Award-winning short story, from the Masters Review’s “Best Stories from Emerging Writers - 2020”
Namibia was my dad’s racetrack. I was his co-pilot. On long stretches he would open his palm to me and say “Lizzie.” And I knew to hand him something – peanuts, biltong, anything salty - to keep him awake. He would chew hard and grip the steering wheel, and his tendons would quiver and the violet undecipherable tattoos on his forearms would dance their smudgy dance. I would stare at him and try to understand how it came to be that I was related to this man, with his expansive face, shiny pink skin, grey beard erupting into sweaty old-blonde curls that stuck to his neck, a can of Black Label beer jammed between his thighs, the rest of the six-pack to his left. My dad, Jono.
My mother waited and watched as I picked my way through carcasses of cars, up to the patchwork brick façade of my childhood home. My baby brother Brandon screamed bloody murder in the back seat. Mom honked and drove off, her black Mercedes sparkling in the sun. My dad was in the kitchen wheezing over a massive freezer, legs spread, khaki short seams straining, full plumbers bum exposed. The freezer was filled to the brim with animals he’d shot that year: Springbok, Oryx, Blesbok and Kudu pink and glistening in their plastic pouches. I imagined him falling in, his flesh becoming in time the same color as the sausages and ribs inside. This made me laugh. He turned around, roaring like a lion. He hitched up his shorts and slapped my back, knocking the air out of me. Sometimes, I had to remind him that I was a girl.
“How’re you, kiddo?”
I sat at the kitchen table while he made me Nescafé with condensed milk. In return, I provided tidbits that confirmed his theories about my stepfather Gary. I described Gary’s white Speedo bathing suit, the way his pubes stuck out the sides. I described the remote-controlled curtains in our new house. How Gary had a little bell he rang to summon the maids to bring more G&T’s. How my mother picked out Gary’s clothes in the morning before work, sometimes even a pink shirt. My dad loved that one.
We spent the afternoon packing up the truck. I made a list of its contents: gas stove, two gas canisters, box with cutlery, pots and pans, two chairs, one table, one tent (my dad would sleep in the truck), two mattresses, fridge, Gerry cans, water cans, mini-generator, dad’s truck tools. When I got tired, my dad packed alone and I sat cross-legged in the corner of the living room in front of the only beautiful thing my dad owned: an old, bright blue glass globe left to him by his mother, my grandmother Anzabeth Spies-Kannemeyer. She died before I was born. The story goes that she inherited a tin mine in the Caprivi Strip then squandered the family riches on trips to Paris, Chanel lipstick and lovers across Europe. The globe was a glimmer of grandeur, a secret message from my ancestors to me. Each country was a different stone. Australia was iridescent Mother-of-Pearl, Russia a green sea of malachite, Chad the bold stripes of Tigers-eye. I spun the globe around and around, tapping places I’d never heard of with one finger, tapping them into existence: Guyana, Jakarta, Anchorage, Chad.
That night I slept in my old room, now shared with bicycle frames and metal cogs from something like a mill or an army tank. My dad could have cleaned up for me, but I was grateful for the chaos and the unraveled feeling of life in that house. He hadn’t changed a thing. The frilly yellow kitchen curtains my mother had sewn when I was a baby were dusty now. Photos of the three of us were everywhere, as though he hadn’t heard the news that my mother had left him.
My dad shook me awake at four in the morning. We rode out of Windhoek in pitch darkness and with dawn, the houses and the gas stations and then even the farms faded away. By full sun we were out on the open desert road. Eventually we’d get all the way up to Epupa Falls. I’d never been that far north. North was Kaokoland, where the Himba lived. I’d never met a real Himba before, only seen them in my dad’s old Polaroid shots. I thought Himba women were beautiful, eerie, their hair and skin turned red from a mixture of ochre and butterfat, their arms and ankles sheathed in metal beads like the gauntlets and greaves worn by knights of old.
As I fed my dad biltong, he told me about the time he delivered a Himba baby. The mother had gone into labor early, before she’d had time to get back to her village. My dad put her in the back of his truck with blankets and kept her calm.
“She was fifteen,” he said. “Younger than you are now.”
