Hum If You Don't Know the Words

by Bianca Marais

  I spent a sleepless night listening to Morrie snoring on his bed on the floor. It seemed that I’d barely closed my eyes before Mrs. Goldman woke me to give me the news. She’d called the hospital and was told that Beauty had come out of surgery. She was apparently in a stable condition.

  “Can we go see her?” I asked.

  “I’m sorry, sweetie. They said only family members are allowed to visit.”

  “But I am family! She’s my granny. Did you tell them that?”

  “I think we’ll have a tough time getting them to understand that. But I promise to keep calling for updates.”

  It was frustrating having to rely on the phone calls for news (especially when all they’d tell us was that Beauty was stable), so I was excited when Willy called to say she’d managed to use her nursing contacts to arrange admittance to Beauty’s ward. She came to see us straight afterwards with an update.

  “They won’t know anything more until she wakes up properly,” Willy said that night as she sat next to me on the Goldmans’ couch, “but they’re worried because it should have happened already. My magtig, I can’t understand it. Beauty has always been such a fighter, but it’s like she doesn’t want to regain consciousness.” Willy placed the teacup and saucer down with a loud rattle, and started dabbing a handkerchief at her swollen eyes.

  They looked strange, as if something black had leaked around them, and I blurted out the first thought that occurred to me. “Are you wearing makeup?”

  Willy flushed and turned to me. She ignored my question and posed one of her own. “Can you tell me again what happened?”

  “Is the makeup for Mr. Groenewald, your boss? Because he liked Edith and she wears makeup?”

  “Robin! Tell me again what happened.”

  I withdrew my jagged thumbnail from my mouth. “I told you! Morrie came to call me to the phone. I went downstairs and spoke to Edith and told her about Victor. She then said she had to phone Johan and we said good-bye. When I got back to the flat, Beauty wasn’t in the lounge, and when I went to the room she was gasping for air and then she fell.”

  “And nothing happened before then? She didn’t get a phone call or something that could have upset her? No bad news?”

  “Yes, I told you! She was upset about the phone call from Johan.”

  “Ja, I know, but was there no other news? Nothing about Nomsa?”

  I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak.

  Willy sighed. “Then the call from Johan was probably what did it.” She blew her nose and then looked to Mrs. Goldman. “Has there been any word about Victor?”

  “Yes, there’s some good news on that front, at least. He’s been moved out of ICU. I’m taking Robin there later. Hopefully he’ll feel up to seeing her.”

  “That will be nice, hey, Robin? Something to cheer you up a bit, liefling? Just don’t say anything to Victor about Beauty, okay? We don’t want to upset him.”

  I nodded. I had no plans of giving someone else a heart attack.

  “Why do things like this happen?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why do kind people like Victor get beaten up and wonderful people like Beauty have heart attacks?”

  “Ag, liefie,” Willy said, “it’s not for us to understand it. The Lord moves in mysterious ways.”

  • • •

  Kiddo, it’s me.” Edith sounded breathless and very far away when she called late that afternoon. “I just heard about Beauty. I can’t believe this happened just after Victor. Are you okay?”

  I wasn’t, but I didn’t trust myself to speak without crying.

  “Hello? Are you there?”

  I sniffed. “Yes, I’m here.”

  “You mustn’t worry, I’ve arranged with Mr. and Mrs. Goldman to take care of you for now and—”

  “You’re not coming home?”

  Edith sighed. “No, I—”

  “You’re never here when I need you. You’re never here when bad things happen. You’re always away!”

  It was a relief to find a target for all my anger and pain; I needed someone to blame. What had happened with Beauty wasn’t just my fault; it was Edith’s fault too. If she’d been home taking care of me like she was supposed to, if she’d made me a priority in her life and didn’t just keep handing me off like in a Pass the Parcel game, none of this would have happened.

  “Oh, Robin.”

  “I need you here.”

  “Kiddo, you know that I’d be there if I could. But the Goldmans are—”

  “I don’t want them! I want you!”

