Читать книгу How to Make a Heart Sick - Heather Mac - Страница 11

While at school, I could chuck my chin in the air and pretend not to give a damn, making out that I was tough and strong. There was no way I’d have dared to behave like that at home, so, given the choice of two shitty places to be, I’d have chosen school every time.

Returning home from school was the most dread-full part of my day, except that I got to walk home, so I knew exactly how much reprieve I’d have before—bam!—whatever would happen.

I clutched the handle of my schoolbag, silver buckle bumping against my leg, first in my left hand for ten steps, then over to my right hand for ten steps. It was vital to keep the order going, counting, along with the banging on my legs. The counting provided some rhythm, some control over my otherwise uncontrollable life.

While counting, I’d also anticipate the various situations I might find at home: what Mom’s mood might be; whether she’d know I’d been in trouble at school again; whether she’d discovered the hole in the biscuit box or noticed the missing silver. It was dangerous to relax my guard when things had been going well at home. I’d been through this before—Mom would spend time with me, laughing, smiling, shopping, talking to me about what I liked or didn’t; I’d fall into believing she’d always be like that, and then I’d allow myself to trust her again; then without warning she’d turn on me and seem to hate me more than ever. I’d learned the importance of being alert and prepared for anything that might happen. There was no saying what might set her off; only luck, which I worked at shoring up, might keep me safe. If I ever questioned the lack of positive results from my superstitious behaviors, I’d quickly set my doubts aside and continue counting: so many steps to the curb; so many steps to cross the road; my bag in the appropriate hand when I set foot on the first brick of a particular pathway.

I’d dawdle my way through the golden dry veld, where Kiewiets reigned supreme, dive-bombing and screeching, until I reached Ararat Road, where I’d cross over by the zebra crossing that led to the Dutch Reformed Church. The church stood on the corner of a large park, named after the Dutch founding father of white Afrikaans of South Africa, Jan van Riebeek. It was a mostly barren place, dry grass crunching underfoot and desperately thirsty trees struggling to stay alive in the summer heat. The Dutch Reformed Church faced-off the Anglican Church, which stood less imposingly on the opposite side of the park.

Smack between the two was ‘Die Taalmonument’, a monument to the ‘wonders of the Afrikaans language’. The monument felt like a bully’s fist to the face, a warning that the ground one was on was ‘taken’, owned by the Afrikaner for the Afrikaners, and ‘don't you forget it’. English and Afrikaans-speaking people hardly mixed at all in those days. We went to different schools and called each other disparaging names, like rock-spider (the English term for Afrikaners, implying that they lay low on the scale of evolution) and rooinek (the Afrikaans term for the English, implying that we had red necks because our sensitive skin couldn’t handle the African sun).

I had to keep my bag in my left hand in the park, always counting—fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, ending on an even number with a six or an eight in it—before crossing to our sidewalk, where I had to change hands. Doing so pronto meant that things would be okay. Often a dripping sound behind my left ear would kick in at this time, a distraction from my counting, and I’d bang on my head to make it go away, or at least to drip more slowly.

It wasn’t a pleasant surprise one day when a lanky boy with close-cropped hair (the local Afrikaans school made the boys shave their heads if their team lost a rugby match) strode up to me and offered to carry my bag. ‘Dra-die-Tas,’ he said, with his hand outstretched. Unnerved, I could only stare at him in consternation. He’d interrupted my counting; my chances of good luck were disappearing the longer I didn’t move. I clutched hard to the handle of my schoolbag, worried that others were ready to pounce, that someone would see me talking to an Afrikaans boy and accuse me of ‘looking for attention’ in the lowest of places.

He had no such worries; his face was full of an enormous smile that had the immediate effect of making me want to burst into tears. It wasn’t often that someone was genuinely nice to me. I was like a sponge, desperate to lap up any kindness coming my way, so I let him take the bag, and from a few paces behind him I tried to resume my counting. His kindness had jinxed me, though; I didn’t have the school bag in the right hand for where my counting was at. Dra-die-Tas placed my bag on the dusty sidewalk by our front gate, flashed me another huge smile and, with a bow, strode off on his long spider-like legs.

