We left toys out for Emily. Her favourite dolls, a trike, a giant Pink Panther, a plastic tea set and some little ponies. We kept her bedroom just as she left it. The room’s cheerfulness breathed cold on my neck; sometimes I would close the door.
I fight the memory of Emily’s funeral. I knew this would happen. I close my eyes to keep it out, breathe deep, curl my fingers into fists.
I think of Emily’s coffin and how tiny it was. Stunted, like her life. Small and white, seemingly inconsequential. White lilies. Everything else in black: a moratorium on bright colours lest they remind anyone that she was just a child.
I loosen my collar and swallow, trying to fend off the assault of the memories I know so well. Not calm, like this ceremony. Loud and wet and cold and hot. Everyone stroking me on the day I felt allergic to touch. Strangers saying how handsome I looked in my ‘little suit’, as if the size of my clothes saddened them, as if the clothes I was wearing mattered. As if anything mattered.
I start to feel claustrophobic. A trickle of sweat runs down my ribs.
Just before the pastor says his closing words I’m out of there, out into the new air and fresh sky. I take off my jacket, sling it over my arm and stride to my car, where I sit for a while with the aircon on full-blast, staring through the windscreen, not seeing anything.
I have a hand-drawn map of how to get to the wake, which I crumple up and throw out of the window. I don’t want to go. I don’t know any of these people and I’m in pain. I want to be in bed with a bottle of Glenfiddich and the curtains drawn, not eating soggy canapés and making small talk with old, fat, swollen-eyed women. But I know I can’t not go, so I start my engine and pull away. The streets I drive along are dappled and pretty once I get out of Braamfontein. My GPS takes me into Orange Grove, where I narrowly miss hitting a Homeless Talk man running towards my car looking like Gollum. I hoot at him and show him the finger. Surely he knows that people in sports cars don’t buy The Big Issue?
I drive past a tombstone showroom. Only in Africa. Death is such a huge business, what with the violence and AIDS. It reminds me of a main road in Lagos that stretches past the major hospital. I called it Funeral Town. There are people standing by the side of the road selling cheap coffins. They display them, looking like cardboard cut-outs. Billboards plastered on the bridge supports and perimeter walls advertising discount funerals, as if when someone you love dies your priority is finding a bargain. If that’s what it looked like outside I can’t imagine the chaos inside the hospital. Scamming suitcase undertakers poised to pounce, like hyenas.
It’s a bustling road and people swarm around my car. There are hawkers selling avocados and peaches, wire sculptures, lighters, fake designer shades and cold Cokes. The robot is still green; maybe I’ll make it through. The junker in front of me is driving so slowly it may as well be going backwards. The taxi beside me is an inch away from scratching my paintwork and the bakkie behind is so far up my arse I feel violated. Cocky, greasy, pedestrians weave their way through the traffic, touching the cars as they go. I hate it when people touch my car. The robot turns orange. I can still make it. I hoot at the car in front to accelerate but it has the opposite effect. The robot turns red and I shout and bang my steering wheel. I hate red traffic lights on these roads in particular. They may as well hand out firearms to the hijackers. I’m a sitting duck. As soon as the red light appears the hawkers hit the road in a well-practised, choreographed invasion. The Homeless Talk guy catches up with me and hits my roof twice – hard – to show me he’s back. I feel my heart banging loud and fast, hammering away at my breastbone. The noises around me become amplified; I hear people shouting at me and cars hooting. My lungs feel like they’re filling with water. I can only breathe in short, sharp breaths. I start hyperventilating. Am I having a heart attack? I hit my chest and cough hard, twice, just in case. The man is dancing for me and smiling. He knocks on my window, leaving oily knuckle marks behind. I need air but I don’t want to get out of my car on this unfriendly street. My legs are unsteady.
The robot turns green, the hawkers disappear and I put my foot down.
The house is a golden oldie, probably built in the 50s. Sturdy and squat, built with red bricks, a green tin roof and plaster which is now crumbling away. The floors are polished Oregon pine throughout, the walls are varying shades of nutmeg and vanilla, and the house smells like unwashed dogs and tobacco. The original pressed ceilings and grubby walls remind me of my father’s house, and that I should go and see him again. This could have been his funeral and my last memory of him would be that stuttering phone call on the night of my party.
I am shepherded through the house and out the back door into the bright heat of the midday sun. A dainty cup of tea is pressed into my hand. Oh God, I hope this isn’t a dry wake. I’m still sweating from the panic attack in the car. Somehow I don’t think that this tepid tea will do a good enough job of settling my jangling nerves. I dodge and sidestep to a downcast potted palm in the corner and surreptitiously empty my tea into it. Probably do the plant more good than it would me.
The garden is overgrown and parched. Tired branches, dusty leaves, desert sand. Patches of old damp blister the garden walls. The garden looks the way I feel. I abandon the empty teacup on the refreshment table. As I turn around, an old lady in a floral shift accosts me.
“Who are you?” she barks. Indigo eyes drill into my face.
“I am… I was a friend of Eve’s. She designed one of my book covers. That’s how we met.” The way she looks at me makes me want to tell her more, but I can’t think of anything else.
“How did you know Eve?” I venture.
“You’re the writer, then,” she says, not without distaste. She has an Afrikaans accent and speaks in a kind of undulating high pitch, rolling her r’s and raising her vowels as only Afrikaans women can.
“Yes.”
“Harris.”
“Yes. Slade.”
She wrinkles her nose.
“Have you written anything I would know?” she asks.
A cent for every time someone asked me that.
“Doubt it,” I lie.
“Irma Shaw,” she says, shoving her flabby hand out at me like a Nazi.
I recoil. It’s cold and too soft, like toad skin. Tofu. Testicles.
“I’m Evelyn’s tannie. Not that she knew it!”
“I’m sorry?”
“We didn’t see a lot of her. She never took the time out of her…” she clears her throat, “busy schedule. To come and kuier.”
So much for not speaking ill of the dead.
“Yes,” I nod, “she was a very hard worker. She was always working. She was a workaholic.”
I know I’m rambling. I don’t know where these words are coming from.
“Not even at Christmas,” she sighs, fingering the gold cross on her chest. “The Holy Lord’s birthday. Can you imagine? Gena-a-a-a-ade. Haar eie familie! Don’t get me wrong; I don’t speak badly of no one. It’s just that, ag man, we missed her!”
“I never had the pleasure of speaking to Eve about her hometown,” I say, “Where is it?”
As she hesitates a grey man puts a hand on her shoulder and whispers in her ear. She nods and turns to walk away, turns back, and says, “It was nice to meet you, Slade.”
The sun gets hotter on my skin. Damn African summers. I decide I need to look for alcohol. There is a man in tweed bringing out clean teacups.
“Excuse me,” I say with a chuckle, trying as much as possible to not look like an alcoholic, “Any chance of something stronger here?”