Bloodlines (47 page)

“Michaela?” he said, but I didn’t answer because I was focused on the body of Brian McWilliams lying on his back on the floor, whose sporadic groaning was now louder than it had been when I left a moment before, a semi-conscious moan, and I knew I didn’t have much time to do what I knew I must. I walked toward him and lifted one foot over him so that I stood astride him and again Khabazela repeated my name, in a question, but this time he knew the answer and he said it again, differently.

“Michaela?” And then, hoarsely, “Michaela, no.”

But again he made no move to stop me as I took the handle of the cast iron frying pan in both hands and hoisted my arms straight up above my head and held it there, poised as I took a deep breath, looking down at Brian McWilliams.

His eyes slowly opened. He looked up at my face, dazed, and after a few seconds raised his glance to the frying pan held high above his head. When I saw the terror take shape on his face I paused briefly but couldn’t stop. I bent smoothly at the waist and brought my arms around in a wide arc and with all my might I hammered the underside of the frying pan down on his head, thinking of a steel ax-head driven deep into hardwood timber.

The frying pan bounced from his skull and the impact vibrated up my wrists, shooting through my arms into my shoulders like steel against steel without any shock-absorber to cushion the blow. Three times I raised the cooking utensil and by the third time my strength was sapped and it fell with the force of gravity alone and its own weight which was enough, and this time there was no bounce and I heard not the hard boom as it landed on the split and bleeding flesh at Brian McWilliam’s hairline but the crack of shattering bone.

My knees collapsed. I sat on his chest gasping and reached down to take his heavy wrist in mine. Before he took his last breath I lifted his hand, holding the fingers out straight. Raising my head, I dug the deadweight fingers into my neck and drew them down so that my skin and then my blood caught beneath his scrubbed fingernails, and my nightgown shredded to reveal my breast, bruised and scratched.

“Oh, Michaela.”

I heard in Khabazela’s voice a deep despair as I rose from the body and slowly sat on the bed, taking his hand in mine as I had taken the hand of Brian McWilliams and as I pulled his hand towards me I felt him shrink back.

“No, no. Just give me your hand,” and I placed his reluctant hand on my belly and looked up at his face.

“My Khabazela,” I said softly as I gently rubbed his open palm against my belly, “We are going to bear a child.”

He looked down at his hand, puzzled, and I saw that he could not reconcile this information with the actions he had just witnessed.

“You’re pregnant?” he said and with relief I saw him begin to pull himself together. I nodded my head, pushing his hand against my belly.

“That’s why you went to see Lungile,” he said, and again I nodded my head and he turned from me to look down at the floor. “But why this?”

“He saw you,” I said patiently. “He knows who you are. He would have gone to the police. Even if they didn’t believe him they would begin to watch you. And what if they started an investigation? They’d find out everything. We had no choice.”

He nodded his head slowly up and down, and understanding became hopelessness as he took his head in his hands.

“Enough,” I said, startled by the sharpness of my voice. “We’ve been here before. Do you remember the real reason we were convicted of treason? We slept together. They couldn’t abide the fact that we loved each other and they put us away. We escaped once—but if they find out who we are they’ll kill you and put me back forever. I won’t let that happen. Not to us and not to our child.”

“You’ve solved the problem of our being discovered,” he said, raising his head from his hands to look at me. When he continued, it was in a calm and rational voice. “This rubbish on the floor will never reveal that we’re lovers. Our secret is secure. All we have to do is get rid of the body and wait.” He paused. “Until you give birth,” he said. He stood and looked around and I could see that he was planning. “They may not know who I am, but they’ll know what you’ve been doing. How are you going to bring up a colored baby, Michaela? Did you forget the law? We have to get him buried. And you have to get an abortion.”

I rose to stand in front of him. “No,” I said fiercely, grasping the lapels of his bathrobe in my fist. “I will not abort our child.” With my other hand I pointed to the scratches on my neck and chest. “Why do you think I did this to myself?”

“I don’t know why you’ve done any of this,” he said, “but we don’t have much time. It’ll be dawn soon.”

“We’re not getting rid of the body,” I told him. “It’s staying here until the police arrive.”

“What?”

“I will tell the police,” I said calmly, staring back straight into his eyes, “that my foreman made advances to me, and I rejected him. I’ll explain that he broke into my house after midnight and raped me. I’ll describe how he tried to force himself on me a second time but I fought him off and because he had been drinking I was able to unbalance him so that he tripped and fell. He knocked his head on the footboard and while he was lying on the floor I went into the kitchen and grabbed the heaviest thing I could and ran back and hit him before he regained consciousness. I’ll tell them how I didn’t mean to kill him,” I said softly, “but I didn’t want to risk being raped again.”

“Oh, Michaela…”

“You keep repeating my name,” I said through gritted teeth, “as if it’s all hopeless. Stop it.”

“I don’t know what else to say,” he said wearily. “And I don’t know where this is all going.”

“I’ll tell you. In a minute you’re going to leave, and you’re going to stay away for a few weeks. The police will come to investigate and hear my story. Everyone will know all about it. And when I begin to show they’ll look at me with sympathy instead of contempt.”

