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Liesl Jobson | Mary Anne's GardenSitting behind Mary Anne’s kitchen, I clutch my cappuccino in both hands. My shredded dignity has slipped through my fingers. I thought I was polite, a well-behaved woman. I thought I was a good mother. That’s all in question now.
As the Indian Mynah flies from my front door to the polished glass entrance of the coffee shop, the distance is four kilometres. The short trip took 45 minutes today. Somewhere between home and here, I lost the plot. Now I’m wondering, did I lose it or discover it?
The perpetual state of near chaos in my head threatens to degenerate into complete catastrophe in the imminent future. Last week, I went shopping without my wallet and forgot to take the children to their swimming lesson. Today I was unkind to the dog and rude in the traffic. Yesterday, I forgot to fetch the post, then I missed the turning to my home. I got lost in the city in which I learned to drive.
I think it has something to do with taking too much medication, or maybe not enough. I must remember to call the psychiatrist. The other possible explanation is that I’m not getting enough sleep. I wonder if it will get worse. Can it get worse than gratuitous unkindness to my children?
Only in the little haven where azalea blooms are unfurling underneath the bird feeder, can I review my panic and unclench my jaw. As I say my prayers, I watch the tiny black kitten stalking pigeons. They are twice her size. Under the shade of the Lilly Pilly tree, I hope my daily ritual might restore me. Once I knew it would. Now I am less sure.
The Lilly Pillies are fat and red now. One drops onto the table between the coffeepot and the sugar bowl. At the end of summer they begin to fall. I should sit at another table, I suppose, further away from the messy tree. But I am comfortable here and the barbed wire coils on the top of the wall are less visible from this corner. I can blank them out when I am under this tree which grew in the garden of my childhood. It connects me to my parents, ageing in Cape Town.
The tree is really a foreigner in South Africa. Like my mother-in-law, it is a native of Australia. Perhaps we will emigrate and live there one day and then I will have to find another haven. If we go to Sydney, then I shall be the foreigner sitting under the native tree. But today I am not going to think about that. I don’t really want to leave. Today I must return to my diary, and write down what happened so that there is a documentary of my defeat. Once I work out how I got into this muddle, I shall find the way back to the place I once knew, the place where I was still a good mother.
The journey started badly. Kyle dawdled brushing his teeth and Jasmine couldn't find her hat. By twenty past seven, we were five minutes behind my careful schedule. When we pulled in at Larry's two streets along, I was worried he'd gone. He takes Kyle to school when we are there on time. When we miss the ride, I'm on my own.
"Quick quick get out!"
"I'm hurrying, Momma..."
"Hurry faster Lad."
At five his great backpack dwarfs his frame. In the rush to leave home, I didn't zip it up. Getting out the car, he dropped it upside down on to the wet ground.
"Damn it, Son, why are you so clumsy?"
"I'm trying, Momma, I'm really trying." He burst into tears.
"Oh Jesus!" I spat, revolted at myself. Why am I such a bitch?
I reached for the crayons that had rolled under the car. When Larry opened the gate I was still on my knees in his driveway. I apologised for our lateness, repacked Kyle's bag and held him tight. As I kissed his teary face and wished my horrid words unsaid, I ran my fingers through his unbrushed hair, did a quick lick and spit to make it lie down. I opened the heavy door to Larry's enormous four-by-four and scraped the sleep out of my son’s still damp eyes. Then whispered in his ear before I heaved the door shut: "I love you, boykie."
The checked cloth on the table at Mary Anne's is green and blue - the teal, aqua and turquoise of the January sea at Muizenberg Beach. The memory of last summer's holiday with my parents comes back and my mother's words haunt me today. "Such a lovely way you have with your children, my darling," she said. "You are so gentle with them, so much kinder than I was..."
Oh Mom, not today. I’m not the same anymore. I get cross about such stupid things. But that's how it is now – small matters have such a disproportionate power, such terrible proportions.
My hand shakes slightly and I spill the coffee as I pour from the Bodum. In the black pool sliding across the bright fabric, my craziness slides out and the anxiety I usually manage is unrestrained. My own capacity for cruelty exposed embarrasses me. I hope I redeemed myself with the too-brief kisses and cuddles. I hate leaving on a sour note. Gauteng Province is Gangsta Paradise. "Whose number will be up today?" In the hi-jacking capital of the world that is the perpetual question, the theme with no variations.
Back in the car the pressure mounted. I restarted the engine with another five minutes lost. In Larry’s steep drive a Sousa march belted out merry inanity.
“Hey tiddley, Hi tiddley, Big band Big bang!”
Round and round it went till I wanted to scream. Instead I poked the pre-set option and reversed up the incline.
“The weary Rand has fallen further against the Dollar and in London it has taken a hammering against the Pound.”
