Читать книгу Shadow self - Paula Marais - Страница 8

In jail I have a lot of time to think, and I don’t always have control over where my mind wanders. A lot of the time, and despite myself, I think about Clay: how much I loved him, the mistakes I made.

So many mistakes! My daughters. My little boy, Joe.

But my thoughts aren’t always completely clear. I think through gauze, through filters. Being locked away minute after minute, second after second (for that’s how slowly time passes) has made me realise that I’ve spent my whole life in a fog. Some days it’s like parting a thick black curtain in front of me, and just when I manage to open it and see a little light, the curtain falls closed again and I’m left in the dark.

Most people want to know where this all started, and I sometimes wonder that too. Perhaps it began the day I was conceived. I wasn’t planned, nor even a wanted baby. My birth mother came from Glencairn, near Fish Hoek. Mother said I inherited my high cheekbones from her, and my breasts. The beauty spot on the right side of my face just above my top lip, the one Mother said I would tempt a man with, and my eyes – one hazel, one a blue-grey – are apparently mine alone.

But how would Mother know really? She used to tell me she only ever saw my birth mother once.

My parents adopted me when I was six weeks old. I swear I can remember my time in the womb. A hostile place, churning with bitterness and fear. At the age of sixteen, my birth mother didn’t want me. A therapist once told me that even as a foetus I must have felt the intensity of her rejection. I’ve spent a lifetime seeking approval, and after what I’ve done, I’ll never get it.

Once my dad told me that my birth mother called me Sofia. When I was adopted, our maid’s name was Sophie, so that had to change – quickly. I’m not sure if I’ll ever grow into Thea. Sofia seems so soft and pliant, with just the right bit of haughtiness and disdain. I wish I was Sofia. I’m not Thea, not Sofia, but something vague and impossibly in between.

I had a brother once. Robbie. He was three years older than me. He was my parents’ genuine flesh and blood: my mother’s blue eyes, my dad’s blonde hair, my paternal grandfather’s mannerisms. I remember how Robbie used to stick his tongue out the side of his mouth as he cut paper shapes at the kitchen table. Same as Gramps. Robbie was kind, and protective. Once he hid me under the stairs while we waited for Mother to calm down because I’d thrown wet toilet paper onto the ceilings down the passage – huge globules of loo roll stuck fast. When Mother started breathing again, Robbie told her that he’d done it as an experiment. And in Mother’s eyes, Robbie could do no wrong.

Whenever we needed to escape, we used the tree house in the beech tree at the bottom of our garden. Dad built it for Robbie – every boy should have a tree house – but it was my special place more than Robbie’s, especially after he got sick. I didn’t know what to do then, so most of the time I tried to make myself invisible. So my parents would forget that the wrong child was dying.

Perfect, kind, beautiful Robbie throwing up in the bathroom and leaving clumps of hair all over the house until he was bald as a baby squirrel.

Home was like a mining town after the gold had ran out. I learnt to feed myself – make Bovril or peanut-butter-and-jam sandwiches, and giant cups of rooibos with milk and spooned heaps of sugar. When my parents were asleep, I’d patter down the passage, ruffling my big brother’s duvet with a tentative hand.

“Thea?” I’d hear him smiling at me in the dark.

“Yes.”

“Bad dreams?”

“Yes.”

He’d roll over to make space for me and I’d slip into bed next to him as though somehow if I held him tight enough, he wouldn’t be able to leave.

When my mother found us cuddled together under Robbie’s duvet, she didn’t like it. Not at all.

“Get out! Robbie needs his sleep, Thea. How many times do I have to tell you?” she’d yell.

“Relax, Veronica – don’t overreact,” my dad would counter.

“It’s inappropriate, Stuart. You know that.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. They’re just kids. He’s her brother.”

It was only much, much later that I realised what she’d feared.

*

My mother always had a sense of what was seemly, and what wasn’t. It was seemly to wear skirts to church. It was seemly to wear a full costume, not a bikini. Girls didn’t go to discos with boys until they were sixteen. Holding hands in public, even between husbands and wives, was outrageously exhibitionistic. Tattoos were too horrendous to contemplate. Skirts without pantyhose? Never. And crying? Well, it just wasn’t something you did – unless completely silently behind closed doors.

