Shadow Self: No Mother is Perfect

How to plead

I’m sitting on a bench in some small room, a cramped musty space. They’re coming for you, I hear and I look around. I can’t see properly. It’s like being asleep and feeling that you need to open your eyes but you can’t. The more you try to focus, the more you panic, and the more out of touch you feel. I want to scratch the cataracts from my eyes, but even if I squint it’s like the room is moving up and down.

A wave of room. A wave of noise. Clattering.

Jangling.

I sit still, putting my head down between my knees. It’s okay, Thea, I said I was here, didn’t I?

Robbie. My heart is bulging with voices, and my brother sounds exactly the same as ever. I feel seasick, leaning in a glass-bottomed boat, with fish floating around below me all dead and bloodied.

A shark dropping below me, its fin cut off, crimson and spinning. A top, going round and round. And round and round.

Lights on. Lights off. Lights on. Lights off.

Ma’am, you’ve got to come now, and I’m not sure if it’s the shark talking, but I feel a grip on my elbow, and I push it away. There’s a squealing noise, like a piglet, a kettle whistle. Then I’m being lifted, floating in a balloon.

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee . . .

This is the courthouse, mevrou, that voice says. You need to stand up now. We’re going up the stairs.

Don’t want to, I say. I need to sleep.

Lady, after what you did, you’ve got a lifetime to sleep. Not much else to do in Worcester.

Worcester? What are they talking about? I’m not in Worcester – I’m

supposed to be asleep with my kids and with Robbie. Didn’t he promise? Leave me alone, I say. I don’t like you.

Lady, I don’t like you either.

I peer at him, and his face appears as though through mist. Fat nose. Stubby eyelashes. Coffee eyes. A peaked hat.

We’re going to have to cuff you, ma’am, someone says, but I don’t think it’s him because his lips don’t move.

As in handcuffs? I ask Robbie.

I think so, Robbie says. What else could he mean? Just go, Thea. Remember how we used to play with handcuffs in the tree house? Cops and robbers?

But that was fun and this hurts.

No need to push me, I say, sounding like Mother.

Listen, lady, just get a move on now. This magistrate don’t like to wait.

So I walk. I don’t like waiting either. And it irritates me when Clay is late. Clay, my husband. I always check my watch a thousand times and wonder why he can’t respect me by arriving on time. Always another emergency at one of his coffee shops.

As I walk, each step is heavy as if my legs are in water. I wade the stairs.

Up, up.

The chains clank behind me where the policemen are standing. They’re talking.

So she told me that my son stole my car when I was attending an accident scene. Dronk, jy weet. And only sixteen. I found him at Muizenberg Beach. And he thought he was too old for a klap.

Mother specialised in those. My first husband was more like her than she would ever have admitted.

Violence. Bodies on bodies.

I shiver. What’s that saying again? Like someone’s walking over my grave.

At the top of the stairs, I walk into a uniform. The man holds me back.

Steady on, wait until we’re ready.

Go. Wait. Walk. Stop. Go. I wish they’d just make up their damn minds. Below me, the other cops chat on.

And the car? What about it? No problems with the car? A dent in the front, jong. He’s going to rake leaves for a year to pay for it.

Rake. My Zen garden relaxed me. Patterns in the sand. Swirls. Twirls. Until Joe tipped the sand on the lounge carpet and Clay said, Enough of this. I don’t like the grit under my feet.

At the top, it’s buzzing. Voices up and down. And the lights are so bright.

I blink, blink, blink.

There’s a hand coming towards me, and then it goes away. Someone’s shouting, Keep away from the prisoner!

That’s you, says Robbie.

I know, I say back. I can feel my wrists.

My oldest daughter, Sanusha, is there, I think, with her hot olive eyes shouting, why, why, why? And I wish Robbie would just explain it to her. It’s better. For Joe. For baby Caitie. For me. Even for Sanusha.

She has her father and he’ll care for her. She doesn’t need me to save her.

