by Zoe Wicomb
Sylvie stretches her arm, and with pointed index finger swivels it round once more. Not you, not you, not you. No one, ’cause none has dared to be Sylvie the good-time-girl, dared to plunge into purple. What does she care about the blood of a boer from long, long ago, the respectable blood that AntieMa bleats on about? That is a stale story of aged, tired blood that has clotted in varicose knots on the legs of old women.
Ousie says you have to press on and thank God for small mercies. She says that she too can see goodness deep down in Sylvie’s soul; Ousie knows that in spite of everything Sylvie loves God, that she is grateful for his mercy. Ousie makes Sylvie sit on the floor, clamped between her thighs, as she rubs oil into the girl’s scalp, rubs the excess into the crinkly hair shafts so that they glitter. Then Sylvie’s head leans heavily, drowsily against the soft thigh. Ousie shuts her eyes and, still rubbing, sings in a tremulous voice:
Jesus sal al jou sonde weg was,
jou sonde weg was, jou sonde weg was.
Jesus sal al jou sonde weg was,
as jy kom kniel by die kruis.
Of all the hymns in the book that is the dreariest, can barely be called a tune. But she, Sylvie, has knelt at the cross and in the gloom of the church has seen it surge forward and retreat, in and out of focus, breathing a purple light. The wooden cross studded with amethysts from which light shot in all directions, crisscrossing the ugly altar with shards of purple. Oh, she has seen that purple light before, waiting by the thicket of thorn trees for him to arrive, dressed in sin. As she was, dressed in sin. Sin all bundled up in the heap of garments they shed like snakes so that their bodies shone with purple light. It is a light that AntieMa, Ousie, Nana—her mothers—have never seen, will never see. It is for Sylvie alone. And for the cicadas who came out to line up in the light and screech about God’s love and sin.
Sylvie prefers the English word for SONDE, a neat, stylish word fit for Sundays: SIN. A looser kind of word that could shift back into Sense, Mind, Will. She bows. Ladies and gentlemen, I rest my case. But no, for them, the Afrikaans people, the hotnos, there cannot be a single, lightweight sin. No, always many, always heavy and fixed, always plural, creeping up on a girl, pumping her up with the bad. On days like today when her pool of vygies have burst into full purple flower she has no problem with sly sin. Let it lie in wait for her. God’s sin, which he will not acknowledge as his own. It is the month October. Al die kriekies kriek daar buite, elke sprinkaan spri-ing. The hellfires have been eclipsed by a purple glow, and she, Sylvie, is not afraid.
Ousie says that if she prays for forgiveness she will be spared to grow old and wise, and understand the ways of the Lord. Sylvie lowers her head and nods. They have no idea. Old and wise? No, rather old and ugly with bulging veins of stale blood, and who would wish that? Ousie used to be young and beautiful. Glamorous in her peep-toe shoes as she swung, laughing and light as a feather, from the Bitterfontein train onto that dusty strip where their coach came to a halt. With the cardboard suitcase that the bedding boy, winking, handed down to her. Why had she come back to this?
Ousie is my mamma, the child, Sylvie, once chanted, and AntieMa said, Yes, she is; we are all your mammas. Now Ousie sings dreary hymns, dragging out the O of sonde so that it chokes like so many op-art dresses stuffed down her throat.
It is a shame about Sylvie’s shirt. About the camera having fixed that moment. Not that she thinks the blue-green check does not go well with the jeans, but hooking her left thumb into the jeans pocket and easing her shoulder, the button has come undone and her bra shows. A clean white bra—her breasts, even if she says so herself, have always been lovely—but still, it spoils the pose. She had hoped for something else, something more sophisticated.
The October sun was already fierce, and she called, shouted at Jakkie to fetch her sunglasses in the wooden chest by her bed—there where she keeps the rollers and the hot comb. There’s nothing like a squint to make a girl look as common as a goatherd. Jackie sauntered over from behind the house, distracted, strumming his ramkie fashioned out of a fish-oil tin, and she told him to hurry, hurry otherwise she’d lose the whole damn style. In the meantime, waiting, she wrinkled her nose, snarled, smiled, smoothed back her hair with a limp film star’s hand.