As Robbie faded away, she bit her lip, and I hated her seemliness with every inch of my unseemly body and mind.

But Robbie was a fighter, and dying didn’t come naturally to him. I remember him sitting in the hospital in blue pyjamas with great white sharks all over them, entertaining the medical staff.

“Knock, knock,” he said to the nurse.

“Who’s there?”

“Isabel.”

“Isabel who?”

“Isabel out of order? I had to knock.”

I thought he was absolutely hilarious.

Dad didn’t want to expose me to it all – the retching, the chemicals, the IV units and beep-beeps of heart-rate monitors. Mother said it would be good for me to understand what Robbie was going through. So I’d sit at his bedside, drawing stick-like dinosaurs that he put up around his bed with Prestik.

When Robbie was at his worst, Mother forgot to fetch me from school.

I was in Sub B by then, and I sat near the gate on my satchel, watching the sun go down and wondering what Robbie would do if he were me. I imagined he would try to walk home: pick himself up and find his way back.

I knew the landmarks but it was raining, hard.

I missed a turn, got lost. A man with no front teeth and a Pick ’n Pay trolley piled high with his belongings found me crying next to a dumpster overflowing with shattered glass bottles. He smelt of beer and sweat and I was frightened of him, but he lifted me gently onto his trolley and took me to the local cop shop.

Who are you and where do you come from?

I didn’t know then that this question would plague me my whole life.

My mother apologised, truly horrified by her forgetfulness. She bought me my own world globe to cheer me up and pointed out countries she’d been to: France, Germany, New Zealand.

But she wasn’t really present. Her eyes were misted over, and her conversation was confused and garbled, as though she couldn’t straighten out her thoughts in her own mind.

What if it was me? I wanted to ask, but was too scared to hear the answer.

*

Robbie hung on, tough as steel-capped boots. When his immune system was weak, I wasn’t allowed near him. Not with my snotty nose, and tendency to pick up stomach bugs at school. I spent my afternoons with Dad, riding around the neighbourhood in his bakkie as he supervised his team installing taps and toilets, and unblocking putrid, smelly drains.

My mother seemed ashamed of what my father did. If asked, she said he was an entrepreneur.

“I’m a plumber, Veronica. It pays the bills.”

“Well, Stuart, there’s just no reason to go on about it. Anyway, you own a successful business.”

“Yes. A plumbing business, which gets you your twice-a-year holidays and expensive private schools for the kids.”

On days when Dad had meetings I stayed at home with the maid. Not Sophie – she’d already left. Dad would leave me plastic elbow joints and plumbing pipes to fit together. I liked it. I concocted intricate symmetrical designs all over the bedroom floor, and they seemed too beautiful to break.

“It’s not ladylike, Stu. I bought her dolls to play with.”

“They’re plastic tubes, for crying out loud. It’s not like they’ve been used.”

I was the baby in the family but I didn’t like baby dolls. Children didn’t fascinate me as a child the way they did Joe when he was a toddler. In fact, I ignored them completely. I longed for a pet – a dog, a hamster. Or silkworms even.

“Unhygienic,” said Mother. “It won’t be good for Robbie.”

Never mind that when Robbie was up to it, we’d go for walks in Kirstenbosch, and Robbie and I would disappear under the oak trees to dig for earthworms. Once, we found a rotting sugarbird, all maggoty and bloodied, and he picked it up.

“So this is what will happen to me,” my big brother said. “Unless they cremate me.” He meant our parents. Mother would have told him to stop talking like that, but I didn’t. “I want to have a bench,” Robbie said, “with my name on it. Right here under the trees.”

Of course Robbie wasn’t allowed to raise the subject. Not ever. And when the time came, the bench never happened because my mother bit down on her already grooved lips and looked away.

But I realise that understanding a mother’s sense of helplessness with a sick child is almost impossible unless you’ve experienced it yourself. The closest I got was chicken pox, with Sanusha scratching raw wounds into her perfect, unblemished skin but it wasn’t as if that was life-threatening.

