The Lazarus Effect

by H. J Golakai

  She turned away, her expression a tempest of too many emotions for Vee to untangle.

  ‘After Jacqui disappeared, I started thinking maybe it was God’s way of punishing me, both of us, for the way we behaved. It’s crazy superstition, thinking that a child is a necessary sacrifice to set things right again. But I can’t help feeling that if we’d been more careful and she’d never been conceived, or if I’d been stricter and done more to keep her away from that pathetic family, none of this would’ve happened.’

  ‘When did Jacqui get to know her father’s other family? Was it your idea, or her father’s, to be closer to them? Or Carina’s?’

  A sharp, bitter laugh broke from Adele’s lips. ‘Whose idea was it? My God, it wasn’t anybody’s grand idea. The three of us would never be that ridiculous, discussing things like mature adults. There was never a sit-down, no ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be fantastic if our families got to know each other and became one big, happy unit.’ God. Imagine that happening.’ She shook her head, chuckling again into her tea. A swift slurp and she set the cup down and fixed Vee with her full, grave attention. ‘You really have no clue, do you?’

  Adele’s eyes drifted down again, this time to her feet, crossed at the ankles. ‘You know, when you called wanting to talk, I thought, I hoped, that Ian was finally stepping up. That finally he wants to stop being macho and grieving alone, or expecting the police to work miracles after two years, and that he had hired someone. Looks like wishful thinking, as usual.’

  Vee waited.

  ‘Jacqui was born not long after Sean. In fact, Jacqui’s close in age to the three eldest Fourie kids. She was born after Serena, same year. Carina did not waste time. She got pregnant right after they were married, and popped three more kids like it was going out of fashion. I assumed she’d be different, posh and what, being a doctor and white and all that. Maybe have only one. Maybe take some time to get to know his family, get used to our racial mess and whatnot. Ian might as well have stayed and married a coloured girl, another darkie like himself.’

  ‘No love lost between you and the missus, then.’

  ‘How could there be, considering the situation he put us in?’ Adele snarled. ‘Ian is no fool. He’s brainy, but not lacking in social skills the way the clever ones are. Especially with women – he has a special way with women. Not just in that sense. He has a way of making you … obey him, somehow. No one ever discusses things with Ian, really, but somehow you find yourself swept along till you wash up somewhere with no idea how you got there. The unspoken rule concerning his two families: we were separate and would stay that way. You know how it goes.’

  Vee knew the deal well enough, having grown up in a similar set-up. Big house, small house. As old as the hills, a virtually indestructible pillar of the African family structure.

  ‘Of course, it was up to me to do most of the staying away, not that I had any intention of doing otherwise. They’ve always had that house out in Pinelands and I stayed in Athlone up until recently. Paths didn’t need to cross.

  ‘Then Sean developed cancer,’ she murmured. ‘Some form of juvenile leukaemia. Life plays the cruellest jokes, or then again maybe it’s God. He was the sweetest of the lot. You couldn’t find a better child. The terrible irony was that they were both gifted doctors who had to stand by, useless, and watch him die. No parent should have to go through that.’

  ‘There have been major advances in cancer research,’ Vee said, digging through her rudimentary archive. ‘Especially for children. Surely there were more options?’

  ‘You may be right,’ Adele agreed, ‘but the type Sean had was severe. I remember the first time Ian told me. It broke him, though he fought to stay optimistic and rational. That boy was the world to him. Sean was five or six then, two years older than Jacqui. Something about the treatment he got must’ve worked, because he went into remission. Then, eight or so years later the cancer came back, and this time it had claws. He was taken overseas, but still … So they started looking for bone marrow donors and … eventually Ian and Carina came to me.’

  The room breathed for a few beats as Vee joined two and two.

  ‘Jacqueline was Ian’s, too. She and Sean were blood. The doctors always do family first, and they assumed they had a shopping list. It was the worst luck ever. Three siblings, and not one that was a good match for Sean – not even little Rosemary. Ian and Carina didn’t come close either. They had no choice but to ask for my help. At first he demanded it, saying it was his fatherly right to use one child to help the other as he saw fit. I told him to adjust his attitude and come back when he had.’

