I walk back to the finch house, thinking bitter.
Not me. Never. I could never go live with you and shut up. Take my kid there and say nothing, like you.
I look up Battery Man. Get the receptionist.
‘I wanna speak to the boss.’
‘He’s busy at the moment. What is it in connection with?’
‘That driver of yours …’
She grabs a quick breath. ‘Yes …’
‘The white guy.’
‘Clive?’
‘He locked me up at Symphony Exhausts on Monday. He beat me up with a broom. He found it exciting.’
She starts moaning like she’s being tortured right there at reception.
‘Hey. Lady.’
She snuffles, ‘Are you a girlfriend?’
‘I want his boss to know.’
She whispers right in my ear. ‘He’s my son.’
Shit. I had the whole thing waxed. ‘I don’t care. Get me the boss.’
She flippin starts crying. ‘I’m sorry. It’s trouble after trouble with this child.’
‘He nearly killed my child.’
‘What? What?’ She struggles to come up.
‘How come he likes to hurt women?’
A cut up sigh. ‘His real father was a very violent man. Especially with Clive. That’s why we left.’ This woman’s useless at keeping back tears. ‘He said it’s the only way to handle a boy.’
‘Wake up lady, he’s a grown man now. He’s bad news.’
She swallows, sorts out her voice. ‘Are you going to lay a charge?’
‘There’s no point.’ Sheez, for once it gives me satisfaction to say it. ‘I’m a prostitute.’
I saved the baby from one crazy. But how the hell am I gonna look after it? Maybe I’ll go high class. Silver service. Work for a boss again. A room with a soft bed and a shower. When I scream, security will come running cause the boss’s gotto look after his stock. I could put the kid in a crèche. Or pay someone to stay at the flat. Maybe Madeleine, if I pay her. She and Noel could care for the kid. I’ll lie to the child, say I’m a receptionist.
Tell her all I ever give, is telephone messages.
I could go high class, now I’m off pills. They kept me down, that’s for sure. They kept me easy, but they kept me down. That’s what Emily said, our manager at the Newlands agency. ‘I need sharp girls. Clear eyes, clear skin. Girls who don’t slur. Is that asking too much?’
She told me to get lost. Shit, her with her arthritis hands, only forty and she was nearly crippled. Chewing on painkillers all day. Stupid of me to take her pills though. But she was taking nearly all the bucks, so I reckoned it was right I should share her Voltaren.
If I went high class I could tell the kid I’m a beauty therapist, or something.
But that’d be a big fat lie.
Like we lied, me and Graham. We kept it secret. But you lied worse Ma, cause you’re a mother.
Plus you lied to the whole world about your cancer. Even Mrs. Frick at the library battled to keep you alive. ‘Long enough to see her little girls grow,’ Mrs. Frick whispered it loud, didn’t care that I heard. She put the terror of your death in me, so I ran quick, quick, quick to the library when you hit the halfway mark in your book. When the library ran out, I sat on your bed and chatted. Chatted, all worked up, scared that the cancer was creeping.
You lay there and lapped it up. I kept talking, about the neighbours, how Marty Trakoshis was Spanish dancing one afternoon in her lounge. She was playing the castanets and the next door Alsatian ran in and attacked her hands. Now they’re all bandaged. About this girl Cindy everyone said was a nympho cause she was in love with an Indian waiter at the Hibberdene hotel. I didn’t know when to stop, just like with my crying. I didn’t see stop streets. When I read aloud in class and didn’t take a breath, Miss Holland, the English teacher said, ‘Tess, you have to learn to stop at the stop streets.’
I went on till you stared at the charging impis. Then I’d go bug Mrs. Frick, ‘Mrs. Frick, my mother’s got nothing. How much longer, Mrs. Frick, before the new books come?’
Mrs. Frick, she got caught in her own good deed. She had to order horror from everywhere. Books that could probably wake up killer cells, kickstart a cancer. Stories about women chased by half wolves and women who got their breasts sliced off with Chinese switchblades. Stories about nice pets getting possessed and psychics who saw kids being buried alive. When I asked you, you told me. You got all worked up, genuinely scared. Made me shit scared, too. But when you told me that story about Carrie who chucked things round with her eyes, I remember I felt jealous. She had a gift. She could wreck the world with her thoughts. Me, I had nothing. Just stupid eyes that cried.
