Whiplash

by Tracey Farren

  ‘Merrick bites my mama, Tess. Here and here and here.’ She touches face, her arms, her stomach.

  ‘Ag, nee.’

  ‘He hurts my ma.’

  ‘What, now?’

  ‘Last night.’

  ‘She must get shot of him.’

  ‘Tell her Tess.’ Josie starts crying. I squeeze the sides of her head, hold her brain in place.

  ‘Where’s your ma?’

  ‘Feeding the pigeons.’ Sounds safe.

  ‘You not going to school?’

  ‘Mm-mm.’

  ‘Ok, I’ve got stuff to do, then I’ll come and see.’

  Josie sniffs something up the down pipe, dislodges a flippin frog.

  ‘Geez, that’s a good sniff!’ She giggles. Holds my hand across the road.

  I unpick her fingers, send her back home past the tattoo parlour, over the train track.

  I’m on the hard bench, shallow breathing. I’ve given Sister Brown a sample. Dark lemon colour, with things floating in it. Pilchards and painkillers is what she’ll find. Please God, not a tadpole. Sister Brown put a thin blank strip in it. Left it on her window ledge, in the sun.

  I wait outside her open door, more sun coming through a high window with little glass nipples. I know from the chemist’s test. Please, no lines. I pray the litmus strip stays white. There’s a young girl waiting with a baby. She carries it over her shoulder like a towel. Eesh, if I had a kid, it’d get killed by the trucks.

  Sister Brown asks her, ‘Baby here for vaccinations?’

  ‘Yes. He’s six weeks’

  ‘I won’t be a moment.’

  She goes back in, does some paperwork. Checks her watch. Writes some more. The mother sits down, lies the baby on her lap. She fusses, wipes sour milk from its mouth. Cleans its ears with her fingernail. The kid’s got no lashes. Just fresh new eyeballs. Its hands spring open every now and then, in funny little frights. Its tongue exercising. Its got ruffles of loose skin round its neck. No chin, like a turtle. It arches its back, opens itself to anyone’s hands. The mother strokes it, checking that it’s real.

  Sister Brown’s making me wait.

  Please can I go back to how I was. I don’t want a baby.

  Sister Brown’s mean enough to believe. She prides herself in being right. She’ll tell me.

  She has a loud conversation on the phone.

  ‘No, the mother can’t have her baby with her. Her mind is going, it’s the HIV … If she’s crawling around looking for her child, her dementia’s got worse … I told her last week we gave her baby to her mother … How do you know this? … Well why is the child being left in the room all alone? … Has anyone phoned the employer and told her the baby must be with people? … How else is he going to learn to walk and talk? … But how long has the granny been working for this woman? … Give me her number, I’ll talk to this madam. I’ll tell her the granny’s worked for her for thirty years, now she must let the grandchild into the house.’

  She dumps the phone, pissed off.

  Sister Brown checks the window sill. She calls me in.

  Sister Brown’s a flippin haughty bitch. She’s got long cheek bones, straight shoulders. She walks with flat feet. She looks at you level, straight in the eye. Maybe I’d like her, if she liked me. But she shuts her drawer hard like she wishes it was my fingers. She grinds her chair back, wishes the floor was my face. Her eyes snap, snap, snap like a slap, slap, slap. She fetches a round card with a drawing pin in the middle, a cardboard arrow.

  My chair’s the same as our old school chairs. Chipboard. Red. ‘I don’t suppose you can remember having unprotected sex.’ Her accent’s all haughty, but she comes to work in a Mannenburg taxi. She doesn’t give me a chance to answer. ‘Well, then, when do you think, was your last period?’

  ‘End of December.’

  She bangs down the sample. Pulls out the strip.

  At first I think it’s blood in the vee of my legs. But the gush is too much. The seat is slanted so it runs in a weak waterfall. I expect to see red, but the stuff dripping onto the floor is yellow.

  Yellow is the colour of my wee as it drips.

  And pink is the colour of the line on the strip.

  I’m washed off the rocks. My heart pouring. No skin to keep me in. Not even the pain pills stop me dissolving. I turn to water like when I was small. Scared to ask for another crayon at school. Scared to speak. The birds tryna get in. Sharks tryna tear my calves off my shins.

  The dark tryna strangle me, squeeze the life out of me.

  ‘You’re eight weeks.’