I hit the pre-set option once more. At the top of the hill the puerile patter of a stoned DJ grated my nerves a little more. He was interrupted by a bizarre commercial for satellite recovery tracking services “Guaranteed to get your vehicle back when hijacked or stolen…”
I tried another channel.
“Peace, perfect peace I give to you...” No thank you, Pastor Patrick. Your honeyed promise is entirely incredible. Not here, not now. This is the New South Africa, you fool. I settled for Sousa until the Eye In The Sky issued its morning warning.
The cars were backed up at the exit of our enclosed suburb. At the guard hut that looks like a child’s Wendy-house, Steven Msomi was on duty. He is a Zulu with tribal scarification on his cheekbones. He waved at us, smiling broadly as he lifted the boom. When he smiles, the serried rows of depressed scar tissue bulge and cease to be parallel. I returned his welcome with a terse gesture and a tense grimace. Jasmine, sulking, refused to wave. I did not elucidate why she should be grateful to him. It would have served no purpose other than to frighten her. I did not berate her lack of respect. I ignored her fall from graciousness and bit my tongue. I touched my sunglasses habitually, glad they hid my guilt.
At Mary Anne’s the gardener sweeps the paving. He sings a four-note melody over again. The repetition is never identical, yet always the same as the rhythm expands, gaining syllables over the ground bass of his grass broom’s even hissing. The melody is a keening, a contracted syncopation, that releases a preverbal memory, an aural recollection. It is a lullaby I have always known – the servants sweeping verandas and raking leaves. These sounds are the songs of my preverbal security. Tied on my nanny’s back like an African infant, I knew a love I never deserved. Ten years ago we bought our hilltop house, where the aging Steven Msomi swept the oak leaves off the expansive lawns. Then he got a permanent job as a night watchman. For a few extra rands, he got job security.
“Is good job, Madam, I lucky!”
Last week Evros Posteleros arrived home to find his mother and the servants gagged and bound. The trio of thieves did not appreciate the interruption and so one shot at him. Luckily for Evros he escaped to his car. Unluckily for the thief he returned to rescue his mother and emptied a cartridge into the gunman's chest. I was writing out Superman invitations for Kyle's fifth birthday party at the time. I heard the shots and bolted the back door.
Then came the refrain - the screaming sirens and screeching tyres of response vehicles. I tried to phone the security company to find out what was going on, but the exchange was down. The helicopter hovered above the oaks for hours, a noisy confirmation of the ongoing search. There is an empty house opposite the Posteleroses’ home. The Chinese family that lived there can’t sell it. I wonder if that is the hide out. It is next door to us.
When I drove past the Posteleros place a bit later, the blue van from the mortuary had arrived. A lump under canvas leaked red stuff onto the tar. On my way to fetch the children I stopped to greet Steven. The scars on his face were parallel. I smelled fear on his breath. He wore his bullet-proof vest.
“Sawubona Baba” I see you Father
“Yebo Mama” Yes Mother
“Usaphila namhlanje?” Did you rise well today
“Eh! Ngisaphila. Wena usaphila?” Yes, I rose well, and you, did you rise well?
“Nami, ngisaphila.” I rose well too
I asked him what was going on.
"The master, she fire, the gangster, she decease, the two gangster, she run away."
"Oh my..." I wondered whether they would remove the corpse before I returned with wide-eyed children.
"Did you see them pass?" I phrased the question vaguely, not wishing to insult him with the implication that he was responsible for the criminals’ escape. Perhaps he perceived an insinuated incompetence nevertheless. It would be rude to suggest he had been negligent, but I think he was too frightened. Security guards are killed all the time.
"No," he said, "I'm sure they enter by the river."
"Siyabonga Baba" We are thankful Father
What I am thanking him for... the information? His failure in an impossible job? The 24-hour shifts he sometimes works without relief?
"Nami ngiyabonga" And me, I am thanking you
What does he thank me for, the pittance he is paid for my protection? The job that may yet cost him his life? We parted after the formal salutation
"Sala kahle, hamba kahle.” Go well, stay well
It is still early here in the garden, and the curlicued iron-and-glass tables are mostly empty. The sun is not yet on my back and an early patron talks loudly on his cellular phone. He got up quickly and left, gesticulating noisily. He clutched his wallet and marched to the till repeating an anguished lamentation of, “Holy Shit! Holy Shit! Holy Shit!”
The Cakefork Brigade will stalk in later pushing designer strollers and infertility clinic babies. They look like identically sculpted Barbie dolls dressed in DKNY kit and empty eyes. Their sweet fat babies look like they eat the cake their mummies sick up discreetly, but they only wave slimy Ladies’ Fingers in their chubby fists. In the still window before the trendy set twitters in, the silence is punctuated gently - a softly whirring air-conditioner, water gurgling at the kitchen drain and the stuttered promise of the rainbird.
