THE WHITE STICKING PLASTER SPLIT HER FACE IN TWO. When she could bear to look at herself in the mirror she thought of bionic men with their ruler-straight noses: it was the one feature that was impossible to render accurately. The skin around her eyes was streaked with black and purple, like ash. She was an animal. She was eight years old again.
The eyes themselves had retreated into their sockets. Light hurt. Talking hurt. There were fewer PAINBLOKS left than she would have liked. The headache never went away.
Devi, who was making herself scarce, had once told her that the left side of the body was the female side. Clients who had knots there indicated their emotional stresses, she said. The right-hand side was the masculine side, the practical side. People who carried their stress there were struggling to do everything they had to do.
“What if you have knots on both sides?” asked Joanna, who did.
“Oh, that’s different. That’s where your wings are trying to break through.”
Why hadn’t Devi come to see her? She thought she knew. The phone rang, but Jan answered for her. She had told him to tell people she was resting, but it had been three weeks. She knew she wouldn’t be able to stand the hands over the mouths, the honeyed sympathy, the choruses of what-is-this-country-coming-to. Her throat was healing nicely by itself, the edges stitched back together under the rough dressing, the Bride of Frankenstein. The site of the intended death-blow was just getting on with it, and Joanna wasn’t going to investigate until those stitches came out. If she saw her own body chopped up into bits it would undo her.
She pretended that the healing was slower than it was. Instead Joanna spent her time in James’s room while he was at school, reorganising the drawers, lining up his shoes, or just lying in the soft cocoon of the white blanket. This is the bed I wanted when I was a little girl, she thought. This is the bed we all want. I wonder if Jan misses me in the Big Bed? They still huddled together there in the morning for James’s benefit, drank their tea and read the paper.
It had been hard to explain to Jan why she had been out of the house in the first place, but she had opted for a mimed version of the truth. He hadn’t said as much, but he probably thought that she had brought the whole thing on herself. He was perfectly solicitous, in public and in private, but also perfectly distant.
She hadn’t heard his feet in the passage, but here he was, leaning in the doorway. God, he was a handsome man! So tall. You didn’t know how disappointed you were going to be until he took his pants off.
“We need to talk.”
Here it was. Finally, the showdown. Joanna’s heart swooped in her chest, and she wanted to laugh. She was supposed to speak as softly as she could, not use her voice until she was completely healed. She pictured the lips of the cut moving in speech. Croak-dot-croak-croak, went the ragged red itch. The major damage was to the cartilage in her neck: the knife had nicked her thyroid and damaged her larynx. It happened all the time. It was harder to slit someone’s throat than people thought. You had to be a FAMILY BUTCHER to get it right.
Being officially mute had suited Joanna just fine. Once she and Jan started speaking they would not be able to stop. The two of them would talk each other to death, and then one of them would have to pack a few things in a bag and find somewhere else to spend the night. It was probably going to be Jan.
He held the little jar up by its neck, between his forefinger and thumb.
“Where did you get that?” Joanna asked him tiredly, sitting up on the bed. It came out in a stage whisper. She hadn’t even thought about the jar.
“It was under James’s pillow. What is it, Joanna?”
She shook her head at him. The tendons in her throat protested.
Jan was still holding the jar up to the light. He shook it, and more flakes came loose from the chunk, like a snow-globe. It was going to disintegrate!
“Don’t do that!” She held out her hand for the bottle. “Give it to me.”
“Not until you tell me what it is. There’s something funny going on here.”
Funny ha-ha or funny peculiar?
“It’s nothing. A specimen from work.”
“From work? A specimen of what?”
“None of your business.”
He threw it at her with sudden, vicious force. Joanna caught it to her breasts but fumbled, and the jar fell harmlessly on the white blanket.
“You think you’re so fucking clever!” His nostrils were pinched with rage: his accent was only noticeable when he got upset. “You’ve been creeping around the house for weeks! Joanna – I know you lost your job!”
She looked at him, aghast. He’d been saving it for a moment like this. Typical.
“How do you know?”
“Your boss – your ex-boss – phoned here to ask for that thing!”
“Did you tell her where it was?”
“No, I didn’t. I didn’t know what she was talking about until afterwards.”
Joanna sagged back against the white railings of the bed, like a family grave in a cemetery plot.
She still had time to hide it properly.
Or she could just give it back.
But it doesn’t belong to Viola!
No. It belongs to Saartjie Baartman.