The policeman’s pushing me; I could feel his fingers in my ribs. Ouch, I say, massaging my side.

There, he says. Stand over there.

I’m in front of a microphone with the sound turned off. The judge − is that what he is? − is whispering to me. And I look at him, concentrating, trying hard to hear.

Madam, he says to me.

There’s my defence attorney, Tom Harper. I know him, have for a long time. He’s smiling at me, nodding gently. But Tom’s not gentle and he’s confusing me. He says something to the judge and comes closer.

Just answer the questions, Thea, he says. What questions? I can’t hear him.

He asked you for your full name.

Doesn’t he know it? He needs to speak up.

Your Worship, the prisoner says she can’t hear you properly.

Then the judge booms at me and he sounds like God, like Ganesha: Madam, please state your full name for the court.

Just do it, says Robbie. Do what he says, and say ‘sir’. Show him some respect.

Thea June Middleton . . . sir.

And your full address, please?

28c Jamieson Road, Rondebosch. (Currently incarcerated elsewhere.)

Now I do this for the purpose of confirming you are the correct accused, and from the records in front of me, you are.

I realise Tom is standing still in front of me, facing the judge. He has his hands folded at his waist, like a contrite schoolboy. But he turns once or twice to look at me, as though I’m supposed to understand him. As I watch the judge, his mouth opens like someone blowing smoke rings at the bar.

I sniff. The room smells of hate and despair. The judge shrugs and I want to step away, step back and float on a cloud, catch a smoke ring like a Bentley Belt.

Does the accused speak English? Why isn’t she answering me? calls the red man, man in red piping.

Yes, Your Worship. She understands you.

Plead, Mom! I hear a voice and it sounds like Sanusha. Sanusha under the water I’m drowning in.

Not guilty, I say. I think I sound firm, solid, but then the big man, Mr Law, says, Can you repeat that please.

Louder, says Sanusha.

Silence, miss, this is a court. We can’t have interjections from the observers.

So I clamp my mouth, like Joe used to when he didn’t want to lie but didn’t want to tell the truth either.

Not you, says Tom, and now I recognise his voice. Oh, there you are, Tom, I say.

Yes, he says, flint-eyed. The plea, please, Thea.

Not guilty, I say again.

The lawyers and prosecutors and policemen and judge all jump. They heard me this time and I laugh.

Panty boys.

Before long, the cops are escorting me down the stairs and I see Clay. Lovely Clay looking grey.

He shakes his head at me, but all the time his eyes don’t leave me, as though he can’t believe it’s me in front of him. I wave. Kiss-kiss.

Now I can finally go back to sleep.

Part One: Preconceptions

Sanusha (aged 5): Important family facts

I am 5 and I know 3 things about Mom:

1. Her eyes don’t match.

2. Being happy is hard for her.

3. She doesn’t like Asmita Ayaa. (Mom says she does but I’m not stupid.)

I know 3 things about Appa, my father:

1. He’s not always at the university when he says he is.

2. He shaves 2 times a day, so he must be super-hairy.

3. He has friends who are ladies who are our little secret.

I know 3 things about me:

1. I’m not beautiful like my mother.

2. I like numbers the best.

3. I hate secrets.

3 + 3 + 3 = 9 important family facts.

If you take 9 and make 3 groups, there are 3 in each group. Also, a polygon with 9 sides and 9 angles is called a nonagon. See?

There are 9 planets in the solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, plus the sun, which is actually a burning ball of gas. Pluto is the furthest away from the sun. Mercury is the closest.

Cats have 9 lives. (But our cat, Marmite, has only got 7 left. Appa rode over him once, and once he landed in the swimming pool and got his head caught under the pool net.) Beethoven wrote 9 symphonies, but I don’t care. I hate classical music, but I love Abba, especially Money, Money, Money because it’s about counting.

Also, 9 sounds a bit like new. And Mom taught me 9 is neuf in French, nueve and nuevo in Spanish and neun in German.

I like the number 9.

It takes 9 months to grow a baby. So this means that when I count to 9, I can make a new start.

