The New Girl (Downside)

by S. L. Grey

  ‘It’s a pleasure, love. I got it specially for you. Because I know how nice it is to escape into stories. I’m sure you’ve got a great imagination.’

  She blushes, looks down. She strokes the cover of the book and then decides something for herself. ‘Come, Mr Ryan. I want to show you something.’ She takes his hand and he remembers when Alice used to do that. It feels so warm, to be needed. He steps over the wall and she leads him down the side of the house, into the overgrown bushes. They push through a narrow opening in a thick, rough hedge.

  Tess clicks a camping light hanging on a lopped branch and the space is illuminated. Instead of more tangled branches there’s a clear space surrounded by growth; it’s a little room.

  ‘This is my castle,’ Tess says.

  ‘Like in a fairy tale?’

  She doesn’t answer but she watches him proudly as he looks around. There are three cracked plastic kids’ chairs, a muddy quilt rolled up in a corner, a couple of cushions. A half-empty bottle of Coke, a purple plastic box, some comic books.

  ‘Do you sleep here, Tess?’

  ‘No. No. Only sometimes. When’s Dad’s out, and...’

  ‘They don’t take care of you, honey. They should take better care of you.’

  ‘I’m okay. I’m fine. I wanted to show you because... because you’re kind to me.’

  ‘You know you deserve to be loved, don’t you, Tess?’

  He realises she’s still holding his hand. It’s sweating. She’s looking at him with an open expression, as if waiting for something.

  Beep-beep. Beep-beep.

  Her cheap digital watch sounds a new hour. She lets go of his hand and looks at the display. ‘Twelve o’clock,’ she says.

  ‘Midnight,’ he says. ‘You know what happens in fairy tales at midnight, don’t you?’

  ‘What, Mr Ryan?’

  ‘Poor girls turn into princesses.’

  Chapter 8

  TARA

  Tara’s been working steadily, and Batiss’s baby’s face is already taking on that newborn rosy glow. She’s christened him Baby Tommy, deciding that he is a boy, after all. She’s always loved the name – secretly planned to use it for her own firstborn son in fact – but it just seems right that he should have it. It suits him.

  She gently places his head on its stand, decides that before she starts the finicky vein work on his forehead, she’ll sort out the colours she needs to re-mottle the Baby Gabby limbs. She digs out her sponges, readies the paper towels she’ll use to blot up the excess paint.

  ‘Tara!’ Stephen yells up the stairs. She listens to his footsteps flumping down the corridor towards her sanctuary, reluctantly unlocks the door, blocking his view into the room with her body.

  Stephen’s face is pink and puffy. His blue work shirt is crumpled and sweat-stained. ‘What the hell are you doing, Tara?’

  ‘Working.’

  ‘But Martin hasn’t had his supper yet – I haven’t had my supper yet.’

  ‘Martin knows where the fridge is, so do you.’ Although she hasn’t eaten all day, Tara isn’t even slightly hungry. There’s a tube of Pringles stashed in her bottom drawer if she needs them. She goes to shut the door in his face, but he shoulders his way in.

  ‘What the bloody hell are you—’ He stops dead as he takes in the printed photographs tacked up on the wall above her desk. To help her with those all-important details, she’s created a collage of blown-up images of Baby Tommy’s anatomy: close-ups of his features, his little bunched fists, his darling chubby legs and, of course, his eyes and mouth. Seeing it through Stephen’s eyes, she realises it probably resembles a murder board – the kind of prop that’s always hovering in the background in crime shows.

  ‘What the hell is this?’

  ‘My commission.’

  He moves closer to the enlarged print-out of Baby Tommy’s mouth, the black thread puckering the delicate skin around his lips. ‘Jesus, Tara. That’s sick.’

  She swallows a snappish response. Baby Tommy isn’t sick. Can’t he see how beautiful he is?

  ‘Who would want something like this?’ Stephen asks, voice thick with disgust.

  ‘A client.’

  ‘Who is this client?’

  ‘What do you care? They’re paying me.’

  This makes him pause. ‘How much?’

