The Monster's Daughter (10 page)

Sometimes nurses came to sit with Pieter in
Saal
3. They'd talk about how South Africa would one day be a Union, with a proper prime minister, and it wouldn't be long before Afrikaners got rid of the Englishman. “Englishman” sounded like a bad word, Benjamin thought, especially because Pieter's voice became all hard and angry when he talked about the English. Pieter never looked at Benjamin and the other children while he talked, only at the pretty nurses. Sometimes he'd touch a nurse's arm or her leg. Some of them didn't like it, but Pieter always said that there were plenty of fish in the sea, the war had seen to that. Benjamin didn't understand what fish had to do with nurses. Pieter sometimes talked to Benjamin about grown-up things, which were confusing. Pieter said Benjamin would never have to worry about these things, and Benjamin was glad about that. Grown-up things did not sound fun.

Benjamin had one friend in
Saal
3. He didn't know his name but
he called him Jo-jo, because that was the sound he sometimes made when he got upset. Jo-jo slept on the mattress next to Benjamin, and had bulging eyes. Spit would drip from his mouth in a steady stream and sometimes he just rocked back and forth all day. Mostly Jo-jo would stare at the ceiling, but when Benjamin made a funny face, or jumped up and down, Jo-jo would smile. Benjamin told Jo-jo everything that he remembered, which was a lot. About
Matrone
Jansen telling Benjamin that he was special and how the library where she took him smelled funny and made Benjamin's nose itch, but he didn't mind because he liked looking at pictures in books while
Matrone
Jansen taught him to read. Reading was hard. Benjamin tried holding the page close to his face, but he'd still get it wrong and then he got nervous, and his mouth wouldn't obey what his brain was thinking, and the harder he tried, the more the sound would get stuck in his mouth. T-t-tr-train. B-b-boat.

“D-d-d-dummy,”
Matrone
Jansen would sigh and tap her heel on the ground. “Stupid retard, I shouldn't have bothered.”

Benjamin didn't like when she called him that. He wasn't sure what a retard was, but he knew it was a bad thing, like an Englishman maybe. He didn't remember anything about the time before he came to the hospital, but he thought about it a lot.
Matrone
Jansen said he was too little to remember. She said he was a war orphan. Orphan meant he didn't have a mother or father, that they were dead or gave him away.
Matrone
Jansen never lied about anything, so her story had to be true.
Matrone
Jansen said lying was a sin, and so was not obeying grown-ups, taking things that didn't belong to you, and saying the Lord's name when you weren't praying. That last one was really, really bad. You went to Hell for that.

When he read well,
Matrone
Jansen gave him fudge. Benjamin really liked fudge. She also gave him something she called coconut ice, which he liked even more. Once, his tummy hurt when he ate too much coconut ice and he couldn't sit still even though he tried his best, so Pieter gave him a punch which made his tummy hurt even more than before.

Jo-jo never said anything when Benjamin told him these things. That meant he was good at keeping secrets. Benjamin had a secret he knew he wasn't supposed to tell, but it bounced around his insides.
Benjamin knew he wasn't three years old like
Matrone
Jansen told the doctors he was. That she changed things in his chart every time a new doctor came to work at the hospital. She said he'd be taken away if anyone knew how special he was and then he'd be locked in a tiny room and never get fudge again. Benjamin wasn't three years old, but he wasn't a grown-up either.
Matrone
Jansen said that was because he wasn't growing right and didn't look like normal children. Benjamin had a pale face with cheeks that were thin and hollow, not round like babies' cheeks. His eyes hid under his white eyebrows and they turned up a little in the outside corners and were almost the color of thin clouds on winter days. That was another secret
Matrone
Jansen had told him. She had said that God only gave special eyes like that to His chosen ones. Jesus surely had eyes like that, she said. But Benjamin didn't want to hang on a cross one day like Jesus did, no matter what
Matrone
Jansen said. He wondered if you could get off the cross to go to the bathroom. Peeing in your pants was not allowed at the hospital, even if it was an accident.

Every day, the black women came to
Saal
3 to kneel on the floor and polish the tiles. Pieter usually went outside then, to talk to the new nurse with the pink cheeks. He said this one was special, more than the others, and that he might make her his girl. Benjamin always joked around when Pieter wasn't there, to make Jo-jo smile. He walked fast in his socks, just a little, and stopped suddenly, bending his knees, so he slid across the polished floor. He liked the way this felt, so he did it again, only faster this time, flailing his arms, looking back to see if Jo-jo was watching. But one day he felt someone push him, and his feet disappeared right out from under him. His body was suspended in air, not touching anything. Free. First it felt good, a jumble of gray ceiling and chair legs and blue mattresses. Then it felt like a giant hiccup, a cracking sound in his head, and he screamed because it hurt very very much.