I would like a new start.

Mom cries a lot. We’re still in this godforsaken garden flat with not enough room to swing a cat (but Mom says don’t swing Marmite).

Oh, there’s another thing I also know about Mom. 3 + 1 = 4

She’s smoking in the garden under the blue gum that Appa wants to pull out because it’s Australian. Appa doesn’t like Australians. Also smoking. He says Mom smells like an ashtray. She carries Stimorols in her handbag to make her breath sweet but they’re burny and they make my tummy growl. Appa says she’d better give up the cigarettes, or else. I’m not sure what else, but I think Mom knows. She still smokes sometimes, but she tries not to. That’s another secret I have to keep.

Mom’s lungs are going black inside her body, but she told me it helps her relax. Relaxing is good, but smoking is not good.

I think I should rub her feet, but she doesn’t sit down long enough. Mom walks up and down the cottage like a trapped animal, peeking out the window. I don’t know what she is waiting for. Sometimes Annie comes down the path, and Mom’s eyes shine. When Annie leaves, Mom’s eyes are dull like my shoes after a long day in the dust.

I have another granny, but she and Mom aren’t friends any more so she doesn’t want to meet me. Mom says I’m not missing anything, but it feels like she is lying. There are 5 things I think I am missing:

1. The other granny’s beautiful house, which Mom talks about some-times.

2. The other granny’s cooking. When Appa isn’t around, Mom some-times makes food from recipes. I love oxtail, which is meat, but Appa doesn’t ever eat meat.

3. Mom’s old toys. She says when she was little she kept them care-fully in a big wooden box at the bottom of her bed. Mom says this granny probably chucked them out, but I don’t think so. Why would someone throw away toys?

4. Other photos of Mom’s brother whose name was Robbie. He died when she was small. Mom only has one photo, which she took the night she left that granny. (Appa says Mom got kicked out.) So Robbie only looks like Robbie in that one photo. I don’t think anyone looks the same always, even if they’re dead.

5. The tree house Mom’s dad made for her and Robbie. Mom says that granny chopped it out of the tree, but I saw it. One day, Mom thought I was sleeping in the car, and she drove to this big-enormous-gigantic house and then she stopped and looked at the tree for a long time. She drove away quickly when the gates started to open. When she got home, she gave me to Asmita Ayaa, and got into the bath to cry.

When I cry, and I don’t cry nearly as much as I did a long time ago when I was 4, Mom holds me tight. She tells me she is filling me with love from her skin to mine. Sometimes she holds me too tight so I can’t breathe nicely, but I like the way her body feels, so I turn my face to gulp some air. Appa taught me that word gulp. He also taught me polygon and nonagon. Fishes gulp in the water. Snakes gulp down whole frogs. I saw that on TV. I like TV but my grandmother, Asmita Ayaa, says I must only watch for 1 hour total a day, and because it is her TV, I have to listen to her for my obedience star on my chart. I’ve been thinking about it. 1 hour is 60 minutes, and there are 60 seconds in 1 minute, so 60 x 60 = 360 seconds in 1 hour.

So it’s 360 seconds of TV a day. That sounds like more than 1 hour. That’s why numbers are better than words, but there are a few words

I really like:

1. Smile

2. Kangaroo

3. Aeroplane

They make me feel like hot chocolate in my tummy.

~*~

Mom has been acting a bit funny. She is sad all the time. She wakes up sad. Even sunshine doesn’t make her happy. I love sunshine – it’s better than rain. When I go to see Mom, I open the curtains to let in the sunrays to make her feel happy, but it doesn’t work. Sunshine always works for me. And chocolate, and bubble baths, and making biscuits in Asmita Ayaa’s kitchen, because Mom’s kitchen is too tiny.

I heard Appa talking to Asmita Ayaa. He was very angry with Mom; really, really furious – like when I spilt paint on his computer when I was supposed to be helping Mom hang up the washing. Why is he angry that Mom is sad? Why doesn’t he hug her and make her better? Asmita Ayaa found me behind the door and told Appa he must calm down. He pinched his mouth together and picked me up, but he didn’t send me love through his skin.

