Black Dog Summer (30 page)

“Of course she does. We all do.”

“Simone especially.”

“Fair enough.” A light breeze lifted the damp hair from the back of my neck and I puffed out a breath along with it.

“So she shouldn't be sad about the jackals because of the ball of light.”

“That may well be the case, sweet pea, but Simone doesn't really know what happens afterwards, no one does.” I dropped down to my haunches and poked a finger through the crust of the soil. It felt warm and moist beneath the surface. Alive. “Whatever the case may be, it's OK to be sad about things going away, Gi. It's better to let yourself get sad if you want to.”

“But Simone—”

“Gi, I know Simone's the smart one who knows all the flower remedies and asanas and the Buddha quotes and that, but are you open to a word or two of wisdom from your funny old mom?”

“Uh-huh,” she said, hunkering down beside me. I could feel the humming life in her small, taut body through the sharp point of her elbow that pressed against my leg.

“If you don't let yourself be sad about things, then that feeling can build up and turn really nasty.”

“Nasty?” She poked one of her own fingers through the topsoil alongside mine.

“Ja, all festering and horrible.”

“I don't understand.”

“Think of the way rotten veggies go all slimy and stinky at the bottom of the fridge.”

“Oh. Gross.”

“Exactly.”

“But being sad sucks.”

“I know, hon,” I said, and placed an arm around her shoulders.

I remember how we sat like that for a long time, listening to the chattering of the birds as the afternoon slowly softened around us; but now, I do not let it get to that. I draw on the power of all the story noise that has been screaming at me without cease for all the time since I passed on. I channel the vibrant surge into something I can wield. I take charge of the memory. I change it.

Gigi, look at me.

I can speak! As I say the words, the fleshless me and the memory me are suddenly one. When Gigi turns to us, her eyes are no longer sky-colored; they shimmer, shining black with blue lights like a glossy starling wing.

“Mom?” The breeze turns into a wind. My hair whips against my face. The bottlebrush seeds rattle above my head, and I can smell the dust and chipboard smell of the cupboard inside 22 Cortona Villas.

Your cousin.

“What?”

Bryony. She needs you. The cord has slipped around her neck and she is choking. You must go to her. NOW.

Somewhere between that time and this time and all times, a dog barks.

Lesedi falls backwards onto the compacted earth of the yard. Her foot hooks the edge of the enamel tub of potato-washing water and sends it flying. The chicken squawks and skitters off in a rustle of feathers, and Ma Retabile wakes with a snort.

The washing water foams out in a wave and then soaks into the dry ground.

Gigi hears footsteps on the stairs. The men. They're here. But it doesn't matter anymore. She takes a breath, steeling herself, and then kicks open the cupboard. The room is so bright after the gloom that for a moment she is blind, stumbling. She grabs the knob on the adjoining cupboard door and wrenches it open.

“Bryony!”

Her cousin is purple-faced. The gag is no longer in her mouth, and her bluish lips are still. Her eyes are huge and bulging. The dirty-white dressing gown cord coils around her neck like a rigid, toweling snake.

“Oh God, oh no.” Gigi pulls Bryony from the cupboard, and they both fall backwards onto the floor. Gigi scrabbles to get behind Bryony and pulls her arms upwards behind her back, immediately loosening the noose. “Breathe, breathe, please breathe,” she intones in a frantic whisper. Then, using her knees to hold Bryony's wrists up to keep the cord slack, she begins to work on the knots.

Bryony makes a tiny sound, a whimper of pain at the ripping feeling in her shoulder joints.

And then the knot comes free.

“Bryony?” Gigi sobs.

For a moment there is silence, and then the girl takes a strange, choking little breath. And then another. Her face turns from purple to white to brilliant red and she curls up on her side, coughing and gasping.

“Oh thank you thank you thank you,” Gigi cries, and throws her arms around her cousin, cradling her like an oversized doll. All the frantic activity has reopened the slashes on her upper arm, and fresh trickles of blood roll down her blue-white skin and soak into the toweling dressing gown.

Beyond the door, the girls can hear the click of animal claws and an excited whine followed by heavy footsteps. Someone tries the door handle. The key wobbles in the lock.

