by JT Lawrence
Kirsten is slightly out of breath when she reaches the third floor (Wheatgrass Shooter). When they first moved in she would say she lived on the green floor, or tell visitors to press the green button in the elevator, and they would think she was crackers. Of course there is no green button, and there is nothing green about the floor on which she lives. Marmalade understands her colours though: If he asks her how many slices of toast she’d like and she answers ‘red’ he knows that means two. Or yellow: one. Isn’t it obvious? No, he says, I’m just used to your type of crazy.
She walks down the dim corridor and fumbles at the door, dropping her access card. Swearing purple (Aubergine Aura), she bends down to pick it up and a dark figure steps towards her.
Journal Entry
20 February 1987, Westville
In the news: South Africa is reeling in the wake of a grenade attack that killed a number of SADF personnel at Tladi secondary school. A second Unabomber bomb explodes at a Salt Lake City computer store, injuring the owner.
What I’m listening to: Slippery When Wet - Bon Jovi!
What I’m reading: ‘Echoes in the Darkness’ – non-fiction about the murder of a teacher and the disappearance of her two children. Heartbreaking.
What I’m watching: The Bedroom Window. Bow-chicka-wow-wow!
Can you believe the news? Seems there are bombs going off everywhere.
Today was the worst and most shocking day of my life.
After fainting yesterday in the photocopy room at work, I went to the doctor down the road, at the corner clinic. All the girls here go to him, although I don’t know why! He is downright creepy! I won’t be going back there again. Told him about the nausea, dizziness etc. Can’t keep any food down. Thought I had a tummy bug. Felt like he could see my secret through my skin. He asked me if I was sexually active as he looked at my naked ring finger. SRP. Self-Righteous Prick. And hypocrite. Everyone knows he’s been having it off with Susan Beyers since her diagnosis. He’s way too young to be such a SRP. Maybe even too young to be a doctor?! He can eat my shorts. Argh, I hate them. Doctors, I mean. They give me the creeps!
So yes, I know you’ve guessed already. I had too, although I was in serious denial. The nurse phones me today (at work!) and tells me the test was POSITIVE. Not positive, as in, Good News, but positive as in PREGNANT.
I AM PREGNANT (!!!)
I was (am) completely shocked. I’m practically a virgin! Plus P and I have always been so careful. I’m on the pill AND we use condoms. Well, we use condoms most of the time. There was that time at the beach after the concert when we didn’t have one. And that once in my Citi Golf when I had that vicious bruise on my left knee from the hand brake and had to wear stockings to work in the middle of summer. Oh, God. Oh God.
A miracle/tragedy. A tragic miracle. Shoot, was all I could say into the phone. Shoot. Shoot. I wanted to say a lot worse!
They wanted me to go in immediately to get prenatal care: vitamins I think. She said something about ultrasounds and folic acid. Acid is right. My life is over! I said I wasn’t going back to that clinic and then she tried to refer me to an obstetrician but I just, like, put down the phone. There is NO WAY I can have this baby. P will think I’m trying to trap him. Get him to leave his wife.
P aside, what on earth am I going to do with a baby?!! I’m 24, still kind of new in town, and trying to make a good impression at work and in the neighbourhood. This was supposed to be my new beginning, my Big Break. How am I going to explain being single and knocked up?!
And, more importantly, what about taking care of the little anklebiter? Screaming sprog and dirty nappies? No way, I’m supposed to be a career girl! It’s the 80s for God’s sake! I left home so that I could make a life for myself, not tie myself down. Not be a gin-swilling housewife. I’ve dreamt for years of perms and power-suits and matching pumps, and having my own computer. And a telephone that I can dial with the back of my pencil so that I don’t ruin my new manicure. Why am I so damned fertile?! It’s a curse!
I don’t know what to do. Very stressed and there’s no one I can tell. Except Becky back home but then she’ll think she was right: that the Big City would change me. Oh my God, can you imagine what she’d think of me now? I could never tell her! The girls around the office are great but I’m not close enough to anyone yet. Besides, they all obviously know P and it would be too dangerous. This will make me sound like a hypocrite but I really don’t want to hurt P’s wife. That would be terrible. I’m a terrible person. This is probably a punishment. As they say, Karma’s a bitch.
