‘Why, good?’
The girls are listening. Bonita just shrugs. But she sticks her head through the bathroom door when I’m sitting down to wee. Whispers, ‘I don’t want you to struggle. It’s not lekker being a single mother.’
Phyllis comes up to me at the back of the class. Says quietly, ‘I hope you’re not giving up this child because your own mother didn’t do a good job.’
‘Huh?’
‘Perhaps you are still angry with your mother.’
I shake my head. ‘All I know is, I can’t handle a kid.’
She reaches up, rubs the lobes of my ears like she’s feeling for truth. She smiles. ‘I understand,’ she says, and shuts up.
Mom, I go the way my soul says. And my whole life just turns on its head.
Chantal and Lennie ask me to move in. They wanna help me, keep me safe. I tell them not yet. I say I’ve still gotto look after the birds. And I’ve gotto practise for the Mother City. But Chantal says please, she wants me close. Says she needs help with her catering, she’ll pay me. So I tell her I’ll come in the mornings, help her in the kitchen. Afternoons I’ll sew with Madeleine. Suresh from belly, her sister’s getting married. Madeleine’s got a whole lot of silky saris to sew. I tell Chantal don’t worry, I’ll come stay after the Mother City concert. ‘So you and Lennie can watch the baby grow at the end. And you’ll be there when … you know.’
‘When you give birth.’
She’s stoked.
I’m shit scared.
We’re gonna get good bucks for the Mother City. We dance nearly every night now. But in the mornings, I work with Chantal. Peel potatoes. Cut onions. Me and her stand in her kitchen with sunglasses on, some of Honorious’s shades. For the onion grief, though, not for show. I still sell at the Sunday market for Madeleine and Honorius. They give me fifty bucks for the day. Now when people ask me if the glasses block out UV, I say, ‘Uh-uh. Pure fashion. And they’re helluva good for cutting onions.’
Sonya, the lawyer, phones Chantal’s house. ‘I’ve already told Josie’s mother the good news. It’s not going to trial.’ I flippin hyperventilate. ‘The perpetrator … um …’ She’s lost Evil’s name.
‘Merrick.’
Chantal freezes with her spatula in the air. Lets big bits of batter drip on the floor.
‘Yes, Merrick, has pleaded guilty. You did a good job of getting properly examined. The evidence of violence and the sperm sample swung it.’ I grin like a maniac at Chantal. She smiles back but she doesn’t know why. Sonya says, ‘So now we must just wait for sentencing.’ I love the way that chick says ‘we’.
‘When?’
‘I’m afraid it will be sometime next year. I would say March if we’re lucky.
‘Geez, that’s slow.’
‘I know. I’m sorry.’
I hug Chantal from the side, so our bellies don’t bump. ‘It’s all because of you.’ I don’t care I’ve got doughnut batter in my hair. All I care is I don’t have to go stand there and tell what he ripped and where he put it. Evil right there, gloating. God, I’m stoked.
And I get mad about belly. Phyllis has worked out a beautiful solo. Designed a whole flippin dance around me. It goes like this. I come on rolled in a tube of red fabric. I dance, unravel. Madeleine and Phyllis hold it so it flares behind me. They’re gonna project the light so when I turn to the side, the shadow of my belly’s like a hundred times bigger on the castle wall. All the others will stay on their knees, welcome the unborn child. Worship my big bloody belly.
We practise in class. Who needs a flippin projector? Those women build me up in class, those belly dancers, till I feel powerful. Bigger than anything ordinary.
They build me up so much you won’t believe what I do. I phone Dumi, I swear. A few days before the concert I phone him at work. Give him a whole nervous speech. ‘It’s the first time I’ve ever danced in a show and I’m the only pregnant one. You don’t have to come but if you’re not busy maybe you wanna come for a bit. I’ve never been to the Gay Festival, but everyone says it’s brilliant. Like, part of Cape Town.’
I dunno how he gets the time and date out of me.
Geez. What if he comes?
And guess what else? Annie comes home just in time.
She comes with five hundred bucks, finch feeding bucks. Lots of little bottles of coffee cream liqueur. A pile of baby bibs. She’s sharp, this one. Before she hands over the bibs she asks, ‘Are you keeping it?’
‘No.’
‘Okay, so who must these go to?’ She holds the bibs up.
I take them. ‘My friend, Chantal.’
