Dedication
To my family,
who know me best and worst.
And Miss Gloria Dunbar,
for teaching me “ The Difference”.
God take all the glory.
Motto
You will live by the sword
and you will serve your brother.
But when you grow restless,
you will throw his yoke
from off your neck.
Genesis 27:40
The Holy Bible
New International Version
Prologue
The teenager broke the bones of her neck and wrist and felt no pain. The core of her being, the person who in life had loved the colour red and soggy chips soaked in vinegar and salt, had left her body two years earlier. The husk that represented what was left of her was passing through an underground drainpipe that lay between a field and a residential suburb with a heavy business component. Stinking, litter-strewn, muddy water, swollen by heavy rains and the effluent of other people’s lives and carelessness, pushed the remains back and forth.
The current had carried its charge from an inactive storm drain, one protected from the usual winter floods by elevation and slope due to pipe failure along a length of the system. The body had lain dry and undisturbed over two summers, but particularly heavy rains caused the concrete channel to shift and settle once more. The corpse’s rest was finally over as the swollen flow of water knocked it through several metres of sub-city planning, abuse the bones weren’t holding up against too well. The cause of the neck break was a simple matter of size and mechanics: the larger channel diverted into smaller culverts and the unusually large cargo was being forced towards a pipe that couldn’t handle it. With force, the corpse could have passed through and eventually washed into the river running through that part of the city. Instead, it lay wedged in a nook, rocking gently.
On a nearby footbridge, a solitary witness stood anxiously waiting for a sign. Something should have flowed out with the gushing water by now; since nothing had appeared, the corpse had to be stuck somewhere. After days of rain, the watcher had anticipated that something like this would happen. The watcher had been quick on the scene after the first drops had fallen, but that hadn’t helped. Attempting to battle strong currents in a confined space was highly dangerous, and the mission proved futile.
Now the first person to have seen the dead girl arrive in the storm drain, and the last one to see her alive, waited with a strange sense of loss, knowing she wouldn’t come out. She would emerge eventually, but not today or tomorrow. And when she did, her terrible secret would come out and a lot of trouble would follow for all involved. So the watcher also waited with a sense of dread.
* * *
Breathe. Instinct, you would think. A few hundred metres away from the field and the watcher, a solo jogger passing the open expanse of Rondebosch Common grappled with the smaller but no less important issue of personal biology.
Voinjama Johnson, bitter but determined, was out for an early run. She had no objection at all to the principle of fitness, but rather to needing to do things like this to prove to her body that she was mistress of it and it had to listen to her. So far, things weren’t looking that way. She sucked in a lungful of air, not freezing but definitely frosty. Frosty enough to declare it was winter, bringing with it whipping winds and slanting rain and unhelpful wan sunlight ten minutes later, when you were already soaked through. Ah, Africa, Vee thought wryly, you gotta love it here. Even winter, a concept few would associate with the continent, was a warped, laughable version of the season.
Bent double and gripping her knees for support, she thought about her larger worries. Surely, please, by the end of the season, things had to get better. If things improved, if “it” was under control by then, then these absurd morning runs wouldn’t be necessary any more. Were they necessary even now? It felt quite fair to wonder as she gasped for breath, muscles twitching, bullets of sweat prickling on her forehead and back, in her armpits and between her thighs. The running was supposed to be good for clearing her head, but evidently the blockage up there was being cleverly circumvented. Doctors couldn’t tell you everything –
“Can’t tell you squat,” she wheezed, clenching her teeth against another stab of leg pain.
– but you would reasonably assume at least one of their remedies would’ve worked, either by luck or default. Psychosomatic manifestation of pain. Hyperventilation. Periodic blackouts. Idiopathic illness, they said, heads shaking in pity. We can’t diagnose if we can’t find a cause. Apparently no diagnosis was still reason enough to medicate every symptom to death. Take these pills to help you rest. No thanks, they make me sleep too deep. Then I’m groggy all day. These ones should work for the pain. They knock me out completely. I feel like a zombie. Holistic medicine? I can’t afford it! Start a pastime then, do something creative. I have a job that pays me to do that. How much more time can I dedicate to creativity? No, not your job. For yourself. You need a hobby to take your mind off things.
To take a mind off a thing. So simple a principle, yet so mammoth an undertaking. Mind . . . thing . . . flick of a switch . . . off. If only life was so –
A new development interrupted her thoughts. A series of spasms grew from flutters and trembles to agonising involuntary clenches, melting suddenly into one whole-body muscle seizure. Vee collapsed forward and swallowed a howl with difficulty, clamping it down to a low groan. An exhausted runner taking a breather along the sidewalk of a Cape Town suburb at six in the morning was hardly a head-turner. But winded and jerking like a puppet, with sweat plastering her clothes to her body – that was bound to slow any passer-by down. She didn’t want that kind of attention – someone thinking she was sick or, worse, an addict in the throes of a meltdown. People sometimes came here to buy drugs; she could get arrested just for looking suspicious.
As sweat and tears of pain prickled, she flexed her neck and looked up. Through a haze, she made out the approach of another jogger, bounding along with all the vim and vitality she would never have. Setting her jaw and summoning all the strength she had, all she knew she’d have for the rest of the morning, Vee heaved what felt like a ton of uncooperative flesh and pulled herself upright. She dug her fingers into her waist and breathed heavily.
A pair of white sneakers, or what looked more like six blurred pairs attached to a maroon velour tracksuit, neared and slowed. You can’t find those tracksuits anywhere now, she thought absurdly, arranging her features into a mask of affable exhaustion. Two, three years ago they used to be in every cheap clothing shop. Now try and find one . . . like looking for a kidney on the black market. The young blonde in the coveted jumpsuit tossed over a slightly concerned smile, and Vee returned a reassuring thumbs-up and an embarrassed grin, letting the woman take in her sweaty face and puffing for good measure. They exchanged the tacit nods and smiles of those who shared the woes and benefits of any gruelling activity before the other woman jogged on, shiny ponytail swishing past.
Vee felt her legs give out, and she collapsed in the grass along the footpath. Rondebosch Common had little in the way of trees and large bushes, but she was past caring. Prostrate, she battled to keep her
