Whiplash

by Tracey Farren

  ‘It’s death,’ whispers Annie.

  He drags her, his love. Sluips her like a rag.

  Suddenly a red figure drops from the wings. A girl in full length robot red screaming, STOP with her body. GO BACK. Drums play for the first time, go right through me. The dying woman wakes up, gets a fright. Chucks the man off. She’s confused. The man begs her, Come back! But the girl in red waves and flares. Burns her, sends her the way that she came. She’s safe again, but she’s still watching Death’s eyes, still wanting to trust him.

  She craves him.

  At interval I see Annie’s forehead’s still pink from her highway roll. She wears those frilly, long usher’s sleeves so you can’t see the scabs on her arms. She’s got a black skirt to her knees, so you can’t see the missing meat on her thighs. ‘Sit here,’ says Annie in a way that tells me I should stay put, out the way, in my frayed jeans.

  ‘Death isn’t bad looking,’ I joke as she hurries to check the china. Annie smiles at the hot water cylinder, gears up for the rush. It’s a slow rush though, cause there’s a lot of bent pensioners who come down the tunnel.

  Annie’s boss is an auntie with curls like clenched tight fingers. She’s in a cream coloured blouse, like Angie’s, her top button tight around her shredded old neck. She speaks to Annie under her breath, like she’s talking her through a flippin emergency. Annie’s perfect at this. She stands straight in her pointy shoes, pours tea for the ancient ballet fans. Slips them sugar sticks like it’s a big, big bonus. Takes no bloody nonsense from the spitting urn.

  A little girl helps out with some change, puts her coins on the counter. Says, ‘I know these are the same as paper money. I know that.’ She says to her granny, ‘Our teacher taught us.’ But she’s miserable when Annie gives her a ten rand note, miserable to swap silver for dirty paper. Annie grins. ‘We’ll change it back just now, okay?’

  The little girl nods, clutches the note like it’s worth something now. Watches Annie like a hawk.

  Two teenage girls leave an old man against the wall, give him tea. They walk away, feathery hair, creamed shoulders, duck feet. The old man drops his cup, spills all over my jeans.

  ‘Eina!’

  He pulls out a yellow stained hanky, comes at me. Mutters, ‘Sorry. They’re trying to kill me. They think I’m made of steel.’ I push him away, ‘It’s okay, it’s okay.’

  Annie burns me with a big warning look.

  Flip, I’m innocent.

  In the second part of the show, there’s a green and an orange robot too. It sounds stupid, but I get caught up watching that woman cross the road again and again. Green calls to her, full of acrobatics. Orange makes her crazy with, Come. Stay. Come. Stay. She dances, but all she wants is to go with Death. And he genuinely seems to love her. I dunno why but the whole thing strangles me a bit. I go outside, into the sun. I’d rather watch cars than a bloody love story that closes my throat. I dunno what’s wrong with me.

  I go back, try again.

  Geez! I can’t believe my ears. It’s the last scene, the last sound. The sound of a flipping huge truck roaring across the stage. Just the sound, not the actual truck, cause it’s just a stage. The beautiful woman, she slams flat. Road kill.

  I’m blown away by the dumb ending. Geez.

  I get outside fast, this time to laugh. I get away from Annie cause I know I mustn’t diss it. She’s got her future safety pinned to the Masque. No more sex work. No more cuts and punches. Just Ceylon tea and sugar sticks.

  Annie could be a ballerina herself with her tight bum and straight back, legs packed with muscle from walking the road. In the car park she lifts a foot onto a bumper. Slips off her high shoe, swaps it for a takkie from a plastic bag.

  I can’t help pushing a bit. ‘So, you rich now?’

  ‘Vokken thirty bucks.’

  ‘For three hours?’

  She nods. Ties her laces.

  ‘Ja, but I meet actors and that.’

  ‘Like who?’

  ‘Like Darryl Dunkley.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘He came to help the amateurs. They’re doing Vaudeville.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Vaudeville. He came to teach them to talk like the French and British and that.’

  ‘Darryl who?’

  ‘Darryl Dunkley. He’s famous.’

  Like this makes her famous.

  ‘He smaaks birds. He’s got a whole flock of birds inside his house.’

  I’m grinning now, cause I think I’ve bust her. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He told me, okay? In there.’ She points at the empty foyer. ‘He just told me.’

