Whiplash

by Tracey Farren

  I can cry I’m so glad when the sun pitches up. Princess hardens up, but stays on watch. Josie’s crawled onto the floor with her mom. Sharonne’s rolled up so tight she looks tiny. I creep around. Iron my black undies, my black jeans. My black t-shirt with the two men wrestling. Black, today, in case of blood stains. Bonita and the girls carry on sleeping like there’s a curse on them. But as I open the door, Josie lifts her head. Smiles like she’s seen an angel or something.

  I buy dry snoek for the taxi. Crunch my way through the bones. Suck up some orange juice. I’m a flippin wreck on a mission. Get shot of the tadpole, get back to work. At the hospital I’ll make like the anesthetic didn’t work. I’ll whimper a bit, put pain clouds in my eyes. Ask for something to get me through.

  It takes two flippin hours to make me a file. Then a long, long wait in a mixed up waiting room. Everyone’s got bags of food, extra clothes, geez, like they’re camping. Down the corridor, doors that say, Gynaecology, Prenatal, Obstetrics. Only the nurses know what’s cutting. They make sure not to look in our eyes. Just the yellow wall behind us, then down at their scrappy pile of files. They shout out names into stale air. One tiny, white nurse, one humungous black one. Voices that can’t afford to be kind. Next to me a girl of maybe fifteen, in a dorky pink dress, hair swiped to one side. Her stomach already fat.

  My other side, a thin lady who makes me think of my doll. A belly that could maybe clip off. All out in front, neat on her lap. A cream outfit, a false plate of little grey teeth. She’s smiling like her horse just came in. She’s keeping the kid, I take it.

  I buy Nik Naks from the trolley. Crunch them. False Plate watches my orange fingers, cheese flavour, trembling. At the end of the corridor I can see the hospital pharmacy sign. In red, a beautiful big arrow.

  Next to False Plate, a young girl with a stars and stripes bandana. A shiny blue tracksuit. She must be from the Americans gang. She unwraps some white tassels. Inside’s a new brown baby with bushy afro hair. She rocks it on her knees like she’s got music in her head. She’s got that proud look. Opens up the blankets for False Plate to see. Asks, ‘Don’t you think he’s a little bit yellow?’

  False Plate looks close. ‘You can usually see by the eyes.’ False Plate checks my Nik Nak fingers, compares. The huge nurse comes close. Stares at Bandana’s bundle. ‘What are you here for?’

  ‘I came because he looks a bit yellow and they said …’

  ‘Wrong waiting room. Postnatal’s on the other side. Past the pharmacy sign.’

  The teenager in pink keeps checking my stomach. But as more women get called, she tucks her chin in, swallows air, shit scared. Shit, she makes me start feeling twitchy.

  ‘How many months?’

  Flip, wrong question. Tears rush into her eyes. ‘Four.’ She croaks, ‘And you?’

  ‘Only six weeks.’

  ‘Are you married?’ she asks.

  This weird shame rushes in. I dunno why, but I make up stuff.

  ‘We’re going to get married.’

  ‘Oh.’ She’s disappointed. In a lost voice asks, ‘How long have you been going out?’

  ‘Five, six years.’

  Shit. Five years ago I was in my third escort agency. Five years before that I was finished with love.

  She tries for some love points, ‘I’m going to a matric dance next week.’ She whispers, ‘I hope my stomach goes down.’ A drop falls on her dress.

  My stomach’s in a tight ball. The pharmacy sign tortures me more.

  ‘What you gonna wear?’

  The right question, this time. She lights up, ‘My auntie gave me money. I bought me this black dress, it’s got silk in the bodice …’ She goes and tells me the whole dress design. She pinches at the pink dress, ‘This isn’t mine. My auntie borrowed it to me. I usually dress more cool than this.’

  ‘Your auntie knows?’ I nod at her tummy.

  ‘My auntie knows but not my pa or my ma.’

  ‘Where’s your auntie?’

  ‘Her doctor wrote a letter for me, but she didn’t want to come in case my pa finds out, then he’ll hate her later.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell your mom?’

  Her face screws up, ‘My mamie would moer me. She would say I’m a slut.’

  Sheez, some flippin furious thing lands on me, takes me by surprise.

  ‘Did she ever ask?’

  ‘No. She thought I was being good.’

  Bitch. Useless mother.

  I hiss, my lips tight with hate. ‘Why didn’t she ask?’

  The girl nods, wipes wet cheeks with her hands. ‘I would have said yes.’

