Whiplash

by Tracey Farren

  The sun’s tryna get in the kitchen window, but the birds block it with their little bodies. Clever enough not to crash into the glass. I unlatch the back door. My God, it’s noisy. As I step out, the finches go ape.

  A black panic above me. I jerk back, shut the door to a crack. Peep out. There are starlings nesting on the roof beams.

  It’s a flippin bird island in the suburb. There are flying geese overhead. Gulls in the garden eating spilt seeds. Flippin gangs of wild birds outside, teasing the finches cause they’re not free. The garden’s also wild. A red hibiscus goes mad at the drain. Creepers climb up the stoep, up the drainpipe, with thick white blossoms like white rubber gloves. Still folded. I know them. They grew on the wall at the Newlands agency. They’re called evening glory, cause they bloom at night. In the day they hide spiders.

  I latch the door. Stalk round the other half of the house, expecting more birds. In the bedroom opposite the lounge, a black and white striped duvet. Clothes on hangers, hooked everywhere like someone was battling to decide what to wear. Some camp waist coats. Pleated white shirts. Those funny pants with the baggy crotch and a built in belt. There’s a computer in the corner. A huge black hat tied onto it with a ribbon. A white scarf over the chair. I pick it up, sniff it. It’s Annie’s. The one I wore to the races. White as an angel’s wing, smells like oranges and pepper. On the walls, blown up photos. The same man, getting older. Black hair in some photos, then a bit grey. Always brushed to the side. Pock marks. Him with daring girls, you know, chancers. Beads. Boots. Bare legs to the bum. Pretty little things, like finches. None of Annie, but what’s the bet this oke’s collected her. She’s a bright little bird, like the others. Naughty, hyped. A new one to flit around his film set.

  I missed a room. Back down the passage, near the front door. It’s piled high with old newspapers. Years old, must be, cause there’s a huge headline that says Two Days To War. A big black bin full of sun flower seeds. Bags and bags of unpopped popcorn. Some plastic tubs. It’s like a flippin farmer’s barn in here.

  I can’t do this. I’m shit scared they’re gonna hit me, hack holes. Whack their warmth against me. Cling to me, try to get in.

  I can’t go into the cage.

  But if I don’t they’ll get thin. Dry out.

  Die a slow death, one hour at a time.

  I’ve gotto grow up and do it, Ma. Forget what you said.

  It was when you were up, selling Sensual Secrets.

  ‘Tess.’

  I ran into the circle of your arm.

  ‘Tess, I want to tell you.’

  ‘Yes, Ma?’ I gripped onto your leg. I wanted you to stay.

  ‘You see those birds there at the rubber tree?’

  ‘The thrushes?’

  ‘Ja.’

  ‘They’re gonna fly into you if you don’t stop wetting your broeks.’

  I thought you meant they’d whack into me. ‘They won’t.’

  ‘They can.’

  ‘I’ll duck.’

  ‘No man, they’ll fly into your fanny.’

  I watched the thrushes flick their tails. Nip grass from their nests.

  ‘Uh-uh. How will they get in?’ Scoffing.

  ‘You need to hold your hole closed. Hold it tight. And baby …’ You called me baby. Made me wanna climb on your lap, cling on. ‘I don’t want that to happen to you.’

  Your face was sad, for real. You were serious.

  I clutched my fanny with my hands. Crossed my legs. Practised pinching my muscles. ‘It’s okay, Mom. They’ll never get in.’

  Later me and Dumi were tickling circles round the edges of the tok-tokkie holes. Some birds flew over us. I rammed my legs together, straight as sticks. Shut the opening.

  Dumi asked, ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Mom says the birds can fly inside me.

  ‘ Dumi killed himself laughing. ‘She’s telling you lies.’

  I kicked him. Bloody hard on the bum, knocking him over.

  Why would my own mother come out in the sun, call me specially to tell me a lie?

  I fill a plastic tub with water. Hold up the seed bin lid as a shield. I take a big breath, hold it. ‘Grow up, grow up,’ I say in my head. Half shut my eyes. Run in. Scream. Dump the water, splash my toes.

  Run back, slam the cage door.

  Run for the toilet. Pee.

  Good girl.

