Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [315]
You coughed and scolded. You had to wrestle against the wriggling that persisted under you. With arms and legs you had to stop her, on both sides, from worming her way out from under you.
You’re not getting away! you managed to say. I have to look after you. You’re mine now. And now you open your ears and you listen to me well, I’ll thrash your backside blood-red for you if you don’t behave yourself now. If you’re good, I won’t do anything to you. If you carry on being naughty and running away I’ll tell the kleinbaas and he’ll take off his belt and flog you till your backside comes out in red welts and then we’ll tie a rope around your neck and tie you to a pole like a baboon, the whole day long until you’re tame.
The child’s breath juddered. A squeaking sound emerged.
You realised what you’d said. You pressed your head against the child’s collar-bone.
No, that’s not true, I don’t mean it, I’m stupid, stupid, stupid, forgive me, I promise you never ever again, never will anybody hurt you again. And you’re not naughty, you’re just scared. Because you have to go away and because you don’t know what’s going to happen. Don’t be scared, just don’t be scared. Nobody will beat you, not I and also not the kleinbaas. Everything will be fine, I promise, your stick is there and the wheel, Lys packed them. And your moleskin. Tonight when we’ve got to the farm over the mountain you can have them and play with them before you go to bed and all day tomorrow.
You wished the child would cry. Then you’d be able to comfort her. Then you could soothe her and coax her and make promises and give assurances and hold her and offer her something to drink, something to eat. But you were the one who cried. The child went limp. You picked her up and walked on towards the dam with her. She was light. Your tears dripped on her.
Never mind, you said over and over again, never mind, there’s nothing to cry about.
Your dress was torn out of its seam at the waist in two places and your knee was bleeding. The child was grey with dust and full of scratches.
I must use this limp terror to get her cleaned up, you thought.
At the dam you drew the child’s rags over her head. You tucked your own dress into the elastic of your panty. You stopped talking. There was another feeling. Pretty words, you thought, are not what’s going to put matters straight between us, not now and perhaps for a whole long time yet. You I’ll have to rule with a firm hand.
You put her down and went and stood in front of her and pulled her off the dam wall. On the first contact with the water there was another squeaking sound, but softer and feebler this time. The child pulled up her knees, but soon lowered them again. You clamped her with one arm around the chest and started washing her with the other hand. The water left dark lines on the dusty skin. On the wet skin there were still other darker stains, here and there reddish ones that looked like burn marks, spots of scabies, ringworm, and older inflamed scars. You kept on splashing water till everything was dark and then got out the handkerchief that you had in the front of your bra and started washing her, first wiped the face, behind the ears and then the neck, that was badly encrusted. You shuddered at the thickly-caked frizzy hair that had certainly never been combed or plaited or even washed. But that would have to wait. You started to wash the child’s front with the handkerchief. Under your hand you felt the bump of a carelessly tied-back umbilical cord, a tension in the body when you wiped across the lower body. You didn’t go any further, just splashed a bit of water up between the little legs and at the back in the cleft of the buttocks.
There, you said, more to yourself than to the child, now at least one of us is more or less respectable.
Jak was there already with the bakkie. It was parked at an angle with one wheel across the wall of the irrigation furrow, you recognised the sign. You took a detour around the back and dressed the child in a clean bleached dress that you got from the hessian bag. Then you locked