by Zoe Wicomb
Jake shook his head, stabbed a finger into the side of his head. You’re crazy, man, cut it out, you’re imagining things. Let’s go for a drink.
Mercia thought that Jake had taken some of her argument on board. On her last visit before their father’s death, Jake seemed less exercised by him, appeared to have come to some understanding with the old man. Mercia wonders why it did not occur to her then that Jake’s experience was different from hers, that perhaps as a child he was not indulged as she sometimes was. Nicholas would have believed it his duty to turn the boy into a man, to toughen him, and so suppress all that he believed to be girlish. Why had she expected Jake to melt at her soppy little tale about an egg? Why had she not remembered instead her little brother sobbing, having stubbed his big toe on a stone? Blood streamed from the toe as he hopped on one foot, trying to clutch the other. And Nicholas’s stern voice: a boy does not cry. Get down on your knees, say sorry to the stones, and stop crying right now. Because of your careless rushing about, you’ve disturbed God’s stones.
Yes, Jake was Nettie’s child, one who found it difficult to recover from her death. He chose to believe that their father had killed her.
Don’t be silly, the twelve-year-old Mercia said, how could he have killed her?
But Jake insisted that no one would want to live with such a brute; that his bellowing was enough to make their mother lie down and wish for death.
Oh, he was too young, too vulnerable, Mercia felt, to survive that death. How selfish of her to wish for a brother who would steer with his fingers on her head, thumb in the nape of her neck. Poor Jake. Too vulnerable for the idea of manliness that their father imposed on him. If only she had been old enough to protect her brother. Instead, she thought of the stepmother of fairy tales who would ruin their lives.
Please don’t marry again, the adolescent Mercia pleaded after her mother died, and her father said no, that he would devote himself to them. And his reward?—Mercia’s defection to Europe. If only she had not been so intent on escape. If only she had spent time with him during that short illness. If only Craig had left earlier, then she would have come home and eased things between father and son. As if they were children, she corrects herself. Why on earth would she who has chosen not to have children take on a motherly role?
Mercia regretted that she was unable to see Jake during his recovery at home in Kliprand. She had been engulfed with work, and reports from both father and son gave her permission to stay away. There seemed to be a truce as a no doubt chastened Jake submitted to his father’s care.
When Mercia eventually cleared time to visit, Jake was sardonic. Well, who is the hypocrite now? He laughed at her solicitous questions about the Willemse girl he had married. Go on, let it out, he said, putting on a high-pitched mimicking voice to ask: What on earth, Jacques, are you doing with one of those people? I thought, he said, I was giving the old man a lashing here but no look, my leftie, egalitarian-minded big sister is the one to be appalled.
Mercia was disappointed to find the old rancor still there. Good God, she remonstrated, don’t tell me you married the poor girl in order to punish Father. That would be so childish, and what’s more, so cruel to Sylvie—and to yourself.
Jake cackled. Remember what Grootbaas used to say when we were little: don’t show your teeth to those people—whatever that meant—they are not our kind. Well, there’ll have to be plenty of teeth on display for all of you. Sylvie’s pregnant.
Mercia mouthed her congratulations. She could only hope that fatherhood would keep Jake on the straight and narrow, though really, it seemed irresponsible, the casual way in which he took to reproduction.
Ag man, Jake conceded, we get along, the old man and I. And he’ll like being an oupa. Too old and decrepit he is now to think of whipping a child.
True, Nicholas was not well at all, but he brushed off Mercia’s anxious questions about his health. Yes, yes, he said impatiently, he’s seen the doctor. All he needs is his favorite chicken and barley soup that Nettie used to make. The old country convention of cooking the entire chicken leg, foot, claws and all, was repellent to Mercia, but no, he insisted that that was best. The strong flavor, he claimed, the medicine that would restore his health, was from the gelatinous stuff of the joints; he would eat nothing else. Mercia poured boiling water over the hideous claws and scraped off the yellow scales.
