The Innocence of Roast Chicken

by Richards, Jo-Anne

  ‘Well,’ said Mark, turning back to Pink Shirt, ‘The Star says they’ve actually been having talks. Apparently he’s been negotiating his own release. Isn’t it extraordinary? Five years ago, change seemed impossible bar a bloody full-scale revolution. Who would have thought we’d see the day when Mandela would negotiate his own release?’

  His girlfriend, a silly girl who took herself very seriously, shook her artfully wild curls back and gazed at her pink fingernails. ‘Hey, this whole week since that gorgeous Ahmed Kathrada and the others were released I’ve been so happy, I can’t tell you. There’s layk just so much layk goodwill on the ground. People are, layk, mixing in the streets.’

  ‘You mean the “jubilant crowds”?’ I spoke for the first time. The room fell silent and everyone looked at me.

  ‘Layk what do you mean?’ asked Pink Nails.

  ‘Well, if one is to believe people like you and the newspapers, the whole country is filled with jubilant crowds. I understand a few more people were jubilantly killed in Natal this week.’

  Everyone shifted uncomfortably. And then Dressed-all-in-Black said, rather sneeringly I thought, with a sidelong pitying look at Joe (I wonder if she works with him?): ‘Well, of course there’ll still be violence. Like, it’s a tragedy but it’s because of apartheid.’

  ‘Oh, don’t give me that meaningless “struggle” shit,’ I said with a laugh, rather contemptuous, to counteract her pitying look. I swallowed my Chardonnay and reached for the bottle. It was empty. ‘I’ll open another,’ said Mark.

  Expertly pressing the two arms of the corkscrew down with one hand, he changed the subject – he takes his host role rather seriously. ‘How’s the strike going, Joe? Any signs of a settlement?’

  ‘Not as yet,’ said Joe, his face changing from set to animated. ‘Management’s not budging. But I’ve been quite impressed with the union guys. And they’ve got a helluva strike going; eight thousand workers out.’

  Frowning at his twirling glass, Leather Jacket, sitting with his long-haired wife or girlfriend leaning against his knee, tried to look knowledgeable as he expounded: ‘But tell me, Joe, I hear the word is that this strike isn’t all that much about wages. I hear it’s got a lot to do with the political climate, and about the union maintaining its political profile?’

  ‘Oh, that’s shit – management propaganda.’ Joe shifted forward, coming into his own now. ‘This is a big company we’re talking about, making huge profits. Their packages may not be bad compared with some smaller companies, but you have to look at them in context. They can afford to pay better.’

  He paused, and then added: ‘This is a bread-and-butter issue.’ He placed his empty glass down in emphasis.

  ‘Oh, here comes Comrade Joe again, trotting out the dinner-party line,’ I said nastily, rolling my eyes.

  ‘You really can be a bitch sometimes,’ Joe said under his breath.

  Pink Shirt quickly jumped in to fill the uncomfortable silence. ‘Well, I’m not sure if that isn’t a slightly simplistic analysis,’ he said to Joe. ‘They learn quickly, these lefty bright young men. Anglo’s been very clever – the company line sounds so much more, layk, relevant when spouted by an old lefty. I don’t think you can entirely put it down to bread-and-butter issues. The unions have certainly had their positions and agendas overshadowed by the ANC releases. But the thing that’s been bothering me a bit is this talk about intimidation. What’re your clients saying?’

  ‘Well, I understand that management is largely exaggerating some strong picketing,’ said Joe, leaning back and crossing one leg over the other. ‘The company’s known for that, you know. But, as my guys say, they can’t control eight thousand workers completely. But I believe them when they say they’re opposed to intimidation.’

  We moved through to the dining room then, at the coy, waving behest of Pink Nails, pink-faced now from the kitchen. She was still very conscious of her position as just-moved-in girlfriend and practising stepmother. Publicly fond, she flapped the child off to bed on the way through the passage.

  Sitting down to our pâté starter, Pink Nails flashed her expensive linen jacket open and, giggling, asked how we liked the ANC shirt she’d found down in Newtown. Everyone thought it was terribly cool.

