On the way down, I see Madeleine through the door, feeding her machine with a colour so pretty, it’s ridiculous. A purple with a pulse, looks hot to the touch. She’s got those ugly glasses on. Behind her, little Noel works the bompie machine.
Limp Lennie spins off the circle, picks me up. Oh, God, not another session of flog the donkey. Flippin manual labour. He says, ‘I’ve been to the circle three times today, looking for you.’ What for? Maybe crushed by his last flop, wants to show who’s boss. With metal, maybe.
I get in. I need the bucks.
I fret big time when he says, ‘I haven’t got money, I just wanna give you something.’
‘Hey, look, I need to make money today.’
‘I’m sorry man, pay day’s next week. I’ll be quick.’
Cut me quick. Kill me quick.
Two’s not enough, I’m edgy as hell. I try suss him out, but all I get is his darkest blue eyes, hiding out. The veins in his temples resting.
‘Aren’t the grooms there now?’ I try be casual.
‘Ja, but I just wanna give you something.’
Flip. My eyes grip the steering, swerve to the side.
‘So, where do you work?’
Where can they find him if I don’t die.
‘Goliath Shock Absorbers.’
‘There in Steenberg?’
He nods. ‘But I’ve got the day off.’ He sighs like his life is over.
The horses are out in the paddocks. A guy carrying hay. ‘Hello Eric,’ Lennie says. I watch Lennie’s eyes. No secret message to Eric. But Eric gives me a look like he knows what women are for. Lennie goes into his reserved stable. I stay put, near the car. Another oke comes past, pushing a barrow full of shit. Stares at me. The sea’s still there, at the end of the tar track. Cars go past, slap at the view. I’m a wreck, man, not enough pills. My breath bumping along my breathing pipes. Nerves squeezing my bladder. I’ve gotto get to the hospital, and what do I get? An impotent oke, a couple of grooms. Maybe I’ll die today, at the end of a flippin hoof pick. I get my toes out my sandals, in case I’ve gotto run. Keep an eye on the dark doorway where Lennie went. The first groom’s still staring, filling a water bucket. Lennie comes out, something in his hand. Dark, with angles. I dig my toes in the dirt, get ready. My skin’s pricked with thorns, my heart pumps blood, chucks it onto my eardrums. I check his eyes.
See only pride.
Still, I step back. Then I see it’s a wooden horse. A shining, living, perfect horse. Galloping, ears forward. Wood polished like skin.
‘I made it.’
My lungs still ready to run. ‘Geez.’
The wooden horse gallops the air.
Maybe the bastard’s tryna get a freebee.
‘Why you giving it to me?’
‘I felt bad about last time.’
I relax a bit. It’s not death. It’s confession. Still, my voice comes out high, jumpy. ‘It happens, you know,’ My laugh’s a mean cackle. ‘Too much Sta-Soft.’
‘No, I felt bad that I picked you up.’
‘You married?’
He nods.
‘Why don’t you give it to your wife, then?’
‘She doesn’t like my horses.’
He’s tryna get pity. Tryna make me do another whole stable number. Forget the bucks, take the horse instead.
‘She thinks I’m running away when I should be fixing things. She goois my horses in the garden if she sees them in the house.’
I haven’t got time for this. ‘So why don’t you go home and fix things, then?’ I’m thinking fix the doors, the sink, the floors. He circles the horse’s neck with his thumb and finger.
‘What’s the use.’ A runaway nerve races up his jaw. ‘All my sperms have broken necks.’
Sheez, I crack up laughing. ‘What, like whiplash?’
He blushes. His smile seems to hurt him. ‘It’s true. And it works on my nerves. I can’t …’
I try stop laughing. ‘You can’t get hard.’
‘It feels like I can’t fill her up. Chantal vreets cake in the day and the night. She’s a cook, but now she bakes for herself also. The one night I found her there in the kitchen with half a chocolate cake gone. She was sitting there crying on the cake. I asked her, why are you vreeting like this? You can’t be hungry. She said she can’t help it. She said she feels empty.’ He sighs, ‘I can’t fill her up.’ He pushes the horse into my hands. A present for me. First I’m laughing, now I dunno why, the whole damn thing makes me wanna cry. I stroke its smooth, round stomach. The muscles in its rump launching it forwards. I crank out, ‘Thanks.’
Geez, the wrong thing to do.
‘I’ve got a whole lot. Come and look.’