Her father, diminished, had a faraway look in his dimmed eyes, the old stentorian voice turned down. If he knew of Sylvie’s pregnancy, he chose not to speak of it. Instead he reminisced about Nettie, about how lovely it would be if Mercia would come again with him to see the old place, the mission station where Nettie grew up. Oh yes, he wittered, Nettie also loved a good chicken soup with specks of yellow chicken fat and bits of tomato, not too much tomato, mind, just a speck of red, a couple of spoonfuls to bring out the chicken flavor.
Really, Mercia would have to stop him. She would have to speak of the child before she left. She winced at the thought of a baby—bald, helpless, mewling, waving its arms and legs involuntarily, like seaweed in water; she could only hope that it truly was the case that old people liked having grandchildren.
She tested the waters. You’ll want to be well by the time the baby comes. Jake will need your help.
Yes, Nicholas said, without enthusiasm. I said I’d help with a house that his wife has an eye on. He was very ill, you know, with the drink. Perhaps a child will settle him. Nicholas shifted into the plaintive mode. I did my best, he started, and Mercia shut her ears—surely not the old litany about saving and sacrificing. Why don’t we talk about chicken soup, she said.
Mercia thought that the house would please Jake, demonstrate their father’s care for him. Sylvie was over the moon. Ooh, she crooned, patting her flat belly, how nice it will be for the baby to start somewhere decent, a nice little room with a real cot. I’ll paint it bright yellow, and with nice sunny curtains . . . She looked up into Jake’s stony face. Or, what do you think, Jake? Don’t you like yellow?
Do what you like, he snapped.
Mercia intervened. That’s no way to talk to your wife, Jake, but he interrupted. Just keep out of it, okay; you know nothing. I don’t want the old man’s house, and I don’t know what’s got into Sylvie. She’ll take anything, sell herself for a pair of curtains.
Ag, Sylvie said, he’s trying to be the old bad Jake. Look, I’ve cooked a nice tomato bredie, and she proceeded to set the table for two.
But aren’t you going to eat with us? Mercia inquired.
Looks like she doesn’t want to, so let her be, Jake said. We’ve got a lot to talk about; you’ve been away so-o long, he accused. His voice had softened so that Mercia did not insist. She thanked the girl for the food, and watched her leave the room.
So how’s this Scotsman of yours doing? Jake asked. Is he giving you enough to eat? You’re so thin. Not skimping on the food is he? And he roared with laughter.
Mercia sighed. It’s not funny, Jake. And do try to remember that I work; I’m a senior lecturer and I don’t rely on anyone to feed me. Craig is my partner, not my father.
For all the sparring and Mercia’s exasperation, Jake became once again the exuberant brother of her youth, who made her laugh with his impersonations, his parodying of members of their family and of politicians. Was it really so long ago that they huddled together in a mealie field, where the sky above had shrunk into a narrow blue strip, the satin edge of a familiar blanket in which they wrapped up together, protected from the world of adults?
Mercia did not speak of the child, and neither did Jake. They ate and laughed and drank Sylvie’s homemade ginger beer until late that night. It was only as she snuggled under the easi-care sheets and heard the girl bustling about in the kitchen that she wondered about Sylvie. What had Sylvie been doing whilst they sat at the table? Where had she gone? Had she been waiting outside on the stoep for them to finish?
If Sylvie had any memories of Ma and Pappa, whom AntieMa so piously invoked, she wou
ld not encourage them to lodge with her. The house was already chockablock with the mustiness of old people, relieved only rarely when Ousie came home, and that did not last beyond the day of her arrival, when the mustiness engulfed her.
Ousie worked in Cape Town and people said that she wore red Cutex lipstick. Not that she would have dared come home with painted lips, oh no, AntieMa would never have allowed her to cross the threshold in such a state. The Sodom and Gomorrah ways had to be left behind, but the sisters did not mind Ousie’s wages as a nurse’s aide at Groote Schuur; in fact, they boasted about her neat check uniform and the white cap that was nothing like a servant’s. They said that Ousie was trying.
When Ousie arrived, always after New Year’s Day when the Cape Town drunks were nicely bandaged up or safely behind bars, she brought a whiff of the modern that drifted around her person like perfume, guided the eyes to her white peep-toe shoes and the op-art shift that stopped just on the knee. AntieMa thought that a final band of black added to the hem would not go amiss, and Ousie nodded dolefully. There was no avoiding the improvement.