Hurry u-up, she shouted, and it was Kytou who turned up with the glasses, which she had to snatch from him as he tried to balance them on his hotnos nose. Get, she said, voetsek, behind the house with you. This picture that she waves dry, this stylish Kool Kat Girl, is for her and her alone. Never mind about the button that has come undone.
Oom Hansie’s saw moans in tune with the old thorn tree swaying in the wind. Sawing, hammering, nailing. Little tongues of light lap at the shade, at his velskoen, where he saws and hammers under the tree. That’s now Oom Hansie, always by the klein-kraal where Sylvie’s hanslam totters on brand-new sin-free legs, its tail wagging. The picture pulses with the sound of an absent saw.
Later Kytou can have his photo with her, Sylvie, and the lamb. Kytou is okay; he does make her laugh, and she’ll let him wear the sunglasses for their pose.
It was not the job she had dreamt of, but after school, after all the things that happened, that filled their heads and leaked silent poison into the house, there was little else. It was Ousie with her town ways who came up with the plan. Not that anyone asked her, Sylvie; it was just announced, as she sat there cleaning the lamps with newspaper, getting the glass chimneys to shine clear as sunlight.
Sylvie was very, very lucky, they said, and her face fell. Oom Lodewyk would take her on in his butchery. Was she not the one who loved goats and sheep? AntieMa queried. Why then would she not be delighted with the plan? As if dead animals, carcasses, were the same as live ones. But she said nothing. All the things that happened was mos her fault and she should be grateful for something to fill the heaviness of those days, stifling with heat and the deafening shriek of cicadas.
No chance of getting to town, especially now that Ousie had come home. No chance at all. She would have to buckle down to the butchery, besides, there would be some money for herself, and perhaps she could have an account with the new Foschini that had opened in the dorp. Get some fashionable clothes. But AntieMa, by now fat as mutton and barely moving out of her chair, said that a decent girl brings home her wage envelope unopened, that her mothers would give her pocket money. Was there really no way of becoming an adult until you became a mother yourself? Sylvie did not think that she had the makings of a mother, the milky swagger, the whining voice. And who on earth would she team up with to do the mother-thing?
She would not let on to old po-faced Lodewyk that she found the meat cleaver scary. Steady does it, or bone would shatter into vicious splinters. Then it turned out to be not so terrible learning to make boerewors. Better than unpicking hems, lengthening skirts, and squinting over invisible stitching. Handwork, they called it at school. The good, the holy, done by hand alone. Busy hands to keep you out of trouble. Well now, with her hands she’d rather make sausages, boerewors. And what’s more, it may be damp as babies, but she knows which she prefers.
Grind the meat in the big old mincer, add just the right amount of salt, pepper, clove and coriander—although she cannot resist an extra dash of coriander—then leave the mixture overnight in the enamel tubs. No nasty cereals thrown in as they do these days in town, nothing nasty like that pink polony. Sylvie would stand over the tubs where time did not only pass, but slowly, wrapped up in itself and taking its own slithery time, mixed things through, drew the flavors into each other until there could be no telling where one stopped and the other started. It was time that brought something new called boerewors, and there was the wonder of it. That too is how a person gets through. You put up with waiting, with thinking of time working its miracle, changing one thing into another, even when your hands are tied behind your back, and when your mothers stand over you with three sets of eyes.
Sylvie does not like to think of large, greedy people gulping down fried sausage witho
ut so much as pausing to think of time trapped in that skin. Hers is the best boerewors in Namaqualand, all because of the extra dash of coriander and the patience, the waiting for time to do its blending business overnight.
She has finished with the sausage maker, the forcing of flavored, spiced mutton through yards and yards of skin. The same mixture through two different sizes to make thick or thin boerewors, because people are so foolish as to believe one to be better, tastier than the other. The machine is washed, the mincer cleaned and put away, and sausages hang neatly from the hooks on the long steel rod. From the end of the steel pole the iron pail hangs, nice and clean, scrubbed free of mutton fat.
When Sylvie first arrived it was a grungy thing, never cleaned because old Lodewyk said that storing fat did not make it dirty. Yes, she’s made a few changes around here, and all for the better. There was no point in hardening her heart against the place, standing stiffly at the counter, or sulking at having to use the cleaver. Rather, she allowed herself to be drawn into the precision of severing a joint, cracking a rib, turning sheep’s neck into neat chops, getting all to shine and sparkle. Now the place could not be faulted for order and cleanliness.
