Black Dog Summer (2 page)

“You're right,” Adele now says, and runs the tissue under each eye again, absorbing the new sparkles of wetness. “She didn't wear any, did she?” And then her forehead crumples and she drops her head into her hands. “Oh God. Monkey.”

Bryony looks away. She wishes that she still had that photograph. Adele often used to say that Aunty Sally had “let herself go,” and Bryony now imagines those billowy lilac pants rising up into the sky like an escaped helium balloon.

“Addy?” The slam of the front door and the sound of Bryony's father's voice float up from downstairs. “You ready, doll?” Liam's voice grows louder as he climbs, and his shoes make padding sounds on the carpet as if he's carrying something heavy. For a second, Bryony considers dashing to her bedroom so as not to see the weird colorlessness that has taken over her father's face since
the
phone call, but she waits too long.

The
phone call happened just as the family was sitting down to supper on Sunday night. It was chops, which Bryony likes, and corn, which she hates, and she was just thinking of ways to get out of eating hers when the phone rang. Adele muttered about people knowing better than to phone at suppertime and went to answer it; then the family heard a strangled howl sound and Liam shot out of his chair and raced out of the kitchen. Tyler and Bryony looked at each other. Tyler's eyes were so wide that Bryony could see white all around the blue bits. Then, from the telephone table in the lounge, came snuffling and shouting sounds and crying and then the sound of Liam leading Adele upstairs.

It was only after Bryony had finished both her chops and her Greek salad with extra olives stolen from Adele's plate that Liam returned to the table and announced: “Guys, I've got some bad news.
Something terrible has happened to Monk—I mean, Aunty Sally. She's . . . she's dead, I'm afraid.”

When he said it, Bryony's head went all buzzy and she had to lay it down on the table very quickly. She stared at the bright yellow teeth of her uneaten corn with a weird, thick feeling in the back of her throat that made her think she might throw up. She didn't, although with the stench of corn that close to her nose it was a near thing. The whole time, she couldn't stop thinking about billowing purple pants.

“Where's Gigi?” Tyler asked, and Liam told them that their cousin was unhurt and was “in good hands.” This made Bryony think of that song about the man who's got the whole world in his hands, and how big your hands would have to be to have the whole world in them.

Since the news of Aunty Sally's death, the house has filled up with choked whispers and secrets. When Granny died from a stroke two years ago, there was loads of crying and lower-lash wiping, but no heavy, white-faced, open-eyed silences. Also, nobody threw things. Yesterday afternoon, when she was supposed to be doing her homework in her room, Bryony heard Adele shouting and the sound of glass breaking. Later, when she snuck into her mother's bathroom after the storm had passed, she saw that, in her rage, Adele had smashed all her little jars of expensive skin lotion. Bryony had never even been allowed to touch them, and now the bathroom tiles were covered with thick, glittering glass slices and gobs of pastel cream. It smelt like vanilla and roses and being clean, and Bryony stood there for quite a while just breathing it in.

Since
the
phone call, the house has also been full of shadows. Bryony noticed new ones this morning in between the throw cushions on the sofa in the lounge with the flowers printed on it, and behind the side plates in the newly renovated kitchen cupboards when she reached in to get out a cereal bowl. Even though it's only been three days, Bryony can't remember what the house was like before the shadows arrived. They're everywhere.

“Hey, Bry.” As her father comes up the stairs he gives Bryony a smile that looks only half defrosted. “Mrs. Ballentine is going to be taking you to school this morning, OK?”

“I know, Dad.”

“Well, get your shoes on, munchkin,” he says, and then when he sees Adele wrinkling her black linen suit at the dressing table: “Ah, doll.” He sighs and goes over and rubs her back with one golf-tanned hand.

She flinches at his touch, which causes a little worm of worry to burrow through Bryony's guts.

“It's going to be OK, Addy.”

“How is it going to be OK?”

“Jeez, I don't know, doll. It just . . . it will be in time. You know. These things . . . happen.”

“What? Massacres on a Sunday afternoon? Only in this bloody country.”