  “Come on. Cut me some slack, will you? I already take off more time than I’m allowed, and I was told in no uncertain terms that if I take off any more, I’ll lose my job.”

  “I hate you and I hate your job too.”

  I slammed the phone down and furiously batted away the hot tears that spilled down my cheeks. Edith wasn’t coming home because her job was more important than I was. Without Beauty, I was more alone than I’d ever been.

  • • •

  Johan led me to the private room and nudged me inside. “Take as much time as you want. I’ll be outside waiting for the doctor to get an update.”

  I didn’t want him to leave me, but I didn’t know how to explain that I was afraid of being left alone with Victor. Instead, I watched Johan disappear down the long corridor, his shoes squeaking on the shiny floor, and then I took a few tentative steps towards the bed.

  The thing lying there didn’t look anything like Victor. Its whole face was distended and bruised so that its nose and cheekbones all blended into one giant purple moonscape. The jaw wasn’t right either, it was way too big, and I could see cavernous space lying behind the cut, swollen lips. Bandages were wrapped around its head, and tubes of clear liquid fed into its arms. The thing looked like a monster, and I was light-headed and nauseated standing next to it. The beeping and flashing of machines only served to make the whole scene even more nightmarish.

  I was about to step back and turn away when the thing’s eyes fluttered open. Its gaze flitted around the room like restless moths before finding my face and settling on it. Its eyes were so raw, they looked as if they’d been cross-stitched with red thread, but they were unmistakably Victor’s hazel eyes. Even in that state, even as pain clouded them, their kindness shone through, and I watched in horror as they welled up with tears.

  “Please don’t cry,” I whispered. “It’s just me. It’s Robin.” I snaked my hand through the tubes that fed into the top of his hand and slipped my palm under his so that his fingertips were resting on the pulse point of my wrist. His fingers curled and he squeezed my hand, just the faintest pressure, and I squeezed back.

  I wanted to wipe away the tears that were running down his cheeks, but knew that removing the evidence of pain wasn’t the same as taking the pain away, which was what I actually wanted to do. I didn’t want him to be embarrassed by his tears either, so I smiled and allowed my own tears to fall free.

  I couldn’t believe how broken Victor looked. His one leg was in a cast and raised up by a hoist, as was his one arm. He looked to be naked under the blanket that was pulled up to his armpit, and thick black hair coiled up his chest and under his bruised neck. A beard had started to grow on his misshapen chin, and blood crusted in one of the top whorls of his ear.

  You should’ve listened to me and moved away. You should’ve been a coward and run away, because then you wouldn’t have been beaten up, and you wouldn’t be lying here looking so awful and being in so much pain.

  As I took all of his injuries in, I noticed something else. The mountain range of Victor’s knuckles was swollen, and scabs were just beginning to crust over the raw wounds on each ridge. The sight took me back to one night when my father had stumbled inside after an evening spent at a mine function, one of the many that women were not
invited to attend. I’d watched from my bedroom door as my mother gasped at the sight of his bloodied hands, accusing him of drinking rum, which made him aggressive and pick fights. Victor’s hands looked just as my father’s had that night.

  Victor fought back.

  And with that realization came the memory of the conversation we’d had the night of my birthday party. Facing your fears is always better than trying to outrun them, Victor had said.

  He was right. Instead of facing my fear of losing Beauty, I’d tried to run away from it. Instead of raising my fists against an unknown future and facing whatever a Beauty-less life would entail, I’d lied and hidden the evidence of Nomsa’s return, and then I’d run and run and run. But you couldn’t outrun your fears because that was the thing about fear: it was a shadow you could never shake, and it was fit and it was fast and it would always, always be there just a split second behind you.

  Victor had said something else that night, too, I recalled, something that had been niggling at the back of my mind the past few days. Karma is when you do bad things to people, and then bad things happen to you in return as punishment.

