Embrace (72 page)

And then, when we walked in the gate and passed beneath the Natal Mahogany, there was Bokkie, calling out that I am now the same height as Lena. At once we stood back to back — she’s wearing shoes, I shouted, ever so slightly elevating myself on my toes, making myself an inch taller than my sister. Indeed, two days before my fourteenth birthday, and it was the first time I could face Lena, eye to eye. But, somehow, I am not proud of it.

Still no sign of Bok. I begin to feel irritated. I remember other times I have waited for him while he was doing business. Waiting, waiting, waiting for Bok. Waiting for the money.

Poor cousin Stephanie: Before she got back from London, Bernice took a break from studying to come with us for a braai up at Uncle Michael and Aunt Siobhain’s. James took me upstairs to show me how he paints his eggs. Uncle Michael has built him a drawing — and worktable that folds out from the wall. I envied him. Above the work-table, on the walls, were racks with books and bottles of paintbrushes and paints. The books, mostly of watercolours and pastel landscapes, do nothing for me, though I said they are ‘really good’. Kitsch is the word I had wanted to use. James’s own drawings are all like magazine illustrations, good, but unoriginal. They tell me nothing of what he sees. James probably doesn’t even know what an Impressionist or Expressionist is.

Then James closed his bedroom door and said he wanted to tell me something I was not to repeat. To anyone. I at once recoiled, thought he might confess to me that he was homosexual. Something that had been said about him since he was about seven and started doing the flower arrangements. I wanted to get out of the room, did not want to know anything about his urges, which have always felt directed at me. Since we were kids, always trying, trying to get aglimpse of my dick, always trying to touch it in the pool, or when we showered together. I find him repulsive, unlike Stephanie, whose cunt I can still fantasize about slipping into, smelling. James’s urges seem as though they could rub off and infect me and make me sick. Like his kitsch art. If I were to look at it for too long, spend too much time in his room, I may start to paint like him.

Once I had promised not to tell, he spilt the beans: Stephanie was not in London on holiday. She had actually gone to her Irish uncle in London for an abortion. He overheard it when she was begging Uncle Michael and Aunt Siobhain for money. She had no idea who the father was. She had to sell Herbie to get enough money to go because abortions cost thousands. And it was illegal in South Africa. If anyone finds out, Stephanie could go to prison.

‘Promise you won’t tell,’ he again begged. I again swore, half hearing myself, thinking only of how ghastly, how horrendous, to fall pregnant. Fall pregnant, like falling into shame. Falling in love. Falling asleep. Falling ill. Falling apart. Falling pregnant. My mind embroidered, flying between Stephanie and my sisters: what will happen if Lena or Bernice falls pregnant? They’d probably just do what black women did if they don’t want a child: stick a knitting needle up their vaginas and dig around in the womb till they kill the foetus. The thought horrifies me. Again I swore not to tell a soul and then moved from the room, down the passage, descending the stairs as if levitating. What if Bernice fell pregnant and didn’t tell? Had the baby and gave it up for adoption? What if she thought she couldn’t have a baby because of what happened to her at Mkuzi? But say the doctors were wrong and her insides were okay after all! Would I tell if it happened to me? The shame of it. Sheets of shame descending like drapes over our house, enveloping the family. And if the story were to get out? The church! The disgrace of the extended family: shame by association. When Lena was my age and I spotted sanitary pads in her cupboard, I imagined that she may be pregnant. I went to Bernice who explained that Lena had started having periods. Menstruation,that’s all. Before getting to Dominic and the dictionary, I had for a while imagined that men too had periods. Dominic said that the closest men got to periods were wet dreams.

By the time I was outside in the yard beside Aunt Siobhain’s papyrus bush, pregnancy had become my worst nightmare. What if I had made Alette pregnant? Though that was impossible for we had only touched each other, never stuck it in, and a girl cannot get pregnant without penetration and orgasm. But what if it happens to one of my sisters? I am certain that Bernice is doing It with Robert. Everyone does It. But everyone knows that FLs break. Lena, who doesn’t have a boyfriend, is on the pill for her skin, but as for Bernice, she has the smoothest complexion in the family and there is, I think, no way Bokkie will allow her on the pill. Yet, Bernice is the one with the boyfriend. I had to speak to her. She had to go on the pill at once. I thought again of Alette saying to me after Malawi: ‘Were too old for that now.’ One step further and this could have been us. I think of Jacques and Dominic. But that was just playing, jerking off. No, if you stuck it into a starfish, could that not pass for fucking? Jacques and Dominic and I; that’s full-on
laying with a man as you do with a woman.
I must become a good Christian, it cannot go on like this. My sins will catch up to me. What if a car runs me over, and I die?

