As for Richard, she had been luckier there. She had stopped in at a pharmacy and found a shelf stocked with herbal African mutis and cures. She picked up a large plastic bottle of Ingwe Izifozonke, The Strong One, Amazing Mixture for All Diseases. She examined the label; an orange cheetah roared with teeth bared and the logo was a fearsome yellow and black, and it looked, she thought, like pretty authentic stuff.
“Whatever you do, don’t drop that or open it,” one of the shop assistants walked up and warned her. “Ag, liewe hemel, that stuff stinks to high heaven. I can’t imagine why they’d ever drink it. We opened a bottle one time out of curiosity and the smell was enough to kill seven cats.”
Helen laughed. “That bad?”
The girl held her nose with two dainty fingers, her little finger stuck up in the air. “We couldn’t get it closed fast enough, I tell you. Let me know if I can help you with anything.” She wandered off to straighten the fragrance bottles.
Helen wondered how Richard would feel, climbing into his sleeping bag at the end of the day and sticking his feet into this gunk. Or maybe she would pour it into his backpack and ruin his things … yes, she would find a way to make his life as unpleasant as possible.
But Robbie was proving to be tough. She was beginning to wonder if she should fly back to Cape Town from Windhoek, and confront him. Perhaps seeing him face to face would give her the closure she needed. Or she could scratch the beloved convertible he had talked about so often, gouge the paintwork and rip the upholstery into shreds. He would never know it was her; he would think she had long since left the country.
She sat on the stairs in the hot sun, staring down at her mannish, capable toes and feeling miserable. Below, the market vendors outnumbered the buyers thirty to one, with old men selling postcards for a rand a piece, while the young boys fought with each other and squabbled like chickens scratching in a yard.
Helen wondered idly what to do with the rest of her day. She had longed for this time to be alone but oddly enough, all she wanted now was to be back on the bus with the group, reading while they talked and argued and slept around her. There was something reassuring about being carried along on a wave of communal activity; it offered a sanctuary from loneliness and the bigger questions in life.
She sat up straighter, and rested her elbows on her knees and realized that the last thing in the world she wanted to do, once the trip was over, was return to Canada. There was nothing there for her, apart from her drunken mother shrieking to pass the time while she waited for her next welfare cheque, or a visit from her crackhead brother. Helen was friendless and without a job or a home to return to, and the bleakness of her future settled in her chest like a large stone. She pulled at the strap of her shoe, thinking that she had somehow had it in her head that she would find a way to stay in Africa and when Robbie had fallen in love with her, it had seemed like everything had fallen into place and all the hurts and battles she had suffered were part of a terrible past, a past soon to be banished and replaced by her happy-ever-after life. She had worked so hard, she deserved things to be good at long last, but now what did she have? Nothing. For the first time in her life, Helen was without a clear sense of purpose, and it was not, as she discovered, a pleasant place to be.
She stared at her feet again, not wanting to think about her mother but unable to push back the unwelcome memories. When she was growing up, she had thought that everyone had a mother like hers, that the way her mother behaved was normal. It was only when she went to a friend’s house after school one day, that she realized the chasm of differences that existed.
Standing in her friend’s kitchen, Helen had dropped a glass of milk. Her hand shot to her mouth in horror as she watched the glass falling in terrible slow motion, while the milk fanned out in a graceful arch and white drops sprayed the room. The glass had finally hit the floor and shattered.
Wide-eyed with terror, Helen held her breath, waiting for the shrieking and the yelling. Her hand was still pressed to her mouth. She was seven years old.
But her friend’s mother had laughed kindly, “I’m sorry, love,” she said, “my fault for giving you a glass straight out the dishwasher; they’re always wet and slippery. Did you get any on your dress? I hope the glass didn’t cut you.”
She wiped Helen’s dress and to her everlasting shame, Helen began to cry, silently, endlessly. To the startled mother, it seemed as if she had opened an endless reservoir of pain, her kindness only making it worse. In the end, she had taken tear-stained, weeping Helen home. She had waited with Helen on the doorstep, holding her hand, until Helen’s mother, Carol, answering with screeches from deep inside the house, had come to the door in a cheap pink satin negligee that barely covered the top of her thighs, with all manner of stains encrusting the fabric.
