Читать книгу Shadow self - Paula Marais - Страница 12

The first time I was in hospital, Mother told me to “be polite” and “not say anything about how it happened”. So this is what actually happened. (I did not knock a kettle of boiling water over my legs as my dad told the nurses.)

They’d put Robbie in the ground that day. He didn’t get the bench he wanted and I was forced to wear a frilly dress I hated. I’d wanted to wear jeans and a T-shirt that said “Little Sister” because Robbie liked it. Used to like it.

“Don’t give me any uphill today of all days, young lady,” Mother said, ripping off my jeans so hard she scraped the skin of my bottom with her nails.

I held my arms across my chest, guarding the T-shirt, but Mother was much stronger. I thought she was going to hit me and that was the end of it because when I put my hands up to my face, I lost my grip. Mother took my scissors from the pencil box on my desk, and she made me watch as she sliced my favourite T-shirt into shreds. Piece by piece dropped into the dustbin as I howled.

“You’re not a little sister any more, Thea. Now wear the damn dress. And shut up.”

Dad came into the room, saw what was going on and walked out again like he always did.

Mother pushed a vest over my head while I stood still, wanting her to get away from me. The skirt of the dress was a horrible green, the colour of baby poop. It had white buttons all the way down the top to the waist, and white lace ruffles in circles all round the skirt. I looked like those crocheted dolls to cover toilet-paper rolls Nana had at the farm. But the farm was Robbie’s favourite place, so I tried to reassure myself by thinking about that.

After he got sick, Robbie used to sleep for most of the long drive to get there, his head on a fat pillow, his mouth half open. I’d watch the lights over Cape Town as we left home in the early hours of the morning, yellow puddles flicking and trees waving spooky hands in the wind. Further on, the mountains were like giant dinosaurs with spikes, their heads lifted in our direction. When the road straightened out, it rolled out to the horizon, like it went on forever. Finally, the car would slow, then bump over railroad tracks and along the fence I could see the heads of Gramps’s ostriches painted pink and orange by the dawn. Like they were welcoming us.

I’d shake Robbie awake, gently, gently. He wouldn’t want to miss this – he loved birds and he even kept a list. Like Dad, he knew how to recognise birds by the way they flew, or the shape of their tails, or the colour of their beaks. I couldn’t tell the difference, but I was quite happy to follow him around, gathering feathers for his jewelled collection box from India. He even had a vulture feather, which was almost as long as my arm, and certainly wider. Mother used to comment about the germs.

When he got even sicker, he couldn’t have that box in his room, and I wasn’t allowed to visit either, in case I brought in bugs from school. Robbie gave me the box for safekeeping, and I recognised this as the honour he’d intended.

One of our favourite things to do at the farm was to visit the ostriches, although we were never allowed near the adult birds without the grown-ups being near. Ostriches are very protective parents, sharing time at the nest as their eggs incubate; if you looked like you might come close, a kick from one of them could kill you. Of course, Uncle Ray and Gramps didn’t let the ostriches keep all their eggs. They had a special shed at just the right temperature, so that the babies had the best chance. Like Robbie, ostriches are sensitive and prone to catching all sorts of diseases. But they die easily, which is how they differed from Robbie, who had taken all this time before he had finally given up.

And today we were going to say goodbye for good.

The funeral was in Mother’s church, with big stained-glass windows reflecting coloured lighting on the pews. It was completely full, because Mother and Dad had a lot of friends and Robbie had been dying for years. These were the same people who, for the previous eight weeks as things were nearing a close and a nurse had moved in, had left our kitchen counter at home piled with dishes of food: lasagnes, boboties, stews and cottage pies; Tupperwares of cakes, biscuits, cupcakes and fudge; and pies, lemon meringue and apple cobbler in CorningWare dishes we’d have to return.

Robbie had been expected to lie on the couch and receive people. His skin was mustard and his body thin, but he had a huge belly from all the water his system couldn’t get rid of. Robbie’s hair, however, had grown back thick, curly and dark brown. Each visitor had been allotted five minutes.

The whole process had exhausted Robbie, and when I asked why he didn’t just tell Mother, he said, smiling, “Oh, Thea – it gives her something to do.”

I think perhaps I hated it more than he did – all those do-gooders stealing my last weeks with my brother.

As the service went on, I looked at Mother and Dad. They were holding hands tightly, a rare display of affection. Gramps had slid in next to me, and I felt the pressure of his suit leg next to my skirt – still a comfort. He touched me lightly on the hand, then looked ahead, trying to stop himself from crying.