The thought of Stephanie having an illegitimate child, of one of my sisters being
put in the other time, knocked up, having a bun in the oven, being on the pole,
depressed me. I must warn them that boys are after only one thing. That is all we speak about at school. They should take a lesson from Stephanie. And don’t stick knitting needles up yourselves, Lena, Bernice. Tell me, I’ll find the money, I promise you, I will, to send you to London for an abortion. Bernice, I repeat to myself in the Mkuzi sun, has to go on the pill. How stupid this backward country is! Not allowing women to have abortions. How far ahead of us America and England are.

I never got around to speaking to either of them, I think as Bokcomes grinning down the selasto path towards the Alcamino where I sit on the bonnet. Waiting.

We’ve dropped off our bags and groceries at the rondavel and had a quick sandwich. As we head for the hides and the Msumu pan, Bok regales me with the tales just relived by him and Hugo Reynolds in the warden’s office: when a ranger lost all his front teeth as a roll of barbed wire fell from a truck and struck him on the mouth near the Umsunduzi — Hugo says he still takes out his dentures to show everyone when he tells the story. When Boy shot the poacher through the artery and the man bled to death; Jonas is apparently still a guard somewhere in Umfolozi. The Parks Board is planning on settling elephant into Hluhluwe and the two reserves may, after all these years, be joined into one including the corridor. When the white rhino calf got stuck in the mud at Masinga hide and how Jonas and Boy had to distract the cow’s attention so that Bok and Willy Hancox and the other rangers could pull the calf free. The impala culling — Willy has probably forgotten what a lousy shot he was, Bok laughs. Taking poachers to the Ubombo police station, at least twice a month — Hugo Reynolds says poaching is worse now than before and they’re trying to expand co-operation with the LPs — local population. How sad Bok was when he had to shoot a black rhino cow close to our house where she had almost been strangled by a poacher’s lasso, strung between two lala palms; I thought it was white, I say; no, black, saddest, most difficult moment of his life, shooting that cow, more difficult than shooting Vonk or putting down Suz and Chaka. How horses are no longer used to follow up darted rhinos — now it’s helicopters — which makes it so much more effective and efficient. Another problem now are the bush fires, seems many are deliberately set to chase the game north across the Mkuzi River where the LPs can kill them off. In his day they made thorough, broad fire breaks; they had to, it was the worst drought in human memory. All the catches they made of nyalas, warthogs, impalas, for export to the few private game reserves in the region — there’s increased interest in those; soon they’ll be popping up like mushrooms, not necessarily Mala Mala smart, but just small private game reserves where the wilderness can be protected and appreciated. Ian Player has done his part, expanding the way South Africa and the world see the necessity for protecting wilderness. Tourism is the future for South Africa. I listen with rapt attention, even as our eyes scan the innards of the bush. Wish he could be back here. Work here.

I am closer to Bok now than I have been since we left Umfolozi. I want to hold him here, keep him here, never again have to experience him outside of this. This is the way I want him. Never again in that garage of his that is his office where I take in a man who only resembles the father I want. Behind his desk in the centre of the garage, surrounded by his shelves of curios. Where I want to find a way to stop kissing him and Bokkie hello and goodbye. Where I’ve outgrown kissing them. Here I could do it. But not there on the phone. Where his manner is that of a man who pretends to own the world, where, but for what Bokkie has told me, I could, without blinking, for a few hours believe that he actually does. Here, where his strident knowledge of the bush is always tempered by either love for it or his humility before it. Not near where the empty white space on the back wall above the trinkets and bangles has nothing other than dust ovals, oudines like scars, no, wounds, marking the spots where once my trophies hung. Wounds about which he says nothing, and I do not consider asking. Where I do not want to hear him tell me a story that will only succeed in making me feel worse. Let the dust ovals against the white wall sit between us as an inheritance lost that will eventually grow scabs that for some reason will make us both feel better; whether because I do not wish to see him shamed into lying, again, or whether it is because my not forgiving him makes me powerful with the brooding indignation of self-righteousness. I do not know and don’t care to explore further the issue of what was mine and pilfered. Where, when at first he asked me to accompany him on this trip, Ihad wanted to say no, I have to work on Latin, for I cannot, for a moment, imagine what we will say to each other. But then, his overzealous demeanour, as though offering me the riches of King Solomon’s mines, tells me he is going north to collect from the maids the smoking pipes he has commissioned, for ethnic pipes are in high demand and even though the Zulus don’t usually make them — they’re really Xhosa — they will be a hit if marketed overseas as authentic Zulu crafts. Where he
knows
the pipes will be a major success. Where I am not concerned with the pipes. Where I already know they will fail. Where he and Bokkie have to seduce me by confessing that it is my birthday gift, that we’ll be coming to Mkuzi and Umfolozi, before I am thrilled and ready to jump into the van. Where I am not concerned with my father’s absence. Where I take unbridled delight in it. Where my school report is ridiculed: A for Art, A for English, C for everything else other than Maths, which has dropped to an alltime low: an E. Where all he can say is: ‘This is the first and last year you’ll be taking Art. You will spend that time from now on doing Maths.’Where Bokkie says: ‘We might not be able to afford Parents’ Weekend in November but it’s not necessary for you to say anything to Lukas or Dominic about why were not coming. Perhaps you can just say Mumdeman is ill or that we can’t leave Bernice while she’s writing matric exams. Auntie Babs can come and fetch you to the farm for the weekend, or do you think maybe you’ll go out with Lukas’s family?’Where I say I’ll go with Lukas s family but know I’ll go with the Websters, and I try not to look at my father, who again doesn’t say a word. Lets his lackey bear the bad tidings. Bokkie of the bad tidings. Where she calls us to supper while Lena and I are watching
The World at War
and when we don’t move she mutters that instead of eating our fingers in front of the TV we should come and eat the food she has slogged over. ‘Look at the two of them, like baboons with those fingers in their mouths,’ and both Lena and I drop our hands, but only I get up and go to the table, saying sarcastically, ‘We plan to eat till we reach our elbows. Then see if you’ll still love us.’ And Bokkie glares at me, and I knew then already, that when we left to come here, she would weep as we drove off, and I’d regret, deeply, the night’s cheek. And again Bokkie calls Lena, now louder, to come and eat because the food’s getting cold. And Lena still doesn’t look up from the TV and says: ‘Just wait, I want to finish watching this.’ And Bok jumps up from the table and slaps my sister across the face. ‘I will not have you speaking to your mother like that.’ And I hate him. If I had a sharper knife, I could plunge it into his back. Let him ever, ever, smack me through the face! I will find a way, Jesus Christ, I will find a way to destroy this man, somehow. And where, less than an hour later after a silent dinner, he and Lena are again the best of friends, as though nothing happened. And I alone am left hating him. As though on my and Lena’s behalf.

