put on the face you’ll have to wear today.’
‘Please come.’
‘No. I must fetch wood before the rain starts. I just wanted to pick the flowers to scatter on the coffins, and only because I loved your mother. She taught me a lot.’
‘You’re lucky, Mabel. She never took the trouble to teach me …’
‘That’s a lie, Gertruidah. She gave up because you kept pushing her away. You never wanted to learn anything from her. She taught me,’ and Mabel nudged the basket with her foot, ‘that where too many wild chestnuts bloom you’ll find nothing but false riches. Fat wallets and lean hearts. Your mother was a good woman, Gertruidah, but your father …’
‘At least he had it in him to give you and your mother life interest in your house, and he …’
‘Life interest? Yes, Gertruidah, he did give me life. When Mama was already on the wrong side of forty and he a whipper-snapper of twenty-six. He owes us that life interest, Mama and me. I’m going now. Don’t forget the chest drops and the sugar and jelly babies.’
‘I need a favour, Mabel. Will you go inside the house and bring me my black pants and my white long-sleeved blouse? My black shoes?’
‘Heavens, Gertruidah, can’t you fetch your own clothes?’
‘I don’t want to go inside the house.’
‘So where’ve you been sleeping the last three nights if you didn’t sleep in the house?’
‘You who’s always spying on everyone, you know perfectly well I’ve been sleeping in the stone house. Bring a clean bra and panties too. And my hairbrush.’
‘Heavens, Gertruidah, do you imagine the house is haunted?’
‘No, it isn’t haunted, it stinks.’
‘I cleaned last Friday, what can it stink of already?’
‘It stinks of Abel and Sarah. Won’t you fetch my things for me please?’
Mabel had brought her things. ‘You must wash your hair, Gertruidah. You can’t go to the funeral with it all greasy. I’m going now. You must be strong today.’
At the far end of the lavender hedge Gertruidah caught up with her. ‘Thank you, Mabel. For the flowers. And for …’
Then Mabel reached out her arms. The scent of bruised lavender wrapped itself around them where they stood, half-sisters from the seed of the same man.
‘Drop a bloody big rock on his coffin, Gertruidah, and tell him I say thank you for the life interest.’
She sits upright. Her hands are blue from the cold, her wet pants draw a black outline for her thin body.
Down by the river the frogs have become a massed choir. For years now the river has been her church. After she discovered the Quaker book in the town library she stopped going to church or Sunday school. On Sundays when it was time to leave she’d run away. Then Abel would chase her, catch her and bundle her into the car. On the way there she’d be sick on his best suit. During the service she’d kick and kick against the pew in front of them until Sarah gave her leg a sharp rap. Then she’d cry blue murder while the minister recited the Ten Commandments. Or she’d deliberately pick her nose. Insist on going to the toilet during every service. Cling to the pew in front of her when it was time to split into groups for Sunday school.
She didn’t want to. She wouldn’t. She hated both the church and God. He left her alone in the dark, even if she prayed all night long. He allowed her father to sit in the elders’ pew and made her mother an important woman in the parish. Why didn’t He punish them if He was so clever and could see everything? What was the use of wedging the toe of a shoe underneath her door and asking God to keep it shut? What was the use of telling her mother about the ugly things if Sarah just slapped her shoulder and told her to stop making up stories?
The library book said Quakers didn’t believe in ministers or churches. So maybe being a Quaker was better because being a child of Jesus didn’t help one bit. The book said Quakers just sat quietly and waited; for what, they didn’t know. That was what she wanted to do: sit by the river and wait for the noise inside her head to grow silent. But it never did, it just got more muddled every day.
One sports day at school she went to hide under her father’s truck. She didn’t want to run in the relay race. Her petermouse hurt because the night before her father had wanted to pretend her petermouse was a stew pot and he was cooking a baby marrow in the pot. Then he stirred and stirred the baby marrow. It felt a little nice and a little sore. In the morning when she peed her petermouse stung so badly she pinched off the stream. Now her petermouse itched, and she wouldn’t run in the relay. From underneath the truck she could hear the women talking on a blanket beneath the blackwood tree.
That child’s behaviour must be the bane of Abel and Sarah’s lives, they said. Abel says he can’t chase after her in his best suit every Sunday. It’s easier to leave her with the maid, she’s so disruptive in church. Sarah says she’s safe wandering in the mountains because the Jack Russell looks after her. But I’m not so sure … Here it’s time for the relay and she’s vanished without a trace. What a life she must lead Abel and Sarah. She was such a cute little girl too, but after Anthony was killed she changed overnight …
She didn’t preach to the frogs, just sat on the sand and listened to the voices inside her head. Sometimes they sounded like horses’ hooves or dry leaves. Sometimes she heard a clock ticking inside her head even though there wasn’t one for miles. Then she cried. And cursed. Scrubbed her hands with sand until they stung and she thought at last the smell of fish was gone. Or she wrote words in the sand with a reed and erased them again.
Sharing her words with other people was a struggle because there seemed to be a raw sausage stuck inside her throat. To forget about the sausage and because she didn’t want to be a stew pot, she wrote more words and sentences in the sand.
Erased them.
Wrote.
Erased.
One Friday afternoon after matric she and Braham were sitting at the corner table in The Copper Kettle, hidden behind the maidenhair fern. If the corner table was taken, she waited until the people left. Only the corner table would do. She didn’t want to feel surrounded or trapped, she wanted to sit so she could see the restaurant door. She needed to know where the door was in case she had to escape.
‘People are talking about us, Braham.’
‘In a small town everyone’s always talking about everyone else.’
‘They say you used to be my teacher and you must be crazy to …’
‘Let them say what they like.’ He stroked her knuckles. She yanked her hand away. ‘I want to sit with you. Other people don’t bother me.’
She took the pen out of the plastic bill folder and scribbled on the back of the bill in tiny, barely legible letters. She used only the letters in her name. Tired. Gathered. Tirade. Drag. Tried. Daughter. True. It was an escape. She crossed out every word after it was written.
‘Gertruidah, if you’re not wiping the table with a napkin ten times over, you’re writing on the bill. Look at me, Gertruidah