‘I can’t!’
But he’s gone, into his stable.
I go after him, thinking shit, man, shit. Clop, clop, clop, my shoes on the cement. The smell of cattle, fur, molasses. The canvas in the corner half covering chunks of wood.
In the cement trough, a stock of wooden horses.
He lies some on the scattered hay. One foot miniatures in yellow, chocolate, chestnut. Rearing, trotting, charging. Some just standing like in a police parade. He picks one up. It’s stretched forwards, its teeth bared. Vicious eyes rolled back. ‘She’s a real skollie.’
I get it then. It’s the horse with the white wrapped round its nose. The one that made him smile that day.
‘I’m the only she doesn’t bite,’ he boasts.
I dunno why but it makes me sore, the way his love spills like that.
I make him drop me off near the flat. I need to dump the horse, take another two, cause I’m useless. Leaking sweat, all shivery. I wanna cry all the time, panic scratches like cat’s claws. As I get out the car I force some words through my stinging teeth, ‘You should carve your wife.’ It’s like, instead of thanks.
The morning’s over and I’ve got no bucks.
I’ll just take two and go again. Just two.
That was my plan, Ma. Take two and get to Jan Van Riebeek. Geez.
Little Noel’s outside False Bay Holiday, selling bompies from a cooler box. A bigger kid helping him. Noel forces a frozen bompie on me. The big boy complains, but Noel’s stubborn. It freaks me, everyone giving me presents. I dunno, I feel flippin touched.
Madeleine’s still drilling when I get up the stairs. I shove at the lock, balance my things.
‘Tessa?’ She gets my name wrong again.
‘Tessa.’ Madeleine grips my elbow. ‘Please come to do my needle.’ I’m shuddering inside, begging for pain pills. She asks, though, like it’s flippin critical. Her eyes shimmer and swell, pulled by her thick glasses.
The purple cloth’s turned into a skirt. Small waist, spanned out wide. Spread on top of a whole pile of others. Blood red. Emerald green. The colours of precious stones. Now, in the room, sapphire blue’s running free. I grip my wrist with one hand to cut the shaking, clamp my teeth on my breath. Stab the cotton through the eye on the third time. Try get away.
‘Tessa, I want to tell you about my daughter.’
I nod like mad, ‘I can’t talk now.’ She holds on, traps me with her big brown hands. I wanna scream, slap her away.
‘Not now.’
‘It must be now.’
‘Not now!’ It’s nearly a shout.
‘Because of the baby.’
I swear the day goes on forever. Hardly any pills. A big, big problem to fix. And the whole world tryna suck me into their life.
I sit on Madeleine’s bed, shivering. She keeps her arm around me, a smooth dragon’s tail. Whenever I move it coils, squeezes. She holds me in a river of flippin blue. Reams of silky blue pinned under her needle. It climbs a chair, falls sheer down the back, runs blue to our feet. She keeps one hand on my knee, reaches between her feet. Pulls out a buggered up old suitcase from under the bed. Scuffed like old shoes. Made of pure leather.
Under the bed, Mom, a suitcase. Just like you. Your Sensual Secrets.
She opens the case. A pile of be
ads burst with colour when they touch the light. She lifts them. Underneath them, crazy colours of African dresses. The colour of every warm fruit, every flippin incredible sunrise. ‘Every time, when I make a beautiful dress, I make one for her.’
A spark of curiosity fires, but I shut up. Swallow my pills for the seventeenth time in my mind.
‘We tried to bring her with us. But she wouldn’t come.’ She loosens her grip, the dragon distracted by grief.
‘Sorry, man.’ I stand up. She pulls me down, ever so gentle. As strong as those freaks on TV who pick up cars with their hands.
‘How old is she?’ I ask.
‘She is twenty five. They stole her when she was thirteen. They took her for sex. For Abatara.’ She spits the name like a swear word. ‘He is a Rwandan general who helped Kabila to get power. But afterwards, he would not leave. He is high up in the RCD.’
Sheez. Like I know what any of that means. I stare at the horse, see how its tail sails in the wind.
‘How old are you, Tessa?’
‘Twenty six.’ Shit, the same age.