“Ya, can I help ya? What the fuck ya want?” she had asked the woman, provocatively posed against the peeling doorframe, smoothing her flyaway wiry bleached blonde hair, her fingernails filthy and ragged.
“I brought Helen home,” the woman tried to explain, “something upset her, she dropped a glass of milk but it wasn’t her fault…”
“Ah, it’s always her fault, eh, stupid kid.” Helen’s mother’s smile was gapped with missing teeth. She cuffed Helen on the head. “She’s clumsy, I tell ya, you should have kids like mine, you got kids? Tell me? You got kids? Ha? Well my kids are a fuckin’ nightmare, I tell ya. You didn’t need to bring her home, she woulda found her own way, she’s got ways, that one.”
The woman, horrified, did not know what to say. “I’ll leave you now,” she said, and she rubbed Helen’s back, a departing gesture of kindness Helen would never forget. Then she turned and walked down the narrow muddy pathway that was lined with dead weeds and junk and made her way out through the chickenwire gate.
Helen’s mother watched her go and she flipped the finger at the woman’s parting back. She looked down at Helen, her mouth twisted around her cigarette, one hand on the torn screen door, the other holding a beer. “Ya gonna get ya skinny ass in here or what?” she barked at Helen who slid inside underneath her mother’s arm.
Her mother sneered at her and slammed the door shut. “You think ya fancy, coming home with ya friends, who do you think ya are, missy? You think ya better than me? You’re not better, I’m your ma, you never forget that.” She pointed at Helen as she spoke and her hand shook, her eyes rheumy in her sallow, haggard face.
She was twenty-eight, she looked fifty.
Helen tried to escape to the relative sanctuary of her tiny attic room. She slipped past her mother and ran up the steep wooden stairs of the dark, narrow house.
“Oh no, you don’t,” her mother screeched, and her furious scream pierced every cell in Helen’s body. Her mother rushed up after her, stamping loudly on the old wooden stairs that echoed and reverberated as if an army were marching through.
Helen dove onto her bed and lay face down, her hands over her ears. Her mother rushed into the room after her and slammed the door with a loud bang. It seemed to Helen that there were three parts to her mother; the cigarettes, the beer and the endless slamming. Cupboards, closets, doors, drawers, shelves, stairs; she slammed and stamped, shrieking all the while like a banshee.
Her mother stood, quiet for a second, inside the closed door of Helen’s room while Helen waited for the onslaught of deranged agony to spew forth. But then her mother paused, her ear cocked, listening for a sound.
“Jimmy’s back,” she exclaimed, “ya lucky kid. But I’ll be back.”
She flung the door open and rushed down the stairs, pounding with the force of a three-hundred-pound woman, although she was no more than a hundred, soaking wet.
“Jimmy!” she yelled, “ya got the beer, eh? Ya lousy fuckin’ loser, turn the fuckin’ music down, what’s the matter with ya, ya come in and the first thing ya do is turn on the fuckin’ radio station to ya stupid rock music, you know the neighbours c
all the fuckin’ police when ya does that, for fuck’s sake…”
And on it went.
Helen, never wanting to be vulnerable again, had refused to visit any of the other children from school ever again. She also refused to have them come to her home. She rarely spoke to anyone outside of class and walked to and from school by herself, with her head down. She studied hard and would not participate in extracurricular activities, mainly because she lacked the necessary gear. She learned to fend for herself at home; she padlocked the door to her room from the time she was ten, even when she went to the bathroom.
Helen’s father was a high-school teacher, he’d had the two kids, Helen and Tommy, and then he’d left in a hurry when it was clear that Carol had lost her marbles. Helen’s little brother, Tommy, was a loser from the start, born to be a druggie. He had learned to swig beer when he was four; Carol thought it was cute. “Thanks dad, for taking us with you,” Helen told him, the one time she met him. She had tracked him down, though he had been slippery to find, and not keen to reunite.
