by Tracy Going
I was still screaming when I heard voices from over the wall. My neighbours.
“Hey, what’s going on?”
Shouting. Muffled voices.
“Call the police.”
I heard pounding at my door, outside on the street.
“Open up. Open this door!”
Thump. Crack.
I heard the wood splintering and I knew it was over.
I was safe.
I stumbled to my feet and collapsed into the arms of my neighbour and his son. I sagged into them as they carefully lifted me and dragged me through the fractured wooden door. I dropped my head and brought my shaking hands up to hide myself from those who had already gathered on the pavement outside. My shouts had drawn passers-by. There were people standing on the other side of the road. The security guards had arrived and they too stood staring.
My neighbour and his son half dragged, half carried me past the gawking crowd, to the safety of their property. When they placed me gently on a chair it was only then that I looked up at them. They looked the same, both earnest and burly, just many years apart.
The kitchen was a cold, stark room, not the warm, cosy hub expected of a family home. It was immediately obvious there was no woman in the house. The linoleum floor was dated. So too were the chairs, with their spindly steel legs and black rubber tips. Remnants of an era long gone. But the kitchen was spotlessly clean, clinical almost, and I was glad. I didn’t want clutter. I wanted space and quiet so that I could try to gather my thoughts.
The son bundled a crumpled, wet dishcloth to my face, and I held it tight to my burning eye. The pain was throbbing through me and the cold cloth pressed against the heat of the swelling brought some relief. He then made sugar water but it sat swirling in the mug. I was unable to hold myself still enough to drink it.
Father and son had raised the alarm when they first heard my screams but the police were yet to arrive. I gave them my sister’s number. I knew my mother and her husband, John, were in Johannesburg for the afternoon and I wanted my sister to contact them so they could be with me.
There was no conversation between us as we sat there, waiting awkwardly. We just stared and waited.
I’d only met my neighbour a week earlier. When I’d knocked on his door, introduced myself and asked him to look out for me, it had been the first time I’d ever seen him. I had shamefully apologised for past disturbances and explained that I had a restraining order in place but that I feared for my safety.
As I sat there trembling, the pain stabbing at my temple, I wondered what would have happened had I not had that prefatory conversation. Would I even be sitting on his chair?
The police finally arrived and we made our way back to my home.
Again I kept myself tucked between my two neighbours. Passers-by still stood waiting and watching over the road and some of my other neighbours had come out too. I saw security patrol vehicles and police vans parked impatiently all along my grass verge.
The armed security guards had somehow prised open what was left of my door and had entered my property. They had also called for backup. Everywhere I turned there seemed to be men in uniform. I heard walkie-talkies and deep, unfamiliar voices.
My home had become a crime scene.
I didn’t want to go inside. I didn’t want to see all the damage. I already knew that the lounge was strewn with shattered glass, smashed picture frames and ornaments, the splintered remains of furniture. I stayed outside. I left it to my neighbour to manage everyone around me and collapsed onto a chair on the veranda.
I needed to sit.
Garp followed me, but this time, as he moved in closer, there was no wagging tail.
We were both still. His head against my knee, my hand limp against his ear.
I leaned forward and held him tight before burying my head in the cold dishcloth, trying to numb the drilling pain and the horror of all that had happened.
Two
“Where is she? Where?” she shouted. “I need to see her!”
I was deep within my own place when I heard my mother’s words cut through the white noise that engulfed me. I lifted my head to see her bounding down the stairs toward me, her husband, John, close behind.
“I knew it,” she announced to no one in particular. “I couldn’t stand him from the moment I first saw him!”
As she moved closer I saw her expression turn from concern to horror. I could see in her eyes what I must look like.
“Look what he’s done to you!” she wailed.
But I didn’t want to see what he’d done to me.
I already knew.
Once John and my mother were confident that all was being managed efficiently, they quickly bundled me into the car. None of us spoke as we made the short drive through the leafy avenues to Rosebank, to the closest hospital. As the soft hum of the engine eased our silence and we passed the garage and the trendy restaurants with their revelling patrons I sat in the back clutching my eye. My jaw clenched, I was trying hard to keep myself together and saw nothing beyond what was directly in front of me. My mother, her shoulders square, resolutely holding onto the J88 and SAPS 308 forms the police had given her to be completed by the attending district surgeon. John alongside her, his hands firmly on the wheel, sitting tight in the middle of the lane steering us forward, his neck still flushed where his collar creased. John was angry and his parting words at my house played over in my mind.
My phone had rung just as my mother, John and I were heading to the car.
Him.
I had pressed the green button and held my hand open, allowing his invective to effortlessly ricochet around my palm.
His words were rough and coarse.
“You fucking bitch …”
I had passed my phone to the police officer to bear witness. I then passed it to John.
But John remained completely undeterred by the rant reverberating from the phone, and he joined the shout-down.
“You get to the police station now,” John shouted back. “Now!”
Garbled echoes from the handset against John’s ear.
“Do you understand me?” John’s finger struck at the air. “We will be laying charges.”
