Authors: Fanie Viljoen
Mindf**k (8 page)
Where to now? We stopped at the crossroad outside Aldam. To our left lay the road to Bloemfontein, to our right the road to Johannesburg, straight on lay Virginia, the old mining town where a slimes dam burst about ten years ago, sweeping away people, cars and houses in Merriespruit. Hell of a disaster.
Like I felt inside at that moment.
Mudslide disaster.
I looked at Sky in the rear-view mirror. He stared down at his hands but obviously knew what I wanted to ask and just said:
‘To Bloem.’
I turned left.
I dropped Kerbs off at his flat first, then Sky at his house. Then I drove home. Tired.
I left everything in the car in the driveway and made my way to the front door. It was locked. My key was under the sun dial in the garden. My dad would have freaked out had he discovered that I kept it there, but I wasn’t going to carry the thing around with me everywhere I went.
I got the key and unlocked the front door.
Everything was quiet.
I strolled through the house. In the kitchen I grabbed an apple, wiped it clean on my T-shirt and took a bite while sauntering onward.
They had probably gone to town.
I opened my dad’s closet in his room. Just to take a look.
The closet was empty. So, he had hit the road. Gone.
For a while I stared at the bare closet but it meant nothing to me. Not then, I was too tired. Maybe it would later.
I fell down on my bed, laying there wearing only my boxers.
I tried sleeping but didn’t know if I actually nodded off. I had a pulsing headache. Or was I dreaming I had one?
And was I dreaming when I heard my mom’s car coming up the driveway? That she entered the house, stopping at my door, wondering if she should come in? That she touched the handle, pressed it down and released it again without entering? That she walked away?
I woke up with a start. It was already dark outside. What time is it, I wondered? I couldn’t find my watch, looked on my cell phone. Eleven o’clock. I lay quiet for a while, listening for any movement around the house, trying to find out if anyone was awake, but I heard nothing.
There hung an awful stench in my room. Something like the smell of old food. I got up to open a window. I wasn’t in the mood to look for the source of the terrible stench.
My mouth felt bitter and dry. I strolled to the bathroom, pissed and gulped down a few sips of water directly from the tap.
The face staring back at me from the mirror didn’t look like me. It was pale, had a two day old beard, red eyes and cracked lips.
I felt terrible. The bitter taste was still in my mouth. I pressed out a squirt of toothpaste on my tongue, took another sip of water and rinsed my mouth with toothpaste. My toothbrush was still in my dad’s car.
The car. I wondered if it was still there. If my dad had come to fetch it.
I was alone in the house. I made my way to the front door.
The car was still in the driveway. Amazing that he hadn’t come to fetch it, I thought. After all the SMSs and voicemails. Perhaps it was because of the thing between him and my mom. And the other man.
The key was still in the ignition. I got in, opened the electronic gate and reversed into the street. The gate closed again. A block further on I remembered that I
hadn’t locked the house. The front door was probably still wide open. Ah, what the hell.
I drove into town.
I needed a beer. And a spliff.
I drove down Nelson Mandela Drive, past Tempe, the Brandwag Centrum, Mimosa Mall. The street’s name changed to Zastron Street. Past the orange and green lights of Stadium Fast Foods (busy as always).
Where should I go? Cool Runnings? Mystic Boer? Maybe to the Waterfront?
But the very thought of all those people crowding those places by now made me realise that I didn’t really crave a beer that much. I didn’t want to see anyone.
Perhaps I should just cruise through the town centre, I thought. No, not there either. It is a dangerous place at that time of night. Some people don’t even go there during the day anymore. I have no idea how all those businesses survive.
To Naval Hill then, I decided. I turned left at the Checkout store on the corner of Zastron and Kloof Street. The traffic light at the old stone church stopped me. I waited. There were no other cars approaching. Should I drive on? No, wait.
Over on the sidewalk I saw someone walking. A girl. In the streetlight I saw she had long black hair, wearing a T-shirt and jeans. She looked around for a moment … and my heart stopped.
It was Partygirl!
The traffic light was still red. I shot a glance at the other one to see if it had turned orange already. No, it was still green.
She strode away further and further. It seemed as if she was aiming for a side road. It was dark there.
The light was still red.
Fuck that.
I floored the pedal. The car shot forward.
It was her, I saw as she reached the next streetlight.
Suddenly there were screaming tires behind me. I spotted a white car in the rear-view mirror. How it crashed into the sidewalk. Dust and a honking horn. I probably should’ve checked if there were any cars coming.
I wasn’t going back. No ways.
I was again on the lookout for Partygirl. I found her in Second Street. She walked with her arms folded across her body. I drove closer. Stopped the car, jumped out, leaving the door open.
‘Partygirl!’
She glanced over her shoulder at me. I could see that she was scared. She quickened her pace.