Annie doesn’t ask questions yet. She screws open a little liqueur bottle. ‘Chantal can have the bibs,’ she says. ‘We’ll have these.’ I dip my tongue into the lekker stuff. Sip it so, so slowly, so I don’t overdo it. I sip up two tiny bottles, tell her the whole story. Annie’s changed. She sits still, listens like she never used to. Watches me, sings when she’s surprised. Still vloeks at the ugly stuff.
‘Vokken vark.’
She’s got all soft. Coos at the nice bits, I swear, like a little dove. I try ask her, ‘But what about Joburg? Tell me, man.’
‘Next time.’
Her feet on my office chair, her bum on the balcony wall. Behind her on Blu Bottle, a gull hangs out with its mate. I’m telling you it’s the one from New Year’s Day. Maybe my dad sent it. My real dad who drowned in the sea. He sent it, Bang! into the glass, to say, ‘Hey, wake up!’ To hang on the gutter, keep an eye on me. Now the gull’s hooked up and happy.
Same as Annie. She came alone today, but it’s like she’s one of a pair now, I swear. Cooing.
Oh my God, you should see them together. It’s pathetic. We’re sewing saris, me and Madeleine, and Annie brings Darryl up to meet us. He stands against Madeleine’s counter, Annie stands against his legs. He rests his chin on her head. They’re like one bloody beast with a happy double head. I can see how she got involved, though. He’s got pock marked skin and he’s not a snob. That makes him okay for a TV star. Genevieve’s all over him. Her dad gets embarrassed, tries to pull her away. But Darryl says, ‘Don’t worry,’ so nicely you can tell Annie’s told him everything. He knows to make a big thing of Genevieve’s rings. He says, ‘Beautiful, beautiful.’ She knows the word, starts unpacking her pockets. She’s got flippin piles of metal things. She lets Noel help her arrange them all on the bed. I get all nervous, try make coffee. But Darryl takes over, does it himself. Calls out to us in a flippin excellent voice, ‘How many sugars?’
We finish the saris the day before the concert. Suresh’s sister got married, I suppose, but all I can think of is me. The night before the concert I swear I don’t sleep. I’ve got clean money in my pocket, a big, big bun in the oven and it feels like my heart can’t hold it all. I’m scared of the strangers, I’m shit scared to dance. Still I catch myself hoping that Dumi will come. Weird, hey? After midnight it all smoothes out. ‘Hey, you’re gifted,’ I say to myself. Then I sleep like a pregnant beauty.
We crash through gay queens with shaved chests and cardboard cones on their tits. Wigs, hair extensions, drunk on flippin free choice and alcohol. Phyllis takes us past the stage, says, ‘Put yourselves in this space, it’s much bigger than we’re used to.’ You’re not flippin serious.
Thank God for Annie, cause Dumi comes way before he’s meant to. He came, Ma. He came to see me.
Mom, he comes into the dressing room like he’s blind. Like there are no dazzling chicks sticking hooks in eyes, fitting their nipples into belly dancing bras. Like there are no naked thighs doing flippin groin stretches. He comes in looking for me. He finds me straight over Annie’s head, cause she’s brushing glitter on my tummy.
He’s got beautiful. Sorry to say so, but he is beautiful.
He hugs me so hard he gets the baby kickboxing all over the place. Annie gets freaked, the baby banging round in there, but Dumi thinks it’s dead funny. The others don’t mind him in there. They can tell he can’t see, he’s
only there for me. They stick desperate, curious fingers in my back, but I just keep mumbling, ‘Old friend, he’s an old friend.’
Phyllis treats him like a flippin king. Sends the tennis coach to get him a tequila. Then Annie takes him out to Darryl, but she tells me later, Dumi watched the backstage door like a hawk. He is beautiful, Ma.
We dance at the foot of the mountain. We come from Congo and Cape Town and flippin Hibberdene. We dance in the colours of deep down pieces of rock. In carnival pink and the pink strings of air round the earth as it spins. The pink of my white girl’s gums. We dance in the blue of tripping electrics, and that bottomless blue where the sea’s the deepest. We dance in banana leaf green, and the green of the sea just past the sand bank. We dance in the red of fresh blood and that ridiculous hibiscus. We dance in our different colour skins. We dance in a soft, spring wind. Whip, whip, whip, we whip our souls in the air, aim them straight at the moon.