  The realization came in a breathtaking flash of insight. Everything that had happened—losing my mother’s mascara, Victor getting beaten up and then Beauty’s heart attack—all of it was my fault. I’d done something really bad the day I decided to hide Nomsa’s letter away from Beauty, and now karma was making sure I’d be punished for it.

  It didn’t matter that I’d told myself that I was doing the right thing by trying to hang on to Beauty. It didn’t matter that I’d believed Nomsa didn’t need Beauty as much as I did. None of that justified my actions. Hadn’t my parents and Mabel been taken from me and hadn’t I suffered through the pain and the loss of it? Didn’t I know better than anyone what it felt like to lose the people you loved most in the world? And yet, despite all that, I’d purposefully kept Beauty and Nomsa apart. Knowing full well that all Beauty wanted was to find her daughter, I’d made sure that wouldn’t happen.

  It wasn’t Edith’s fault that this had happened. This had nothing to do with the fact that she was never home. This wasn’t God moving in mysterious ways like Willy had said. I’d been looking for people to blame when the blame lay with only one person: me. Both Victor and Beauty were in the hospital fighting for their lives because I’d done something unforgivable, and I was rightfully being punished for it.

  Along with the guilt and the burden of responsibility came another thought.

  If my doing something bad caused this to happen, then surely my fixing it will make it all better.

  And suddenly, I knew exactly what I had to do.

  Fifty-three

  ROBIN

  3 OCTOBER 1977

  Yeoville, Johannesburg, South Africa

  So,” I concluded, “I have to find Nomsa and bring her to Beauty.”

  Morrie and I were sitting on his bedroom floor. I’d just confessed everything, telling him the whole truth about how I’d caused Beauty’s heart attack, and giving him all the details going back to the day of Nomsa’s visit.

  Nomsa’s letter and the photo Morrie had taken of the two of us were cradled in his lap, proof of my betrayal. I wore Beauty’s Saint Christopher pendant on a new chain around my neck because I’d been unable to fix hers where it had snapped. The pendant hung next to the heart-shaped locket Beauty had given me for Christmas, the one with my parents’ pictures inside, and it felt as though I was carrying everything I’d ever need around my neck. It gave me courage.

  Morrie hadn’t said anything the whole time I spoke. His eyes had just widened steadily with each new revelation.

  “Could you please say something?” I pleaded, plucking up the photo and looking down at it so I wouldn’t have to look at the shock on his face. Would he still so desperately want to be my boyfriend now that he knew what a terrible person I was?

  “How are you going to find Nomsa when Beauty, Maggie and Willy have all been searching for her for more than a year without any success?” Morrie asked.

  “I don’t know,” I sighed. “But I can’t just do nothing.” I looked down at the picture, studying it while wishing with all my heart that I could go back to that scene and change it. If I could do everything differently, I would. Seeing Nomsa and me together like that shamed me; it was as if Morrie had captured one of the worst moments of my life and pinned it to the photograph for all eternity as proof of what a monster I was.

  “There has to be someone who knows where she is. Maybe Maggie will know where to find her.”

  “Maybe,” he said but he sounded doubtful.

  I still couldn’t look at him and my gaze lingered on the photo. I couldn’t look too closely at myself or Nomsa either, and so I skirted around us, studying the rest of the picture instead: the giant oak tree, my school case, the swings in the distance, the sun-dappled black woman standing off to the side in the background.

  “I think you’ll have better luck with the letter,” Morrie said. “I bet you it tells us where Nomsa is.”

  “Hmm,” I said, my attention focused on the woman I’d noticed in the photo. I held it up closer to have a look. The marks I’d thought were spots of sunlight streaming through the leaves didn’t make sense because she wasn’t standing in the shade.

  “We just need to find someone who can read Xhosa to translate it for us.” Morrie was still talking about the letter.

  “Hmm.” And then I recognized the marks for what they were. “Look, Morrie,” I yelped, showing him the photo. “I’ve only just seen it. See this girl to the side with the sun splotches on her face?”