It wasn’t her.
It wasn’t her.
I got back into the car and sat bent forward over the steering wheel. Should I have cried? It was what other people would have done. But I couldn’t.
I made a U-turn and turned right at the crossing. I wasn’t in the mood for Naval Hill anymore. I was on my way home.
The white car was still parked on the sidewalk in front of the church.
The driver noticed me again. He probably hoped that I’d come back, but I drove past. He gave me the finger. And I returned the favour.
Back through the darkened streets. Past the liquor store, Receiver of Revenue, the blue glass building, and then I saw her again …
Partygirl.
The same hope.
The same disappointment.
Kelly hammered on my bedroom door. I’d noticed that she was home but I wasn’t in the mood to talk to her. She would only bitch and moan about Mom and Dad and how shit it was that they wanted to separate, and about the other guy who fucked everything up in our household. (As if it weren’t fucked up a long time ago.)
Point was – I didn’t need it. Not right then.
My mind was muddled and my body felt like an ant farm inhabited by millions of little moving black ants tunnelling through my flesh. Scurrying about, carrying pieces
of cut flesh out of me. I could almost feel their small feet tickling in my intestines. And I felt like one of them – I wanted to keep on moving and moving.
I scratched around in my closet until I found a small suitcase. (My old grade 1 bag, could you believe it?) It was where I kept everything my parents weren’t supposed to see. They always went through my stuff when I wasn’t around. Thought I didn’t know, seeing that everything was already in such disarray. But I knew, as we understand our own bedevilment. There’s a kind of fuzzy logic behind everything.
In the suitcase I had an unsmoked spliff. Heavy stuff which I intended saving for a special occasion. I removed it and stuffed it in my back pocket. There wasn’t anything special in my life anyway.
I removed the burglar bars. I had sawn them off a long time ago and they were basically just décor now.
I hopped through the window and
strolled on in the dark past the fruit trees. I could still hear Kelly hammering on my door. How she cried for me to open up.
In the corner of the yard there was a Wendy house, where we kept the gardening tools. I sat down behind the house, made myself comfortable on the ground and lit the spliff. Its mellow sweetness rushed through my body.
Peace at last.
I watched the tip glow. Then I lay down on my side on the ground. While gently floating away I wondered what Kerbs and Sky were up to. If they also thought about Partygirl.
The dreams came fast and furious.
One of them was more like a voice and probably not a real dream. At first the voice was far away. Then it came closer. It called … my name …
‘Burns …’ The word echoed in my mind.
It was Partygirl.
‘Burns, I am not dead.’
I woke up, soaking with sweat. The Wendy house’s wall was against my back and the ground right at my face. It was still dark.
‘I’m not dead.’
I glanced around. It felt as if the voice had whispered it in my ears just now. Maybe shouted, because it was still so clear. It couldn’t have been a dream.
She was there!
Partygirl was alive.
I have to find her, I thought. I jumped up, felt my stomach aching with hunger pangs. The munchies. But fuck that, I thought, I had to find her.
‘Partygirl!’ I cried out into the night, stumbling around in-between the trees. ‘Partygirl!’
My voice echoed against the neighbours’ houses, returning to me in the dark, abandoned and empty.
I climbed through my bedroom window. She might be waiting for me in my room. No, she wasn’t there either. I threw open my cupboard door. Nothing.
My heart raced as if I had run the Comrades marathon in a record time. Anxiety thickened in my throat, stole my breath. I unlocked my bedroom door and darted through the house. From room to room. I called her name. Screamed her name.
Nothing.
‘Chris!’ someone called my name. I turned around.
It was Kelly.
‘Have you lost it completely? What’s going on with you? Just look at you!’
Only then did I notice how filthy my clothes were – from the sweat and the sand. My skin was sticky and there was sand under my fingernails. My mouth tasted bitter as if a dog had lifted its leg inside it. I felt sick, nauseous and hungry.
Lost.
Empty.
Kelly stared at me as if I were roadkill.
‘Why didn’t you open up the door earlier?’
‘She isn’t here,’ I said.
‘I wanted to talk to you. Shit, I just want to talk to someone. You know you can’t with Mom –’
‘She isn’t here.’
‘They’re getting a divorce, Chris. And what will happen to –’
‘She isn’t –’
‘Mom’s with the other guy, Chris. I know she’s not here.’
‘Not Mom.’
‘What? We’ve been talking about Mom the whole time!’
Kelly seemed to be hovering across the carpet. Past the TV, the hi-fi … hazy white like an angel.
‘Chris!’ Suddenly she was right back where she was before. In focus. It looked as if she wanted to cry.
‘Go talk to one of your boyfriends, I don’t wanna fucking know. I don’t care what Mom and Dad do.’
‘You’re a real dick, do you know that?’
I know.