It takes a mother like me to achieve that.

Holidays happened less often after Robbie got sick. He couldn’t face the long journeys, and the airlessness of the back seats of the car or the humming air-conditioning on planes. The stares of strangers didn’t really bother him. Little children would walk past and point. Look Mommy, he has no hair. Robbie didn’t hide under caps or bandanas, though of course Mother wanted him to. Darling, there’s no reason not to wear this one, it’s very smart. Both Robbie and I knew it was nothing to do with “smartness”. She hated our family to stand out. One move into the Spur (which was already a step down for her) and we instantly had extra balloons and colouring pages. We all knew why. On the playground, kids studied Robbie curiously.

“Wanna feel it?” Robbie offered.

And one child after the next would touch his head, tentative fingers over the bumps and grooves of his skull.

“What’s wrong with you?” a child asked once.

“Cancer.”

“Oh.” His forehead crumpled, then: “I’ve got Fizzers. Want one?”

Even though I was only five, I remember a particular holiday Robbie did manage, in the earlier years, when our family had its closest stab at normalcy: 1970 somewhere near Knysna. Rising early every day, Robbie, who was nine, and I would walk to the beach, our reluctant dad in tow. He never was a morning person, and Mother needed time to titivate, as he called it. She’d join us later, her make-up perfect, her face protected under a huge sun hat, giant sunglasses shading her eyes.

It was only on holiday that Mother relaxed enough not to criticise our every move. In fact, on some days she was quite transformed, picking up the Frisbee and tossing it with practised strokes that had us ducking, diving and exhausted within half an hour. She even dived after the Frisbee into the water once, sending Robbie and me into peals of laughter when her fancy pink hat flopped over her face. The hat dried all wonky, so after that Mother only wore it in the garden when she was killing those yellow-and-black rose beetles by dropping them into methylated spirits.

Those beetles came back every year, and Robbie always refused to have anything to do with the extermination. So I’d go get the tightly closed meths bottle and the jars from the garage, and Mother and I bonded in our killing fields with our own brand of Agent Orange – except ours was purple.

Robbie adored teasing Mother, and sometimes he had her giggling like a girl. She would ruffle her hands across his head, and comment on how well he was catching a ball or writing or building his LEGO. But I liked being at the beach with her more than anything else. She was very concerned about my skin, and would rub sun cream over the parts of my body not covered by my swimming costume. I loved the touch of her hands on those days; gentle, yet thorough. It made me feel cared for, loved.

Dad would sit on his towel with the day’s paper – he was a bit of a news addict. “Not sure what that Ringo Starr is going to do now the Beatles have disbanded,” he’d say, or, “Does Vorster seriously think this Bantustan thing is going to work?”

He wouldn’t expect an answer, but sometimes Mother would smile at him and say something surprising like, “Ringo was a star drummer before he even became part of the Beatles. He wrote ‘Octopus’s Garden’, you know.” Where Mother got titbits like that I never knew, but she was an avid reader, something she passed on to Robbie but not to me. I could never sit still long enough to bother. Besides, I just liked the sound of her voice as we sat on either side of her for our bedtime story. She could make her voice boom like she was talking down an amplifier, or go soft and silky like a snake. Robbie, always more affectionate, would throw his arms around Mother and kiss her on the cheek.

“I love you overcountable to infinity,” he would tell her.

“You too, kiddo,” she said back.

Every afternoon on our holiday, Mother would disappear for a few hours. At first we looked forward to it, because we knew Dad would sneak us an ice cream, despite the fact that we were supposed to be on a special diet that Mother’s cancer support group had recommended for Robbie.

When it came to being ill, Robbie wasn’t like me. He submitted to Mother’s care with a patience I longed for. He seemed able to do things for the simple reason that it made others happy. And Robbie made me happy like nobody else ever would or could.

The holiday seemed to make Robbie stronger. He didn’t tan as easily as I did, but within a week his body was browner and less ghostly. He made enough friends for both of us. I trailed behind him like a spoilt pet, joining in volleyball and Frisbee games with the big kids, when Robbie could manage them.