Pieter towered over him. “If you don't want to listen, you must feel,” he said. “That's the only remedy for a little
kak
like you.”

Benjamin kept screaming as his head throbbed, not caring what Pieter did to him. He heard
Matrone
Jansen's thick heels clack down the hall long before her thin body appeared in the doorway. Her white cap dangled from her stiff brown hair by a single hairpin, her white
apron flapping like the morning wings of the small brown birds in the tree outside as she rushed to him.

“What is going on?” The vein over the bony bump on
Matrone
Jansen's forehead bulged when she yelled.

“He did it to himself. I told him to stay on his mat,
Matrone
,” Pieter stumbled defensively. “I can't help it if these dum-dums don't listen.”

“You are supposed to be watching them.”
Matrone
Jansen crouched over Benjamin, her hands sliding under his armpits and lifting him to his feet. “You should do as you're told, son,” she whispered. “Otherwise we'll have to visit with the Angel.”

The Angel was the strap
Matrone
Jansen kept in her desk drawer, a thick leather belt cut in half and nailed to a plank. She called it the Angel, because it was a warrior of God, like the Archangel Michael, and would beat Satan out of you any day. When she swung her arm, the belt part made a loud “fwhop,” and licked your bottom till it felt like it was on fire. Sometimes, when she was really angry,
Matrone
Jansen would use the plank side. She said it was for Benjamin's own good, that it would save his eternal soul.

“Stop crying, boy.” Pieter grabbed Benjamin's arm, his face swollen.

Benjamin closed his eyes and held his hands to his face, waiting for the slap to come, but
Matrone
Jansen stepped in front of Pieter. She pushed Benjamin's head down, her thumbs parting his hair. “No blood, just a bump. Lucky for you, Mr. Smuts.”

“It wasn't my fault,
Matrone
—”

“I'll see you in my office.”
Matrone
Jansen turned and walked away, her body a straight gray line.

“Witch,” Pieter muttered when she was out of earshot. He shoved Benjamin. “You stay in the corner the rest of the week for that, hear?” He turned to the rest of the room. “And nobody talks to him.” He was greeted by dull eyes blinking listlessly. Jo-jo continued his perpetual rock, his head flopping as if his neck was made of jelly. Pieter smirked.

On Sundays,
Matrone
Jansen took Benjamin to church with her. He sat very still during services, so that
Matrone
Jansen would be proud of him. Benjamin didn't like church much. The
Dominee
stood behind a box and always spoke in an angry voice. He had slicked-back hair and wore a long black dress.
Matrone
Jansen said that when it was a man of God, they didn't call it a dress, they called it something else.
The
Dominee
said that their nation was chosen by God, because He led them to this land in dark Africa, and gave it to them, and it was their sacred mission to guard their Christian heritage here. The
Dominee
talked about God testing His people in the war. Some of the older women would wipe their eyes then and the men would cross their arms and stare at the floor. The
Dominee
said their suffering would be rewarded. If they truly believed, God would avenge His people. That made everyone happy again and they said, “Amen.”

After the service,
Matrone
Jansen always took him into the storeroom at the back of her office, where shelves ran from the floor to the ceiling filled with sheets and cleaning supplies and extra kerosene.
Matrone
Jansen used the storeroom to drive demons out. The other children had many demons, making them act up and yell and shake and not understand. That was why they were in the hospital, because of the demons,
Matrone
Jansen said. “I command you, Devil be gone!” she would shout, lifting her arms in the air. When
Matrone
Jansen drove the demons out, her mouth stuck to the edges of her face, so Benjamin could see all her teeth, even the ones in the back. He sometimes imagined that they were as pointy as her fingernails and that she bit demons in half as they flew out of the children. He didn't think
Matrone
Jansen was very good at driving demons out, because the children would just stay the same, but he didn't tell her that. He knew that would mean there was a demon in him and that
Matrone
Jansen would have to drive it out and wouldn't believe he was special anymore. That scared him more than anything, so he tried to remember Sunday sermons as best he could to please her.
Matrone
Jansen would lock the door once they were in the storeroom. It was so small in there that Benjamin's nose almost touched the shiny seams on
Matrone
Jansen dress.