  I run in again, a tub full of seeds. This time they fly for me. Oh, shit. Some get behind my shield. Hit my back, my arms. My nightmare. One whacks my hair, one whips my neck. Birds hit me like flippin memories, but I pour the seeds. Get the hell out. Run back to the feed room. Get more. Run to the next cage. Keep running, in case I stop.

  When they’re all fed, it’s weird, I’m smiling for the first time in how long. Panting crazy, the tips of my fingers tingling.

  One more job, I’ve gotto sort out the smell. This’ll take a bit longer.

  I get a whole lot of newspaper. Put on one of Darryl’s pleated white shirts. Untie the black hat. Let them try dig into my head. I keep my eyes a bit shut, so I see more lashes than flitting birds wings. Keep my muscles tight. This time they just smack the air around me, don’t actually touch me. I keep my back to the mesh. It’s not that I think they’ll fly in. I’m not a kid anymore. But still.

  Ag, I’m killer. I crack the whole thing. Lay all the cages with warnings of war. Okay, I get dizzy from holding my breath, but when I chuck myself back into the seed room, something proud breaks free in me. I just ran into flock after flippin flock, got whacked, got whipped. No birds even broke my skin. I feel like a flippin hero.

  Flippin gifted.

  It happens when I relax. When I’m happy like that, that’s when I remember the turquoise.

  I’m on the window sill, in turquoise silk. Swinging on the burglar bars. The sun makes me transparent, an insect wing. The nightie’s called ‘Lounge Lizard.’ Graham bought it for me. Thin, lacy straps. Slits all the way to the waist. The turquoise of False Bay in summer. He’s grabbing for me, a ring inside a ring inside a ring inside his eyes. ‘Tess, someone’ll see you.’

  ‘But you can see me.’

  ‘I’m allowed to.’

  He pulls me down and tickles me, makes me giggle.

  ‘Sssh, not so loud. Your mom is sick.’

  He slips his hands into the Lounge Lizard slits.

  ‘I’m allowed to. I’m allowed to, hey Tess?’

  My heart is swollen like it’s taken in water. Pumping tons.

  I’m mad, I’m mad, making stuff up. Making disgusting pictures cause I’m coming off pills. Hallucinations, must be.

  I whisper, there on the old news of the world, ‘Help me, help me, help me.’

  I don’t know how long I sit there, I swear. Long enough to see the deadline’s the same as the tadpole’s. Two days to war. Two days to suction.

  In forty eight hours she’ll be sucked away.

  Tomorrow’s her last day.

  I try lying on Darryl’s black and white bed.

  ‘I’m allowed to, hey Tess?’

  Shame burns me white hot.

  I roll onto my stomach, make the sound of a beast, left behind by the others.

  Pain brought to me by flippin belly. Thank you.

  I need peace from this pain. I’ll die without it.

  The sun’s sunk behind the mountain. I run, catch a new, chilly wind. Get in before closing. Slip past the till girl reading the Echo. At the dispensary, a hand holding the phone’s all that shows. I can’t pull off a lie right now, so I just stick my arm over where they keep the pain pills. Geez, I’m in luck. The Syndol’s the closest. The till girl’s too surprised to even think. I dump the money before a white coat pops up. Twenty five bucks. Don’t wait for the change.

  I’m on the road next to the railway when I hear someone sing, ‘Miss Peterson! Miss Peterson!’ It’s Sybil, her yellow curls like in an old photo. Hobbling high speed on her bandaged ankle. A train pounds past. The carriages run a broken line of light along a
wall, along her pale face. The Syndol’s a bulge in my top pocket.

  Sybil laughs at herself, peaches on her cheeks from her hurry. She points at her ankle. ‘I fell over my mother-in-law’s dog.’

  If she says anything about the pills, I’ll say it’s better than being married to a lazy sod. That’s all I know about her.

  She loses her laugh, touches my sleeve. ‘Miss Peterson, I just wanted to give you some medical information.’

  I’m waiting for a speech about addiction and liver damage and all the stuff on the paper in the box, when she says, ‘Even lower scheduled anesthetics can be very damaging to a baby in the womb. Syndol, Propain, Adcodol, Lenadol. They’re all the same. If you take too many, the codeine can damage the foetal heart.’

  Blood pumps up from my heart to my ears. She saw me try swipe that pregnancy test.

  ‘It can also cause breathing defects, bone defects …’

  I see that Sybil doesn’t have kids. I see it in the way her voice goes deep and her eyes look inside, like she’s fetching the words from her own empty womb. ‘It won’t be able to grow properly.’