At night we shared a room in the self-catering unit our parents had rented, and Robbie would read to me by torchlight or scare me with ghost stories, setting my imagination racing with images of blood, guts and gore. Together we created a fantasy world entirely obscure to my parents, which delighted us all the more.

Yet despite these pockets of joy, there remained a tension we couldn’t escape. My mother couldn’t keep her eyes off Robbie, so concerned that he would tire or hurt himself. And when my dad eventually lugged a deck chair down to the beach for her, she couldn’t relax, was constantly reaching for the sunscreen, and sipping obsessively from a large bottle of water. In the afternoons, she ordered us off the beach to rest.

And she prayed. A lot. Perhaps even on the beach. We said grace before every meal: Thank you for the delicious food. May it bring good health to Robbie and help him through his recovery. Amen. I didn’t resent the lack of a mention for the rest of the family: it seemed right that God’s attention should be on my brother. But it also seemed that Mother was spending a great deal more time with God than with Robbie. She would walk or drive to the nearest Catholic church for confession every afternoon, returning hours later – cheeks red, eyes bloodshot – to help herself to a whiskey. Dad would open a bottle of wine for dinner and she’d drink a lot more of it than he did. Thinking about it now – and I have enough time to do that – I wonder if those copious amounts of water and the lie-ins on that holiday were the after-effects of an almost constant hangover. Ironically, this only continued while Robbie was alive and it didn’t seem to affect her management of our household.

It took my dad’s heart attack to change that.

*

At school I had one special friend.

Annie was the purest sunshine. She was blonde, and pale, with sparkling white teeth, and thick glasses that perched on her nose so she looked constantly curious. Though she wasn’t beautiful, she drew people to her like gravity. For reasons I never understood, she locked onto me. She didn’t care about my constant need to impress everybody: the best Barbie, the most books, the prettiest clothes. At thirteen, I would be the first person in our class to lose her virginity – and to a boy three years older than me, who went to Bishops, and whose parents had three BMWs and a palace just next to Kirstenbosch.

Annie was captain of the netball team and a provincial swimmer. Most of the time she had a salmon-pink slice off the skin of her nose, and freckles from spending too much time in the sun. She wore her socks rolled into sausages over her ankles, and sewed up the hem of her skirt so it just covered her bum. Annie organised sleepovers and could cook the meanest Thai curry – with prawns!

She is also the person who introduced me to my first husband, Rajit – perhaps one of the only things about our friendship I truly regret. Of course, Sanusha would resent my saying that, for obvious reasons. Sanusha can bristle even at the slightest comment; she’s always been so touchy.

As far as I recall, Rajit and Annie knew each other from some inter-schools debate on whether the British Royal Family were entitled to privacy since the recent birth of Prince William. They were on opposing teams. Annie’s team won (of course), but he took the beating so well that she invited him to a party that weekend at her house in Rondebosch. It went without saying that I would be there. One look at Rajit and I thought I was in love. He was a delicious boy, even then – dense eyelashes, almond-pool eyes, and taller than me, which in those days was unusual. His skin didn’t have a trace of acne, and he already had wide shoulders, a perfect narrow waist and a voice for radio. Later, when we were first married, we would lie in bed and I would listen to the rumbling of his deep baritone. Just that voice alone could make my stomach twist tighter than a French braid.

That night, Rajit noticed me immediately, just as Annie had expected him to. Annie liked to matchmake and the fact that he was Indian attending a party in the less-than-liberal Southern Suburbs made it even more exciting. My parents hated the very idea of him immediately; my friends thought I was daring as hell.

“It’s not that I’m racist, darling,” Mother said, “but just think of the cultural differences! What about Christmas?”

My dad said less, which meant more. It wasn’t like him to be so silent on this sort of issue, especially when it was clear he agreed with Mother. Actually, it wasn’t so long afterwards that he dropped down dead on the contour path near Rhodes Memorial. He’d been training for the Argus with his mate Denzel, who then told me I was the death of my dad, with my wild ways, terrible marks, and cavorting with that “curry muncher”.