  The dead dancer pulls off in a little white Uno. Annie kicks the closest car tyre. ‘I’m bored,’ she says. She looks up where the sun’s still blazing orange on the rock. ‘I’m lus to go up the mountain.’ I think she means this mountain, till she says, ‘Let’s go to Rhodes Mem.’

  We get a lift to Rondebosh. Before we get in the red BM I tell Annie, ‘Supper money. It’ll be quick-quick, okay?’

  She shakes her head like a crazy.

  ‘Not you, man. Just me.’

  A hundred bucks. Tourist price. Annie gets out at Wynberg park while I bend my head and tame the snake. A German, no hair on top. Two bald heads. I stop halfway, tell him I don’t swallow, so he gets a pack of Nandos serviettes. He’s polite, pink, sweats along his eyebrows. Afterwards he says, ‘Danke,’ his voice weak, like he needs to build up his red blood cells again. I nod, watch the forest glow some last minute trick before the sun drops behind the rock. A better ending than that dumb dance show.

  ‘Stop picking,’ I say to Annie, who sits like a lady on the hill. She drops her hand from her elbow.

  He drops us at the offramp. Annie takes us on a short cut through the old zoo. It’s gone long ago, all that’s left is foundations, cracked paths, old feeding bins. Annie’s all excited cause we’re walking through her past.

  ‘When I was a laaitjie and I was onbeskof, my dad said, Watchout, I’m gonna gooi you to the lions.’

  ‘Were there lions then?’

  Annie’s still relieved. ‘Naai, man. I came to look.’

  ‘How old were you?’

  She shrugs. Looks into that time. ‘Must be … nearly ten. When they took me away from my ma.’ There’s a big empty echo in Annie’s voice. The sound of a little girl taken away.

  Annie told me before, her mom’s a button head. Hooked on mandrax. Annie didn’t go to school. Just went from house to house to beg. She told me she learned to give head to get bread.

  But she never, ever told me she was less than ten. God, she was tiny, man. It hurts like hell under my ribs.

  ‘So you came to check for lions?’

  She points, ‘We stayed in a flat down at the station.’

  ‘Just you and your dad?’

  ‘Him and his stukkies.’ Her laugh comes out like a hiccup. ‘I came up here to get out of the flat. My dad and his girls, sies, they were all over. On the table, in the bath. Never in the bleddy bed.’ I laugh cause it’s not like Annie ever has sex in a bed. But my heart’s all tight, it nearly hurts me to breathe. My mind stuck on that tiny kid, doing sexy stuff for some supper. Then with her dad, running up, up, away from the grunts and giggles and the tricks. Stuff kids shouldn’t see.

  Annie giggles, ‘I came to the zoo to get away from the monkeys.’

  Sheez, I need a couple more Syndol.

  I wish we’d asked Baldy for a lift up the hill. We walk a slant up a flippin vertical slope. Annie knows the path well. My lungs are bleeding, my legs locking by the time we get to the memorial. Stone stairs, stone lions watching, flicking their tails. At the top, Smuts’s head on a platter. I fall down on the bottom stair, refuse to move. Annie checks out the early lights of the city. Finds the M3, the N2, the M5, plotting them like a scientist spotting gas balls in the sky.

  ‘C’mon meid, get up.’

  ‘Forget.’

  She takes my hundred buck note and flies off the w
all. I force down two pills from my evening dose, try sort out my shivery legs.

  Annie comes back with slap chips on a real plate and a bottle of Graca wine. My unbroken hundred.

  ‘Who’d you con?’

  ‘The Christians at the top.’

  I look up at the sky.

  She points up the stairs. ‘The restaurant at the top, man.’ We split the chips, but I warn her I’m finished with uphills. ‘Jus, you’re a lazy ou rol.’

  We flatten the wine, then Annie takes me down a red path, shiny from people’s feet. But there’s no sign of people, just old trees spiking the sky.

  At first I think they’re skinny new trees. Annie whispers, ‘I’m gonna go down. When I say, you must chase them to me.’ Only then I check they’re animals with antlers. They stand in a bunch just like the ones in the basement of the Cape Town museum. Stacked to save space. Don’t ask how I ended up there, that’s another whole story. But true’s God, a whole bunch of live buck right here, nose to bum. I grab for Annie, but she’s gone. She glides down a line of deep green, a ditch where the rainwater runs. The buck shift, nervous. I wanna laugh, cause they lift up their heads like Disney buck, like they’re gonna start singing, I swear.