  ‘Five thousand,’ she says, without a twinge of guilt at the lie. He knows that most Reborns go for between two and three thousand; the lawyer in him will approve that she’s upped her rates.

  He turns away from the photographs with a shrug of revulsion. ‘What’s wrong with Martin? Is he ill? He’s shut himself in his room.’

  ‘He’s your son, why don’t you ask him?’

  ‘I have asked him, I’m asking you. Christ, first you almost burn the house down, now you hole up in here for a measly five grand. What’s got into you?’

  ‘I could ask you the same question.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  She can feel the electric charge of a major row crackling in the atmosphere between them. A showdown is way overdue – they need to clear the air – but if she gets into it now, it will use up valuable Baby Tommy time. She’ll have to backtrack, try and nip it in the bud. ‘Nothing, Stephen. I didn’t mean anything. Look, I’m sorry about supper, I guess I just got carried away in here, forgot the time.’

  His body language loosens instantly and Tara feels a jab of triumph – it’s so easy to play him, almost too easy.

  ‘It’s fine. I know Martin can be difficult.’ He reaches out and takes her hand. ‘And I know I’ve been... distant, preoccupied lately. There’s big shit going down at work again.’

  She slaps a practised expression of concern on her face. ‘What sort of shit?’

  ‘Trouble with the trust account.’

  ‘Again? You want to talk about it?’

  He runs his hands through the sweaty clumps of hair at his temples, starts to ramble on about the audit that has the senior and silent partners squirming. Her ability to listen calmly while he unpacks his day is one of the fundaments of their relationship, although he usually prefers to spill his guts to her just after they’ve made love. But that hasn’t happened for a while, has it? In fact, she can’t actually remember the last time they had sex. Was it a week ago? Two weeks? A month? Hard to believe that just over a year ago he used to sneak out of the office, drive across town to the Melrose apartment she shared with a bunch of students, and all so they could have twenty hurried minutes together. She watches his lips moving, a bubble of spittle popping at the corner of his mouth. The thought of his hands on her now makes her skin crawl.

  She finds herself wondering – as she does more and more these days – what would have happened if instead of staying in Joburg, letting herself slide deeper into their affair, she’d carried on with her round-the-world adventure, caught a flight to Buenos Aires as she had planned to. She allows herself to dwell on the forbidden issue of whether he would have even consented to the hurried divorce, the hasty marriage, if she hadn’t fallen pregnant. More and more these days, she doubts it. She has to face it. If it wasn’t for that ill-fated pregnancy, she wouldn’t be trapped here. She’d be back in New Jersey, or possibly teaching in another state, praying that the school administrators didn’t dig too deeply into her background (she is, after all, just one Google click away from being found out). Still, she can’t afford regrets, and in any case there’s something about this place that’s got to her, squirmed its way under her skin. It’s not the city itself; she’s still struggling to get a handle on its aura of suppressed violence, clogged highways, paranoid security estates and sprawling townships. She’s not sure what it is, suspects it’s because there’s so much need here. If what she’s read on IOL is true, there are thousands of South African children locked in an epidemic of foetal alcohol syndrome and abuse; casualties of a country ripped apart and slapped back together, the seams still showing. Kids like Jane, for instance. Staying here and helping needy k
ids like her, well, it would be a way of doing penance for what’s gone before, wouldn’t it?

  ‘So what do you think?’ Stephen says.

  ‘You poor thing,’ she says, hoping that he won’t ask any specific questions. ‘No wonder you’re so stressed. Sounds like a nightmare.’

  It’s the right thing to say – all he needs. ‘How about we go out for supper at the weekend? Just the two of us.’

  ‘That’ll be nice.’

  ‘I’ll order take-away tonight, shall I? What do you want? Pizza? Simply Asia?’

  ‘Whatever you want, Stephen,’ she says, willing him to leave, fingers itching to pick up her mottling sponge.

  ‘That’s my girl.’

  He wraps his arms around her, buries his face in her hair. She pulls back, catches the fleeting look of distaste on his face as he gets a whiff of her unwashed body and stale breath.

  She doesn’t care.

