Whiplash

by Tracey Farren

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I think it makes her feel, you know, in charge.’

  ‘What makes you feel in charge?’

  Here come the questions.

  ‘I’m finding new ways.’

  He nods, like he gets what’s happened.

  I push him, ‘And you? You feed the world?’

  He laughs, ‘Yup.’

  ‘Like your Ma.’

  He’s dead quiet for a while. The yacht masts are like trees tilting in the harbour. I think I’ve pissed him off. But he takes my hand. Squeezes, lets go. A bit of sun still leaks through a dip in the mountain, makes a pretty pink streak on the sea.

  His flat’s right in that dip. Eesh, the place feels like a hotel room. Helluva beige, you know. Off-white curtains, off-white couch. Wood and metal. But he’s got this beautiful parrot, a flippin unbelievable lime green. I’m talking cream soda crossed with a tennis ball. But the bird’s head looks cut off from its body. A whole ring of feathers missing round its neck. Inside the ruffles, this thin sucker stick. I laugh myself silly, till the parrot laughs back. I’m not joking, it’s Dumi’s laugh. Then it barks like a flippin old lady’s dog. An identical bark comes from the next door flat.

  ‘Ssh,’ says Dumi.

  The parrot goes, ‘Ssh.’

  I laugh again, the parrot laughs back with Dumi’s laugh. I’m having the time of my life, but Dumi looks sorry. ‘He’s lonely.’

  ‘Why?’

  He shrugs, looks lost. ‘I travel too much.’

  ‘Get him a mate.’

  His grins slow and wide, ‘I’m trying.’

  This shuts me up fast. He lets the bird out the cage. It flies over me, I hardly worry. Lands on his shoulder. It nips at his ear, ever so gentle. Tucks its head against his neck, makes the noise of a flippin pigeon.

  ‘What if he shits?’

  ‘You wouldn’t do that, would you Jabu? Oh, no.’ Dumi’s talking in this silly baby voice. ‘You’re too much of a gentleman.’

  That night I tickle the greenest head you can get, gobble my wine. I watch Dumi spice big, pink tuna steaks, the bird on his shoulder. I swallow buckets of spit. ‘My mouth’s watering like you won’t believe.’

  ‘Didn’t you get enough in Natal?’

  ‘It’s the baby. It’s crazy about fish.’

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want to keep it?’

  I keep nodding, show him I’m sure.

  ‘Because I can help you …’

  ‘Dumi …’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The baby saved me. You should’ve seen me.’

  But his eyes aren’t even scared.

  ‘It was a flippin miracle.’

  He pours sweet chili sauce. Spreads it with a knife. Turns the steaks over, shows their clean sides. ‘So you don’t want to be its mother?’

  ‘Chantal’s its mother.’

  ‘Will you tell me about all of it sometime?’

  I feel heavy inside, like I’m saying, ‘Yes’ in a church. Keep my eyes on the raw fish.

  I move in with Chantal and Lennie, just like I said.

  The first night I’m there I dream I’m in your deep freeze, Ma, with your fish.

  Eye to eye with a huge salmon. The ice crackling and popping. I’m lying on my side, my elbow up like a dorsal fin, my feet pressed together like a fish’s tail. It’s cold, but I’m thinking, never mind, you’ll defrost me on the grass and keep the cats away. But it’s Chantal who opens the door and carries me out, not you.

  When I tell Chantal in the morning, she puts an extra blanket on my bed. She asks me, ‘Do you have a lot of bad dreams?’

  ‘Ag, hardly ever now. And my bad dreams, they’re a bit funny. Even in the dream I think I should laugh.’

  Mornings, I help Chantal chop up stuff. In the afternoon we sit on the stoep. Huge pots of food growl on the stove while me and Chantal talk. She tells me the whole story about banning me. She’s like me. When she tells a story she goes, ‘he said-I said-he said.’ So this is how it went.

  Chantal went to Lennie and said, ‘Kathleen said Arnold said he saw you driving with the white girl from the road.’

  He was tjoep stil.

  ‘Did you go with a prostitute?’

  He said nothing.

  ‘I didn’t want to marry a man like that.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like those men who’ve got to prove themselves. I married you because you were different.’

  ‘I’m still a man.’

  ‘I know, but you were kind and soft.

  ‘Ja, but you slat me for being soft.’