  When she gets way below them, Annie waves at me. The buck jump back in fright, trot on the spot, their black eyes shining. Their fear makes me lekker brave. I charge, flap my hands like a baboon, shout like a flippin man. The beasts shoot up, then forwards, flippin fuel injected. They gallop, the ground hollow under their hooves. They gallop towards Annie, a shit scared stampede, drumming, kicking. Oh my God. But just before they hit her, they split, straight down the middle. Tear down to a faraway fence. They come together again, coast the fence along the highway.

  Annie runs back to me, her eyes burning, bulging like the buck. She’s laughing, a crazy, crazy kid. ‘How was that, hey? How was that?’

  It feels like I’ve just seen something very secret.

  Annie says, ‘I always used to do it. I always used to tease the buck.’

  I dunno why, but this stupid sadness parks on my heart. Even with the Syns. I feel sorry for little Annie, you know, Annie the kid. Coming up here, scaring the buck.

  Rich white girls give us a lift in a Renault Megane. They’ve smoked something, but one’s hyped and one’s dumb. The hyped one lisps a tongue ring. Doesn’t stop talking. ‘We’re getting out of the bowl, we’ve so had it with the city. Where are you from? Oh, cool, I know. You’re like us, you need to play out of your zone sometimes.’ Her words jam up my head, prick holes, tear the membranes. It feels like my brain’s all stuffed with junk. I go home, Annie hooks up with them, takes them to Penzance Pub at the station. She thinks she’s one of the girls now she’s given up the job.

  Next door, the little boy’s banging on something. Funeral drums, bang, bang, banging some grief. I stick my head in. There’s still bright cloth everywhere, but in tight tangles. The machine needle’s still stuck in mid air. Naartjie peels scattered, curling. Madeleine’s still slumped on the bed in her purple red dress. There are chips and bruises on the walls, dents in the table. Noel’s banging the room with his mother’s tin pot.

  Sheez. I’ve gotto take a few extra to chill.

  Sunday, I’m starving. I’ll kill for fish. I’m on my way to the café and little Noel shoots out. Hooks a leather belt round my leg. I wanna chuck him off, but I see it’s a man’s belt. Must be his dad’s. He’s got dried white streaks running from his eyes. He drags me into the room.

  Her big body’s under a yellow striped cloth. No head, no tail. I lift up one side. Her toenails are already too long. Her legs limp, powdery, like the Princess’s skin. I lift the cloth off her head. Tufts at her neck. Most of her hair extensions are off. The same white trails out her eyes, down her loose cheeks. I give her a good shake.

  She comes awake bit by bit. Takes forever to remember me. ‘Tessa.’ She gets my name wrong.

  I run back to my flat, grab the pack of Panado. They’re child’s play, nothing. For me, just back up. Twenty six left.

  I get water. ‘Take four every two hours.’ I push four between her lips. ‘No.’ I read the back of the pack. ‘Two every four hours.’

  I buy fried hake from Mays café. It’s down the hatch by the time I reach the lights. I go give Noel a fat Granny Smith apple. What the hell, I give work a miss. Stuff the Sunday market men. The ones who tell their wives they need some tools, come buy me instead. Mid morning I take a couple of extra Adcodol. I need peace cause I dunno why, I feel sorry for everyone. Sorry for little Annie on the mountain, chasing buck to feel big and strong. Sorry for little Noel, his mountain of a mama caved in.

  I stay home but I don’t sleep. Not me, not in the day. I take my pills, get nice and chilled. Go next door, talk to Madeleine. I dunno if she’s listening, but okay, I’m a bit high. I wanna show her I know what it’s like to have a broken heart, so I tell her the whole Athol story.

  ‘I gave my TV to the beach preacher.’ Madeleine shifts, but the cloth stays on her face. The word TV makes Noel put the TV on. ‘This boyfriend was giving me shit.’

  Noel checks me out, sharp. Another word he knows.

  ‘He gave it to me. So I gave it to the preacher at the beach.’

  Athol was always saying, ‘Just watch that preacher. He’s got fantastic charisma!’ In his fake American accent, must have got stuck to his shoe while he was walking in New York.

  ‘I gave the ou my TV. I told him he should stay home. Watch church on TV.’

