The Ghost-Eater and Other Stories

by Diane Awerbuck

  ‘Hmm,’ Victor says.

  ‘There wasn’t exactly a beach at Maidens Cove – but there was sand here and there between the rocks, and a huge tidal pool. My cousin Ryder was the only one of us who could swim. He would run along the white-painted walls and dive into the pool just before the huge waves knocked him off. It was a game the big boys played, a bit like Chicken.’ Adeela pauses, takes another sip of tea. Victor’s mug is already empty. ‘We used to explore all the nooks and crannies between those rocks, Amina, Huda and me. They were just granite boulders, but to us, they were castles, the walls studded with diamonds. We would go back one day and get those diamonds out, we promised ourselves. We would chip them out and be rich as princesses. I can’t remember what Amina wanted to buy, nor Huda, but I wanted roller skates, like the white girls I’d seen when the bus drove past the Sea Point Boulevard. I didn’t know what they were called, nobody I knew had them, but Ryder told me.’

  Adeela puts her mug down, too heavy to hold any longer. ‘I have a picture of Ryder in that box. Do you want to see it?’

  Victor does not want to talk about Ryder. He does not want to talk about scattering ashes. He wants to pretend this isn’t happening. He wants to hurl his mug across the room, listen to it smash against the framed Matisse print, watch the tannins stain the white wall brown. He wants to fling the French windows wide open. He wants to fly with her through the gap between the apartment buildings and show her what’s left of the autumn leaves, show her the skyline, the bridge, the river. The new independent bookstore that’s opened not three blocks away on Court Street. He wants to stop in at The Chocolate Room and have the waitress bring their favourite coffee without having to order it. He wants to keep her here. He doesn’t want her to go anywhere.

  ‘Sure’ he says, feigning what, exactly? Enthusiasm for the reminiscence of a dying friend? Victor is aware of trying to rise out of his own need to be comforted. His need to talk about them as they were. He wants Adeela to say how she regrets ending their affair, regrets relegating him to ‘close friend’. He imagines the moment she finally concedes. He imagines he can rescue her. Even from this.

  ‘Sure,’ he says again, aiming for encouraging.

  The box is down on the floor, between her chair and the wall. It is a medium-sized cardboard box that has been decorated and then varnished. On the lid, there’s an amateurish portrait. It takes Victor a moment, as he stoops to pick it up, to realise that it is Adeela’s face on the lid.

  Adeela laughs at him. ‘Good thing I usually leave painting to Lilly, hey?’

  Her name is printed under the self-portrait, and a date. Her birthdate. She lifts the lid and rummages about, then pulls out a newspaper cutting, slightly crisped by age, and hands it to him. Cape Times, 30 June 1976. There are a lot of people in the picture, mostly young, students, schoolkids even, a few older people. ‘Police disperse thousands of protesters,’ reads the caption.

  He gives the newspaper cutting back to Adeela, ‘Which one is your cousin?’

  Adeela is hugging her chest as if cold. Victor feels a flash of guilt for wanting to yank the door open.

  ‘Do you need a blanket? Want to lie down? ‘

  Adeela shakes her head. ‘This one,’ she says, pointing. ‘And that’s me just behind him.’

  Victor looks again, but can only see what looks like the corner of a skirt behind the wavy-haired boy she’s pointing at.

  ‘That was the last time I last saw him. He was supposed to be looking after me because the schools were closed. But Ryder said he had to go on this march, and did I want to go along? There had been marches in our neighbourhood before, but Ma had always kept me home.’ Adeela stares at the grainy black-and-white picture. ‘You can see,’ she says, ‘the clouds are down low over Table Mountain. It was really cold that day and rainy, but we still went. Ryder helped me do a double bow on my takkies before we set off up the street. They had been Elza’s takkies and were still a bit too big. I loved those takkies – they were plain white canvas with a green-and-yellow stripe down the side of the foot to the rubber toe. They had thick rubber soles. Good for running and jumping. Ryder said we might have to do some running, so I put them on. There was a crowd gathering; we could hear the singing while we were still walking down Buitenkant Street. There was a helicopter flying low over town, and police vans. We used to call them Black Marias … I don’t know why. That made me kind of nervous. We walked with some of the other boys from Ryder’s school who lived near us, bigger boys who were joking with Ryder about being the next Hector Pietersen. I had no clue who that was. I thought maybe he was a movie star. Ryder loved going to movies at the Avalon bioscope. I remember feeling quite proud that these big boys thought Ryder was going to be a star. I only found out later, much later, who Hector Pietersen was.’

