‘Circle City’. There were no traffic lights in Welkom, with their limiting options of straight, left or right. In Welkom you got to drive in circles, car-dancing, ‘Look to the right, give way, step to the left, merge, indicate, retreat…’ I’d lie in bed fantasizing about the freedom the road offered, the freedom of birds.
One stifling night, I woke from fitful sleep to white light spilling around the edges of my curtains. Pulling them back revealed a moon so startlingly huge I was convinced I could reach out and touch it. I wanted that light all over me—magic light, bright and clean and all mine—so I tiptoed down the hallway, hoping to open the French doors to the patio without making too much noise. The patio door was already open, and someone was sitting on one of the cane chairs, bathing in the moonlight, legs spread out, head thrown back against the floral cushioned headrest.
It was Dad. At first he didn’t notice me, so intent was he on the moon, on his thoughts, his hair standing up in places and falling in others, free of the hair oil that usually held it slickly to his scalp. Ice clinked as he drew a glass up to his lips and sighed with satisfaction. He was shirtless, his arms dark brown against the pallor of his chest; for a moment I felt nervous—was it okay for me to see him like this? Mom would be furious. ‘Girls do not see their fathers naked, or half naked; it’s sick!’ she’d say. But she was asleep, it was just Dad and me for once, so I got my bravery up and decided to approach him, heart beating clippity-clop, my neck prickly with apprehension.
I’d hardly ever had time alone with him. Yet I craved his attention more than anything, so very much. Mom accused me of being a ‘suck up’ and said my need for Dad’s attention ‘disgusted’ her. If I said, ‘Good morning, Daddy,’ that was sucking up; if I used the term ‘Dad’ instead of ‘Daddy’, that wasn’t only sucking up, it was something so bad that I didn’t dare ever call him that in front of her. If Mom caught Dad and I speaking on our own, that was sucking up of the worst kind, and if he touched me, I had done ‘a disgusting thing’. The punishment for these crimes was meted out as soon as he was out of sight: a pinch; a twist of the ear; or a belting, depending on how Mom felt on the day. As a result, I avoided Dad when she was around. Sometimes I couldn’t avoid him, though, like when he’d say, ‘I said, good morning, Kate.’ I could see how disappointed he was in me that I had no manners. But I had to judge carefully which evil I could endure better: Dad being hurt and mad at me; or Mom’s revenge. Usually, I chose to hurt Dad, and it broke my heart because I loved him so much, and I hated Mom equally for making me choose.
But there he was, alone, everyone else sleeping, so I stepped forward determinedly yet gingerly. He turned to look at me, and I couldn’t see what his sky-blue eyes were saying, but he used a gentle tone: ‘What is it, Kate? What do you want?’
‘Nothing, Daddy.’
‘Too hot for you?’
‘Yes, Daddy.’
‘Sit on the tiles; they’re nice and cool.’ Moonlight bathed us, me and my Dad, my real family, the only family I wanted. We stared out at the golden heat-shriveled lawn and dark trees of our garden, all lit up by the massive moon-lantern blazing down on us. At that moment the others were banished; they didn’t exist. Still, I couldn’t utter a word, not one of the thousand things I normally wished to share with him each day; the silence was only broken by the humming and swatting of mosquitoes.
‘Did you know that the French and British have built an aeroplane that flies faster than the speed of sound, Kate? Supersonic speed. It’s called the Concorde; this plane can fly any distance in half the time it would take a normal jet. It took me three months getting here by ship in 1957; a Concorde would take less than a day.’
‘Wow!’ was all I could manage, hanging onto his words.
My Dad spoke with a broad Scottish accent, rolling r’s, aah-ing his a’s, oh-ing his o’s, even though he’d left Scotland soon after graduating from university. ‘It’s important to know what’s going on in the world, Kate; your Mum was a smart woman, smarter than me by far. She always kept up with what was going on in the world, always had something to add to a conversation. You lot fill your ears with pop music day in and day out.’ He mentioned her just like that, as though it was normal. ‘She was the love of my life, your Mum. The love of my life. What was I supposed to do? You were just a baby. I had to work.’ Ice clinked against ice and glass, mirroring the clinking of his words in my brain, so vitally important but with no easy landing place in my jumbled head. I was still letting them sink in when Dad abruptly changed the subject: ‘What do you think about us getting a television set, Kate?’
‘Wow!’ was all I could manage again, still savoring and storing away ‘the love of my life’.
‘Finally, this country has entered the modern era. You’ll be able to see things that are happening in other parts of the world as though they’re happening before your eyes. Will you watch the news with me, Kate? Learn about the world?’
‘Really? Are you really getting a television set? Mom’ll be so happy!’ I fell into my role of Mom’s champion as inevitably as a baby poops its pants, and it felt just as uncomfortable, even humiliating.
‘Humph. I’m sure she won’t be watching the news!’
I hated myself then; why hadn’t I agreed? ‘Yes! I’ll watch the news with you! Yes! I want to know what’s going on in the world! I want to be smart like my mum, so you’ll be proud of me!’ I racked my brains for some way to draw him back to me, to stop him from shutting me out and wanting to be alone.
‘Go to bed, Kate, or you’ll be tired in the morning.’
‘Yes, Daddy.’ But my legs wouldn’t work; sitting cross-legged on the cool tiles had given me pins and needles. I reached for the chair Dad was sitting on, and he reflexively grabbed my arm to steady me. A touch, his touch, big strong hairy hands that could make everything all right—I didn’t want him to let go. I thought about pretending I couldn’t walk, anything to make him have to care about me, hold me, touch me more. I did that a lot in those days—pretend, act, dramatize—because I had to; Dad just didn’t seem to notice me otherwise. Neither of us enjoyed those moments, so fake and pathetic, but I had no idea how to reach him otherwise. I didn’t want to ruin things further that night, though, so I let him press me away.
‘Go on, now.’
‘Good night, Daddy—Dad.’
My heavy heart made for leaden feet that didn’t want to take me back to bed. There were no tears for all the withdrawn arms and unspoken words, but a burning, a great desire for revenge against the one who was to blame for all the loneliness. Mom!
Instead of going down the passageway and back to bed, I slipped through the ‘formal lounge’, which was a shortcut through to the dining room, and on into the kitchen and the pantry cupboard, my place of solace. The formal lounge was ‘out of bounds’ for the family, reserved only for guests, and it held all of Mom’s prized possessions: antique tables; silk cushions; paintings; and hundreds of silver ornaments. The drawers of an antique chest were stuffed with silverware wrapped in newspaper, which Mom unpacked once a month to admire and for Evelyn to polish and shine. I usually helped Evelyn with the shining—a tedious job, and I never figured out how to prevent my fingerprints from smudging all over the very thing I was trying to leave blemish-free, but this was one of the jobs I had to do because of the troublesome me that I was. Punishment.
Passing the chest that night, I got an idea, a most delicious secret revenge idea. There were so many pieces of silver jammed together and never used in there, I decided to select a newspaper-wrapped parcel and very carefully hide it among
