Quicksand

It’s too hot to concentrate. All I can think about right now is the mess I found you in when I got home yesterday. Today is going to end badly too. You were drinking before I left for school. And here I am, forced to waste my time in afternoon detention all because I didn’t do my homework. Homework! What a laugh! If Mr. Savage could be a fly on the wall – and God knows there are enough flies crawling around my house – to see all the work I have to do when I get home every day, he would know I don’t have time to write a stupid essay about my family tree. Here’s what I’d tell Mr. Savage about my family if I ever did get the time to write it all down.

I was born with six fingers on my right hand, which was why my mother, Kiki, had to hand me over to The Sacred Heart Orphanage right after my birth. The reason, she explained to me later, was that my six fingers had made some people think that Lev Field, who also had more fingers than he needed, was my father.

When Kiki was born, her mother, Claire Ash, who would have been my grandmother if she had lived long enough to see me come into this world, asked Ethel Bennett, her best friend since childhood, if she would become Kiki’s godmother. Fortunately, she said yes, because when Kiki’s belly began to swell at the tender age of seventeen her mother was already dead, so it was left to Ethel to bring Kiki into her own home and give her a roof over her head.

Later, when I emerged into this world, Frieda, Ethel’s daughter, whom I would have called Aunt Frieda if things had worked out differently, said she thought it was too much of a coincidence that both Lev and I had the same congenital abnormality. Ethel counted my fingers and agreed. She urged Kiki, who up until then had refused to name the father of her child, to confess it was Lev, which would tie her uncertain future to that of a man who at least owned his own shop. But Kiki saw right away the problem she would be faced with trying to convince people that I wasn’t Lev’s sprog. She said goodbye to Ethel and Frieda, thanked them for their help, dropped me off at the orphanage and disappeared.

I was four years old when my mother came back to claim me. She recognized me straight away, even though I had slid my right hand deep into the fold of my skirt and was holding it rigid against my thigh, just the way the nuns had taught me to do whenever people came to choose a child to take home with them. I can still remember her flyaway hair, white and light as a thistle, surrounding her pale face; the way her smile wrapped itself around me and how, before I knew it, my six fingers were nestled in her outstretched hand.

“Hello Destiny. I’m your ma, but you can call me Kiki.”

“The child’s name is Mary.”

“It’s Destiny,” she corrected Mother Superior. “I wrote it down for you the day I left her here.”

Destiny, Destiny. I liked the sound of my new name. My tongue darted about inside my mouth, silently tasting its shape, while the argument bounced back and forth.

“Enough!” Kiki said, snatching the register from Mother Superior and making a big black smudge with her pen over the name Mary, so it could never be seen again. Then she wrote my new name, Destiny, in the small space left above.

“Destiny!”

I wish Mr. Savage wouldn’t suddenly shout like that; it makes me jump. Cora, my new best friend, jumps too. She gets detention as often as I do. Mr. Savage makes his way between the desks towards me and once he has passed Cora, she turns right around in her desk and grins at me.

“Back in your private dream world again, I see,” he says, towering over me and tapping his ruler on the back of my chair. Small bubbles of spit gather in the corners of his mouth. “Wipe that whimsical look off your face will you and return to reality.”

“Perhaps she’s thinking, Mr. Savage,” Cora says.

He swings around to face her. “And who do you suggest she might be thinking about?”

Cora stares at him for a moment, “Someone she loves?”

“Aha!” Mr. Savage swivels like a dancer back towards me. The corner of his lip twitches. His eyes narrow. “And who might that be?”

Before I can answer, his ruler comes down whomp! on my exercise book, splitting the blank page in two.

Startled, I mumble, “My mother, sir. I was thinking about my mother.”

Which is the absolute truth.

#

“You showed him, alright,” Cora says, as we walk home together later. The only good thing about detention, is that we spend a lot of time walking home together in the afternoons.

“Showed him what?” I ask.

She rolls her eyes at me. “You know!” She collapses onto me, squealing with laughter. “You should have given him the name of a boy - that would have been even funnier!”

“I don’t daydream about boys,” I say. Which is not the absolute truth. I daydream about Tobias all the time. But nobody knows that. I watch him from a distance. He’s the most popular boy in the school - always smiling and telling jokes to his little clique of worshippers who follow him around laughing at everything he says. Tobias doesn’t even know I exist.

“You’re doing it again,” she says, giving me a weird look.

“What?”

She rolls her eyes again. “Daydreaming, stupid!”

She’s really got that eye movement sussed. It’s so deflating; so powerful and yet so simple! I’ll practice doing it, so the next time Tiger Pretorius or Nuts Schoeman run up and shake their hands in front of my face and yell Freaky Fingers at me, I’ll lift my eyeballs up to the sky, sigh deeply and roll them. I’m going to practice it like mad. Just thinking about those hateful kids, I get all stirred up. “Let’s do something really crazy today!” I say to Cora.

She has stopped that business with her eyes and is looking at me with surprise. “Like what?”

I take a deep breath and look around. “Like, take the shortcut home?”

“You mean cut across the railway line?”

For a moment I don’t answer. “Unless of course, you’re too scared.” I give her a long look, daring her to have the nerve.

She shrugs. “Of course, I’m not too scared.”

