The Story of Anna P, as Told by Herself

by Penny Busetto

  Even as she remembers this, she feels her stomach turning. She pulls the cushion out from behind her back and snuggles it against her body. But the memory keeps coming.

  They all pile in, their father in the back. He is drinking steadily and openly now, and is barely coherent. No one says a word. It is growing dark quickly, and her legs have turned mottled with the cold. Blue and pink and white. Sand scratches her thighs where they rub against the leather seat. She feels a tight bitter anger in her chest.

  Sitting as tall as he can, David drives slowly down between the dunes and along the shady avenue of bluegum trees. The cold dusty scent of eucalyptus fills the car. He doesn’t notice the police car parked by the side of the road in the long shadow of the trees. Only when he hears the siren behind him does he turn his head and see the policeman signalling him to stop.

  – Dad, it’s the cops!

  – Oh Christ! Quick, hide the liquor!

  They push the brown medicine bottles under the seat and sit paralysed, waiting. An overweight policeman saunters up to the door of the car.

  – License please, lisensie asseblief.

  Her father opens the door on the far side, trips and falls out on to the ground. He pushes himself to his knees and then unsteadily to his feet. He holds on to the door of the car for balance.

  – Listen here, officer, my son’s just having a driving lesson.

  The policeman studies him, and then inspects each of the children in turn. No one says a word.

  – Meneer, you are drunk. Come with me. Don’t you kids move!

  They sit in the dark vehicle and wait. They isolate themselves within themselves and don’t see their father being led away. After what seems like a very long time of cold and dark, the policeman returns and points at David.

  – You, seuntjie, come with me.

  A different policeman gets into the car without saying a word and drives the two remaining children over the dark hills to home. The car pulls up at last outside the house and they slip out while the policeman speaks to their mother in a low serious voice.

  As on so many other occasions, she doesn’t know what the outcome of this episode was. It is blanked out in her memory.

  It is now almost completely dark in the room. She breathes deeply, flicks an invisible spot of dust off her jeans.

  He sits forward and looks at the small clock on the table beside her.

  – È quasi ora. Dobbiamo finire. Ma riprenderemo domani. I’ll see you tomorrow.

  He stands and shows her to the door.

  Session 3

  He opens the door and gestures her to her seat. She sits down. She glances at his face and he looks back expectantly. She closes her eyes to keep him out. Her thoughts are swirling about, dark wings fluttering through her brain, confusing her. She looks down at her lap. Her finger reaches out towards the loose thread and begins to work it backwards and forwards. Slowly her thoughts settle. Where was she yesterday?

  Her father.

  When she first has the idea of killing her father. How the idea begins to flit in and out of her mind and won’t go away.

  It is a rainy winter’s night. About seven o’clock. Warm yellow light spilling out on to the wet lawn through the window. She is playing in her secret place behind the couch. She is surrounded by the smell of cooking. Onions frying. Her mother is making braised steak and mashed potatoes and gem squash and green beans for supper. She knows she is going to gag on the beans as usual. Jelly and custard for afterwards. The radio, a big brown wooden box with black dials, is transmitting Mark Saxon and Sergei Gromyko in No Place to Hide. Her father is in his big chair next to the fireplace. Still wearing his white hospital coat with CPA/KPA stamped in red across the breast in a cross intersecting at the P. A glass of beer on the armrest. A crate of beer half hidden behind his chair. There is the smell of beer mixed with the smell of onions. He begins to quarrel with her brother, then leaves the room, but returns almost immediately and pulls something out of his pocket. Small, metallic. She thinks, That’s a gun. It doesn’t look real or dangerous, but she knows without question that it is. From where she sits she can see the black hole leading inwards to emptiness. She crouches down as low as she can to get out of sight of the hole. Things move fast. There is screaming and shouting and running feet and cold and dark and then she is in the car with her mother and the boys and they are driving away fast. No time for feelings, just the need to get away.