  I kick the door closed with my takkie. Sister Brown’s worried about the violence. She stands up carefully, waits to see what I’ll do.

  My bladder’s empty, now my eyes start leaking. ‘The valves have gone,’ Graham used to say, like I was some kind of car.

  There’s no baby. No way.

  Sister Brown pulls paper towel from the wall. Drops wads on the wet. Gives me a whole sales speech. Says I’m lucky cause it’s legal. Lucky …? I can’t hear properly. I just hear some words, ‘… responsibility … support … free … suction.’

  I’m emptied out on the floor.

  Nothing left.

  There’s no baby.

  No way.

  She writes me a note for the abortion.

  More flippin luck, there’s a clothing collection for the Vrygrond kids. Sister Brown finds me a camouflage catsuit for a ten year old. Thin at the knees. Outside, the one mother’s flippin multiplied. A whole queue of women with different sized kids. I stagger past them to the toilet. Past a woman with a baby doll stuck to her breast, sucking like a maniac. Lips rolling in, rolling out. I force the catsuit over my hips. The pants part reaches my knees. The top half only fits if I drop my shoulders. The seam cuts into my fanny. Sister Brown gives me a plastic packet for my wet dress. Gives me my letter for Jan Van Riebeek hospital. Says, ‘You’ve got a month left.’

  In tight camouflage, I go into the daylight. Up the hill, past Shoprite.

  God, I’m seasick. The tar swells up, rises up to the mountain. I keep my eyes on the robots at the top, red light, green light, orange light, red. A sign of dry land, close to home. The pavement throbs under my feet. The music’s so loud, the taxi joints buzz. The rapper’s raging stuff like, When I was in the womb, I was amped to get out, something in me said kick, punch, fight. Get the hell out.

  How’s that for flippin crazy?

  There’s a white woman airbrushed on the side. Blonde hair in a cloud, hotpants on long legs. Bum to the cars behind, looking back, cheeky. The big sticker on the window, Man United. The taxi hangs onto the handbrake hill, waits for green. The rapper ends and the radio guy booms, drowns out all the heavy revving, ‘Okay, news on the hour. A father, mother and a domestic worker have been arrested for allegedly using a four year old in a sex orgy at their house on Saturday night.’ This police spokesman guy comes on. ‘It all came out through the crèche teacher,’ he says. ‘The little girl told her they rubbed cream on her and raped her.’ A new voice, a psychologist. ‘The child had been behaving strangely for some time. She was abnormally obsessed with her genitals. This obsession is a common response to an ongoing cycle of abuse. They learn to associate their genitals with love …’ They cut her off halfway through talking. The newsreader shouts something about the US Secretary of State, ‘… the death toll in Iraq … mass murder … terrorists.’

  It’s like a rock from the mountain broke loose and crashed through me, leaving an empty hole for the wind to whistle through. I fold over, shafted by shock. Rubbed cream. Terrorists. Genitals.

  A young woman touches me. She’s got a baby blue top on, her whole brown stomach is bare. Her eyes clear like mountain water. ‘What’s wrong?’

  I eat mouthfuls of air, force them down. I wanna run. Run to my flat, fly up the stairs, hide from the cars, the clear eyes. I get to my feet, but the cars keep cutting across, they won’t let me pass. They won’t stop even when I push the button at the cros
sing, over and over.

  I’ll hide at the sea.

  My feet swing down the slope. I’ve gotto cross the railway line, get to the sea. The same sea as my home sea. The East side, the warm side.

  Outside the tattoo shop, I stop against the glass. A baby girl, obsessed with her genitals. A girl, a pet, rubbed with cream and raped.

  I hurt. I hurt.

  The face in front of me flashes like a hawker’s jacket. Full of studs, sleepers, chains. He keeps his distance. Maybe I stink of pain.

  ‘Lady, what’s up?’

  ‘Bugger off.’ A baby girl obsessed with her genitals.

  Metalworks goes back to his shop wall, pinned with butterflies, dragons and flames. A brindle bull terrier in a choke chain lets its big bony head fall on its paws. It slides onto its side, its legs out stiff. Metalworks plants his long legs on a table. Chains looped under his boots. I wanna cross the line, get air from the waves as they break. The sea will cover my crying.

  But the railway gate’s shut. People waiting. No sign of a train.