  Adeela stops talking. Victor takes a yellowing hand into his. The heavy silver ring swings loosely on her middle finger. He turns it the right way up so the big blue stone, the colour of Adeela’s eyes, is on top. It’s a ring, he knows, that belonged to her grandmother. The only thing she has ever told him about her family. He covers the withered hand in both of his big, indecently fleshy ones, careful not to crush her.

  ‘I had to wear shoes too small for my feet the rest of that winter. Not that Ma was mad with me, she was just too distraught about Ryder to notice things like shoes. I felt so guilty … maybe if I had run faster, if Ryder hadn’t tried to stick with me. I still ask myself, what if that takkie hadn’t come off? Would Ryder have been arrested? Would he have died?'

  Adeela withdraws her hand from Victor's and pulls at her cardigan. ‘Someone found me and took me home. It was dark already. Ma put me in her bed and gave me something bitter to make me sleep. I was only seven, turning eight. They never told us how he died.’

  Victor stands at the French windows with his back to her. The wind has picked up a little. The tree’s branches scratch lightly against the glass. What, apart from platitudes, is there to say? What word?

  ‘I think,’ she says, ‘I should lie down a little now. We were up very early this morning, Lilly and me.’ Adeela grips the arms of the chair and tries to lever herself out of it. She feels exhausted and the pain is making her nauseous. ‘I’m sorry, Victor, to rattle on so. I don’t know what’s got into me this morning.’

  Victor helps her to her feet.

  ‘You will come again tomorrow, won’t you?’ she says. ‘You and Vanezu? I want you to meet Sukey.’

  Together they cross the faded Persian, and into her room. Next to the three-quarter bed, with its thick down duvet, though it is only fall, is a table with her medicine, a stainless steel dish, a glass of water, and an old-fashioned travel alarm clock that folds into its own ruby-coloured leatherette case. Her customary pile of books has been replaced by the nurse’s green plastic file. Even Adeela’s reading glasses are gone. The bedding is already turned down, and the curtain half-drawn. Victor helps her lie down, kisses her gently on the forehead.

  ‘We were good together, weren’t we.’ She says it as a statement.

  II. Lilly

  It is eleven o’clock when Lilly comes through the front door. She has been gone just a little more than an hour, but is already anxious about her mother. Victor takes the groceries from her and starts to pack them away in the small kitchen: skim milk; eggs; a small piece of fresh fish; miso soup; half a watermelon, the seeds dark and slick; a bunch of roses; coffee and bagels. Lilly walks across the sitting room noticing, as she passes, that her mother’s cup of tea is still three-quarters full. A white film has settled on the surface. Adeela’s room– it used to be Lilly’s– is no more than an alcove off the living room, but it has a huge sash window filling up the external wall and it looks out onto the tree. She thinks of it as her mother’s tree, though it really belongs, she supposes, if it belongs to anyone at all, to Mr Cohen on the ground floor. Grumpy old fart.

  They swapped rooms the day Lilly turned seventeen. It was her mother’s idea; she wanted to simplify – at lea
st that’s what Lilly remembers her saying.

  Lilly is up the ladder, painting the walls Plascon’s sun-kissed yellow when the intercom buzzes, so Adeela puts down her roller and peels the latex gloves from her hands. They’re just about done anyway. The intercom buzzes again. And again.

  ‘Hurry up, Mom,’ Lilly says.

  Adeela presses the button for the speaker. ‘Who is it?’ she asks.

  ‘Hi, Mrs K. It’s us. Is the birthday girl in?’

  ‘Vanezu?’

  ‘And Kate and Loren. We’ve got cake.’

  Adeela buzzes them in, but its Lilly who flings the front door open and goes out into the hall. She can hear voices coming up the stairwell, the sound of feet. Somebody is wearing heels, probably Kate. Lilly half-expects Mr Cohen to yell at them for making such a racket. Then a moment later there they are filling the landing, her very best friends. Kate is carrying a chocolate-raspberry cake from Mila’s Cake Shoppe. Loren has a bunch of yellow lilies.

