Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [45]
That was the last straw. You started shouting at her.
So what will ever be right and good for you, Ma? I thought you wanted me to help you, I thought I had to help your people here, on your behalf? What do you want me to do then? I want to give you the best I have, my faith, my ingenuity, my love, my courage, the best years of my life, and you’re still not satisfied? Why can I never be good enough for you?
You were so beside yourself, you could have sunk your teeth into the meat and torn it apart, but you only lifted it up in your hands. This is my body, you thought. You dropped it at her feet. She folded her arms and looked at the meat on the ground.
Or do you want to take me apart and reshape me over and over again until I am to your satisfaction, to a T? Will I be right then?
You’re wasting food, she said.
She turned her back on you. You were incensed. You took a step backwards.
Then it rose up in you. You started saying it. You could not stop. She turned round when she heard the new tone. You spoke quietly, to her face.
Or is your problem that you don’t know exactly how you want me, Ma? Is that your real problem? Because there is no image on which you can base me? Because there is only a hole there where you are, a silent hole in the ground? Well, I am something, Ma, you hissed, I am not nothing, I am somebody and I know what I want from life and I know what to do to get it. I will provide for myself.
That was the only time in your life you’d ever seen her scared. Her pupils dilated and her mouth gaped, but she said nothing. You pushed past her. It was she who was left on her own in the pantry.
That was the first and the only time. After that she was different with you until her death.
I wash my hands of you, she came to tell you later that evening at your bedroom door. Just that, and closed her bedroom door.
You were alone with the plan which would change your life.
The whole story of how it all started, nobody knew except you and Ma. Not even you yourself understood it very well. All your life you’ve wanted to record it, just for yourself, to try to gain some clarity. But you never got round to it. It was a skipped chapter. You couldn’t bring yourself to do it.
threshold kerbstone step do they brood over these barricades dally dawdle halt camouflage the tread the stumble-step nightly from window to bed the foot that falters on the fringes of carpets the bump in the garden path how did it begin? was it all the comings and goings of my years right over the pebble in the shoe right over the heel-wart regardless of the toenail growing in was it the hot sand? that running with one sandal? that lunging-after and catching by the neck of the white-foot hare? was that where the germ entered my heel the iron around my ankle the black pound-weight swinging from the bridge of my foot? foot that drags foot that hangs foot that sleeps and everywhere that milla went the lamb was sure to go.
12 July 1960 8 o’clock (after supper)
What a day! Half restless. I have a sense that I’m forgetting something, but what? Have just gone and peeked if the light in the outside room is off yet, but it’s still burning. Jak says it’s the first time he’s heard of a skivvy’s room with electricity is this my interpretation of the Light we’re supposed bring to the Southern Tip of Africa. Simply put my foot down. She has to be able to see to read & to embroider how else is she supposed to occupy hrself in the back there in the evenings? J. looks at me as if I’m off my trolley.
The door is still open a crack as I left it behind me I suppose she’s drinking hr tea I suppose it’s all very new for her perhaps she’s washing hr clothes. Don’t know how she’ll get the blood out of the white jersey.
Honestly thought it would be good if she could work herself to a standstill before moving into hr room. Went this morning & put the brown suitcase with hr possessions on the half-shelf under her little table. Was at first tempted to surprise her & to unpack everything for hr like