Rachel Weeping (9 page)

‘There you go,' the assistant said, looking at her curiously. She handed Rachel her receipt.

‘Thank you.' Rachel grasped the piece of paper, hiked her handbag up on her shoulder and made for the exit, her head still bowed.

 

 

 

Michelle's head was pounding as she opened the medicine kit and took out a bottle of Panado. She popped two tablets into her mouth and chased them down with a glass of water, cringing as the medicine travelled down her throat. She had never been good at swallowing tablets as a child and found that as an adult she still needed a full glass of water to get a single vitamin or tablet into her system.

Time had passed slowly and even though she was now past the halfway mark in her pregnancy the hours spent at home were dragging. A person could only read so many books, she'd discovered, and she often found herself just walking around the house looking for things to keep her occupied.

She put the glass in the sink and leaned against the marble counter as she waited for the painkillers to take effect. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, her tight belly pushing against the counter. She had started to show recently and when she looked at the unattractive clothes she now had to wear it made her sigh. She wasn't as bad as some of the other mothers she saw on her visits to Dr Pieterse or the antenatal classes, but that didn't make her feel any better about her change in dress size.

The changing hormones in her body were also making it difficult to approach the matter rationally. As far as she was concerned, she had become fat, ugly and boring, qualities that she had spent a lifetime striving not to be.

‘I'm sorry about earlier,' Chris said. He had come up behind her without her hearing him. He put his hands on her hips. ‘We don't need to find out.'

‘No, I reacted badly,' Michelle said. She rested her back against her husband's chest.

Chris started to kiss her neck, pulling her body closer to his. She could feel him against her back. When she realised what he was trying to do she pulled forward, away from him. Chris stopped.

‘I'm just … tired,' Michelle said, looking down at her hands.

‘And you have a headache,' Chris said sardonically. ‘I know.'

He let go of her and they stood in an uncomfortable silence. Michelle tried to decide whether she was being unreasonable. It had been a few weeks since they'd had sex and she knew it was probably frustrating for Chris. Since he was giving in about finding out the baby's sex, she supposed she did kind of owe him. She turned around to face him and began unbuttoning her shirt.

‘Not now,' Chris said, stopping her hands.

‘What's wrong?' Michelle said. ‘It's okay.'

‘I've heard people get more excited for root canals.'

‘Come on, Chris.'

‘Don't worry,' Chris said, taking her face in his hands. ‘We're both tired.'

He leaned forward and kissed Michelle on the forehead. Then he turned and walked out of the kitchen.

The touch of his kiss lingered on her skin and Michelle closed her eyes, allowing the weight of the day to wash over her. She knew that Chris was trying to bring some form of normalcy to their lives but she was just too tired to help him. All she wanted to do was to go to sleep and wake up to how things were before – before things fell apart.

Chris lay lengthwise on the couch and turned on his iPad. There was a photograph of Anja in front of a new car at the top of his Facebook feed. She was sitting on the bonnet of a Volvo with a huge smile on her face and a glass of champagne in her hand. She appeared to be toasting the salesman who was standing next to her.

My new Volvo! #sexonwheels #grrrr

Chris grinned.

We're clearly paying you too much #no13thcheque

He waited for Anja to answer and, sure enough, the iPad pinged a few seconds later.

Nooooo!!! :) LOL

Chris liked her comment and returned to his timeline to see what the rest of his network had been up to that day. The tablet pinged again and he saw that Anja had sent him a private message.

Make sure you don't leave the Durban plans at home again, Boss! :)

Ja, ja, Missy
, Chris typed back.
Just make sure my coffee is ready when I get into the office tomorrow morning.

Anja responded with an emoticon of a cup of coffee and a smiley face and Chris, chuckling, sent back one of a thumbs up. He was about to type something else when he looked up and saw Michelle in the doorway.

‘I'm going to bed,' she said. She was already in the old tracksuit she had taken to sleeping in this winter.

‘I'll be there in a few,' Chris replied. ‘Just answering a couple of emails.'

 

 

chapter 10

Michelle raised her
eyes to the projection on the screen in front of her to follow the words to the hymn the congregation was singing. Even though she had sung Amazing Grace for most of her life, she only knew the first chorus by heart and always needed help with the rest.

She and Chris had been attending this church for about four years and they had integrated into the (mostly white, professional) community fairly easily, something she credited to Chris's ability to make friends with anyone. She, on the other hand, always struggled to form relationships with new people, especially with women, but she had pushed through and now she was part of a group of women that met weekly to talk about life, faith and family.

The venue was a relatively new building and it had comfortable chairs, classy finishings and a stage at the front of the church hall which was the platform where preachers ministered and musicians played their instruments. The stage was lit by coloured lights and a spotlight over the large screen which displayed the words to the hymns and, occasionally, videos. In Michelle's opinion it was a little too ‘rock concert' for a Sunday morning but she had come to terms with the fact that the morning rituals would start with loud music and bright lights. The band was made up of drums, keyboards, a few electric guitars, a violin and a 20-voice choir. The band performed passionately as they led the congregation in song.