  She sighed. ‘It wasn’t the kindest thing to have done at the time, but Ian picks the wrong moment to aggravate me. He can’t admit he’s wrong or needs help. He adjusts terms to suit – calling in a favour, keeping score, being entitled to this or that. He said the most utter bullshit, about doing so much to provide for Jacqui and whatnot, like that had obligated us to him. He even offered to pay me if she was a match.’

  ‘What did you decide?’

  ‘As in, did I let them ‘compensate’ me for using my kid? No, I didn’t. I’m a mother! What pissed me off was his suggesting that it could all be kept quiet. Slide me some cash, take Jacqui to the hospital and stick her up with needles to help Sean. I don’t know what that man had in mind, but he was willing to pull some dodgy stunts and risk losing his medical licence rather than be upfront with his wife about who the donor was.

  ‘That’s when I saw him for who he really was – someone who lived and breathed his bloody career and image. The great doctor was ashamed he’d made himself common by having a love child. He loved Carina but came to my bed when the fancy bloody well took him. Then he expected to snap his fingers, and I’d put my daughter through pain, for what? I knew then I’d never get any respect unless I demanded it, so I demanded it. No matter how afraid he was of throwing us all into the same messy pot, this time he was forced to consider my pride. He had to get his precious Carina’s hands dirty too, as in they both had to come to my home and speak to me about it properly. And I won’t lie – I wanted them to beg. Which they did. But it didn’t end there.’

  Vee read her body language. ‘You were still apprehensive about the donation process.’

  Adele nodded. ‘The first round was only blood tests to see if they were compatible. With half-siblings, I thought it was a long shot. I could still feel like a good person who had cooperated even when nothing had panned out. But once a match was confirmed, it got real. Even after we explained it to her, Jacqui was brave and wanted to do it. She met Sean and they really hit it off. The procedure sounded straightforward, there’d be anaesthesia and everything, but it was too overwhelming. I’m not proud of it but I lost my nerve and backed out. I got Jacqui discharged from the hospital and took her home.’

  In the leaden silence, Vee did some arithmetic. With Sean aged fourteen, Jacqui would have been twelve. Old enough to absorb the awkwardness of their parents’ dilemma, but not old enough to understand every adult nuance, every undercurrent of friction. Vee pictured it: two families, subsets of each other, fighting and saving each other from drowning all at once. ‘That couldn’t have been easy for you. Didn’t go down well with the Fouries either, I expect.’

  ‘I’m not a monster. I knew I’d crack, but I needed time to digest it. Then Sean took a turn for the worse and it put things into perspective. It wasn’t about me or Carina or any of us. I didn’t need any more convincing, but Carina came to see me on her own, to beg me one more time to help save her son. Mother to mother. She wasn’t the same cold, hateful woman who had sat in my lounge when we’d met face to face. I agreed to take Jacqui back in the next morning.’

  ‘But the procedure didn’t work, did it? Sean died.’

  Adele nodded. ‘It never even went ahead. In that short time, Sean developed an infection. They tried everything to save him. Infections are common before transplants, and his system was already too weak from everything else. He passed a
way around this time in September, not long after his birthday.’

  Adele rummaged through her handbag for a pack of Stuyvesant Extra Mild and tipped it in Vee’s direction. Vee shook her head. She had more than enough chipping away at her already.

  ‘I warned Jacqui not to smoke,’ Adele said, exhaling out of the nearest open window. ‘I never used to. Disgusting habit. Told her it would lead to an early grave.’ She shook her head bitterly. From her lips to God’s ears.

  ‘How did Jacqui take Sean’s death?’

  Adele knocked ash out of the window and walked out of the room. Minutes later, she returned with the squirming puppy in her arms. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘He’s not house-trained yet, but I never have the heart to leave him out in the cold.’

  New cigarette between her fingers, she continued: ‘My girl was so different from me. Sometimes I wondered whether they didn’t hand me the wrong baby at the hospital. She took it so hard, because to her she’d messed up. She was like that, so protective and proud. When she loved someone, she made their well-being a personal responsibility. Something her father could’ve learned a lot from.’