Appa doesn’t enjoy cuddling me, but he likes cuddling my teacher at Humpty Dumpty’s. He thinks I don’t know. When she looks at him, her eyes are all gooey like in the cartoons. Appa doesn’t get all gooey. He’s got lots of ladies who like him. Once he saw some ladies on the side of the road and he stopped to say hello. Their boobs were popping out, and they had long silky legs and very high shoes. They looked in the window. One of them was chewing gum. Mom says chewing gum is not for children because they can choke. The ladies had shiny bits of gold in their smiles. I liked their make-up. It was pretty, like in the movies.

I also said hello.

One of the pretty ladies’ faces changed.

What kind of a jerk are you? she said. With kids in the […] car?

She said a bad word, and I wasn’t kids. There’s just one of me. Calm down, love. I forgot she was here.

So that hurt my feelings. I was driving with him all afternoon telling him my news about the plastic containers we need for collecting but-tons, and Melanie’s new doll that has hair that really grows. Also, I was telling him that dog begins with d and rhymes with frog. I know all about rhyming, you know. 1 = fun.

Well, I have kids and I don’t bring them out here, mister. Go home to your wife.

Appa drove away and then he looked at me.

Your mother can’t even fetch you from school, he said. Doesn’t she know how busy I am? Now, don’t tell Mom about this. It’s just our little secret, okay?

Years ago, when I was actually 3, I slept in the same room as Mom and Appa in the cottage. But then I heard Mom saying, No, no, no. They were playing wrestling. Appa was on top of Mom and she pushed him back so he hit his head on the wall and then he said a naughty word and smacked Mom on the face. She cried very quietly but then I got out of my bed to hug her and tell her I was awake.

I love you, Mom, I said. Do you know how much I love you? Mom wiped her tears and smiled for me, but it didn’t look like a real

smile because there was blood coming from her lip. She said, I love you too, poppet.

Appa said nothing. He lay back on the bed and switched off the light. He grunted like a piggy pig. Mom took me outside and we looked at the moon. She smoked a cigarette, but I didn’t tell Appa. When we got back to the cottage, he was snoring. I don’t like that because he sounds like a train going through a long tunnel.

I didn’t fall asleep the whole night. Seriously. Children can do that, you know. I got up in the morning and I wasn’t even a tiny bit tired. I don’t know why I always have to go to bed so early.

I’m not allowed to sleep in the cottage any more. Asmita Ayaa made up a pink room for me in the house. Mom and Appa said I needed my own space.

These are the things in my bedroom:

1. Bookshelf with 5 shelves

2. Bed

3. Cupboard

4. Fairy lamp

5. Bedside table

6. Toy box

7. Art table

8. Blackboard with photos stuck on

9. Kiddies chair (purple)

10. 13 stars on the ceiling

I like my room, but Mom can’t understand why we can’t get our own flat where we can all be together in the same building. She doesn’t actually mean all of us, because she wants to leave Asmita Ayaa and my grand-father Kandasamy Ajah behind, and be just 3:

1 = Mom 2 = Appa 3 = me

Appa gets cross when she says this, because why waste money when we have a perfectly good place to live and we’re all very comfortable? Money doesn’t grow on trees, and why doesn’t she bring in some cash of her own and stop lying in bed feeling sorry for herself? Then Mom says she’s 24 and married 5 years and we can’t be tied to Appa’s parents forever. Then Appa says she knew what he was like when she married him, and after 5 years she still doesn’t make a decent curry.

I like Mom’s curry.

Some days are very bad. Every day when I wake up, I always run to the cottage to say good morning, but sometimes Mom doesn’t even open her eyes. I know she’s not dead, because I can see her breathing with her lungs. Her lungs are inside her body getting rid of the bad air and giving her blood beautiful fresh oxygen.