I shivered and vowed, right there and then, never to have sex again, never to bear children and while I was at it, never to get married.
“She was scared shitless but afterwards, she promised to name the baby after me. In secret. So somewhere, in some village up North, there’s a Himba kid around your age whose mother calls him Jono.”
He winked at me. “Maybe we’ll find him.”
We arrived in Okahandja at dusk. Streetlights illuminated government buildings wrapped in barbed wire. [excerpt ends]
Winner, First Prize, Zoetrope ALL:Story Contest - 2015
And there it was—the cross. One blue line meant no baby. Here was a blue line crossed with another. Blood rushed to her eyes. She felt dizzy and hot. She heard a noise outside the bathroom, something falling, and thought it was her husband home early. But it was only a window banging. It seemed wrong to be finding out this way, in secret, as though she were a wicked teenager, not a woman in a Godly marriage. Estelle thought of herself as essentially wicked; she had wrestled with wickedness all her life. As a little girl she had rubbed hot chili on her brother's lips while he was sleeping, and her crimes had not stopped there. Now she had deceived her husband by buying the test behind his back. Why make things so tricky? And yet a strange sense of calm washed over her, and she smiled, looking up at the unfinished concrete wall as though she could already see right through to the end.
She wrapped the plastic wand in tissues and buried it in her cardigan pocket, amidst the small stones and dead flowers her boys had given her. Head bowed, she walked down the dark hallway, her ponytail swinging like a schoolgirl's: left, right, left and right again. She was resolute but could not pin down what, exactly, she had resolved. The boys did not notice her—they were twirling on the carpet, building Lego mansions. She went out the back door into the thicket of sweet, sticky pine trees that opened up to the river flowing strong and true all the way out to the icy Atlantic Ocean. The river spoke infinite languages, but today it whispered things unknowable. She threw the wand into the water and watched it—pretty somehow—as it shed the tissues and floated away.
They would have to add another bedroom. Ten years ago, they had built the house from scratch. Riaan was alive in a different way back then; building the house was his chance to prove himself to her. At night they had exuberant, exhausted sex. Wearing flowing tie-dyed dresses, she would spend her mornings making baby food or tending to the vegetable patch. At lunchtime, she brought juice and sandwiches to the laborers who ate sitting in the shade of the cement mixer. The house had grown haphazardly since then and still smelled of cement. There was always more work to be done. Holes gaped into darkness.
She searched her soul for traces of joy. There were none, truly, and this recognition filled her with despair. The child would know, somehow—its brows forever knitted with the recognition that its mother did not want it. They had only just started trying for a girl. But how could she have conceived on the first attempt, at her age? She thought of the women from church who'd had five sons trying. They would not be running orphanages or going on missions to Malawi. They would not be finishing their teaching degrees or learning to play the blues.
Riaan was across the river and far away, working with his crew. His team had dwindled to just five men—with democracy came new labor laws, and with new labor laws came soaring wages. He would be happy with another boy, another set of hands. Buying the farm had been his idea. For years he had worked nights managing the Waikiki Restaurant, first to pay off his student loans and then to save enough for the down payment. Before the boys were born, Estelle would meet him after his shifts, and over coconut pie and lime milkshakes they plotted out their lives: the house, the servants' quarters, the cornfield. It wasn't technically a farm, though she'd always liked to think of it as one. The correct real estate term was "small holding." The hope was that eventually, once the city had bled into the countryside, they might sell it to developers for a profit.
Estelle looked across the river and pictured Riaan, chainsaw in hand, sunburned and sweating, chopping down Port Jackson trees. Imported from Australia to stabilize the sands of the Cape Flats, the aliens were taking over, depleting the water table and fooling everyone with their pretty yellow blossoms. The young ecologist who had come to assess the damage handed them a glossy government pamphlet with diagrams and deadlines and said, in a heavy Afrikaans accent, rolling his rs dramatically, "Mr. and Mrs. Swanepoel, I'm sorry, the situation is rrrreally not good. It's rrrreally, rrrrrrreally not good." Estelle had felt an urge to comfort him, as though it were his farm that needed saving.
