Shadow Self
Paula Marais
Human & Rousseau
For my mother, Marilyn Marais, whose importance in my life cannot be expressed in just one sentence.
It was Hansen who first made me aware of shadow selves. He would lie in bed watching me for whole minutes, and I would look back into his eyes and wonder, What does he see? How can he not see the truth? Where is it hidden? It made me ask, when I looked at other people, what possible selves they were hiding behind the strange rubber masks of their faces. I could nearly always find one, if I watched for long enough. It became the only one I was interested in seeing.
– Look at Me by Jennifer Egan
How to plead
I’m sitting on a bench in some small room, a cramped musty space. They’re coming for you, I hear and I look around. I can’t see properly. It’s like being asleep and feeling that you need to open your eyes but you can’t. The more you try to focus, the more you panic, and the more out of touch you feel. I want to scratch the cataracts from my eyes, but even if I squint it’s like the room is moving up and down.
A wave of room. A wave of noise.
Clattering.
Jangling.
I sit still, putting my head down between my knees.
“It’s okay, Thea, I said I was here, didn’t I?”
Robbie. My heart is bulging with voices, and my brother sounds exactly the same as ever. I feel seasick, leaning in a glass-bottomed boat, with fish floating around below me all dead and bloodied.
A shark dropping below me, its fin cut off, crimson and spinning.
A top, going round and round. And round and round.
Lights on. Lights off.
Lights on. Lights off.
“Ma’am, you’ve got to come now,” and I’m not sure if it’s the shark talking, but I feel a grip on my elbow, and I push it away. There’s a squealing noise, like a piglet, a kettle whistle. Then I’m being lifted, floating in a balloon.
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee …
“This is the courthouse, mevrou,” that voice says. “You need to stand up now. We’re going up the stairs.”
“Don’t want to,” I say. “I need to sleep.”
“Lady, after what you did, you’ve got a lifetime to sleep. Not much else to do in Worcester.”
Worcester? What are they talking about? I’m not in Worcester – I’m supposed to be asleep with my kids and with Robbie. Didn’t he promise?
“Leave me alone,” I say. “I don’t like you.”
“Lady, I don’t like you either.”
I peer at him, and his face appears as though through mist.
Fat nose. Stubby eyelashes. Coffee eyes. A peaked hat.
“We’re going to have to cuff you, ma’am,” someone says, but I don’t think it’s him because his lips don’t move.
“As in handcuffs?” I ask Robbie.
“I think so,” Robbie says. “What else could he mean? Just go, Thea. Remember how we used to play with handcuffs in the tree house? Cops and robbers?”
But that was fun and this hurts.
“No need to push me,” I say, sounding like Mother.
“Listen, lady, just get a move on now. This magistrate don’t like to wait.”
So I walk. I don’t like waiting either. And it irritates me when Clay is late. Clay, my husband. I always check my watch a thousand times and wonder why he can’t respect me by arriving on time. Always another emergency at one of his coffee shops.
As I walk, each step is heavy as if my legs are in water. I wade the stairs.
Up, up.
The chains clank behind me where the policemen are standing. They’re talking.
“So she told me that my son stole my car when I was attending an accident scene. Dronk, jy weet. And only sixteen. I found him at Muizenberg Beach. And he thought he was too old for a klap.”
Mother specialised in those. My first husband was more like her than she would ever have admitted.
Violence. Bodies on bodies.
I shiver. What’s that saying again? Like someone’s walking over my grave.
At the top of the stairs, I walk into a uniform. The man holds me back.
“Steady on, wait until we’re ready.”
Go. Wait. Walk. Stop. Go. I wish they’d just make up their damn minds. Below me, the other cops chat on.
“And the car? What about it? No problems with the car? A dent in the front, jong. He’s going to rake leaves for a year to pay for it.”
Rake. My Zen garden relaxed me. Patterns in the sand. Swirls. Twirls. Until Joe tipped the sand on the lounge carpet and Clay said, Enough of this. I don’t like the grit under my feet.
At the top, it’s buzzing. Voices up and down. And the lights are so bright.
I blink, blink, blink.
There’s a hand coming towards me, and then it goes away. Someone’s shouting, “Keep away from the prisoner!”
“That’s you,” says Robbie.
“I know,” I say back. “I can feel my wrists.”
My oldest daughter, Sanusha, is there, I think, with her hot olive eyes shouting, why, why, why? And I wish Robbie would just explain it to her. It’s better. For Joe. For baby Caitie. For me. Even for Sanusha.
She has her father and he’ll care for her. She doesn’t need me to save her.
The policeman’s pushing me; I could feel his fingers in my ribs.
“Ouch,” I say, massaging my side.
“There,” he says. “Stand over there.”
I’m in front of a microphone with the sound turned off. The judge − is that what he is? − is whispering to me. And I look at him, concentrating, trying hard to hear.
“Madam,” he says to me.
There’s my defence attorney, Tom Harper. I know him, have for a long time. He’s smiling at me, nodding gently. But Tom’s not gentle and he’s confusing me. He says something to the judge and comes closer.
“Just answer the questions, Thea,” he says.
“What questions? I can’t hear him.”
“He asked you for your full name.”
“Doesn’t he know it? He needs to speak up.”
“Your Worship, the prisoner says she can’t hear you properly.”
Then the judge booms at me and he sounds like God, like Ganesha: “Madam, please state your full name for the court.”
“Just do it,” says Robbie. “Do what he says, and say ‘sir’. Show him some respect.”
“Thea June Middleton … sir.”
“And your full address, please?”
“28c Jamieson Road, Rondebosch.” (Currently incarcerated elsewhere.)
“Now I do this for the purpose of confirming you are the correct accused, and from the records in front of me, you are.”
I realise Tom is standing still in front of me, facing the judge. He has his hands folded at his waist, like a contrite schoolboy. But he turns once or twice to look at me, as though I’m supposed to understand him. As I watch the judge, his mouth