The first major intersection on the road was choked with cars. The helicopter’s voice cracked with static on the traffic report:
“… and in Sandringham there’s an accident … London Road… Please avoid this route if possible. A ped…strian has … knocked over… Empire, Jan Smuts … motor bike…Windsor and… a bumper bashing on Barry Hertzog and Hyde Park… out all over the city, so treat …Queens … intersections … four-way stop - Blairgowrie Drive … Verwoerd… in… Grosvenor and DF Malan, Hans Strydom… at Sloane and Cumberland.”
The harsh names of long dead Afrikaners clashed against the cool places in far away England. The chaos of the roads is reminiscent of other wars. This mayhem is born of a simmering despair and other dark forces render quaint and orderly recollections entirely futile. The roads are in disrepair and the municipality has no money to repair the ancient casings that allow water into the electrics whenever it rains. I’m told by friends who’ve settled there that the English traffic lights always work and the streets are very clean. Here, drivers’ licenses are easily (if not cheaply) bought and rival taxi gangs kill for route monopolies while traffic officers pocket enormous bribes. Is it possible that this place’s inhuman heritage will ever beget courtesy?
The lights turned green and nobody moved. I checked that the doors were all locked and put my handbag into the cubbyhole. An avocado vendor swung his bags of fruit under my nose. I checked my rearview mirrors compulsively. At every stop street and red light, I watch for hostile body language in the pedestrians that mooch through the cars - a defensive gesture that may give me an extra second in an attack. How paranoid I have become.
A poster headline reads, “TEENAGER’S HIJACK DEATH”. The banality of the crime is rendered newsworthy merely by the victim’s having been a child. I know we will have to leave this country. Before the lights turned red, I inched the car forward, not realising that the headline had caught Jasmine’s eye.
“T-E-E-N...” lisped Jasmine between newly lost milk teeth. She is learning to read.
I didn’t want to try to explain to her about hijackers, so I distracted her from the newspaper banner by picking a fight.
“Do you see this traffic, Jasmine?”
“Momma, what is that word over there?”
“Never mind that word, it’s too difficult for you.” Oh great, I thought to myself, there you go diminishing her ability before she’s even tried.
“Jasmine, do you see this revolting traffic jam?”
“Yes. What about it?”
“This is the reason you should look after your hat.” Prize logic, I tell myself.
“My hat?”
“Your school hat. If you put it on the coat stand like you’re supposed to when you came home from school yesterday afternoon, you would know where to find it and we wouldn’t be late now. You are never going to get to school on time now. When are you going to jolly well listen to me?”
The cinnamon buns smell sweet in the oven as I gather my fractured conscience. Joseph the cook fries bacon for the patrons. Each day as I arrive, he kneads the koeksister dough with experience and love. His long black fingers twist thin plaited ropes. Then he massages the lily-white croissant pastry into crescents and whirls. His strong hands curling the creamy shapes, scatter them with raisins, paint them with honey. They wait on a darkly oiled baking tray next to the warm oven, rising with a feminine rhythm under his tender gaze, until he puts them to bed.
At last it was our turn to go. Then a taxi driver jumped the lights and nearly collided with us. In the Republic Road intersection, I hit the breaks and snarled,
“Fuckwit!”
Jasmine saw me coming apart and thought it was funny. As I took off again she started giggling. She intoned a sing-song under her breath.
“Fuck-wit, Fuck-wit...”
“Stop it, Jasmine, it’s not funny.”
“But you not allowed saying fuck Momma.”
“For fuck’s sake shut the fuck up!” I bellowed.
She giggled as the light just before the turn-off to the school changed to red again.
I loosened my seat belt, turned around to slap her. I looked up and saw a truck driver behind me, watching me. My hand connected with her cheek as our eyes met. He shook his head and looked at me.
The coffee is good at Mary Anne’s – an aromatic Kenyan blend. Not too expensive either. I didn’t feel the chaos so much when I felt centered, when I was well. When last was that? Yesterday, last week, or has it been years. I know my once-civilised veneer is slipping when I start to swear. Cursing is a yardstick indicating I need more antidepressants. I was proud of my sophistication, intelligence and breeding. They are no match for this she-devil now. Mom, would you believe this preposterous tale? These are improbable times. Boundaries that once served sanity are as vague today as the sun, obscured by the hazy sky. March is unusually muggy. I’m waiting for the dry winter so that I can breathe.
As I arrived at Mary Anne's an old man watered the pot plants outside the wrought iron gate that borders the cracked and scabby parking lot. I climbed up on the brick veranda where late summer geraniums bloom half-heartedly. I rang the bell. While I was waiting to be let in, the old man passed me. I mumbled a greeting to him. He did not look me in the eye; nor did he return my greeting. Maybe he is deaf. Perhaps he saw my shame and couldn't stand to look on me.
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