That very afternoon, it began. Riaan led a team of ten men who worked away with loppers, chainsaws, and buckets of chemicals. It hadn't stopped since.
Riaan sat slumped at the kitchen table, covered in yellow pollen dust. He seemed more tired than usual, Estelle thought, but that was to be expected. On top of his part-time teaching post at the Christian Academy, he had picked up weekend managerial shifts at the Waikiki again. The rusks and koeksisters she made fetched a pittance at the home-industry shops. They could barely afford the children's school fees, let alone those for the teaching degree at which she had been chipping away, module by exorbitant module, for almost six years. Their savings were dwindling, and the boys would soon need new school uniforms.
Upon hearing of their plight, their minister, Paul, had said, "God loves an impossible situation." It did feel impossible sometimes—along with the Port Jacksons, they bore the growing sense that the country was becoming a place in which they no longer had a place. Some of their friends were leaving for friendlier shores: for Montreal, Brisbane, Galax. Places with zip codes instead of postal codes. Places where it snowed. Small price to pay, their emigrating friends had said. The new South Africa is no environment in which to raise children.
Riaan refused to surrender so easily. Tonight, however, he seemed defeated. She would wait until he was in brighter spirits to share the good news. They all held hands, and Riaan said grace. Estelle kept her eyes open and watched him. She admired how his eyebrows came together when he emphasized certain phrases. He started each sentence with, "Father God." He prayed for strength and for hope, which were the anchors of the soul. It was Riaan's optimism that had first drawn her to him. He played guitar in the church band. Thinking him handsome, Estelle had volunteered to play keyboard. She loved the instant-mix community that came with church life, the fellowship with other young mothers, some of whom had piercings and tattoos. The verkrampte Dutch Reformed Church of their parents' generation had dissolved, and in its place had risen a new brand of Christianity better suited to modern times.
With adversity, Riaan's faith had grown stronger, while hers wavered. The tattooed young mothers she had thought were her friends were showing themselves to be more interested in rising up the ranks of church ministry than in building a new society. Increasingly Estelle took what she found useful, from sermons and Bible study, and cast the rest aside.
When grace was done, ten-year-old Johan said, "Praise God," which was meant to impress his father, and Luke—eight—huffed and shoved peas into his mouth, fanning Estelle's fears that the boy had inherited a bit of her depravity. After dinner, Riaan did what he did every night: put all the leftover morsels into separate, carefully labeled Tupperware containers. To the boys' inevitable complaints about the boiled potatoes and microwaved carrots that reappeared in their school lunches, their father would say, "Starving children in Africa." The children would roll their eyes and reply, "Dad, we are in Africa," and his response would be: "Well, you don't want to starve then, do you?" And to those terrific, pumping eyebrows and wide, salesman's smile, they knew to say no more.
They awoke to a commotion in the kitchen. Luke cried out, "Ma, the cat's laying kittens!" Everyone rushed over to see. She was a long-haired, gray beauty of a cat. For weeks she had been walking with a sideways waddle, and Estelle had known to put a cardboard box and a blanket next to the stove. Now, the cat lay inside the box, licking four slimy newborns. Estelle imagined the little embryo inside her own belly reaching out in turn—fellow aliens, brainless and helpless. The heart starts beating on the eighteenth day; she'd heard this in church once. The child inside her seemed to radiate heat outward, seemed to give itself away.
Riaan ate his breakfast in silence. Estelle could detect from his deliberate movements—the way he stirred his coffee, clanging the spoon against the cup, the swift wiping of toast crumbs off the tablecloth—a simmering anger. He disliked cats—they were extra mouths to feed, snake bait, ill suited to farm life. Dogs were useful, dogs were security. Riaan could be boyish and goofy, with his wide clown smile, gleefully jumping on the trampoline with his sons, racing and wrestling with the Dobermans, strumming Bob Dylan tunes on the guitar after supper; in these moments she loved him best. But now and then he turned cold and distant, and after ten years of marriage she had learned to predict his moods. She looked at him and imagined a bank of clouds racing toward him. Soon he would be enveloped in a dark electrical storm, and they would all know to stay away from him for a day or two.
That night, after the children had gone to bed, Riaan said, "You do realize we can't keep them."