  I hate her mother. Useless bitch.

  They call more names, Pink Dress starts talking fast. ‘I came yesterday.’ She points at her fanny. ‘They put something inside to get it all ready. But my friend said the baby’s going to haunt me. She says her cousin’s baby came back as a ghost.’

  She’s asking me.

  I wanna tell her I lied. I’m also getting rid of mine. But Nurse Huge calls, ‘Margaret Johnson?’

  Margaret grabs my leg, sinks her fingers in.

  Nurse Huge frowns at her folder, says, ‘Are you her aunt?’

  Margaret hangs on like I’m her flippin Siamese twin.

  I kick my folder under the bench.

  I swear, I end up down the passage, Margaret crushing my finger bones. We go straight into an operating room. A Hollywood handsome doctor with wavy grey hair. Stuff all character. He doesn’t look at Margaret’s face once. He should look at her shit scared eyes, talk to her nicely, but he’s some kind of cannibal. It’s like he’s gonna cut out a half alive beast, eat up its organs. He lines up a whole stack of silver tools. Doesn’t ask how she’s feeling, just checks his forceps and his knife and other long, metal things. He gets this rubber tube ready, runs his vacuum pump for a bit. Gets all ready to go inside, take what he wants. Eat her insides while they’re still warm.

  This nurse has got puffy, hair curler curls. Freckles like mine. Tired lines creep down her cheeks. She’s got a nice, soft mouth, but she scrubs her hands, violent. She dries them rough. Talks kind, ‘I know you have already had counseling, but are you still sure you want to do this?’

  Margaret nods, holds tighter to me.

  A ghost comes out the corner. The anesthetist, a tired old man with a long needle, for feelings. He says his old, old lines, ‘Something to make you comfortable, something to make you feel easy.’ His hands like flaking leather on her young, green vein. Eina. It’s in. He fades to the corner, waits. His old hair dyed brown, like a corpse fixed up for the family to come see. He just wants to retire, I can tell. He just wants to stop feeling.

  Hollywood sticks his fingers into Margaret’s stomach skin, makes it move like a water bed.

  ‘Which way?’ asks Nurse Puff.

  ‘Head up,’ he says.

  Nurse Puff asks Margaret nicely to open her legs wide. Margaret’s knees shake like crazy as they go down.

  Dr Le Grange did that to me. Went inside my legs.

  Nurse Puff says, ‘Just something to numb the cervix.’

  I touch Margaret’s eyelids, quick-quick. ‘Don’t look.’

  A flippin huge needle goes right into her.

  The doctor takes his time, gets his forceps. Goes back inside, makes Margaret jerk.

  ‘Is it sore?’ Nurse Puff asks.

  Margaret shakes her head, tears running straight down her temples.

  He tunnels inside with metal. Jerks hard, makes Margaret’s stomach jump.

  I’m already feeling dizzy, tryna swallow my dry tongue. It freaks me the way he goes inside her open legs. Into her soft, young body.

  Like Dr Le Grange, when I was a kid.

  Geez Mom, that was nothing.

  A flood of blood. Burning red in that bright, bright light. The doctor twists his hand, brings something out. Oh my God, it’s got toes on it. Perfect, tiny toes. Dumps it in his silver dish. I clamp my hands over Margaret’s eyes, put my face against hers to bloc
k it. No way in hell I’m gonna let her see. I whisper to her things I don’t believe. I whisper the things that Madeleine said. ‘The baby doesn’t mind. It’s a spirit, not a body, so it can’t die.’ He goes in again, pulls out some more. I don’t look, just keep saying, ‘And it won’t haunt you, cause it doesn’t mind.’

  My hands over her flooding eyes. Out the corner of my eye, slippery bits go into the dish.

  ‘It’s nearly done. Not much more.’ Nurse Puff bends over the silver bowl. Starts arranging the bits, I swear. I can’t help it, my eyes just look. It’s a jigsaw puzzle kid. Tiny thighs, perfect feet. Torn off arms. Some messy big bits that are maybe its tummy, mashed up. The doctor waits. The nurse nods at him. I think, thank God it’s over, but he goes straight back in with his forceps. Finds something, squeezes hard. I swear I hear a soft crack. I can’t stop looking, I’m flippin hypnotised. A crooked mask comes out, crushed and leaking. Real baby eyes hanging skew. Nurse Puff covers the dish with a cloth, takes it out. The evil doctor will eat it, I’m sure, with more silver instruments. With a bib made of hospital cloth, in the back room when we’re gone.