  Madeleine and her lost daughter in Congo. Now Sybil from the chemist, fired up for my child.

  I swear, they look at me and they see a baby.

  It’s like this kid’s alive.

  Two on my tongue. Three on my tongue. Shit.

  The codeine can damage the foetal heart.

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  I chuck the box in the lounge cage. It lands against the mesh, near the water bowl. You’d think it’s a snake, the flippin screaming fit. But now at least, I’ve got to think twice.

  I leave my pills in the cage. While I’m waiting for Monday, I get back to work. Do what I know. My heart is raw but I get back to work with a fat gangster.

  I wave him down on his motor bike. Tell him I’ve got a room. I chuck the Syns, but I make more risk. Don’t ask me why.

  I get on the back. I think he stole the bike cause he rides it rough. Misses the gears, drops the throttle. I pinch the sides of his jacket. Watch the fat fold on the back of his neck. He takes the back roads. Walks the bike over the footbridge at the vlei. I force myself to chit chat. ‘So what do you do?’

  ‘I’m a fitter.’

  But I can see he’s a gangster. Bulbs of gold on his fingers.

  ‘What do you fit, gold rings?’

  ‘That’s right,’ in this flat aggro voice that says don’t ask again.

  ‘Hey, wait.’

  There next to the vlei, I break off a thin Port Jackson branch.

  ‘I’ve got birds at home.’

  He whips out this flippin mean flick knife. Slices three whippy green sticks. But I’m not scared of his blade. Not today.

  ‘Leave some leaves,’ I tell him.

  The finches shriek. Shoot up. Land. Hit the mesh with their wing tips, make feathers fall. There’s still a strong bird stink. Before we do it, I ask him to hook the sticks on the mesh. There, in the corners. The birds freak out, but he does it quick-quick, cause he’s keen.

  I must have had a death wish. The oke wants to go on top.

  I say, ‘No, you lie back.’

  ‘You think I’m too fat.’

  I squeeze his huge arms. ‘Ag, no, I’m sure you can hold yourself up.’

  But I’m not sure. He takes it as a challenge. I lie on the couch, spread my legs. The finches whistle as he lands. I think I’m dead, my back’s gonna snap, but he lifts himself up. Giant hands next to my head. His arms start to wobble. He’s gonna topple. I buck to hurry him up, pray his scaffolding won’t break. If he falls I’ll die. He’ll leave me there to stink with the finches.

  He blows air, ‘Whooooo.’ Sags onto me. God, he’s gonna crush me after the flippin fact, but he rolls onto the floor. The birds flare up. Chatter and babble about it all. ‘Serious-ly, serious-ly.

  Did you see?’

  He rustles paper money. Two fifties. His arms tremble on his bike.

  ‘See you, girl.’

  His sweetness a surprise. Maybe, for a split second, he loves me.

  Like Graham did.

  The thought zaps me like lightning.

  I clean up, go back to the road.

  Limp Lennie picks me up. Now what does he want? I’m thinking he must have firmed up by now, he’s had long enough.

  Back to the stables, the grooms nowhere today. Like that first time, I’m waiting for him to take me into his straw house, undo his buckle. But no, he still wants me to understand him. He wants us to stand with the sun hard boiling our heads. He wants me to meet the mad, red horse. Shines like oil. Redder than rust. Says its name is Pienkie. He gets defensive when I laugh. ‘I didn’t give her that name.’ He tells me the police keep it alone cause it bites holes in the others. ‘But she’s my favourite.’

  ‘Why?’

  He shrugs. ‘I don’t know. I’m kak scared of horses.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My father was a groom at Randy Wilson’s racing stables.’

  The horse rams the hay with its nose, twitches the flies off its skin. Looks straight at Lennie, flippin mechanical jaw grinds the straw into nothing. ‘He forced me to ride.’ Lennie ducks under the gum pole. All fluttery, he strokes the horse along its neck, down its shining spine.

  ‘Aren’t you scared it’s gonna bite you?’

  ‘Yes.’ He keeps it sweet, charms the horse. ‘Like I said, I’m kak scared of horses.’ He strokes, like he’s finding new muscles, new lines. It stamps suddenly, swings back, rasps at its flank with flippin gigantic teeth. For a split second, Lennie goes slack, like someone just pulled the cord out.