Michelle looked over at Chris and saw that he had his eyes closed, enjoying his time singing to God. This ability to get lost in God's presence was yet another difference between the two of them. Chris was able effortlessly to enter this state of being and he could sing for hours on end without getting bored, while Michelle could last for about ten minutes before her mind started to wander.

When a visiting preacher once said he thought heaven would be a place where they'd spend eternity engaging with Christ this way, Michelle couldn't help but hope he was wrong. She could imagine nothing worse than this kind of eternity.

She, on the other hand, preferred hearing the Bible expounded by an articulate preacher and could easily follow a two-hour sermon, where Chris would glaze over during the introduction to the message. She had woken her husband up a few times after he had fallen asleep during a sermon and often found that he was completely unable to recall what the preacher had spoken about after a meeting. But, she figured, between the two of them they probably got the best of both worlds.

As the hymn reached the third verse, predictably Michelle's mind began to wander, moving from the to-do list for the week ahead, the meetings she had lined up with clients, to the thing that had occupied her thoughts constantly for the last few months.

A baby.

Most of their friends were on their second or third children by now and, while Michelle knew perfectly well that you didn't have children because your friends were having them, there was a part of her that had started to long for a child. She and Chris were missing out on a part of life they only had a brief window of time in which to access and, with each month that passed, she knew that the window was getting smaller and smaller.

As Pastor Anton took to the stage, Michelle's eyes scanned the congregation until they came to rest on a woman two rows in front of her. She was holding a baby girl in her arms. The child must have been about six months old and she was looking over her mother's shoulder, studying the faces of the worshippers behind her with open curiosity. Every now and then her eyes would blink and close sleepily and she would jerk her small head back up. Michelle couldn't help smiling.

‘
Do you see this woman?
' Pastor Anton said into the microphone, reading from a Bible app on his tablet. ‘
You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair.
'

Tired from the effort of keeping her head up, the baby rested on her mother's shoulder. Suddenly her eyes locked on Michelle's. When Michelle smiled directly at her the little girl's eyes lit up and she lifted her head back up again. She gave Michelle a big smile before burping and hiccuping and bringing forth a mouthful of milk onto her mother's shoulder.

‘
You did not give me a kiss
,' continued Pastor Anton, ‘
but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet.
'

Michelle suppressed a laugh as she watched the exasperated mother shaking her head and wiping ineffectually at her shirt with a tissue. The woman handed the baby to her husband so that she could go and clean herself properly. The man took his baby daughter in his big hands and held her up to his face. He spoke silently to her and made funny faces. Michelle could see Chris doing that if they had a baby.

‘
Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven, as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little, loves little.
'

Michelle was aware of Pastor Anton's voice but realised she hadn't listened to a single word of the reading. It was too late now so she closed her eyes and whispered a private prayer to God, asking him to give them a child.

 

 

 

‘We are all called to forgive our enemies, just as Christ forgave us! A-men!'

Rachel pulled Maia by the hand as the two of them entered the Christ Embassy Sunday meeting, late but barely noticed by the worshippers who were already singing and dancing with great enthusiasm. Pastor Enoch was standing on the stage shouting into the microphone and the congregation responded with great gusto.

‘AMEN!'

The church met in an old shopping centre that had been stripped of its shelves and converted into a hall large enough to accommodate 2 000 people. Plastic chairs were set out in uneven rows and a makeshift stage had been erected at the front. A blaring speaker system brought music and the word to the congregation and the walls were decked with banners proclaiming ‘Jesus is Lord' and ‘King of Kings'.

The congregation was comprised mostly of black people, everyone dressed in the best clothes they owned. Maia always wore her white dress to church, which Rachel had found at a second-hand shop in town, while Rachel would come to the meetings in a black, ankle-length skirt and a bleach-white blouse. She had seen some churches where the worshippers came in casual clothes but she believed that if you would wear a suit when you visited with the President, you should do the same when you met with Jehovah.

‘We don't forgive our enemies when we feel like forgiving them!' Pastor Enoch declared passionately. ‘We forgive them because it is the only way to be set free! A-men!'

‘AMEN!' the congregation shouted back as the keyboard player thumped his keys in the background.

She scanned the busy hall. She saw Tapiwa in the section where they usually sat, waving at her to come through. Rachel and Maia made their way through the crowd towards her, and Tapiwa shifted up so that they could take the two chairs she had saved for them.

‘The taxi was running late,' Rachel explained as she greeted her friend. The two women wasted no time in joining in the singing. When Rachel glanced down, she saw Maia whispering to the Barbie doll Abigail had given her. She had told the child to leave it at home but somehow she had snuck it past her. She considered taking it away but didn't want to deal with a crying child in the meeting and so she let Maia be.