An itchy-ball hit my head, disintegrating into a shower of brown seeds that clung to my hair and clothes. I turned to see Steven scouring the ground under a plane tree for another missile, but I was in luck: the balls had mostly dried out, seeds blown away by the summer wind. In winter, the balls of seed hung hard and green on the trees, and bullies loved the pain they could inflict with them. By spring the now-brown and dry seed balls were a favorite of bullies, who like to shove them down shirt-fronts or into undies, where the extremely fine, hairy seeds created a terrible itch. My interactions with Steven were mostly like this. He relished being a bully, and had no other way to interact with me other than shunning me, which, thankfully, happened more often than not.

With his attention on me now, I broke out in a sweat, hemmed in by fear. I’d lost all sense of control over my circumstances by not abiding by the rules of counting. Steven shouted, ‘Afrikaner lover, rock-spider!’ My body refused to come to my aid. Frozen to the spot, I was staring at Steven, infuriating him, forcing him to do the inevitable ‘whatever’ to punish me. But he just shoved me aside to enter our yard first, and commanded, ‘Use the back door—you stink, rock-spider.’ To Evelyn, who was sweeping the porch, he threw out an order, ‘I’m hungry; get me something to eat,’ slamming the front door behind himself.

Evelyn threw me a ‘look’, which usually meant trouble for me, so while she followed Steven into the house with a cluck and an ‘Eish’, I figured it was best to keep a low profile by hiding out around the back of the house in my usual wait-for-it spot in the vegetable garden. I used a piece of guttering that ran along the wall as a seat, listening and anxiously anticipating ‘whatever’.

That afternoon Simon found me, an ice-cream cone dripping chocolate all down his fingers and hand.

‘Kate, what are you doing? Mommy has ice-cream cones; she says you can come and get one.’

‘Ice-cream? Really?’ I could hardly believe it! Why had Evelyn flashed me a ‘look’, I wondered?

I followed Simon to the back door, through the scullery and into the kitchen, where Mom was dishing up a large cone for Steven.

‘Hello, Mommy,’ I said, as softly as I could.

‘Where have you been, Kate? You should have been in ages ago!’ Not angry, just inquiring.

‘Um, I just went to see your pretty strawberry plants, Mommy.’ I prided myself on being quick-thinking and knowing how to say the kinds of things Mom liked to hear.

‘Aren’t they lovely?’

‘Yes, Mommy.’ She passed me a cone, not as drippingly full as the boys’ ones, but I was still thrilled. She was wearing a floral sundress and white heels. With her perfect makeup and her hair braided around her head like a girl, she looked young, fresh and happy. ‘I have a visitor in the lounge. We’re not to be disturbed. You may all play in your rooms for an hour, not in the garden, mind—we want our peace and quiet.’

Steven moaned that he didn’t want to stay in his room, that he wanted to join her in the lounge, that it ‘wasn’t fair’, but Mom was adamant. She promised to take us all to see the movie Jaws one Saturday, if Steven did as she asked without complaining. A trip to the cinema was about the best ever reward for anything, so I guessed that her visitor had to be very ‘important’! I was so relieved by my turn of fortune that it felt as though I’d survived a trip to the guillotine, and so I reckoned that the Afrikaans boy was a good luck omen, after all.

Strains of Barbara Streisand wafted from the formal lounge room. The boys didn’t seem to notice anything unusual about the doors being closed, but my curiosity was piqued, and I felt I had to know what was going on inside. Sometime later, the sound of adult voices traveled down the hallway as the lounge doors were opened—muted voices, male and female. The front door groaned, and I tiptoed to the bathroom and stood on the loo seat to get a look out at the front path.