  Now came the hard part. Vee cleared her throat and sat straighter. ‘Ms Paulsen, you speak about Jacqui in the past tense. I’m sorry to have to ask, but does that mean you don’t believe she’s still alive?’

  Without hesitation, Adele shook her head. ‘No,’ she replied flatly. ‘Wish I could say different, like ‘I feel it in my gut’ or ‘Deep down a mother knows’, but I can’t. Jacqui was a handful. She was growing wild and I was essentially a struggling single parent. But one thing she wasn’t was cruel or maliciously dishonest. Yes, she lied – which teenager hasn’t? But she wouldn’t run off without one word, not one, to tell me where she was or how she was doing. Nothing would make my girl do that to me. So, no, I don’t think she’s alive.’

  She lowered her dejected weight back into the sofa. ‘I told her to stay away from those Fouries. I knew nothing good could come out of it, but she wanted to be part of them so badly. By the time the madness of the transplant was over, the idea of them had taken root. She wanted a real family. I tried to be enough, but they had a draw on her I couldn’t compete with.’

  ‘You suspect they had something to do with her disappearance?’

  ‘Don’t know what to think. I’ve been over it a thousand times in my mind and it makes no sense. This city’s dangerous, but no one wants to think what can happen to their own. I’ve learnt so much about missing children these past two years … Do you know how many go missing countrywide? Over one thousand six hundred per year. And three hundred of them are never heard from again.’

  Her voice cracked. The burning circle of tobacco illuminated a film of liquid brilliance in her eyes, threatening to break over the rims. ‘One thousand six hundred a year,’ she whispered, ‘and my baby’s one of them.’

  Vee switched off the recorder and let the silence chew at the edges of the room. Families and their lies and wars. If anything was familiar … She refrained from rubbing her tired eyes. Outside, the light faded fast. ‘Do you have a picture?’ she asked.

  Adele walked over to a dresser, and retrieved and handed over a thick envelope. A lot of thought had gone into cobbling it together. Among the papers were two photographs. The uppermost showed Jacqui on the beach, fully clothed and laughing as she held a Coke. She had a small face, framed by shoulder-length curly hair, and her mother’s brown eyes. A pretty pixie of a girl. The second showed her decked out in full uniform, forcing an embarrassed smile for the camera on what looked like a momentous school day.

  ‘Keep it,’ Adele said, blowing smoke in Vee’s direction. ‘I don’t need so many any more. Sometimes I think I’m the only one left in the world who still cares what she looked like.’

  5

  Cape Town doesn’t really see men, Joshua Allen mused. It definitely wasn’t a man’s city, red-blooded, not the way Johannesburg or Rome felt, or parts of New York. Sure, people looked; their eyes rested on and made out the shape of a person representing the male gender, but somehow it didn’t quite register. Weird, for a city with a markedly higher proportion of women than men. He would’ve thought the female majority would be … not exactly beating doors down with sticks, but a little more attentive. Husbands and fathers were the worst hit, trundling after their womenfolk everywhere. Their owners.

  Joshua leaned against his car in a parking lot in Rondebosch, eating an ice cream cone. He felt ignored, and kind of lonely, if he was being honest. Which was nuts, since he was in the clutches of a draining situationship that left little time for feeling sorry for himself.

  He stared through the glass-panelled entrance of the Pick n Pay supermarket across the way, making short work of identifying the pair of women’s shoes he’d come with from among a stampede of others. Real leather boots, an ankle-length cut with a matching maroon handbag. Expensive stuff. He should know, since he’d paid for every stitch. The shoes met another pair before the till and began an animated exchange he knew of old: toes pointed at each other, heels clacking. He’d have to wait longer.

  ‘Great,’ he muttered. He was a dumb disciple too, just like all the other guys. Here he was, left to rot on the curb like an old banana peel, and he wasn’t even put out. Wouldn’t be surprising if women no longer registered his presence, either.

  ‘Hey, gorgeous,’ he ventured to passing potential, endless legs in a snug pair of jeans.

  ‘Fuck off.’ The girl eyed him up and down with lazy nastiness and swayed on.

