Downstairs, some bergies lean up against the ablution block wall, out the wind. All their clothes packed on their bodies. When I get close I see it’s Randall and Muffy. A white giant and a puffy coloured woman. Her cheeks, her swollen body, all pulled in at her rumpled mouth. Next to them, an evil looking oke. Something dirty in the air, like he’s smoking, but he’s not. He waits, one foot up against the yellow wall. Tattoos like broken veins on his face. They creep up from his collar, out of his sleeves. Top lip tilted. Too little lip skin from a scar. It’s not a cleft palate, it’s a knife split, fixed. A sly kind of guy. Watching the cars. Watching Bonita.
Bonita’s in the middle of the beach circle. Flinging crumbs for a whole gang of pigeons. She’s in a painful pink dress, the South Easter tryna rip it off. Tryna snatch her Pick n Pay packet. I knuip, stay far from the birds.
‘When you fetching the girls?’ I shout into the wind. Knuip as the sea gulls dip. The wind loosens their belly feathers, lifts them like scales.
‘They’ve got netball,’ she shouts back. As she sends crumbs up into the crowd, she shows me with her eyes. A white Cressida. An old man sits up straight, bird watching. No muscles in his mouth.
One more jump, in other words.
On our wall it says, False Bay Holiday in metal letters. I know where the missing word is. There in Military Road, at the tyre repairs there’s a ramp. A whole pile of tyres. They’ve got our missing word, Flats, nailed onto the fence. The stairs of our flats are steep and stained. A low greasy line from kids’ fingers. The building smells of boiling bones. I’m on the first floor in the corner. As I turn the key I remember. Shit. The bird.
A coat of sand in my hair. Dry eyes. The tuc-tuc-tuc of a machine next door. The new family from DRC.
I squeeze my cheek against the glass, check the corner of the balcony. Some feathers at the mouth of the runoff pipe. But no bird. It looks like the South Easter’s sucked it up back out. I flatten a glass of Coke. Run a deep bath. Lie there, dreaming.
Maybe I’ll be a fashion editor. No chance of being a model. I won’t crack the shining eyes, sweetheart look the girls have got in the mags. Like God’s knitted into their jersey. A genie in their flippin lipstick. No, I’ll be an editor, rather. I’ll stay in a cottage on the mountain, not a flaking flat with one room. A wardrobe so dark and heavy it’s like a dead horse in the corner. No. I’ll have a kingsize bath, and rows of stuff in green tubes, imported face and body stuff. I’ll go to work in my Jetta, my briefcase in my boot. My hair rippling from a special mask that costs the same as two jumps. I’ll put on too much makeup and frighten myself, but I’ll have the whole drive to town to rub some off with my fingers. I’ll have those popup tissues on my dashboard. Wear bambi coloured jackets and skirts. I’ll be meatier by then, my breasts will be bigger, a cup full of milk on each side. When I walk into work I’ll bring in fresh air from my good nature. I’ll smell like some plant that flowers at night. I’ll go on a shoot or two. Order pizza and beg the models to eat a just a tiny slice. I’d be like a mother to them.
The photographer will waste film on me as I check the clothes, cruise outside to get a better line on my cell. He’ll have clean, long hair and long fingers, good for picking out splinters, good for drying glasses right to the inside. He’ll whisper to me that he wants to marry me.
I scrub myself squeaky clean. Inside and out. Shave myself smooth, rub on some cream. Climb the ladder to my loft, it’s a brick ledge the size of a double bed. I’ve got a silly, thin mattress up there. I clip my new Syns out of their foil. Put them in my fertility doll. Angie gave her to me after I left home. She’s mud brown wood with a natural light streak that runs across her face, wraps around her big, sticking out belly. She’s got an egg head. Rickety legs. Ange didn’t even know about the hinge. Me, I found it straight away. Just under the swell of her stomach. I hooked my nail into it and its belly fell open. Nice and hollow. I lie on my stomach, read about Helen for the hundredth time. The book’s mine now cause I’m banned from the library. They sent me a letter, Return it or you’re banned. Well, stuff you too. Helen was an artist, this crazy bitch in the desert. She got a local oke to make concrete sculptures in her garden. Elastic camels and stretched men leaning, straining towards God knows what. Lots of fat owls with headlight eyes. And begging mermaids with their hands up, saying, Love me, please love me. She had bottles and bottles of smashed glass in her pantry to rub into them while their cement was still wet. She’s famous, old Helen. Crazy bitch of the desert. She killed herself with caustic soda. Took flippin ages to die. She might as well have swallowed her own broken glass, she suffered so much.
