Zoë Wicomb - You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town

The thin one opens her mouth, once, twice, winding herself up to speak.

‘They never notice anyway. There’s so much food in their pantries, in the fridge and on the tables; they don’t know what’s there and what isn’t.’ The other looks pityingly at her.

‘Don’t you believe that. My marram was as cross as a bear by the time I brought in the pudding, a very nice apricot ice it was, but she didn’t even look at it. She know it was a healthy grown fowl and she count one leg, and she know what’s going on. She know right away. Didn’t even say, “Thank you Tiena.” She won’t speak to me for days but what can she do?’ Her voice softens into genuine sympathy for her madam’s dilemma.

‘She’ll just have to speak to me.’ And she mimics, putting on a stem horse face. ‘“We’ll want dinner by seven tonight,” then “Tiena the curtains need washing,” then, “Please, Tiena, will you fix this zip for me, I’ve got absolutely nothing else to wear today.” And so on the third day she’ll smile and think she’s smiling forgiveness at me.’

She straightens her face. ‘No,’ she sighs, ‘the more you have, the more you have to keep your head and count and check up because you know you won’t notice or remember. No, if you got a lot you must keep snaps in your mind of the insides of all the cupboards. And every day, click, click, new snaps of the larder. That’s why that one is so tired, always thinking, always reciting to herself the lists of what’s in the cupboards. I never know what’s in my cupboard at home but I know my Sammie’s a thieving bastard, can’t keep his hands in his pockets.’

The thin woman stares out of the window as if she had heard it all before. She has finished her chicken while the other, with all the talking, still holds a half-eaten drumstick daintily in her right hand. Her eyes rove over the shopping bag and she licks her fingers abstractedly as she stares out of the window.

‘Lekker hey!’ the large one repeats, ‘the children will have such a party.’

‘Did Master George enjoy it?’ the other asks.

‘Oh he’s a gentleman all right. Shouted after me, “Well done, Tiena. When we’re married we’ll have to steal you from madam.” Dressed to kill he was, such a smart young man, you know. Mind you, so’s Miss Lucy. Not a prettier girl in our avenue and the best-dressed too. But then she has mos to be smart to keep her man. Been on the pill for nearly a year now; I shouldn’t wonder if he don’t feel funny about the white wedding. Ooh, you must see her blush over the pictures of the wedding gowns, so pure and innocent she think I can’t read the packet. “Get me my headache pills out of that drawer Tiena,” she say sometimes when I take her cup of cocoa at night. But she play her cards right with Master George; she have to ’cause who’d have what another man has pushed to the side of his plate. A bay leaf and a bone!’ and moved by the alliteration the image materialises in her hand. ‘Like this bone,’ and she waves it under the nose of the other who starts. I wonder whether with guilt, fear or a debilitating desire for more chicken.

‘This bone,’ she repeats grimly, ‘picked bare and only wanted by a dog.’ Her friend recovers and deliberately misunderstands, ‘Or like yesterday’s bean soup, but we women mos know that food put aside and left to stand till tomorrow always has a better flavour. Men don’t know that hey. They should get down to some cooking and find out a thing or two.’

But the other is not deterred. ‘A bone,’ she insists, waving her visual aid, ‘a bone.’

It is true that her bone is a matt grey that betrays no trace of the meat or fat that only a minute ago adhered to it. Master George’s bone would certainly look nothing like that when he pushes it aside. With his fork he would coax off the fibres ready to fall from the bone. Then he would turn over the whole, deftly, using a knife, and frown at the sinewy meat clinging to the joint before pushing it aside towards the discarded bits of skin.

This bone, it is true, will not tempt anyone. A dog might want to bury it only for a silly game of hide and seek.

The large woman waves the bone as if it would burst into prophecy. My eyes follow the movement until the bone blurs and emerges as the Cross where the head of Jesus lolls sadly, his lovely feet anointed by sad hands, folded together under the driven nail. Look, Mamma says, look at those eyes molten with love and pain, the body curved with suffering for our sins, and together we weep for the beauty and sadness of Jesus in his white loincloth. The Roman soldiers stand grimly erect in their tunics, their spears gleam in the light, their dark beards are clipped and their lips curl. At midday Judas turns his face to the fading sun and bays, howls like a dog for its return as the darkness grows around him and swallows him whole with the money still jingling in the folds of his saffron robes. In a concealed leather purse, a pouch devoid of ornament.

The buildings on this side of the road grow taller but oh, I do not know where I am and I think of asking the woman, the thin one, but when I look up the stem one’s eyes already rest on me while the bone in her hand points idly at the advertisement just above my head. My hands, still cradling my belly, slide guiltily down my thighs and fall on my knees. But the foetus betrays me with another flutter, a sigh. I have heard of books flying off the laps of gentle mothers-to-be as their foetuses lash out. I will not be bullied. I jump up and press the bell.

There are voices behind me. The large woman’s ‘Oi, I say’ thunders over the conductor’s cross ‘Tickets please.’ I will not speak to anyone. Shall I throw myself on the grooved floor of this bus and with knees drawn up, hands over my head, wait for my demise? I do not in any case expect to be alive tomorrow. But I must resist; I must harden my heart against the sad, complaining eyes of Jesus.

‘I say, Miss,’ she shouts and her tone sounds familiar. Her voice compels like the insistence of Father’s guttural commands. But the conductor’s hand falls on my shoulder, the barrel of his ticket dispenser digs into my ribs, the buttons of his uniform gleam as I dip into my bag for my purse. Then the large woman spills out of her seat as she leans forward. Her friend, reconciled, holds the bar of an arm across her as she leans forward shouting, ‘Here, I say, your purse.’ I try to look grateful. Her eyes blaze with scorn as she proclaims to the bus, ‘Stupid these young people. Dressed to kill maybe, but still so stupid.’

She is right. Not about my clothes, of course, and I check to see what I am wearing. I have not been alerted to my own stupidity before. No doubt I will sail through my final examinations at the end of this year and still not know how I dared to pluck a fluttering foetus out of my womb. That is if I survive tonight.

I sit on the steps of this large building and squint up at the marble facade. My elbows rest on my knees flung comfortably apart. I ought to know where I am; it is clearly a public building of some importance. For the first time I long for the veld of my childhood. There the red sand rolls for miles, and if you stand on the koppie behind the house the landmarks blaze their permanence: the river points downward, runs its dry course from north to south; the geelbos crowds its banks in near straight lines. On either side of the path winding westward plump little buttocks of cacti squat as if lifting the skirts to pee, and the swollen fingers of vygies burst in clusters out of the stone, pointing the way. In the veld you can always find your way home.

I am anxious about meeting Michael. We have planned this so carefully for the rush hour when people storming home crossly will not notice us together in the crush.