  She’s only had three hours’ sleep, but this morning she feels more alive than she has for weeks. Freshly showered and dressed in a newly ironed shirt and pair of Levi’s, she smothers the temptation to check on Baby Tommy – the lure of him is so strong she can feel it in her gut – and pads down to the kitchen.

  She makes herself a cup of instant, pulls open the fridge and sees they’re out of milk. Goddammit. Now she’ll be forced to go shopping after library duty instead of heading straight home to Tommy.

  She should really go and check on Martin. Make sure the little bastard is up and ready for school. She drains her coffee, makes her way up to Martin’s room and taps on the door. No response. She knocks again. ‘Martin? You up?’

  ‘Go away!’ There’s a panicky edge to his voice she’s not heard before.

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘Don’t come in!’

  She presses her ear to the door – hears what she thinks is a muffled sob.

  Should she go in? There are no locks on Martin’s door; Stephen confiscated the key months ago after he’d locked himself in to avoid being punished for smearing the word ‘Bitch’ on her car window with mud. She turns the handle, steps inside, sees him frantically trying to push his bed linen into the wash basket. The pungent odour of urine fills the room.

  He rounds on her, cheeks wet with tears. ‘I told you not to come in! Get out!’

  ‘Hey,’ she says, ‘it’s cool.’

  ‘It’s not!’ He drops the sheets on the floor and screws his fists into his eyes like a much younger child. It’s the first time she’s ever seen him cry.

  ‘Here,’ she says, ‘let me do that.’ Careful not to show any disgust, she rolls the sodden sheets together, wraps them inside the duvet cover.

  He wipes his snotty nose on his sleeve. ‘Don’t tell Dad.’

  ‘Of course I won’t. Besides, it’s no big deal. It happens to everyone.’ Does it? Isn’t late-stage bedwetting one of the signs of a psychopathic personality? She chides herself for being so unsympathetic. Poor kid is in a state.

  ‘I had a bad dream,’ Martin says.

  ‘You remember it?’

  He shakes his head. She can tell by the way his eyes shift that he’s lying. ‘You want to stay home today?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘You sure?’ That way, she thinks, with only a hint of shame, she’ll have an excuse to carry on with Baby Tommy instead of doing library duty.

  ‘I’m sure. You swear you won’t tell?’

  ‘I swear. It’ll be our secret. Really, you can trust me, Martin.’

  He sniffs.

  ‘Hey, what went on in that meeting last night? That Encounters thing?’

  ‘Just stuff.’

  ‘Is it a... Christian-type thing?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘What then?’ She’s heard that the Scientologists have spread their tentacles throughout South Africa. But even Mr Duvenhage wouldn’t allow that kind of hokey shit at the school, would he? She remembers the soda can on the flyer – perhaps it’s some kind of marketing drive.

  Martin sighs. ‘It’s just stuff. Primo stuff.’

  ‘And that word – primo. Where did you hear it from?’

  He shrugs. ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Is it like a new slang word? Like rad or lekker or whatever they say here?’

  ‘S’pose.’

  ‘Have you told your father about Encounters?’

  ‘Why should I? He won’t care. He’s always busy.’

  Fair enough, Tara thinks. ‘Well, if you are going to go to school, you’d better hustle. I’ll pop these into the washing machine, it’ll be as if it never happened.’

  ‘Tara?’ he says as she turns to exit his room.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’ In all the time she’s known him, she’s longed for him to show her the tiniest sign of gratitude or respect, but now that he has, why does she feel so uneasy?

  The morning’s class streams into the library, and Tara’s surprised – and oddly pleased – to see Jane trailing in after the others. Her uniform looks even grubbier today; her hair greasier. Dark circles ring her eyes as if she hasn’t slept. Tara tries to catch her attention, but Jane heads straight over to the starter-reader shelf and drops to her knees.

  ‘Who is that?’ Malika says, nodding in Jane’s direction and wrinkling her nose.

  Tara feels a stab of irritation. It’s not Jane’s fault that her uniform is tatty. If she is one of the outreach kids, her parents probably can’t afford to wash it every day. ‘She’s new. She was here yesterday. Didn’t you see her?’

