Almost Grace

by Rosie Rowell

  I glance at the service shop on the way back to the car. I don’t suppose they sell fresh carrots. Spook is waiting in the car. There is a large packet of chips in his lap. ‘Want some?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Drink this.’ He hands me another bottle of Energade.

  After hurrying the petrol attendant along, he turns to me. ‘I need to borrow some money.’

  ‘I don’t have my wallet here.’

  ‘It’s in the glove box.’

  I fish it out, trying not to touch the wrapped-up gun. ‘How much?’

  ‘Four hundred.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come on, Grace, I’m trying to get you home,’ he says, not meeting my eye.

  ‘Via Joburg. Why don’t you ask them about the weird rattle while we’re here?’

  Spook snorts in derision. ‘These guys are petrol joggies. What do they know about cars?’

  ‘More than you.’ My voice is braver than I feel.

  We have been climbing up the edge of a valley. At times the road leads us right into the folds of the hillside so that we can’t see anything but rock and overhanging trees. It is blessedly cooler. I feel able to think clearly for the first time today. I turn to ask Spook what time we’ll get back, but his frown of concentration makes me decide to leave it a while. As we reach the top of the incline, we emerge out of the shadows into a different landscape. Scrub bush has replaced the farmland. The sky has softened ahead of the coming evening. We are on a plateau. Valleys fan out below us and in the far distance, a smudge of blue sea. The car makes a burping sound.

  ‘That’s not good,’ I say, turning to him.

  ‘It’s fine,’ he says.

  ‘It can’t be the petrol,’ I say a few minutes later. Spook is chewing his lip and doesn’t respond. We haven’t seen another car since we left the petrol station. I have another hundred rand in my purse; I should have given that to him.

  The tar road disintegrates into loose gravel, forcing Spook to slow down. He scratches his ear; he drums on the steering wheel. Soon potholes force him to weave about the width of the road.

  ‘The road is shocking,’ I say.

  ‘Floods last winter,’ he grunts without looking at me. Does he really wish he’d left me behind in the bath? Probably.

  A loud pop makes Spook jerk the car to the right so that I’m pretty much sitting in the bushes.

  ‘Shit,’ says Spook. He leaves the engine running and gets out.

  I turn around in my seat and see him standing at the back of the car. I wait for him to come back but when he doesn’t I clamber over his seat and walk around to join him. He is standing with his arms crossed, feet apart, glowering at the back of the car.

  ‘What is it?’ I say.

  ‘Puncture,’ he replies.

  The back wheel is completely flat. ‘Bummer,’ I say.

  ‘D’you think?’ He turns on me as if it’s my fault.

  ‘So change it,’ I snap and walk away.

  He starts laughing.

  ‘What?’ I turn around.

  ‘No spare.’

  ‘You chose this godforsaken road with no spare tyre?’

  ‘That’s right,’ he answers, stony-faced.

  I shiver in the silence. We’re supposed to be on our way home! I wish I was anywhere in the world but here. The sounds of the bush take over, indifferent to the two pathetic creatures by the side of the road. Shushes and scurries and lazy air moving in far off trees. Above that is the sound of a low rumble. I listen to it for a while, to be sure. ‘Spook?’

  ‘Ja.’ His voice is low and quiet and defeated.

  ‘Can you hear that? There’s a car coming.’ Surely they’d be able to help us.

  He jumps up. ‘Get in the car,’ he barks.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Get in the car!’ he shouts so that I’m running to do as he says. I scramble back into my seat. He leans across me and fishes the gun out of the T-shirt.

  ‘What are you doing? The car could help us with the tyre.’

  ‘Stay here,’ he says.

  I stare after the madman who has just slammed the door. His reactions are as irrational and random as if I were flicking through late-night movie channels. Maybe he is actually unstable. ‘Stop it, Grace!’ I say aloud but my voice is wobbly. Then it dawns on me – the flat tyre is the last thing on Spook’s mind. The call to Marvin; the text message. Something has gone wrong. The gangster/poachers are coming after us. The thought sucks the remaining air from the car. ‘Tell Gavin to stop fucking with the big boys.’ That’s why we took this bizarre route back. I picture the black car, climbing the side of the valley, getting closer all the time. Tell me I’m wrong, I beg Louisa, Tell me I’m crazy. The man with his tattooed neck and cheap cigarette breath. Vooitog. I find I’m holding my hands against my chest, reciting every prayer I’ve ever heard. I don’t want to die. I will never, ever take any painkiller again as long as I live. I’ll spend my life doing good works. Just please not here, on the top of a hill, so far away from my mum. I squeeze my eyes shut. Through my open window the approaching car sounds as though it’s slowing down. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t pick up your calls,’ I whisper.

