Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [38]
She’s made great strides with the embroidery, Agaat, she’d by now be able to add a few chapters to the embroidery book.
Quarter past five, it chimes. She’s back in the kitchen where she put the kettle on on her way out, so that now she only has to add boiling water to the bag and the thickening agent. Here she is coming down the passage. First tray, set out last night, second quarter-hour of the day. Tea. Morning medicine.
With her smell of Lifebuoy and Mum and calamine she enters the room.
Praise the Lord, rise up rejoicing, she sings. She stops when she sees I’m already awake.
Her uniform crackles. Her cap shines like a beacon. She is wearing a clean white housecoat with short sleeves, over that a white crocheted jersey. I can smell the cold-water Omo. The apron is stiff with starch. Her rubber soles sough as she tacks about my bed.
She cranks me up, she pummels my pillows, she hoists my neck out of my body, she props up my head, she arrays me.
Wake and shake, make and take, she says.
She comes with a wet lukewarm sponge and wipes out my mouth.
Mole from the mouth, she says.
She unfastens the nappy between my legs, puts it aside in a bundle and slides the number one pan in under me.
She puts on my bib.
She clamps the jug with the long spout and the little tube to the railing of the bed. She bends the drip-stem with the mouthpiece so that it’s suspended above my lips. She adjusts the drip-hole. She puts the mouthpiece into my mouth.
Ten counts between each swallow, she says. Ready steady go!
She eases open the valve. The first drop of warm thickened liquid spreads over my tongue. Rooibos. One mouthful tea and one mouthful breath and count to ten, says Agaat, think of the undrprvlgd.
A mouthful of consonants. Lest I forget what I wrote.
I do my best. Half runs down my chin.
She watches me closely while she prepares everything. She tucks the bib in further under my chin. She wipes my chin. I get hold of the rhythm. I am thirsty. I count to ten. I swallow. I count ten tens and ingest ten mouthfuls, a quarter-mouth at a time. This cup.
Agaat fills the plastic basin with hot water from the kettle that she’s brought with her from the kitchen. She arranges the towels, the washcloths, the soap and the sponges, everything neatly on the large hospital trolley that Leroux carted in here.
I drink three more tens.
Drinking merrily she is this morning, says Agaat. Have you peed yet, Ounooi?
I signal, no, you can see for yourself the nappy is dry. She doesn’t look.
I’m asking, have you peed yet?
Now she looks. I signal again no, I have not and don’t be so crude so early in the morning.
Well go on pee, Ounooi, I haven’t got all day.
Don’t look at me, I gesture, look in the other direction.
Agaat makes little whistling sounds between her teeth to encourage me.
It won’t come.
I hear nothing, she says. She puts her hand behind her ear.
Is the little tap stuck this morning, hmmm? Well, perhaps you can’t drink and pee at the same time. Let’s close the tap up here, then maybe the one down there will open.
She keeps her face straight. She closes the tea drip and takes the spout out of my mouth. Her rubber soles suck noisily at the floor, it sounds as if there’s extra torque, extra weight in her tread. I recognise it. That’s what she does when she discovers she can’t make me. She turns her back on me. I know what she’s going to do. She swirls the water around in the washbasin. She wrings out the cloth to make it drip in the water. Still nothing. I know she’s listening. Her ears point backwards. She takes a glass, she pours the water, over and over, from a height.
I try to think of something else. My bladder is full. I want to. I didn’t want to in the nappy, else there would have been all manner of commentary. And I don’t want to make extra