I guess that makes me guilty of patricide, too.

It wasn’t as if Rajit was the only boy I’d cavorted with. Boys lusted after me and didn’t have to wait long either. After a day on the beach we’d go to parties disguised as sleepovers (I told Dad I was staying at Annie’s house while she told her parents she was at mine). I’d stand around with my smokes and my new BIC lighter bought on the sly from the Spar. Lighting up, I’d adjust my boob tube and return a precise glance to the boys who interested me.

In those starlit evenings, everybody would be getting drunk on rum and Coke or boxed wine. I usually chose the wine, sipping it quickly until my head spun. Greg-Dave-Fabio-Adriaan-Grant-Costa would soon have his arm around me, making me feel special. He’d say things like, “Isn’t she gorgeous?”, “Look who I found, isn’t she something?”, “God, you’re hot”, and for those few hours of fondling and casual, unprotected sex, I didn’t doubt myself. It isn’t easy to feel confident when your mother always tells you not to be full of yourself.

But it was after all those boys that I married Rajit, at the age of eighteen, in a red sari encrusted with turquoise beads and embroidered with thick gold thread. His mother, Asmita, bought it for me on a trip to Jaipur.

And what else could I do? My matric was so poor there was no way I was going to university, not that I was interested. In class at school I had dreamt about travelling – about Galápagos, Antarctica and Route 66. And when I wasn’t doing that, I was thinking about Rajit and his naked body against mine in the back of his father’s Honda Ballade. (It’s amazing what you can get up to right under your parents’ noses.) I’d had no inclination at all to read my set works, and no patience with studying. History was dull, maths was incomprehensible, Afrikaans was tedious and I enjoyed the biology I was learning with Rajit a lot more than fungal spores and the life cycles of amphibians. Geography was my only saving grace.

But I was map reading my way out of there when I hit a dead end.

*

Sanusha.

Though half of her DNA is mine, after she was born she looked and acted nothing like I did. For one thing, she’s incredibly clever, like her father, whose brilliance was one of his main attractions until he started belittling me with it. Sanusha was a bit on the chubby side, so the combination of striking intelligence and, well, porkiness meant that she was often bullied by the little bitches she went to school with. Unlike me, Sanusha was lucky enough not to care what anybody thought, or at least she put a lot of effort into pretending that she didn’t.

Rajit chose Sanusha’s name, which we didn’t know the meaning of, though he told her it meant “Princess”. Physically, she resembled his mother in every way – a more exact version of Asmita would have been difficult to create.

I didn’t like it; I wanted my daughter to be a younger, better version of me.

My pregnancy was the final straw for Mother. She was standing next to the kitchen sink chopping onions when I came home to tell her. Raj and I had decided I should do it alone – since my parents hated the very sight of him, his presence on Upper Torquay Avenue was scarce.

The one and only family supper we’d ever had – a year earlier, when we’d started going out – had been something of a disaster. I remember how my dad had put out his hand to shake Rajit’s and how he’d then wiped his palm on the back of his jeans, his nose flaring ever so slightly the moment they separated. Dad liked bone-crushing handshakes, shows of strength and manliness; Rajit was the kind of guy who filed his nails. That was one of the things I liked about him, his long gentle fingers, his manicured cuticles.

“Wet fish,” I heard Dad tell Mother in the kitchen.

Then we sat down at the dinner table. Because of Rajit, for the first time in my life, I noticed the room from somebody else’s point of view. My mother was very into lineage, even if it wasn’t all her own. On the sideboard, rather than the usual bowl of fruit and odd condiments, my mother had endless family portraits. Lined up in silver and gilt frames were my – well, Robbie’s – ancestors, all stiff collars, tight hair, unsmiling poses for the camera. In amongst them was the odd grin, one or two spontaneous shots, people caught off guard, their emotions captured for all eternity (and I was sure I hadn’t imagined the look of understanding between my much younger grandmother and a man who was apparently my grandfather’s older cousin). But even more noticeable was how white and similar they all looked. It was probably for that reason that my favourite photo had always been the one of my mother’s grandfather at a hunting lodge in Rajasthan: Indian men with their turbans and elegant moustaches, handling shotguns while hunting dogs yapped at their feet. I liked to imagine myself in that exotic scene.

