‘I’ve been beaten, but you can’t see it.’ I can feel the colours that will come. The blue, the pink, the red. They’ll come slowly with the sun.
‘I just need to get to hospital.’
The giant doesn’t believe me. ‘You ggeally shouldn’t wish that.’ A problem with his r’s. ‘I’ve spent enough time in that place.’ I hang onto a screen that has perfect punch holes in it. Hooked onto it, old tailgate lights, labeled in koki. Fiat. Opel Kadette. ‘Bike accident,’ he says.
‘The bruising’s still coming, so it doesn’t look like …’ ‘Him, he spent longer.’
The wheelchair guy gives us blue heat like a welding flame.
Shuts us up about his accident.
‘Can you call an ambulance?’
Giant’s confused now. Thought I was leading up to asking for money. The wheelchair oke pushes some tea towards me. The cup has clouds on it. He spoons in three white sugars. He looks like those racing car drivers on TV after the Grand Prix who sweat themselves beautiful. Behind him are oily black bones, car parts cut from horrible accidents.
Two survivors, these guys.
The tea is made with condensed milk. Wheelchair gets Giant to plant a plastic chair outside the door. I sit there with the tea, burn my lips.
Cars piled up like it’s mating season. Then electrical poles, with wires strung. On top of that, a clean, clean mountain. Stripped clean in the night. Oily dust streaked down the storm water drains. Just a few clouds stretched from drip drying in the sun. I must have said something about the mountain, cause Giant says, ‘You should come back and take a photograph.’
Like I’m a tourist come to see scrap with a mountain balanced on it.
I start to shiver in the sun. ‘Please call an ambulance.’
Giant calls an ambulance. ‘A woman here says she’s been beaten up. No cuts, no. No bggoken bones … No, I don’t think it was ggobbeggy.’
I sit shivering like a wet dog, tryna figure out ggobbeggy. Stare at my knees, feel the pain pitching up. Digging in where the broomstick landed. I drink more condensed milk tea. The ambulance doesn’t come.
Giant helps a customer. Ford Sierra door handles. ‘They bust when the mechanism inside busts. It’s not the plastic, it’s the metal inside. I’ve got a few on the left side, what do you need, fggont and ggear?’
‘What?’
‘Front and rear,’ I say. I’ve figured it out. Ggobbeggy. No, it wasn’t robbery. But he could’ve smashed the baby. He could’ve crippled it.
Wheelchair asks, ‘Where do you live?’
‘Muizenberg.’
‘You can get one taxi, all the way. Can you stand?’
It’s sore to stand, and the world goes warped. Watery.
He wheels up to me, ‘Jump on.’
I park on the arm of his wheelchair. We roll down the rubber mat. He stops a taxi on the road. The driver turns his sound system down for a bit. Wheelchair talks to him, pays him with coins from his top pocket.
I know the band, its Skwatta Kamp. The dashboard traps a thousand flies, sounds like, buzzing with the base. The oke raps about how he loves the sun, how he’s so stoked he’s an African. The taxi volume wipes out the world, wipes out my mind. The drum beat blasts through my feet, splits the flippin axle. There’s a Rasta next to me with slow eyes. Was he born with those big eyelids, sealed at the sides? His dreads smell like Lady, when she’d been in the rain. The noise, it gallops. Rolls through me, round me. Holds me tight. Inside the violence of sound it’s safe enough to think of my tummy. There between my hip bones is a pool of no pain. I try my muscles. Number one. Number two. Number three. All fine. Place of flippin safety. Can you believe it? My belly’s okay.
I think the baby’s okay.
The music gallops, wraps me up. Some chicks sing the chorus, sing it’s up to me to get the joy I need. It’s inside me, they say, go look for it.
The baby’s okay. The baby’s okay. Thrill from my stomach runs up to my throat. A laugh rattles there, buzzes like the dash. Breaks onto my face. The Rasta smiles with me, his heavy eyes green as weed.
The taxi takes me right to the finch house door. A note from Bonita and the girls. In pencil on a torn page of a school exercise book, We came to see you. Each signed their own name.
