‘This is a barrel, this is!’ Shoves the mag into Josie’s face.
‘Ride it then, go ride the barrel.’
‘I’m going to.’
Josie laughs, ‘You gonna ride the barrel in the rubbish truck, man.’
Sharonne tries out a blazing look. ‘Well, you are the rubbish.’
She says, ‘There’s a Western Province ou in my class, he’s gonna teach me to surf.’
‘Haa-aa. A boyfriend!’
Sharonne slaps Josie with the mag. Noel’s nervous, forces himself to laugh.
Bonita says, ‘Ssh man. What are you arguing for now?’
My nerves are begging for peace. ‘C’mon, c’mon. Go learn how to make bompies.’
Noel trusts me now cause I stopped the argument. Climbs onto my lap. The girls press together. Watch plastic sleeves fill with red juice. Red the colour of nothing on earth.
I swear, Ma, it was crazy how stuff kept happening. One thing after the other. The big boy who sells bompies with Noel bangs on the door.
‘Ifonela iTessi.’
Tessie, he calls me. Like Angie. Maybe it’s her on the phone.
Maybe Graham’s dead. I scratch at the chest at the door, tryna get out.
Bonita warns me, ‘Careful. Watch out.’ I run to the phone.
It’s Annie from Joburg. My heart lifts up, tries to fly.
‘Vok, my phone time’s nearly finished now, you took so long to come. How’s it with you?’
‘No, okay.’
‘Man I’m phoning for a favour, Tess. You know my pa was looking after Darryl’s house?’
‘No.’
‘He was looking after the finches for us.’
‘The what?’
‘Man, Darryl’s finches. He’s got lots there at home and he’s stressed man, Tess, because they bust my dad for dope in the house. The finches got goofed.’
‘The what?’
‘The finches, man, birds.’
‘Oh.’
‘And my pa got locked up. Please feed them, Tess. Feed the finches for us. I’m making lots of marcha, I’ll help you out when …’ She gets cut off. Not enough marcha.
Now there’s hungry birds somewhere. Shit.
It’s freaky in Madeleine’s flat. I try hide against a wall, but Noel climbs on my lap. Stuffs a bompie in my mouth, still liquid. Bites the other side of the plastic. His side’s covered in snot. I bite my side, suck the unbelievable red, his knees digging into my stomach. He watches my eyes like I’m important. I get up, slide him onto the floor. Go look out the window. Bonita dives to cover the glass, ‘Tess, you wanna get shot?’
I put the TV on. There’s a talk-to-the-dead medium, his pants nearly pulled up to his tits. He stalks his audience, says, ‘I’m being pulled over here. Your dog, is it … Bob?’
‘Bobo,’ the lady says. She starts crying.
‘Bobo wants you to know that he’s with you every minute of the day and the night.’
Madeleine shows the girls how to use the heat sealer. And the trick with her freezer, how to hook the door shut. Bonita twitches, checks things. Noel quietly tears up the surf mag. Hours to go to sleep time. It feels like bricks are falling, trapping me in the flat. All I want is good, easy peace. Some space in my brain. Syndol.
The medium says to someone, ‘There’s someone to his side, that’s brother, sister, girlfriend, wife … Jane? Janine? … Jeanette!’
But the family’s never heard of Jeanette.
I made up that business with Graham, that business of looking for ticks. My miserable, stoned mind. I made it up, must be, like the twit on TV.
Madeleine puts on her pink toweling pants under her green caftan. Gets out a whole pile of beautiful bras, the same colours as the precious stone skirts. She stands with her box and her bras. Says, ‘Tessa, come help me tonight.’
Bonita’s ready to shove the chest against the door. She begs, ‘Don’t go, Tess. He might be watching.’
I whisper, so the kids don’t hear. ‘He doesn’t want me.’
I squeeze after Madeleine, get the hell out.
I made up that whole business with Graham.
And if I stay, all I’ll wanna do is get the key out the belly of my doll. Chuck my pain pills into my mouth.
Madeleine’s caftan blows in the wind, shields me. It’s lime green with flying yellow discs, like Red Scalp’s lemon tree.
‘I’m not gonna dance.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’m not a dancer.’
She laughs. ‘I can dance. You can dance. Anyone can …’ ‘How long have you been dancing?’ I ask.
‘That is my third time, the night that you started.’
‘I didn’t start!’