For the child, Ousie also brought clothes, which AntieMa inspected for decency, and often there was a hem to be let down, an extra buttonhole to be made. Which at the age of eight Sylvie was already capable of doing herself. Oh yes, AntieMa said, a girl-child must know how to do such things. As a good wife and mother your stitching must be near invisible.
Why did Sylvie not find it odd that they called each other AntieMa, Nana and Ousie, the names that she, the child, called them by? But Sylvie did wonder why she should have to be a wife and mother when none of the sisters, her sisters, was. But were they her sisters? Had Ma, whom she no longer could remember and who, AntieMa said, was as sin-free as the pebble-white hills, also been her mother? Or was she Sylvie’s ouma?
Don’t keep yourself old-fashioned, AntieMa, the spokesperson for all three, would reply, by which she meant that the child should not be precocious. There were things that you did not ask your elders. Sylvie knew that she was being fobbed off. AntieMa said: Of course Ma was mother to all of us, but we three are also your mothers. You, Miss Cheeky, have lots of mothers. Which did not sound grand at all. Lots of lace-edged hankies with embroidered corners, or flower hair slides, or a paper bag full of nickerballs—that would be something, but here was one example of lots not being so desirable. To have brothers and sisters, lots of other children in the house, that too would be good. But many mothers—whoever had heard of that? Lissie in her class claimed to have seen a picture of a giant woman, with a whole row of breasts and several feet, who would qualify as both one and many mothers. Nana said that other less fortunate children may not know of such a condition and therefore make up silly stories, but she, Sylvie, was just unusually lucky. And when Ousie came home they would have so much holiday fun that the sisters knew Sylvie would not spoil things by asking old-fashioned questions. And she didn’t. Not even what Ousie’s trying meant, what she was trying for.
See, they said, that was why the child had the beautiful name Sylvie, which meant Good Girl. She had always tried to be the Good Girl that AntieMa said she was—deep down. Except for the time when Sylvie took a sixpence that turned out to have been deliberately left under a chair by Nana as a test. Then AntieMa pursed her mouth and shook her head sadly. What could anyone expect of a child shot through with sin? she asked.
The Willemse sisters were respectable, and not bad looking either, but too full of themselves, people said, almost as snooty as the Murrays, whose house had a verandah and glazed windows. Which the light-skinned Willemses did not have, and neither did they have such good hair, such good blood, so why they gave themselves airs and graces, no one knew.
Ai Goetsega! the old people had sniggered, next thing they’ll be taking on the English talk like the Murrays. Just as well they didn’t have the book learning. Ouma Willemse, with her sour-fig face perched on a regal neck, would have nothing less than a teacher court her girls, and ones with hair to boot, so that the local young men gave up. Pride will come to a fall, they said vengefully, as one by one the men had been turned down, and now, look, a clutch of crooked spinsters with only the small child, whom no one could account for.
Where had the lovely child come from?
The Goodlord has given her to us, they said, and who could argue against such a gift? Which also meant that Sylvie could not leave home, would never be allowed to live in town. Her mothers had pledged to God that she would keep out of Sodom and Gomorrah.
When finally Ousie was of an age and had had enough of trying, she did the decent thing and came home to Namaqualand. Groote Schuur no longer was the glorious place it had been in Dr. Christiaan Barnard’s day. (Ousie thought it only correct to call him by his full name and title.) The trained nurses were lazy, leaving more and more work to experienced aides, and there were too many cheeky African girls who would not take orders. Ousie was of the old-fashioned kind who expected Xhosa girls to look up to her. No, at forty-eight she was a Big Woman, and she had had enough. She would rather go home, tend to chickens, sell eggs, and possibly find work as a housekeeper in the dorp. This time Ousie’s gifts were worthy of one retiring from city life. But that was it, she sighed, final gifts. She was tired; she had had enough of trying.
For Sylvie, there was a camera, and Sylvie did not tire of taking pictures of herself. AntieMa did not approve. Especially later when the girl started dressing up. It was profane, vain, and as the preacher said, vanity must come to a fall. Did the girl have no shame? All those tight, tight clothes that would give any healthy person the hiccups, the skirts too short and the necklines too low, enough to make her mothers choke with shame, but where was hers? Where was Sylvie’s shame? And how could her sewing skills be put to such shameful use?