  ‘So,’ she said, fluttering heavily mascara’d eyes round the table, ‘when do you think they’re going to lift the emergency?’

  ‘And wouldn’t we all just hate it if they did?’ I should have kept quiet, but I was just dying to see her pert face crumple in horror.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked, unattractively showing some masticated melba, another piece of toast poised in mid-air.

  ‘Well, everyone can enter the “struggle” now that it’s safe to do so. Even you. Why weren’t you wearing that ANC T-shirt five years ago?’

  ‘Well, I couldn’t find one before,’ she stammered, her face crumbling and turning pink again.

  ‘And everything’s still conveniently black and white, if you’ll pardon the pun,’ I continued, mercilessly prodding at every holy cow in sight. ‘Conveniently, there are still things to fight against: the old regime is still in place, apartheid laws still on the statutes. Lucky you, you still have time to feel like a hero of the struggle – now that more political prisoners are being released than detained.’

  ‘That’s appallingly cynical,’ drawled Leather Jacket, as Pink Nails rushed from the room, gulping: ‘I must just see to the main course.’

  That was about all of it, I think, except that Joe fell silent and tense and wouldn’t look at me again. Neither would anyone else, mind you. So I concentrated on the companionship of the Chardonnay. I shouldn’t have concentrated so hard, it seems, since I vaguely remember vomiting over some seedlings near the gate as we left. Joe didn’t help me but sat in the car, drumming his hands on the wheel and watching the Mercedes and the black BMW (maybe Dressed-all-in-Black is an attorney, after all) drive away.

  *

  Oh God, I feel awful! But I must arm myself; put my squirming soft flesh inside some samurai steel. Part of my armour is my clothing, those grey invisible skirts and brown shirtwaisters I carefully choose to conceal myself. And my glasses, the thick lenses of which hide and shrink the large dark eyes which sometimes, when I gaze myopically into the mirror, remind me of someone else.

  ‘You know,’ says Joe, making me jump as I put the hairdryer down on the bed, ‘when I met you I thought you were funny, and I thought you were bright, and I thought you were like a kicked puppy I could nurture. I really thought, that if I gave you understanding and love, you would open up and trust again.’

  He takes a deep breath. Here it comes.

  ‘Something happened to you in the Eastern Cape – I don’t know what. After all these years you still deny it. But things are happening now, in the country and in my job. I feel like we’re really and truly moving into a period of change. I want you to come with me … but I don’t, quite frankly, know …’ He breaks off, taking a deep breath and shaking his head. ‘I don’t know if you’re alive enough in there to come out. I’m starting to lose faith in there being enough live “you” in there to save … Oh, Jesus Christ, Kate,’ he says as he contemplates my blank face.

  ‘Even though you’re a rampant bitch and you humiliate me in public, I actually still love you. I’m begging you now, I’m begging, damn you. Let’s go back there – you’ll never heal otherwise. I’ll face it, whatever it is, with you. And …’ His large hands lift to rub at his agonised eyes. ‘I want to go home. Since we married, I’ve never gone home – I’ve humoured you, hoping it would go away.’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake, don’t be so dramatic,’ I snap, lifting my brush to my hair. ‘I’m not avoiding anything. It’s just a creepy little place. We left. We came to the big city. I just don’t believe in going backwards.’

  ‘If it was so idyllic, as you always insist, then let’s go back … this Christm
as.’

  ‘And even if there was something horrific in my past, how do you expect to face it with me? You can’t even cope with the shit I dish out to you. With your hopeful face, you can’t even conceive of there being evil in people or places.’

  I stop brushing and snigger, looking at him in the mirror. ‘You’re like a gambolling lamb at the start of spring. You’ll be led to the slaughter soon enough. Why should I be responsible?’

  And while he is still opening his mouth, I close it for him again by saying that of course, we are talking hypothetically and there is nothing remotely skeleton-like in my closet. ‘You’d just love there to be. Then you could be the great hunky saviour you’ve always wanted to be.’

  ‘I’ve begged you now; I’m not going to do it again. You’ve got a month and a half to decide. And then I’ll have some decisions to make, too.’

  He walks towards the door and pauses, turning: ‘You’re beginning to sicken me, you know.’ With a small gasp, he continues: ‘And I couldn’t bear that – I’d leave you first.’