  Now he goes into her with a knife. Scrapes some shreds out. Puts the tube up her fanny, turns on his machine. Wet sucking sounds. Nurse Puff meets my eyes now. Looks sorry, oh so sorry. Like she’s sorry the doctor didn’t once look at Margaret’s face. Like she’s sorry he broke the baby in pieces. Like she’s also sorry Margaret’s mom didn’t ask.

  Nurse Puff gives me a pack of antibiotic pills. Says, ‘We’ve treated the bleeding, but if she starts to flood, bring her straight in.’ She gives Margaret a Sparkle to suck, like she’s been a good kid.

  I catch Nurse Puff on the way out. Whisper, ‘Why didn’t he just suck it out?’ Thinking, like mine.

  ‘He was too big. We only aspirate up to thirteen weeks.’

  ‘He?’

  She looks nervous, like she just made the jigsaw kid real. She nods.

  I pack the pills in Margaret’s bag. I help her to her taxi, straight past the pharmacy sign. I keep my folder, break hospital rules. Margaret can’t smile, but she sticks her arm through the taxi window. Her pen’s got a pink rubber bear stuck on it. She writes her number on the cover.

  In my taxi I eat a whole bunch of tiny bananas. They’re warm and yellow as yellow. They taste like they’ve got the sun in them, which is good, cause I need another day.

  On the way, you won’t believe the sign in the chemist at Lakeside. It’s like someone saw me coming, I swear. Relief! Half price Syndol.

  They’ll be suspicious cause I go there a lot. But I’ll spin them that I’ve just had a womb scrape.

  I can’t. The tadpole’s cosy, still in one piece.

  That’s when I click. Stupid.

  Stupid. I should have gone back.

  Shit. I should’ve gone for sudden death. Told Nurse Puff I was there for me.

  It’s Friday. Two days before they open again.

  Stupid bloody idiot.

  I’m stuck with the tadpole in my stomach. Margaret’s torn up kid in my mind.

  And ugly new day dreams about Graham.

  The tears swim upstream, squirt up past my tonsils.

  I should’ve gone back.

  It’s madness in my flat. Smashing pans metal music playing on the radio. In one corner of the room, a pile of black bin bags, stuffed full. The girls are sliding across the stoep on my chair.

  ‘Mommy’s fixed it!’

  Bonita’s fixed the wheels and is making fishcakes. Maybe like yours, Ma, from a fillet of snoek. Nice, raw balls. She starts a frying marathon. We eat them as they turn brown. Geez, they’re lekker. Bonita’s got Tassies in the fridge. Says, ‘It’s the fashion, did you know? To chill your red wine.’

  Josie pulls the CD player out of a black bin bag, shows me the two prongs don’t fit in the wall. ‘Have you got a plug to make it work?’

  ‘Uh-uh.’

  Bonita’s in the mood to talk. Her old landlord’s stored the rest of her stuff. No sign of Merrick. But while she was out she heard the fishermen marched in Kalk Bay today cause only the big wigs got new quotas. Some little pipsqueak, somebody’s son from the government, got two tons of lobster and Sam the sea dog, one of her regulars, got nothing. Now they’re saying they’re just gonna poach. Fuck the government.

  I don’t wanna hear news of the world. Bonita sees my freaked out face, thinks it’s the kids. Calls them to do their homework. Josie won’t. She makes coffee, dips some bread in it. Bonita says, ‘Don’t let it fall.’ Josie lets it fall. Fishes it out with a spoon. Sharonne works on her Bushman project. She looks like a beautiful bushman girl, sitting there on the bed, with her wide apart eyes and crinkle cut hair. Pleated pink skirt. A red top that says, Maybe Baby. She’s gotto take it off, but I can’t say your mom’s a prostitute and there’s a drug addict boasting he’s gonna have sex with you. Bonita’s convinced the kids that every oke who’s ever screamed ‘Whoore’ from their car, every kid who says so at school, is talking rubbish.

  ‘Fuzigish are playing tonight at the Independent Armchair Theatre, here’s Tammy Plankton talking to Will the trombonist …’ Madeleine comes in like the radio announced her. Holds up a string of tiny brass bells from a Bata Toughees box. Full of bells and beads, and things on strings. The girls dip their fingers into the box, greedy fairies, mad for treasure. Madeleine lets them fiddle, tinkle the bells. Says they’re for the belly bras. She asks me, ‘Will you sew them on?’