‘Today she is free. But she would not come with us.’ She makes a funny moaning noise, then takes a deep breath, sucks up all the spare air in the room. ‘She lives in the streets of Goma. She is so …’ She twirls a hand at her head, showing crazy. She pinches at her fingers. ‘She puts the rings from Coca Cola tins here. She does not even ask for money. Men pay her with rubbish. They cut copper pipe, they pay her with that. I suppose they rape her too.’ Madeleine twists sideways, stares out the window. Throws the rape on the waves.
‘She has a sickness of the brain. It must be Aids.’
The callbox rings outside. Madeleine turns to stone, no jokes. She sits stiff, listens. A voice answers, then silence. The room gets heavy with prayer, I swear. A new voice starts babbling, all happy. Madeleine turns back into flesh, carries on. ‘They let her go when she got sick. She is full of sores. She thinks …’ Madeleine smiles in the saddest part. ‘She thinks she is a queen.’ Her eyes beg something from me, I dunno what. ‘The men follow her and the flies follow her, but she thinks she is a queen. She lives in the bush. She will not live in a house. She lived in the bush for eight years and they did things to her that made her forget who she is. In Goma the men call her La Reine de Miel.’ Her smile is gone. ‘Queen Honey.’
‘Does she remember you?’
Madeleine stares into the blue pool. Shakes her head. ‘There is an old lady there who knew my mother. She takes food to Genevieve. She wraps her plate in silver paper. She walks on her knees into the bush. She calls her Queen to make her eat.’ Madeleine’s sad as hell, but her tears don’t drop.
I‘ve got to get across the river, get across the cloth. Take my horse and get to my loft.
‘We were loyal to Laurent Kabila, Honorius and I were. The Rwandans helped Kabila, but then they wanted too much. They killed him. We were loyal to Kabila’s son, Joseph, but the RCD stayed in the East. They took our village over. And they took Genevieve to punish us.’
Her suffering fills up my nose, my mouth. I struggle up, False Bay Holiday tilts a bit. I squeeze between the sewing machine and the wall.
Madeleine begs, ‘Come help me. I need your eyes. I must finish the skirts by tomorrow night.’
The wall dips away behind me. I flatten my wet hands against the plaster.
‘I can’t.’ I can’t wait a day.
Back in my loft, I take two Adcodol. But two’s not enough.
I look at the horse, I wanna cry. I look at Princess, I wanna cry. I think of Madeleine’s daughter, her Coke tin rings. Me with my wet wipes. I wanna cry.
I can’t get calm. I can’t go to the road. I’m useless. Waterworks. I take another two to try blast the bullshit, but I think of the tadpole, cringing, twisting like a fish. Not a pretty flip but a fit, a spasm. Suffering.
I go down the ladder. Stick my finger down my throat. Vomit up my only chance of peace.
Madeleine at my door, ‘Tessa! Tessa!’
Stuff off. Leave me alone.
‘Tessa!’
I let her in.
She looks at my stomach. ‘You are sick?’ All I can do is cry. She tries to hold me, but I twist away.
‘Come help me sew. The dancers will pay tomorrow. You take fifty rand for a skirt. I take one hundred.’
It’s not like I’ve got any choice.
I prick my fingers all day. Sew on sparkling sequins. Brilliant skirts slipping in my shaky hands. Madeleine gives me some putu and curried fish. Three bites are heaven. I can’t touch the rest. Noel brings cold coins with cold hands. Fetches more bompies from the deep freeze. Each time she holds a one rand coin to her cheek. Says, ‘Aah, nice and cold.’ He repeats it, learning English. ‘Good boy,’ she says, and sends him back. He gets wilder each time, giggling like a mad thing. His tongue Ferrari red, he starts chucking the coins into her lap.
‘The sugar’s making him crazy,’ I say, but Madeleine just makes me sweet, sweet Rooibos tea.
One rand a sequin. Fifty sequins a skirt. Fifty bucks, same as a blow job. Or a cheap jump. I sew the rands, I sew the minutes. Sequin by sequin, I sew the time through the day. This way no one gets to touch my thin skin. On the road my nerves would be shot, my skin would be screeching. The sun hissing through the salt air.
Instead I sit listening. Shaking. Pricking. Madeleine talks to me, doesn’t mind I don’t answer. She hems slowly with her bad eyes. Talks to me all through the day. Every now and then she goes dead still, like she’s praying. Then I figure it out, it’s the trains. Every time a train pulls away from the station, Madeleine stops talking, stops sewing, waits. Then she starts up again, tells me more terrible stories in a calm, sweet voice.
I remember the colours.
