner accent. It would normally make me very nervous, but if she is a friend of Maggie’s, I know I can trust her. She turns and the light catches the pendant hanging around her neck. It is a gold Saint Christopher; the one Maggie gives to those she cherishes most. I know that if I turn the pendant around, it will have a single word engraved into the back: “Believe.” And I do believe. This woman is going to save Robin, I know it.
She pulls a thermometer from her pocket and walks over to the bed.
Robin opens her eyes and they seem to clear for a moment. She looks at the woman and then she starts to scream and thrash around.
“No. No. No.” Robin reaches out an arm and smacks the woman across the chest. “Not you. No. Not you.” The child is desperate to get away from this woman and her eyes roll towards me in appeal. “Please. Help. No.”
“I am sorry,” I say to the woman. “I do not know why she is being like this. It must be the fever.”
The woman merely grunts and instructs me to hold the child’s arms down. I circle my fingers around Robin’s wrists and try to raise her arms up above her head to rest against the pillow, but Robin struggles against me. She pulls her arms from my grasp and I do not know where she gets this strength from. She fights against me and, in her warrior spirit, is my daughter. Robin is so much like my Nomsa that it takes my breath away. I wonder how I did not see it before. Finally, after much thrashing around while the woman and I both try to hold her back, Robin slumps against the pillow, her jaw slack. The fight has gone out of her.
The woman slips the thermometer between Robin’s lips.
“Her temperature is forty-one degrees. My magtig, that’s very high. I’m worried it might cause a seizure.” She puts the thermometer down and turns to me. “Where’s Edith?”
I am surprised that she knows Edith’s name. Maggie usually limits information in situations like these as she says that people cannot betray one another with details they do not have.
“Maggie told you about Edith?”
“No. She just said that a child needed medical help and that the caregiver was a black woman. I’ve met Edith and Robin before.”
Before I can ask the woman the details of that meeting, she checks her watch and then stands.
“I unfortunately can’t stay very long because I have an appointment at the courts that I need to get to.” She digs in her bag and pulls out a bottle of yellow medicine, which she hands across to me. “You need to give her this syrup every eight hours, exactly on the hour. Try to keep her hydrated. I’m going to give her an injection now that should help her with keeping fluids down. Carry on with the cold compresses and give her cold baths every few hours. If we can get the temperature down, the worst will be behind us.”
Once the injection is administered and we are again at the door, I take the woman’s hands. “I do not believe that you told me your name.”
“It’s Wilhelmina,” she says.
“Thank you, Wilhelmina. Thank you for what you have done for us. I will never forget this kindness. I hope to see you again one day so that I can repay it.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” she says. “I’ll definitely be back.”
Thirty-three
ROBIN
1 THROUGH 7 SEPTEMBER 1976
Yeoville, Johannesburg, South Africa
Everything was blurry like looking through a desert haze. Beauty was there with me, a dark smudge, and then she wasn’t. I blinked, trying to clear my vision, but that only made it worse. I could make out the white ceiling and the light fitting and the net curtain fluttering against the window, and if I turned my head, the Elvis paintings shimmered at the horizon of the room before they faded into blackness.
The next time I opened my eyes, Mabel was back again after having left me at the police station on the day my parents died. She was sitting next to me, singing softly, leaning over me with something wet and white in her hand. A cloud, she was holding a cloud to my face, and it felt wonderful.
Except it wasn’t Mabel after all; it was someone else with skin like darkness. Something silver shimmered at her neck and it dipped down towards my lips every time she leaned in. Up and down and up and down.
When my vision cleared slightly, I saw a disc with a giant of a man carrying a child across the water on it. The giant whispered that everything was going to be okay. His icy breath swept over my lips as he kissed me and then he was gone, and Mabel was gone too and the loss was overwhelming. Mabel had left me. Mabel, who I loved and who called me her white child and who kissed me all over—everywhere except my lips—Mabel had walked away without looking back. Each time I relived her leaving, the tears would run until the vision blurred and faded away, and then I would wake and it would happen all over again.
