Wilma is like a moth with no wings, pacing up and down in the harsh glow of the bulb. Three days have passed since we last saw her, since she stooped over Sindi’s sleeping body, nudging her with the knobkerrie while sunlight played over my sisi’s face and brought her back to life. In those three days only Loveday came near us. She brought porridge and bread and, once, a tub of hot soapy water and clean rags for Sindi’s hand. She refused to speak to Sindi, keeping her eyes down as she unwound the dirty bandage. The stink from the wound brought a sour kiss to her lips. That was the only time her stony mask slipped.
Then Ma Wilma sent for us. Now we stand, hands behind our backs, waiting for her attention. Her pacing makes me think of Miss Booley, our grade five teacher, even though Miss Booley was ruler-thin. Miss Booley once made us stand in front of the class, hands behind our backs, eyes reading the floor while she paced, up and down, up and down, up and down . . . until, without sign or warning, she snapped around to face the class with their blank eyes and their straight necks.
“Look,” she hissed, her finger pointing at us while her spiky features faced the others. “They’re not clean children, not clean the way children in my class should be.” And they looked at us, at our uniforms that weren’t clean enough. Our second-hand uniforms, too short and not clean.
“No, ma’am, not clean.”
They looked at our baby-dolls, our scuffed and worn baby-dolls, and they laughed and pulled their lips thin over their white teeth; and inside me, hate grew. Hate bubbled and boiled until the rage clenched my hands into fists. I wanted to bash Miss Booley’s face. I wanted to take her head and smash it into the wall, into the whiteboard and the desk, to wipe that face away until there was nothing left but blood and mess and no face. No, ma’am. No face. No clean face. Just fat bloody lips and broken teeth.
Tears brimming, I cut a look at Sindi to see if she was ready to smash Miss Booley. But Sindi’s eyes were dancing, her nostrils trembling as she swallowed the giggles. She was laughing. Laughing at Miss Booley. And as I looked at her I-don’t-care face, my fingers went soft and my anger dissolved and the laughing caught and it snorted out my nose, a pig grunt laugh and then Sindi couldn’t swallow any more and we were both laughing-laughing, laughing-laughing, and Miss Booley was raging-raging and we were “OOUUUT!”
But we didn’t care. No ma’am, we didn’t, because second-hand dresses and worn-out shoes don’t matter. Teachers and classmates don’t matter. Sisters matter. Only sisters. Sister-sister, sister-twin, twin-sister.
“I thought the sickness was on you, girlie, even though you tested clear. The way you slept, like the dying sleep. Coma, I said to the boys, that one’s got the coma of the dead on her. We’ve seen it before. Many times we bring girls in, older girls that have been on the street for years and they roll over and die. Stink the place up like dogs. Then my boys have to move the body, dump it somewhere. It’s looking for trouble, shifting corpses. So no more older girls, I says to them, no more. Bring me little ones and we can look after them until they’re old enough, but only if they haven’t been fiddled. Not easy to find little girls nobody’s fiddled with these days, everybody thinks a little girl’s going to save them.”
Dora asked a skollie for a sugar sweet.
Ma Wilma leans on her knobkerrie. “But then my boys told me you was a beauty. Bit skinny, but a beauty. They said you’d clean up good. They told me how they’d watched you crawl into the cars and not come out. They’re good boys, but they can make trouble. I couldn’t have it on my conscience, such a beauty trapped in the cars.” She spits on the ground at our feet. “Now it looks like I’ve rescued one of them.”
Dora flashed pink blumas in the street.
She pulls something from the folds of the clothes and holds it out. Her hand wrapped so tight around it her knuckles show white through her skin.
Dora kissed Jack-rola an’ now she’s dead.
A spiteful smile twists Loveday’s lips and she pushes Sindi so she’s within punching distance of Ma Wilma’s fist. Sindi flinches, but Ma Wilma just opens her hand. Something falls to the floor.
Dora’s not in heaven cos her vetkoek bled.
Loon Man’s cross lies there in a tangle of string. I look at it and I know, bad things have come.
The boys strip her of her new clothes and she cowers in front of them while they stand around talking about her titties and her bum. She tries to hide behind her arms, but they pull them down and hold her wrists. They say she’s too skinny, but she has a pretty face and in a few weeks they can make her fat. They look at her. She looks at the floor.
“Think about something else,” I whisper, because I know how it is.
I know because of the day we went to the sea. When we caught a taxi to the swimming beach, Sindi and me and him, while Mama went shopping for a tombstone. I think about the waves and how we clung to him, holding on to his thin arms to keep from being swept under. Then he showed us a place they used to call the Golden Mile before the water rose up and flooded the fancy hotels.
Shame-shame, Thuli’s shame, all the same, shame-shame.
They paint her lips the colour of blood and smear the same waxy stick onto her cheeks to cherry them up. I’ve never seen her with make-up before, it makes her look like a clown, just like Mama used to say it would. It makes her look like she’s been punched in the mouth. They say the colour suits her.
They make her wear the white dress. The lace crackles when they zip it up. The camera flash flares against the fabric, against the shiny sweetheart cups that stand out proud while her titties try to hide. The dress is so bright, her skin so dark it seems the dress is a person and she its shadow.
Shame-shame, Sindi’s shame, all the same, shame-shame.
I stood on the lid of the toilet seat, staring at the lock. The echoing drip from the cistern kept time steady while his breath came hot and fast-fast. On the other side of the door, I heard Sindi singing quiet to herself. I thought it was strange, Sindi didn’t sing. Then I realised it wasn’t her singing. It was me.
“You’re a good girl, Thuli,” he whispered in my ear.
After, we stood in the damp shadows of the ladies’ toilet and changing room, peeling our wet vests away from our bumpy skin. The pads of my fingers were wrinkled, as if the sea had made me old. They felt numb and strange, like somebody else’s fingers. The changing room smelt of pee, wet concrete, splintered wood and the thick-bleach salt smell of him. We turned away from each other then, no longer the same. I watched her dress in the mirror, but her face was a closed door and she wouldn’t look at me.
Shame-shame, Thuli’s shame, all the same, shame-shame.
“Smile, sista,” they say and poke her in the ribs, tickling her like this is a joke and everyone’s friends. They take picture after picture, crowding around her image on the tiny screen after each flash.
“There are some good ones,” they say. Ma Wilma smiles and says to tell the Commissioner to sell her cheap.
PART 2
Z3
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