“Shush, Addy.” Liam increases the force of his back rubbing and glances up at his daughter, but she's looking at the carpet. She swipes one foot across the rug, making a darker curve in the pile. The word “massacre” leaves a new black blotch in the golden bedroom and makes her think of mascara again. She knows it's a word she's heard in history class but just can't, for the moment, remember what it means.

“Come on, girly-pie, shoes on. Go and make sure your brother is ready for school,” Liam says in his no-nonsense voice. Bryony turns and leaves the crumpled tissue, the scalded eye skin, and the dark stink of that heavy word behind her.

I pull myself free. It's a struggle, because Bryony has become sticky (like the boiled sweets that Gigi used to suck and then take out of her mouth to glue to the sunny kitchen window when she was little and we still lived in Johannesburg), but I finally manage. From up here, the spun-ice strands of some merciful cirrus clouds hide the Wilding house from view.

I remember those silly purple pants. I eventually cut them up into a skirt for Gigi when we were living on the farm and new clothes for a growing girl were hard to come by.

The last time I set foot (a real, flesh-and-blood one) in the cloud-hidden Wilding house, I was wearing a tie-dyed wraparound skirt in shades of turquoise that I loved despite its dangerous
tendency to flap open in a strong wind. Whenever I wore it, I would have to walk very sedately so as not to upset it too much, and speed was out of the question unless I wanted the world at large to get an eyeful of my panties.

But that afternoon, I ran in it.

I remember Gigi's squeal of surprise when I scooped her up off the floor of the lounge where she'd been playing with toddler Bryony, and then her look of concern when she saw my tears. “What's the matter, Mommy?” Although she was too heavy to carry in such a way anymore, I clutched my daughter to my hip and ran.

As I swept through the front door, the hem of the skirt flew up and snagged onto one of the hinges. For a moment I was caught, legs bare, sobbing and fumbling with the fabric whilst trying to keep my hold on Gigi. That is when I looked back and saw Adele. She was watching my struggle from within the safety of her immaculate kitchen and her face looked smooth and white, like hard bone. She did not come to help me, or call me back and say that no, it was all right, she'd made a mistake, was just being silly. She did not rush to embrace me and tell me that she didn't mean it and that of course I was welcome here, and please forgive her for saying the things she'd said. No, she just watched me as I fought to free myself from the clutch of her front door, her eyes burning fury from behind that still, ivory-colored mask.

I had to tear my skirt to get away.

It is blissful to be out of the story. Up here, every delicious cold mouthful of Africa's cloud breath buoys me higher, and families of swallows swoop and glide inside me. But I cannot taste ozone and feel the birds without also hearing the relentless roar of the story tide. It only takes a moment before the call of that one, insistent little tale begins to build to an unbearable crescendo.

The story tugs at me like a brass hinge with threads of turquoise fabric caught between its teeth.

Bryony is impatient to get to school and revel in the recent celebrity status that a murder in the family has given her. She twitches and
shifts on the squeaky leather backseat of Mrs. Ballentine's car, and barely waits for it to stop before flinging the door open and sliding out onto the pavement. Before Carryn (who is only in Grade Five and lisps) can even think of walking next to her, Bryony dashes through the school gates.

As soon as she's in, she slows down to a trudge and makes her way up the drive towards Miss Botbyl's classroom with her eyes down and her shoulders bent over to indicate just how burdened she is under the massive weight of despair. The fellow inmates of Class 7B waiting in the patch of sun outside the classroom all rotate their heads towards her approach like a family of inquisitive meerkats.

Bryony, now center stage, stops and allows her school bag to slip to the floor.

“Hey, Bryony.” Amanda's long, straight ponytail shines like strands of sticky toffee in the sun. She takes a step towards Bryony, and the lesser meerkats swivel their heads to watch. They're always watching Amanda. Bryony's convinced that a fairy godmother cast an enchantment spell on Amanda when she was born because everything she does is somehow just that little bit shinier than everyone else.
It's kind of sickening how unfair it is.

“How are you doing today?” Amanda asks.

“OK, I guess.” Bryony keeps her voice low, as if the energy of talking is taking its toll.