  But the car doesn’t stop. When I open my eyes there’s nothing more than a thick cloud of dust. For a moment I feel physically jangled, like when you prepare to take a big jump downwards but land on the same surface.

  Spook opens the door. He sits down heavily in the driver’s seat, watching the dust cloud left by the car dissipate reluctantly in the heavy air. He wraps up the gun and puts it away. Although his face is tightly controlled, his hands can’t stop shaking.

  He stares at them for a moment. He shakes his head. Then he starts laughing.

  ‘What?’

  He’s laughing too much to answer. He pushes himself out of his seat. The laughter grows louder and more out of control, he’s shouting and laughing at the same time. My mum told me once that she was with her granny when the police arrived to tell her that her husband had died in a car accident. Her granny had started laughing hysterically. The policeman had had to slap her to make her stop. ‘Her laughter was the most horrible sound in the world,’ said Mum. Watching Spook, I know what she means.

  ‘Do you –’

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ he mutters. He kicks the wheel. ‘Fuck’s sake!’ He kicks the number plate. He walks around the car, kicking the wheels and the doors. ‘Stupid fucking USELESS piece of shit! Nothing works!’ he turns and shouts at the hills. ‘Nothing ever fucking works!’ He is shouting so loudly that his voice is hoarse. ‘For once, just once in my life, can’t I get a break?’ He yells at the sky. ‘Jesus! Is it too much to ask?’ He bangs his hands down on the bonnet of the car. He turns away and kicks at the stones on the side of the road. ‘What did I do to deserve this … this SHIT?’

  You’re a poacher, I think, that can’t be good karma. Then I think of the gun, wrapped up in the T-shirt in the glove compartment. Am I part of the shit he doesn’t deserve?

  Spook carries on muttering words that sound like nonsense, garbled up, throwing his arms around like a child having a fit in the supermarket. Finally he is spent and sits down on the side of the road, holding his head in his hands.

  I start at a walk but soon I’m running. Though my flip-flops against the gravel road slow me down, it feels as good as though I’m on the beach, wild and free, barely touching the ground. I need air. I gulp it in, as if I’ve been underwater for the past few hours. Yes Rory, running is my literal escape mechanism. If only you could see me now.

  My plan is simple. I will not stop. I’ve been sitting all day; I will run all night if I must. I snatch glances at the surrounding veld7. We are so high up that the hills and valleys we climbed out of are barely visible. On top of the world. I feel no connection to this strange world. It is as though I’m running in a video game. The only sounds that reach me are my thumping heart and sharp intakes of breath.

  This is the first sensible decision I’ve made in days.
Each step is a confirmation that I am back in control. I feel my legs stretching out, my strides getting longer and firmer.

  There is a battered brown road sign up ahead, slightly obscured by a bush. The signpost points towards a barely visible track that will take you to a place called Gamkaskloof. Underneath that is written, ‘Die Hel8’. I could run there. It is a long time since a car has been down there. As I slow in indecision the first stab of pain hits, as sharp as a tear through my insides. I’m doubled over, panting, with my fingers digging into my sides to stop the pain. My body, normally so obedient, is in revolt – cramping and spasming, as useful as Spook’s piece of shit car. I sink down to a rock underneath the sign and clutch my knees, rocking back and forth in an attempt to make it stop. It is true – I’ve landed up in hell.

  I am left exposed and helpless. An eighteen-year-old girl stranded in the middle of nowhere. When the pain dulls, reluctantly, I am too exhausted to lift my head. Deep, otherworldly silence settles around me. Perhaps this is all a very clear dream: Spook didn’t find me in the bath and I’m in a coma, experiencing a vivid alternative reality. I pinch myself hard. ‘Ow!’ I say aloud. But things hurt in dreams too – how can one be sure?