  ‘My favourites!’ Lilly squeals.

  Adeela rescues the cake and flowers while the girls fling their arms around each other, shepherds them into the apartment.

  ‘For you.’ Vanezu produces a bottle of Californian sparkling wine from the bottom of her tote bag and offers it to Adeela with a kiss. ‘From my dad, for putting up with Lilly for seventeen years.’

  The candles are lit. They sing ‘Happy Birthday’. Lilly stands leaning over the table, her long black hair hangs straight and smooth as an ironed sheet on either side of her face. She clasps it out of the way with one paint-freckled hand, and blows the candles out.

  ‘Make a wish,’ Adeela says.

  Under Lilly’s white vest, apple-pert breasts fill the lace-edged bra with such confidence that a spasm of longing for her once-little girl catches in Adeela’s throat. It is all right, she tells herself. This is how it goes. These are her friends. I am her family. They will lie on the couch, they will drink my champagne, they will eat one modest slice of cake each (except for Loren who will sneak another when she clears the plates), they will listen to music and talk about boys. They will check their mobiles constantly and respond to messages while continuing their conversation. They will see what others are up to, then plan where to go. They will discuss what to wear. These are the things girls this age do. And on Monday, they will go to school, and not prison. This is, after all, how a girl should be spending her seventeenth birthday. This is 2011, New York.

  Lilly passes her a piece of cake and a glass of sparkling wine. ‘Are you still going to get that poetry book today?’ she asks.

  Her mother takes the hint. ‘See you girls later,’ Adeela says. ‘I’ll be back in time to make you some supper before you go out. How about pasta with roasted baby tomatoes and parmigiana– it’s Lilly’s favourite–, and a nice big green salad?’ She waves from the door.

  Lilly knows that after clearing away the supper things, her mother will sit in her favourite chair and read the poems in her new book one by one. She knows this because her mother insists that’s the only way to read poetry, slowly, expectantly, the way you eat oysters. The magic, she always says, comes after you swallow. Lilly knows her mother will go to bed in the little alcove room with the curtains not yet hung before she gets home. What she doesn’t know is that during the early hours of the morning Adeela will confuse the light left on in the window opposite with the bulb in the interrogation room, and wake up frightened.

  Lilly has forgotten precisely what the doctor said to her. The exact words probably don’t matter that much. She remembers more clearly the spread of colour up the doctor’s face, the way the tiny veins webbed across her cheeks seemed to light up, how her eyes narrowed. She must have taken the time to put make-up on that morning – there was a smudge of blue mascara just above her right eye. She must have drawn her hand across her face before coming into the room to speak to Lilly. The treatment wasn’t having any effect any more. There wasn’t anything else left to try. Not a whole lot to say, really.

  Lilly calls Victor; he’ll come over at once. Then she skypes Sukey.

  ‘Oh, Lilly,’ Sukey says, her short curly hair all tousled from sleep, her mouth moving slower than her voice. ‘I’ll get an earlier flight. I’ll be there as soon as I can’.

  This is the plan. It has all been discussed. Lilly knows what she is expected to do. She and her mother and Victor have worked it all out. She knows they are to engage a nurse from Central Hospice to help. She knows Victor is executor of her mother’s will. There is enough money for college and she is already the legal owner of their apartment.

  It’s almost noon. Lilly says goodbye to Victor. He holds her face in his hands and kisses the top of her head. ‘She was pretty talkative this morning,’ he says. ‘Probably wore her out. That and all the excitement about Sukey coming.’ But they both know she is more than just tired. Lilly goes to pick up the tea mugs near her mother’s chair. There’s a box with its lid lying to one side. Lilly stops. She recognises it immediately for what it is. She has helped her mother prepare for the memory box workshops she used to run as a counsellor at the HIV/Aids centre. Lilly knows that on the lid there will be a self-portrait of her mother. She knows that her name and her birthday will be written underneath it. She knows, without looking, that there will be a space left open where Lilly can write in the date Adeela dies. She knows it will be soon. Lilly kneels on the floor next to the coffee table. She cannot read the writing on the side of the box, though she knows it will be a timeline charting the events of her mother’s life. She cannot read the writing because of the tears in her eyes.

