Zoe Wicomb - October

Antoinette, who passed her Junior Certificate with flying colors, had learned about the French Revolution. Her parents would not have known of that queen’s unfortunate death, and she did not tell them, but since her schooldays she has refused to look at a fowl or a sheep held down on a block with a chopper hovering over its head. Her father complained that all that schooling had given her airs. Why, with such a grand name, he whined, had she chosen to call herself Nettie?

Surely no one named Antoinette could help thinking of the guillotine, Nettie explained to her husband, who, delighted by her knowledge and identification with Marie Antoinette, agreed to spare her the sight. She did not admit to a distaste for meat, and as a good wife gritted her teeth to prepare dinners. Nicholas could not be expected to tolerate a fastidious palate, so it was a question of subterfuge, God forgive her, of strategic dishing that would allow her to eat as little meat as possible. Prolonged cooking guaranteed detached bones that could be buried under rice or potatoes accompanied by just the sauce or gravy, bones that she would then uncover for display. Like a dog, she thought. For Nicholas, like her father, was strict, a good man, a man of principle who would not tolerate fussiness. It would take some drilling to find the well of kindness that she knew was there, in his heart. And frugality helped. He praised her for the way in which provisions stretched well past the weekend, even if the meat cooked to death was not always to his taste.

When Nettie’s first baby lay squirming helplessly beside her, the mother looked on in terror. Was it really hers? What, dear Lord, had she done? And whatever came next? Where in God’s name was Mother Nature, whose job it was to flick the hidden switch of motherhood so that Milk and Love would fountain in abundance? Nettie fell back wearily against her pillow and watched the two delivering oumas whispering to each other and bustling about the baby, who had forced its way out with such wayward enthusiasm, leaving what felt like a hole. Nettie’s bruised body was like an egg drained of substance, no more than a fragile shell. No wonder she felt nothing for the baby. There was only terror, and she knew that to be a sin.

Lord have mercy upon us. Christ have mercy upon us.

The Anglican litany learned for Confirmation haunted her. When she left the Moravian mission station for high school in town, her father agreed that the English church would stand her in better stead. Over and over the prayer rang in her head — Lord have Mercy upon us. Christ have Mercy upon us — demanding to be uttered. Antoinette Murray could not do so.

Come now, Ouma Anna said sternly, as she laid the tiny damp creature on Nettie’s breast, you’ve got to feed her. Nettie feared that her empty frame, the eggshell, would shatter, but she nodded and looked away, so that the ouma had to get the little mouth affixed. Then the baby sucked vigorously, making the mother wince with pain. How would it manage to extract milk from such emptiness? If only Nicholas were there to advise, but he was kept out of the room by the oumas, who took no little pleasure in lording it over Meester. These were things he had no knowledge of. He had been shown the little girl, now he had to keep out whilst they cleaned and bound the mother’s body, smacked and swaddled the baby, and got her to feed. But Nettie lay listless, silent, until he appeared and assured her that the Lord would indeed have mercy, that Mother Nature worked hand in hand with patience.

Nicholas picked fresh lucerne from the cow’s pasture and having packed it liberally on brown bread and butter, persuaded her to eat. Whoever’s heard of eating cows’ food, the oumas protested, but the hole at the heart of Nettie slowly shrank and thin milk trickled into the baby’s greedy mouth. Nettie stifled cries of pain as the gums clamped on to her cracked nipples. The oumas recommended Borsdruppels, so aptly named for the chest, but Nicholas, forgetting to be polite, said that was nonsense, that antiseptic Friar’s Balsam would do the trick.

Never again would Nettie rely on Mother Nature. It was her own efforts, her own stoicism that healed the wound and the nipples, and trickled substance into her body, so that caring for the baby, a girl, brought a wary kind of love. As for the child’s name, yes, they would have to rely on God’s mercy, but Mercy seemed to her too abject, too poor-sounding with a two-syllabled surname. The variant Mercia was just the ticket.

The second child was much delayed. Nettie would not admit to it, but she did everything in her limited means to prevent pregnancy. Nicholas advised that she should stop feeding the little girl, but the child fortunately was thin as a stick insect, so that Nettie claimed the milk to be a necessary supplement. More than three years later, when Nicholas, anxious for a boy, would tolerate no more of her nonsense, the morning sickness announced another pregnancy. The birth saw Nicholas trick the oumas out of their privileged roles. Of course, he would say that the baby had given him no chance to summon the midwives, that it came charging out of the womb as if pursued by demons, but the oumas pursed their lips. In his pride he let slip that the pots of boiling water and strips of linen had been at the ready. The oumas were outraged. What could Meester possibly know about the secret rites of bringing a child into the world? Too proud to have his son delivered by old Namaqua women, that was it. It was poor Nettie, subjected to the indignity of a man’s gaze, his clumsy attentions, deprived of women’s knowledge and care, with whom they sympathized. They muttered their curses. Meester’s know-all pride and arrogance must come to a fall.

This time Nettie was prepared; she had no expectations of Mother Nature. She also chose to believe that Nicholas had no choice, that the baby was so quick off the mark that there was no time to worry about the oumas’ absence. Push, he urged, his hands clamped on her shoulders, claiming that the baby’s head was there, that it was a matter of minutes. Besides, he said, one could not be sure of the old women’s cleanliness. Nicholas, the autodidact, had done his homework; it turned out that there was nothing to it that common sense did not dictate, and he delivered the baby with skill. A boy, they both exclaimed with delight. And relief, for that meant they could put behind them the business of reproduction.

Nettie said tactfully that he should leave the rest, the rituals, to the oumas, who had turned up regardless, to which Nicholas agreed — it was a live boy with everything intact — but not before the old women had washed their hands properly. The cheek of it, offering them a basin of hot water and soap! Ouma Grieta knotted her doek decisively and bit her lip. Ai Goetsega! Such arrogance would not go unpunished, and barely had she muttered the words when a bolt of unseasonable thunder rumbled. Within minutes a mighty storm was unleashed, and as the baby, smacked, washed and swaddled, drew his first mouthful of milk, rain drummed steadily on the zinc roof, drenching the arid land, and Nettie sank into grateful sleep, cradling the boy. They would call him Jacob, after her own father, and in honor of God the Father who had blessed Jacob of bygone days with productive dreams and a handy ladder. But Nicholas thought otherwise; he did not want to argue with God, but Jacob’s treachery, deceiving his father and brother, should not have been rewarded; and his mother should not have connived with her son. So he suggested what he called the French version. Why not Jacques, since Nettie had after all been a Malherbe? They would call him Jake for short, and that should placate her father.

The little girl, Mercy, who at the age of nearly four felt the vastness of the world swirl about her, whose loneliness brought language tumbling willy-nilly, chaotically from her voice box, was over the moon about the boy. The baby was soft and round with a plump face in which she buried her own thin cheeks. He smelled of clean fresh water. He was hers, her very own baby whom she would love with all her heart. She spoke with him in the funny prattle that her parents did not understand, warbling her voice like a bird, knowing that he understood. It was as if a switch had been flicked and all around was glorious light suffusing the dull days. The baby opened his eyes, large and black, and smiled at her, flooding her heart, and Mercia promised baby Jake that she would guard him like the angel that her father said she should be.