The finches sing a welcoming party. Hungry, like me. I turn the taps on soft. Take seed in, uncovered. Only a slight tightening. One, two, three cages. The lounge cage last. The Syndol looks ancient. Covered in bird shit. The hunger hits. I want some. Finches trip around my head. I sit against the mesh, under a ledge. Don’t touch the pills. Pull up my dress, watch the colours. My arms covered in stripes. My thighs, my chest. But my stomach is clear. I saved the baby.
My shoulders are sore. I feel my back with my fingers. Lower back, one sore stripe across a kidney. One cheek bone aching. I did a good job. Finches flutter round me. Touching me soft. Touching me where he hit. I sit like this, pick up the pill box. Pick off the feathers. I need some now. This time for real. It’s normal for sore. I pull out a whole sheet. Ten peace pills. Clip, clip, clip, the sound’s in my mind. The clip of the foil off the back of each pill. But I only take two. That’s normal for sore. I sit there with the bird song and the running water. Then I click, it’s the bath. Struggle up.
The bath’s running over. I leave the Syndol on the edge, drain some water. Get in slowly, spill some more. Take my dress off once I’m in. Check again. My stomach’s okay.
Madeleine bangs for ages. I hear her calling, but even when she’s inside, I keep quiet. She comes in lugging her big stripey bag. She covers her mouth with two hands, stares at every inch of my body in the bath. Tryna rub the marks out with her eyes.
‘A client,’ I tell her.
She can’t speak.
I tell her the whole silencer story. It comes out like broken twittering.
Madeleine touches the skin on my stomach, checks it out carefully. She sighs, ‘When will you stop your suffering?’
‘What do you mean?’
She picks up the Syndol. Zips it into her weatherproof refugee bag.
‘When will you stop?’
Something strips in me. Bitch. Taking my pills. Blaming me.
‘And what about you? When will you stop? If you trust God so much how come you don’t stop watching the trains? Why do you worry and wait your whole life?’
Madeleine’s eyes fill with bath water. ‘I want him home.’
She looks at the floor, taps the pool with her sandal. She comes up, whispers, ‘I have lost too many people.’
I feel so shit, I go for the throat. ‘But I’m not your daughter.’
She stares at me. Her tears drain back. I swear, she grins.
‘Yes. But I can still be your mother.’
I’m confused.
‘I learned that from Phyllis. She has no children. But she helps us all.’ Madeleine’s all chirpy again, ‘Come, we go and get orders for veils.’
‘What?’
‘Come, the bras are finished. Now they want their own veils for the concert.’
God, there’s no stopping her.
‘You tryna trick me to dance?’
‘Not to dance, Tess. Look at you. But you must not be alone. So you must help me with the orders.’
She helps me to dress. Long sleeves, jeans. All that shows are bruised hands, a streak on my cheek. She watches me chuck my head back, stretch my eye skin. Sting my eyes new with Safyr Bleu.
When we get there they’re doing loose hip circles. Big, loose ones, all come undone. Red Scalp’s in orange tie up clothes. Tie up pants, orange criss crosses across her back. When she sees me her eyes turn to worry, tie me up. I sit like a prisoner where Madeleine puts me, next to her striped refugee bag. Crispy tries her best not to stare, but she’s not very slick. Madeleine joins in, does the circles. Her hips nice and loose, but her eyes hold me there, holding me up. She’s babysitting big time.
Red Scalp talks while they’re circling. ‘Remember belly developed during a time when childbirth was ve
ry dangerous.’
Shit, she’s looking straight at me.
‘They’ve found thousands of gravesites, skeletons of women with their babies stuck in their birth canals.’
‘Aah no,’ go the women.
‘So the women developed the dance to get ready. To get strong.’ Red Scalp smiles straight into my eyes, ‘Belly is about coming to the world alive.’ She slips to the CD player, pushes a switch. The drum beats gather, she turns it up. ‘It’s about birth!’ The drums strike the studio air, strike the mosaics, shatter them into splinters of light. The cats get the hell out, stick close to the ground.
The women do the hip, hip, hip smack thing, shoot their hips up to their ribs. Get strong for the baby, strong for the pain, facing death with their hips, whipping it.
The music’s finished, the women are laughing. Suresh, the Indian girl chucks herself flat on the floor. Madeleine pours over forwards, panting. Red Scalp says, ‘And just think. Just think. In Victorian times when the women went mad and convulsed backwards, Freud and the doctors said they were begging for sex. But what if that was the start of no? Because the power to say yes is the power to say no.’ Only some of the women are listening. They laugh, echo, ‘No.’ Follow the others, hustle to get the practice veils off the hooks. One cat comes back in. Sits on the threshold and listens with me.