Sylvie sets up the camera as soon as old Lodewyk leaves wearing his black waistcoat, with a fake leather folder under his arm. The pompous old fool always dresses smartly to go to the bank, as if those boere-meneers would notice. Hardly anyone comes into the shop in the early afternoon; she need not fear any disturbance. A pity about the black doekie that she has to wear bound tightly around her head; she does not think her forehead is rounded enough for such severity, but never mind, there are always ways of flouting the rules, finding pleasure in transgression, even if the ones you trespass against do not know. Sylvie’s black doekies have a secret splash of color, a patterned corner here or there, so that folded, a flash of floral is at the brink of revealing itself. A man, a dull man like old Lodewyk, will never notice. She whips it off, refolds it so that the spray of green leaves shows. A photo needs some color.
AntieMa thinks the doekie is an affront. The Willemse sisters never wore such things; their hair is not of the peppercorn kind that has to be tucked away. What’s wrong with a white polystyrene hat like the boer butchers wear? AntieMa’s objections make it easier for Sylvie to wear the doek. And Lodewyk does not deign to reply. He stomps and grunts. Typical of the Willemses. Full of airs and graces, and never satisfied.
Even if Sylvie says so herself, the sausages look fine, perfectly marbled with the red of mutton and the creamy-white of fat in just the right proportion. Dappled and gleaming, glory be to God. Sylvie sets up the camera and does the customary skip, a little good-luck akkeltjie before its knowing eye, before smiling, calm and composed, holding a rope of perfect sausage in her outstretched arms. In her left hand, the end is lightly pinched between thumb and index finger; the right hand is slightly raised with loops and loops of sausage draped over it. She throws back her shoulder triumphantly—tirrah—smiles broadly, in spite of herself, in spite of the pity of it, of her, Sylvie, the Kool Kat, the Wicked One, the Good Time Girl, beaming in a butcher’s shop.
Her face is lit with pride. Only fear of someone bursting in prevents her from wrapping a length of sausage around her neck. Like a rich silk scarf. For it is a cold winter’s day—people think it doesn’t get cold in Namaqualand but Yissus, it can be bitter. Her fleece is zipped up to her throat. She could toss the length of sausage over her shoulder with the flip of her hand, just so, just like the film star on TV, the one in Egoli. Instead, this tame pose, but never mind, she smiles brightly, if out of breath, and click, click, it’s done.
Think of it as an advert in Huisgenoot. Healthy boerewors for the family, recommended by a healthy, smiling young butcher. Sies-sa-aa! that’s Sylvie. As long as no one mistakes her for a mother.
Sylvie has the perfect idea. Imagine, in the dark. On a summer’s night. Stealing into Lodewyk’s butchery. The moon just about skimming the window so that an eerie, film-set light is cast over everything. Over the streamers of sausage that gleam as moonlight lifts out speckles of shiny white fat. She, Sylvie, having stripped off all her clothes, would coil the sausage around her nakedness. Carefully, slowly, starting at her feet. Hitse! what a gedoente getting it round and round herself, coils of marbled sausage cool against her skin. Neatly, like an Egyptian mummy, a queen wrapped in time. And if the sausage skin should break? Ag, the sausage meat would stay, plastered to her skin, grafted onto her. Sylvie, the Sausage Girl, brand-new as a baby, at one with her handwork.
Oh, but she would need a better camera, a flash, and besides, you couldn’t sell such a heap of used boerewors. What would she do with all that secondhand sausage, warmed by her flesh? Only good enough for the dogs. What a waste, what a dog’s dinner that would be.
Sylvie stares with furrowed brow at the picture. Oh no siss, ooh siesa! The end of the sausage looped in her hand hangs down behind her right arm, just long enough to stick out, and she grimaces, like a—a thing.
As a child, Sylvie loved playing at the klein-kraal where Oom Hansie worked at weekends with his sawhorse and plane. There were the beautiful curls of pale, shaven wood to twist around her fingers, and she would pick up to examine in turn the chisel, the hammer, or the wide-toothed saw, but Oom Hansie did not mind.