  ‘I slat you for running away. Your firewood means more to you than I do.’

  ‘It’s my art.’

  ‘But you run away with it. You run away every day and all I’ve got is food. And look how fat I’ve got.’

  ‘Now that’s my fault?’

  ‘Ja. I eat like this when I’m lonely.’

  ‘You’ve got lots of friends. And you watch too much TV. That’s why you’re fat.’

  ‘You shouldn’t say your own wife is fat.’

  ‘And you’re always with children. Your brother’s children, the next door children …’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘It makes me feel stupid. That’s why I make the horses …’

  ‘That’s another thing. Why the horses, horses, horses …?’

  ‘What else must I make?’ They stare hard at each other. ‘Must I make a carving of you?’

  ‘Yes. Why not?’

  I don’t tell Chantal it was my idea.

  She tells me how it went. When he started carving her, they talked about me. I can see them quiet, the evening sun turning the dust on the carpet into sparklers. He was sitting behind her. She said, ‘You put all your love into your stupid horses. And that white girl.’

  But she probably said, ‘whore.’

  ‘I don’t love her like that. Man, I’ve only seen her twice.’

  He carved, maybe, the softest part of her neck. Said quietly, ‘I only love you.’

  Her hands on her knees, her heart leaping like paraffin on a nearly dead fire. ‘Then why do you lie? Why do you say you didn’t have sex?’

  ‘I tried.’

  The flames suffocated.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Once at the stables.’

  When Chantal tells me this, she watches my eyes in case he lied. But I nod.

  She says, ‘Tess, I stayed awake the whole night. Sick with jealousy. I got up to pee. Put on the TV. Went to the kitchen, ate cake. Then I shook him. I woke him up. Just that once? Do you promise? He said, Yes. But ey, the pain in me kept me awake all night.’

  ‘Ag, shame,’ I say. ‘Sorry, man.’

  Then the next time she sat for him she asked, ‘What else did you do with her?’

  ‘I went to watch Damon wrestling.’

  ‘What? When?’

  ‘One Saturday night.’

  I can feel the bitter quiet. Lennie bending his head, maybe getting the outline of her breasts from the side.

  ‘What did your brother think of your stukkie?’

  But she probably said ‘whore.’

  ‘They didn’t see me.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘They never see me. I stay in the crowd. I hide.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I don’t want them to come judge me. Treat me like a moffie. Ask me when are the babies coming. Ask me, what do I do to stay fit. What better job am I gonna get. I’m a moffie compared to them. You know how they break my neck, just greeting me.’ ‘But Damon would be happy if he knew you watched him.’

  ‘Ag. He’s got my dad.’

  Something in his face blew off the dead ash. Blew tiny flames back to life. She grabbed his hand, put it to her cheek. Kissed the middle of it.

  That’s when he said, ‘Sorry, Chantal.’

  She tells me at the end, ‘You know how they say, sorry doesn’t help?’

  I nod.

  ‘Sor
ry helps.’

  It’s hard for a flippin whale on land. Sheez. The days go bloody slow. Lucky Chantal and me like to hang out. Chantal talks a lot, but she’s sharp as a blade. Strong, if you need her. And flip, can she cook? Curry like I’ve never tasted before. Whole cloves, whole cinnamon sticks. Woody spice flowers called star aniseed. Piles of yellow rice. Vetkoek dripping syrup. I stuff a whole one in my mouth, greedy for the next. But by the time I’m finished chewing, I’m full. Sticky chicken, oh my God. Fried in a pot with fruit chutney. I’m talking huge pots, scrubbed silver. We eat from the food she makes for the staff at Schultz Pharmaceuticals. In the old days maybe I would’ve eaten their pills, now I’m eating their bloody beautiful bobotie. Chantal makes trays and trays of it, covers them with silver foil. We pack them in Lennie’s boot. Cover them with towels. He drops them off early at the canteen on his way to Goliath Shocks.

  Chantal’s got beautiful kitchen knives. Long blades, stubby blades, skinny blades, all blades. Lennie carved a holder for them. She’s had them since she was married, she said. She got them from Lennie for their first anniversary. He sharpens them himself. Takes them outside, sounds like a sword fight. Sharpens them, one on the other.

  ‘When you weren’t talking, did he still sharpen your knives?’ She knows exactly what I’m asking. She says, ‘That’s how I knew there was still a chance.’