  There’s an ad break on Madeleine’s TV, it’s Andy MacDowell saying she’s not scared of wrinkles.

  ‘Well, he makes such a bloody noise.’

  The oke goes on and on about disaster. How God’s gonna get us. Strike us down with his fire. Drown us with his floods. Long lists, he gives. And always in there, the prostitutes.

  I tell the lump on the bed, ‘Athol, this boyfriend of mine, he cocked me a deafy at the Scratch Patch.’ Madeleine’s foot twitches. The cartoons have got Noel by the eyeballs. ‘He hurt my feelings.’

  I can say it now cause I feel nothing.

  Athol made out like he was so into me. Told me I’m like gold. I’ve got spirit. I’m so real.

  ‘At first I thought, ag, sure, he’s just trying for freebees, but then he took me to see movies. We saw, what’s it, Moulin Rouge. At Cavendish. And he bought me a TV.’ No one minds when I forget to talk. High as a kite, I sit there, remembering.

  Athol wired his camera to the TV. Suddenly my spotty mirror wasn’t good enough. He wanted to watch us doing it on the screen. But I didn’t mind cause when he was still just a jump, he wanted us to sit next to each other, the blanket up to our belly buttons. Look at us in the mirror. How could I make him pay? I feel nothing now, but that time he hit a soft spot. He said we looked like brother and sister, him with his wispy peroxide. Me with my bleach. But we didn’t. I was skinny and he was still lugging puppy fat. He had red roses on his cheeks, like someone come in from the snow. I’m covered with breeding freckles.

  He said the gap between my teeth was gorgeous. ‘They’re like rifle sights,’ he said. He said he was dead at my feet.

  He said let’s go visit his mom. She’s still at the flat where he grew up, in Berea. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘let’s go to Durbs. We’re Durban jollers.’ I saw beaches, bikinis, blue bottles. Going to the Golden Egg, taking his mom for a steak. Thinking maybe I’ll take him to meet you, Ma. Say nothing about your years in bed, just how sweet you are to look after Graham. Thinking maybe we could go for pancakes at Angie’s.

  Noel punches the air with his fist. ‘Whooaa.’ On TV, a robot’s head goes flying. I tell Madeleine, ‘You know what Athol was in the movies? Okay, he was clever and maybe he’s made it by now, but he was a runner. A runner! That’s like a slave, ready to run, ready to fetch, ready to fart if they ask him.’ Madeleine’s hand creeps out from under the cover. Her nails are crooked and split. ‘I went and saw him on set.’

  They were filming a scene at t
he Scratch Patch. Some fighting pirates come across a stash of treasure.

  ‘A pirate movie. Top English actors, he said. Looked E-Grade to me. E for effing dumb.’ I’m on a pluck. Flying nicely. ‘A runner on a kak movie.’

  He was holding sun block for the makeup woman, who was rubbing it into red strips on the pirate’s arms. It was way too late. The ou was streaked with black makeup like he’d being rolling in a dying braai, but the sun had cooked the rest of his pommy body. Athol jerked when he saw me. The roses on his cheeks boiled, got bigger, the tips of his ears glowed red. ‘Athol!’ I waved, all cheery, like I was a cousin or something, come to Cape Town for a tennis tournament.

  ‘He cocked me a deafy. Made out like he’d never met me.’

  Bastard gave me these ugly get-lost eyes. I got a helluva shock. Pulled myself together. Gave him back the same face. Then I went and splashed water on it. Took a few Syndol. Okay, this time for pain.

  ‘He was too ashamed to even greet. Too larney, the shithead.’

  And he said he liked me cause I was one of a kind. So straight, the way I handle things. ‘Gritty,’ he called me. ‘Gorgeous.’ I still went and looked at the rocks on display, brilliant colours like they were dyed. They gave me a poster with all the different stones you can get. Upstairs they had barrels and barrels of stones, plugged into electricity, rolling, rolling, to get the look of the wind and the rain and the passing centuries. The Syns worked like a bomb.

  ‘So when I got back home I carried his TV all the way to the beach.’

  I go back to my loft, you know, feeling sweet. Fine about everything. Tell the Princess, tell her grey eyes, ‘Fine, I’m fine.’

  Little Noel comes in, I dunno when. Finds the fluffy puppy I got for Angie’s new baby, the one I never sent. He ties a string to it, chucks it into the loft. Fishing for someone to play with.