Also, my family would be totally horrified. I can just imagine the look on Dad’s face. He lives in this whacky reality where the 60s didn’t happen and we’re all still pre-sexual-revolution conservatives. I guess I was, too, until six months ago.
F*CK! He’ll disown me in an instant. And Mom. I’ll be an orphan.
F*CK F*CK F*CK!!
It feels like the world is tumbling down around me.
I feel like jumping off a bridge! I may as well! Then at least I could rest. My mind could rest. Who would miss me, anyway?
I feel so sick. Anxiety, guilt, morning sickness: all turning my stomach into a washing machine. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I don’t know what to do.
I think I’m going to throw up again.
God help me. I don’t deserve it, but please help me anyway!
Chapter 4
A Big Red Bloom Over His Heart
Johannesburg, 2021
Kirsten gasps, clutches her chest.
‘Jesus Christ!’
‘I’ve been called worse,’ says the dark figure. The overhead lights flicker back on.
‘The fuck are you doing here?’
‘Hai wena. Is that the way you would greet the son of God Almighty?’
‘As far as I know, the son of God doesn’t skulk in dark corridors with inflatable motorbike helmets.’
‘And how would you know, being the infidel that you are?’ asks Kekeletso, arms akimbo. ‘And, bless you, sista, still such a filthy mouth.’
She holds up a black bag. ‘Is it okay if I shoot up in your place?’
Kirsten leans forward and hugs her, smells nutmeg in her cornrows, and warm leather. She loves the way Keke dresses. She seems to pull off a look that is sexy, hardcore, and feminine, all at the same time. Kirsten always feels like a tomboy in her company, in her uniform of tee, denim and kicks. She swipes her card and opens the door.
While Keke is dosing herself with insulin in the lounge, Kirsten opens the door of her antique aqua Smeg and roots around for a couple of craft beers. The idea of needles makes her gril, so she’s never been able to watch Keke do it. Just hearing the beeping of Keke’s SugarApp on her phone makes her shudder. There is the zip of the black bag (Squid Sable), which means she’s finished, and when Keke comes through to the kitchen her nano-ink tattoo is already fading. The white ink is sensitive to blood sugar: when Keke’s level is normal the tattoo is a faded grey; antique-looking. When she needs a shot it turns white, and the dramatic contrast with her dark skin is quite unsettling.
Kirsten twists off a cap with a hiss and hands the bottle to Keke, who looks like she needs to say something.
‘So,’ says Kirsten, ‘never known you to be lost for words.’
Keke says, ‘I think you’re going to need something stronger.’
She opens her black leather jacket and slides out a folder, laying it on the kitchen table. Kirsten puts her hand on it. It’s warm. Keke moves it away from her.
‘Drinks first.’
‘At least you’ve got your priorities straight.’ Kirsten forces a smile. The folder burns a slow hole in the kitchen table. Finally, she thinks: finally some explanation, some kind of way forward. She grabs a bottle of Japanese whiskey by its neck, and hooks two crystal tumblers with her fingers. With her free hand she gets some transparent silicone ice cubes from the freezer.
‘Do you ever miss real ice?’ she asks, ‘I mean old-fashioned ice, made out of f
rozen, you know, water?’ She sits down, across from Keke, across from the folder.
‘Nope,’ says Keke. ‘That’s like saying you miss coal-powered electricity. Or cables. Or teleconferencing. Or hashtags. Or church. Or Pro-Lifers.’
‘Or condoms. Or tanning,’ adds Kirsten.
‘I wouldn’t know,’ says Keke.
‘I hope you’re referring to tanning.’
Keke laughs.
Kirsten says, ‘You know what I don’t miss? Handshakes. I always hated shaking people’s hands. I found it bizarre even before the Bug, before people stopped doing it. It’s too... intimate... to do with a stranger. Which is when you usually had to do it. I’m no germophobe, but...’
