Tammy Baikie - Selling LipService

As part of our echo studies, Dad showed me a paper on how people are able to judge the distance of a sound’s source. It’s all about amplitude modulation and the way reverberations dampen the loud and softs. The more objects the sound waves crash against on their travels, the more echoes eddy around. In an anechoic chamber it’s impossible to tell how remote a noise is. That’s exactly what will happen to the story of Echo. Her voice won’t carry true when it strikes up against a whole brand portfolio of products. No one will hear the dusty slap of Ovid’s Roman sandals coming from far away.

The chorteen is already suited up, masked and waiting when I return. She snatches the book from my hand and rustles her biohazard plastic off to the reading room. When I go back into the silo, there’s a movement behind a distant shelf and I feel the presence of she that’s not me like an old wound in wet weather.

I wear headphones whenever I leave the flat. It looks as if I’m listening to jingles, but I just don’t want to hear Verbociter’s LipServiced version of Ovid’s story. I try to keep words between my ears and the edges of a page. I don’t speak; I don’t listen. If I could I would shut my eyes, too, so no capitals on hoardings, signs and windows can pierce my thick skull with their interrobangs. And I wouldn’t have to see everyone’s lips curled borchardly back against the offensive language of my tastures.

More copywriters come to the repository, far more than I ever remember when Dad was here. They wink and tell me they want ‘the one with the fellow who prefers not to’ or ‘to con-verse with the creature who has no toes’. Some even insist on rifling the stacks themselves. I keep watch because I can’t turn my back.

On the days when I can’t stand it, I imagine having a child – someone to break my silence and skeepen the shadow words. But I soon meaker again, remembering Mother, and why she had me, and all the hepnot past that followed. I will not repeat that. Neither will I think of Stillwell and how he would tell me a language that isn’t shared isn’t a language at all. But what have I ever gained from sharing? So instead I finock mentally through my glossary and glinker at each erpish teetle .

Thank you to the Jacana Literary Foundation for being brave enough to publish a novel about breaking through entrenched forms of expression and to my editor Jenefer Shute, whose delicate touch belies a laser-like acuity in separating the good from the bad.

While writing this novel as part of the MA in Creative Writing at the University of the Witwatersrand, I was very fortunate to have the support of Karen Lazar and Bronwyn Law-Viljoen, as well as the infinitely perceptive Gerrit Olivier. They patiently turned my words over every which way and offered sound and sane comment. The input of my fellow travellers Jessica Liebenberg, Dennis Dvornak and Billy Rivers was also invaluable. Thanks also go to my parents for their supernatural faith in me. Finally, I owe a debt of gratitude to my intrepid readers Danièlle Crouse, Vicky Jacob-Ebbinghaus and above all, my husband James.

First published by Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd in 2017

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© Tammy Baikie, 2017

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d-PDF ISBN 978-1-4314-2480-1

ePUB ISBN 978-1-4314-2481-8

mobi file ISBN 978-1-4314-2482-5

Cover design by publicide

Job no. 002957

See a complete list of Jacana titles at www.jacana.co.za