‘But we don’t pay, because we sew.’
‘I’m not …’
Madeleine says gently, like she’s on my side. ‘I dance to make Phyllis happy. She is trying to help me.’
That’s when I remember that Madeleine’s also battling. With her husband missing and all.
The belly girls flutter, fly into Madeleine’s shoebox. Nip at the trinkets and chains. Lay out their new bras, make arrangements. Pluck at me, call me to see. Suddenly now I’m a stylist. Sheez, I feel like a fake. Guilty, like someone might bust me.
Red Scalp’s on form, Queen Crazy in her new red skirt. A knotted top. Her breasts only just behaving. Barefoot, orange polish on her toes. Someone teases her, she says back, ‘Orange is the colour of the navel chakra, didn’t you know?’ Her toe rings send lasers as she walks on the wood. Red Scalp gives them ten minutes, then says, ‘Okay, who wants to shimmy?’
They don’t wanna let go the baubles and bells. Crispy Nora asks me, ‘Can we leave them like that? Can we carry on later?’
I nod, keep my eyes down. Red snip in my cheek going black.
While they’re stretching, I slip out. The young guy opposite’s sanding wood on his stoep. I don’t wanna know why he’s got toilet bowls planted on his stairs. Why there’s ruby red roses flushing out of them. He stops working to watch me. ‘What you staring at?’ I tune him.
He jerks, carries on sanding. I go back inside.
They’re on the floor, ankles tucked over their knees.
‘Twist from the waist.’
They all twist round, look at me. I can’t handle them staring like that, so I sit. Tangle myself up, same as them. Tell myself it’s okay. I was just crazy that day. Stoned out my bracket.
The cats pose graceful in the corners. Next to me, the young Indian girl, Suresh, I think. Black silk hair, eyebrows in that perfect aching shape. Egyptian, with her stone cheeks, stone nose. Red Scalp’s bright curls, lips like a young girl’s. Her feet dead silent as she circles us.
‘Remember, your body’s hardest task is to carry your skull.’ She smiles, ‘It took millions of years to learn to do it.’
I know what she means. Sometimes mine’s a garage full of junk. Mice bloody mating there.
‘So unravel slowly. Let your head come up last.’
When we’re standing, she says, ‘You are going to shake your pectoral muscles only. She bangs a hand between her breasts. ‘Lift your arms from here. Good. Now, shake! Shake! That’s it, shake yourself loose!’
Red Scalp’s breasts bang together like Spanish knockers. She laughs, ‘Shimmy … Shimmy.’ Sends air bubbles up, they pop from her lips in a chain, a giggle. Suddenly I get it. The speed wobble catches me. I’m shaking, shaking like a Grand Prix steering wheel. Can’t stop, don’t want to. My mouth smiling all on its own. Some women wail, collapse, hang their arms. Some try again, still tryna to find that connection in their chest. Then the laughter takes over all of us, makes us useless, bubbling, hot.
‘The shimmy’s the best thing to drain toxins. Bad memories. You can use it to drain the fear, to make way for love.’ Some of the women giggle. ‘Yes, yes, and that kind of love. But when you shimmy, I want you to think, I am God.’
A barking laugh comes out of some of us. I’m careful not to look up at the sa
g in the fabric.
‘Because that’s what you are.’
Egyptian rolls her eyes, but not nasty, you know?
‘If you don’t agree, that’s okay.’ Red Scalp grins, naughty as hell. ‘It doesn’t change the truth.’
Now the laughter comes easy as music.
‘Okay, get your heels down. Small movements, only the heels.’ Jig, jig, jig, stamp, stamp, stamp. She drums the wood, fast, faster. So fast she goes out of focus. Legs vibrating, buttocks bouncing, makes a mosaic of her body. I drum, drum, drum with her till I’m gonna break the room into splinters, shiver the mirror, crack it with stress cracks.
‘Shimmy! Chest, bum, heels. Don’t be afraid. Go faster, faster!’ Ugly dreams, shake them off. Shake it off, shiver and shake the horror through my heels. Shimmy so no one can get a hold, if they touch me I’ll kill them with my electric shock. Electric shake, I can’t stop.
Then I see they’re all watching. Wild smiles, laughing cause they just did a hundred revs a second.
I freeze up, go still. They clap for me. Madeleine starts an African wobbly wail. Crispy Nora comes at me, waves a turquoise scarf. ‘Tie this around your waist. Then you also have a skirt.’
