A spray of sparks arced off a beat-up Honda as a new exhaust pipe was soldered in place. In another corner of the workshop floor, a mechanic gunned the engine of a no-hoper while another two celebrated with greasy high-fives.
On days like these, Marieke Venter barely felt female. She had to squeeze a boob or sneak into the loo to check down her knickers if her creases and crevices were still there. On the days she was on her cycle there was no need to: the crew, who knew her too well, let her know she was persona non grata. On those days, every word she said (she had to admit, she did snipe a bit) got taken out of context or ignored. It would help if there were another woman around. Unfortunately, the downside of working in a garage – or in the auto-mechanical industry, as her father had insisted on calling it – was that birds of her feather were rare.
‘Where’s Ashwin?’ she asked one of the mechanics.
Pieter shrugged, wiping a spanner on his blue jumpsuit. ‘Thought he was in your office. Typical. If you find him, tell him I need him working on the Golf’s suspension. That lady wants her car today and if he doesn’t want kak like last time …’
Marieke clenched her jaw and muttered something crude, low enough to stay under the racket. Pieter gave her a look and she flushed. She never griped openly about her and Ashwin’s problems. It stirred up chatter, and the guys sure knew how to gossip like hens. Being the only woman at Venter’s Auto and Electrical Garage was one thing, but it would help to no end if she didn’t have to run the place more or less single-handed while Ashwin farted around.
She slipped into their cramped office, the only place on the premises besides the toilet that had any privacy. She groaned as she put her feet up.
I need another job, Marieke thought. Which was crazy. She was the administrator, head of finance, roster organiser and competent under the hood; she had several jobs already. Besides, Venter’s was family, and you didn’t bail on family.
She knew full well what Pieter’s look had been about. Despite all her efforts, Ashwin didn’t show her enough respect. The boys on the workshop floor gave her her due, but not her own brother. Some had worked for her father and were proud to see at least one of his children remained dedicated to the garage’s survival. Surgery on automobiles had been her dad’s passion, and busting her ass to keep his business afloat was hers. Ashwin had other ideas, but he would, seeing as the old man’s will favoured him and he owned the shop.
Marieke tapped piles of bills and orders against the desk and put them to one side, getting grouchier by the minute. She knew she was no genius and her talents were few, but she knew what she was about. She was great at doing what she was told, getting things in order and keeping them that way. Maybe that made her a simpleton to some, but it was her fussing that kept Venter’s out of quicksand time and time again. She had done it, and still did. In the pinch of crisis, she–
A loud tap sounded on the glass panel separating the office from the chaos of the floor. For the thousandth time, Marieke wished the partition was one-way and soundproof. She wished it was bulletproof too, not so much for her sake as for that of the idiots on the other side.
It was Pieter again. He gestured wildly, hand to one ear in the shape of a phone receiver as he mouthed something. She frowned and waved him in. Did he want to use the phone?
He shook his head vigorously and stabbed a finger at the office landline, moving his lips slowly. Come one, come all, was that what he was saying? She threw her hands up. He rolled his eyes and came round to poke his head in.
‘Yassis, Marieke, you suck at charades. I was saying, someone called. The same woman that called before, asking for Ashwin. I figured she wouldn’t mind speaking to you instead, but you were out.’
‘What woman?’
‘She’s called before, even stopped by and waited around on Tuesday morning. I took a message.’ Pieter pointed to the Post-it stuck to the edge of the desk and closed the door behind him.
Marieke spent a long time deciphering the Khoisan rock painting that was Pieter’s handwriting. Afterwards, she contemplated. Her grey cells were shuffling down a road and she didn’t like where they going. An investigator was looking into an old missing persons case and wanted a word with her big brother.
For all Ashwin’s past shenanigans, there was only one thing that hovered in the background of their lives, the ghost that wouldn’t move on and leave them in peace. He’d said nothing to her of calls and drop-ins by investigators, but it went a long way towards explaining his volatile mood and unexplained absences that week. He was avoiding the unavoidable. After everything that had happened back then, with everything that she knew, he was still running and still shutting her out.
‘Nie meer nie,’ Marieke whispered and stuffed the scrap of yellow paper with a scrawled number on it in her jeans. No more.