  1966 … Sixteen days to Christmas

  I heard the shouts, but mutedly, as I lay stretched to my full extent, my ears half submerged in lapping bathwater. I dropped my head lower, venturing into the calm of the sensory bubble which lay below the surface. I floated in this half-world, wallowing closed-eyed, until shockingly I was plucked suddenly upright, back into the bathroom. I streamed water as my father mouthed soundless words at me. Throwing a towel over my head he made a bundle of me, which he tossed on to his shoulder, and jogged from the room.

  ‘What?’ I spluttered. ‘What did you say?’ My voice skipped in time with his body, bounding through the house. At last, holding me right way up on the veranda, he silently pointed. The day was just a faint glow now – a recessed light giving emphasis to the dark splendour of the harsh horizon.

  And then I saw him, in all his wild pride and pure white lustre. Picking up the incandescence of the sun’s last rosy rays – Snowball’s father. I gasped, and a small shudder just touched my shoulder blades with goosebumps. Poised on the very knife-edge of the horizon, there was nothing gentle or homely about him. He was the harsh embodiment of the very wildest, primal aspect of the farm. And then his head turned, drawn perhaps to the lit tableau of silent adults and children, standing, drinks in hand, at the veranda rail. For just a second, our eyes met in an almost tangible joining, and then he was gone. Streaking white across the land he was effortlessly beautiful, unreachable, untouchable.

  The dimming horizon was suddenly dull and bereft. But I was charged, my limbs flooded with a raging, wild joy, which could be expressed only by chasing across the darkening lawn, my towel flapping and soaring, my voice raised in a joyous yell. Everything was OK. God had sent me a sign, a wild omen of wonder; of the unchanging certainty of the farm with its ephemeral glimpses of life’s eternal miracle.

  The group on the veranda was laughing now, made ordinary by their clinking drinks and chatter. Backlit, they were settling into seats, my mother holding her ankle out as bait while she poised her hand to trap and destroy the next mosquito to land. A rose-beetle tapped its hard little carapace in sharp metronomic clicks, flinging itself suicidally at the veranda light.

  *

  I watched my father Pantene his hair, his hands cupped and smoothing his head. His comb slicked it straight back, cutting sharp tooth-shaped runnels in the shiny hair.

  We had left early for our swim, I having woken him with a touch as soon as the morning light rushed through my wide window. Conspiratorially we had left the dim silence of his room and stepped into the morning’s gentle cool with that familiar skree-bang. The smell of coal smoke and fowls had mingled mustily in our nostrils while we, as was right and fitting, had eaten figs off the tree before diving into the sharp cold of the water.

  I was dressed now, in carelessly pulled on shorts and T-shirt, my vest grubby and hanging halfway down the shorts. My father wore shorts too, long shorts with fly and belt, matched with long white socks and slip-on shoes.

  ‘Your mother’s family’s coming for lunch today.’ He paused and I saw him struggle to articulate what he wanted to say – this man whose strength and warmth were expressed through his body. His body spoke for him, in his games, his tickling, his great, outstretched, protecting arms. His voice always sounded gruff, unused to communicating.

  I sat on the edge of the bath, watching him continue unnecessarily the precise marking of his already dead-straight parting, a startling pink stripe in his dark hair.

  ‘They’re making the effort to come from all over the District …’ He paused again, but would not look at me. Finishing with his comb at last, he began to rinse it, very precisely, under the running tap.

  ‘Ah hrum,’ he cleared his throat but his voice still sounded rough, unused, like someone who has spent some years in enforced silence. ‘They’re coming to see you,’ he said, speaking faster now. ‘Please make an effort – for your ma and your ouma’s sake …’

  I rolled my eyes. A hint of exasperation crept into his tone – he must have seen me in the mirror. ‘For goodness’ sake, use some of that Afrikaans that we send you to school to learn. It wouldn’t kill you to say a nice “Goeie môre, Tannie Marie” now and again.’

  I wailed exaggeratedly, flinging myself to the bathroom floor, my face screwed into an expression of melodramatic agony and distaste. ‘I ha-a-te speaking Afrikaans. At school the girls say I sound like a plaasjapie when I speak it. And here, they always make comments about how Engels I sound.’