She didn’t move out that Owl House. I’m reading again how she watched the sun and the shadows on her sculptures all day, when this weird little growl comes from down there. Eesh. I don’t think skollie, I think rat. Or insect. Something with spiky legs, a crispy collar. Maybe even wings. I creep down the ladder. Open the door, so I can run if I have to. I bend, shade my eyes from the sun coming in. Under the bed, there’s a small, black shadow. My slow, slow heart changes gear. Starts racing the next door machine. Shit. The bloody bird’s got in! He lines me up along his curved beak. Rattles off a whole lot of head moves. My bladder cramps. A bit of wee wants to come out.
I’m gone. Slam the door. Flap around, scared. The room next door’s wide open. The Congolese woman’s winding a manual sewing machine, tuc-tuc-tuc. She’s got old man’s glasses on, a thick black frame. She’s decked in orange, working clouds of shiny green cloth. Her skin’s like the skin of a black fruit.
‘A bird flew in.’
I go right inside. There are weird white flecks in her brown eyes.
They’re way too big, till she takes her glasses off.
‘In your room?’
‘Under the bed.’
In the silence, the silky fabric starts to lump and slide. A knotty haired little boy comes out of it.
‘Noel and I will take it out.’ She says something in French African. The boy’s up and hanging off her orange dress. Ready for action, using his mom’s legs for cover.
I wait outside, hang my jaw to open my ears. Watch my thin, shiny shins. It’s late afternoon, the couldn’t-care-less sounds of African jazz comes from upstairs. Shit. Inside, the cracking of feathers. Blasts of flight. I go to the woman’s balcony. Twist over the bum high wall. Try see. My balcony door’s hooked open. The woman’s waving my broom around. The gull’s diving away, flying crazy lines. The boy’s nearly under my bed. The bird whacks into my Scratch Patch poster, the one with the precious stones. The poster whips sideways, hangs upside down.
Suddenly, everything’s still. The boy shoves his legs further under the bed. I’m stoked he’s scared. It’s not just me, see? My ladder looks brittle under his mother. The broom slips from her hand, drops with a crash. She stops at the top, stares into the loft. Her and the bird eyeball each other. She turns her head and waves slo-mo towards outside. I see she’s speaking. The gull flies smooth, right over her head, ducks under the doorway. I fall back on my haunches, watch him glide. He lands on the gutter of the building opposite. Blu Bottle Discount Liquors. The sun’s gone from the sky behind him. He’s a bird shaped shadow, facing me.
‘Go. Go.’
I mean, he’s got the freedom of the flippin city.
But he’s going nowhere.
‘Thanks, man.’
She tells me her name’s Madeleine. They just moved up from Church Street. She thinks she’s my friend now, wants to make me coffee, but I say, ‘No, don’t worry.’
She leaves the cupboard door hanging open. Instead of food and stuff there’s a whole shock of sunglasses in there. Tangled, black. She checks me looking. ‘We sell at the market.’
‘Here?’
‘Muizenberg on Sunday. On Saturday, Greenpoint.’
‘Okay.’
I know Greenpoint. I joined Heavenly Escorts when I first came to Cape Town. When it got quiet, we walked past the African curios. Past the old men’s heads, the elephants, right to
the Health and Racquet Club. We posed there in the parking lot, full of MGs and open top Mercs. Watched our regulars up there in the glass gym, shunting and pumping for glory. We got ready, looked dead sexy when they stopped to dry off their sweat, change their weights. We went to remind them, our lunch time men, Hey, honey, you’re due for a spin.
At my flat I roll up my poster, chuck it in the trunk. Up in my loft, it’s streaked with gull shit. I wipe it up, open the doll. Take two pills from tomorrow’s breakfast bunch. Just two, for the fright. I don’t take painkillers cause I’m sick. I don’t pretend, tell myself I’m in pain. I’ll tell you straight, I take the stuff to feel good. My job takes guts. The stress builds up. I’ve upped my dose, cause just before Christmas they killed Amanda, from the road. She was hyped, maybe on uppers. No front teeth, long, long legs. She had the bod, you know the right shape against the vibracrete, but she didn’t even need to do sexy moves. She was just dead friendly. The kind that gets a prize in school for being kind. At our school they called it, Living Out the Christian Principles. Amanda had the bod, but she got her guys by fluttering her hands and chat, chat, chatting. Shit, some guy split her from her throat to her belly button. Popped out her eyes. Left her buried in the sand at Clovelly. Some mom was collecting sand for her kid’s sand pit. Dug up her loose eye. The cops went and dug up the rest, but they didn’t bother to try find the killer. They didn’t even come question her pimp.
