“What do you want?” the old woman asked. I looked into her eyes.
“I want to belong,” I heard myself answering. “I would like to buy some of your necklaces,” I corrected myself and stooped to finger a green, white and black anklet.
“Sit down,” she commanded.
I did.
I had gravitated towards her every Saturday for the past month now. The marketplace was just on the other side of the post office. It was bristling with sellers and buyers, noises and shapes, but she was the sun. She was a field of daisies. She was an old woman draped in orange cloth, carefully choosing the colored beads from a row of old margarine tubs and threading them one by one on a black leather string. She was sitting on a brown blanket. Her wares were spread on a white lace cloth in front of her.
“I’ll make you one,” she said. Her fingers were stubby, like the branches of an old tree. She tied a knot in the string. “Tell me what you want.”
“I want to belong,” I repeated. “I was delivered to Africa thirty-three years ago, but it was a mistake, my mother said. I belong elsewhere. They had to tear me from the womb. I don’t belong anywhere. I am a wayward parcel.”
The old woman rummaged in the tub with black beads. It made a soft rustling noise, like an unseen mouse in long grass. Then she picked a bead and threaded it into the string.
She looked up. “Yes?” she asked.
“I love post offices. I used to love post offices. I thought I might be redirected to a different place.” I took the stamp from my forehead and crumpled it in my hand. “It was just a silly game.”
The old woman stirred the tub with white beads. The beads rustled with the same soft stirrings. She picked one and threaded it into the string.
“Yes?” she asked and almost smiled.
“I loved and lost and lusted and lied,” I said. I wasn’t sure what the sentence meant, but it did seem to say something about where I had been.
The old woman took one of two rather dried-up looking oranges by her side, scraped a hole in the skin and started peeling it. She broke the orange in two and gave me half. I took it and promptly put the whole half in my mouth. I chewed and swallowed and then spat out a few pips. It was incredibly sweet. The juice ran down the side of my mouth.
Then the old woman did smile as she ate her half wedge by wedge. When she had finished she carefully wiped her hands on a piece of cloth and chose a bright orange bead to thread into the necklace of my life, which, apparently, was being shaped in her hands. I was fascinated and glad that I had come here.
I eyed the tub with the blue beads. Surely I needed a little blue now.
I waited for her to say “Yes?” again, but she was waiting for me.
I rubbed my hands. They were sticky with orange blood. “I am creamy and privileged. My mother wouldn’t have approved of the way I ate the orange. I was well brought up in a civilized way. We were taught respect for everyone. I am well educated. I travelled the world. I nearly married a Frenchman. I had an affair with a Nigerian in Berlin. I marched in protests against discrimination. I went on a hunger strike in sympathy with downtrodden people and I still don’t belong.”
Her hand was hovering above the tub with blue beads.
I wanted a blue bead. I wanted a blue bead. I wanted. I wanted to belong under African skies.
She picked a yellow one.
I was suddenly nauseous. “Being hungry for the sake of a cause is not being hungry,” I said.
“Yes,” she said and threaded the yellow bead.
I stood up. “I have to go now. How much is the necklace?”
“It isn’t finished.”
“I want to buy it anyway.”
“It isn’t finished.”
“Thank you, anyway,” I said and found a few notes in my pocket. I held them out to her.
She didn’t take them.
I put them on the ground in front of her.
She didn’t move.
A faint breeze suddenly stirred the marketplace, lifted the notes and carried them in all directions. Other people chased them down.
I walked away. I could not see for the tears that were streaming down my face. I wanted the blue one.
I could not find my car. Perhaps it was stolen. I caught a bus home and locked the door behind me.
I stayed in my house for six days. I didn’t open the door when Agnes hammered on the door. I ate all the food that was in my house. I drank all the liquor. I sat in front of the TV but I didn’t switch it on. I slept, dreaming of a new Ice Age and the sun. It was a dream divided.
Agnes’s voice, threatening to call my mother, eventually pierced my solitude. I opened the door. The leaves had accumulated in front of my door.
She grinned. “You look awful. Shall I call your mother anyway?”
I smiled.
“New neighbors on the other side of me are having a house warming tonight. Please come.”
She didn’t repeat the threat. I was feeling silly anyway, melodramatically silly. I had a wonderful life. There was nothing wrong with it. There was nothing wrong with me. I just had to stop my crazy little obsession. No more post offices for me. Of course I belonged. I had lots of friends. I had a mother who would promptly fly in from England and probably kick down the door herself it she knew there was something wrong with me. She thought I was still with friends on a yacht in the Bahamas. I have never been there, but you had to keep a diligent mother off your back. While I was supposed to be in the Bahamas, I had been doing the rounds of all the weird small post offices I could find. I had been standing in long queues waiting to buy a one Rand stamp to paste onto my own forehead. Hoping, always hoping.