Afterwards, grown-ups I didn’t know and some I did patted me on the head and glanced at me with big, sad eyes, but when they looked away they talked about ordinary things – how the weather was so perfect for winter, and have you heard that Sandra and Freddy finally got married, after all these years.

I was standing on my own when the reality began to hit me.

I’d got used to Robbie not playing outside with me, but even from his bed he used to look at me and say, “Hey, Thea? Why’re you looking so miserable? I’m not dead yet.” He read me stories and, when he was too sick, I’d sit next to him and tell him about school and Annie and his friend Tony, who was still the school marble champion – even though we knew for a fact he stuck Prestik on his shoes to steal marbles when people weren’t looking. “My idea,” Robbie once told me, and I thought he was super-clever.

When we were finally back home I tried to break away from the guests, even Annie, who’d come with her parents. When Gramps coaxed me to eat something, I shook my head and walked to the bottom of the garden, where the tree house was, shimmying up the trunk in my baby-poo dress. In the corner of the tree house, I traced my fingers over the initials Robbie had carved. The T was better formed than the R – he’d battled to get his pocketknife to do the curves as the blade kept snapping back in. This was our equivalent of Robbie’s bench – a view over the mountain and a quiet place to think. Through the window, I watched the people milling about. I knew that they’d all go home and forget about us. The food deliveries would stop and I would be stuck in this silent house with no Robbie, and just Mother and Dad for company.

I wanted to be sad for a long, long time, thinking about my brother. Then a head peeped up into the tree house.

“I knew you’d be here,” said Annie. After clambering in she offered me a bit of her cake. “Want some? It’s like caramel or something.”

I bit into her cake and it didn’t taste of anything – just powder dissolving on my tongue. Robbie had left his special feather box in the corner of the tree house and I leant over and opened it, noting the new guinea fowl feather I’d found in Kirstenbosch a few weeks back, when Dad had taken me “to get out the house for a bit”.

“What do you think you’ll do tonight?” Annie asked, crumbs in her mouth.

“I don’t know. We’re supposed to be praying with Father Patrick.”

“What for?” Annie said, her pale face all squashed up. “It’s a bit late isn’t it?”

I looked at Annie and started to giggle. Soon I was laughing so much I could feel the tree house shaking. Then Annie started to laugh with me, until tears were pouring down our faces.

It felt good.

“I wish you could come to my house. It’s not so sad there,” Annie said as we hugged each other.

“Mother wouldn’t let me.”

“Right,” Annie said. “When you gotta pray, you gotta pray.”

This sent us into another torrent of giggles.

We heard Annie’s dad calling from the veranda.

“You okay?” she said, holding her hand against mine to form a steeple.

“I guess.”

And then I was alone again in the tree house.

I don’t know how long I sat there; I got cold when the sun started setting. Here, in our special place, the loneliness began to overwhelm me and I began to sob from a part of me I didn’t even know existed. This wasn’t sadness: it was deeper, wider, higher, longer and I didn’t think I’d be able to move until I put my hand over my heart, where Robbie had told me he’d be when his body had left. But I couldn’t feel him there – all I could feel was how I hurt, and I knew that he’d lied.

He was never going to be with me again. And now who could I trust?

Without thinking about it, I grabbed Robbie’s feather box, and I climbed through the tree house window onto the outstretched branch where we’d once seen a sugarbird. With one hand to steady myself, my thighs gripping the rough bark, I opened the box and grabbed a handful of feathers, sending them drifting into the wind. Angrily, I grabbed another palmful, and another and another, until all that was left was the vulture feather, too big to fling.

Suddenly, my heart burning, unable to see through my tears, I realised that all that was left of Robbie was flying away from me, getting stuck in the leaves, and I tried to get some of the feathers back. I couldn’t reach, so I stretched, and the branch under my weight, was bending, bending −

CRACK!

I screamed as the branch snapped, sending me flying into the shrubbery and mud. My fall was broken slightly as my skirt caught and ripped on another branch. The landing wasn’t too sore, but I was wet through, a puddle of old rainwater soaking into my dress. I sat a moment, too dazed to move. But then I heard some footsteps.

“Thea? Thea?” my dad called. “What are you doing out there?”

I stood up quickly, patted myself down, then sprinted towards the house, the grown-ups still inside. As I burst into the lounge, everybody turned to look at me.

“Thea?” Mother said, her voice tight.

“I fell out the tree house,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“Go upstairs immediately,” Mother said. “I’m coming in a minute. And don’t dirty anything else.”

Dad nodded, having followed me quietly into the room, his eyes on my funeral dress. “Do what your mother says.”

I shuffled my way to the stairs, feeling big adult eyes judging me when they didn’t know anything about being a kid, a lonely child like me.

