Annie’s playing loud reggae, drowning out the stale jokes from the yard. A bunch of men slouched against the fence, drinking Annie’s dad’s Omo.
Annie’s in black stockings and white gloves, no jokes.
‘Blackmail,’ she says, rubbing at the stockings. Her lips done in purple. Her eyes sparkling.
‘Huh?’
‘They’re called Blackmail.’ Annie talks with her teeth cause her lipstick’s so thick.
‘Where from?’
‘Pick n Pay.’
Annie presses on her suspender clips, but she’s not patient enough. I crouch down next to the sofa. The yellow cloth on the couch has still got curtain rings on it. I click her suspender clips shut, one by one. She chucks back more beer.
‘Keep still man!’
Annie twirls her free leg. Her balance is amazing, showing off to the mildew mirror. There’s still fur on the walls from last winter. I click Annie’s last clasp. ‘I dare you to go just like that.’
She laughs.
‘You’ll be like a fashion model. They go nearly naked. Or in just newspaper.’
‘Newspaper?’
‘You know, those recycling designers.’
Annie’s dad comes in, his dreads big as a bunch of bananas under his Bob Marley beanie. He ignores Annie as she bends over, wobbles her tits, settles them into her black bra. Annie’s breasts are new and strong, coffee brown. Silky, like they’ve never ever been punched and pummeled like putty. She manages her own hook and eye.
‘What you wearing?’ Annie’s dad asks me. I pull out my white lycra dress. Straight out of my backpack it looks like a rag.
‘You should see it on,’ says Annie.
Annie’s dad disappears. The good thing about him is he’s not interested in us. He’s got his own girlfriend, younger than me.
It’s easy for him to pull chicks. He’s a powerful oke. He’s got a busy shabeen. Sells food, too. He makes a killing, cause he gives credit. So he says, I’ll give you this beer, this fatty chicken, this bank bag of dagga, if you pay me back double. He keeps people’s pension cards, their IDs as guarantee. Acts like he’s giving them double the chances, double the luck. I dunno if he’s proud of Annie or just mean. When the people say, ‘Do something about your daughter,’ he tells them, ‘Vok off. She doesn’t touch the white stuff. She stays out the gangs.’ Annie’s dad’s dead against madrax or tik, says if she touches it, she must maar bugger off and never come back. I suppose he saw Annie’s mother going down. But he’s filthy mean with his bucks. He makes her pay rent. Won’t give her a cent.
My dress is non crush or whatever you call it. It’s so tight anyway, my body disappears the creases. I left it in Jik for a day and a half, so it’s thin, but white as Annie’s teeth. Damn, it’s a bit low, shows some little blue bruises on my breasts. That Indian oke had bony fingers.
But Annie gives me a silky white scarf. She whips it up, rests it on my shoulders. ‘There.’ She chucks one end round my neck. She climbs into her red boob tube dress, gathered up on one side. Her shoes are sharp picks, flippin pop the earth as she goes. I put on my low snake heels. A wooden S. They’ve got no back straps, but the crooked bones in my toes stop them from falling off.
Outside, the drinking men straighten up. Watch us over the fence. Get their slack beer lips firm enough to whistle. The smell of stew hits me, cramps my stomach with hunger. Annie’s cat sees us to the end of the road, makes funny yipping sounds, purring inbetween. Thinks she’s part of our parade. She’s ginger, her bony back like a bow, her hair in clumps like she’s busy turning into something else. The tips of her ears are bleeding. Her one eye looks straight at the other. Down the road she fades into some wavy air coming off a hot metal shed. The smell of heavy, hot meat makes me crazy.
Kids carry rice and meat in plastic tubs, just like the one on the pony’s foot. ‘What’s happening?’
‘It’s that Catholic thing. When they come feed us meat, then they starve themself.’
Some horrible hunger kicks me. Annie says, ‘That Lent thing, man.’
It’s weird cause you never see food in Vrygrond. Not on the streets. Vrygrond seems to live on beer and dust. Pots of water on a thin flame, someone chucks in rubber carrots, a dead cabbage. Ag, okay, I’m exaggerating a bit. Inside the houses you see fried snoek sometimes, and lots of cold porridge. Still, Annie told me once that lots of the Vrygrond babies, when they cry for milk at night, they get watery tea. My heart gets sore at the thought.