“Shame,” Amanda mutters, and puts a soothing arm around her shoulder. She smells of Pantene shampoo and toothpaste, and Bryony's stomach flips at the great and wonderful Amanda's touch.

“The funeral's today,” Bryony adds.

“Oh my God,” says Stacy, coming up on her other side and breathing more toothpaste into her face. “That's the grimmest.”

“They're not going to have one of those open casket thingies, are they?” Tsolophelo asks, stretching her lips over her braces in order to bite them.

Seeing as her parents had not actually told Bryony how her aunt was killed, and enthused by her classmates' thirst for details, she'd made up a tragic little tale in which Aunty Sally was shot in the neck and bled to death in minutes (they did the arteries in Biology last term).
Now she wishes she'd given herself some storytelling wiggle room. A stabbing would've been much more gruesome. “It's a closed casket.” Her whisper implies a corpse too horrifying for family members to bear.

“If it's today, why are you at school? Why aren't you going?”

“Mom won't let us.” This much of her tale is true. Adele says that funerals are unsuitable for children and wouldn't even let them go to Granny's funeral two years ago. Bryony had been secretly relieved to be banned from it. Crying in front of people makes her feel strange and skinless, as if anyone can see inside of her.

“My mom said that it wasn't just your aunty that got killed on Sunday,” Angel pipes up in an eager voice. “It was a whole bunch of people that lived on that farm in Limpopo. It was in the newspaper and everything.” The sides of Bryony's head feel suddenly cold, and it's not because she can't stand Angel (who wouldn't let Bryony join in on a game of Running Red Rover once when they were in Grade Three) but because Aunty Sally's murder was in a newspaper. She had no idea.

Bryony leans her back against the wall and shuts her eyes. The conversation now seems to be coming from a long way away.

“It was an animal rescue center that they raided, my mom said. Did you ever go there and play with the rescued animals, Bry? Were there baby lions? My brother had an iguana once but it started to get aggressive and my mom made him give it away.”

“Shut up, Angel.”

“My mom says that all the farm killings in this country are actually a jellyside and something should be done.”

“A what-i-side? What are you on about?”

“Jellyside. Haven't you ever heard of it?”

“Isn't it like when lots of people get killed or something?”

“No, man, that's jealouside.”

“Ja, use your logic . . . you kill people when you're jealous of them, right?”

“I guess.”

“So it's got nothing to do with jelly.”

“But what about those poor animals? Do you think they're OK if all the people are dead? Do you think someone's feeding them?”

“Oh, shame!”

“Bryony?” Amanda is suddenly right up close again. “Hey, guys, I think Bryony's going to faint.”

Bryony lets nameless hands help her down to sit on the cement floor of the corridor, not even caring that her skirt has ridden up and everyone can probably see her panties. She is thinking about how she always wanted to go and visit her aunt and her cousin at their exciting-sounding animal rescue center in the bush, and was sure that she would one day be able to convince her mother to let her. Now she never will.

Bryony's nostrils are suddenly, inexplicably, filled with the floor polish and butternut smell of her granny's old house. For the first time, she remembers the way the folds of the embroidered tablecloth had made her feel as though she and Cousin Gigi were in their very own private, lacy tent under the dining room table. She remembers the stolen jar of peanut butter. The ends of Gigi's plaits had ended up all glued together because she'd kept twisting them with her sticky fingers.

Bryony tries to imagine what Gigi must look like now that she's fourteen, but she just keeps seeing peanut butter smeared on freckles and a red corduroy skirt that was handed down to her when Gigi grew out of it. It had itched.

Bryony bursts into tears: huge, uncontrollable ones that pump and slime out of her. The circle of girls around her opens up a little. This kind of crying is dangerous and everyone knows it.

“Someone call Dommie. Is she here yet?” Dommie is Bryony's best friend, and at the sound of her name, Bryony cries even harder.

“I think we should rather get a teacher.” That's Tsolophelo talking. Bryony can hear her still struggling not to spit through her new braces.

“Hey, Miss Botbyl's coming!”

“Miss Botbyl, Bryony's crying.”