  ‘I don’t care what the kids say at school. Now is a good chance for you to practise speaking it properly.’

  ‘In any case, how can you tell me to speak nicely to them in Afrikaans? You hate the Afrikaners. You’re always saying so.’

  ‘That’s the government I’m talking about – and you know exactly what I mean. This is family. It’s different with family.’

  He turned off the tap and finally turned towards me, sitting up now, cross-legged on the floor. Pointing his thin black comb at me, he said gruffly: ‘You just see that you behave nicely to them. If you upset your mother or Ouma, I’ll tan your backside. And the same goes for Michael. You’d better tell him so, from me.’

  I felt suddenly depressed at the thought of the family coming. I was dying to see Great-Aunt Marie, but she never seemed Afrikaans to me. She spoke English, as Ouma did, and never made a fuss over whether I could speak the language or not. Oom Frans and his Tant Anna were altogether different – they seemed more rigid somehow. Even their accent was harder, more strident. I could never feel close to them, or feel that they were family to me.

  I slipped past my father and slunk from the house. The ground was heating in the dusty courtyard, where Dora was warming herself on an upturned box. She shuddered with her silent, convulsing laughter. ‘Molo, Missie,’ she replied to my mumbled ‘H’lo, Dora.’ I trotted past her and stole into the chill of sudden concrete darkness.

  ‘Molo, klein Missie.’ I recognised William’s voice but could not yet make out the faces, dark against the dank walls. I could smell the scents of the boys’ room, smoke on the blue overalls, coffee, the smell of the brazier.

  The wide white grins of William, Petrus and Albert slowly emerged from the gloom. William’s son was there too, a half-smile on his face. Wrapping his hands in rags, he poured an enamel mug of coffee from the tin standing on the brazier. He was generous with the boys’ ration of condensed milk before handing me the sweet, milky mixture. I liked it unstirred so that, when I had slurped the coffee – holding it between two hands as the boys did – I could run my grubby fingers around the mug and suck the dripping condensed milk from my hands. The boys didn’t speak to me but accepted my presence companionably, as they murmured and clicked in their fast Xhosa.

  ‘Wi-ll-i-am.’ Ouma’s voice rose and her footsteps padded closer in the dust of the yard. ‘William? Is jy daa
r?’ She stopped just outside the doorless entry to the room.

  William had already stood, carefully placing his coffee on the concrete floor. Plucking his hat from his head, he ducked through the entrance clutching it in both hands.

  ‘Ja, Miesies.’

  Ouma squinted in the sunlight, reflected from the whitewashed outer wall of the room. ‘How is Mary this morning?’

  ‘She is better, Miesies. She is very pleased for the soup and the muti.’

  ‘Good. But I really wanted to talk about John. What are you going to do about the boy?’

  Hidden in the gloom, I watched William’s son take a slow sip of his coffee, his face hardening as William’s voice reached us from outside.

  ‘Ag, Miesies, what can we do? The young people nowadays, they don’t want to work.’

  Ouma waited while he scuffed the toe of his gum-boot in the dust. ‘He was always a good boy … a strong boy … but he makes his mother sad now. Hau,’ he said, shaking his downcast head, ‘he is my first-born son but he is a sorrow to me.’

  I heard a snort beside me, or perhaps the first-born choked on his last gulp of coffee before clanking his cup to the ground. The other boys continued sipping with their gentle slurping noises. John rose and stepped from the room. He looked very straight beside the hunched figure of his father.

  ‘Ag, there you are, John,’ said Ouma briskly. ‘What have you decided to do? You are causing your father to sorrow, jy weet.’

  ‘I will do what I think is right,’ he said, again not using ‘Miesies’. As he turned suddenly towards the darkened room, I could see that fury had hardened his features, glistening now in the sunlight. ‘But why don’t you ask your boy Albert …’ He gave the word ‘boy’ an inflection which caused Ouma’s head to jerk back and her eyes to flatten. William, still gazing at the dust, gently shook his head, murmuring, ‘Hai, hai, my son.’