SHE THOUGHT ABOUT THE MEN. All through the reconstructive surgery and the interviews with the police and the therapy that came afterwards, she thought about them: where they were; if they had hurt another woman; if they were thinking about her. The pine tree stood mute on its roundabout. Every day Joanna circled it like a maypole, tied to its subterranean horror.
But ordinary days kept being laid over the dread. Inside your body there were a hundred clocks. The small things saved her, and Joanna found herself thinking, I am lucky. Kevan was right.
She had her house and her husband.
And she had her child.
I nearly lost you, she kept telling James in her head. I nearly lost you. I nearly died. Joanna knew that she might very easily have given up that night on the mountain when the toad moon set. It was James’s quavering anger that had chivvied her along, irritated her until she had got up again.
She didn’t want to scare him so she tried not to be smothering. She explained that she had hurt her face and her neck, that he couldn’t jump on her, that she had to whisper. He thought it was funny: he had only just learned to whisper, himself. Joanna had been teaching him the difference between his indoors voice and his outdoors voice.
She probably let him do more things now that he shouldn’t – have another muffin, not bath every night – but she kept asking herself if it really mattered. And Joanna hugged him as much as she could. She felt his body along hers and thought that he was already half his adult height. The day was coming when he would push her off him and wipe the kisses from his face: it was coming, but it hadn’t arrived yet. She saw the two of them holding hands, bound by light. The golden hour.
The sun was rising earlier. She noticed everything, and remembered it. In another life it would be called mindfulness, but Joanna didn’t want it to have some schmucky self-satisfied label.
The morning walk to Busy Babies was no longer a chore. Getting ready for Busy Babies was.
She wheedled. “James, it’s not raining today. It’s going to be hot. Don’t you want to wear your Crocs instead?”
“Boots.” He wasn’t angry, but he would be if she kept asking. It didn’t matter, did it? He could just take them off when he got to school.
James clumped along next to her, his right ankle buckling every now and again as his foot slipped out of the wellington. She kept hold of his right hand and looked straight ahead. People looked at her askance but didn’t really stare. They were used to seeing bandages, wheelchairs, prostheses. The one-legged man who traversed Recreation Road swung along at speed, outpacing them as he always did. Joanna wanted to give him a salute of solidarity.
But some part of her wanted the acknowledgement of her injuries. I want them to see me, Joanna thought. I want them to know that everything is not right in this town. People like me – tax-paying citizens! – can be hurt and disfigured and abused.
At the same time she knew that was silly. The man in the slicker had come to her aid, hadn’t he? He had probably saved her life.
Joanna swapped James’s satchel to her other shoulder. The road looked as it always did, although the box had disappeared. The same collection of wind-blown old people crossed the road at Marina Gardens; the same couple of pensioners eked out their toast at Karen’s Kozy Nook – and why not? It had the Best Value Breakfast in Town!!
As they neared the split pine tree – “Look, James. Monkey tails!” – the top of a man’s hooded head was disappearing down the stairs. Joanna stood still, the fright bitter in her mouth. Her throat was on fire.
It was them.
“Mommy! Got a sore!”
Joanna was clamping James’s hand, her fingers frozen solid. She tried to let go of him but she couldn’t. James was squeaking and pulling away from her, and at first Joanna thought that one of the kids on his way to the bike track had barrelled into them. The blow came at the backs of her knees and threw her forward onto the pavement. Even as it happened, she felt the skin abrade from her palms and the gravel lodge in her surfaces. She dimly heard the shriek of metal and then the sick thump of a car’s engine mounting the kerb.
On all fours, she shuffled her hands towards her knees, an absurd yoga position. Fallen Woman, she told herself, and laughed, then coughed like a dog. She felt something rip in her throat again.
People were running towards them. They were shouting.
James was lying in front of her, half on the tarmac. He wasn’t moving. Joanna scrambled over to him on her hands and her knees.
She reached him and turned him over onto his back. His eyes were closed.
Joanna felt the heat radiate off James as she picked him up and hugged him to her. Oh, thank God! He was warm! He was fine. He was going to be fine, her Lazarus baby. This was just like the birth. He was in shock. He would come round and they would go to False Bay – it was just down the road. They could walk! She would carry him! They wouldn’t even need an ambulance! – and get him checked out for minor injuries. They would go home. She would keep him out of school tomorrow – his teacher would understand – and put him in the Big Bed with her. She would read him Going Places in the Car as many times as he wanted. Yes, and she would ignore the error in the title.
When she could bear to, Joanna held him away from her and looked closely at his face. James was drained and white. He looked normal except for the angle of his jaw. What was wrong with him? Joanna bent closer, the pulleys of her muscles creaking and sore.
His lips were too close to his chin. James had a new overbite, like a Simpsons character. He had fallen so hard that his front teeth had been driven through his lower lip. Oh, Christ, that was going to hurt! And the blood! Facial injuries on kids always looked so terrible at first, Joanna thought. They were hard to see, with the screaming and the pulling away, so that when you tried to look at the injury – the slice on the scalp from the tree, the bruise on the cheek from the garden tap, the cut on the chin from the corner of the coffee table – you didn’t really know what you were looking for. Joanna wondered why she didn’t travel with her tiny homoeopathic First Aid kit from A. White (Chemist). Should she try to separate James’s lips, or wait for help? What if he couldn’t breathe? Was someone going to come? People were on their cellphones. The man in the blue anorak was touching her on her shoulder again, asking her if she was alright. Joanna shrugged him off: she was trying to concentrate.
She felt all along James’s limbs, his jointed arms, his soft baby calves, his feet in their striped socks. She fingered his toes, every one of them, as she did when she dried them after his bath – and then realised that he wasn’t alright, after all. How could he be? The car had knocked him right out of his wellies. They stood there, still warm, one upright, its mate fallen on its side, three paces away from the spot the box had been. Its stain was still on the pavement.
The yellow car nosed the forked pine tree on the roundabout, as if it was grazing. A woman was opening the door – S ‘n’ M DRIVING SCHOOL – of the car, the beast that had growled and pounced. She got out and stood looking at Joanna, who didn’t recognise her because she wasn’t wearing her turban.
“No pain,” said Joanna croakily to herself. “No pain! No gain!” She wished the man would stop patting her back.