  They park under a jacaranda tree outside the police station. Nobody says a word. The blue flowers are heavy with water. The rain drips down on to the metalwork chassis of the car making loud plonking sounds, or flatly and dully on to the tarmac outside. They are too proud to go inside and ask for help, so they just sit there and wait. The night passes slowly. Her legs and feet turn numb with the cold.

  She stops in mid-memory, bothered by a detail. If it was winter there wouldn’t have been flowers on the jacaranda tree. They flower in November. But it was winter, of that she is sure. She remembers how cold it was.

  At some point, after many hours, they go back home. They park in the street in front of the house. Her mother and the boys discuss what to do next. She is too little, they don’t ask her opinion. They decide at last to go into the house and see where he is. They decide that Anna should go in front because she is his favourite and he is least likely to hurt her. At least, she thinks that is the reason. She is terrified, but also feels quite special and important.

  The house is dark, the garden is dark, it is raining so there are no stars or moon to light the way. They climb through the fence and walk across the black wet lawn, she in her shorty pyjamas, her bare feet icy cold and wet. What will they find? Will he be waiting behind the door in the dark, shadowy, mad, ready to kill? Will he have shot himself and be lying on the ground in a puddle of blood? Her childish imagination runs riot. But she forces herself to keep walking. They reach the front door and hesitate, then push her forward. She stands on tiptoe to turn the door handle.

  The memory ends here. She doesn’t know what happened next. She can’t remember. There’s a kind of dead end. It all goes blank. She knows that she went to school as usual the next day; she always did. She knows that it was never mentioned again. She doesn’t know how it ended. Perhaps he had gone to bed.

  A few days later when she comes home from school she sees him swaying in the doorway at the top of the stairs that lead down into the garden, his heavy body outlined against the afternoon sun. It is a question of an instant. She doesn’t even think.

  He doesn’t hear her coming up behind him. She reaches up. Her hand touches the worn fabric of his white hospital jacket, feels the warmth of his body beneath. A quick push is all it takes. There is no resistance.

  He tumbles down head first, slowly, as she stands there where he had stood only a second before, her hand on the doorframe, watching. His body is soft, offering no resistance, like a lifeless object. And when he reaches the bottom he lies there motionless.

  She goes to her bedroom and lies down on her bed in her school uniform. She falls asleep. When she wakes up her mother is home. She can hear her moving around the kitchen. Her mother tells her there has been an accident and her dad has been hurt.

  He isn’t dead. It’s actually quite difficult to kill someone, she realises: the body puts up a huge fight for survival. Her mother calls the doctor who brings him around and helps him to bed. He seems fine and the doctor leaves. They all go to bed.

  Her father begins talking, long rambling monologues the way he often did when he was drunk. And her mother can’t sleep because of his talking, on and on. She is worried because she has to go out of town on an audit tomorrow, she must get a good night’s sleep. At last she comes to Anna’s bed and asks if she can change places with her. Will Anna sleep in her bed?

  How high her mother’s bed seems that night. She climbs it like a mountain. She lies in the dark room beside him hoping he won’t notice her. But he does. In the dark she hears him chuckle. He stretches out his
arm and pulls her to him and she goes.

  And when it is over, she lies praying for death for him. Perhaps for herself as well.

  But he is awake beside her in the bed. In the dark. He lights another cigarette. She hears the clink of glass as he pours more beer, the sound of him swallowing. And then the talking starts again, about work, about Van his assistant, and all the usual things, and her eyes grow heavy. But something is different tonight, not quite the same; his thoughts are confused, the speech long and rambling more than usual, and she watches the glow of his cigarette in the dark, and sometimes he dozes off in mid-sentence but just when she is beginning to relax he starts talking again. And now his speech is slurred so that she can hardly understand what he is saying. At last he falls silent.

  As the morning begins to filter into the smoky, beery room, her mother bustles in to start the day. But he just lies there, inert. And then her mother is on the phone to the doctor and the children are packed off to school.

  She remembers the scratchy angriness she felt as dawn fingered its way through the curtains into the dank-smelling untidy room where he lay unconscious, silent, his breathing now shallow and slow.