A little girl goes past in a daze, wishing the lid open with her eyes.
She gives up, drops to the pavement. My mouth fills with spit as she digs in the tub. She shoves meat in her cheeks, her eyes gone to a faraway place where meals grow on trees.
We get whistles all the way down the tar. From cars with kak suspensions and tinted windows. Cars held together with rope and hope. It’s men running Saturday morning favours, fetching a gearbox, a drug score, bringing a carpet for their mother maybe. Annie cocks a deafy, bubbling on Omo, ‘Auntie Elizabeth delivered her daughter’s baby in the back of my dad’s bakkie last night. You know Auntie Elizabeth next door?’
‘Uh-uh.’
‘You do, man.’
‘Oh ja.’
She’s got a wobbly jaw and runny eyes. Wise eyes, like she wants to laugh but only she knows what for. She drinks.
‘Ooh aah, baby.’ We get the middle finger from a blotchy Datsun. That’s what we get for all our trouble. Annie with her Blackmail and me with my flippin early blowdry. ‘Take it easy, baby,’ from a guy in the back seat. Annie just turns them into ghosts. I push her a bit,
‘I suppose Baby’s better than Naai and Poes and Hoer.’
Annie acts dumb, like she’s got no clue what they call us when we’re not dressed for the press. Annie’s good at blocking things out. Even when she’s working the road, she’s thinking of Hollywood. The five star life. Her latest is this old actor, Darryl. She drops his name all over the place, thinks he’s her boyfriend. Like now, you’d think the Met is the Oscars. She’s on a washing powder high, walking a tar carpet. Taking steps too long for her body. You’d think lava’s gonna shoot up from the holes her spikes make.
The sun is flippin desperate, thinks it’s gonna die young or something. It stings my cheeks, makes wet patches under my arms. You see what I mean, Annie’s on about a movie on TV. ‘It was called Down with Love. There’s these two chicks, like us, in pink suits and those caterpillar goeters around their neck. They stand at the door like this …’ She arches her back, stretches an arm to the M5. ‘And then they gooi, like this …’ Annie struts like on a ramp. ‘The music goes, you know? It’s Renee Zwe … Bridget Jones, man. She wrote a book about how love makes us swak. So Ewan McGregor made her fall in love with him, but he went and fell in love with her by mistake. It was so kwaai, I wish you saw it. It was in the old days, when everyone dressed smart all the time, like us, going to the races.’
‘What’s happening with Darryl?’
‘Dom drol.’
‘And now?’
She shakes her head, won’t say. Talks instead about the drama last night.
‘Auntie Elizabeth came to the door, dronk. But Pa says she got sober like this …’ She clicks her fingers. ‘… when the baby came out.’
‘Whose baby?’
‘I told you, Priscilla next door. The baby came out in the bakkie.
With the … what’s it?’ She pulls a fist from her tummy.
‘The cord.’
‘The cord stuck around its neck. Auntie Elizabeth was shouting in the back, I can’t see a bleddy thing! When they got to the hospital the nurse skelled her out, Man, stupid woman, can’t you see the cord is around its neck? Auntie Elizabeth sommer shouted back, No, man. Your vokken skollie kids have shot all the vokken street lights out!’
The old guy next to me in the taxi’s dead drunk. His breath makes me wanna be sick. He swings his head like a drugged animal, stares at my cheek. It’s like he’s battling to keep his eyes in.
Raw eggs, tryna slip out, like the baby in the bakkie. I let him stare cause you can check he’s tried hard, with his striped shirt, his suit pants. And I know that drunk stare. These guys are already dead. My face’s just a screen to watch some blurry movie of his old life. Annie thinks it’s helluva funny. Between the two of them I battle to pop my Syns on the sly.
Outside the race course, Annie pulls our tickets out of one of her ruffles. I say, ‘Maybe I should keep my own ticket, in case.’ ‘Uh-uh.’ She breathes fresh bubble gum onto my cheek. ‘You’re not leaving me.’
We walk like the women in Annie’s movie, in time, all cruisy. A helluva lot of couples here, with nice, conditioned hair. A model with a wire skirt, coiled from the waist. What did I say? Nothing on but her undies. Red, blue, yellow flags flicker from the wire line. She’s got that sun bed skin and white blonde curls down her back. Glad makeup. You know, permanent tan, permanent blonde, permanently flippin glad?