“Mommy,” Gigi says. She shuts her eyes.

“Gigi? Bryony? Are you girls all right?” No answer. “Move away from the door!” Eric Masondo tests the strength of the lock by pressing his shoulder against it, and then steps back and lunges forward. The lock pops open easily beneath his body weight, and he steps into the bare bedroom.

The first thing he sees (and Bella sniffs) is blood. He takes a cautious step towards the huddled children. The one with her back to him has no shirt on, and the knobs of her spine almost seem to pierce through her pearl-white skin and the thin, grubby elastic of her bra strap. She does not turn to look at him, but the blond girl in her lap peers around her ribs and stares at Eric with huge, terrified eyes.

“The black men are here,” she mouths.

“It's all right, I'm not going to hurt you.” Eric's voice comes out thinner than he expects it to. Usually, he would rush over and crouch beside two frightened kids like this and tell them that they're safe, but for some reason he holds back.

He notes that the blood seems to be coming from the older girl's arm, but the wound looks fairly superficial from where he is standing.

“They're in here,” he says softly to the policewoman as she comes up behind him, and, as he does so, the pale girl whimpers and curls her body protectively over the younger child huddled in her lap.

Lesedi switches on her BlackBerry and notes the one little bar on the screen that indicates at least some chance of getting reception. She walks away from the yard with the toffee-colored chicken and the pile of sweet potatoes and the dark patch of spilled water on the orange earth, and heads to higher ground, stepping between tufts of long, juicy grass stems and over stones as she makes for the top of the small hill that borders Ma Retabile's homestead.

The sun is a milky white disc behind a soft fuzz of drifting cloud in the western sky, and a light breeze cools the film of sweat still coating her skin.

Lesedi wishes she could phone Adele Wilding from next door and ask her if her daughter is all right, but in the ten months that the Matunyanes have been living in Cortona Villas, the two have barely exchanged greetings, let alone phone numbers.

She glances at the screen. Three bars. She keeps on walking, determined now to reach the top of the low rise. The breeze drops and the air feels hot and close. A large, khaki-colored locust springs from a grass stalk and clings to her shirt for a moment before launching itself off in another direction. Four bars.

Finally, she stops. She presses a few buttons on her phone and holds it to her ear. It's ringing.

“Sedi!” She smiles at the sound of Thabo's voice.

“Thabo.” She shuts her eyes against the encircling peaks of the vivid green mountains with their aloe-print skirts. “Have you sold the house yet?”

“No.”

“Good,” she says. “Don't.”

“OK.” She can hear the grin in his voice. “No problem, babe.”

“But please tell the estate agent that I'm going to be looking for office premises to rent. Northern suburbs, high end.”

“Sounds interesting.”

“And I think I'm going to need to visit my mom when I get back. Have a little chat . . .”

Lesedi opens her eyes. The mountains are still there, looking down at her.
Go
. They sing.
Go home
.

I AM
a rutted dirt road that winds through the bush. I am a dense clump of fragrant grass tipped with little brown seeds. I am a tick, clinging to a stalk and waiting for a duiker to pass by. I am a low cloud with a thunder rumble deep in my gray, churning belly. I am the first drop of rain that plummets down and slams into the waiting, thirsty earth.

I hear all the whispers and the calls and the sighs and the stories—all but one. It is silent, my story noise. It no longer screams at me.

I listen hard for it, expecting it to start at any moment, to build to its all-encompassing crescendo and force me back to the Wilding house, but it is gone.

The wide sky beckons, but I hesitate, and, although there is now nothing making me do it, I listen for the familiar cadence of my daughter's sleeping breath and follow it. My sister is there too, awake. Once more, I am at her side.

Adele, who is exhausted and can no longer summon the energy to stare at the two sleeping girls attached to their respective drips in their hospital beds in adjoining rooms for one more minute, steps into the corridor and leans her head back against the wall. She hears the squeak of shoe rubber and glances up to see Liam returning from his trip to the cafeteria with a paper cup of coffee in each hand. Hospital lighting and a day full of worry are doing him no favors: his skin looks green and pitted. He hands Adele her coffee.