God gave me nothing. Even when I prayed. Any case I suspected God was a perv. When you first met, Graham was sweet about your mole. Always said it was a huge beauty spot. When you wore your short denim shorts, when I was still small, he said God was so busy drooling over you, he dropped the whole pot of beauty spots. Spilt them on your leg.
I read you all the stories I wrote, the ones from English class at school. But I got no more prizes after standard six cause I started writing gruesome for you. Sheez. Like that dumb story I wrote about this killer. Remember, I called him the Cereal Killer. He stole the cornflakes competition slips from the shop. He phoned the mothers and told them they’d won. ‘Come and get your cereal!’ he said. He waited at an old warehouse in town. He was helluva friendly, dressed all smart. He tricked them inside and locked them up. Sometimes just the mom, sometimes the mom and the kids. He starved them to death and plucked their eyes out. Makes me sick when I think of it, cause of Amanda, cut in the sand. He dried their eyes out and ate them like raisins. Geez.
Remember Ma. That’s when the teacher said, ‘Enough!’ and gave me bad marks. The other kids said I was sick. But it was you who was sick. I was just tryna make you better.
You said you were proud of my creative writing. And proud of Angie’s swimming. But you didn’t come to any prizegivings. Graham never came either. He said he had nothing to wear. He wasn’t lying, his wardrobe was nearly empty except for his train driver’s uniforms. But when I won the English prize in standard six you kept my prize next to your bed. A book of English quotations. It soon had a tea ring stained into it.
You used it against the Christians. The old man down the road, with the glasses like Madeleine’s. They pulled his eyes out their sockets, made them water with strain. When he took them off, his eyes snapped back. His toenails grew like vines, up, up towards the sun. It was their staffie Bruno who got stuck to Lady. Him and his wife thought only sinners die so young. So they tried to save you. They sat on your bed and said Jesus would forgive you if you really and truly in your heart wanted him to.
That freaked me. What terrible thing had you done? Maybe you’d killed someone. I thought about it. You didn’t kill your dad cause he got knocked into the hatch of a boat by a ton of pilchards. And you didn’t kill your mom because Granny Doreen flew off the back of a delivery boy’s motorbike. She was a nurse at Humansdorp hospital. Bumming a lift back from night shift, you said.
You nodded and murmured until you got fed up. ‘The tendency to turn human judgements into divine commands makes religion one of the most dangerous forces in the world.’
I knew it was a quote from my book, cause you never talked like that. You must have had time, one day, between killer plants and house cats turned psycho. It was Georgia Harkness who said it, I looked it up. I don’t know if that’s a man or a chick. The old man and his wife got all awkward.
‘I’m tired,’ you sighed, suddenly all weak. ‘I need to sleep.’ When they went, you hissed at me, ‘If you let them in again, then you be the sinner! You confess! You be forgiven!’
I went crying to Gladys, my head in her lap. I begged her never to let those old people in. Never, ever. The one with the long toenails and the bible. Not him or his wife. I made her promise. Gladys patted my back, calmed me with terrible Zulu words. ‘
Igwala,’ she said, over and over. Coward. But I knew she didn’t mean me.
‘Scrub yourself clean. Brush your hair till it shines.’ All the orders I got from your bed. Sea water stuck in my ear. ‘Put your head to the side and jump. Jump.’ But you never came into the bathroom. ‘Dry between your toes.’
No. I won’t lie to this child.
It’s Easter holidays, must be, cause kids on skateboards carve up the tar. Some boys play cricket in the road, bowl OUT! against a black dustbin. Girls go round in twos, piles of thin plaits like they’ve got time for hair now. I leave the stretched Jesus door open cause I don’t wanna be all alone with my past. Flip, this baby’s churning up old stuff. Not just the new pictures I know are true. Also old memories, like from the back of the shop, the personal avos.
Two big girls cruise past, maybe sixteen. One white, one brown, their hair brushed bright like for a flippin photo shoot. They go heads up, boobs out, the same fake jewels on their wrists. Excited to be out with eyeliner on. Virgin written all over them. Geez, when I was sixteen I was living with Dave Delirious from Radio Mango. Sixteen with red stripes. Red lipstick. Red nails. I met him when I was still only fifteen. My first week, my first escort agency in Durban. He got me innocent. I hadn’t had sex for money yet. I was tryna be a true blue escort, not a slag like the others who got their agency cut for the date, plus cash from the client for going all the way.
