Geez.
I try remember my mission. One jump. One skirt. Money tonight. Tomorrow, I’ll do it.
I pop pills in my mind. See them going in.
Suddenly she gives me that flippin mad smile. Bossies from the war. ‘When she came back I tried to tell her. They did not touch you. No one can touch you. You are not a body, you are a beautiful spirit of God. That is what you are. The rest is lies. The rest is just …’ She cuts a shape in the air. ‘Nothing. A nonsense.’
I remember the colours.
I’m sewing bright pink sequins onto on a red skirt, Madeleine tells me about someone called Phyllis. ‘Phyllis used to teach English to the refugees. I went to her English class down there.’ She points to the sea. ‘Heee, I made her shocked. She was a nun, a servant to God. I said, Phyllis, I can kill today, God does not care. It does not matter. Ha! She was shocked. Every week we argued like this. It was good for my English.
‘I said, Phyllis, you are scared of God. You are scared of the church. She argued with me, then one day she suffered a car accident. She went into the hospital for a long, long time. Six months she was gone. And when she came out, she stopped to be a nun. She started to dance.’ The sun trips across Madeleine’s white teeth. ‘She said to me, Madeleine, I was cold for too long. Now I dance to get hot, hot, hot.’ She laughs, chucks the finished skirt onto the pile. ‘I said to Phyllis, I know it. I hated for long. I hated myself and I hated them. But then God told me, no one can die. So no one can kill. Not even God. Not the devil. Not the enemy I hate.’
I don’t understand Madeleine, but her voice is deep, wraps my nerves in soft, silky cloth.
‘I forgot yesterday, for a little time. I was thinking of how I lost my daughter. That is why I was angry with you. But then I remembered your baby cannot die. Even if you kill him.’
My voice sounds like it drifted in through the window.
‘Her.’
I think that’s the only word I say the whole day.
Madeleine tricks me into it. She says, ‘Come with me. You must help me to measure their chest.’ Something about the mother city.
Plus I’m stoned as a toad.
It’s the purple house with the lemon tree and the dancing woman on the gate. Madeleine’s got the skirts stuffed in a striped plastic sack. The front door of the house opens into a huge room. Music chanting, instruments you pluck, from somewhere in the East. A wooden floor. One wall is just mirror. Women in tracksuit pants, rolled down at the tummy. T-shirts tucked into their bras. Candles lit in curling candlesticks, even though it’s still light outside.
Madeleine’s a celeb in this place. ‘Aah,’ they say as we walk in. A flippin choir of smiles, all because Madeleine’s bringing their skirts. They eye the bag. They’re not staring at me. I check to make sure. They’re definitely not.
Noel chases a cat, catches it in the corner. It snakes onto its back, taps him with its paws. He rubs the fur on its belly with a hard, flat hand. That Red Scalp from the chemist is up in front, the one who swims in her bra. She’s in black lycra longs, a tight orange t-shirt that says Corenza C. Above the lycra’s her belly. A dish of white flesh, I swear. She smiles at us. Maybe a trick of the mirror, the air spits out light. Maybe there’s glitter in her lipstick. She’s huge, this red dyed woman, but big with muscle. I look at her big, white feet, rings on her big toes. She could be an older Ange. She moves out of her stretch like she’s doing water ballet. The Corenza C makes me click. A slow, stoned click. She must be Sybil’s sister. Sybil from the chemist.
Red Scalp waves us towards a room off the side. I think we’re gonna sit somewhere and wait, but Madeleine dumps the bag, goes back into the big room. Leaves me in the kitchen with too many grapes. Tumbling green grapes, off the table, onto the floor. And a tower of lemons about to fall. Through the kitchen, there are ferns. An inside courtyard. Glass flowers, other shattered shapes on a wall. The sound of running water. Noel runs past carrying an upside down cat. It lies cradled like a baby.
In the studio, Red Scalp says, ‘Okay, we’re going to grow up now, lengthen the spine, up from the hips. Now tuck in your tail.’
I peep through the door.
‘Drop, Nora, drop that arch.’
I suddenly see all the cats. Tortoiseshell most of them, blending with the knotty floor boards. Some of them closed up in circles. One’s spinning, patting at some flying insect. One strokes figure of eights round the legs of a bench. One cat sits high on a shelf, blinks at the stretching women.