Even though Rachel did not understand the words of the song, she knew them by heart and understood what they meant, thanks to a translation by Tapiwa. They sang songs in a mix of languages at this church, catering to the many African nationalities that made up the congregation.

Her first visit to Christ Embassy had happened three years ago and had come about from an invitation from Tapiwa. They had met a few weeks earlier when Tapiwa had started working on the same street as Rachel, and when she suggested Rachel and Maia join her one Sunday, they'd gone along. The church was in the suburb of Randburg and it required a taxi and 30 minutes of walking to get there but, as Rachel soon discovered, it was worth the effort.

With no support or family in Johannesburg, Rachel's first year in the city had been incredibly lonely, something that had been relieved by the weekly church meetings. She had found a sense of belonging when she sang with the group of believers and her heart filled with purpose when she heard the scriptures preached from the front of the huge hall. She had even met the occasional Mozambican in a meeting and she could barely describe the joy that came from being able to speak her mother tongue to another adult.

‘Pass the doll to me,' Rachel whispered in Maia's ear. ‘You can get it at the end of the meeting.'

Disappointed but obedient, Maia handed the Barbie with the mermaid tail over to Rachel, sighing exaggeratedly as she looked ahead at the stage. A smile on her face, Rachel shook her head and pushed the doll into her handbag before greeting the woman seated on the other side of her daughter.

Pastor Enoch was in full cry this morning.

‘Not forgiving someone is like swallowing poison and believing that the person who hurt you will die! A-men!'

‘AMEN!'

‘God is good!'

‘All the time!'

‘All the time!'

‘God is good!'

‘A-men.'

Pastor Enoch paused as he caught his breath. ‘Sister Mary is going to lead us in a song,' he announced, ‘while we take up the tithe and offering. Remember, brothers and sisters, the word of God says that if you want to be blessed, you must be a blessing.'

Then he proceeded to tell them for ten minutes about how giving to the church would welcome blessing into their own lives before he finally made way for Sister Mary to pick up the microphone and start singing. Ushers got up from their seats and started passing collection baskets down the rows, watching vigilantly to make sure no one stole from them.

Between Maia starting nursery school and her father not being able to earn very much from repairing fishing nets, it had been a tough month for Rachel and she contemplated allowing the offering basket to pass her by, torn between her obligation to her faith and the reality of her financial situation. She listened to the words of the pastor as he reinforced the scriptures, promising her that if she was generous to God then God would be generous to her. She closed her eyes and decided to stretch her faith, telling God that she would step up but that she needed him to help her with the mountain she was facing.

She opened her purse and took some money out, placing a R2 coin in Maia's eager hand and folding a R20 note in her own. When the collection basket reached them she placed her tithe inside and held the basket out for Maia to add her contribution. The little girl took her time and, when she did add her tithe, it was as though she were throwing a coin into a wishing-well. The basket moved on down the row and Maia, a big smile on her face, looked up at Rachel and blew a kiss at her. Then she stretched up to whisper in her mother's ear.

‘I asked for princess hair, Mama,' she said.

 

 

 

The words of Pastor Anton's sermon went straight over Chris's head, a mix of scripture that he struggled to process at ten in the morning. He had his iPad in his hands, the Bible app open to the scripture that was being referenced, but the words were just a blur to him.

In a time before tablets and smartphones people used to sit with Bibles on their knees and the air would be filled with the sound of pages fluttering as the congregation searched for the relevant verse. When he and Michelle were dating they used to silently race to see who could find the verse first, the loser receiving a pinch on the leg which the rules said they had to take without drawing attention to themselves.

Michelle preferred paper to a tablet in church and she usually had her notebook out, scribbling down points that resonated with her from the message, but this morning she seemed lost in thought. Swallowing a yawn, Chris leaned forward and exited the Bible app and went through to Facebook, giving a quick look around to see if anyone had noticed. Michelle hadn't, but he could see she wasn't paying attention to Pastor Anton either. Her gaze was fixed somewhere just ahead of where they were sitting, a small smile playing about her lips. Chris scrolled through the Facebook timeline, looking at the activities of his friends who weren't in church meetings that morning.

Today had been booked off in the calendar for him and Michelle to make a baby. It was the height of Michelle's fertility window and she had set aside the afternoon for them to have sex. Devoid of spontaneity, the whole set-up felt about as passionate as two dogs at the breeders whose owners stood to the side waiting for them to do what needed to be done. It was the seventh time they had gone through this and it wouldn't have felt as cheap were it not for the fact that these days Michelle didn't show much interest in sex outside of the sacred fertility window. Chris was becoming more like a tool than a person and, as he sat back and tried to stay awake, he hoped to God that this would be the last time they would have to go through this.