On the table, Mother had laid out her best china, her silverware that our maid spent hours cleaning – usually with a cross face and a longing look out the window where the sun was shining and the gardener was mowing the lawn. Mother had put out a bowl of flowers and candles, but the whole combination seemed intimidating rather than welcoming, even to me. Like she was trying to chase away this unwelcome boyfriend with drapery, Czech crystal and sparkling cutlery. She’d dressed for dinner so that Rajit, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, looked ridiculous.

Imperious, my mother stared across at Raj, as though daring him to pick up the wrong knife, while my dad, doing his uncomfortable best in a smart jacket and trousers, offered his only insight into the Indian population: “I do love a good curry.”

Silence.

“I’m glad,” Rajit smiled eventually, his beautiful teeth white against his dark skin. “I always enjoy a vindaloo. The hotter the better.”

Recognising the mockery in Raj’s voice, I kicked him under the table. He smiled at me and winked.

Silence.

“Rajit’s going to study actuarial science,” I tried.

Dad’s face was blank. “What the hell is that?”

“Darling,” Mother patted his giant paw.

“I want to work with numbers,” Rajit said.

“What, like in a bank?”

“Not necessarily,” Rajit said.

“Can I serve you?” Mother said, indicating the perfectly matched tableware piled high with potatoes, and broccoli, salad and meat. Lots of meat.

“Raj is a vegetarian,” I piped up.

My dad blanched and my mother pushed back her chair. It was a definite movement, but the chair didn’t make a noise on the wooden floor.

“Dear me,” she said with a look I knew well. “Thea, please come help me in the kitchen – I seem to have forgotten the gravy.”

I followed her meekly.

“You don’t think you could have mentioned the fact he doesn’t eat meat?” she hissed, cornering me near the pantry.

“He didn’t want me to make a fuss.”

“Well, now I’m making a fuss. What do I feed him?” she said, as she swung open the fridge door. It thudded loudly. She bent down, pulling out a packet of brown mushrooms.

“Don’t bother, Mother. He’ll just not eat the meat.”

“Are you trying to bring shame to this household? Do you absolutely insist on embarrassing me? Is that what you want?”

“You didn’t even want him here, Mother. I didn’t want to make more work for you.”

“Everything about you involves work,” Mother shoved a pan onto the stove, turning on the gas. She poured in olive oil, chopped in onions and garlic. The mushrooms. Lemon juice. Mixed herbs. I could see the tension in her shoulders. She was stiff as a shop-window mannequin, her face plastic. Then turning abruptly, she shoved me forward, bumping my arm against the counter. “Go to the dining room and help your father. I’ll come in a moment.”

“Right.”

In the dining room, neither man was speaking. I caught Rajit’s eye as I walked in and shrugged. Dad leant forward, elbows on the table, and glugged down his wine in a single gulp.

“So, why are you here, exactly?” Dad said, pushing the bottle towards Raj, who shook his head almost imperceptibly.

“I like your daughter,” Raj said softly.

“So do I,” Dad said, “but I’m not sure I like you.”

“Dad!” I said.

“Quiet, Thea – this is between me and this young man.”

“I wouldn’t say that, exactly,” Raj countered. “Thea has a right to an opinion.”

My father rammed his fist onto the table and porcelain clinked. “I know what’s best for my daughter!”

“Maybe I’m what’s best for her,” Raj said.

“I wouldn’t exactly say you have the life experience to know that.”

Rajit lifted his chin, and looked my father squarely in the eyes. It was like watching two rhinos squaring off. Dad glared at Rajit and Rajit didn’t flinch. In fact, I think he may have moved slightly forward, which seemed to confuse Dad, who blinked and then immediately sat back.

“You have siblings?” he attempted mildly.

“Two younger sisters,” Raj said as he relaxed into his chair. “Layla is fifteen and Kesiree is sixteen.”