Near the betting tower, lots of good old gambling men gripping flaps of paper. Nicotine skins, yellow stains in their hair, checking us out. Also, Moslem boys, hair like silk banners, shimmering shirts. Young Hanifs. Stylish from the flippin womb. Pity Annie’s off the job.
But I’m the one who rushes us past the tower, tryna find the ABSA Bank tent cause my stomach’s doing flip flops for food.
In the tent, our hosts cut us dead.
Burt sees us first. A big stretch of the eye, a burst of silence. His tongue flicks back into action, carries on talking to the jacket in front of him. Bastard.
The women have already split from the men. They’re putting their fingers deep in their drinks, chasing their cherries. Already relaxing. I don’t see William.
Burt and William gave us the tickets at the end of last winter. Okay they were sloshed on red wine at the time. ‘Noble’ red wine, they said. From William’s underground cellar in Constantia. Noble, I reckon, to wait twelve years before you open the bloody bottle. The cork crumbled, sent William and Burt into ecstasy. ‘Aah. Delectable, what?’ Neither of them from England but they kept their tongues behind their teeth, oh so terribly English. Berry black wine in squeaky clean crystal. Bloody heavy in my hand.
They picked us up when we were crossing the circle, late in the day. Burt’s Merc C230, went round and round and round. ‘I smell rich,’ Annie said. Flashed them to say okay.
‘You must be very dizzy boys,’ was my intro.
They took us up, up, up the Neck to a mansion on the mountain. A flat garden, can you believe it. A tractor mower thing parked under a million year old tree. Hundreds of metres of flower bed. One of those huge swimming pools that must make the world look like a mirror ball from outer space. We went straight to the fire place. The boys clipped their words, hopped about. Scratched at matches, lit some chunky logs. Nervous. But they’d done it before, that’s for sure.
The red wine flooded my veins. Plus I took my evening dose in William’s toilet, so it didn’t take long for my muscles to fall off the bone. I don’t remember much of inside, just quiet furniture. Polished, backs against the wall, slim little ankles. I remember the hairy rug, though. It sucked me in. And an armchair so comfy it could turn you into a flippin paraplegic. Annie was clever, she only perched on hers.
Hyperactive, she was, on a glass of rich man’s blood. Burt cut to his line. Offered Annie a tour of the house. She laughed, blunt as usual, ‘Don’t you mean a tour of your body?’ Made Burt blush to the roots of his cow’s lick. He talked nonstop till they reached the second floor, then he suddenly shut up.
I let myself slide off my chair. Sat for a bit on the fur, then rolled onto my stomach. Geez, that place was comfy. I felt like those babies on TV, after their bath. Just love and luxury. I was lying on my stomach on the carpet of dreams, when William stuck his foot under me. Tried to slide it lower. His face was blotchy red. His hair had sprung up, showing all thin. His nostrils grabbed air and of course there was a tent in his trousers. If he’d stroked my legs, or breathed on the back of my neck, there where the soft hairs make it sensitive, I might have been glad of the job. But no. He was tryna find my clitoris with his big toe. Missing by a mile too, kind of hakking at my hip bone, mostly.
Shit. Let me get this done.
So I hauled myself up, straddled his little one man tent and let him suck too hard on my breasts with his thick, spoiled lips. God, the things we do for bucks.
Burt’s a doctor. A hand surgeon. He’s gripping his cocktail glass so hard his hand’s gone white, but his ears are fleshy red lamps. He forgot about us. Probably wrote off the two hundred for Annie long time ago. Forgot he even gave us tickets. Burt turns his back, does some eyebrow signing, probably. William fades when he sees us, wants to disappear.
It’s a big mistake to ignore us. Annie says, ‘Poes’ under her breath. Tilts a juicy cocktail to her lips.
Once I’ve chucked a few tiny chicken pies in my mouth, my taxi top up starts working properly. I get that good, creamy feeling. We’re okay, Annie and me. The guy at the door took our tickets. We’ve got a good view of the mountain and a couple of men by the balls. Easy peasy.
Annie demo’s to me how Burt said hello out the corner of his mouth. Dropped it like for some stray to pick up. She eats pickles like there’s no tomorrow, asks round for a racing programme. I pig out on some white cheese under sweet red sauce. I get some champagne. Let the bubbles supertube through my system, land in my brain with a splash. I check out the wives.
