Strong Medicine
Authors: Angela Meadon
Strong
Medicine
ANGELA MEADON
Copyright © 2016 Angela Meadon
All rights reserved.
ISBN:
1530999308
ISBN-13:
978-1530999309
DEDICATION
For Mike,
my
sine qua non.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It takes a village to raise a book, and I could not have created Strong Medicine without the unending support of my friends and family. Mike, Cathy and Glenn, Dave, Jinx, and Lood. Thank you for giving me the tools, confidence, time, and space to bring this labor of love to fruition.
Up to three hundred people a year are killed in South Africa so that their body parts can be used in traditional medicine. Most of them are children.
Prof. Jeremy Sharp, Murder for Medicine, 2018
Lindsey had painted dead rabbits on her fingernails. Tiny black and white rabbit heads with crosses for eyes and their tongues sticking out. She sat cross-legged on our bed while the soapies bubbled their way across the TV on the dresser. It had taken her three hours, and seven different nail polish bottles, before she was happy with her handy work.
The grey pre-dawn light and blurry edges of sleep softened the edges of the bunnies. They drifted in and out of focus as sleep relinquished its hold on me.
The bunnies on Lindsey’s nails had started out as regular bunnies with smiley faces, but she was worried her friends would call them lame and tease her. She’d picked up a paintbrush with only a few hairs and, with her tongue sticking from the corner of her mouth, she’d turned the happy bunnies into dead ones.
A pang of regret gripped my heart. My little girl was growing up too fast. She’d be ten years old in a month. She still had a child’s body, long skinny legs, an impish little smile, and the white-blond hair that matched my own. I missed the sweet innocent baby, the sassy toddler. But I loved the cheeky little girl she was growing into.
Lindsey lay on her side facing me with her fingers in front of her mouth. Exactly the way she’d slept as a baby. The blankets rose and fell as she breathed the slow breaths of deep sleep. There was just enough light for me to see the dead rabbits. They were hectic. We’d have to talk about them later. They weren’t suitable for school. She’d spent so long painting them that it would break her heart if I made her clean them off before she got to show her friends.
The first birdsong cut through the cold, silent morning. Only the
mossies
were too stupid, or too stubborn to stay in their beds until it warmed up a little.
Cocooned in warmth and quiet, it was easy to imagine that it was just Lindsey and me, in our own house. We’d live in a neat three-bedroom cottage on the south coast, with big open windows and waves crashing on the beach outside. Seagulls would wake us, not little brown jobbies.
The dream of our own house faded, leaving hot frustration in my chest. There were five other people in this tiny house. It had been perfect when my father had died. Just big enough for my mom and her two kids. But twenty years had added children and partners, and we were all still stuck in the same house.
I’d moved out when I discovered I was pregnant with Lindsey fresh out of high school. I moved in with her father and everything was
lekker
until it wasn’t. He was ‘too young to be tied down,’ and I wound up back on my mother’s doorstep with an infant and a suitcase full of bad memories.
Soon I’d have enough money to put down a three-month deposit and we could get a place of our own. I just needed to save for a little longer. I’d have to get used to living alone again. It wasn’t easy sharing a home with so many people, but we were a close family and supported each other through toxic relationships, bad jobs, and no jobs.
Creased sheets twisted between my toes as I tried to soak the last warmth from the bed before getting up. I kissed Lindsey’s cheek, and stroked her hair. Her skin was soft and smooth, her cheeks slightly plump. She was almost as tall as me now, but there was still some softness to her face. It wouldn’t be long before that softness melted away in the furnace of adolescence.
With seven people living in one small house, with one small bathroom, it paid to be the first out of bed in the morning. Lindsey hardly ever got to shower first, but if she woke now she might get to enjoy the best of the warm water, and the fresh bathroom.
My fingers brushed tangled strands of hair from her forehead. “Lindsey, wake up, baby.”
Her eyes flickered open and she smiled a lopsided smile that lifted my heavy mood. “Hi,
Ma
.”
“Hey baby, you want to shower first?”
She rubbed her eyes and nodded.
“Go on, everyone else is still asleep.”
She slid out from under the covers, shivering as the cold air pried past her thin pajamas. We padded down the hall to the bathroom and I waited outside the door, listening to the shower splutter and spit into the plastic tub.
The house came to life around me, as it did every morning.
My brother Thomas shuffled down the passage and stood behind me in the queue. “Hey, Erin. Who’s inside?” He ran a hand through the knots in his dark brown hair. Dad’s hair.
“Lindsey got the jump on us this morning.”
He nodded and leaned against the wall with his eyes closed. If he wasn’t standing upright you’d swear he was fast asleep. His face was slack, his mouth open just wide enough that his front teeth gleamed in the half-light.
He roused himself when the bathroom door creaked open. Lindsey emerged, water running from her hair and dripping onto the carpet. She stood on tippy-toes and kissed my cheek, then scampered down the passage to our room.
“Be quick,” Thomas said as I closed the bathroom door behind me.
There was a queue of grumpy faces outside the door by the time I emerged. Thomas and his girlfriend, Sue, passed their toddler between them. He wriggled with excitement and that baby-strength that makes them so difficult to hold on to. My mother and her boyfriend, stood a meter apart. Not talking again. The bathroom door banged shut as Thomas and Sue went in together.