On a wall, a black and white photo of a nun in a silver frame. But the rest of the room’s full of mosaics and feathers. A lamp with blue tile chips on it, some white feathers stuck into it. Peacock feathers hang from a painting of pink dancing shapes. Tiny tiles run high in a line on the walls. In the corner, fabrics hang on a line of hooks. Reds and blues and greens, just like Madeleine’s. But also sun yellows, sand yellows, ochre and gold.
Madeleine’s pulled off her dress. Underneath she’s got pink toweling pants. A green vest with spider’s web lines. Her brown stomach bare to the cats and the candles and the whole wall of mirror. Madeleine calls me in, says, ‘Come.’
Some of the women turn and smile at me, forget to grow up or whatever. A tall woman with hair on springs, with a straight, strong back. Straight nose, like a pale Egyptian.
A young Indian woman with a nose ring.
The one Red Scalp called Nora. I’ve seen Nora before. She’s that thin, crispy woman at the coffee shop. The one who saw me crying.
Some others, all flippin shapes and colours.
‘Now find your wings.’
I stand there, lost in the flippin wild. Tricked. Red Scalp nods at me. Plain friendly. ‘Let your muscles span out until you are broad.’ She faces the mirror, her bum a black beam. ‘Ready to fly.’
I stick out my arms, feeling shy from my insides.
‘Feel your wing span.’ Red Scalp sounds close, kind, like she’s known everyone all of her life.
My arms are so, so long. Abnormal I think. Gently Red Scalp says, ‘What’s your name?’
I’m sure I don’t say.
‘Tess, move your wings, from here.’ She presses a fist, soft, in my back, one in my chest. ‘One up, one down.’
‘Bend your knees, Tess.’
Stuff off. I was tricked in the first place.
She pushes my shoulders. I resist.
She chops the backs of my knees, soft. Laughs softly as I sink. A stoned giggle comes out of me.
‘Now …’ Red Scalp spreads her fingers over her fanny bone.
‘Find that first belly muscle, it’s like a sling. Tighten, hold.’
I see the tadpole slither away.
Red Scalp walks over to Madeleine. ‘Got it Madeleine?’ so kindly it’s like she can’t be talking about a fanny muscle.
Madeleine nods.
I only get it then, I swear. Red Scalp’s the nun Madeleine was talking about. The nun who got cold from praying.
‘Number two is a tight band between your hip bones. Got it?
Now, three is right behind your belly button. Pull, that’s it, don’t release.’
She faces the mirror. ‘Your belly button should disappear.’
Her fat cat stomach turns into a gum tree trunk, flat, white. Her belly button heals up, vanishes.
Weird.
I try it, like she said it. One. Two. Three. Pull and hold. My belly button hides away just like hers.
Cool.
The stretching’s done, they dive into Madeleine’s bag.
Their fingers flick, they clutch the cloth, let go. Pinch, touch, shake out their new skirts. The sequins are a big hit. They pull their skirts on, go close to the glass, sway to watch their skirts move. Crispy Nora ordered emerald green, that green like polished banana leaves. The tall, tall woman with the hair springs ordered the long, long yellow, the kind of yellow that makes spit squirt in your mouth. Surprise surprise, Red Scalp’s got the red. She looks like war, a fighting queen. She stands manly i
n front of the mirror. No music. The women watch, the dust stirred up. Sailing hair from too many cats. A hissing kind of silence.
She dances.
Geez. There’s an animal in her belly, growing from her hips, grafted to her ribs. Flippin watery contortions, thrusting, rolling figure of eights. Thrash, thrash, she cracks the dusk with her hips. Snaps the air with her skirt, whipping it red. Her arms, her fingers, snaking, raking. Seaweed. Snakes. Then I see they’re wings. Gliding, dipping, stroking. But her feet are the hooves of a horse. She stamps like a stallion, rearing, spinning, hammering her heels on the floor. She’s wild, this bitch. Grinning red glitter, silver rings on her toes. Going into war, dead happy. Geez.
Nothing like the photo of the nun on the wall. A younger face, ironed smooth at the eyes. Stiff white robe like a paper doll. No hair in sight. Now she’s got a hairdo, ridiculous red curls tripping.