  “It’s called ‘dappling’ not ‘splotching’ but, yes. What about her?”

  “That isn’t from the sun; it’s white birthmarks. That’s the girl from the shebeen! Nomsa’s friend.”

  He squinted more closely at the picture. “The one who said she didn’t know where Nomsa was?”

  “Yes, but she was in the park with Nomsa just a few weeks ago, so she must know where she is now.”

  “But why would she tell you the truth if she even lied to Beauty?”

  My bubble of excitement began to deflate. He was right. There was no reason why the girl would tell me where Nomsa was when she’d lied to Beauty about where that man, Shakes, was. There was no reason why she’d—

  And then it clicked, and I finally, finally remembered the very first time I’d seen her. The knowledge that had been just out of reach the whole time came to me in a flash of vivid images: a police station; a half-naked girl with her arms crossed over her chest; a man’s shirt ripped open barely covering her; the smell of sweat and smoke; a white hand offering a blanket and a black hand taking it.

  “Maybe she’ll tell me because,” I said as I jumped up, “I did something nice for her once and hopefully she’ll remember and do something nice for me too.”

  • • •

  I found King George in his usual spot in the basement storeroom smoking one of his sweet cigarettes.

  “You want King George to take Little Miss where?”

  “Meadowlands in Soweto,” I repeated. “To a shebeen.”

  “A shebeen? Isn’t Little Miss too young to be dopping?”

  “It’s an emergency, King George. Please. Beauty’s in hospital and she might die, and I need to find her daughter so Beauty can get better and . . .” I was panicked and babbling.

  I reached into my backpack past Beauty’s journal and everything else I’d packed, and pulled out a handful of notes; it was the last of the money Edith had left for us while she was away, and I’d taken it all from the biscuit tin in the kitchen. I’d also broken open my piggy box and had a bank bag full of coins from that. “Here,” I said, shoving the notes and the bag at King George, “I have money. I’ll pay you. Please, please just take me.”

  He looked down at the money resting in the palm of his hand
and whistled. “Jussus! Where did Little Miss get this money? She rob a bank?”

  I shook my head, but before I could reply, King George shoved the money back at me. I wanted to scream from frustration that he was refusing to help me.

  “Keep the bucks, Little Miss.”

  I groaned and turned to go. I had no hope of finding Nomsa if I couldn’t even get to Soweto. There was no way Willy would take me to the shebeen, and if Mr. Goldman wouldn’t even sit in the Bara waiting room, he definitely wouldn’t go into a Soweto suburb. Maggie and her husband had gone into exile in London after the police raided their house again. There were no buses for whites that went to Soweto, and King George had been my only hope of getting there.

  When my hand touched the handle, King George called out. “Wait! Where is Little Miss going?”

  “You said you won’t help me, so I need to try and come up with another plan.”

  “King George didn’t say he won’t help Little Miss. He say he won’t take money. Little Miss don’t need to pay King George. Friends mos help friends out.”

  “So you’ll take me?” I asked, cautiously optimistic.

  “Ja, if it mos means so much to Little Miss.”

  “Thank you! Oh, thank you so much.” I launched myself at him, hugging him as tight as I could.

  “Jinne, now you make a ou wish he rubbed some soap over hisself this week.”

  • • •

  Is Little Miss hunnerd percent sure no one is sending the cops after King George looking for Little Miss?”

  I ducked my head out from the blanket that was thrown over me where I was hiding on the backseat. “Don’t worry. Morrie is covering for me.”

  We’d told the Goldmans that I wasn’t feeling well and wanted to go to bed early. Mrs. Goldman had been busy all day with preparations for Sukkot and so she hadn’t been paying that much attention to us as she cooked and got everything ready for that night. The plan was that Morrie would wait for me to sneak out, and then he’d stuff pillows under the duvet and switch the light out. After they’d returned from the synagogue, he’d pretend to check on me every hour or so, and report back to his mother that I was sleeping soundly so that she wouldn’t get suspicious.