Dave Delirious was actually Dave De Wet. He was thirty six. Animal skins in his tiny flat. His wife got the house. He dared me to walk naked in front of the window. He wanted people to say, ‘Have you seen Dave’s little flossie?’ At parties he kept me on his lap, whispered, ‘Kiss my ear.’
But back in the flat he wasn’t half as nice. Farted in front of me. We had sex, yes, but it wasn’t half as buzzy, the thing between us, as on the veranda of the Malibu. Those white plastic chairs, everyone drinking vodka with passion fruit. Watching Dave, the radio DJ and his young chick.
He didn’t pay me, it was a real relationship. But I nicked some from his wallet. Never more than fifty a day. Funny how that’s still my minimum flippin pay. He knew about it, planted the pink one, I think. Payment for the tongue in the ear parade. He shopped with me, stood outside the fitting rooms. Rolled his eyes and said something about the appetite of women. Chatted like that to the shop workers, who just about fainted to meet him. Dave didn’t talk to me much, just played old tapes of his radio slots. But he had a short, deep tub right under his shower. He taught me to trim my pubic hair in a strip, like in the blue movies he watched to get going. I wasn’t shocked. I’d seen Graham’s mags all my life. Ag, the blue movies made me feel a bit seasick, but I fixed it with cheesecake from the bakery downstairs. Up to my chin in bubbles, cheesecake and a pink one from his wallet, I felt like the queen of Morningside. Thinking Graham would freak if he could see me, and Mom, you’d do Arab springs in the grave you prayed for.
On the radio Dave Delirious dedicated songs to his ‘little sizzling lamb chop.’ But at the flat he started running me down. My accent was cheap, I ate like a pig. I laughed too loud and too long. Then he started sending me insults from his wife. ‘Catherine called me at the station, Tess. She said it’s not just your age, babe, it’s your breeding.’
Another time, ‘Catherine says you’re probably going to give me an STD.’
Bastard.
Bonita and the girls come crashing in. Josie unzips her top, pulls my wooden horse out. It’s decorated in all colours of scooby doo wire. Sharonne’s in a bright pink top. Bonita boasts, ‘She bought it herself from Mr. Price. The money she got from sewing.’
‘The sequins?’
Sharonne’s eyes flash proud.
‘Nice. What are those?’ I tease her, pointing at her screaming pink toenails.
‘Passion Pink,’ she says, seriously. Then she goes quiet, stares at all the birds. Josie causes a commotion, hits the cage to see the birds make a cloud. Sharonne and I shout, ‘Stop!’ I tell Josie they can die of heart attack. Sharonne’s impressed. She stares at them like they’re made of crystal.
I make them some tea. Ask Josie to go buy milk from the shop, but Bonita gets all edgy. Puts Darryl’s home number into her cell, makes Josie take it.
‘Two minutes there, two minutes back. I’m watching the clock.’ Bonita has a good look round the place. Checks the lining of the curtains, lifts the mats with her toes. Ignores the birds. Stays away from the peach couch, like she knows. She flips through one of Darryl’s House and Homes. I’m burning my fingers on the tea bags when Sharonne creeps up on me. ‘Tess, can I bring my boyfriend here?’
‘Huh?’
I think sick. Think sex on the peach couch.
‘That boy from school, Roland.’
‘What for?’
‘Tess, he wants to come see me after school, but … but I want my mom … not to be there.’
‘Why not?’
She shrugs just like her Ma. ‘Because Tess, everyone knows she goes with men.’
I’m flippin struck down with guilt. Bonita’s guilt. My guilt. My ears burn hot as the teabags. I press more brown stains into the mugs. She’s looking up, tryna see into my eyes.
‘Is it the guy who’s gonna teach you to surf?’
‘Ja.’ She smiles, love all over her face. ‘But I hate getting my head wet.’
I laugh with her.
Sharonne knows about her Ma. She’s skaam about her Ma, but she tries her best to be like her. Same Vaseline cream to make her skin shine. Same lipstick over the line. Dangly earrings, just like her Ma.
Josie gallops in. Dumps the milk. Behind her the sound of wheels on the wood. God. An invasion of plastic bikes. Josie’s brought Nora’s boys with her.