Madeleine claps the loudest at the end. Red Scalp laughs like war’s for fun. Goes over to the CD player. ‘Remember you’re in water. When I was lying in that ditch, close to death, I saw that the whole world is fluid.’
She pushes a button. On the CD, women chant from under the ground. A low echo, vibrating. ‘We are all flowing water. Feel the fluid in your body, the thin skin of your cranio sacral sac, holding you together.’
What the hell is a cranio sacral sac?
‘Go through the chatter, all the noise, to your God self.’
I look up, nervous about this God stuff. There’s a pregnant bulge in the fabric ceiling. Something stuffed in rolled up cloth, ready to fall. Something slung like a carcass.
‘Ready? Contract your belly, one, two, three. Pull up on one side. Hold, drop! Up. Drop. Drop hard!’ Then she sings gently, ‘Other side.’
I swear to God I’m belly dancing. Shik. Shik.
‘That’s it!’ She sounds surprised, ‘Nice, Tess!’
Up, drop! Shik, shik. Shik-shik, and it’s dead. Shik-shik, suck it out. Cut it out.
‘Hee haa.’ Red Scalp’s a cowboy.
No more days. Shik, shik, a razor cut. Shik, shik, a lightning strike.
Graham sits on the toilet seat. Feet apart. Checking for ticks. Checking, his fingers in the cracks. The smell of engine oil. Train driver’s fingers.
Oh, God, I hurt.
I hurt like when I heard the taxi radio on the hill. It cuts me down. Madeleine helps me up. Red Scalp with her. Shaky, shaky. I’m shaky.
‘Are you alright?’
Geez. My tongue swollen like I’m lost in the desert. All the blood in my body laps in my ankles. Red Scalp’s palm in the hollow of my back. Madeleine pressing on my chest. Red Scalp’s voice with love in it, ‘When you isolate, you open your navel chakra. It’s the centre of your sexuality and your emotions. It can be a shock.’
I can feel Madeleine and Red Scalp’s eyes meeting, there above my head. She says quietly, only for me, ‘When it opens, we start to take responsibility for our hips. We start to say no.’
The others carry on, casual, like everyone collapses every now and then. Madeleine measures the women, between their shoulder blades, across the tips of their nipples. They giggle. The Egyptian says she’s tired of carrying her breasts around. Crispy Nora says she’d take the leftovers any day. They joke like that. Fork out from their purses.
Me, I’m faded to a thin, flippin trickle. A loose thread. Tricked into horrible pictures by this place. The sagging ceiling, the falling grapes, the shik, shik, shik.
Graham with his fingers in a little girl. Sis.
Madeleine gives me my bucks outside. She holds Noel against her chest, pats his back. His eyes open, shut. Open, shut. The late train pulls away, Madeleine waits, listens. Sighs and walks. Checks out the dim stars, faint from street lights. Starts saying thanks for helping. I interrupt her, ‘What did I shout when I was drunk?’
She stops. Says straight, ‘You said you killed your father.’
Not a single bit of blame.
‘What?’
‘You hit him with a something.’
I was crouched on the back of his bakkie. Through the window, into the cab. ‘I hope you have a stroke and die!’
My face in the wind. Power for a second. A cable connected between heaven and hell.
He laughed so his broken tooth showed, wiggled his fingers through the window. I slapped his hand. Flexed for the go slow hump in the road.
My laugh is ugly, even to me. I put Madeleine straight.
‘No, man. I just wished he would die.’
It wasn’t Angie, it was me. My wish hit him once. Cruised the sky over Africa, hit him again. His metal wheelchair, the perfect conductor. But the stroke struck him useless instead of dead. Now he lives for TV, maybe Sinbad in the afternoons. Soft porn after midnight.
I try smile under the streetlight, make it nothing. But my face is paralysed and my voice carries a whole flippin dam.
‘I didn’t kill him.’
Christ. Never again. I’m not touching dagga. It’s poison that stuff.
And no way I’m going near that belly dancing place, Red Scalp and her sagging ceiling.
I take two Adcodol again. Stick the rest in one of my mockcroc boots. Lock my wardrobe, so all that’s left in the doll is a key.
But there’s no way in hell I can sleep. I’m sweaty, I’m melting, but I’m flippin ice cold. I get funny cramps in my legs, then a huge fist round my middle. I dry heave. Retch nothing but memories. The tick thing.
I still got tick bite fever as a kid.