Appa is normally gone when I wake up, but sometimes he has breakfast with my grandparents and me. When I don’t have Humpty Dumpty’s on Saturdays and Sundays and holiday time, I like to crawl into bed with Mom. She moves over without waking, but I can hear her sigh. Moving over for me is good.

I can hug Mom as much as I want to, even if she doesn’t hug me back.

Thea: A mother’s sense

In jail I have a lot of time to think, and I don’t always have control over where my mind wanders. A lot of the time, and despite myself, I think about Clay: how much I loved him, the mistakes I made.

So many mistakes! My daughters. My little boy, Joe. But my thoughts aren’t always completely clear. I think through gauze, through filters. Being locked away minute after minute, second after second (for that’s how slowly time passes) has made me realise that I’ve spent my whole life in a fog. Some days it’s like parting a thick black curtain in front of me, and just when I manage to open it and see a little light, the curtain falls closed again and I’m left in the dark.

Most people want to know where this all started, and I sometimes wonder that too. Perhaps it began the day I was conceived. I wasn’t planned, nor even a wanted baby. My birth mother came from Glencairn, near Fish Hoek. Mother said I inherited my high cheekbones from her, and my breasts. The beauty spot on the right side of my face just above my top lip, the one Mother said I would tempt a man with, and my eyes – one hazel, one a blue-grey – are apparently mine alone.

But how would Mother know really? She used to tell me she only ever saw my birth mother once.

My parents adopted me when I was six weeks old. I swear I can remember my time in the womb. A hostile place, churning with bitterness and fear. At the age of sixteen, my birth mother didn’t want me. A therapist once told me that even as a foetus I must have felt the intensity of her rejection. I’ve spent a lifetime seeking approval, and after what I’ve done, I’ll never get it.

Once my dad told me that my birth mother called me Sofia. When I was adopted, our maid’s name was Sophie, so that had to change – quickly. I’m not sure if I’ll ever grow into Thea. Sofia seems so soft and pliant, with just the right bit of haughtiness and disdain. I wish I was Sofia. I’m not Thea, not Sofia, but something vague and impossibly in between.

I had a brother once. Robbie. He was three years older than me. He was my parents’ genuine flesh and blood: my mother’s blue eyes, my dad’s blonde hair, my paternal grandfather’s mannerisms. I remember how Robbie used to stick his tongue out the side of his mouth as he cut paper shapes at the kitchen table. Same as Gramps. Robbie was kind, and protective. Once he hid me under the stairs while we waited for Mother to calm down because I’d thrown wet toilet paper onto the ceilings down the passage – huge globules of loo roll stuck fast. When Mother started breathing again, Robbie told her that he’d done it as an experiment. And in Mother’s eyes, Robbie could do no wrong.

Whenever we needed to escape, we used the tree house in the beech tree at the bottom of our garden. Dad built it for Robbie – every boy should have a tree house – but it was my special place more than Robbie’s, especially after he got sick. I didn’t know what to do then, so most of the time I tried to make myself invisible. So my parents would forget that the wrong child was dying.

Perfect, kind, beautiful Robbie throwing up in the bathroom and leaving clumps of hair all over the house until he was bald as a baby squirrel.

Home was like a mining town after the gold had ran out. I learnt to feed myself – make Bovril or peanut-butter-and-jam sandwiches, and giant cups of rooibos with milk and spooned heaps of sugar. When my parents were asleep, I’d patter down the passage, ruffling my big brother’s duvet with a tentative hand.

Thea? I’d hear him smiling at me in the dark.

Yes.

Bad dreams?

Yes.

He’d roll over to make space for me and I’d slip into bed next to him as though somehow if I held him tight enough, he wouldn’t be able to leave.

When my mother found us cuddled together under Robbie’s duvet, she didn’t like it. Not at all.

Get out! Robbie needs his sleep, Thea. How many times do I have to tell you? she’d yell.

Relax, Veronica – don’t overreact, my dad would counter.

It’s inappropriate, Stuart. You know that.

