and sounds. Could she have imagined it all?
No. Thinking that she was imagining things was what her parents had wanted her to believe.
Despite being washed by rain her arms feel dirty where the people at the funeral tea touched her. When she places the shopping bag on the base of the water tank, the phone rings again. What if it is Braham? She remembers his whispered words beside the grave: Let me know if you need me …
She needs him.
She doesn’t want to need him.
She takes the Victorinox from her pocket and polishes the red handle until it shines.
The year she got the Victorinox was also the year her mother dragged her out of the church one Sunday and gave her a hiding outside because she’d sung ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ so loudly. She never looked in the hymn book because to sing from the same book she’d have to stand close to her mother. She didn’t like her mother. It was better to keep all the hymns inside your head so you didn’t have to stand close to your mother.
Then her mother took her outside and said she was mocking the Lord if she sang ‘Polly shine your boots and shoes’. She hadn’t done it on purpose. It was what she’d heard the grown-ups sing. From then on whenever they sang ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ she ran away to Umbrella Tree Farm in her head, to sit by the river and talk to the creatures great and small.
The next September when her mother’s twin sister Auntie Lyla came to visit she brought her a hymn book of her own. She liked having her own hymn book. She liked reading the words herself, and not having to stand close to her mother.
She was thrilled about her Victorinox with the red handle and the black leather pouch she could hang from her waistband.
‘Come,’ her father said, ‘sit on my knee then I’ll show you what the knife can do. The Swiss are master knife-makers. This one is called a Victorinox. Over here!’ He slapped his knee as if she was a dog and he was ordering her to jump up against him. ‘No one at school will have an expensive Swiss army knife like yours.’
She didn’t want to sit on his knee. Didn’t want to!
But the red-handled knife was beautiful; she’d wanted a penknife forever.
And she only had to sit for ten minutes, even though it was bad. During the day, when the sun shone and someone might be around to see what her father was doing, it was different from the night. At night she didn’t sit on his knees; at night she knelt on hers.
At night she shouted, ‘Ouch!’ Loudly, so that her mother might hear. ‘Ouch!’ It stung where he slapped her bare hip and told her to be quiet. He said it was the place where her babies would come out one day and he had to make the hole bigger or her babies would get stuck inside her tummy. He said it was a father’s duty.
But she didn’t want to have any babies, ever. She didn’t want the hole to be bigger. She wanted Bamba to curl up at her feet, wanted her Lulu doll in her arms, wanted her mother to hear when she called. But no one cared what she wanted. No one knocked before they came into her room, and she wasn’t allowed a key. It was different at the hostel where you had to knock before going into someone’s room and you had a key for your locker in the study hall.
Her father said she couldn’t have a key for her bedroom. Her mother said her father knew best, but she knew she was lying. And her father lied too, but you couldn’t tell grown-ups they were lying.
‘Ouch!’ she screamed into the mattress.
Screaming didn’t help. No one heard.
She turned into Sleeping Beauty, asleep for one hundred years. And because the castle was overgrown with rambling roses covered in thorns, no one could come near her. She wasn’t Gertruidah Strydom: she was a sleeping princess on a featherbed. In her sleep, even though she wasn’t asleep, she drew a picture of the prince who would break through the rose thorns to wake her with a kiss.
When Braham Fourie joined the school as English teacher in her grade ten year, she couldn’t tell right away he was a prince.
After a while she forgot the ten minutes of knee-sitting. Forgot how the waistband of her shorts cut into the flesh of her abdomen as it was pulled tight from behind. Knuckles drilling against her tail bone as he wormed his hand inside. She no longer heard the panting in her neck. No longer felt his body jerk or the final bump, bump, bump against her back. She scraped the back of her shorts against the stoep wall to remove the rope of slime. Took Lulu down to the river; hugged her against her chest. ‘Thula thu, thula baba thula sana,’ she sang the song Mama Thandeka had taught her.
Ten minutes was nothing.
Your Victorinox lasted forever.
She imagined the day she would turn into a baboon that lived in the mountains, with no doors or walls. Then she would take her penknife with her. She could use her Swiss army knife to peel prickly pears in the veld, or to skin a porcupine if she were giddy with hunger. It had a screwdriver, bottle opener, ballpoint pen and toothpick. Tiny pliers for removing thorns. A ruler and a compass so you wouldn’t lose your way when fog rolled down the mountainside and you couldn’t see your hand in front of you. On one end of the ruler, a tiny magnifying glass to start a fire if you ran out of matches or they were wet. A torch the size of her little finger she could shine into Bamba’s eyes at night to check that he was alive.
It was her father who brought and gave her the knife. With love.
Abel who showed her how the knife worked while she was sitting on his knee. Also with love.
The difference between her father and Abel was as wide as a ravine.
And love was something she would never understand.
The maidenhair fern in The Copper Kettle was her witness that she told Braham: ‘I have no idea how to be good to you, ever. Because I don’t know what goodness is.’
Her stomach rumbles again. She hasn’t eaten anything since yesterday when Mama Thandeka sent Mabel with an enamel dish with mealie rice and curried potatoes and chicken livers. Mabel wanted to clean the house and do the laundry. But she sent Mabel home.
‘There’s nothing to do here, Mabel. Rather go …’
‘What about the laundry? There must be a bundle of sheets, I haven’t changed the beds since last Wednesday.’
‘Mabel, after the funeral tomorrow I’m going to burn the sheets.’
‘Heavens, Gertruidah, they’re good sheets! You can’t go and burn them, rather let me and Mama take them.’
‘I’ll buy you new ones. I don’t want their bedding here on Umbrella Tree Farm. Now go wash and braid your mother’s hair. You were going to do it on Sunday before the police came and everything got muddled …’
‘At least let me sweep the stoep and rinse out the milk cloths, and …’
‘There are no dirty milk cloths here. Now go, I want to make a sign for the gate. Tell your mother I said thank you for the food.’
‘What sign are you making for the gate?’
‘You’ll see when it’s done.’
After