‘Because once your hips unlock, the earth can connect with your head.’ Red Scalp comes to me, puts a hand on my head, a hand on my stomach. ‘Brain to feet.’ Cause of the chaos of veils, no one notices Red Scalp doing magic. They’re all too busy feeding on colour, running their fingers along the hems, tryna find the long ends.
Red Scalp drifts behind me, strokes down my arms, hard but gentle. Her hands have an electric effect, I swear. She grips my fingers hard, says, ‘Giving you the energy to stand by what you’re feeling.’
It’s like someone dropped a coin down the well. A sure feeling lands in the pit of my belly. What I knew in the taxi when Skwatta Kamp was rapping and the Rasta saw me smiling. This baby will live.
Underneath my clothes, my skin the colour of veils. A dawning of blues, plums and suns.
I will give birth to this child.
I watch, all worked up for the rest of the lesson.
‘Take your veil. This is your soul.’
Red Scalp gets shy smiles.
‘If you’re dancing in the concert, you will want your own.’ She dips her head at Madeleine, teases, ‘Speak to Madeleine about your soul.’ Their practice veils rest at one hip. ‘Okay, light fingers on the far corner, ready to step.’ They float forwards. The silk slides up smooth into transparent flags, air magic, the colour of bruises. Shimmering screens brush their arms, their temples with colour. Silk from their fingertips, pouring in circles, swirling figure of eights in front of them. Watching, I feel the silk on my bruises, the gentleness of Red Scalp’s touch, the sureness of life, there in my belly.
I help Madeleine take measurements. Work out their wing spans so she can make them veils. I hold the tape measure, but it’s Nora who reads off the numbers. Then Nora’s holding the tape and Madeleine’s measuring me. Saying, ‘Tess, I will make you something pretty.’
‘But I don’t dance.’
Red Scalp hears. ‘You don’t dance, but you’re born to it.’
I shake my head, shake off her words. ‘Not born.’
Red Scalp laughs, free from her stomach. She stands, hands on her hips, a flaming red tamer. ‘Okay, not born.’
Everything’s a big, fat joke. Madeleine’s fingers are gentle on my shoulder blades, getting the measurement. She joins in the teasing, ‘Tess was not born, she fell down from the sky.’
Madeleine says, ‘Come Tess. Come home tonight. ‘ But I’m still scared of the loft and the sweetness of the girls. Plus the Princess will be covered with wet towels.
‘No, no, I’ll be alright. I should never have gone with that guy.’ She watches me, soft, like the birds. ‘Stupid,’ I say. ‘It was stupid.’
She puts pressure. ‘I saw Bonita’s old boyfriend in a car at the station.’ She flutters her big fingers at her throat. ‘With the tattoos here.’
‘Did you tell Bonita?’
She nods. ‘In a black car.’
I fret, torn between two bloody dramas.
I shrug, step off the pavement towards the finch house.
She asks, ‘What have you got to eat?’
I tell the truth. ‘Tuna.’
One tin left for the kid.
miracle number three
But once I’ve decided, Red Scalp’s spell loses its thrill quick, quick. I fret myself stupid. I’m three months pregnant. I’m keeping it. But how the hell am I gonna bring up a kid?
The next few weeks, I do lots of jumps, for the bucks. But also cause it makes me feel safe. Weird hey? I used to take pills cause the road was scary. Now I go to the road cause I’m shit scared.
Only now, the jumps piss me off. Badly.
I go with this municipality guy to Silvermine forest. White guy. Won’t come to the finch house in case of ratepayers. We go into the pine trees, away from the braaiers. Grey sideburns. Not that old but he’s got emphysema. His skin’s got no oxygen. Grey blue, matches his eyes. Pat, his name is and how’s this, he’s in charge of environmental health. ‘Air emissions,’ he says. His lungs are buggered. He makes a growling noise when he breathes, like an old dog dozing. Chooses a big tree next to a clear stream. Walks round and round it to check there’s no ratepayers watching. Gets a spot and round and round he thrusts, like smoke rings, round and round we go.