  Chantal cries during Days of our Lives. She watches the re-runs in the morning, cries when those perfect Americans get hurt. I tease her, call her Waterworks.

  One day she tunes me, ‘You must stop using those eye drops.

  They dry up your tear glands. Then you can’t cry if you need to.’

  ‘But that’s good.’

  ‘Uh-uh, it’s not healthy. We cry for a reason.’

  ‘What reason?’

  ‘We cry out the poison.’

  I think she’s gonna go on about suffering and stuff, but she just smiles at me. ‘If a piece of dust goes in your eye, your tears wash it out.’

  We both laugh cause of all the stuff she deliberately left out. Dumi comes to visit me at Chantal’s. We sit and tell Chantal and Lennie a whole lot of stories about when we were kids.

  ‘How old were we when we tried to stick snails in the pavement?’

  ‘Oh ja. You cruel child,’ Dumi says.

  ‘How old were we?’

  ‘I was about ten.’

  ‘Cause we saw Mrs. Gentili …’

  ‘Next door … What do you call that with the cement …?’

  ‘Mosaicing.’

  ‘Ja, mosaicing her table. She was an out and out alcoholic,’ Dumi says.

  Me and Dumi laugh cause we still see her stumbling round, happy as shit, all alone at her own garden party. Dumi reminds me, ‘But she did hers with sea shells.’

  ‘She made it so bumpy her whisky glass couldn’t balance.’ We laugh like we did when we spied through her fence. I say, ‘Anyway, we decided …’

  ‘You decided …’

  ‘… to use snails instead. Roadworks left wet cement outside our house. We were gonna stick the snails in and put up a sign that said, Go Slow Like a Snail.’

  ‘I wrote the sign,’ says Dumi.

  ‘But he didn’t wanna do it. What if it burns? What if it burns the snails’ feet? He stuck some cement on his tongue. He shouted, Stop! Stop! It burns! Take them out, take them out! I said, Don’t be stupid, man. Have you ever heard a snail screaming?’ I shut up suddenly. Cause I remember what Dumi said, then. He said, ‘Tess, sometimes things scream, but no one can hear.’ Dumi rubs my back, there between my shoulder blades. I say quietly, ‘It’s just that, snails were about the only thing I wasn’t scared of.’

  Dumi tells Chantal and Lennie, ‘So we threw them, instead, into Mrs Gentili’s flower bed.’

  Chantal and Lennie laugh at our stories. Sometimes they stop listening, we go on for so long. Some of the stuff, you know, you had to be there. Or you had to be ten.

  Dumi goes for a week to Cairo. Shit, I get all edgy. But he phones three times to say, ‘Hey sisi, how’s life?’ On the last day he says he’s got very good news. He can’t say yet cause he’s gotto first run it past his staff.

  When Dumi gets back he tells me it’s all organised. Get this. His work’s organising this big conference, the one he explained on the radio. Dumi went and told everyone at work about the history of belly, how it meant survival. And they’ve got this big drive towards feeding pregnant and breastfeeding mothers in central Africa. He gives me a whole lot of numbers about infant mortality, all over the world compared to Africa. Babies that die before they turn one, mostly cause of no food and bad water. The mom goes hungry when she’s pregnant and the kid goes hungry once it’s born. It’s very bad in the south of Africa. In Angola two hundred out of one thousand babies die before they’re one. Same as Afghanistan. But places like Sweden, only two babies in one thousand die. In New Zealand, it’s like, five. South Africa’s in the middle. About sixty, I think. Thank God Chantal’s been feeding me. Geez.

  I’m so freaked out by the numbers, I forget he’s tryna break some news. Get this. They’re gonna fly fifteen dancers to Cairo to open the Belly of Africa conference. I nearly wet my pants. He tells me relax, it’s only end of Jan. I’ll have three months to get ready after the baby.

  Then we’ll get on a plane, go dance for thousands of politicians and feeders like Dumi. Flippin big wigs from all over the world.

  Dumi and me go and see Phyllis. She is so, so stoked. She rattles her hands in the air like an African mama. When she’s calm, she keeps tryna sell him what he’s already bought. ‘We have a nice cultural mix. Women of all colours and persuasions in our group.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And they are all dedicated dancers, you saw that at the Mother City concert …’

  ‘I know. I know.’