“They’ll feel even sorrier for you when you give birth to a black baby,” he said bitterly. “Did you forget that under this government, law trumps biology? If it’s illegal for us to make love, then having children is illegal, too. It’s bad enough that you’re willing to hide our child behind rape, but that doesn’t change reality: bringing up a black child as your own is illegal. He’ll be taken from you and brought up by a colored family, or by a black family closer to his skin color. By strangers. What kind of life are you condemning our child to?”

I was suddenly unable to breathe, as if the air has been sucked from my body. This was a nightmare, and I began to see that it might have no end. I allowed myself to consider Khabazela’s suggestion that I get rid of the baby, but it passed quickly as I remembered Lungile’s face, and Solomon’s expression, and my father’s constant admonition to never forget who I am. Instead, I began to think about the sequence of possibilities, and how I might handle each one.

“We don’t know how dark our child will be,” I said aloud, “or what kind of hair he’ll have.”

If he’s very light, I thought, there’ll be no issue. If he’s a little dark but has straight hair, they’ll assume he has my coloring. But if he’s a little dark with kinky hair they’ll subject him to the pencil test—put the pencil in his curls and if it stays there then he’ll be guilty of having black blood somewhere in his past, either in McWilliams’ family or in mine. What will happen then? Or worse, if he’s very dark…

I felt rage rise in me at the infamy that forced me to give a value to the child I carried based on curls and coloring, on the way his hair fell or the richness of his skin. And then the rage evaporated and turned to fear for how terrible my child’s life might be if he had rich, burnished skin or tight, shining curls and we failed in our fight to make things change.

“How the hell am I supposed to know? There’s no rule book here—no right way. We have to make this up as we go along. If we decide that it can’t work,” I said softly, rising from the bed, “that he wouldn’t have any kind of life here, I promise I’ll take him and go somewhere else. We’ll leave the country.” I paused. “And you’ll come with us.”

He didn’t respond to my words, but he rose to stand facing me and I asked him a question, dreading his answer.

“Aren’t you happy—even a little bit,” I asked, “that we’ve made a child together?”

He tried to laugh off my question, and looked surprised when he heard what emerged from his own throat—something between a groan and a sob, harsh and pained.

“Happy?” he asked, placing his hands on my shoulders. “You kill an unconscious man with a cast iron frying pan, and I sit by as you mutilate yourself with his still-warm fingernails. You pick that bloody moment to share with me the news that you’re carrying our child. Then you explain how you plan to accuse the dead man of rape to hide the fact that the child is ours. And you intend to raise our child without me, because it’s illegal for us to live under the same roof, have a child, or raise the child together. And you ask me if I’m happy?”

“It was a stupid question,” I said. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for you to find out like this.”

In the ruin of my bedroom, he embraced me. “This is the way it is,” he said.

What hurt me most was the resignation—even defeat—in his voice. In response I threw my arms about his waist.

“You’re having our child alone, Michaela,” he said softly, speaking into my neck. “You have less than a slender hope of making it work, and I’m excluded from this picture. You’re conducting an experiment, and it terrifies me, for the child’s sake, and for yours. And I’m frightened for us.” He pulled back and looked at me. “A lot more frightened than happy.”

That he was fearful for us gave me pause, but we had no time. I kissed him hard and he kissed me back. I tore myself from him and pushed him out and watched him walk across the yard to his room in the servants’ quarters through the dull yellow gleam of light reflected from the kitchen window.

After a few minutes he emerged carrying a bag under his arm, looked quickly towards me at the kitchen window and nodded. Then he slipped away across the yard and into the gloom, and as he disappeared, fingers of darkness seemed to crawl into the yard in an attempt to swallow up the light.

I shivered and turned back, gathered my shattered life and my ripped nightgown tight around me, and walked down the hallway to the phone. I put the receiver to my ear and rotated the ringer handle. Cassie, the night operator, picked up.

“Hello, Michaela. Is there a problem?”

“Better get the police out to my farm.” I paused, clearing my throat. I was yet unpracticed in this kind of deceit. “It’s McWilliams, my foreman. He raped me. I think I’ve killed him.”

.

twenty-two

MICHAELA

Natal, South Africa, 1967

T
he policemen who arrived at the farm before dawn were both shocked and impressed by the damage I had done to Brian McWilliams. They stared at his broken and bloody head, commented quietly on the blood and brain matter smeared on the underside of the cast iron frying pan I had left lying beside the body. Then they turned to me, asked lots of questions and took detailed notes.

I was sitting on a chair in the dining room, and the older officer, a man in his fifties, knelt at my side, gently examining my scratched face and torn robe.

“You might want to have your doctor examine you,” he said, rising to his feet. “I know you live alone here—would you like me to call anyone for you?”

I shook my head. “No. I’ll be fine.”

“I know you will, Miss,” he said, smiling, and I frowned at him. “I know this must be very difficult for you, but you can take some comfort in knowing that, pardon my language, this bastard picked the wrong woman.”

They called the police station and waited with me until the wagon arrived to collect the body. I took a bath and dressed, and the only evidence of my ordeal was the scratches on my face, covered by the purple of mercurochrome. By then the word had spread, and by the time I emerged from my bedroom, Jane and Letty had arrived and were in the kitchen, making tea. Once I had convinced them that I was fine and that I would do best if allowed to go about my daily routine, they praised me for my fortitude, and left.