What I’m saying is it’s a heavy job. I take pills to unwind. To feel a bit easy, breezy. To keep doing it, keep on my feet. Hit the road, face the bloody sun. Work the okes, come home with bucks. If I’d finished school, I might have done something clever. But now there’s not a lot I can do, and don’t ask me to work at the Seven Eleven. So I don’t lie to myself, say I’m in pain. I lie to the pharmacists, fine. Not to myself.
It’s not like I’ve gotto have the Syns. I just want them. I wanna operate, not lie flat on my back. Deadly bloody duvets up to my chin. No thank you. I’ll hit it hard, then I’ll die. Not lie round wondering when, like you, Ma.
Like you used to. Ange says you’re up now, out of bed. Fishing full time. Going for that twenty kilo cooter, or salmon, or rock cod. She says you were cured by Graham’s stroke. It’s like you’ve swapped. Ange says Graham’s half dead. Parks his wheelchair in the darkest corner of the lounge, where there’s less reflection on the TV.
Just after the gull, I find Princess.
First I go up the mountain with Hanif, the cop. He picks me up. Moslem with hair so black you can see rainbow colours. He drives the police van up, up, up along a fire break. Up over a koppie, there where the shark spotter’s binocs can’t bend round the rock. Hanif makes me duck under the dash, just in case. He opens my hand on the seat, presses a twenty and a ten into it.
‘It’s all I’ve got on me.’
Its bugger all, but it saves me five hundred for loitering.
He leaves his radio on, screens the calls. The radio says there’s been a car theft, Hanif says, ‘My van’s too slow.’ There’s a mugging in town, Hanif says, ‘That’s a Chubb street.’ Chubb’s private. The rich people pay cause the police are so useless. Like now, shit going down and I’m standing, stark raving naked on a rock shelf with a police sergeant. A million years ago it held a boulder, now a dry pot hole holds a policeman’s bum. As usual, Hanif keeps his clothes on. He’s lined the hole with his beaded seat cover. Says the seat cover calms him on his callouts. There are black butterflies everywhere. Fine, cause they’re light flyers, no chance of them thwacking against my skin. I keep my boots on. Land on Hanif like I’ve dropped out the air. While he’s grunting and grinding into his stress beads, I watch a pair of black eagles faraway, flying circles round a shaft of rock. They must be nesting there.
He shoots his rocks off.
‘You’ll have to walk down, alright?’ He doesn’t wait for an answer. Before he gets his pants up properly I see his waffle bum, riddled with bead dents. He does up his fly, gets in his van. Off to investigate a hit and run.
I blend in with the butterflies. A black leather skirt from the second hand shop, cracking a bit at the hem. A leather vest with buttons for show. Mockcroc boots, raw at the toes. I stay away from heels, but these boots give me legs to heaven. They’re too hot for summer, though. And dumb for mountain hikes. I pull them off, wash in a stream down near Boyes Drive. The sea below is still foam, still stunned from last week’s wind. I go straight down the hill, between fancy English flowers and bloody mountain mansions. When I get to the stone church on Main Road, I see it’s twelve noon on the clock. An hour to go, but call it lunchtime. Maybe there’s water behind that carved wooden door. I’ll take my pills, there in the shadow.
I get my Syns out among the candle stubs. I’m looking for water when the priest comes out. Gives us both a helluva fright.
‘I just came to look.’ Like, I’m not here to buy.
‘Of course.’ His voice is like a girl’s.
His head’s too big for his body, sways in figure of eights as he smiles. He seems to have more teeth than he needs. His hair is flicked back, silver. I take little steps, hold my boots behind me. Look around like I’m at an art show. The pills get wet in my palm. A stained glass lady with a veil and a baby bounces blue light, red light onto the benches. I go deeper in, towards a little stage with a bible holder on it. Behind it the usual spatchcock Jesus, spread like Shoprite chicken. This one white clay, no eyelids. He looks terribly clean, even his blood stains just a neat, pink dribble. My hair is greasy and I’m not properly washed. Nowhere near ready to be raised to heaven. All I want is my Syns. When I sneak a look back, the priest lands his eyes on the polished benches, sways his teeth. Jesus, the guy needs to stop smiling.