  Right now, I’m still useless for the road. She pays me for the bras, I don’t need to take my nerves to the tar. Get pinched and pulped, with nothing to get me through.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘We will go at six. They can tell you which ones they love. They can choose.’

  ‘No! I’m not going back there.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘You can ask them what they want.’

  ‘Maybe I will forget.’

  ‘Uh-uh. No.’

  I’m staying away from that ceiling, those patterned cats.

  Madeleine shrugs, goes back to her flat with her shoebox of shiny stuff.

  Sharonne gets stuck with her homework. ‘Mom. Mom. I left my ruler at school.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I need to draw an arrow.’

  ‘Do it with your hand.’

  ‘It has to be very, very straight.’

  ‘Rubbish, man, draw it with your hand.’

  Sharonne starts to panic. She likes things right. Her fringe dead straight. Her nails all slick.

  ‘It must be very, very straight, Mom.’

  Bonita says, ‘Josie, have you got a ruler?’

  Josie’s eating sugar from the bowl. ‘Nooit.’ She starts coughing. Bonita looks for something straight.

  ‘Just use the lid of the tea tin.’ I’m on my way to get it and, BANG! There’s a terrible blast. Pain in my face. The swivel chair shunts on its wheels, whacks against the balcony wall. Its back smashed. A fat hole through it. Stuffing sticks out, wiry red hair. The top of the balcony wall’s gone in one part. Powder on the floor. Chips of red tile everywhere. I touch my cheek, prick my finger. Pull it out. Eina. A shark’s tooth of glass. Then I see there’s a bullet hole in the window. Smash cracks all round it.

  The two girls lift up, into the loft. Bonita takes the shape of the corner. A ripped hole through the door, the size of an eye. The building has stopped. Silent. Then, shouting, shuffling. More shouting below. Bonita goes on her tiptoes to try see the street, but won’t walk. I crawl towards the door. Open the fridge for protection. Wait a bit. Stinks of egg mayonnaise. The cucumber’s gone brown. Bonita’s Tassies drip dripping. I crawl closer. Peep through the ragged hole in the door. Straight into Madeleine’s eye.

  ‘Tessa?’

  I turn the key.

  There’s a gathering of False Bay Holiday.

  ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘The tattoo man.’

  ‘He shot through the door.’

  ‘Gone where?’ I ask.

&nbs
p; Marie the car guard says, ‘Gone to the beach.’

  Hanif comes, and the Pretoria Policeman. They get statements from everyone. Must be the end of their shift, but Hanif’s still all neat and shiny. Pretoria hums of garlic. The refugees who saw Merrick trace their necks, tell about the tattoos.

  Hanif asks Bonita, ‘So are you laying a charge or not?’

  She nods. ‘And I want a interdict.’

  He gets irritated. ‘I don’t understand you whores, you pomp the skollies, this is what you get.’

  Bonita’s furious cause the girls heard. ‘Fuck off. Just fuck off and go!’

  ‘Hey!’ Pretoria gets all cocky.

  ‘Ma!’ Sharonne tryna get her mom under control.

  ‘Ja, just fuck off. Just leave it.’

  Geez, I’m disappointed in him. The father of the tadpole.

  ‘The skollies, hey?’ I say. Stare at Hanif, ‘Only the skollies?’

  They back off, shit scared I’m gonna say more.

  When they’re gone, Sharonne starts laughing like a mad thing. Bonita asks, ‘What?’ Sharonne points at my cut cheek, says to her Ma, ‘Now you and Tess are like twins!’

  Madeleine says we can pile in with her for the night. We grab some things, hustle in. Madeleine’s couch is on its head, against the wall. The bompie machine’s in the middle of the floor. Bonita makes me help her shove the chest of drawers against the door.

  Sharonne sighs, pulls a surf mag out her bag. Uses the edge to draw a straight line. Rubs it out, draws it ten times. I tell her it’s perfect, leave it now. Bonita takes the magazine away, gives it to little Noel to read. Noel laughs at the girl’s cheeks on every third page, g-strings up coconut oil bums. Bonita checks the curtains, the door, says, ‘Sssh. Sssh.’

  Madeleine works the bompie machine, faraway in her brain. Stops every time a train leaves the station. Sometimes she pulls the curtain away, watches the station subway. Bonita crouches down, waits with her. Twitches the curtain back into place.

  Sharonne shows Noel a man on a wave that curls like a sea shell. ‘That’s a barrel.’

  Josie mocks, ‘You don’t even know what’s a barrel.’