I chuck my hands up, try stop her, ‘No! No!’
‘Come on, this is your colour.’ She holds it against my cheek. I jerk away, bend my hands like a baboon’s, so she can’t stick it between my fingers.
‘Not turquoise!’
‘Why, with your blonde …’
‘I hate it!’
Shit man, there’s water in my voice. Crispy chucks the scarf in a corner, brings a cat to life. She stays kind. ‘She’s so good, hey Phyllis?’
Red Scalp’s watching the whole thing. She nods.
While the girls finish choosing shiny things for their bras, Red Scalp says to me quietly, like a blessing, ‘You isolate beautifully.’
I feel my mouth pull sarcastic. ‘D’you know what I do for a living?’
‘I’m sorry, but …’ She shrugs, cheeky. Like she was with the God thing. ‘You’re gifted.’
Gifted!
Shame like a flippin train, charges through me. Gifted with a leg against the toilet wall. Jammed on a car seat. Clamping on till they roll their eyes, shudder and shoot. That’s my job, isolate. Make it quick.
Sheez.
And the drama doesn’t stop. What do we find when we get back? A flippin police chick at Madeleine’s flat.
The girls are watching a war movie on TV. Except for the grenades blasting sand, the flat is nice and quiet. The bompie machine’s all bare. Bonita’s reading the torn surf mag, I swear. Noel’s on his stomach, watching Constable Chandler’s brass bits like he’s watching the stars in the flippin sky.
Constable Chandler’s pretty from the side. Short hair, sweet nose. Face on, she’s got yellow teeth. These stabbing eyes. She’s slim like she can’t fight, but she can run. Madeleine grabs Noel, traps him on her hip. But Chandler ignores her, comes towards me. I backpedal out the door, thinking I’ve been sewing on sequins, not even soliciting. She catches up outside my door, the bloody bullet hole between us. ‘The guy who was house sitting for Darryl had a three day party.’
I relax. Okay, this is about Annie’s dad.
‘The neighbours complained. We caught them smoking slowboats through Darryl’s Kahlua.’
This chick’s hundred percent blind to the funny side.
‘So Darryl’s friend says you’ll feed his finches.’
‘Annie?’
She nods. ‘She says Darryl’s paying you.’
Ah, shit. ‘When?’
‘When they get back.’
‘I mean when must I feed them?’
‘Oh. Once a day … and you’ve got to clean out the cages.’
‘Geez.’
I can smell birdshit, just thinking about it. The stink from the Marina picnic park.
‘This Darryl guy. He’s famous?’
Huge delight in her eyes. ‘A TV star.’
She holds out a key. The ring a heart shape in red beads.
I’ll vomit on the spot, I swear. I smell it. It’s mould and gunpowder and rubbish bins in the sun. Birdcages, I bet, will smell like that. And I must put my hand into thrashing feathers, warm blooded things with fish bone wings. Ag, no, man.
‘Can’t you do it?’
‘I’d love to. But I’m not allowed to.’ She’s genuinely sad she can’t help a celeb. She sticks her finger into the bullet hole. Picks out bits of sawdust. ‘Eleven of them died from the dope.’
God.
‘The fumes.’
Okay, she’s talking birds.
‘I did what I could yesterday. But they haven’t been fed today.’ Little things dying slowly. Wasting away.
I take the key.
‘Eleven Cromer Road.’
Bastard police. They look after pet birds, let us get shot.
Eleven birds dead at number eleven.
What a joke. Like there’s space for birds in this bursting head.
I tell them through the soldiers’ screams on TV, ‘Look guys, I’m sleeping in my loft.’ Dare Bonita to try interfere.
It’s Sharonne who grabs my hand, her eyes big. I shake her off.
‘Bullets can only go straight.’
I need to straighten out my brain.
The flat’s still full of the shock of the blast. The air’s still scared. I climb the ladder. Get the key. I gobble two Adcodol, lock the last two back in my boot. God, I want more.
That belly place’s done it again. The word gifted bangs around in my head. Did you know hope can make you claustrophobic? It’s from happiness stuffed down, I think. Tonight gifted fights with turquoise. Both of them tryna win. That turquoise made me furious tonight. Crispy forcing silk on me. Turquoise charity.
I remember, Mom, you walked in while Graham was choosing.