John was right. We would be laying charges. I would be laying charges. It was the only way, and I was calm in the knowledge that it was procedural and necessary.
John parked the car while my mother and I made our way to Casualty. The automatic doors opened slowly for us to pass through and, as they yawned closed behind us, my mother edged closer. She put her arm around my shoulders and held me tight to her side so we could move through the sterile, dustless air as one. Using her body, she closed me off from prying eyes. I kept my head low, my hands pressed tight to my face. I was trying to block the tears, but I also didn’t want to look at anyone. I didn’t want to see who bore witness to my shuffle of shame. I didn’t want to see anyone showing me pity. But still, as I moved down the passage in my mother’s embrace, my shoulders heaving, I felt the unseen glances. I felt them as they pierced and ruptured my back. I heard the silence as I painfully made my way past.
I was immediately ushered through to a ward. Blue curtains were pulled together around me and the next hour became a blur of paperwork and purposeful process. Between the district surgeon, Dr McKenzie, and the nurses, there were many carefully tending hands as they lifted, probed and touched.
“Where does it hurt?” asked Dr McKenzie gently.
“My eye,” I said, trying to hold my sobs in.
“Yes, but where else?” she asked, running her hands over me, assessing the damage.
“Don’t worry about the rest,” I said, pulling my shirt back in place. “It’s just my eye.”
I was sent for X-rays to check for fractures. There was nothing broken, nothing structural at least.
Dr McKenzie completed the police forms and documented the injuries to my head. According to her report, I had a large supra-orbital haematoma with some right lateral orbital bruis
ing. There was bruising of my anterior neck, left jaw and posterior neck, as well as an injury to my scalp over the occipital lobe. It was all medical jargon, but she noted it word for word.
I left the hospital sedated and a little quieter.
It was dark by the time my mother and John led me into the brightly lit police station.
We were not the only ones there to report a crime.
It was an average Saturday night in a suburban neighbourhood, with regular weekend complaints. A house burglary, a smash-and-grab incident, a broken car window, other petty crime. It was only me who’d been beaten up.
It was busy and there was nowhere to sit. All the seats in the charge office were occupied so we were directed out into the passage, past the peeling, one-way mirror into the overflow area. My mother was still holding me tight as we shuffled through and settled ourselves into the chairs, tufts of hardened yellow foam escaping through the cracks in the blue, faux leather. We waited our turn to make a report.
It was only as I was sitting still in the passage, the medication beginning to numb the pain, that I realised I was shivering, that I was cold. I looked down at the clothes I’d pulled on that morning. Bright green linen shorts, a white T-shirt and shiny takkies. New clothes. I had bought them a few days before. It was a bold outfit, perhaps even a little defiant, suggesting the promise of fresh beginnings. But as I sat there under the harsh fluorescent lighting, my new clothes looked the way I felt. Dirtied, bloodied and rumpled.
I held myself warm, crossing one arm over my chest, my other hand still clutching the wet dishcloth, pressing it flat to my bulging forehead, pushing past the pulsing heat of my swollen eye. It was a pointless gesture. But I tried anyway. I hugged myself close and leaned back against the wall, my head hard against the rough plaster. Walls that had been rubbed smooth from years of other resting heads.
I closed my eyes.
It was all too much.
I didn’t want to see what I looked like or where I was. I didn’t want to acknowledge the decay, the cracked faux-marble flooring and the grubby electric cables hanging exposed and tired along the grimy walls.
I was stiff from the cold and the pain when his words crashed through, raining down on me.
“Get those motherfuckers out of my sight!” he bawled, his words reverberating down the passage.
It was him. In the charge office.
“Don’t let them be near me,” he shouted.
I sat upright. I could make out the scuffling and jostling and, although I knew I’d be safe, I backed up into the wall, trying to make myself disappear. I watched as police officers rushed toward him and held him in place. With some force, they managed to form a human cage, a barrier between him and us, out in the passage.
“God forgive me, but he’s awful,” my mother groaned. “What a dreadful man.”
The police officers were having none of it. They restrained him and funnelled him through to the process room somewhere at the back of the station where he was charged with assault and the intent to do grievous bodily harm.
But that was not before I noticed that he had changed.
He was no longer wearing khaki shorts and a T-shirt. Instead he was well turned out: neatly pressed chinos and a fresh white shirt, a navy-blue blazer. Except for his shoes. He was still wearing the same brown suede. He had arrived at the police station cloaked in tailored respectability and was presenting himself as elegant, refined and sophisticated.
I slumped back into my seat, numbed and disbelieving.
Surely not.
It was soon after that we were ushered forward for me to tell my story. I was propping myself up against the tired counter when the policeman who was to take my statement leaned toward me.
His brows came together as he frowned.
He peered closer.
Then his eyes opened in delight and at the top of his voice, loud and clear, his words resonated across the room: “Hau, it is YOU!” Leaned a little closer. “It is you. Tracy Going!”
“Yes, it’s me,” I mumbled.