“Okay,” I said and went to have a shower and dress for the party. It was time to stop sulking, grow up and party. It was time to celebrate.
An hour later I followed the music to the party. The gate was open. The little garden was prim, proper and neat. I should do something about my own garden. It was a wilderness. The Home Owner’s Association was probably going to complain soon. We had to keep up pretences. You could fall apart anytime you wanted, torture anyone you like, as long as the grass was cut and you didn’t smoke. I immediately lit a cigarette.
The front door was open. The room was overflowing with people, trying very hard to have a good time. I was on the point of making a U-turn when I saw him. He was the only one not trying to have a good time. He looked neutral. He just sat there, alone on a couch, with his feet primly together, his hands clasped on his lap. He wasn’t drinking, he wasn’t eating. He was just sitting there. He was nice-looking in a kind of mediocre way.
I squashed the cigarette in an ashtray, poured myself a drink and sat down beside him. “Hi,” I said.
He looked up briefly. His eyes were very blue, though his hair was thin and a nondescript brown. “Hi,” he said and looked at his clasped hands again.
“Patricia,” I said.
“John,” he mumbled without looking up.
“You live here? In the complex?” I asked.
“No. Someone asked me to come.”
I sighed and swallowed my drink. I twirled the empty glass in my hand.
“What do you do for a living?” I asked.
He looked up again and then down, almost immediately.
“I explore impossible places,” he answered.
I smiled. He was a joker and perhaps interesting. “How do you do that?”
“I observe,” he replied.
He wasn’t smiling, and neither was I. He was a nutcase. I had better go. But, being a nutcase myself, I persisted.
“How? Explain it to me!” I commanded. “How can you explore places that don't exist?”
“Do you see the stain on the carpet beneath the coffee table?”
I leant forward. I nodded. There was a reddish stain on the beige carpet.
“Does it look like Africa to you?”
I fell on my hands and knees and had a good look. “Perhap
s,” I answered. “Sort of.”
His face lit up. His smile made him look like an angel. Or perhaps it was because I was still on my hands and knees. I got up. “Are you crazy? High on something? What is the matter with you? Who are you?”
“John,” he answered, still with that smile.
I parked myself on the couch again. “What if it looks like Africa? It is still only a stain under a coffee table.”
He kept on looking at me, with that smile. “What if Africa were only a stain on a carpet beneath somebody’s coffee table?”
“But it isn’t.” I needed a drink, but I could not tear myself away from that smile. He looked so happy, so excited. “Come home with me,” I said.
“Okay,” he said and got up immediately.
We went out into the garden. He walked beside me. “Any impossible places here?” I asked. Could this prim and proper garden produce similar fantasies in this man?
He immediately fell on his stomach on the manicured little lawn and then he rolled over. “Yes,” he said. “Come and see.”
I stretched myself out on the grass next to him.
Late arrivals to the party stepped over us without stopping.
I stopped breathing. Then I gasped. The full moon was rising behind the conifer. And the conifer shone like a giant candle.
I turned to him. “Who are you?” I asked.
“John,” he answered.
I was trembling when I got to my feet. “Let’s go home,” I said.
“Okay,” he said and walked beside me.
I unlocked my front door. What mysteries are going to be revealed with this man by my side?
We balanced on chairs. We slithered under beds. We explored ordinary impossible places. He never touched me, yet he held me in his hands. It was ecstasy. My house was a universe.
I made us some food, but he wasn’t hungry. I spilt some milk. It was the full moon on my kitchen floor. I couldn’t handle it any more. It was too much. I fell asleep eventually. He was still sitting on a dining room chair, his feet neatly together and his hands folded on his lap, staring out the window at the night sky.
When I woke up it was light already. He was gone. There was no sign that anyone had been in my house. I had imagined him. There was some sour milk on the kitchen floor though. It didn’t look like the full moon any more. More like a moon landscape. I fell on my knees and had a good look. I tried the parallel perspective flat on my stomach. It looked like the surface of some weird planet, perhaps. Certainly not like sour milk on my kitchen floor.
I fetched a bucket and was happy while I washed the floor with warm soapy water.
I showered, dressed and caught a bus to go and look for my car. If it was really stolen, I had to report it.
When I got to the car park where I thought I had left it, I passed the gate and went to the marketplace instead. She was there, as if she never leaves.
I sat down beside her.
She took my half life from her neck and held it in her hands. “I kept it safe and warm,” she said.
“Thank you. I think I imagined a man. He spent the night in my house. It was wonderful.”
She smiled and selected a green bead.
Her hands kept on working.
A blue bead.
An indigo bead.
A violet bead.
And then she reversed the process.