Estelle had known this was coming, but now it seemed overly harsh, irrational, an early lesson for the boys that life is unfair, better get used to it.
She sat on the edge of the bed and looked through the window at the tiny cabin where Warren, their farmhand and driver, lived with his wife, Evelyn, their domestic worker. A light was still on, and she imagined the two of them sitting, warmly, together inside. Warren and Evelyn's children were grown and living better than their parents ever would. In a way, she envied the born-frees—envied, even, the color of their skin.
She felt tiny pricks in her womb. Something was attaching itself to something else. Something was growing. She gazed up at the dark blue Helderberg Mountains, which often seemed to speak to her, to tell her what to do. But tonight they were silent. She decided to tell Riaan about the baby, about the test, and then heard the soft whistle of his snoring. He had fallen asleep without meaning to, which was probably for the best. She would wait a week, maybe two. She'd had an early miscarriage once before, between Johan and Luke. She was bedridden for days. Riaan had comforted her.
In the morning she told the boys, "We can't keep them." Luke sobbed into his cereal but knew better than to argue. A few weeks prior Riaan had spanked the boy with his belt instead of his hand. When Estelle tried to stop him, Riaan quoted Proverbs and pushed her away.
The boys made flyers: FREE KITTENS FOR A GOOD HOME! in big yellow, red, and green letters, decorated with stars and rainbow crayon. The flyers went up at school, at church, at the Tyger Valley Shopping Center.
The kittens seemed to double in size by the day. Their eyes focused on objects, and their paws tugged at everything around them. The boys came home from school and played with the kittens for hours. Johan sketched them with long, careful pencil lines. Luke pulled their tails and tied little purple bows around their necks. When they strayed from their mother, the Dobermans scooped them into gentle jaws and brought them back.
Estelle hid in the bedroom and wept under the covers. Everything she had planned for was gone. Nothing made sense. She sobbed, then felt guilty for sobbing, then fell into sleep, not for rest but for relief.
A week went by, and no one called for the kittens.
[excerpt ends]
Essay in “Go!” magazine - July 2020
It is hard, if not impossible, to find Galax, Virginia, on most paper maps of the United States. But you know you’ve reached it when you see a sign that proudly declares, “Welcome to Galax: World’s Capital of Old-Time Mountain Music”.
In 1994, my aunt and uncle packed up their house in Somerset West, and moved to Galax with my three cousins. A decade later, I moved to New York for work and started visiting them for the holidays. We would celebrate the American tradition of Thanksgiving by cooking and eating way too much. Each time I visited, I would make sure to pop into Barr’s Fiddle Shop on Main Street, a converted barbershop crammed with handmade mandolins, banjos, guitars, drums and, of course, fiddles. The walls are lined with dusty posters and autographed record sleeves, one of them signed “with love” by Dolly Parton. I would return to New York with Tupperware containers filled with my aunt’s spiced apple cake, gooey koeksisters and her famous crunchies. Her sweet treats were so good they often didn’t last all the way home. When my aunt died last year from cancer, I was heartbroken. I wanted to feel close to her one last time. I had a week off between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, so I took the chance to go back to Galax – this time, alone. With my uncle away, the cats needed looking after and I needed a break from the grime and noise of New York.
Galax hosts the world’s largest fiddler convention. Every summer, its population swells from 7 000 to more than 70 000 as musicians camp out for a week and compete for prizes in categories like Claw-Hammer Banjo, Folk Song and Flatfoot Dance. Nothing cheers me up like live music – especially bluegrass, which in the old days was called “lightning in a bottle”. I like the foot-stomping rhythms, and the simple but universal themes of love and loss prevalent in the lyrics of the songs. But I was there in the winter holidays, and I soon discovered that Galax’s Blue Ridge Music Center – an outdoor amphitheater and museum – was closed, as was the Rex Theater, off Main Street. And so, on a whim, I signed up for banjo lessons with the owner of Barr’s Fiddle Shop, Stevie Barr. I chose the banjo because it seemed easier to learn than the fiddle. But I also love the sound of it. In Ken Burns’ documentary series Country Music, musician John McEuen says of the banjo, “It doesn’t make you sad, it makes you feel better.” The banjo has its roots in the African gourd and was brought to America on slave ships. It has since become a staple, along with the fiddle, of American country music. Stevie plonked me down with a banjo in the middle of the shop and we got right to it. I learned the G, D and C chords and he taught me how to read tablature so that I could continue teaching myself later. The lesson, which I expected to take half an hour, took up most of the afternoon because Stevie kept stopping to look after customers, after giving me simple three-note “rolls'' to practice. He greeted everyone like long-lost family members, from browsing tourists to an 80-year-old man who wanted his guitar strings replaced because he was taking up the instrument again after his wife had died. Stevie introduced me to everyone and I soon felt right at home in Galax.