“Thanks.” The cardboard is hot beneath her fingers.

“The girls still cased out?”

“Ja. Neither one of them has so much as stirred.”

Liam glances through the doorway and into the first room. Gigi
has a block of white gauze plastered over her left upper arm and a drip needle in the opposite wrist. She is asleep. The drip is for dehydration and sustenance, apparently. The doctors, with a searching look at himself and his wife, proclaimed her to have been in dire need of both.

Bryony looks very small in her own white bed in the next room. Her face is less flushed than it was, probably because the drugs have helped her fever to come down a little. He follows the transparent worm of the drip cable all the way down to where it stabs into the flesh above her small, sore wrist. The bruise there is more prominent now, an ugly bangle of dark gray and purple. Liam notes that the mark around her neck is still an angry crimson. He quickly turns away.

“What the hell happened, Addy?”

“I wish I could answer that.” Adele takes a sip of her coffee and walks over to the row of chairs in the corridor. “Neither of them has said a sensible word since we found them.” She slides down onto the worn chair cushion. “Gigi, of course, has not made a single peep, and Bryony was whispering about how Gigi tried to save her from a dog or some such nonsense.”

“But Bryony's bruises? I don't . . .” He shakes his head, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment. “The cops are sure there was no one else there?”

“You know they are, Liam: they told us both. They searched and sniffer-dogged and fingerprinted our house and number twenty-two. Nothing.”

“I know, it's just . . .” Liam comes over and sits down beside her. “Did the girls get into a fight? I mean, who cut up Gigi's arm?”

“I don't know.”

“Surely not Bryony?”

“Liam, I don't know.”

“And all Bryony's bruises and her damaged windpipe—she was almost strangled. To death.”

“I know.”

“Gigi?” Liam asks, and he and Adele exchange a look. After a long moment, Adele sighs and turns her head.

“It had to be. No one else was there.”

“Christ, I knew she was screwed up but this is . . . well, this is dangerous stuff.” There is another long silence. “She can't stay.”

“Liam—”

“What?” Liam remembers the way Gigi rose from her bed yesterday evening, screaming at him, demonic. “She's a bloody psychopath.”

“So what do we do with her, Liam? Chuck her out on the street? We're her legal guardians, for God's sake.”

“We could send her away for a bit, to a special boarding school or something. There must be places for kids like these.”

“What, like Girls and Boys Town? Isn't that for juvenile delinquents?”

“Well, how would you describe this recent crazy behavior?” Liam says. He remembers Gigi taking him by the hand and showing him around the farm every single time he drove up to Limpopo to visit Sally. Even on the brink of fourteen she had been wide open and generous with her smiles and eager to teach.
The honey badger eats snakes—did you know that, Uncle Liam? The name makes it sound all cute and fluffy and stuff, but one of these little guys can rip the head off a cobra, no problem.

“Or maybe just a boarding school where the teachers can keep an eye on her,” Liam mutters. “Christ.” He pinches the bridge of his nose and squeezes hard.

“I suppose,” Adele says. “I can make a few calls, see what our options are; but before we decide anything, we need to know from Bryony exactly what happened.”

Liam takes another sip of his coffee. “Your hair. You had it cut. It looks nice, by the way,” he says, and Adele bursts into tears.

Consciousness returns to Gigi as a series of bright blobs of light that tease her flickering eyelids to open. When at last they do, she spends long minutes just staring at the strips of aluminum that hold the ceiling boards together, until gradually the rest of the room makes its presence felt. I'm back in a hospital, she realizes. She listens to the sound of voices and footsteps and life in the corridor outside, and then lifts her arm to stare at the place where the drip needle goes in.

Finally, she looks over to the adjoining bed. It is empty. Carefully, she extracts herself from beneath the covers and slides her feet onto the cool floor. Clutching the drip stand in one hand and the back of her gaping hospital gown in the other, Gigi edges her way out of the room and into the corridor. A nurse in a dark blue uniform zooms past carrying a folder of paper. “Where's my cousin?” Gigi wants to ask, but her mouth is too slow.