Maybe I’ll take the baby home. Say nothing about Graham. Ask you to help me, Ma. The kid can play with Angie’s kids, there at her place, high up on the hill. They can make mud cakes in the red sand. Play under the plastic tables between the tourists’ feet. I wonder if Angie’s still got that tame monkey she told me about? The kid would love to play with it. I could work for Ange, maybe. Or, I dunno, wash hair at Lee-Anne’s Salon. Maybe learn to cut and style. I’ll say nothing about Graham. I’ll stay out the lounge. On the weekends I could take the kid to the beach. Watch you fish.
Round and round we go till Clean Air’s emission. He chokes at the end. Spits stuff out behind the tree. He drives a red Polo. ‘Hack-hack-hack,’ he laughs, ‘That was an enjoyable site inspection.’
He pisses me off. But his notes are crisp. He keeps them in his boot, in his CD drive. ‘Nothing else in your boot? Girls your only sport?’
Fear pays a quick visit, there in his eyes. He’s shit scared for his job. He drops his eyes, counts out an extra pink one.
I buy Coke from the garage shop. Spot two winter avos at the back. Geez, I wanna fall on them, savage them. Let them feed my swollen breasts. ‘Those your personal avos?’ I ask.
He says yes, but sells me one for three bucks. I scoff it as I cross the foot bridge over the vlei. Tear the avo skin with my teeth. Watch a crowd of tiny fish make a graceful turn.
He should have died when I was a kid. I could’ve gone fishing with you more, like when I was small. You let me lie across your leg. I looked up at your hands on the rod. Up through its eyes, spear fishing the sky. I watched your hands, reeling in, letting out line. Sometimes kisses fell on my face, cool little fish from heaven.
When you got a hit, I fell into the sand, cheered you. Your eyes got sharky, your lips pulled in for the kill. ‘It’s yours, Mom. It’s yours. I hope you get it, Mom.’
When it got close, I shut my eyes and crossed my fingers, looked at the sky, not the green line.
The flapping, twisting, silver fish made you laugh like a happy, happy woman. ‘How was that babe?’ You shoved your fingers into its gills. ‘How was that, am I clever?’ You held it still, worked the hook from its lips. ‘Dig a hole, Tess. Quick, a big one.’
I dug like a dog, holding my breath. Lady scrabbled with me, nose to nose, spraying sand between her back legs. When the shad was safe in its grave, you got gentle, looked suddenly all full and fat.
&nbs
p; ‘You got it, hey Ma?’
You’d bait up again, zig zag a strip of sardine on your hook.
After you cast, I lay across your leg.
You found out early on, Mom. And you didn’t say a thing.
You gave up Croc World after you saw us. Felt something creeping, coming in through your mole. Sure your body was tryna eat itself up. Graham bought you soft cover horrors. But he couldn’t keep up with you, you were a flippin speed reader. He tried horror videos, but he got it all wrong. He should have got you Grease, the movie. You would have been stoked cause you and Graham watched Grease in Plett, when you first met. When you were dressing for Croc World you used to sing while you stuck on your purple Parks Board epaulettes, sexy like Olivia, ‘Oo oo ooo …’
He stuffed up and got The Fly.
You freaked out. But at the wrong thing.
‘It’s disgusting! What are you tryna do? Are you tryna make me sick?’
You were there the first time I wet myself. I was watching The Fly. I wanted to see what else made you sick Ma, other than catching us like that. So I put the movie on with the sound low. Gladys’s radio jived in the kitchen, the steam iron’s throat rattled through the house. The smell of cauliflower cooking. Swish, as you turned the pages of your book. Angie and me watched The Fly with the sound nearly off, me tryna guess which part was too disgusting for you. Angie was two, I was six.
This guy got stuck in his machine with a fly and he started turning into one. He got uglier and uglier till the man in him died and he puked up this green stuff all over the place. Geez. I wet the carpet like a dumb dog. Lady tried to lick it up. I ran to you, ‘Mommy, Mommy, I wet my pants.’
You looked up from your book, you sounded stone dead, ‘You must have a bladder infection.’
But you didn’t take me to a doctor to check. You left it.
Gladys blotted it up with the Sunday Times. The bikini girl on the back page got my wee. I watched the rest of The Fly from the door. When the scary parts came, I picked Angie up and ran away. Then I crept back for more, still tryna see what else made you sick.
Never.
Whiplash Page 19