‘I know! You’re taught as a kid to catch your sneeze with your hand—’
‘—and cover your mouth when you cough—’
‘And then the next moment you’re shaking everyone in the room’s hands.’
They both pull faces at each other.
‘Some people still do it, you know.’
‘Ja, well, bad habits die hard.’
They drink.
‘So,’ she says, ‘how’re you doing?’
It makes Kirsten squirm to talk about herself when she isn’t in a good place, when her Black Hole is gaping, trying to swallow her. Who wants to hear about her hollowness? Who wants to be bored with her First World Problems when they have enough of their own? When someone asks her how she is when she feels like this she is always tempted to yell ‘Fine!’ and change the subject as quickly as possible. But Keke knows her better than that.
The Black Hole is Kirsten’s name for the empty space she has always felt deep within herself. She has never known a time without it, only that it shrinks and expands depending on what was happens in her life. When she fell for Marmalade James, for example, it was pocket-sized: a small blushing apricot. When it sunk in that her parents were dead: a brittle plastic vacuum cleaner, emphasis on the vacuum. Not being able to get pregnant is the size of a tightly formed fist, which free-floats around inside her body but is mostly lodged between her ribcage and her heart. Sometimes the hole grows or narrows inexplicably, and makes her wonder if there is another version of her walking around, falling in and out of love and otherwise experiencing the rollercoaster of (a parallel) life. She has always had The Black Hole, it is part of who she is, and it hurts her insides just thinking that she will most likely carry it to her grave.
Keke, sensing her discomfort, says, ‘Your plants are doing well.’
‘Yes.’ Kirsten looks around as if she has forgotten they are there. ‘They’re happy.’
‘Happy may be an understatement. Your flat is a veritable jungle.’
Kirsten laughs. ‘It’s not.’
‘It is! There’s a lot of fucking oxygen in here. Do you even remember what colour the walls are?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘If I ever run out of news stories I’m going to come back here and do an ultra-reality segment on you. The crazy plant lady. Living in a Jozi Jungle. Madame Green Fingers.’
‘Ha,’ says Kirsten.
Keke puts on her important-news-headline voice: ‘Most lonely women get cats, but Kirsten Lovell is a fan of... flora.’
‘Ha. Ha.’
‘Most hoarders are content with keeping mountains of old take-away containers, but this woman can’t get enough of The Green Stuff.’
‘That makes me sound like a blunt-vaper.’
‘Her neighbours called the authorities when the vines began creeping through the walls and into their kitchens... it was clear: time for an intervention.’
‘Okay, hilarious. You can stop now.’
‘Really? I was having fun.’
‘I could tell.’
‘It started off innocently, you know. A fern here, an orchid there.’
‘Ah, yes, those orchids. Gateway plants.’
They smile at each other. Kirsten is surprised at how grateful she is for the company.
‘Earl Grey.’
‘Er, what?’
‘The colour of the walls,’ says Kirsten. ‘Earl Grey. The colour you get in your head when you taste bergamot.’
‘You’d better not say that on camera. They’ll cart you off to somewhere you can’t hurt yourself.’
‘Hm. That doesn’t sound too bad.’
Keke leans forward again. Business time. ‘So. Is there any news from your side about the... burglary—from the cops? Any leads?’
Kirsten shakes her head. ‘Niks nie.’
God, she hates talking about it, thinking about it. Pictures, unbidden, flash in on her mind. The broken glass and splinters on the floor, the up-ended furniture. Pillows ripped apart. The hungry-looking safe wrenched open and plundered.
The blood was the worst. There wasn’t a lot of it—in a kind of detached way she had noticed how little actual blood was spilt—but the vividness of the colour (Fresh Crimson), like leaked oil paint, it was as if it had come alive and advanced on her, misting her vision and strangling her: and that unforgettable assailing metallic smell. An avalanche of a thousand copper spheres.
‘Nothing? Not one lead?’ presses Keke.