‘What are you doing?’
Silk scraps all over the bed.
‘How much is this one?’
He held up a turquoise nightie. Small.
‘She’s too young!’
You tried to grab it. He flicked it away.
‘She’s old enough. How much?’
You shook your head. Started folding the silk shrapnel, tidying up your stock. The lacy black cat suit with slits up the thighs, Midnight Minx. The red camisole with the red crotchless shorts. Fire fly.
He grabbed the list on your dressing table. Took out fifty bucks. Dropped it on the pile.
You sounded shredded, your voice ripped up.
‘Well then, you might as well get one for Angie.’
‘Don’t be stupid.’
He looked at you like you should be chained up.
‘She’s too young!’
I gave that blue nightie to Angie when I left home.
I claw through the moonlight. I don’t cry. Take the last two. Nothing left. I pull the mattress off the bed. Lie in the line of the bullet. I wish I’d stayed next door. I wish I could see them breathing. See Bonita’s bite marks, the lines on her neck as she sleeps.
Princess smiles a sorry smile. She knows the finches are hungry.
Wild thrushes flew past your window, Ma. The light blocked by the rubber tree, wavy arms, pods like swollen finger tips. The thrushes flicked on, flicked off. Never rested.
Inside the dark room, you and your mole.
I hear myself giggle.
You said it was a birthmark, but it was a mole. Thick and raised, and hairs growing in it like soil. Mrs. Mole terrified to leave her hole. Terrified of a creeping disease. But you loved your mole. ‘Look.’ You held the chocolate against it. ‘Same colour.’ Graham always got you Whispers from the café. He got us Coke and false fingernails. I was the only one who ever shared his biltong.
You colour matched it. Stroked it. Tweezed out the hairs. You loved your brown mole like you loved dying.
I doze a bit, jerk awake, my heart beating like bats wings. Sweating. Remember the shimmy, how I looked in the mirror, jig-jigging i
n my jeans. Gifted is bullshit.
I looked like a fool.
Flippin happy riot, Bonita and the girls move back. They see I’m alive, no bullet holes. Plus it’s Saturday. Bonita says they have to stay in, but the girls will burst out of there by midday, I can tell. The sun will make steam of Merrick and his gun. The chaos kills me. Sharonne makes a racket with her plastic packets, taking stuff out, rolling them up. She turns the tap on hard, wasting water. Josie flaps her pants, makes them crack before she puts a leg in. Bonita’s still tense, but humming nonstop. Another night with no sleep makes me wanna cry. If I go out, I might pour onto the pavement, dry up in the sun. Become a nothing.
But I make it to 11 Cromer Road. It’s across the train tracks, in the village. Wooden gate, wooden door with a stained glass Jesus. This one’s all stretched like he’s been hanging for too long. There’s a crowd of tiny birds in the window. The usual pinch of my sphincter. I stick my face against Jesus’s thin chest. There’s a long wooden passage right to the back door.
I brace, turn the key. Bird squeaks stick needles in me. The stink of wildlife and dagga. Stale, like matted armpits. I go in. Nudge open the door on the left, where the bird window is. Cause short, shocked screams. I expect bird cages like in a pet shop, but one step in, I hit mesh. From floor to ceiling, I swear. Hot little bodies. Soft feather blades on bicycle spokes.
I scramble back. That whole front room’s decorated with birds. Hyped, hungry, must be. Whirring, darting, shaking their tails. But the mesh is tight. They can’t reach me.
Hyperactive wings, velvet bellies, twig legs gripping. Amped to eat, to stay alive. The cage fitted with a couple of kite sticks, no leaves or trees. Their tub of water nearly empty. Dirty.
Oh my God. In the lounge, another mesh wall. This cage the size of a flippin Vrygrond house. A hundred finches have got half the lounge, the fireplace too. Feathers piled up, droppings on the mantelpiece, the South Easter whining down the chimney. Outside the cage, a peach coloured couch.
I watch from the door, my stomach knock-knocking all the way to my throat. I check them out. They look like girls. Dolled up, lifting their skirts. Orange throats, hopping. They watch me back, shout loud, no skaam. ‘We need to eat! We need to eat!’ I swear, they’re everywhere. There’s a kitchen through a hatch in the lounge. Through the kitchen window, more finches. This oke’s a flippin freak! Part time film star, part time finch freak.
Whiplash Page 15