  ‘Lilly,’ says Adeela. She is standing in the doorway, leaning against the wide, white-painted Oregon pine frame. ‘Lilly. Lilly. Lilly.’ She crosses and the room and lowers herself onto the floor, holds onto her daughter. They cling to each other, but it is Lilly who is holding Adeela up.

  Lilly helps Adeela into her chair, fetches a glass of water, then sits on the stool Victor sat on only hours before. The kitchen clock, a replica (though granted, it’s somewhat smaller) of the one in Grand Central Station, says twelve forty-five. Crystal is only due at two to administer today’s pain meds.

  ‘Shall I call Crystal, and ask her to come earlier?’

  ‘Uh,’ says Adeela, ‘I’ll be okay for a while still.’

  Lilly lays her head on the armrest of her mother’s chair. Its familiar, slightly dusty smell is mingled with something sharper, something menacing. Can a smell be menacing? She wants to burrow her head into her mother’s side like she did when she was little. Wants her mother to smell the way she smells when they’ve been lazing in the sun. Or out in the wind. Wants her to smell of pancakes, or of the spicy lamb casseroles she calls bredie, of the chopped dhanya Americans call cilantro. Not this sharp, impersonal smell that tastes metallic in her mouth.

  Adeela strokes her head. Lilly’s hair has been cut into a Chinese bob and Adeela tucks a stray end behind her daughter’s ear. At the base of her neck, just where it begins to curve into her shoulder, is a small tattoo, the shape of the African continent.

  ‘I was sure you were a girl, long before they could tell one way or the other, and by then I was already calling you Lilly,’ Adeela says. ‘When I went into labour, I knew I had chosen the right name. I knew you would arrive that night, even though you were taking so long. And you did. Quarter past eleven on the twenty-fifth of September. The same day as Lillian Ngoyi.’

  ‘Lillian Ngoyi? Who’s that?’ Lilly lifts her head and looks at her mother. ‘Was she an aunt or something?’

  Adeela is quiet, looking out the open French window, at her tree.

  ‘Somebody in South Africa, or somebody here?’ Lilly prompts. Her mother doesn’t ever talk about her family, doesn’t like to talk about when she lived in South Africa at all.

  ‘They called her the Mother of Black Resistance, the woman I named you after.’ Adeela takes a sip of water. ‘Have a look in the box, Lilly. There are a few pictures of her, near the top.’

&n
bsp; Lilly puts the box onto her lap and lifts out a clutch of papers. There is a set of black-and-white commemorative postcards tied in a striped ribbon. She pulls the ribbon, takes a card and turns it over to look at the photo. A middle-aged African woman looks away from her, her eyes gazing off to one side from beneath a high, pointed forehead framed by tightly combed back hair. There are deep lines running down from the sides of her nostrils to the edges of her wide-mouthed smile. It’s a formal picture, taken in a studio, maybe.

  ‘She looks like she’s seen something that has made her really sad,’ Lilly says, passing it to her mother. She always thought being named after a flower was lame, but she’s not so sure about being named for some politico either. Lilly looks at another postcard. Four women in old-fashioned clothes are linked arm in arm; behind them is a whole crowd of women. One of the four is wearing a sari; another is in a smart suit with a handbag draped over her left arm. She has dark glasses on under a careful hairdo.

  ‘That’s Lillian.’ Adeela points out the third woman, the one with a wide-collared shirt tucked into a full, calf-length skirt, two lines of braid stitched just above the hem. ‘That’s Helen Joseph’ – she points to the dark glasses lady – ‘and this is Albertina Sisulu. I can’t remember who this is just now. Her name will come to me … Sophia something.’

  ‘What are they doing? Looks like a march of some sort.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Adeela, ‘a very famous women’s march, in protest against the passbooks African people had to carry with them wherever they went.’

  ‘So I am named Lilly after a South African activist? Not the flower?’

  ‘Mhhh. I wanted to be like Lillian Ngoyi when I was a teenager. She was an incredible woman, Lilly.’

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘A few months after this picture was taken, she was arrested for high treason with hundreds of others, including Nelson Mandela. That was 1956, before I was born. She was kept locked up until she died. 1980. I started high school that year. She wasn’t just an activist, like those bourgeois types marching around Central Park shouting the odds for gay rights or gorillas in Uganda; she was a real heroine. She sacrificed her life fighting for an end to racism and sexism. I used to think our generation would finish that fight.’