The heat of the shower had fled by the time I dragged a pair of jeans and a bright green vest over my wet hair. Goosebumps stood out on my skin and only settled once my body heat seeped into the clothes. I combed my hair straight and shoved my feet into two pairs of socks and my trusty sneakers.
Half an hour after we’d gotten out of bed together, Lindsey plopped down at the wonky kitchen table. Coffee rings and dark smudges stained the green linoleum top. Decades of use had left it scuffed and worn down. And the damn thing wobbled no matter how we tried to wedge its legs level. It was as unsteady as a three-legged racehorse. Maybe if mom’s boyfriend didn’t drink so much we’d be able to afford a new one. Maybe if he got a job we could afford a bigger house. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Lindsey’s school uniform was a few sizes too big, the sleeves of her green jersey hung from the ends of her hands. I reached over and rolled them up so that they wouldn’t drag in her breakfast. The dead bunnies on her fingernails emerged from their woolen burrows.
“What’s your teacher going to say about those?” I arched an eyebrow at her nails and dropped a bowl of cornflakes onto the table in front of her. A few drops of milk splashed onto the table.
“She can kiss my butt.” Lindsey grabbed a spoon from the tin in the middle of the table. Her cheeks flushed and she looked at me from under her eyelashes. “I’ll make sure she doesn’t see them.”
It was almost 6:30 already. The look of determined defiance in Lindsey’s serious blue eyes was enough to convince me to put this discussion off. She shouldn’t go to school with her nails like that. I should have said something last night. But she’d already done so much work before she killed them that I didn’t have the heart to make her clean them then.
“I don’t have time for this right now, the nails or the language.” My thumb found the spilled milk on the counter, leaving a milky sheen as I sucked the milk off my finger. “Just don’t let Granny hear you talk like that. She’ll have a heart attack.
“Ja,
Ma
.” Lindsey shoveled a spoonful of cornflakes into her mouth and licked at a dribble of milk that escaped down her chin.
“Do you have netball today?”
“Ja, the match ends at three. I’ll walk home after.”
“Okay.” I scooped the last of my cornflakes from the bowl and drank the sugary milk. “Clean your nails when you get home.”
“Ja,
Ma
…” Lindsey’s voice followed me out of the house.
The sun was an angry red welt on the murky horizon. I shaded my eyes and slipped a cigarette between my lips. Crazy Mr. Botha was already sweeping the passage outside his apartment. He pushed the evening’s coal dust out beneath the railing; it billowed in a grey cloud before tumbling onto the floor three stories below.
Hot, fragrant cigarette smoke filled my lungs. A pillar of ash tumbled to the concrete balcony, right between Mr. Botha’s feet.
“Hai!” His fleshy jowls quivered and his watery eyes bulged.
We did this almost every morning, but this morning there was an extra opportunity to mess with the old man. I winked at him and pointed at the open front of his trousers. “I can see your
piel.
”
Grumbled cursing followed me all the way down two flights of stairs to the building’s parking lot. The crazy old man would probably still be there, muttering to himself and sweeping the passage, when the sun went down tonight.
My little white Uno stood under an old tree in the parking lot. Bird crap decorated the roof and slid in lumpy white trails down the windscreen. I snubbed my cigarette and dropped the
stompie
. The door opened with a squeal of protesting hinges and I dropped into the seat.
The engine wheezed when the key turned in the ignition. The car shuddered and clunked and fell silent.
“Come on, old girl.” The accelerator pedal creaked as my foot worked it up and down. The second time I turned the key, the engine choked and spluttered, then shivered to life. The car was almost twenty years old, a hand-me-down from my mother when I’d gotten my first job. The black bumper was almost grey from years spent in the sun. Dents and scratches covered the body. It was a wreck, but it was the only car we had, and it kept going even on cold winter mornings like this one.
Traffic was already backed up all the way past the gate of our complex. I pulled out of the driveway and edged my way into the queue of cars in the street outside. Joburg’s skyscrapers stood shrouded in smog on my left, far away and forlorn in the autumn morning. The city was much prettier in summer, when the thunderstorms kept the air clear and the trees were full of leaves. Now it just looked old and tired, like Mr. Botha.
The morning news fought with a harsh static hiss to make it out of the tinny speaker in my door. It was the same old story in Jo’burg. Men killing each other, violent protests over lack of service delivery, and politicians dodging blame for screwing up their portfolios. The final story made my stomach twist. It was about a child’s body that was found discarded in the veld in Soweto. The family asked for privacy at this time.
A shiver ran down my spine, like a moth fluttering against my skin. Lindsey walked to school and back every day. It wasn’t far and she was responsible for her age, but there was always the possibility that something might happen to her.
If I worked closer to home I could drop her at school. If we lived in a nicer neighborhood it wouldn’t be such a problem. There was nothing I could do right now except trust in Lindsey’s common sense and maturity.
I turned off the radio and let the concertina traffic guide me into town. I had a long day of work ahead of me and worrying about things I couldn’t change would only make it longer.