I waited in my bedroom, listening to people saying goodbye. Then the heavy thud of the front door closing. The latch on, the key in the lock. Shivering through my wet clothes, I desperately dabbed at my dress with a sponge, trying to wipe away some of the mud.

Mother’s footsteps sounded on the staircase, my dad’s mild voice following. “I’m sure it was just a mistake.”

The footsteps stopped. “She’s deliberately spiteful, Stuart. Why today? Why would she embarrass me like this?”

“Let’s just bath her and move on, darling. It’s been a rough day.”

“I’ll deal with her. Just bring in the plates from outside.”

“Can’t we leave them for tonight, just this once, Veronica?”

“Darn it, Stuart, I can’t wake up tomorrow in a pigsty!”

“Okay. But be gentle – she’s also grieving.”

My mother walking again. “That’s no excuse.” And then she was in my bedroom looking at me.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry. It was a mistake.”

“Don’t lie to me, Thea. You didn’t like the dress. You did it on purpose.”

“I wouldn’t, Mother. I didn’t mean it!”

She moved forward. “Look at you! Father Patrick will be here in an hour and I’ve got enough to worry about without your filth. Strip!”

I tried to unbutton my wet dress, but my fingers shook.

“Are you making fun of me, young lady?”

“The buttons are stuck.”

With one swooping movement, she ripped off the buttons all the way down the front of the dress. It dropped to the floor.

“It’s ruined. You ruined it!” she said.

I held my arms to my chest, shaking.

“Take off your knickers.” She stalked out.

From the bathroom, I could hear water battering the tub.

“Thea!” she barked.

Steam rose in giant swirls around the room.

In one movement, Mother lifted me up and threw me hard into the bath. With my whole body in the scalding water, I felt as though my skin was being peeled off. I screamed and screamed.

It was Dad who took me to the hospital for second-degree burns over my legs and bottom.

Mother stayed with Father Patrick to pray.

*

All those years later, in another hospital, I woke up with Clay standing next to my bed. It wasn’t possible, was it, that the manager from the coffee shop was there, and Rajit didn’t even know?

“Your brother’s a good man,” the nurse said to me as she waddled her broad bulk next to me.

How does she know about Robbie?

“He’s just a boy,” I said. “He’s never really grown up.”

The woman blinked, then scratched her head.

Why do people always look at me like that?

While I was there, I tried to remember the nurses’ names, but I couldn’t. There were just too many of them, and because they were in uniform I couldn’t tell which one worked for Raj. But I was watching, analysing them just as they were analysing me. This one stuck a thermometer under my arm, connected me to a blood-pressure monitor like I was the subject of a scientific experiment. When would they have enough temperatures, enough blood pressures, enough urine, enough blood?

“I’m going to have to go now,” Clay said. “I’ve got to be at work.”

I nodded as he kissed me on the forehead.

“Get better, Thea.” He slipped away so silently that I began to wonder if he’d been there at all.

Raj’s visits, however were upbeat and chirpy, as he bounced around the room like a cicada. Maybe the hospital made him nervous. I could see the patients in the other beds looking at him, wanting him to sit down.

“I’m sorry I hurt you,” he said. “I’ve learnt my lesson. I won’t do it again.” He put a picture of the three of us on the bedside table. “See how happy we once were?”

“You keep them away,” I said, flicking the frame over, cracking the glass. “You keep away too. I want to see my daughter. Only my daughter.”

“Now don’t be like that …”

“I need to think.”

“You’re not in a state to think,” Raj said. “You’re imagining things. I’m your husband. I need to think for you.”

Idiot. As if I want him to think for me.

I fixed him with the gaze I was perfecting. It certainly made the nurse’s squirm.

“I want to see Sanusha.”

Raj nodded. I could see he was angry but for once he kept it all in.

“I’ll bring her tonight.”

“Thank you. Now go and tell that head shrinker the hospital keeps on sending round not to bother. I won’t talk to him.”

That night Sanusha sat on the edge of my bed reading to me. She looked away from the story for a moment and asked, “Why won’t you let Appa come?”

“Appa and I are having a little disagreement.”

“A fight?”

“If you want to call it that.”

“He’s sad. He told me to tell you he was very sorry.”

So, Rajit’s emissary. Without the aid of any monitors, I knew my blood pressure was rising.

Is she watching me too? What did she tell Rajit?

An uncomfortable knot was forming in my stomach. I bit down hard on my lip and fell back into the sheets.

“You’re bleeding, Mom.”

“What?”

“Your mouth is bleeding.”

I wiped the scarlet onto my palm. “It’s nothing.”

“Blood has platelets and plasma,” Sanusha said. “If your body runs out of blood, you die.”