I don’t look at Dumi cause he’s watching so hard. I look at my friends instead. Bonita and the girls huddle close to the stage. Josie grins at me like we’re all alone. Bonita doesn’t like crowds. She stands all small, till I wink at her, then she stretches up. But you should see Chantal and Lennie, all puffed up, so proud of my stomach. Looking around like they wanna say, ‘She’s having our baby.’
At the end of the dance, Phyllis moves to the front, takes over the stage. She’s brilliant. She rocks the ghosts of the slaves. She makes the gay women crave their own bright silk. She whips joy into the guys with the fingerlicking pink on their nipples. The dance ends, they go mad, screaming and whistling like it’s ladies night. Phyllis starts her speech before my solo. I’m so shit scared, my feet lose their feeling. Lucky the stage is dark now, just a spotlight on Phyllis. I’m wrapped in blood red cloth, hung by invisible gut above my head. Phyllis tells them the history of the dance, the whole survival thing, the stuff about preparing for childbirth.
‘Belly dance,’ she says, ‘is a prayer for grace.’ She tells them how in ancient times, no men were allowed. Some gay guys go, ‘Ooh hoo,’ stoked about the women only thing.
God. My fingers are dead, my head numb like I’ve just popped five Syns. I’m a flippin rag doll, till I hear Phyllis say, ‘New life, new birth. Revival!’
Thank God, something moves in me. Something graceful. I wind out slowly, tell myself, it’s not me dancing, it’s my soul. A huge shadow glides with me on the ancient stone wall.
I dance for my life. I dance for the child who nearly died. I dance for my granny who died in a scooter accident and my grandpa who got killed by a ton of wriggling fish. I dance slowly at first, my arms drift up, I spiral my fingers. Sleepy, snakey grace, waking. The others kneel around me, twist and swirl, stay low. My hip circles go faster, smaller, I roll my big belly. ‘Aaah,’ the crowd sighs. Some worried, I think, I might go into labour. But I show them what the dance is for. I pop, pop, pop my tummy, show them I’m ready, no matter what. I dance hard for you, Ma, and your mole, for Angie and her pancakes, for my real father who made music. Then I unpin my veil from my waist, whip it in front, whip it behind, fill it with air so it floats, light green. I crack my veil for my friends, I crack it again for the kid. I send her out, shoot her out on a tongue of green silk. Then I crack my veil, let it drift down, my soul, saying thank you.
Nora does a flippin fabulous back bend. Madeleine kneels at my feet, her face to the people. She touches my belly with her big, thick hands.
When the music ends, Phyllis shouts into the quiet, ‘Resurrection!’ The fast music slams on. All the women jump up, go straight into the drum dance. I chuck my veil at Josie’s feet. The girls scrabble to grab it. Josie drapes it over her head like a Muslim. Bonita gives her a nudge, warns her to watch it. Only then I look at Dumi. Straight on. I’m not scared he’ll think I’m tryna pick him up, cause this is the No dance.
Never. Never. No! No! No!
Shik. Shik. Boom! Boom! Boom!
The crowd can’t help it, they stamp and clap. The mountain behind is made out of light. Prehistoric rock light, rearing up. On the castle wall, a man who looks like Jesus jiggles his shoulders in a wheelchair. A giant kneels in front of him, sways the wheelchair this way and that. Their eyes are locked together, like welded by love. It’s the okes from the flippin scrapyard.
‘Wow, Tess. Powerful dance.’
Dumi’s proud like we’ve got flippin blood ties.
‘It means No.’
He looks blank.
‘It’s about women’s power. Not sex, like in the music videos.’
‘You’re saying no?’
I let a smile slip. ‘Yes.’
‘Okay, okay. I won’t even try.’
Disappointment chews faraway in my brain. Someone pulls on my shoulder, ‘That was stunning.’
It’s Musica, I swear. It’s like a joke, Ma. I told you, a flippin miracle. Everyone came. Musica’s in a double breasted jacket, with a new, camp accent. His little blonde boyfriend’s in a grandpa vest, bangles up to his elbows. Musica’s scared to look at my belly, but his little boyfriend’s a bit drunk. Lies his fluffy head against it. Musica pulls him up.
I laugh. ‘It’s okay. It’s okay.’
They go, but Musica looks back, still flippin grateful, I swear.
‘And them?’
I twist the air to show Musica’s curls. ‘I know him from the road.’
Dumi’s eyes jolt, then he squeezes my elbow a bit too hard.