“And what do your parents do?”

“My dad’s a teacher. My mom’s in litigation.”

“A lawyer?” Dad said, as he bit hard on his fork. He sloshed some more wine into his glass, gulped it down.

“Yes.” Rajit sipped his Coke.

My mother scuttled back in the room carrying her best platter and brown mushrooms piled on a bed of couscous.

“Rajit,” she said, “you eat mushrooms?”

“Thank you, Mrs Malan. That’s great.”

Of course, nothing Rajit did could impress my parents – including eating mushrooms, which he’d always told me tasted slimy and reminded him of black slugs. If he’d hovered cross-legged above the table and juggled fire, Dad would have just glared at him, and Mother would have said it was getting late.

Not that it got late. The Cape’s summer sun was still shining by the time dinner was over, the atmosphere was so tense that I’d developed the beginnings of a migraine. I rubbed my palms against my temples, wishing, not for the first or last time in my life, that Robbie was there. Even charming Rajit seemed to be taking strain. Beneath the tablecloth I gripped his hand tightly.

“Well,” Mother said, after another pained silence. “How about some coffee?”

Rajit tried one of his winning smiles. “No, thank you, Mrs Malan.”

“You’re going to tell me you don’t drink coffee either?” Dad asked. “What the hell is wrong with a cup of coffee? You should have a cup. Put some hair on your chest.”

Rajit’s eyebrows rose. “That really is a wonderful offer, sir, but I’ve got an assignment I need to do still. I should probably get home before it gets too dark.”

“Your parents let you ride your bike at night?” Mother said.

“Sometimes they work late.”

“Ahhh,” said Mother, as if that explained everything. “Busy parents.”

“Yes, I guess so.”

“I’ll walk you to the door,” I said, hoping for a kiss away from my parents’ disapproval.

My dad stood up, not offering his hand this time. He nodded briskly. “Rajit.”

“Sir. Mrs Malan, thank you for a delicious meal.”

Outside the front door, Raj took me in his arms.

“That went well,” he said, starting to laugh.

“I’m glad you still have your sense of humour,” I said.

“I see I’m going to need it.” And then his body was against mine, his lips opening to envelop me. “I’ve got something to give you before I go,” he whispered. “Something to remember me by.” He placed a little package in my hand.

It was his serviette, neatly folded, containing his remaining mushrooms.

*

And then, just a few months later it seemed, it was just Mother and me in the kitchen, different mushrooms waiting uncooked in a polystyrene tub next to the sink.

If my mother blamed me for Dad’s death, she didn’t say, but her experience of loss made her increasingly distant: two deaths in her nuclear family. Both people more important than me.

“Can I help with something?” I asked.

She looked at me, a tight smile crossing her lips. “What about a salad?”

I nodded, took lettuce, cucumber and tomatoes out the fridge.

I noticed a glass of whiskey, no ice. Drinking alone because there was no one else to drink with.

“What are we having?” I asked.

“Risotto.”

“Great.”

Mother had let a lot slip, but her culinary talents were still sharp. Glassy onions sizzled in the pan; in a bubbling pot asparagus became a brighter, deeper green. We worked systematically, silently. Cooking was the one thing we could do together without arguing.

Mother had her “wireless” in the kitchen. She listened to Springbok Radio from first thing in the morning when we could hear Eric Egan calling out his favourite catch phrase “I looooveee yoouuu”, until well into the evening after the news bulletin at seven sharp. The radio was a relief. It eased the tense silence, but not completely. I cut the cucumber skin in alternating stripes of dark and light, as Mother insisted, then sliced it up.

“You’re home early,” Mother commented as she measured cups of Arborio rice into the pot.

I knew that was a dig. I’d become one of those clichéd teenagers using the house like a hotel. In for meals and dropping off my washing, then out, out, out. At home, I couldn’t stand the intensity of my mother’s stare, or the memory of the past we shared that she seemed to have conveniently forgotten. I was trying forgive her for the way she’d treated me, but I wasn’t like her – I wasn’t blessed with a walk-in confessional and the knowledge that a few Hail Marys would sort out anything.