  Early, much earlier than usual, she is up and pulling on her school uniform, the light-blue shirt and tie, the navy tunic, the navy blazer over the top. Underneath, the thick cotton bloomers and grey socks. It is cold and drizzling as she makes her way up the hill to school. She is the first child in the playground and she doesn’t know what to do. The school buildings are still locked. She goes and sits on the dead tree trunk in the glade and waits. Blankly, thoughtlessly, comatose like her father.

  There is no one at home when she comes back from school. The house is quiet and cold. There is nothing to eat but she isn’t hungry. She goes outside and the chickens flock to the fence of their run. They’ve obviously not been fed. She goes back to the kitchen and measures out a bowlful of food and takes it to them. They fight over the corn that she sprinkles about.

  She crouches down and holds out a few kernels on the palm of her hand to her favourite hen – a scruffy, skinny, henpecked creature with a torn comb and bare neck who has managed to avoid the pot for so long because she looks so unhealthy. The hen turns her head to one side, glares at Anna with a beady eye and at last pecks the grain from her hand, then jumps back. Now that Anna has nothing for her the hen ignores her. She starts to sing a hymn from Sunday school that she feels sure the hen must like, ‘Under His Wing’, but the bird takes no notice and keeps scratching around in the dirt. The rooster takes a few cautious strides towards her, but when he sees that her hands are empty he moves away. She is glad. He scares her.

  Her mother comes back after dark. She is tired and looks worried. There is no supper, but no one is hungry. They sit in the lounge and she tells them that their dad is in hospital. He is in a coma. There has been massive haemorrhaging in his brain from the fall. He is on a life-support system.

  Everything seems flat, unemotional. Drained of meaning. Even now she can’t feel anything.

  They sit and wait. At about ten the phone rings. It is the doctor. The damage is too extensive. The hospital needs permission to disconnect the life-support system. There is nothing the family can do but wait for him to die.

  They wait. She prays for him to die.

  At two am the doctor calls to say he is dead. Wordlessly, without looking at each other, they get up and go to bed. Does she sleep? She doesn’t know. She supposes so.

  In the silence, she hears him light a cigarette, hears him take a deep draw and then blow the smoke out in her direction. She feels it curl its tendrils about her, creeping under her clothes and into her hair.

  The next morning she goes to school as usual. In the playground she tells her friends she has a secret, feeling strangely proud and special. But she won’t tell them what it is. The bell goes for school and they file into class. They stand for the Lord’s Prayer.

  – Our Father, who art in Heaven.

  She bursts into wild, uncontrollable tears. The teacher takes her to the sick room. She makes her lie down on the narrow bed in the corner of the room and covers her with a blanket. She asks Anna what is wrong. She remembers saying:

  – My father died last night.

  The teacher pats her shoulder, blankly. She quite clearly doesn’t know what to do, whether to go back to her classroom, stay here with Anna or go to the headmaster. She is young, fresh from teacher training college, inexperienced. Eventually she leaves Anna alone.

  The child lies there in the bare room. She doesn’t know what to do. She doesn’t feel sick. There is no reason for her to be in bed. She doesn’t want to be alone. After a few minutes she gets up, straightens the bed and goes back to class. Everyone avoids looking at her as she walks in, although she can feel their eyes on her back when she sits down. She knows the teacher must have told them.

  It suddenly occurs to her that they don’t know that she has murdered her father. Because that is what she suddenly realises she has done.

  – I’m a murderer, she thinks to herself with a sense of utter isolation and bereavement.

  For days the rest of the world falls into shadow for her. Only his death is real, highlighted by her mind. She waits in an agony of terror and excitement for the police to come and arrest her. She feels quite sure they will put her into jail and sentence her to the electric chair.

  A few days later she comes home from school and the house is full of people and flowers. She has never seen so many people in the house before. They’ve never had visitors before. It is a cold, overcast, rainy day; the smell of lilies and chrysanthemums and mud is overwhelming. The smell of the dead.

