Per Contra
Summer 2007
Plain Text Version - Fiction
PAISLEY
The ‘s’ at the end of les and cartes and postales is silent, I say, modulating my voice, hoping to conceal my dismay at Kate’s terrible pronunciation. My 14-year-old’s French oral exam is tomorrow and I want her to do well. She recently moved in with me after living with her father for six years. He must see I can care for her. I want him to let her stay.
We’re seated at the dining room table, surrounded by textbooks, a dictionary, her file stuffed with dog-eared handouts. I doodle an ‘s’ on the notepad and cross it out, explain again about elision. In Afrikaans you pronounce everything you see. Nothing is hidden. It’s a translucent language.
The paisley table cloth is faded now. My mother bought it travelling in India. She went alone, to celebrate turning 50. She took photographs of the Taj Mahal, the relics at Goa, the cripples
I draw a clock face at three o’clock. My daughter fingers a pimple. I resist the urge to brush her hand away. Quelle heure est-il? I ask.
Trwuz urz, she says, rolling her eyes. I suppress a sigh and say, Nearly right. You pronounce the ‘s’ at the end of trois because it connects to the ‘h’ of heures, but the next ‘s’ is silent. I used to teach music at l’École Française de Johannesbourg. Diplomats’ kids, mostly, and contractors’. Troubled souls who moved to new cities every few years, never settling anywhere.
I draw a four o’clock.
Ma-ahm, she says, Gimme a break. All her friends have American accents. It’s the fashion, learned on TV. We don’t have one, but my daughter mimics her friends. TV’s bad for your health, I’d said, when she asked. It makes you stupid. Still, she came. She said she wanted to live with her mom. She was tired of Jesus in the other house, and fellowship and worship and having faith.
Devons-nous faire une promenade? I say after an hour of conjugating verbs. She looks at me blankly. That means Shall we go for a walk? Let’s take a break.
Wecircle the park where small boys play cricket. Lightning flashes on the horizon. My daughter towers over me now, resting her arm on my shoulder momentarily. She’s tall, like her grandmother. Her father sends her to a private college, a fancy place my parents couldn’t have afforded. When I fetch her I’m to stay put in my little car. She doesn’t want people noticing my shabby kit. I dressed up when I went to visit her teacher, wearing my crisp linen suit, with mascara applied and a lipstick called sugar plum.
As we walk around the park jacaranda blossoms pop underfoot, pungent explosions that turn to lilac sludge in the rain. Storm clouds have built, high and puffy, the sky black in the south. I’ve forgotten the French word for clouds, for thunder.
She says, Ma, Dad’s driving me to Maritzburg this weekend. I want to go to boarding school. We’re going to look at Epworth, at St John’s. Good church schools. Je t’enverrai une carte postale. I will send you a postcard.
The sun is low. The light reflecting off the clouds bounces against white security walls, blinding us. I reach out to her, to steady myself.
CRAFTY
Kate opens the fruit I bought from the Zimbabwean boy weaving between slow cars during rush hour. My window was down, even though it’s a prime hi-jacking spot. The fan’s is broken, stuck on hot. Another boy tried selling us a beaded wire cow, big as a boot.
He said, Our mother in Harare, she make the crafty cows to feed hunger children.
We haven’t space for clutter, but I pity them. They’ll sleep next to the river if it doesn’t rain, or in the Hillbrow ghetto if it does. Both can swallow a child when they’re raging.
The boys looked Kate’s age. I bought the bag of fruit, even though I knew the apples would be floury and the peaches dented. They’ll be lucky if the police don’t get them. The R20 I paid might keep them out of Lindela, the refugee transit centre that’s like a concentration camp.
At home Kate asks, Can I give my baby a naartjie?
He’ll love it, I say.
Won’t be too acid?
He’ll toss it if it is.
Her baby is a four-month-old Senegal parrot that bleats like a goat. Its eyes are still milky grey; its head round and fluffy. I bought it for her soon after she moved in with me, a device to hold her. Her father keeps cats. If she goes back to him, she’ll have to leave the bird.
The day we returned from the pet shop, she hammered an old teaspoon, pinching the edges to form a spout for its open beak that tugs like a nursing infant. He nibbles the orange peel, sneezing at the citrus vapour.
The phone rings. I freeze at the stove. Kate carries on peeling the naartjie with her long nails painted metallic green. Her father won’t allow makeup. The phone rings a second time. We look at each other. My eyelids stick in a too-wide stare.
It’s probably him, she says, narrowing her eyes.
Let it ring, I say. My skin is too tight, my lungs too small. We don’t have caller ID.
Maybe it’s an estate agent, she says, pragmatic, controlled.
I’ll get it, I say, but she’s already wiped her hands on her jeans and lifted the phone. Before answering she stares me down, reproaching, You gonna be scared all your days?
She says into the receiver, It’s not a good time, Dad. We’re making supper.
Kate moves into the passage, soothing him, saying, Don’t worry. It’s blown outta proportion. Call you later. Yeah.
After supper she rings him on her autodial. I want to intervene, to stop her, to gesture a warning: be careful what you say. But I know I mustn’t. I pretend I’m working on my computer, but I’m clicking keys so she won’t notice I’m listening in.
Sos osss sos ss sssssss sos sos
I didn’t want to worry you, she says.
asdfasdf lelelele ffff fuckufuckufuck
She says, We didn’t keep you out the loop deliberately, to be spiteful.
llllooloo loo loop pool poopop pop
Last week there was graffiti on the school toilet walls: KATE UPTON IS A BULIMIC SATANIST.
A week ago she swallowed six painkillers, vomited immediately, then told me. I checked her colour, her pulse rate. Through the night I listened to her breathe. I called the psychiatrist in the morning, setting up an appointment. I complained to the head teacher. The school told her father about the graffiti, the overdose. Then he phoned threatening: to take her away, to get a court order, to bring the police.
She says, I’m fine, Dad, it’ll be cool. Don’t worry.
kkkkk llk llk lkjjkj kkk okok ok
Pi preens a strand of her hair in its beak. She dyed it reddish brown to match mine. I laughed saying she’d need grey too if she wants to look snap-snap.
Yeah Dad, Thanks Dad, she says, sounding American. The bird grooms her eyelashes. She dyed them too.
r re ref refu refug refuge refugee eee eeeeeee
She laughs, says, We wrote the Technology paper today. I had to design a wire cow, like the ones the Zimbos sell, you know, made of beads and wire. It wasn’t great. I hadn’t studied too well.
I want to shake her. She shouldn’t say that. He’ll blame me. He’ll take you away.
zzz zim zimz babababa wee wee wee