Burt’s wife, must be, has a long nose, incredibly long legs. Not a pebble of cellulite. In a dress like mine, stretchy, white. But hers is lined and not so tight. Yellow flowers embroidered round the neckline. Her hair streaked orange and blown back like she’s been out breaking the sound barrier. Glitter nails, like she dipped them in the milky way.
No one’s talking to me cause my dress is so see-through. They just follow the line of my g-string with their eyes. I eat baby tomatoes, maybe too many. Come across a grey lump of stuff. Ask under my breath, ‘What’s this?’
‘Aubergine.’
A woman in a white shirt, glasses with no rims. I scoop some aubergine in, maybe too much. Face the crowd, suck my fingers. Catch their eyes slipping back in their sockets.
Stuff them.
This is the races. Where the models wear nearly nothing and dumb hats.
On the loudspeaker the commentator goes crazy, like someone’s about to drop a bomb. The tent people snap toothpicks, break up, leave the ham to go hard. Rush to the fence.
Me and Annie hang back.
A whole herd of horses race past, make an earthquake. Gorgeous beasts crack up the crust, their muscles rippling. Their tendons streak white in the sun. The jockeys’ silk flashes, cracks in the wind, their whipping arms sweep in a blur. The tent people scream, punch the air, pull their mouths ugly. The commentator climaxes, geez. Raves about Sweet Jewel.
A few rush off, go cram their bags, I suppose. The others come back to the tent, scoff their drinks, stretch their cheeks with too many olives. They’ve got a hungry look now.
I end up back to back with William. After a couple of bubbles, I’m game to tease. William’s wife’s got swollen knuckles, the middle one huge, like a knuckle duster. Her thumbs hang funny.
‘Our Betty dog’s deteriorating fast.’ Her face says about thirty five, but her back curves out all osteo. She’s talking to a woman with gold vine straps climbing up her calves. Next to Gold Vines is a man with a big belly. Maybe gold coins, like a piggy bank. ‘She was kicked by a horse,’ William’s wife explains.
William argues with her, ‘No, it’s not that. She has a genetic defect. The runts often do develop problems with their bones. Stiffness.’ He’s insulting his wife, I can tell. Not talking about Betty dog.
‘Well, she got a terribly hard kick from our Arab. I heard the crack. He sent her flying. And when she was younger, she got caught in a snare. Was it for a week?’ William shrugs, bumps me. Turns to see. He goes patchy, spills his drink on his shoe. Lifts his lip like a ner
vous dog. Turns back to his wife. Suddenly he cares a helluva lot about Betty dog. ‘She must have survived by licking water off the leaves.’
Annie’s stoked, she’s seen the whole thing. She comes closer. The wife says, ‘I called and called. I went everywhere on horseback.’
William puts Gold Vines out of her misery. ‘But then she arrived at our door.’ Gold Vines slumps with relief, overdoes it a bit. Piggy Bank nods out of time.
‘The wire had been cut.’ William glances behind him.
His wife strokes her crooked thumb, sighs. ‘She’s badly scarred.’
Gold Vines chucks off her depression. ‘Well, I’ve got my second Weimeraner now. She arrived from Joburg on Tuesday.’
‘Oh. How old?’
William tries to gap it, bends his wife to get past. But Annie butts in, ‘Watchout.’
William’s wife cranks back up in a hurry.
‘Watchout they don’t steal it. The gangsters on the flats steal those pure breeds. They’re lekker soft. They can use them as bait. Pure breeds and kittens.’
They gasp so hard I swear the tent sides suck in.
‘They breed killers, those people. Pitbulls. Staffies crossed with God weet nie wat nie. Then they tease them, hang the cats on a rope. Or gooi a pedigree in for them to chew up. It’s terrible. Terrible. You must be careful.’
William dives away, clings to Burt in the corner of the tent, probably saying, ‘Well, now we’re in the dwang, what?’
Annie chucks a long drink down her gullet, sways a bit. Marches up to the two huddled men. Hugs Burt round the stomach. He stares at the parting in her hair, spreads his arms like he’s saying to the ref, ‘I was nowhere near the ball.’
‘Dankie vi’die kaartjies, Meneer.’ After that down-down, Annie’s tongue weighs a ton. I quickly go to the snacks near there.
Burt whispers, ‘Can you two please leave?’
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