‘If they have one, they’re not sharing it. All I know is what they said upfront, that it looks like it was a house robbery gone wrong. Looks like it was two guys who broke in. Something about bullet trajectories and blood spatter.’
Keke frowns at her. She knows it must sound bizarre to hear someone talk so technically about the murder of her own parents. But Keke knows that Kirsten doesn’t cry. She describes Kirsten as ‘immune to face-melting’.
‘There will definitely be some kind of… forensic evidence. Crime scenes of botched burglaries are usually teeming with the stuff.’
The bodies had looked like jointed paper dolls, the vintage ones you dress with paper clothes, 2D. Her father’s body drawn as if he were a runner in a comic book. A big red bloom over his heart. Her mother, unusually pious, hands secured in prayer position with a bracelet of black cable-tie (Salted Liquorice). A small hole in her forehead. Both lying on their sides, their waxen faces resting on the dull, dirty carpet.
There is a cool palm on Kirsten’s arm and she flinches, looks up and blinks past the pictures in her head.
‘Are you okay? I’m sure you’re still very shaken up, it hasn’t even been—’
‘I’m fine. I’ll be fine.’
‘You shouldn’t be alone. Where’s Marmalade?’
‘It’s been long enough.’
‘Long enough? It hasn’t even been a month, Kitty Cat. The last time I saw you was at the funeral, for God’s sake.’
They sit in silence. The funeral: twin coffins and the cloying scent of lilies. Pollen stains on white tablecloths. Clammy hugs.
‘Zim,’ says Kirsten. ‘James is in Zimbabwe, at that new clinic.’
‘Then who is all this healthy food for?’ She motions at the toppling fruit bowl, the mountain of bright green apples, and vegetable stand.
For thirteen years James has tried to stud Kirsten’s junk food diet with healthy alternatives. If she is going to eat that CaraCrunch, then she should have a low-fruc Minneola too. Slap chips? The mitigating snack is a handful of edamame. He tempts her with fresh chilli gazpachos, honeyed veg-juices spiked with galangal, wild salmon salami. He eats as if he can reverse the diseases he sees in the world.
‘He always stocks up the house before he goes, hoping I’ll run out of junk and resort to eating some kind of plant matter. He says we should buy shares in Bilchen and then at least we’ll have money for the double bypass surgery I’ll need one day.’
Bilchen is the Swiss-owned megacorp that produces the majority of processed food in the world: cheap, tasty, and full of unpronounceable ingredients. In addition to their plants in China and Indonesia they own hundreds of factories in SA, producing mountains of consumables, from food to hygiene products to pet snacks.
When James sees her eating something like her staple Tato-Mato crispher
es he says to her: ‘You know that there is no actual food in there, right?’ and she laughs her fake laugh to annoy him, licks her fingers, and points at the pictures on the foil packet. ‘Tato-Mato, Doctor Killjoy. It’s made out of potatoes and tomatoes. A vegetable and a fruit. You heard it here first,’ and he shakes his head as if Kirsten is beyond help.
Bilchen is perennially in the news for one scandal or another. Anti-freeze contamination in their iguana food, horse-DNA in their schmeat rolls, sweat-shopping kids in Sri Lanka, big bad GMO. They own so many brands they can just kill whichever has caused the controversy and re-label their product, market it as ‘new’ to hook the early adopters, and deep-discount it to the couponers. The leftovers feed the freegans. Et Voila, a new brand is born. P-banners and virtual stickers plead with you to ‘vote with your feet’ and ‘consume consciously’: ‘Boycott Bilchen’ is the new ‘Save the Rhino.’
Keke sighs theatrically. ‘How lucky does a girl get?’
‘Ja, yum, look at all those... shiny green apples.’
‘No, I meant Marmalade. Kind, generous, god-like in appearance, saves little children, and does the grocery shopping!’
‘Well, he gets cars loaned to him all the time, for his job, so it’s easier for him.’
‘Pssh. There is a Man-Lotto and you won. uLula.’
‘He also has his faults, you know.’
‘Ha! Not likely.’
Kirsten hides her smile.