He shrugged. “Sheila said no contact was better,” he said. Sheila was the second wife, a churchgoing teetotaler he had met at an A.A. meeting.
“Your mother was a real looker once,” Helen’s father had said, smiling at the memory. “Before she started hitting the booze big time. And she had to take those meds, they said she was bipolar, manic depressive, borderline personality, you name it. Course, she never stayed on them like she was supposed to, only stayed on them long enough to feel better, then she’d go off them and wham, the maniac was back. But my theory is that getting pregnant screwed her up, all those hormones out of whack, or maybe the hard work of being a mother. She was pretty good fun when I met her. I mean she’d party hard but she wasn’t crazy, not like she is now.”
Helen, sitting across from him at a McDonald’s, looked him in the eye. “Help me get through teacher’s college,” she’d said, “and I’ll never ask you for anything again. And I’ll never contact you again, either.”
She was fourteen at the time. “You’ve got a deal,” he said. She never saw him again but he put money into a bank account for her, while he went off and had two more kids with Sheila. Helen never met them, never wanted to.
Helen distanced herself from all her family. She came and went like a quiet ghost, learned to earn her money, and she found ways to shave what she could from what her mother and Jimmy carelessly left lying around. She guarded her belongings, studied at the library, and took up running. She had a clear goal for her life and with that, came hope.
She took to sex with the same passion she had taken to running; it was a way of working off her pent-up energies, it was a release. She joined an online dating site making sure that her prospective lovers knew the emotional boundaries were set at point zero; encounters were physical only and that had worked fine–until Robbie.
And as much as her mother was an untidy, out of control slagheap of a woman, Helen was precise, neat, practical, contained. These traits were woven into the fabric of the life-raft that saved her, but now she had nothing, no plan, and no recourse to rescue from any quarter. Without warning she began to cry and the market vanished in a blur. She brushed the tears away with her capable fingers and hugged her knees to her chest. She had no idea what to do next.
Kate looked down the driveway that André had just left. She could still taste him and smell his skin, feel the coarseness of his unshaven cheek, and her breast still tingled where his hand had been. She lay down on her bed, thinking she would just rest for a moment when the next thing she knew, she was waking from a deep sleep, disorientated and confused.
“You were fast asleep,” Eva laughed. She was sitting on her bed across from Kate, scribbling in a notebook.
Kate sat up. “Look at the time, and I still want to go shopping.”
“Let’s go then.” Eva hopped down off her bed and Kate followed.
“How was last night?” Kate asked, not really interested but hoping to distract herself from thoughts of André.
Eva laughed. “We had great fun. Enrique and I are now married and we’re going to have lots of babies. We were so drunk, I felt really sick. Still, it was fun. Wait, we must go into this store.” It was a small boutique with an unusual window display; three wooden giraffes of varying sizes had purses and scarves slung around their necks, with brightly-coloured cushions at their feet.
Kate was quickly enthralled by the one-of-a-kind couture garments she found on the racks. “I love this skirt, it’s so vibrant.”
“And I want to try this on,” Eva held up a short dress with zebra patterns and splashes of vibrant green.
Kate bought the brightly-coloured skirt, while Eva bought the dress.
“Let’s go into the thrift store,” Kate said as they stepped out into the bright sunlight. She pointed to a dimly-lit shop next to the boutique. The store had stacks of brown ceramic glazed pottery in the window, and a dusty spider plant hung from a macamé basket.
“Really?” Eva was disbelieving.
“I’ll find a treasure,” Kate assured her.
She quickly scored a gem that had Eva shuddering; an unusual handmade doll with long skinny witch-like fingers and a little hat fashioned like cattle horns. Her long, pale blue, thickly-padded Victorian dress was patterned with cornflowers.
“Fourteen dollars,” Kate calculated the price from Namibian dollars and paid while Eva shook her head.
