‘Don’t touch me, Braham.’ She pushed his hand away. ‘You know it gives me the creeps.’
‘Let me see what you’re writing.’
She pushed the bill towards him; nothing on it was legible.
‘What is written underneath the ink, Gertruidah?’
‘That I want to love you.’
‘Then love me, won’t you? Come with me to the hospital fundraising dance next Friday night.’
She crumpled the napkin into a tiny ball; wiped the table again. His hand on her wrist. She felt her bladder contract from the shock and tickle. She hated feeling the tickle in her bladder. ‘I don’t own a dress. I can’t dance. And I’ll run away if I have someone so close to me an entire evening.’
‘Where do you want to run to, Gertruidah, and why?’
‘I’ll never stop running.’ With a toothpick she drew circles on the table. ‘I have to go, Braham. My father’s waiting for the lawn-mower blade and it’s almost milking time.’
She placed the right amount inside the plastic bill folder but he took out the notes and held them out to her. ‘It’s my turn to pay. Won’t you stay a little longer, please?’
‘Not today. And I won’t come to town next Friday so don’t wait for me.’
She slipped the notes underneath the vase with wild chestnut flowers. Once on the dirt road she wound up the window to keep out the swirling dust. She seemed to be sitting on something slimy, something that seeped out of her lower body over which she had no control. She beat her hands against the steering wheel, her voice echoing around the cabin. Abel Strydom, what have you done to me! What are you still doing to me! I wish you’d die! I wish I was dead!
The next time they met at The Copper Kettle she wrote on the plastic tablecloth with her finger so her words remained a mystery to Braham.
The first letter she learned to write was A. For Anthony. It looked like a house with a high-pitched roof and no chimney. She used to see it on Anthony’s school books on weekends when he was home from boarding school. Anthony didn’t mind if she paged through his school books. He was six years older than her. He and Mabel were in the same grade but he went to the town school while Mabel went to Auntie Margie’s farm school on Sweetwater. Coloured children weren’t allowed at the town school until 1992, and by then Anthony had been dead seven years. Mabel became Gertruidah’s guardian angel both in the hostel and at school. Because Mabel could always be counted on to fight for her.
Leave Gertruidah alone, you bitch, or I’ll smash your face in!
What, you hit me, you bloody common kitchen maid? That Friday Mabel sat detention because she’d called the white child a bitch. And the white child went home although she’d called Mabel a common kitchen maid.
There were many incidents like this, but Mabel always stood her ground.
She was four and Anthony ten when he died. All she remembers about the funeral is a sheet of paper with light purple Jesus hands, and the A in his name just below them. She knows she must stop brooding about Anthony; he’s been dead for over twenty-two years. She never even really knew him. All she knew was the sense of disillusionment that covered Umbrella Tree Farm like a dark blanket after he was dead.
Still, she sometimes dreams about him with disturbing clarity. Dreams about the tiny birthmark on his forearm or the time his toenail fell off after his toe got caught in the mouse trap; dreams about a birthday cake shaped like a tractor, with the icing in John Deere green and yellow. When she wakes up, her eyelashes are wet and her heart heavy. But even in the wasteland of her most distant memory she knows it’s not Anthony she’s sad about. She’s sad about something inside herself.
No one ever told her how Anthony died. But she heard all about it all the same, whenever Abel and Sarah fought. Especially if Abel was drunk. He was seldom drunk out of his mind but when he was, he was uncontrollable, mad. His rage lasted until it gave way to sorrow; only then would he grow calm.
No matter how it started, every fight ended up being about Anthony’s death, which was why she knew far more than they realised.
Stupid Gertruidah.
If they only knew how clever she was.
The rain has gone; the wind has died down. The mountainside lies wrapped in a thin skin of fog. Aside from the frogs there’s a holy silence, as if the earth is holding its breath. The smoke has gone at Mama Thandeka’s house.
She walks to the shed to fetch the shopping from the truck. Water sloshes inside her shoes and her funeral blouse clings to her breasts. She won’t take the food inside the house. She’ll store it on the shady side of the water tank and cut the bread with her penknife. The penknife has often come to her rescue in the veld.
Her father brought the knife back from an agricultural tour to Switzerland in 1992, when she was in grade four. The date is written under the flap of the leather pouch. It was the same year she asked her teacher if she could take the class’s dictionary back to the hostel for the afternoon. She wanted to look up the meanings of allergy, therapy, genetic, trauma and masturbation because they’d been milling around her head for so long.
‘Why are you looking for those words, Gertruidah?’ the teacher had asked, her eyes wide.
‘Because.’
‘Don’t lie to me, Gertruidah, why those words?’
‘I dreamed about them.’
She could tell the teacher wasn’t going to leave it at that but she didn’t want to talk – her dad said she mustn’t talk. So she imagined there was a slime sausage in her throat and threw up on the teacher’s feet. Throwing up was easy if you thought of a slime sausage. Then the teacher got all concerned about you and let you have your way. Someone being concerned about you felt good. Being allowed to take the dictionary to the hostel made you seem important.
Allergy. Sensitivity to allergens.
Therapy. Treatment for illnesses, disorders.
Genetic. Regarding the genesis of something.
Trauma. Injury, scar.
Masturbation. Sexual self-gratification.
She understood little of it. It made her think of when her father branded the Bonsmaras. Although she felt sorry for the cattle she wished she were a cow so she wouldn’t have to sleep in her bedroom at night. The mark from a branding iron healed after a while but the things that took place in her bedroom made her sick.
When she opens the door of the truck, the smell of oranges hits her nose. She feels light-headed from hunger, and from thinking in circles, calling up images of the past. From uncertainty over whether the things she remembered were the truth. Could they have happened differently, or in a different order? How was she able to retain such big words for such a long time? Could she really read when she went to school? Was her memory shaped by a child’s understanding or had she coloured in her childhood with the knowledge, insight and skills of an adult?
What difference does it make, the when and where? Because nothing and no one can clear the fog of memory from her mind. The fright
