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 …’
He placed a finger below her chin to tilt her face towards his.
‘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