“Cool! C’mon let’s go!” I grab her hand and together we race along the dusty street, past grimy blocks of flats with mean, narrow windows and thick iron bars soldered firmly across the front doors to keep the skollies out. A dirty, belching bus whooshes by, leaving its acrid stink in our nostrils. Today, none of this bothers me. Being with Cora makes the world feel right. Now we’re crossing the grassy field and we turn towards the grey path running alongside the railway line. Dilapidated fences cordon off the backyards of the railway houses on our left and the track beneath our feet narrows. A tall gum tree up ahead marks the spot where the monotonous, flat, dun-coloured sand of our path takes a sudden right-hand turn, snaking up and over the metal railway track and down the incline on the other side. We splash through a culvert crammed with long-stemmed arum lilies. A train whistles in the distance. The Strand Express! Surely, it can’t be here yet? I look up and see the bull bar of the train thundering towards us, churning up a cloud of brake-shoe dust beneath its wheels.

“Run Cora,” I shout. “We’re nearly there.”

Cora is tiny, or as Kiki would say, pocket-sized. I, on the other hand, am tall and, well, to put it plainly, bulky. Compared to her, I feel Herculean. She tries her best to keep up. The bank is steeper now and much higher than I remember. My lungs are bursting, my muscles screaming at me to stop. I hear the screech of metal on metal. Adrenalin pumps, terror grips me. Mustn’t fall now, Cora. But she’s light on her feet and I have her hand in mine, dragging her along. Small dark stones slip and slide beneath our feet as we follow the turn of the track and scramble up toward the elevation, the ear-piecing whistle of the fast-approaching train tearing through our brains. We sprint across the line and fling ourselves, screaming, with only seconds to spare, onto the sandy turf, where we tumble, furled together in a bundle of arms and legs, down the bank. We lie in a terrified heap, unable to breathe or speak. Cora recovers first.

“You are crazy,” she says breathlessly. And then she smiles at me. Her smile wrinkles her nose and lights up her eyes. I would walk on hot coals for one of Cora’s smiles.

#

We reach the gate of my home. It hangs awkwardly on one hinge. I kick it open and check out the house. I am shocked to realize I haven’t given you a thought all afternoon. The curtains are still drawn and to outsiders it might seem empty. But I know you’re trapped in there, drinking yourself to death. When last were you sober?

I step onto the path. Weeds grow haphazardly between the cracks in the uneven paving stones. Ants swarm across the scuffed black of my shoes. I think back to the house we shared with your friend Ben in Touwsrivier, and before that the small, one-bedroomed cottage in Vredenburg where your friend Sakkie let us work on the farm with him for a season, picking watermelons and butternut and pumpkins. I remember the six months we spent in Somerset West. I liked it there – even went to the farm school a couple of times a week when work was slack. I was happy in Somerset West. I had a kitten called Josie and a friend called Nadia. She cried when the seasonal work ended, and we had to move on. She promised she would look after Josie and not let Oom Danie drown her in the river with the other unwanted litters. But the place I loved best of all was Pater Noster. I made friends with the fishermen who brought us crayfish when they had some to spare. You liked the beach parties. Lots of glass to clean up sometimes, I remember.

“Y’ma still at work?” asks Cora, her voice popping my daydreams like soap bubbles. I’d forgotten she was there.

“Ja,” I lie. “She works late, sometimes.” Cora doesn’t know about the drinking.

“Want me to stay ’til she gets back?”

I shake my head. “I’ll be okay.”

“But what if someone’s already got inside the house, waiting for you?”

“Naah. Look - no windows broken, see?” Cora’s right to worry. Bad people, skollies, cruise these streets, scoping the places out. Their eyes see everything – who went to work, who went to school – the empty house, the hidden key? It’s the price we have to pay so I can go to school, you tell me.

I walk up the path and turn the key in the front door. “See you tomorrow,” I call over my shoulder. I step inside and close the door, alone now, with a boogie man far worse than even Cora could imagine.

At first, I don’t see you.

“Kiki,” I call softly, screwing my eyes up in the gloom. I stand awhile, adjusting to the light. Dark shapes reveal themselves as familiar objects, discarded wine bottles, your empty souvenir box on the table. Faded photographs, newspaper cuttings, a champagne cork or two, all lie in an untidy heap on the floor. From the corner of my eye, I see you stumble toward me, bottle in hand. “It’s me. Destiny,” I say.

You stagger closer, bottle aloft, contents dribbling. I hold you, steady you, then ease you slowly onto the couch. A mixture of sickly odours wafts from you. I take the bottle and place it on the table. “That’s enough for today.”

A gassy sound explodes from your mouth.

“It’s okay, Kiki. I’m home now.” I step carefully over your precious souvenirs and head for the bathroom to run your bath. It’s not easy undressing you in your semi-comatose state but I’ve perfected a technique. You’re mostly skin and bone these days, but I’m strong. I lift you over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes and peel your damp broeks from your legs. I slide you back down onto the couch, lifting your soiled dress up and over your head as I do so. Your breasts are like shrunken pears. I carry you to the waiting bath and lower you into it. You grunt with pleasure. “S’nice,” you murmur. I kneel beside you and hold you in the warm water like a baby. I wish I could wash away your addiction as easily as I do the filth it leaves behind.

“Why are you doing this to yourself?” I whisper. You float, oblivious to everything. If I should release my hold on you, you’d sink below the bubbles. Guilt surges at my treacherous thought and I lift you out quickly. Of course, I’d never do that. You moan a little and make feeble protests as I dry you and pull a fresh nightdress over your head. You begin to snore the instant I slide you between the sheets.

I know things can’t go on like this. I keep threatening to phone Dr. Brink, but never do. I look at your emaciated frame lying beneath the covers and make myself a promise. Tomorrow morning, God only knows how I’ll pay him, but tomorrow morning, come Hell or high water, I am going to phone him.