Don’t be ridiculous. They’re just kids. He’s her brother.

It was only much, much later that I realised what she’d feared.

~*~

My mother always had a sense of what was seemly, and what wasn’t. It was seemly to wear skirts to church. It was seemly to wear a full cos-tume, not a bikini. Girls didn’t go to discos with boys until they were sixteen. Holding hands in public, even between husbands and wives, was outrageously exhibitionistic. Tattoos were too horrendous to con-template. Skirts without pantyhose? Never. And crying? Well, it just wasn’t something you did – unless completely silently behind closed doors.

As Robbie faded away, she bit her lip, and I hated her seemliness with every inch of my unseemly body and mind.

But Robbie was a fighter, and dying didn’t come naturally to him. I remember him sitting in the hospital in blue pyjamas with great white sharks all over them, entertaining the medical staff.

Knock, knock, he said to the nurse. Who’s there?

Isabel.

Isabel who?

Isabel out of order? I had to knock.

I thought he was absolutely hilarious.

Dad didn’t want to expose me to it all – the retching, the chemicals, the IV units and beep-beeps of heart-rate monitors. Mother said it would be good for me to understand what Robbie was going through. So I’d sit at his bedside, drawing stick-like dinosaurs that he put up around his bed with Prestik.

When Robbie was at his worst, Mother forgot to fetch me from school.

I was in Sub B by then, and I sat near the gate on my satchel, watching the sun go down and wondering what Robbie would do if he were me. I imagined he would try to walk home: pick himself up and find his way back.

I knew the landmarks but it was raining, hard.

I missed a turn, got lost. A man with no front teeth and a Pick ’n Pay trolley piled high with his belongings found me crying next to a dumpster overflowing with shattered glass bottles. He smelt of beer and sweat and I was frightened of him, but he lifted me gently onto his trolley and took me to the local cop shop.

Who are you and where do you come from?

I didn’t know then that this question would plague me my whole life. My mother apologised, truly horrified by her forgetfulness. She bought me my own world globe to cheer me up and pointed out countries she’d been to: France, Germany, New Zealand.

But she wasn’t really present. Her eyes were misted over, and her conversation was confused and garbled, as though she couldn’t straighten out her thoughts in her own mind.

What if it was me? I wanted to ask, but was too scared to hear the answer.

~*~

Robbie hung on, tough as steel-capped boots. When his immune system was weak, I wasn’t allowed near him. Not with my snotty nose, and tendency to pick up stomach bugs at school. I spent my afternoons with Dad, riding around the neighbourhood in his bakkie as he supervised his team installing taps and toilets, and unblocking putrid, smelly drains.

My mother seemed ashamed of what my father did. If asked, she said he was an entrepreneur.

I’m a plumber, Veronica. It pays the bills.

Well, Stuart, there’s just no reason to go on about it. Anyway, you own a successful business.

Yes. A plumbing business, which gets you your twice-a-year holidays and expensive private schools for the kids.

On days when Dad had meetings I stayed at home with the maid. Not Sophie – she’d already left. Dad would leave me plastic elbow joints and plumbing pipes to fit together. I liked it. I concocted intricate symmetrical designs all over the bedroom floor, and they seemed too beautiful to break.

It’s not ladylike, Stu. I bought her dolls to play with.

They’re plastic tubes, for crying out loud. It’s not like they’ve been used.

I was the baby in the family but I didn’t like baby dolls. Children didn’t fascinate me as a child the way they did Joe when he was a toddler. In fact, I ignored them completely. I longed for a pet – a dog, a hamster. Or silkworms even.

Unhygienic, said Mother. It won’t be good for Robbie.

Never mind that when Robbie was up to it, we’d go for walks in Kirstenbosch, and Robbie and I would disappear under the oak trees to dig for earthworms. Once, we found a rotting sugarbird, all maggoty and bloodied, and he picked it up.

So this is what will happen to me, my big brother said. Unless they cremate me. He meant our parents. Mother would have told him to stop talking like