  When the horse eats again, he says softly, ‘When I was three he put me on race horses. Some were nearly eighteen hands high. He held me on and ran with the horse in the ring. I slipped off, but he grabbed my ankle and pulled me back up. He wanted to teach me. I was the first born.’

  I know by now I’m here to listen.

  ‘Later he used the whip. He made me ride alone.’

  Hardly ever happens on the road, but I know the deal from agency days. All I have to do is say, So? and, Oh?

  ‘Thoroughbreds on protein food.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Protein hypes them up.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Lennie stands right behind the horse now, perfect place to be kicked to death. He runs his hands down its legs, to the ground.

  ‘He put me on this one stallion. It threw itself onto its back.’

  The horse swings its head back to him, nudges him hard with its nose.

  ‘I had internal bleeding.’

  The horse carries on destroying the straw. ‘But I never broke a single bone.’ Lennie’s eyes shine as he boasts, ‘I never, ever broke a bone.’

  This from a man whose sperm all have broken necks.

  ‘Oh?’

  He goes on about his bad fall.

  ‘I was two weeks in hospital. My father came to see me. He told me, When you are right, you are getting straight back on!’

  Lennie ducks out of there. The chestnut beast runs along the gum poles, sends up a siren, a flippin song of longing. Shit, like it’s homesick.

  Lennie also looks lost. ‘They’re going to shoot her.’

  I look around, ‘Who?’

  ‘The cops. She attacks anyone who tries to ride her. She bit off two of the captain’s fingers.’ He draws a line under his last two fingers. ‘Here.’

  ‘They’re gonna kill her for that?’

  He nods. ‘They’re waiting for the papers from somewhere.’

  The horse grinds at the gum pole with curved, yellow fangs. Lifts off a strip, careful, like a carpenter. Whinnies again. She listens, her head way up. Pure muscle makes a snake shape in her neck.

  ‘And now they keep her alone, she’s also got harregat with the other horses.’

  ‘Right off?’

  He nods. ‘They said he was only bridling her up in a hurry. That time when those boys robbed that German ambassador on the beach
.’

  ‘I heard. They stabbed him in the eye.’

  ‘The whole police team had to look through the dunes.’

  The restless red horse sends up sand, frets along the poles.

  I speak for her, ‘She wasn’t in the mood.’

  He nods. ‘Someone must have hurt her, some time.’

  I shift down the gum pole, out of reach of the beast that bites off fingers. Rest my own worried bones on the fence. Shit, I need Coke. I shade my eyes from the sun, keep a watch on that horse through a mash of lashes. Lennie talks more. Seems like his dad and his brother bullied him.

  ‘My brother’s a champion wrestler. He used me for practice, him and his wrestling maats. I just went loose until they got bored of me.’ He boasts again, ‘I never broke a single bone.’

  Pienkie paces. Trots round her cell, glares at the horses in the distance. Neighs for forgiveness or war, I dunno.

  Lennie gives me this whole story how his mom used to make soft dolls for the Coon Carnival. Pinstripe pants. Afro hair. ‘When my brother was rough I went loose like those dolls. Like I was stuffed with lappies.’

  I see him flying around, arms and legs at bad angles.

  A smile loosens his face, his eyes catch the sun. ‘I carved little banjos for those dolls.’ His smile scuttles back into his jaw. Funny guy. Too sensitive. God only knows how he ever managed to be stiff. Ever.

  Lennie goes on about when he was a kid, I say, Oh and, So. But it makes me remember. I’ve never been on a real horse, but we used to pretend. We galloped them wild on the gravel heap. We were like, seven or eight. Way before Kerry’s horse with the tick bum.

  After that time with the ticks in my bikini, Kerry’s mother made her ask me to play. We were up on her garage roof, rolling the ball of a deodorant bottle. Her white cart horse stood below, crunching the spines of some napier leaves. He whipped his head up just like Pienkie. Like he was tryna make out like he was highly strung.

  ‘My hymen’s already broken,’ said Kerry.

  ‘What’s a hymen?’

  ‘It’s a piece of skin that goes over your fanny. Like on a drum.’

  ‘But what about your wee?’

  ‘No, man. That pipe comes out somewhere else. It’s a piece of skin. Virgins have it. But only virgins who don’t ride.’