  At the sound of footsteps I lift my head. Spook looks grey under his tanned skin. He stops in front of me and rubs the back of his head in the same way he did that first morning, looking down at me from the deck. I feel it on the inside of my palm.

  ‘Come on.’

  ‘Can’t we just drive with the flat tyre to the next town?’ I ask.

  But he dismisses it with a short ‘Too far’, and starts walking back to the car. A few minutes later he stops again. ‘Grace!’ His voice sounds like Mum’s at the end of a very long day.

  ‘Maybe there’s a farmhouse at this Gamkaskloof?’ I call.

  ‘It’s a fucking nature reserve,’ he replies.

  The sun is full and fat and slipping dangerously close to the horizon. This environment is as alien to me as a country halfway across the world. I know pavements and cars and beaches. Even the Sunday morning walks Mum and I take on the mountain are signposted. Those are circuits, with a beginning and an end.

  I take out my phone. There is no signal and only 20 per cent of the battery left. No phone, no people, no car. What would Louisa do? The thought makes me laugh. In Louisa’s world this would never happen.

  Spook is back. ‘I’m sorry.’ His tone makes it clear that although he is apologising, it ought to be me.

  ‘When Louisa and Brett get back and I’m missing along with the bag with the gun and fifty thousand rand, they are going to freak. They’ll go to the police. The police will send out a search party for me.’

  ‘I left messages for Louisa. Last night and this morning.’

  This makes me feel very small. ‘She could be freaking now.’

  Spook’s hands are in his pockets. He looks around, kicks at the stones on the road. ‘You can’t sit there all night.’

  ‘I can,’ I say, looking in the opposite direction. I keep my gaze steady until I hear him walking away. I will sit here all night. How long is twelve hours anyway? I’d rather sit here than tag along after a lying, poaching criminal who wishes he hadn’t fished me out of the bath. I rub my arms bracingly, the way my mum used to do after I’d stayed in the pool too long. I glance up and catch the sun as it drops from view. I feel stung by its desertion.

  People suffer unspeakable hardships every day – sitting on the side of the road for twelve hours is nothing compared to being forced into child slavery or crossing a nature reserve full of predatory animals in order to become a refugee in a country only marginally less bankrupt than your own. But I am in a nature reserve. Still, this is not the Kruger Park by any stretch of the imagination. The biggest animals around here must be buck or baboon. Snakes don’t come out at night. But what about hyena, or those nasty pointy-eared rooikat9?

  Then comes the most wonderful sound in the world – a ping from my phone. I take it out and stare at it – three bars. Three bars! Angels appearing in the sky could not have made me happier. I have to call my mum. I have to speak to her. After I’ve dialled her number three times, each time listening to the ten rings before switching to voicemail, I have to acknowledge that she’s not going to answer her phone. Why not? Where would she be at eight o’clock on a Tuesday? It’s not one of her yoga nights; even if she’s out, why isn’t she answering? I try the landline at home.

  It is answered after four rings, and I almost laugh out loud with relief. But the voice that answers doesn’t belong to my mum.

  ‘Ju-Ju?’ I ask.

  ‘Hello, Trouble.’

  ‘Why are you there? Where’s Mum?’ Oh dear, Mum is not going to be happy. Every now and then Ju-Ju moves in with us for a few weeks. Mum calls it the ‘Julia Cycle’. Ju-Ju calls it a spot of bad luck she didn’t see coming. It is normally the fault of some ‘freakin’ asshole’. Once she stayed for a month, until Mum told her she had the mentality of a freeloading teenager. They didn’t speak for a long time after that.

  ‘She went away for a few days, chicken. That friend of hers … the angry one … I always want to call her Chlamydia –’

  I laugh. ‘Clarissa!’ I’ve never liked Clarissa. I’ve always had the feeling she resents having me around.

  ‘Exactly. She said your mum needed a break and took her to some spa where you can’t take cell phones … I forget.’

  ‘A break? Why does she need a break? What about work?’ I can’t imagine Mum agreeing to taking an unplanned ‘break’. Those are for people who are not fine.

  There is a little silence from Julia that suggests there is something I’m being a bit thick about. ‘Your mum tried to get hold of you before she left. Anyway, I’m housesitting.’