  Across the road there’s a coffee shop. Some people watching me. People with friends, people with hobbies, people with collars. A stick insect woman steals the froth off her little boy’s milkshake. But the boy’s watching me, worried. He points. His twin brother stares. Their mother stands up, smoothes her dress. Skraal and knobbly. Unsure.

  I force my legs. Go up the slope before she interferes.

  Skip the sea.

  My baby will be smeared with cream.

  The bull terrier’s ribcage lifts and falls.

  Legal and free. Like a shot to the head. Or a suction.

  It’s quick. They’ll rip it out by the roots. Tear off its air.

  I’ll go tomorrow. Let them suck it out, flesh off flesh.

  Give me sudden death any day. Don’t ask me to watch anything die slowly. You in your burrow, hiding from the sun.

  I won’t pump it with pills. I won’t. It’s a brand new thing. It must die quick.

  Fear hangs off my ribs, swings in my belly.

  Nothing will ever be the same again.

  My breath catches on spikes, I must strike the fear down, but I won’t take pills. It’s not like I’m addicted.

  I stumble into Blu Bottle, sober as shit. Buy Tassies. I won’t poison it with pills, but I’ll have a drink.

  This time the cars stop.

  I lock my door. Drink one glass of Tassies for me, one for the Princess. Stay out the loft.

  Henrique comes to fetch the week’s rent. I hold the money through the door. ‘I’m fifty short. I’ll give it to you tomorrow.’ ‘You must make sure. Otherwise, Bernard.’

  The thing is, I don’t really drink. Sometimes I knock back a glass when my pills feel thin. Graham taught me not to drink. His dad drank like the living dead.

  I sit on my broken chair on the stoep. Watch the tops of the trucks sliding past. Watch the drunkards roll into Blu Bottle. Simon the Scribe’s outside, his mane looks sticky, even from here. He shouts at the cars, tells them they’re careless. Tells them they feel rocks for the poor. ‘Do you think we are blind? We know it’s a global racket. We know. We are impoverished. We are indigent. But we are not blind!’

  He went to UCT. He’s blind drunk every day but his pickled tongue still chucks fancy words.

  More Tassies, in the bath. I don’t need pain pills.

  I put on one of my ten kimonos. Air Japan. Nice and silky with aeroplanes on. I got a whole box from the guy who gave me the wet wipes. An air steward. I scratched through the cubby hole, looking for a tissue. Needled him a bit, ‘So, why don’t you get the air hostesses to give you a blow job?’

  ‘I try. They laugh at me when I ask.’

  ‘You got any wet wipes?’

  For some reason he thought that was funny. Made me get out, look in his boot. He had boxes of Wipe It Clean wet wipes. Boxes of kimonos. Boxes of traveling toothbrushes. They all fell off the back of a plane.

  I sit in my aeroplane kimono, rock on the old office chair. The rocking helps my spinning head. Like when you’re running with the wind behind you, you don’t feel it. I try read the TV mag, even though Annie’s gone. The actors all have fat smirks. No rehab shots for me. I down another glass.

  It can’t be born, cause it’ll have to go on a leash. And if it’s a girl it’ll get raped.

  I flatten the bottle, can’t remember much, but I’ll tell you what I can work out.

  I threw my name away at False Bay Holiday. I vomited over the balcony. Thanks to the wind, I got someone on the head. The Xhosa family in number six. ‘Hayi wene, isifebe!’ Bitch, they called me.

  ‘Sorry.’

  I vomited again, got someone on the cheek, someone looking up.

  They hammered on my door. I crawled out, tried to kiss their feet, I swear. ‘Sorry, sorry.’

  I sat on the top of the stairs. Oh my God. Tilting, but not going over.

  I pitched. They jumped. I lurched back onto my bum.

  When Madeleine tried to pull me back to my flat, I fought like I was being arrested. Screamed something, God knows what.

  I threw my name away at False Bay Holiday.

  miracle number two

  Madeleine brings me my legless night with four sugars. ‘Bos will fix you.’

  Flippin refugee, but she acts like she invented Rooibos tea. Sunlight sticks splinters in my eyes, mice with razor nails run inside my head. I need what’s in the belly of the doll.

  Funny, Madeleine knows something, but it’s the boy who’s got this wise face, checking me out. It doesn’t stop him bouncing on the bed, freaking the mice out. Madeleine puts the tea on the floor, pulls him off.

