Per Contra
Summer 2007
3
Plain Text Version - Fiction
I click off the phone and pull over, just before Jesus Loves You. I slump over the wheel, sobbing.
WATERHOLE
I fill up at the Blyde River fuel station, the same place I stopped at three days ago when I went to interview Andries, the excavator operator up at Mariepskop. The pungent odour of petrol is a jolt. It reminds me of my father, teaching me to drive, instructing me to pull up on the same side as the gas tank. There’s only a bottle store here, the plant hire place and a kafee.
I ask after Upside-down Thomas who’d filled my tank earlier in the week. The attendant shrugs. I’m relieved, just making small talk. Upside-down Thomas had told me he was studying Public Relations through correspondence. He asked me to give him a job, asked me to help him. Gee, I said feeling like a culprit. I wish I could. Jobs are hard to find.
I’d printed the cheque with my fountain pen. Thomas had admired the pen, but it felt like an accusation. When I blew on the wet ink, he narrowed his eyes below his black and blue peak. I figured his studies were a fiction. He held my cheque, looking long and hard at my name, pulling on the paper, stroking it between his fingers.
I’d said, Keep up the studies, Thomas. I hope you get lucky soon. On the job front, I added, blushing.
I’ll try my level best, he’d answered, licking his lips.
I buy bottled water at the kafee and walk back, swinging my packet, singing, happy to be going home. I’d spent the week on assignments for the magazine, interviewing vehicle operators for the transport issue, talking to local business owners. I’ve missed my daughter.
There were monkeys, a hornbill, an eagle and lots of different buck. I saw the large holes dug by warthog undermining the electric fences and the spoor of big cats. I saw a snake that left no trail in the gravel, so that after it had gone I doubted I’d seen it. It was hot at the campsite and the river had dried up. The tap water had tasted soapy.
I feel dehydrated, glad of the sparkling mineral water I like so much. I unscrew the lid, loving the hiss, anticipating the first sharp mouthful.
The garage owner in Kamogelo told me he used to have two excellent mechanics, but one just up and died. The one I interviewed didn’t look too good either. He was thin with yellowed eyes and lesions on his skull. The mechanic has to train somebody new soon, but the problem with that, he’d said, is that the new guy is going to up and die on you too. It’s tricky.
The owner of the plant hire company rents out earth moving equipment to farmers building dams. He can’t employ his men over weekends, can’t keep his equipment operating enough hours in the month to pay off his bank loan. He has to let them go Saturdays, for funerals. Every week, another funeral. They’re croaking like frogs, he’d said. You know the end is near when they start sleeping every tea break and lunch hour, napping on the ground if there’s a 20 minute wait.
While I’m waiting for the cash slip, a man at the next pump greets me like he knows me. I don’t remember him. Thomas? I ask, tentative. No, he says, Goodenough.
Good to see you, Goodenough, I say, confused. Perhaps I interviewed his colleague, the mechanic, or the forklift driver. Was he a friend of the excavator operator? I can’t place him.
You go where?
Home, I say, Jozi, taking just a sip from the water bottle, but wanting to guzzle.
Jozi’s a big city, he says, watching my throat. I don’t know anyone there.
It’s a big city, I say, dabbing my lips.
A man needs a friend in Jozi, he says, still staring at my throat. My knees turn to paste. Perhaps you give me your number, he says.
Perhaps I don’t, I say, looking at the gravel that yields no footprints.
CLIP
My daughter lies on her stomach on the wooden floor. Her legs are under my bed. She points my camera at her baby parrot holding a grape in its bandaged foot. I bought grapes and mangoes and avocado pears at a wooden stall near the Blyde River yesterday.
Why’s Pi eating in my room? I ask, staring at the beard of pulp around his beak. He shakes his head and the mush disperses across the parquet tiles.
He likes the décor, says Kate.
You mean he can see the floor in here, I say, wiping up grape particles with a tissue.
Whaddevah, she says. A flash. Light bounces off the walls, my wardrobe. Gotcha!
We’ve been apart for five days, me in the bush, her looking at boarding schools with her father. Her pet had stayed at the vet because it needed antibiotics. We left Karma, the other bird, the one that had ripped out Pi’s claw, with a friend.
Clean up after him when you’re done, I say. I don’t want to tread in sticky stuff.
She ignores me.
She had constructed a toy for his cage, looping together old keys, a dead tin opener, a plastic toy, and the silver ring I gave her last birthday. She’d worried about him being fretful. The toy will distract him, she’d said.
Don’t let him chew the electrics, I say.
You hear that, Pi? No wires for nibblies. Don’t want a Fried Pi. No burned beak. What would the vet say? Abusive parents, neglectful mothers. Pass a tissue, Ma.
I hand her the box. She wipes the bird’s face. It struggles. Stop fussing, Pi Baby.
Take one of me and Pi, Mom. I click. We laugh. She reviews the images, showing them to the bird on her shoulder. Look, that’s you, Pi. You’re cute. And photogenic. She holds the image out to me. He says it’s a bad pic. The angle’s not right. He’s looking away.
Take another, Mom. I’ll need good photos of me and Pi. For my wall. At boarding school.
CREST
I’m ten minutes early at the psychologist’s rooms where the mediation is being held. Kate’s father is there already, talking to his lawyer, whose mascara is punishing. I hold out my hand. Her fingers are sticks, her hand-shake pointed, hurting.
I wear my black work skirt, ironed, the mauve silk jacket I bought at a second-hand shop for its good label. The heels do it, make me look competent, perhaps even pretty.
Her father returns to his car, retrieving a folder from the boot. The last jacaranda blossoms fall on the roof. I say to the lawyer, Did he tell you today was the day? She scrutinises me as if she’s hearing-disordered. It’s too late to quit the story. I say, Twenty-one years ago today, we got married.
She says, No. He didn’t tell me that. I feel an idiot. But I’m not finished. I say, I was 19.
He returns and rings the doorbell. While we wait, a woman in the street answers her cell phone. She talks loudly, saying, That wasn’t the deal; I can’t possibly agree. She’s big, with cropped hair, wearing quilted salmon. From the way she opens her car door, I know she’s unafraid.
I carry my lap-top in a brief case. Moral support – that self I’m still proud of: photographer, writer, those digital codes more real than paper, than court orders.
Inside is dark and cool. A dragonfly hovers above a decorative Koi pond at the entrance. This is going to be an expensive two hours. I’ll pay the child psychologist; he’ll pay the lawyer.