  I hear her take a drag of her cigarette. ‘Are you smoking inside?’

  ‘No,’ she answers quickly.

  ‘But you’re talking on the inside phone.’

  ‘No one likes a smart aleck.’

  If Ju-Ju is not having one of her moments, why is she housesitting? It seems very out of character for Mum to leave her sister alone in her home. ‘Ju – are you on Gracewatch?’ At around the age of eight I started resenting the word ‘babysit’, so Ju invented the term ‘Gracewatch’.

  My aunt is quiet. Now I get it – my mum wouldn’t leave on a phone-free break unless there was someone around, in case of an emergency. Is she expecting an emergency? Am I the reason Mum needs a break?

  ‘Should I be on Gracewatch?’ asks Ju, after another drag.

  ‘No!’ I say, looking out over the glowing sky. ‘Everything’s fine.’

  ‘Sure? What are you doing?’

  ‘Just chilling outside. The sun has just set and left behind a beautiful sky. Anyway, I should go,’ I say quickly, as I feel the tears building up. ‘Bye.’

  The sky is beautiful. Golden oranges and reds are slowly deepening into each other. From this position I could be Moses, or Moses’ girlfriend, looking out over the Promised Land. It’s the kind of scene that is used as a backdrop for motivational speeches: you are limitless, as free and perfect as Mother Nature. Yet I feel like the last thread that was holding me down has just snapped and I’m falling through a vast empty void. I cannot bear to be an emergency. But I feel completely lost. I’ve spent my life trying to find the missing pieces of myself and reasons for my being on this planet. But they don’t exist. Everything is so random. The fact that I exist is random; the fact that I met Spook; that I am stuck here, in the middle of nowhere, staring up at the stars. No one is watching; whether I’m here or not makes no difference to the world or history or even the next minute.

  If Rory were sitting next to me now, he’d turn to me and say: ‘You are a child of the universe. No less than the trees and the stars.’ The first time he quoted those words, I thought he was messing with my head. They are the words Mum would say as she kissed me goodbye every morning; they belong to a poem that sits in a frame above her bath. Even though it says �
�M. Ehrmann’ at the bottom I used to pretend it was a note from my dad, a letter he sent to me when I was born. Rory. If only he were sitting next to me, the rapidly darkening sky would be poetic, not threatening. I miss him and his cramped little office and his horrible pack-of-three shirts. I miss the fact that he was so big – bigger than me and Mum put together and bigger than everything I threw at him. Until the day my ‘problems’ became too big for Rory the giant to fix and he didn’t want to see me any more. Up until this moment I have been so embarrassed every time I let myself think about that day, so ashamed that I was too bulky a problem for that huge man to carry. But tonight I feel something different – I feel desperately sad. More than sad. Perhaps Louisa is right after all – I feel as though someone in my life has died. I feel grief.

  My phone rings. I snatch it up. ‘Brett?’

  ‘Grace? Hooray! It’s Helen.’

  ‘Helen?’

  ‘Where are you, my love?’

  The words make me laugh. I can’t help it, exhaustion washes over me. ‘I’m a long way from Baboon Point,’ I say. I take a deep breath. ‘Is Louisa there?’ I screw up my eyes in anticipation of the conversation I have to have.

  ‘Uh – no. She’s gone back home.’ Helen’s voice sounds careful.

  I am so disappointed I can’t find any words.

  ‘Oh my god, it’s been drama to the max here,’ Helen carries on. ‘Louisa arrived here after your fight, got super drunk and threw her phone into the sea. Then she threw up everywhere.’

  At least that explains why Louisa didn’t pick up any of Spook’s calls. ‘That’s no way for a guest to behave,’ I say, if for no other reason than to make sure she keeps talking.

  ‘No,’ laughs Helen, ‘no indeed. When she woke up she decided she needed to go back home and sort out this shit about her course next year. Immediately. You know what she’s like.’

  ‘I do,’ I say. In the darkness Helen’s voice is like a string guiding me back. She is my Ariadne.

  ‘Where are you, Grace?’

  ‘Oh.’ For two blissful minutes I’d forgotten about the hard rock I’m sitting on and the flat tyre and the disaster that is my life. A sigh works its way through me. ‘It’s kind of difficult to explain where I am. Literally.’