“Who is your savior, Benjamin?”
Matrone
Jansen would always ask.

“The Lord Jesus Christ,
Matrone
.” That one was easy.

“And what happened to our Lord, Benjamin?”

“He died,
Matrone
.”

“
Ja
, but why did he die?”

“The Jews asked the Romans to crucify him,
Matrone
.”

“That's how. I asked why.”

He got it wrong. A lump bulged in his throat. “F-for my s-s-s …” He closed his eyes anticipating the blow. “S-sins.”

“Stop that.”
Matrone
Jansen tapped her heel. “What can you do to be free from sin?”

“I have to b-b-beg f-for f-f-forgiveness. I have to f-f-ollow the rules.”

“Commandments.”

Benjamin nodded. He didn't want to talk anymore.
Matrone
Jansen put her hand on Benjamin's head, her long fingers squeezing his skull. “Beg, then, Benjamin. Beg for forgiveness, so that when His fiery wrath comes, you may be saved.”

And he did, panicked thoughts jaggedly confessing things the minister said were bad, words he didn't know the meaning of, a liturgy of wrong, professing a legacy bestowed on him, the son of a man, birthed from the loins of a woman, the offal of the world, the product of lust and greed. When he couldn't think of anything anymore,
Matrone
Jansen would make her voice soft and say, “He is the servant of God, to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer. Amen.” And then it was over and Benjamin was glad.

“You must never tell what we do here, Bennie.”
Matrone
Jansen smiled, the skin on her face pushing into deep grooves, like there wasn't enough room for it.

He always promised, because then
Matrone
Jansen would give him fudge and call him a good boy.
Matrone
Jansen made the fudge at her home. Benjamin once asked what her house looked like, if the walls were glossy yellow too and if she had a family that had kept her.
Matrone
Jansen had laughed. She told him that she lived alone and that her parents were dead. She was an orphan, like him.

The Sunday night that everything changed, a white flash woke Benjamin. He couldn't see Pieter anywhere. Only a single kerosene lamp stood on the shift table, bathing everything around it in a soft light circle. Outside the sky raged, making breathing sounds, growling like the caretaker's dog when he saw black people. An invisible giant stomped on the trees, setting the sky on fire. It was the wrath of God, like
Matrone
Jansen had said. Benjamin panicked. What if God was there to take him? Something banged against the window above Benjamin's head, over and over again. God was knocking, demanding to be let in.

There was another flash of lightning. Rain scraped on the glass like
Lucifer's talons on the souls of sinners. The room stirred, the sounds of the others drowned by the voice of God. Small bodies on blue mattresses squirmed, their movement growing like a sea-wave. Next to Benjamin, Jo-jo thrashed wildly. His tongue protruded from a slack mouth, saliva dripping onto his blanket. They would all go to Heaven, Jo-jo and the others, because they weren't twelve yet, that's what the
Dominees
had said. But Benjamin was different and nobody could fool God. Something banged outside. Jo-jo screamed, his body tightening into a ball. This set the others off.

Benjamin crawled over to Jo-jo, his mouth dry, his skin hot and clammy. “Stop. Quiet, Jo-jo. God's going to find us.”

Jo-jo's arms wriggled wild. Benjamin put his hand on Jo-jo's head, trying to stop it from moving. The boy squirmed, kicking, rolling away from Benjamin, falling off the mattress onto the floor. A barrage of gut-wrenching shrieks followed. Benjamin put his hand over Jo-jo's mouth, but it was too late. The sky exploded, lighting the distorted faces around him. Benjamin's breath stuck in his throat, refusing to let go. He had to get away. He had to get to the light, like
Matrone
Jansen always said. The light would save them all. He crawled to the shift table, his hands leaving wet prints on the red tiles. His stomach retched, his dinner spilling onto the floor, a sickly yellow of squash and fudge that burned his throat. Pieter didn't like cleaning throw-up. He would
bliksem
Benjamin now for sure. Benjamin struggled to straighten up, holding on to the side of the table. He jabbed at the lamp, slowly pushing it to the edge of the table. He stood on the tips of his toes, gripping the lamp's copper base between his small pudgy hands. He would bring the light. God would see that he was in the light. That he was a good boy. The lamp perched, suspended between table and nothing. Benjamin reached up to grab its handle, but it was heavy, too heavy for him to hold, and it fell.