‘And that big red haired woman? Is she your teacher?’
‘Ja.’
‘The spiritual midwife.’
Geez, that blows me away. Right there I know Dumi gets it. He flippin gets it.
The others party right till sunrise. But Dumi takes me and Bonita’s girls home at midnight. He’s got a VW Cabriolet, white with a black soft top.
‘Geez.’
He goes to a lot of trouble to say he got it second hand. A good deal, something about tax.
We can’t really talk with the girls in the back, but I tell him I’m giving the baby to Chantal and Lennie. He doesn’t ask why.
‘How did you meet them?’
‘He was a client.’
‘Is he the father?’
‘Uh-uh. He couldn’t. He had a problem with, uh … whiplash.’
The day after the Mother City, I go on my own to the clinic. I wait on the bench. Sister Brown marches past, her eyes flatten me. Her mouth’s already straight and tight, it’s like you can’t surprise this chick. I’ve got the drumbeat from last night still in my head, and my whole body’s a bit sore. I start shivering deep inside, not from the cold. Not from the Aids thing. From Sister Brown judging me. I take a big breath, I go, what must I think? Then I remember, hey, I’m going round with two Gods.
There’s God in me and God in the kid. Stand back Sister Brown.
Sister Brown’s like a flippin tar road. Level, rock hard, stay on your side of the white line. Today she turns into a runway. I tell her the whole story, breathless and friendly, cause of the double dose of God.
‘Pregnant,’ and ‘rape,’ gets me nowhere. But when I say, ‘I’ve given up sex work,’ she lets my wheels right over the line. She forgives me, I swear, for everything I’ve done and everything I’m still gonna do. When I say I’m giving the baby away, her straight lips turn up and her eyes go all light. She smiles, gives me space to lift off, I swear. I remember, sheez, Sister Brown’s got God in her too. That’s three in one small room.
They trained her to ask a whole lot of questions. She asks, ‘If you are HIV positive, who you will tell?’
‘Chantal, that’s the mother. Madeleine. I dunno. I suppose all my friends.’
‘If you are HIV positive, who will look after you?’
‘You.’
She gets a horrible shock. Then she laughs like hell, cause she knows I’m joking about how she’s always hated me. Then I think, maybe she also wanted to like me. You know, deep down. She stabs my finger, eina, takes my blood. Says we’ve gotto wai
t ten minutes. ‘Do you want to wait outside, or just sit here?’ I stay with Sister Brown.
It’s the same again. Pink for danger. Another life and death colour test.
‘Do you have kids?’ I ask Sister Brown.
‘I’ve got one. I had two. I had a handicapped child, but he died.’
I find myself nodding like a flippin nun. ‘He’s in a good place, then.’
Just for a second her eyes go dead happy. She smiles out the window like he’s just flying past.
Sheez. God. Like I knew, the white space stays white. A beautiful white space for the baby and me.
Sister Brown shakes my hand hard.
‘Thank you,’ I say, to her and to God at the same time.
I haven’t got Chantal’s number so I phone Goliath Shocks. But they won’t put me through to the workers. So I leave an urgent message for Lennie Meyer. ‘Your baby’s hundred percent.’
Josie says Dumi phoned while I was out. Says he’s gonna come see me after work. Sundown he’s there, I swear, with babygrows from Woolworths. Loose, in the bag. Two white ones. Josie and Sharonne kiss them, hold them up. Say, ‘Aah cuute,’ like old mothers.
‘That is so, so sweet.’ But I mean Dumi. Bonita knows, the way she looks away, all embarrassed.
He wants to take me for supper. I panic, say I’ve already eaten. Bonita takes charge. ‘She’s had some spaghetti, that’s all. She needs fish.’
‘I’m full though. I haven’t got space …’
Dumi stares at my huge belly, chances it, ‘Come, you can make space.’
The others make me go.
I’m scared to be alone with him. I can feel my face is blotchy. My belly’s so big my legs feel like flippin sticks underneath. He holds my elbow like a lady across the road. He asks me something. I get the words ‘… seared tuna’ between the car swipes. I nod like crazy cause that sounds nice.
We go to his flat in Cape Town. It’s a flippin far drive, past Rhodes Mem. The mountain’s gone soft in the half dark. It’s like the buck see us coming. They start running, glide high speed along the highway fence. I tell him about Annie, how she loves to chase them.
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