But he never heard my response as he turned and hollered to his colleague in the adjoining cubicle. His colleague wasted no time and soon the two were standing before me, arms crossed, mouths open wide. They were gaping at me as though I was some wondrous apparition, like it was not possible that I could be there, before them, in real life. They were looking at me as though my forehead was not bulging blue, that my eye wasn’t swollen shut, that my hair wasn’t hanging limp from the wet dishcloth. They were marvelling.
“You are my role model,” the charge officer grinned, shaking his head in disbelief.
“Thank you—” I said.
“Tjo, I know that voice,” he chuckled. “I listen to you every morning on Radio Metro. You and Bob. Hau batung, you two … You are my favourite.”
“Thank you—” I said again.
I couldn’t help myself and I smiled.
He was very kind and very generous.
Once the excitement had settled down and everyone around us knew exactly who I was, only then could I proceed with my statement. And it was a long, laborious process. I spoke slowly and clearly. I simplified where I could. I repeated myself when necessary. I spelled out words when needed.
And when we were finally done, I was exhausted. Drained.
All I wanted to do was sleep, and as soon as I was back in the comfort of John’s car I folded myself into the leather and surrendered myself to the remainder of the night. I was too scared to be alone, in too much pain, couldn’t face the destruction in my home, so I went back with my mother and John.
As the streetlights broke through the darkness, we made our way down Jan Smuts Avenue and headed out to Brits. I let the soft classical notes of John’s music wash over me, and soon the strobes between the lampposts lessened and finally ceased.
“We’re not letting this go,” I heard my mother’s soft murmurs. “She can’t allow anyone to do this to her and get away with it.”
Her voice was faint and although her words emerged distorted, fading in and out of my understanding as the plop of tyre fused with the tar, I knew she was right. But I couldn’t bring myself to think about my immediate future. Not now. So, instead, I allowed the blackness to swallow me up until I no longer saw the stars pricking the sky outside like trillions of sharp needles.
I closed my eyes and tried to still my thoughts.
I needed a warm, soaking bath to soothe my aching body but when we arrived it was more than I could manage so instead I took some more painkillers and eased myself into my childhood bed.
“Try to get some sleep” were my mother’s words. “We’ll talk in the morning,” she said.
It had been a lifetime since she’d last tucked me in and I found it comforting. I lay there quiet and unmoving, hoping that the stillness would clear my mind so that I could forget and rest. It was a pitiful pretence, for sleep eluded me.
Three
I knew I was awake – and I didn’t want to be. I longed to be wrapped up in the warmth of oblivion. I wanted to undo the day before. I wanted it never to have happened. But I couldn’t. I knew that. Nothing would ever change it.
My childhood bedroom had long since been redecorated. Gone was the cobalt-blue feature wall. It was all floral now, pink and flowery. John had arrived in my mother’s life with his heavy, dated furniture and there had been nowhere else to put it all. So now my old bedroom was dwarfed by its interior. I lay still, only my eyes moving as I glanced around. It was far too busy for my comfort. One wall was framed solid with a built-in cupboard that my father had crafted many years before, the other wall compressed with John’s two free-standing closets, held apart by a matching, and equally oppressive dressing table.
I couldn’t breathe.
It was as though the air that threaded between all the furniture had pressed tight together around me, musty and dark. As though the past was clinging desperately to the ball-and-claw feet, hanging on tight like a sad, fading memory. It was a ro
om that had been allowed to stagnate. It was a room that was no longer used.
I lay still, trying not to move my head, trying not to provoke the pain, trying to keep my mind as static as the air around me so that my thoughts wouldn’t push through. But they did. They swirled and eddied until they won.
How did I get here?
Where had it all gone wrong?
I played it over in my mind. The day before had started out as any ordinary weekend day. It was a Saturday, which meant I had slept in long past sunrise. This was a luxury I permitted myself, given that Monday to Friday I catapulted from my bed and rushed to the studio of the biggest commercial radio station in the country. Each weekday morning at six, as the digital clock blinked its exactness in red numbers on the studio wall, I woke up millions of listeners and brought them the first news bulletin of the day in what I liked to think of as my perky, crisp and articulate manner. But Saturdays were different. Saturdays were leisurely. There was no need to rush anywhere.
My son was with his father for the weekend. The day had been mine.
It was the twenty-fifth day of October 1997 and spring had finally reached its sell-by date. The morning had gone quickly and soon passed into afternoon. I had spent most of my time out on the veranda pretending to read, but the words had washed right over me. I had tried to concentrate but it was difficult, distracted as I was by all that had happened over the preceding weeks. So mostly my book lay neglected beside me. It had been far less demanding to squander time watching a hummingbird play a solitary game of tag between the leaves of the Aloe africana in the far corner of my garden than it had been to try to concentrate, to absorb words on a page. I had sat there watching mindlessly, hypnotised by the mundanity of it frantically flitting from one tubular pendant to another, a magnificent blur of jewelled feathers. The hummingbird, just like me watching it, both of us lost in the aloe’s succulent pride as it nonchalantly flouted the constraints of grass and gridded paving. The aloe, standing tall, boasting orange-red pokers like an aide-mémoire that life must be lived in profusion despite the season.