What do the Old Ones know? They are of another world. They have not noticed how the world around them has changed. Even Ousie for all her city ways is old, wears her colored cringe like a shawl tightly held around hunched shoulders, knows nothing of the world. They think of the new as tarred roads, water from a tap, telephone wires. They do not see that the young are new, that their bodies are fresh, that music beats in their blood, that with their heads lifted to the blue sky, their spirits soar way, way above the little church steeple. Hitse! This is the New South Africa. Even here, in what they call the godforsaken Namaqualand. But the young do not mind that God has forsaken the land. If that is how he wants to play it, so be it.
Here before her silver screen, Sylvie can be anyone at all, but today she is the Reckless One, the Daredevil Goosie who smokes and drinks and who is . . . yes, she’ll say it: envied by all. The Good Girl, who has slipped in a teenie-weenie word to become the Good Time Girl. She has borrowed Tiena’s cream canvas jeans and tucked her cigarettes into the right pocket. Just so, on the hip, which she thrusts forward, so that the packet of Marlboros (she always transfers her ciggies into a Marlboro packet) shows. Smoking Can Kill, it says. And you better believe it!
Hitse, all it takes is a skip, a leap or two into a pose—forward, backward, onward Christian soldiers—to be someone else. What does she care? Sylvie does not need a mirror for messing around with her mouth, pouting, or pulling it to the side, tilting her head like the girl with the glossy hair in the Clairol picture. She can stretch out her arm, point a finger, skim it across, taking in you and you and you, all of you stuck-up ones, who will say not a word against her, who wouldn’t dare, ’cause why, she is the Reckless One who’s seen it all, who doesn’t care. Who has Three Mothers. Pity the camera can’t record that movement of the arm swiveling across the imaginary crowd. Pity all has to be rehearsed, for there’s the business of setting things right, then running to take up a practiced pose, breathless and just having to hope for the best, hope that the just-arrivedness does not break through the glossy print.
Sylvie has shooed them all out of the way, but Jakkie and Kytou can be heard messing about behind the house, so that it takes some concentration getting the haughty look. How does one
stop oneself from laughing out loud? Perhaps it is too much of a sneer, but it will do, it will do for a Kool Kat. Then Oom Hansie starts up. Stationed at the gate of the klein-kraal, in the dappled shade of the thorn tree, he has begun his usual business of hammering, sawing, nailing down. Just as she thought that he had finished. There is a large bird circling, right above her head for God’s sake. Is it a bird of prey? a hawk? a buzzard of some kind? Come, she shouts, waving a fist, come and get me if you can.
Some will say, what about the flowers, the two pools of purple on either side of her. Well, what about it? A picture needs something pretty, some color. What is there to say except that every year, true as the clock strikes twelve at midday, these patches of dreary old vaalbos, so dead you can kick at it with shod feet and same difference, these two bushes go berserk, and explode, ag, like so many stars into this wild purple, pools of pure flower, with not so much as a tip of gray leaf showing. All around is gray, gray, gray dust, that is, not counting the common gousblom, a bleached yellow, so insipid that as a teenager Sylvie used to pop them into her mouth and swallow them whole whilst Jakkie and Kytou, still laaities themselves, looked on in awe. But here, where she has planted the vygie, its crazed October color bleats like a goat whose lamb is being slaughtered. Which she has always known is for her, Sylvie, and her alone. That is why she turned the patch into a garden, arranged the stones, which Jakkie helped her carry, into an enclosure. In the veld she dug up kanniedood and koekemakranka, and planted them around to show up the glorious purple. That’s not a garden, Jakkie sneered, but what does he know? Jakkie’s job is to do as she says.
If, as AntieMa sighs, the devil has blown into her blood, then that blood is the screaming purple of vygies here at her feet. More Namaqua Daisy than the bottle of sweet wine she could swig in one breath, in a single gurgle. Who amongst the meide could do that? Who could claim that pool of bold purple faces turned to the sun, daring it to scorch?