A tall man with thick grey hair, wearing a suit of similar color, had one hand casually placed on Mom’s backside. He was leaning in to kiss her on the neck, apparently whispering in her ear, then he drew her hand up to his lips, backed away and turned down the path through our front gate. I recognized him as someone who used to work with my Dad; he and his wife had even come over for dinner at our old house, before we’d moved. It was amazing—gob-smacking, even—to see Mom in this romantic position with another man; she always seemed to rebuff affection from Dad, and I’d only seen them kissing once. The flower that was Mom in her best moment wilted before my eyes as the man drove off in his BMW.

She bent to remove her shoes, and as she stood, her braids fell loosely to her shoulders, which seem hunched now. Hairpins clung higgledy-piggledy here and there; she’d gone from beautiful to broken in a moment. I ducked down and dashed back to my room, my mind abuzz from what I’d seen, trying to work out what it meant. Pulling Ken and Barbie from my toy box, I tried to recreate the scene, combing down Barbie’s hair and dressing her up in her best clothes, with Ken in his jeans and cowboy jacket.

‘You look so beautiful, Barbie. Want to go on a date? I can’t, Ken; I’m married. I sure would like to go on a date, though. Being married is so boring; my husband doesn’t appreciate me at all. You shouldn’t be bored, Barbie! You should have fun, you’re so beautiful. Okay, let’s listen to Barbara Streisand, drink wine and smoke cigarettes. Would you like to dance with me, Barbie, before I have to go back to work? You can’t go back to work and leave me all alone again, Ken! I have to go, Barbie, but I’ll see you soon. Oh! Ken, don’t go!’ I shoved Ken and Barbie back in the box; they irritated me so much with their always-beautiful looks and demanding ways.

I’d seen a secret; I knew I had. The romantic moment involving Mom became fodder for the fantasies I had of her going away forever. I seriously hoped that, left to her own devices, Mom would eventually run away, never to be seen again.

One night, we were watching the news with Dad, stuff about South Africa being banned from the Olympic Games and a terrible earthquake in Honduras that had killed over 20,000 people. I couldn’t comprehend that number of dead people, but the news presenter had moved on anyway. ‘Andries Treurnicht has been appointed Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration and Education.’

Dad growled, ‘That’s going to add fuel to the flames! What’s wrong with this government? Can’t they see that every move they make to squeeze and contain the blacks is going to cause a reaction? That Treurnicht would have been a concentration camp guard if he’d been born at the right time.’ He kicked his legs out in front, as he was wont to do when irritated, folding his hands across his middle as if to contain himself that way.

Mom sat like a block of stone, sending shivers through me. She was in a dangerous mood, and it made my skin crawl with apprehension. The babel of the TV was interrupted by Evelyn with a small green bush with purple and white flowers on it, delivered by a ‘boy’ for ‘The Missus’. The label read: ‘Yesterday, today and tomorrow.’

‘What the hell is that about, then?’ Dad asked as Mom leapt up, suddenly all flustered, to take hold of the plant.

‘Oh, it’s just something I asked Joy about; she has one in her garden, and she must have sent it over—how sweet.’ I didn’t believe her; she looked as though a light had gone on inside of her, suddenly all bright eyes and shiny skin.

She was like that; she could change from one frame of mind to another, from one expression to another, in a flash, in a moment. I reckoned the plant was from Mr Grey Hair. I sent up a silent prayer to Mary Mother of Jesus, or to anyone else who was listening: ‘Please make her go away with him, please! Not just for me, but for Dad too. Please, please, please!’

It was no great stretch to imagine Mom and Dad splitting up. They were constantly bickering, and Mom was always complaining about how bad Dad was, how she was going to have to leave him. Once I asked her whether, if she divorced him, I’d go with her. I said, ‘Please take me, Mom!’ Of course I didn’t mean it; I just wanted to know what would happen to me if she left. She said she’d get me whether she wanted to or not, because women always got the kids. That frightened me; maybe divorce wasn’t such a good idea after all. She had to run away with Mr Grey Hair—there was no other option.