  ‘God. That hair. What was her mother thinking? I’d never let Sienna and Ruby out looking like that.’

  ‘Maybe she doesn’t have a mother, Malika.’

  Her harsh tone goes right over Malika’s head. ‘Maybe. You okay to deal with her?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Tara makes her way over to where Jane’s rummaging through the shelves. ‘Hey, Jane. You want to read with me today?’

  Jane looks up at her and grins. She’s getting better at it; hillbilly teeth aside, it looks less like a snarl.

  ‘Which book would you like to start with, sweetie?’ Tara remembers how Jane was holding that book upside down. What if she can’t read? Is that likely? At age ten?

  Jane immediately hands Tara one of Duvenhage’s vile self-published picture books. The front cover shows a group of smugly grinning children, their arms around each other. Off to one side, a small boy with angry slashes for eyes appears to be aiming a vicious glare in their direction. It’s an appalling cover – the children’s heads are way too large for their bodies; they look like pumpkin heads – and the garbled title, There’s No Team In Individual, looks like it’s written in blood.

  ‘You sure you want this one, sweetie?’

  ‘Yes, miss,’ Jane says.

  Tara scans the first page. It’s all in rhyme, and terrible rhyme at that.

  ‘Will you read it to me, miss?’

  Tara smiles. ‘You’re supposed to read it to me, sweetie.’

  Jane stares at her expressionlessly.

  If Jane can’t read, the last thing Tara wants to do is embarrass her in front of the other kids. ‘How about I start and you can join in?’

  Jane nods solemnly.

  Buzzy bees are all the same, they like to work not play.

  They buzz around in flower stalks, making honey all the day.

  They like to follow, keep the faith, they like to keep in line.

  They know that if they act real nice their lives will turn out fine.

  Children too, like me and you, we like to have our chums.

  As long as they are GOODLY ones, not deadbeat scummy bums.

  Jesus, Tara thinks. What the hell was Duvenhage or Clara thinking ordering a dodgy book like this for the library?

  ‘What are chums, miss?’

  ‘It’s an old-fashioned word. It means friends, buddies, you know.’

  ‘Oh.’

  She’s about to suggest to Jane that she fetch
another book, when the fire siren whoops.

  Clara’s office door slams open and she scurries towards Tara. ‘It’s probably just a drill,’ she says, ‘but I should really check what’s going on. Can you escort the library children outside, Mrs Marais?’ She peers down at Jane, frowns slightly.

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘Good,’ Clara says. With a last confused glance at Jane, she heads out into the corridor.

  Tara claps her hands. ‘Okay, everyone. Line up by the door.’

  The children silently pack their books away and line up. She does a swift head count, then instructs them to hold hands and keep together. Jane is standing apart from the others, that awful book still clutched tightly in her arms.

  Tara beckons her over. ‘Hey, Jane. Why don’t you hold Skye’s hand?’

  Jane drops the book onto the floor and limps forward, but Skye steps back, shoves his arms behind his back. ‘I don’t want to, miss,’ he whines.

  ‘That’s not very nice, is it?’

  ‘Please don’t make me,’ he whispers, and Tara sees the wobble of tears in his eyes. She understands why he isn’t keen, of course. Jane isn’t exactly the most approachable of children, but this is an extreme reaction, surely? There’s always one outsider kid in every class – he or she usually ends up being a bully-magnet – but she gets the impression that Skye’s reluctance runs deeper than being caught being nice to the weird kid.

  Malika is already leading the line through the door.

  Tara sighs. ‘Go on, then, Skye. But you are being very rude.’

  ‘Thank you, miss,’ he whispers, fleeing after the others.

  ‘Well, it looks like you’ve got me,’ Tara says over-brightly to Jane. She takes the child’s hand in hers. ‘Don’t worry about what Skye said.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not worried, miss,’ Jane says. ‘He’s just a brown.’

  Tara blinks. A brown? Is that some sort of racist statement? Unlikely, as Skye is as white as she is. ‘You shouldn’t use words like that, Jane.’

  ‘Like what, miss?’

  ‘Brown. If you... um... use it in the wrong way, people might think you’re being racist.’