‘You can come here,’ I tell Sharonne. ‘But only when I’m here, hey?’
‘Ja, of course.’
The world rolls off her shoulders, she’s glad as anything. It must be cause I’m pregnant, but pride makes a lump in my throat. She’s just a girl with baby breasts and new underarm hairs. Now a boy’s noticed her out of all the girls in school. I polish the teaspoons on my t-shirt, to give me time to swallow.
Nora arrives. Nora and Bonita start flapping their gums, talk like they’re cousins or something. The boys race their bikes in the passage, freak the birds out. I shut the door. Josie wants to go in the cage, let them sit on her.
I say, ‘Okay, but move slowly.’
She goes in with my wooden horse. The finches think it’s feeding time. They flock her, flick her, but she just gets the giggles. She does a few sudden moves to make the birds panic, till Sharonne and I shout, ‘Stop it!’
Josie whistles to them, pats her shoulder, ‘Come and sit.’ When they won’t, she shoots out a hand, tries to catch one.
‘Uh-uh. Out!’
She leaves the horse on the floor, runs out the door, the two blonde boys after her. Bonita jumps up, calls her back. ‘Not one foot on the pavement.’
‘Ma!’
‘You can play on the wall.’
Bonita tells Nora her whole life story, just not the grief. It’s all decorating today.
‘I think it all started with my mother. She worked in a factory that made Roman blinds. She brought all the catalogues home, so I could see all the lekker things you can get, you know? And I always wanted a beautiful home. A beautiful, big house.’
This is Bonita, sleeping on the street with a knife under her head. Running from her boyfriend’s teeth, camping in my flat. ‘My sisters are factory workers, but no, I thought, not me. Me and my husband, we went into Novalon.’
Bonita lies, she didn’t marry the guy. That’s why she gets no maintenance. The oke worked for a flooring company, had a problem with depression. Only thing that helped was time off with his buddies, shooting pool. Drinking beer. So she stood in for him. Laid the screed, skimmed it. Measured, cut. Mopped the glue. Matched the patterns. Drove his bakkie, filled his contracts. I know the whole story. She only tells Nora the good half.
‘I k
ept saying to my husband, there’s big money in vinyl if you make it look like something else. You know that wooden look? The pattern is of wooden planks? That gave me the idea to make one that looks like hessian.’
‘Sacking?’
‘Ja. The rich people have hessian all over their house. Two thousand rand a square metre, s’waar. So the other people, soos in Plumstead, and lower Claremont, they also want that look. But it must clean easy because they don’t have three black women to come clean with carpet foam. And the plastic stuff is ten times less cost. Two hundred a square metre. And it worked. It worked! It sold like … like …’
Bonita can’t think what it sold like cause her husband chucked off his depression. Chucked Bonita and the girls. Got his dead brother’s money, had a whole lot of hessian print vinyl made. His dead brother’s wife did the books for the imitation hessian. And she didn’t mind pomping an imitation of her dead husband. Bonita tried to apply for maintenance, but by then she was doing sex work to feed the girls. The bastard said they weren’t his kids.
‘What, you mad?’ he said when the social worker went there. ‘One father, two children, with a hoer? Sure, sure I’m their father. Sure, like this is real hessian.’
Nora hurries to go wash her little boy’s leg. A bright bleeding flower on his knee. Bonita keeps talking like I haven’t heard the whole story before.
‘The richies love the rough stuff. I saw this CD rack for one thousand five hundred at Home Sweet Home. It had a ugly devil thing on the sides with thin legs and vuil hair. They love that, it’s called primitive chic.
Something vicious in me now. Half the story’s only half the story. Half the story’s same as a lie. I say quietly, so Sharonne can’t hear, ‘Is that why they screw us?’
She gets me back fast. ‘Ja. But more you than me.’
That night, I dream of telling Hanif.
My legs stretch up the hill to the police station. Up, up. I break a sunbeam across the charge office. Up, up the stairs. Into a room packed with lost case files. Yellow, sticky with dust. Empty boxes of Kentucky Chicken everywhere. A window over the bowling green where there’s white skittles, old fogies moving stiffly. One bends into a smooth movement, rolls a black marble. Applause bursts out of a can.
Whiplash Page 20