But here! Here, here. Beside him in the Alcamino, it doesn’t matter and that’s where I want to keep him. He speaks a hundred experiences and memories and plants and birds I knew nothing of, and his talking grabs me like a fist enfolding my Adam’s apple: my recall forms but a tiny selection of imprints from his: his life here, their life here, my life here, intersecting but divorced. If we were to write them down, his and hers and mine, what would be the same? What would be different? And as mine are fewer, drawn from the time I was five and younger, does it make the place more or less real for him or for me? And if all our memories — no, the world’s memories — could be written down or even just manifest as they were thought — then what would become of us? If the thoughts of each one who has lived from when we came out of the sea or from dust or a rib whatever you want to believe was breathed out into the world for all to hear or see? How would we distinguish anything from everything? And if we included the thoughts of Jonas and the black people, the millions of them! Thoughts in words, voices in words, memories in words, histories in words: a mist of words littering the world. Words covering amoeba and algae, the waves, sand, the leaves, the plants, the animals, the people, the books, the air. The globe, the universe, and theuniverses that lie behind it. And not a single one’s words will be ignored! Memories and thoughts will be written on everything in a hundred thousand languages, Cantonese, English, Maori, Arabic, Xhosa, Afrikaans, Sanskrit, Hebrew, Zulu, Spanish, Ndebele, Hindi, Swahili, and even languages no longer spoken. The language of history and musicology and art and science and geography, and memoir, and novels, and love, and families, and film, and conflicts, the language of birds, of insects, of animals, and biology, and the hunt, in pictures, in poems. In grunts! And signals from before we wrote or even thought in language, let alone through alphabets in a time before calendars or time. The words would envelop everything and turn into tides that bump up against each other like waves breaking and the memories would go to war like storms and hurricanes and histories will be clouds colliding in trenches and tearing veins and fault lines causing lightning and fires that burnt to cleanse everything till we’ll know a single word means a million things. An Armageddon of the word. Of thought, memory. From where it will all begin again, repeat itself over and over, also because a single word left out is a lie, a single voice silenced betrayal. Until from the cycles of chaos something evolves that will not require language. Something that will communicate without sound, perhaps with only touch. The epoch in which we will be nourished by and live from a nail tracing an eyebrow, a cheek. A knee resting against a thigh. Toes meeting in the grass. A palm on a belly. The lifting of a hair from where it has landed on a shoulder. An orifice opening for the rubbing of a finger. Footsoles on warm sand. One nose brushing another. A shadow catches my eye. ‘Rhino at ten o’clock.’ At once Bok brings the truck to a gentle stop. It is a cow, being led by her calf. Right in front of us. Bok turns off the ignition and we sit quietly. Do nothing but watch as they graze from the sweet grass on the side of the road where the water run-off makes the grass grow longer, greener.