When I wasn’t taking banjo lessons, I visited family, friends and neighbors. My aunt had been well known in the area through her work as an occupational therapist. She often told me and my cousins stories about her patients, especially the children she loved to treat. She visited them at home and would hand-make splints and other contraptions to help them adapt after injuries or illnesses. She was also renowned for her other gifts: She sang in the church choir, sewed wedding dresses, made stained glass windows and grew fresh herbs and vegetables. If you invited her for dinner, she would invariably show up with a loaf of freshly baked bread, usually sesame seed-coated challah, best eaten right out of the oven, steaming and sweet. I settled into a routine – feeding the cats, visiting people, going for my banjo lessons. In the afternoons, I would go for long walks on a trail that follows an old railway line in New River State Park, one of my aunt’s favorite places. I even attempted some baking, but soon gave up after I made muffins with the taste and consistency of freshly popped tennis balls. I decided to leave the baking to my cousins, who have become gifted bakers themselves using my aunt’s recipes. Word got out that I was divorced and single. Ralph, my aunt’s neighbor, said with a sparkle in his eye, “I have the perfect guy for you.” I wasn’t staying long enough to go on a date, but I have subsequently become friends with this fellow on Facebook. My aunt would have got a kick out of that. I began to understand why she had chosen to live out the rest of her life in this remote place. The warmth of the community, the easy laughter, the rich musical traditions and the beauty of the mountains had started to work their magic on me.
Stevie Barr invited me to a show he was playing that Saturday night. I drove to Primland, a golf estate with 360-degree views of the Blue Ridge Mountains. In the afternoon light, the mountains really did look blue, with soft edges receding into lighter and lighter blues. The trees were bare, giving the mountains the appearance of fuzzy sleeping beasts. Stevie played his banjo with a husband-and-wife team, Johnny and Jeanette Williams. Johnny played guitar, Jeanette played the bass and sang lead vocals. The crowd swelled to 50 or so people of all ages, and the mood was festive, with people crooning along to the old mountain tunes it seemed they’d sung their whole lives. Jeanette told the crowd that Stevie Barr had played for the Queen of England not once, but twice. Of course, Stevie was so humble he had not told me he was famous! I decided to stick with the banjo, so I bought the cheapest one Stevie had. He refused to charge me for the lessons, and custom-made three banjo picks to perfectly fit my fingers. I also bought Banjo Primer for Beginners to help me learn the basics. As we were parting, Stevie said, “It’s like a puzzle. Just touch the instrument once a day and eventually it will all start to make sense.” With my new banjo strapped to my back, I skipped over to visit Margaret, my aunt’s adopted “mom” in town. She is 89 and breathes with the help of an oxygen tank. I played a few chords for her and she laughed and clapped. That moment alone was worth the trip. Playing music for others, or being played for, is a gift that is timeless and universal, needing no translation. On my last night in Galax, I sat on the back porch and played what little I knew as the sun set and the sky turned a soft pink. Underground, ready to bloom in spring, were the tulip bulbs my aunt had planted in the last week of her life. I told myself that I was playing for her, and it did feel that her spirit was there, somehow, enjoying the music. Just then, a string of fairy lights flickered on, winking at me. Of course, the lights may just have been faulty but I like to think she approved of my pilgrimage to Galax – and my banjo adventure. Even if I never get past “Boil Them Cabbages Down”, I will always be able to look at my banjo and conjure up the warmth of the place my aunt called home.