  She can hardly breathe. She tries to reach her mother but there are too many people in the way.

  – Not now, Anna, she says.

  There are scones and teacups and plates laid out in the lounge but no one is eating yet. She ducks under the table and sits as far as she can from the sea of tweed jackets and damp woollen skirts and heavy shoes. It is dark and cool and quiet in there. She curls up tight hoping that no one will notice her. But then the tablecloth is lifted and a huge face distorted by gravity appears, wet lips outstretched for a kiss. She withdraws and turns her head, and the lips pull apart to show teeth. She is dragged out and forced to submit to the kiss.

  A cousin takes her to a car and they set off for a drive that keeps them away all afternoon because it is not thought right for children to go to funerals. They go to Bainskloof and Wemmershoek Dam, and Steenbras Dam, which looks like pictures she has seen of Canada. Perhaps they are in Canada. She wishes she could go far away to Canada where no one can find her. She doesn’t know her cousin who is much older than her, and they don’t talk at all. Just drive, silently, in the grey drizzle. They get home after five. Everyone has gone; the house is empty, only the flowers remain to remind them that anything out of the ordinary has happened. But she doesn’t dare to ask about it. She imagines the funeral has taken place although she doesn’t know what a funeral would look like. She wonders if her father has been buried in the graveyard that she and her mother and brothers walk past every Friday evening on their way to the library, where the owls hoot in the trees.

  A few days later she helps her mother to clear out his cupboards. They put everything into cardboard boxes. They never speak of him again.

  There is an autopsy and the official version is that he had been drinking as usual, he had fallen down the stairs and hit his head on the floor and lost consciousness. No one suspects her part in it. She is the only one who knows what really happened.

  In those months after the funeral she is always at home. The house feels dark and cold but she has no desire to be anywhere else. There is no need to go and play at her friends’ any more or to go and sing to the chickens. In fact she has no desire for company. The only thing she craves is food. Sweet, sugary, milky things, comforting and soothing. Every day when she comes home from school, alone in the dark, cold house, she bakes herself batches of sco
nes, or cakes, which she eats by herself in the darkened lounge. She takes no pleasure in it.

  Session 4

  She enters and sits down in the usual seat. She looks at him quickly from under her brows, then averts her head. She had almost been looking forward to coming here today. To continuing her thoughts. But now that she is here she feels tired.

  He smiles and sits down opposite her.

  – Allora, Anna, non ti sei ancora stancata di questa storia? Aren’t you tired of this story yet? All you need to do is talk. Tutto qui. That’s all we need.

  She feels so tired. She wishes they would just let her be. She doesn’t want to sit here in this room with this man watching her, pushing her to think and remember and feel.

  She closes her eyes and slips back into the past.

  She is twelve when she first meets Luke. She has just come home from boarding school for the holidays. He is her cousin from out of town, about ten years older than her, who has come to stay with them while he is studying at the university. She has never met him before.

  She walks into the lounge and there he is, deep in conversation with her mother. He is watching himself in a mirror as he talks, his eyes only on himself. He doesn’t notice her standing in the doorway and carries on talking. She feels like an intruder and goes back to her room.

  She remembers that first meeting vividly, his heavy straight hair, his huge brown eyes, his quick movements. She realises it must only have been much later that she noticed his fine wrists and ankles, the delicate hands, the square well-manicured fingernails, although they all seemed to be present in her mind in that first moment. She remembers his mocking gravelly voice, the histrionics, the swagger.

  The impact on her is massive; she can’t get him out of her mind.

  Luke is always so busy that she hardly sees him. She hears his car skid into the driveway in the early hours of the morning, feels the slam of the front door shake the floorboards under her bed, and his footsteps run to his room. But one day, he knocks on her bedroom door to say hello. He raises his eyebrows sarcastically at the music she is listening to on the radio. A few minutes later he brings her an LP of Bruno Walter conducting the Berlin Symphony Orchestra playing Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, the Pastorale.