This place is making me sweat. Feels like my leather might peel, my whole body start drip, drip, dripping in the aisle. I knuip my fanny, do a one eighty turn. But Mielie Teeth blocks my way.
‘Do you need help with anything?’
I shake my head.
‘I get the sense you have some kind of burden …?
He won’t move. I try nudge past. He taps my shoulder like I’m a bloody boiled egg. He cracks me alright.
I lay into him. Jab at the clean, clay Jesus with my empty hand. ‘Why do you guys go on and on and on about Jesus dying? Hang him all the time so you can cry about it?’
He shows me his mielies.
‘What’s the big deal? Jesus knew it was gonna happen. Like the suicide bombers, the Arabs, they plan it for ages. And they also do it for God.’
At last the priest’s lips come down over his teeth.
I keep stabbing, ‘It happens all the time, guys blow themselves up.’
He speaks high and slow, ‘My dear, when Jesus enters you, you know He is the only …’
‘Look, he’s a man. I’m a chick. I don’t have a dick, or hair on my back. I don’t even smell the same. And you want Jesus to enter me? I have enough of that every damn day, thanks.’
I burst out so hard, the heavy door sticks open. I bang myself down on the pavement. Pull on my boots.
‘Poes!’ some truckers shout at me. The swear word sails over my head into the church. They lean on their hooter for half a flipping kilometre, ruining that one morning without wind.
A bit later I make fifty bucks off Samson in Tokai.
‘Hey. Is it you?’ He comes straight at me. Big baton. Security boots. ‘It’s me. Samson.’
I check out the spanking new buildings behind him. The brand new bricks in the car park. ‘What, you got a new boom?’
He nods, smiles. I know him from Newlands, when I was with Butterflies. For fifteen months I did dead, rich men. Big jobs, their days like bricks on their heads. Samson was a guard at the President’s townhouse, just down the drag. A big, black guard in the white yuppie suburbs. Samson was a good husband. Never touched his salary. Paid for his blow jobs with tip money.
‘You alone?’ I tune him.
He checks around, goes back in his kiosk. I go in, duck
down out of sight. He pays me with ten silver fives.
From a distance they look like gravestones. There’s a Kentucky opposite. The parking lot’s empty like no one ever eats between meals. As I get closer, the gravestones change into chalky figures. There’s a weird, muscled dog behind the wire fence. A few of him. A hunting goddess, going by her bow and arrows. About three of her. Some baby angels, their bellies bulging from too much milk.
A real oke in overalls dumps a new angel in the scraggly grass, adds to the mob. Nearby’s a statue of a hunk. A gorgeous naked oke in a fat, stone sulk. But it’s the statue next to him that pulls my eyes. She’s in a powdery, white robe. Smiling quietly at the road, like she’s seeing exploding stars instead of cars. Like the Kentucky’s a flippin crystal palace.
My feet are sore. I’m thirsty, I’m hot, but I’m still sweet on my Syns. I hang on the fence, check her out. Two drunks walk past, argue over an empty half jack. One chucks it, smashes it on the tar. The way she smiles, they’re lovers come to bring her sparkling glass. Like she’s a secret princess.
I’ll have her at my pool.
I’ll live with a big man. Maybe a body builder. Maybe a Joburg Jew with smooth skin stretched over big, big muscles. He’ll rub white powder on his hands, pump iron in a back room. He’s different to those guys at the Greenpoint gym, grunting next to each other, watching themselves. ‘Gnnnn’, working in front of a bloody big mirror. Okay, he’s the same cause he also farms muscles, gives each muscle food to make it breed. But he depends on me to tell him, ‘You’re getting too big.’ ‘Your ankles are looking too thin,’ I’ll say, and he’ll slow down on the leg press.
He’ll give me signing power. I’ll have sculptures put up at my heated pool. I’ll buy the sulky stone hunk and the smiling princess. I’ll float round on a big, puffy lilo. When he gets home from work he’ll kiss me on the forehead. ‘How was your swim?’ His sex drive will be low from the stuff he takes. But when he’s horny he won’t just jump me. He’ll come to me with special oil. He’ll kneel at my feet and hold out his hands. Ask to have my foot in his palms.
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