  In the car, this kid on a skateboard’s hogging the road. He flicks up his board, catches it. Dumi’s gotto jam on brakes. The boy stands still, cocks his head. We wind down the windows to listen, too. It’s Phyllis, whooping in her courtyard.

  We’re gonna dance at the conference that Dumi organised. Ten of us plus five girls from a belly studio in Athlone. Can you believe it? We’re gonna go to where the Muizenberg geese come from.

  Phyllis makes me take it dead easy. Tells me to come only twice a week and dance gently, gently. ‘I promise you that you will be strong for the birth,’ she says. ‘And you will be fit for Egypt.’

  I take slow walks across a prickly field. Go there where the big, brown vlei starts pulling to the sea. When they see me coming, the Egyptian geese make a scene. Bark like dogs, flap around, hustle their babies into a team. Float off. The way the babies grow, they’ll be teenagers by the time this baby comes. I tell the baby not to hurry. Phyllis says there’s lots of time. Grow nicely in there, I tell her, and come out big and strong.

  I start writing all this for you on the bank. I sit for so long, the geese get used to me. They climb back on the bank, shit all over the place. Tuck their beaks into the fluffy fur close to their skin. They’re perfect. Leather brown up the back, black gloss round their eyes. But they’re tough as hell. Upset them, they honk, they hoot, they take running dives. Flippin cheeky, like the girls on the road. Pretty, but when they open their mouths you can hear you better not mess with them.

  Funny, one day I’m just thinking of Annie. I’m on the bank writing, I start giggling there with the geese, cause of that time long ago, this ou owed bucks to Annie. She gave him credit, but he didn’t come pay. A flippin teacher, I swear. Annie checked him at Shoprite buying expensive grapes.

  ‘Hey! Where’s my money?’

  The whole shop stopped.

  The ou acted dumb. ‘What money?’

  ‘Money for my fanny, man!’

  Same day, Annie walks up the road just as me and Chantal are pulling out in the Mini. She opens the door, gets in the back. ‘Where are we going?’ she says.

  So we all go for the check up at Fish Hoek
hospital.

  Sheez, False Bay’s breeding. There’s such a long queue it takes a whole morning just to suck blood and make me a file. But Chantal’s got snacks and she gets her hands on a Star Dust mag from another waiting mother. Annie gets all pissed off at first, the way I laugh at the celebs.

  ‘Annie, I’m not laughing at Keira. I’m laughing at the dork who took the photo. I mean, what kind of freak would take a photo of her armpit?’

  So Annie also laughs at Keira’s crinkly armpit. The editor’s drawn a red koki circle round some loose skin. I read the words to Annie, ‘And she thinks she’s not skinny?’

  It’s lucky, cause lunchtime Chantal gets Lennie on his cell. His mate from the factory gives him a lift to Fish Hoek. Lennie rushes in just when the doctor’s got cold gel on my tummy, the scanner switched on. This doctor’s a fit, coloured oke. Two little stripes shaved near his ears. Looks like a raver, you know, like he dances all weekend in the forest. Monday comes, he finds himself standing with a scanner.

  A creature comes onto the screen.

  Oh my God. A real baby.

  Snot en trane. Annie thinks we’re all mad. All of us crying, Chantal and Lennie and me. Raver’s also surprised. Watching Lennie, he starts blinking way more than normal. You see, the kid’s got a perfect round head, like Lennie. Lennie’s loose arms and legs. Wide apart eyes, like Chantal. I swear you can see what it looks like in there.

  ‘But it’s upside down,’ says the doctor. ‘Breech.’

  ‘So now?’ Chantal’s all scared.

  ‘We’ve got a week to turn it, otherwise we’ll have to caesar.’

  ‘Cut?’

  ‘Yes. You’re RH negative which means we can’t risk any tearing.

  Your blood mustn’t mix with the baby’s. It’s very dangerous.’

  Chantal’s a wreck. ‘What can happen?’

  ‘One or both of them can die.’

  Chantal lets out a funny cry.

  But it’s weird, I’m not worried. One thing I know. No one’s gonna die.

  Only, shit. Flip. If they cut, there goes Egypt.

  Lennie strokes Chantal’s back, like it’s her who’s gotto be cut.

  ‘Do you want to know the sex?’ Raver asks.

  Chantal looks at me, so I look at Lennie. ‘Do you?’