“Mommy,” I whispered.
I want you, Mommy. Please come, please. I’ll be strong, I promise. I’ll stop crying and I’ll smile and I’ll be good and you will love me this time. You won’t wish I was the dead baby, my real twin sister, the one who wasn’t born.
In my fevered dreams, I was six years old again, hiding behind the couch being quiet as a mouse, taking quick peeks and listening in on the grown-ups’ conversation. Edith and my mother took long sips of wine, and cigarette smoke escaped from their noses and mouths, making them look like angry dragons. My mother only ever smoked when Edith came to visit.
“God, you’re so lucky having the exciting life you lead,” my mother said.
“It’s not luck, darling. It’s called ‘birth control.’ I told you no bloody good could come of giving up your training and marrying a mine worker. If you’d listened to me, you’d be a footloose and fancy-free airhostess, and the two of us would be jet-setting all over the world like we planned.”
My mother groaned. “I know! Don’t rub it in. It’s not like I planned the pregnancy.”
“There were ways to take care of it, but there’s no use crying over spilled milk. Robin’s very cute,” Edith offered in a grudging sort of way.
“I know she is,” my mother said. “It’s just that she’s her father’s daughter through and through. They’re like two peas in a pod, always ganging up against me and making me feel left out.” She was quiet for a moment and then added, “I sometimes wonder about Robin’s twin, the one I miscarried . . . if she would’ve been more my child. More like me.”
Edith laughed. “A mini Jolene? What a scary thought. One of you is bad enough, thank you!”
“I’m not that bad! And at least I’d know how to deal with someone like me. Motherhood is hard enough without feeling like you gave birth to an alien. It’s like there was a mix-up somewhere and I got given the wrong child.”
I’m not the wrong child, Mommy, I can be the right child. I will be just like you and you will love me.
Mabel. Mommy. The giant. They came and went, came and went like the tides, washing over me in waves but none of them cooled me down.
Cat was there with me; she leaned in close and settled against me, falling through the barrier of my skin until she lay snuggled up inside of me. She was my twin, the one who died and the one my mother said she wanted, until I brought her back to life, raising her from the dead like Lazarus. Then m
y mother didn’t want her so much anymore.
Where is the cloud? Where has it gone?
I tried to look for it but the world blurred again.
• • •
Later, I don’t know when exactly, they came again, the giant and the baby, coming closer and closer until they touched my lips, a benediction. They were cool against my skin, but this time they were cloaked in gold, not silver. When I looked up, I recognized the white face floating above and my blood ran cold.
It’s the woman who wants to take me away! No!
I tried to keep my teeth closed so she couldn’t hurt me, but I was too weak to fight back. I begged Mabel-Beauty to help me, but she was on the bad woman’s side and she held me down. The woman forced a tiny dagger into my mouth and I waited to die.
Cat squirmed in my belly where she was sleeping and then she burrowed into my heart to hide. She would not be helping me, and I was too sick to help myself.
Daddy, come save me. Daddy, please.
• • •
When the social worker left after injecting me with poison, she took the gold giant and the child with her. Mabel-Beauty was back with the cool cloud.
“Edith will be back soon,” she whispered. “Soon.”
That’s a lie. I don’t want to be fed any more lies.
So many of them already swam in my veins as silver snakes; they were red-hot scaly things rubbing against my skin from underneath making it feverish and raw. Mabel-Beauty poured more lies into spoons and tried to get me to swallow them.
“No more lies! No more snakes! I don’t want any more of them.” On and on, they whispered to me with their forked tongues.
“Robin,” Beauty said as I knocked the spoon of lies from her hand. “My child, I will tell you the truth.”
“You will?”
“Yes, I will answer all your questions truthfully. I promise. But then you must let me feed you this truth medicine. It will help take away the snakes and the lies. If you swallow the medicine, I will tell you the truth.”
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