One little tick sat on the glands of my neck and sucked for dear life. In the hospital I wore a gown perfect for deticking. String knots and fresh air at the cracks. The bed dizzy miles from the ground. My arms laid out on the white sheet. I couldn’t move them. The nurse was a bitch. She cranked up the bed, talked in a scary, sweet tongue. Like she’s seen somewhere how humans talk to their young.
‘It’s home time for me. Let’s get this down now.’
‘No.’ Did my voice come out?
Out of her white dress came a white bowl, white icecream.
The spoon too big, a metal spade to shove icecream into me. I shook my head, but she kept shoveling. Cruel, creamy, cold. I swallowed, tried to choke, ‘No.’
The vomit was a cold, hard blast. It covered her chin like shaving cream, ran down into her collar. She wiped it, wanting to kill. She dropped the spoon, ducked under the dizzy, high bed. I didn’t see her again. She left me with my dead arms, dribbling dairy.
The cow. I can’t remember her face.
Graham said he was sorry he didn’t check in my hair.
Oh God.
Graham checking for ticks. That’s all he was doing, wasn’t it?
He said, ‘Don’t forget to check Ange before she gets in the bath, Tess. Come here. I’ll check you.’
I would have got up and gobbled more pills, for sure, if Bonita and the girls didn’t pitch up that night.
A whisper at my lock, ‘Tess!’
I’m up like a shot. Smash my shin on the downstairs bed.
Bonita and her girls are huddled outside my door. A piece torn off Bonita’s cheek. Purple half circles chopped in her arms.
They nearly fall into my flat.
‘He stole my rent. They threw us out.’ She holds out her arms.
‘He bit me.’
Bonita makes sure the door’s locked. The girls wrap together, sit on the bed. Sharonne wears a little satchel. Packed for attack. They give me the whole, horrible story, whether I want it or not. ‘He stole my rent every time. When I told him, give it back, he just said, Shut up.’
‘Shut up hoer,’ Sharonne says quietly, keeping facts straight in the middle of the night.
Bonita snarls, ‘He said he loved me. But he bit me like a mal hond. The night before last night he brought his friend from jail to the flat. They smoked white pipes all night. These people are mal, Tess, these druggies.’
Josie says, ‘His friend kept saying, I’m not a man, I’m not a man.’
�
�His maat was raped in Pollsmoor. So Merrick ruks him in front of my mirror. He says, Look at you. Look at you. Remember that time you kopstamped that vris ou, from the 28s? Remember you broke his nose? Remember that time you cut the neck of … some ou. They talked like that, bad, bad tronk stories, all night long. And they smoked white pipes in front of the girls. I told him, Get out! Take your friend.’ Bonita loses her fight. Looks at her arms, ‘He was very, very goofed, so he bit me.’
Josie says, ‘He bit my mamie a lot.’
‘He always said sorry. He said it was from when he was a little boy, he bit his Pa to try stop him donnering his Ma.’
Sharonne says softly, ‘Don’t make excuses, Ma.’ Her voice is scary normal. ‘They kicked us out. They said, even if we pay the rent, they don’t want us. Because of Merrick.’
‘The fighting,’ Josie says.
‘So we slept there at the pavilion,’ Bonita says. ‘I slept with a knife under my head. He found us there. I cut him, Tess, because he was saying terrible things. Terrible things.’
‘What things?’
The girls stare at their takkies. Squeeze their knees together. Bonita’s voice wobbles, ‘I’m gonna swim in your daughter’s vagina.’ But then a blade flashes in her eyes, ‘I stuck him with the knife.’ She touches her thigh. ‘He was bleeding too much. He won’t come here.’
We all stare at the door.
It’s like Madeleine was waiting, a flippin soldier on guard. Her door sucks open as my knuckle hits the wood. She lends us a mattress and a blanket. Sharonne pulls clean socks out her pack, makes Josie put them on. The girls go head to toe in the bed. Bonita on the floor. Me in the loft.
Me and Bonita lie staring, awake. Me hiding my heaves thinking, tomorrow. When the moon touches Blu Bottle, Bonita curls up, makes bubbling noises. I watch the Princess watching over the kids. She looks real at night, like she’s breathing, for sure. I scrape through the night, sweating, freezing, watching her, watching that moon with a piece bitten off it.
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