Another violet bead.
Indigo.
Blue.
Green.
Yellow.
Orange.
Red.
White.
Black.
She completed my life with a knot.
“There,” she said and held it out to me. “It is done.”
I took it. The necklace was alive in my hands.
“Thank you,” I said and hung it around my neck.
I was comforted.
I was happy.
“Twenty Rand,” she said.
I gave her a hundred.
“Thank you,” she said.
On my way to the car park, I started running. I was seventeen again, doing the 800 meters. I was a champion. I had a rainbow around my neck.
A shot rang out and I fell.
“Eish! Easy. Easy, Sissie,” a voice said and a hand helped me up.
I looked for blood. I had been shot.
But only my hands and knees were bruised. It was probably just a cracker, or a car backfiring.
“Look out for potholes, Sissie. This is Africa, you know?” He was young, niftily dressed in white and black, with a little white hat askew on his head. And he was amused.
I dusted my knees. “Yes,” I said. “The potholes. How can I forget?”
“You all right now, Sissie?” he asked.
I nodded. I was all right. I really had to calm down and try growing up.
My little yellow jeep was still in the car park. I tipped the attendant, who smiled broadly. I drove home and parked the car in the garage. I switched off the engine. I pressed the remote again and the garage door closed behind me. It was deathly silent.
I switched the car on again.
Safe as houses
Tuck me in
Daylight waits for no man
You're still young and breathing's easy
Suck it in*
I switched the engine off and went into my house. What was I doing here? Why was I still here? Why wasn’t I on a yacht in the Bahamas?
I switched on the TV.
Corruption
Racial tension peaks
Murders
Hijackings
A new species of hominid called Australopithecus Sediba was discovered on the Malapa Reserve in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site. It is roughly 1.95 million years old.
Ah, yes. That was why I was still here. I lived in the cradle of mankind.
I fingered my necklace.
I may have imagined him, but I would go and ask Agnes if she had seen him too.
I stood on a garden chair and looked over the wall that separated our little courtyards. She was sitting under an umbrella, sipping a drink.
“Hi,” she said. “Come over and have a drink.”
“I just wanted to ask you something,” I said. “About last night’s party ...”
“Oh, sorry, so sorry. Are you angry with me for making you go when you hadn't wanted to?” Agnes started apologizing.
“No. Don’t worry,” I answered. “I had an amazing evening. I think.”
“Come on over,” she said. “And tell me all about it.”
“Okay,” I said. I didn’t know Agnes at all. Yet I told her one day in a fit of rage about my irritating mother who kept watch on me like a manic hen. Since then I had a feeling that she took over my mother’s role, though we seldom spoke.
I walked out my gate and into her garden. “Drinks are in the house. Help yourself,” she said.
I sat down next to her. “I drink too much.”
“Eish. Yes. We all do. You say you had a great evening?” Agnes smiled beneath her floppy white hat.
“Yes,” I replied. “I met a man. I think. His name was John.”
Agnes giggled.
Why was she giggling?
“I have a confession to make,” Agnes said. “I did some matchmaking. You liked him? He is wonderful, isn’t he? Weird, but wonderful.”
“You know him?” I gawked.
“Yes.” Agnes smiled. “He is my brother.”
“Your brother? You talking about John?”
Agnes nodded with a broad grin.
“But you are ...”
She grinned again. “Yes. I am black and he is white. He is like a brother. Buti John. His mother adopted me.”
My heart started thumping with wild abandon. He was real.
“He is shy, terribly shy, but an amazing man and a talented artist. His paintings sell like hotcakes. I am very proud of him. Buti John. I thought you migh
t like him.” She grinned again.
“Who are you?” I smiled. “My fairy godmother?”
A painter. That figures. “Where is he?”
“In the house, making dumplings. He can cook too.”
I slowly got to my feet. My knees were buckling under me. “I will teach him to do a gumboot dance on the roof of my car,” I said. “I thought of doing it this morning, but I decided against it. Now, I think it is a good idea. And I will teach him how to eat an orange.”
As I walked towards Agnes’s house the blue of the African sky entered my mind and all was at peace. My heart was beating to the thud-thud of an African rhythm. I was home. The potholes of life were merely the entrances to places where continents could be found under coffee tables. I stepped on the rake that was lying on the grass and the handle flew up and hit me an almighty blow on my forehead. I screamed and was dizzy with pain, while I could feel the bump on my forehead growing under my fingers. My mother was right. Africa was not a safe place. I sighed, said I was all right and collapsed in John’s arms.
*Safe as Houses by aKing:
https://www.gugalyrics.com/AKING-SAFE-AS-HOUSES-LYRICS/438201/
THE END
THE BOX
by Michelle Browne
https://scifimagpie.blogspot.com/