I bit into her cake and it didn’t taste of anything – just powder dissolving on my tongue. Robbie had left his special feather box in the corner of the tree house and I leant over and opened it, noting the new guinea fowl feather I’d found in Kirstenbosch a few weeks back, when Dad had taken me “to get out the house for a bit”.
“What do you think you’ll do tonight?” Annie asked, crumbs in her mouth.
“I don’t know. We’re supposed to be praying with Father Patrick.”
“What for?” Annie said, her pale face all squashed up. “It’s a bit late isn’t it?”
I looked at Annie and started to giggle. Soon I was laughing so much I could feel the tree house shaking. Then Annie started to laugh with me, until tears were pouring down our faces.
It felt good.
“I wish you could come to my house. It’s not so sad there,” Annie said as we hugged each other.
“Mother wouldn’t let me.”
“Right,” Annie said. “When you gotta pray, you gotta pray.”
This sent us into another torrent of giggles.
We heard Annie’s dad calling from the veranda.
“You okay?” she said, holding her hand against mine to form a steeple.
“I guess.”
And then I was alone again in the tree house.
I don’t know how long I sat there; I got cold when the sun started setting. Here, in our special place, the loneliness began to overwhelm me and I began to sob from a part of me I didn’t even know existed. This wasn’t sadness: it was deeper, wider, higher, longer and I didn’t think I’d be able to move until I put my hand over my heart, where Robbie had told me he’d be when his body had left. But I couldn’t feel him there – all I could feel was how I hurt, and I knew that he’d lied.
He was never going to be with me again. And now who could I trust?
Without thinking about it, I grabbed Robbie’s feather box, and I climbed through the tree house window onto the outstretched branch where we’d once seen a sugarbird. With one hand to steady myself, my thighs gripping the rough bark, I opened the box and grabbed a handful of feathers, sending them drifting into the wind. Angrily, I grabbed another palmful, and another and another, until all that was left was the vulture feather, too big to fling.
Suddenly, my heart burning, unable to see through my tears, I realised that all that was left of Robbie was flying away from me, getting stuck in the leaves, and I tried to get some of the feathers back. I couldn’t reach, so I stretched, and the branch under my weight, was bending, bending −
CRACK!
I screamed as the branch snapped, sending me flying into the shrubbery and mud. My fall was broken slightly as my skirt caught and ripped on another branch. The landing wasn’t too sore, but I was wet through, a puddle of old rainwater soaking into my dress. I sat a moment, too dazed to move. But then I heard some footsteps.
“Thea? Thea?” my dad called. “What are you doing out there?”
I stood up quickly, patted myself down, then sprinted towards the house, the grown-ups still inside. As I burst into the lounge, everybody turned to look at me.
“Thea?” Mother said, her voice tight.
“I fell out the tree house,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Go upstairs immediately,” Mother said. “I’m coming in a minute. And don’t dirty anything else.”
Dad nodded, having followed me quietly into the room, his eyes on my funeral dress. “Do what your mother says.”
I shuffled my way to the stairs, feeling big adult eyes judging me when they didn’t know anything about being a kid, a lonely child like me.
I waited in my bedroom, listening to people saying goodbye. Then the heavy thud of the front door closing. The latch on, the key in the lock. Shivering through my wet clothes, I desperately dabbed at my dress with a sponge, trying to wipe away some of the mud.
Mother’s footsteps sounded on the staircase, my dad’s mild voice following. “I’m sure it was just a mistake.”
The footsteps stopped. “She’s deliberately spiteful, Stuart. Why today? Why would she embarrass me like this?”
“Let’s just bath her and move on, darling. It’s been a rough day.”
“I’ll deal with her. Just bring in the plates from outside.”
“Can’t we leave them for tonight, just this once, Veronica?”
“Darn it, Stuart, I can’t wake up tomorrow in a pigsty!”
“Okay. But be gentle – she’s also grieving.”
My mother walking again. “That’s no excuse.” And then she was in my bedroom looking at me.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry. It was a mistake.”
“Don’t lie to me, Thea. You didn’t like the dress. You did it on purpose.”
“I wouldn’t, Mother. I didn’t mean it!”
She moved forward. “Look at you! Father Patrick will be here in an hour and I’ve got enough to worry about without your filth. Strip!”
I tried to unbutton my wet dress, but my fingers shook.
“Are you making fun of me, young lady?”
“The buttons are stuck.”
With one swooping movement, she ripped off the buttons all the way down the front of the dress. It dropped to the floor.
“It’s ruined. You ruined it!” she said.
I held my arms to my chest, shaking.
“Take off your knickers.” She stalked out.
From the bathroom, I could hear water battering the tub.
“Thea!” she barked.
Steam rose in giant swirls around the room.
In one movement, Mother lifted me up and threw me hard into the bath. With my whole body in the scalding water, I felt as though my skin was being peeled off. I screamed and screamed.
It was Dad who took me to the hospital for second-degree burns over my legs and bottom.
Mother stayed with Father Patrick to pray.
*
All those years later, in another hospital, I woke up with Clay standing next to my bed. It wasn’t possible, was it, that the manager from the coffee shop was there, and Rajit didn’t even know?
“Your brother’s a good man,” the nurse said to me as she waddled her broad bulk next to me.
How does she know about Robbie?
“He’s just a boy,” I said. “He’s never really grown up.”
The woman blinked, then scratched her head.
Why do people always look at me like that?
While I was there, I tried to remember the nurses’ names, but I couldn’t. There were just too many of them, and because they were in uniform I couldn’t tell which one worked for Raj. But I was watching, analysing them just as they were analysing me. This one stuck a thermometer under my arm, connected me to a blood-pressure monitor like I was the subject of a scientific experiment. When would they have enough temperatures, enough blood pressures, enough urine, enough blood?
“I’m going to have to go now,” Clay said. “I’ve got to be at work.”
I