  She’s got granadilla pips or something exploding on her dress, purple seeds shooting in green. Her eyes are varnished like the buck eyes at Rhodes Mem. I try the tea. A lead weight in my head thunks to the front, concusses the mice. I burn my lips, spill the tea. Noel runs to get me water.

  ‘That wine made you not walk.’ Madeleine blames the wine, points at the empty bottle. ‘It made you shout.’

  ‘Ah, no.’

  I’ve gotto get up that ladder, get her and the sun out of here. But Noel brings me water, just like Annie did. It lurches and drips above my head. I fight with my kimono, take it before it tips. Glug it like there’s no tomorrow.

  ‘What was I shouting?’

  ‘Ooh hooo.’ Her short song tells a long story.

  I drink some tea with four sugars. Burn a coat on my tongue. ‘I told you I’m pregnant, hey?’ Sheez, first time I say it, the new word drowns me with hot, hot shame. But Madeleine sings something surprised, spreads her arms. Thanking God for a flippin win. She’s a shadow over me, a dark blessing. She wraps me up, soft. The boy crouches on the floor, puts out one finger, touches the blanket near my stomach.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you last night?’ I mumble into her skin.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then what did I shout about?’

  ‘Ooh hoo.’

  Now it’s something cruel she’s singing for me, keeping for me. ‘I can’t have a baby. I’m getting rid of it.’

  Her hands, thick skinned like feet, clap over her mouth. She shakes her head, her hefty legs make her dress shiver. Noel asks something in African. But Madeleine says nothing, just stands up straight. The sun darts past her, spikes my eyes. I roll onto my stomach. The mice start a lazy race.

  Cold silence behind me.

  Noel climbs the ladder. Out the corner of my eye, Madeleine seems tall to the ceiling, her arms folded over her heart. Noel fiddles up in the loft. She reaches up, takes him. He disappears into her chest.

  She goes out quietly, accuses me with the door’s quiet click.

  Shit.

  What’s it to her?

  She’s nothing to me.

  Madeleine’s sewing machine shoots the mice down dead. They start rotting straight away. But it’s my breath that stinks. God, why the hell is she sewing? What happened to the nice, quiet bompies?

  I�
��ve gotto make money. I’m short with the rent and after the suction, I’m sure there’ll be blood. I’ll have to stay off the road for a bit. Shit, man, I don’t even have bucks for the taxi. I climb the ladder, keep my eyes half shut. The coating comes off in my sweaty palms. I swallow two Adcodol with the tea, only two. That’s what they say on the box. I wrap another two in a square of toilet paper. Stick them in my sling bag. Two can’t hurt the tadpole. Two now, two at lunch. Then I’ll go get it sucked out, that time on the cliff.

  I never have real orgasms. I don’t want to. It’s horrible, like a fit or a stroke. Short circuit of the flippin nerves. Ag, I know how to masturbate. If the pump action leaves me with an ache, sometimes I fix it. I hardly ever want to though, and when I do, I keep it small. I’m not into the shattering, the scattering. No thanks, me flying apart like I’ve been hit by a flippin truck. And I’ve got to put myself together again. It happened once with Warren the bouncer, that boyfriend of mine. The prick could lick. I hated the blown apart feeling afterwards. I expected to see bits missing in the mirror.

  Idiot gloated.

  And soon after, I found out about the photos.

  Two’s not enough. I get out two more. Princess is watching, hoping I won’t.

  Let her see. Let her see.

  She and Madeleine can say what they want. It’s better than having a baby they rape.

  Princess keeps smiling her calm, cement smile. Full of trust.

  I chuck the pills back in the doll, plus the two from my bag.

  I can wait. I’m not flippin addicted.

  I force down stale chips, Greek Lamb. Try drown out the sewing machine with a cookery programme on the radio. Some chick talks about cracking the rib cage, forcing the stuffing in. Way too painful. I switch it off. Just let the Singer machine drop into the hollow spots in my head. I’ll kiss feet again today. Make bucks, operate.

  But I’m pathetic in the mirror. My freckles sticking out like snail’s eyes. I dunk myself in the bath. Get into my jeans, the ones with the waist band I chopped off with the bread knife. A red stretch top that says ‘Disco.’ On the road I’ll be bright, like Road Works in Progress. I shock my eyes white. Get the hell out, my hair still wet. Brittle as a flippin pretzel.