Doff, doff, doff she drummed with her hands in tune with his hammering. AntieMa said it would do no good, that the child would get in the way, even hurt herself, that she should keep away from the klein-kraal. Hansie, she said, was being forward now that Ma bless-her-soul was dead. But Ousie came to Sylvie’s defense. What harm could come of it? Hansie, she said, would always keep an eye on the child, would not be a nuisance. If the thorn tree was the place where he chose to spend his spare time, it was none of their business; the klein-kraal belonged to everyone. At least the child had in him a good example of useful work. AntieMa pursed her lips but gave in to the homily that presented itself. Idle hands, she intoned, make devil’s work.
What was Oom Hansie making? Sylvie asked. The man mumbled something she could not follow. Later he gave her the three-legged stool with her name, SYLVIE, carved around the edge of the seat. Would she be allowed to keep it? Of course, he said, although she should ask her mothers. He said she was a kleinnooi, now with a throne of her own, and held out his hand to ruffle her hair, but she deftly slipped aside. AntieMa would not like that; AntieMa said there was no call for touching people, other than the circle of handshaking after the church service.
No longer did Sylvie sit cross-legged on the earth, her skirts tucked into her broekies. Oh no, she dragged her stool around the yard, sat perched on it, swinging her legs and surveying the veld. Fancies himself a carpenter, AntieMa sniffed, inspecting the stool. Not bad, she conceded, but it won’t last, was bound to fall apart, especially with the child traipsing with the thing all over the yard. She would let Hansie know that they were not poor people in need of furniture.
Sylvie was in Standard Four when walking back from school with her friend Janie, they came across Oom Hansie, his hand raised in greeting. Kleinnooi, he smiled, and doffed an imaginary hat. Janie whispered that everyone knew the man was a freak, a madman and a pervert, that they should turn round and run. Which they did. But Sylvie was ashamed. She knew that it wasn’t true, and when next she saw Oom Hansie with his hammer and saw she went to the klein-kraal, dragging her feet through the dried mimosa balls, up and down, until he called her over and said if she came next week he would bring something he had made for her. Not a word did he say about Janie, and so flooded was her heart with gratitude that she could not speak. She shook her head, then nodded. Yes, she’d be there.
Thus it was that Oom Hansie presented her with a chest, a wooden box made of slats in which he said she could keep her private things. Sylvie held out her hand formally to say thank you, then let out a whoop of delight. Yislaaik, she crowed, but she would have to find a pretty cover so that no one could peep through the slats.
The next day Oom Hans
ie brought a small Bokomo flour bag and showed her that if one unpicked the stitching on the sides it turned into a single length of cloth. If you washed it, he said, you could embroider in nice colors all around the faded images of corn on both sides. Green for the stalks, yellow for the cobs, which he warned would take some nifty needlework to pick out the individual kernels, and then any color you fancy for the surround, although it might not be desirable to draw attention to the cloth’s origin by embroidering the words, BOKOMO.
Sylvie thought otherwise. She did not mind this handwork. It took a while to do the yellow corn, as well as a crocheted edging for the whole cloth in red. But the large letters of BOKOMO were easier, picked out in bright turquoise. Draped over the rough chest, the words became a special reminder of Oom Hansie. What did she care that AntieMa thought it common or backward to have a flour sack as a drape? As long as she kept her nose out of Sylvie’s chest.
What do you keep in there? the old woman asked. It was a secret. She wouldn’t say that all there was was a pale blue bird’s egg and her Standard Three Reader with the story about a girl’s red shoes that she had not returned to school. And a handful of boklam’s perfect drolletjies.
Mist in the shallow valley crept up slowly like a thief across the field, toward the motorway. If you looked, it stopped in its tracks, guiltily. Like a game they played as children, What’s the time, Mr. Wolf. Which, of course, was no good with only two of them.
Why was Mercia on a bus rather than on the train to Edinburgh? Ever conscientious, she worked at it, the being-left-behind, the management of loss and grief. Everything was different, and to maintain control, to keep on top of things, difference itself had to be cultivated. So why not the bus, why not see for herself why people of her kind preferred the train?
Now was the time, she said to Smithy, to assess all her habits, to check whether there was room for change. Craig’s defection, his loss of interest in her, may well have happened because of her unexamined habits. A loved one may once have turned a blind eye, but in time would come to raise an eyebrow at slovenliness, at the old slippers and shabby dressing gown she clutched around her on a Sunday morning until well into the day.