“Totally creepy,” she said. “I need to go and email but first gossip: Ellie hit on Stepfan last night but only after she hit on Jono and she was aiming for Enrique first but he wasn’t interested.”
“Not Stepfan,” Kate said. “No way.”
“Yes, way. Stepfan wanted her to go to a hotel with him.”
“That’s too gross for words. I hope she didn’t go?”
“No, but he did. Into a totally trashy place. Ellie ended up coming with us and carried on drinking and some local guy tried to chat her up but she threw up on him.”
“What was he like, this local guy?” Kate thought that perhaps André had been out on the town, chatting up tourists.
Eva gave her an odd look. “Average height, dark hair, kinda skinny, about twenty. He was disgusted and he left but we stayed. Sofie was so drunk, she was talking at the top of her lungs but the music was so loud no one could hear.”
“And Harrison?” Kate asked. “Was he okay?”
“Last I saw of him, he had Treasure hanging all over him and they left the restaurant in a big hurry — they didn’t come dancing. Harrison looked like he was having the time of his life. Don’t ask me about Rydell-the-psycho because I’ve got no idea where he was and I couldn’t care less. I’m going to email, see you later!”
Eva hugged Kate and rushed off up the street.
The Eighth Night
KATE SAT DOWN ON A LOW BRICK WALL and dug out the cellphone that André had bought for her. As she’d hoped, there was a text message.
Hving fun bokkie? Hope so. Dinner?
She grinned and texted back: fell asleep aftr u left. Shopping now. Raincheck dinner for now
Still smiling, she headed to Peter’s Antiques but was startled by a sudden reflection in the window behind her; a man was a hair’s breath away from her back. She leapt to the side, swung around and came face-to-face with Rydell who smiled his wet smile. “Why are you following me?” she demanded.
He chortled. “I was just crossing the street the same as you. I’m allowed to, you know.”
She ignored him and went into Peter’s. Rydell followed her. She was soon distracted, marvelling at the store’s variety, and she soon forget about Rydell. After she paid for her souvenirs, she left and went into to the local grocery store to pick up supplies for the following day. Once again felt someone standing too close for comfort. She turned and for the second time, it was Rydell too-close and personal. She was about to sa
y something to him when he laughed eerily and she realized there was no point. She paid and walked hurriedly away, checking behind her to see if he was still following her. She got to the lodge and rushed into the room.
“Are you okay?” Eva was lying on her bed reading.
“That darn Rydell, I swear he’s been following me. I confronted him but he just laughed at me.” She sat down on her bed and looked into the distance, chewing on her lip.
“What are you doing tonight?” she asked Eva. “I feel really unsettled.” She was thinking about André and wondering whether she should change her mind about dinner.
“Anyone would be upset by Rydell-the-psycho. I went to the Internet café but it was too full, so I’ll have to go back later. We’re all going to the Cape to Cairo restaurant tonight. Nobody’s heard from Mia and Richard; it’s like they’ve disappeared. Speaking of disappeared, Harrison and Treasure have been outta sight all day, too. And Rydell’s been following you. So that’s where the group is, or isn’t.”
“Yep, that’s the whole crazy deck of cards. Maybe I should have another nap or something.”
“Are you okay?” Eva sat up on one elbow, “you seem… I don’t know…”
“Discombobulated? Yes, I am.” Kate pushed her purchases to one side and lay down on her bed with her hands behind her head. She was dying to see André but she was too afraid to.
“I’m going to have a shower.” Eva got up. “Come to dinner with us, you’ll enjoy yourself.”
“Maybe,” Kate said. “But I should pack.”
“Pack in the morning like the rest of us,” Eva advised, grabbing her towel.
Kate lay there, thinking about André, wishing she had taken a picture of him. She decided not to join the others for dinner but stayed in the room, reading instead, unable to really concentrate. She suddenly could not wait to be back on the bus, travelling along the lonely roads with the vast blue sky above and miles of dust on either side. She turned out the lights and quickly fell asleep, tired out from all the excitement of the day.
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