“I wanted to see you,” I told her.

“Really?” Mother looked up at me, her plucked eyebrows arched. “Why?”

“Well, we haven’t spent much time together.”

“I should never have given you your father’s car. I should have sold it. Every time you roar up the drive I think it’s him.”

She didn’t need to say any more. Even the act of coming home pained her.

“Maybe we should sell it then,” I suggested. “Get something else.”

“It’s not every eighteen-year-old that has a car. When I was your age, I caught a bus. Or I walked. When your father and I were courting I used to walk from Bishopscourt to Mowbray with a book just to see him. I could read two chapters en route.”

I’d heard that before. My lack of interest in reading was another of her disappointments. We didn’t swap books like other mothers and daughters, or visit the library together filling baskets with hardbacks.

“You must miss him terribly,” I told her.

“He was my soulmate,” she said simply, “which is something you’ll need to be a little older to understand.”

“I love Rajit, Mother,” I said.

“Love!” she replied, pouring a cup of Chenin Blanc into the pot, then slowly adding the water from the asparagus. “What do you understand about love?”

“You weren’t much older than me when you met Dad.”

Mother stirred, turning down the temperature on the hob. I sliced through a tomato, just pricking my finger. Blood pumped to the surface and I licked it off. Why did conversations with Mother always taste so rusty and metallic?

“I was a woman when I met your dad. You’re just a girl.”

My face burned, a red-hot flush coming to the surface. “I’m pregnant, Mother, so I guess I’m going to have to grow up.”

She switched off the stove, pushed the pot to one side. Then she turned, her pinched face just under control, and slapped me across the face.

“You little slut,” she said. “Every day I pray you’ll turn into a better person. And now this.”

I touched my cheek, uncertain if there would be more violence, instinctively moving away from the knife still lying on the chopping board.

“I’m not a slut. Rajit’s the dad. I love him. He loves me.”

“He’s not the first guy you’ve slept with, Thea – I’m not a fool. I know your reputation. It follows me every time I go to church. I’ve prayed for you so many times.”

“I’ve changed.”

“Really? You think you know that boy. You don’t, Thea. You know nothing about him.”

“I can learn.”

“You’re going to learn the hard way.”

Mother brought her face so close to mine that I could see the blood vessels in her eyes. Then she grabbed my wrists, banging me hard against the cupboard, my back against the door handle, a shock of pain down my spine. Letting my wrists go, she grabbed a handful of my primped-up hair, and slammed my head against the cherry-wood cabinet.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Dizzily, I tried to push her away, but felt the crushing weight of her stiletto through my foot. I winced, tried not to cry out.

I knew these moods. Play dead. Be limp. But this time I couldn’t do that. What if she hurt my baby? With all the force I could muster, I pushed her away. Mother’s face registered shock and she stepped back for only a moment before pushing her face into mine.

“You’re a filthy whore, Thea. Just like your mother.” Mother tucked her hand under my chin and her fumes filled my face. “Get rid of it,” she hissed. “Get rid of that baby or I will never forgive you.”

I longed for Dad then, the soft-spoken reason he offered when he dared disagree with Mother. I was crying and I tried to stop, but the sobs rose in my throat, almost choking me.

I gasped. “What are you saying?”

“You know damn well what I’m telling you. Abort it. I won’t have a crossbreed bastard in this family.”

“I thought Catholics don’t believe in abortion.”

“That’s not a baby – it’s a mistake.”

“I’m going to marry Rajit, Mother. We’ve already decided.”

“Over my dead body. You think raising a baby is easy? Marriage? Your father would be turning in his grave. God only knows how ashamed I am of you. I plucked you off the streets, raised you like my own and this is what you do to me?”

“I won’t kill my own child. I won’t.”

And I need someone to love me.

My mother straightened her skirt, ran her fingers through her hair.

“You’ve got twenty-four hours to think about it. If you do what I say, I’ll pay for it and all will be forgotten. But if you marry Rajit and keep that spawn, then pack your bags, my girl. I do not want you in my life.”