  Too young, anyway. Her hips dipped just a touch in his direction, though, he was sure of it. He pushed off the bonnet of the Jeep Cherokee, took a step in the direction of the supermarket, instantly concluded it was a bad idea. He would be eaten alive. He leaned back again. Five more minutes and that was it.

  A solitary figure across the street caught his eye. A familiar outline loitered near the display window of an electronics store, watching Celine Dion in concert on a dozen stacked TV screens. Joshua hesitated, smoothed his hair down best he could and stepped off the curb, right into a tree trunk of a chest.

  ‘How much per hour?’ the guy in his way said, frowning.

  ‘Uh …’

  ‘Parking.’ The man pointed to his car and dug through his pockets. ‘How much?’

  ‘Oh,’ Joshua said. The man, stout and fair-haired, was a good two heads shorter, compensating with the brand of bravado that Joshua had come to expect from Mzansi’s paler citizens. Joshua shrugged. ‘Ten bucks … rand. Ten rand. Twenty if you take longer than half an hour.’ He was acclimated to this shit. The Mother City played a remorseless game of favourites, cosseting some of her children and abusing others, a reality inescapable unless one chose to ignore it. This was hardly the first time some random had assumed he was a car guard, or a janitor, or a waiter, going on nothing more than skin colour. Might as well make some money off it. The man made a big show of his surprise before he paid up, muttering about the country going to the dogs as he walked off.

  ‘Please man, some money for food.’

  Joshua dropped his eyes, further down this time. A street kid, a skinny little thing in an oversized, battered tracksuit top and shorts – too short for a Cape Town winter, however mild Joshua considered it – stared a challenge up at him. The kid’s eyes skimmed over Joshua’s tatty attire, sizing up both his rank as a fellow homeless person and right to any money changing hands on that turf.

  ‘Listen, kid, I scammed this money fair and square,’ Joshua teased. ‘How ’bout we split it?’

  ‘Ten rand?’ The boy snorted. ‘And that’s yours.’ He pointed accusingly at the gleaming Jeep and then thrust out his hand. ‘I saw you park.’

  Joshua chuckled and handed over the note. ‘Here’s a bonus.’ He pushed a KFC box with an unfinished three-piece meal in it at the boy. ‘You need it more than I do.’

  He struggled to keep himself from breaking into a run as he crossed the road. On the other side, Celine Dion’s rapt audience hadn�
��t moved, a bulging plastic bag of shopping clutched in her hand. His heart was going way too fast for half a minute’s exertion, but that much was out of his control. He searched his mind for the perfect, coolest opener and the best he came up with was: ‘I’ve asked you to stop following me around. I’m never gonna crack and sleep with you.’

  The woman turned, and a huge smile lifted the most inviting mouth Joshua had ever pressed against his own.

  ‘Joshua Allen! I do declare,’ Voinjama Johnson rolled her eyes. ‘You always know how to ruin my day with your presence.’

  ‘V. J.’

  She was competition, tall for a girl – a jibe she always hissed at. Joshua dragged her into a hug and she laughed and pretended to struggle, while he surreptitiously revelled in the smell of her hair and neck. A waft of baby soap, vanilla and something feminine and bespoke filled his nose, setting off an ooze of warmth under his breastbone. His arms made quick study through her navy pantsuit. She wasn’t back to her usual weight since the surgery but she looked a lot more solid than she had when they’d last met. Her ass was still perfection; her smile touched her eyes.

  ‘Stop groping me, New York City boy. Whetin you doin’ heah? Dah nah even yor neighbourhood. And it too cold for dis kana nonsense.’ She prised the ice cream cone he’d forgotten he had from his fingers. She took a large bite and made a series of throaty sounds he hoped, had long hoped, he’d hear one day in a less public, less clothed arena. ‘Brain freeze, but so worth it. Yeah, so, I had no idea you were still in town, since you too hip to take anybody’s calls. Whehplay you been hidin’ so?’

  Joshua grinned. She’d been a floater for two-thirds of her life, yet aside from a slight American affectation her accent was unharmed. ‘For Chrissake, when are you gonna learn to speak English properly? You write for a living.’