“I’m not running out of blood.”

“An adult body has five litres of blood.”

Yes, and if I can slit my wrists properly this time, I might get rid of enough of it. Get her out of here – she’s driving me nuts.

“Mom’s tired,” I said forcing a smile. “I think you need to run back to Appa.”

“But I want to sleep with you tonight,” Sanusha whined.

“This is a hospital, for God’s sake, not a slumber party. Go home with Appa. Mom’s exhausted.”

“Thea?” A voice at the door.

Annie. Thank God.

“Can I come in?”

Sanusha ran over to my friend. “Mom’s very cross, Auntie Annie.”

“Mom’s sick, darling.”

“She won’t talk to Appa and she wants me to go home.”

Annie looked at me. Her face was flushed – she’d been in the sun. Normally, Annie looked like a paler version of the lead singer of Roxette – her hair was cropped short because she was still playing so much sport. But she had no curves whatsoever. Flat as a diving board – no hips, no breasts, no bum.

“What are you staring at?” Annie asked after a pause. “Do I have spinach in my teeth?”

“I don’t like spinach,” Sanusha informed her. “It tastes like grass.”

“And when was the last time you ate grass?” Annie said, picking her up. “Are you a cow?”

Sanusha giggled. “Cows have four stomachs,” she told her.

“Well, I have an extra stomach just for pudding. Even if I eat all my food, I always have space for lemon meringue.”

They were making my head buzz.

What are they talking about? Why don’t they just go away?

Annie cuddled Sanusha. How could she be so angular and still give my daughter these hugs she could sink into?

“Did you check?” I murmured.

Annie put Sanusha down. “Listen, darling girl. Go and ask your dad to get Mom a cup of coffee. Okay?”

“Did you check?” I said a little louder as soon as Sanusha was out the room.

Annie moved closer, sat on the bed and patted my hand. “There was no one, T. I walked up and down. I even checked the bathrooms.”

At least someone is listening.

I nodded. “Visiting times are the worst. They masquerade as family.”

“I can imagine. But think about it, T. They don’t need to be here if Raj is already in the hospital.”

I beckoned Annie closer, and put my mouth to her ear. “I think he’s got to Sanusha. She’s asking me all these questions. Telling me stuff,” I said to her. “Do you think I’m right?”

Annie looked at me, an unreadable expression on her face, then she picked up my brush. With long, sweeping strokes she tidied up the matted nest about my face. “No, Thea. I don’t think so. She seems just the same to me.”

“She’s not his spy?”

“Sanusha is your daughter. She loves you. She wants you home so you can make pancakes and take her to the park.” Annie turned my head slightly, clipping some strands behind my ear. “Listen to me, T. You trust me, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

She cupped my chin in her hand. “Repeat after me: ‘I do not have to worry about Sanusha.’”

It felt weird, but I said it.

“Sanusha is my beautiful daughter, and she will always care for me,” said Annie

“Sanusha is my beautiful daughter, and she will always care for me.”

“I am just having a hard time and she is worried about me.”

“I am just having a hard time and she is worried about me,” I repeated.

Annie smiled. She’d had corrective surgery and no longer wore her glasses. They used to hide the colour of her turquoise eyes, but now they were her best feature. They twinkled, and I felt the tension begin to ease out of me. But then I remembered.

“And what about Clay? Did he get to him?” I said.

“Who the hell is Clay?”

“The guy from the coffee shop. He’s visited a few times.”

“Really?” Annie’s eyes glinted.

“He brings me muffins. He bought me a jersey once. I like him.”

Annie looked at me and I could see she didn’t think this was a good idea at all. “Listen, Thea, I don’t know the guy. But what I can say is that your life is complex enough at the moment.”

“I like the way he looks. He has this silver hair. He smiles in his eyes. Like you.”

Annie linked her hand through mine and changed the subject. “Have you read that mag yet? D’you need another one? What about some more hand cream?”

“I’m not feeling good, Annie. I have these headaches –”

“You’ll get better, sweetie. It’s just a matter of time.”

“I can’t go home with him,” I told her. “I don’t trust Rajit. Asmita’s probably putting something in my food. It’s bitter sometimes. She doesn’t cook like Mother, that’s for sure.”

“Well, your mom certainly made a fabulous paella.”

I missed Mother. My heart ached and I wanted her there. The number of times I’d driven up to her gate with Sanusha to show her what she was missing, but driven away again. A mother is a mother, even if she is the worst one on earth.

“She’s not here for me, Annie.”

“No,” Annie replied holding my hand in hers. “But I am. If you want to, come and stay with me for a while, T. With or without Sanusha. Until you decide what you want to do next.”