I’m sewing gold sequins onto emerald green cloth when she tells me how her husband saved her eyes.
‘The people in the village said he was a coward. But they do not know how it makes you, when the rebels take your daughter. They do not know your mind, when they take your child and use her up.’ She ties a knot, snaps a thread. ‘I kept acid in my house. For if they came back.’
She gives me her needle to thread. Watches me battle like it’s me who can’t see. ‘He came back. Abatara came into my house.’ The thread goes in by pure bloody accident.
‘He did not know who we are. He came to warn us all to vote for him.’
I lick my finger, try pick up a sequin. Knock a whole pile of gold onto the floor.
‘Everyone gave them the beer to drink. Not me.’
I try pick them up with my fingernails.
‘He asked, How many people live here? I said, There were four. Before you took my daughter. It looked like a devil jumped onto his back. I picked the acid up behind the door. I threw it at him.’
I stare, feel my mouth hang open.
‘I missed. I missed.’ She shakes her head, like she’s still sorry she missed. ‘They held me down. They laughed. They held open my eyes.’
Madeleine holds up the red cloth, checks her line is straight. The sun pours red light onto her. ‘They poured the acid in.’
Outside, a train pulls away from the station. Madeleine goes still, bends her head to the street. Then she lifts the red fabric up to her eyes. Blinks, dips her needle in. ‘Honorius went outside to milk the cows.’ She smiles like she’s got some sick sense of humour.
‘My husband. He knew if he fought, they would kill us. So he ran outside to milk a cow. And when they were gone, he washed my eyes with the milk. He milked the cow, he washed my eyes.
He was the one who saved my eyes.’
Me, I try find peace in the middle of a gold sequin. Jab my needle in.
She whispers to herself, ‘He is that kind of man. If he is not back, he is dead.’
Her eyes are giant cause of the old man’s glasses.
‘He does not care about politics anymore.’
They’re chocolate sauce, speckled with acid.
‘Honorius lives to keep his f
amily alive. If he is not back, he is dead. He is that kind of man.’
Sequin by sequin, I sew through the day. Find the eye with my needle, fix sparks on the cloth. But my shaking fits get worse. They start in my stomach, smack bang in the middle. Spread to my fingertips. All day my scalp pricks with dumb fear. The Shoprite car guard comes in. Madeleine says something. The car guard watches me, cold. Comes back with a little joint. Madeleine gives me an oyster shell for my ash. Says, ‘I told Marie you are sick. You are shaking.’
I have a few drags. I sew, then, oh so slowly that Madeleine says, ‘Go and sleep.’ She puts me in my downstairs bed. Puts the joint in the sea shell, on the floor. Makes sure I see it. Says, ‘If you cannot sleep.’
I wake in the night, shaking like a maniac. Drink gallons of water. Swallow some vomit that comes up. It takes six matches to light the car guard’s joint. Soon the passing cars are sweet tambourines. Swish. Swish. I blow the smoke over to Princess. Not sure if the smile is her smile or mine.
In the morning, flushing my toilet’s like a bell for Madeleine. My first wee, my first flush, her head’s round the balcony wall. ‘Come Tessa. We have to work.’ She holds a new joint in the air. It’s weird, like she knows. Don’t go up the ladder.
Today she feeds me red beans and spicy butternut. Noel tells her a long story in his funny French, eats with his mouth open. I try that. Eat with my mouth open. Down a whole bowl. Madeleine still wants to talk about her daughter. Now I’m stoned, I can see. She’s mixing us up.
I’m sewing silver sequins onto blue silky cloth when she tells me her daughter was a kind child. Friends with all the weak kids.
‘She was a friend of the little girl, Allandra, whose father said, no, he is not the father. That made her mother not want her.’ The dagga hasn’t fully killed my shakes. I wobble my way back into the eye of a needle. Sheez. Try remember it’s instead of screwing in the bush.
‘Even her grandmother called her a homeless goat.’
Madeleine stops as a train pulls away. Watches the road. Carries on. Talks stuff that could burn like hell if I let it in.
‘She was a friend of the little boy whose arm was bent. She would have been a good mother, that child. She had little chickens in her pocket. She fed them every hour. At the school, too.’ She spreads some purple on her lap, rubs her fingertips on it. ‘They took her from the school with baby chickens in her pocket. The other two girls they took were already fifteen. She was only thirteen. She did not even have breasts.’
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