‘COME HOME’ the SMS said.
I found Simone sitting on the sofa with something wrapped in a towel on her lap. My immediate thought was Truschka. Somebody had finally ridden over our troublesome cat who managed to escape from the flat at every opportunity.
‘For God’s sake, she used to live on a boat!’ I once muttered after Mrs Shimansky’s departing back after being fined for not keeping our cat inside for the umpteenth time. I kept on expecting to hear that Truschka had used up her nine lives and was about to be kicked out of Sonkasteel but so far it had just been a litany of fines. This way Mrs S had the pleasure of watching me squirm on a regular basis.
Truschka and Simone were inseparable, and often she’d pick her cat up and disappear into her bedroom when things became too much for her. I approached Simone with dread in my heart. Her face was white as marble, and her bottom lip trembled.
‘Simone, what’s the matter? Has something happened to Truschka?’ She shook her head but just kept clutching on to the bundle. ‘Can I look?’ She let me open the towel. It was a huge dead seagull. Its neck was at a strange angle and the eyes were glazed and dead. There was some blood coming from a wound round its neck.
‘He flew into the window,’ she said in a desperate voice. ‘I heard a big bang and there he was, on the floor of the balcony. I put Truschka in my room. Can we take him to the vet?’
‘It’s dead, Simone. There’s nothing we can do for it. Let’s put it in a shoebox with some tissue paper and then we’ll think about what we’re going to do. Okay?’
My daughter was distraught when I took the gull out of her arms and laid it in the box. She started to shiver as if she would never stop. I ran to get the anxiety medication prescribed by the neurologist; it didn’t seem right to tranquilise a fourteen-year-old girl, and it made her dizzy and drowsy, so I only brought it out when I thought she really needed it. I gave her half a tablet with some water and then sat down next to her with a blanket and held her until she dozed off in my arms. But it took a long time, and she kept murmuring, ‘Why did he come here, why wasn’t he on the beach?’
Bloody good question.
The next morning I went past Klaus Knappman’s office and handed him the bird in the shoebox.
‘Whew,’ the detective said, holding his nose. ‘Wat het jy hier?’ What do you have here? The smell of death was mingled with the rank smell of seaweed and crustaceans rotting on the seashore.
‘What’s that blood around its neck?’ I asked.
Klaus said he wanted to show the bird to someone and he’d be back. When he returned, he said that his colleague agreed with his assessment. This gull had been garrotted with a wire and then lowered to our balcony, probably by someone lying on his stomach on the roof. That person had then bashed the gull hard against the glass to make it look like an accident.
‘It’s such a beautiful bird. Does it mean it’s a young seagull with those chocolate-brown streaked feathers?’
Klaus nodded. ‘My colleague says it’s a juvenile kelp gull. He’s a real clever oke about birds and animals. We call him “Bird Brain”, but it’s like a fond name.’
‘Who would do something like that?’
‘You must keep your head on your shoulders about this, Paola,’ Klaus warned. ‘When I started out, my partner and I used to get called out all the time to sort out neighbourhood squabbles. People used to do the weirdest kak; one retired lawyer dumped his rubbish on the access road so his neighbour couldn’t use it, somebody else shot his neighbour’s cat with his son’s pellet gun, one woman sent her gardener with a paraffin can and matches to burn down her neighbour’s conifers. There’s all kinds of crazies out there.’
‘But what if it’s them, Klaus. What if they’re trying to make her mentally unstable?’
‘Them?’ Klaus sounded baffled. ‘Simone has just had a shock. She’s not going to become mentally unstable because a bird died.’ He ran a hand through his hair.
Of course he didn’t know what I was talking about. They were a recent phenomenon in our lives. But it felt like they were ancient and had been there forever.
‘The crow people on the corner.’ I told him about them, the little bit I knew, and the effect they were having on Simone. Klaus said I was becoming paranoid and that it was probably someone in our building that didn’t like us. That’s what it looked like to him. It could even be teenage boys with too much testosterone and all their brains between their legs. They knew a pretty girl was alone in the flat. They were probably giggling while they did it.
On the drive home I went through a mental list of all the teenage boys who lived in our apartment block. There weren’t many of them and none of them fitted the bill. At that age they found girls their own age intimidating. Doing something like that to a wild bird was cruel, and trying to frighten a young girl with the bird’s horrible death was something more than cruel. There was too much planning involved, my gut told me. This was not your average teenage-boy prank. It was something more elemental; it was someone who wanted to mess with Simone’s head and who wanted me to know that we could be reached.
The next morning Simone said those weirdoes on the corner gave her the creeps and why couldn’t we take a different route to school? When she turned to look at me, her eyes pleading, I could see them there, burnt on her retina. I said lightly, why not, taking a different route stimulates new neural paths, but not every day because it takes longer.
The headmistress of Our Lady of Fatima Convent School requested my presence in her office urgently. A rumour had reached her that Simone was carrying a knife. None of the girls would say they’d actually seen it; they’d just heard about it. Simone herself had denied any knowledge of a knife, but the headmistress knew a lying teenager when she saw one. Simone would have to hand her school bag in at the office each day, and collect the books she needed for each class. But they could hardly do a body search …
This was serious. I pleaded for Simone, pointing out that the school psychologist had noted she had adjusted well socially and that her school record showed no incidents of bullying or violence, and that, on the contrary, young kids like Josh, Roxy Vermaak’s brother, seemed to gravitate towards her.
‘It’s just a rumour. Who told you?’
The headmistress ignored my question and instead reminded me that it would be enough for a knife to be found in Simone’s possession for her to face immediate suspension, followed by a disciplinary hearing, which would be a mere rubber-stamping of the decision to expel her. The school rules were clear: any pupil who endangered other pupils and staff by carrying a weapon onto school grounds was no longer welcome at Our Lady of Fatima.
The headmistress and I had negotiated treacherous waters together before. It had taken a while to get Simone placed at Lady of Fatima, which had a long waiting list. In the end my mother had called up the chairman of the school board, an art collector, who frequented her gallery and for whom she’d done a favour or two (as she put it). On day one, Simone had refused to attend her new school unless Truschka went along. She’d gone to the admission interview without complaining and had even been cooperative but somehow the thought of all those new girls was too much for her.
‘You’re being ridiculous, Simone,’ I’d said, close to despair. We were already late. She couldn’t miss her first day. I didn’t want her to stand out; I wanted her to be ordinary. ‘You’re thirteen years old. You can’t take a cat to school.’
‘You’re ridiculous, not me!’ she’d shot back. ‘I’m not going without Truschka. You’ll have to drag me into the car and you’ll have to drag me out at the school.’
Then they’ll see what a bad mother you are and take me away from you.
I’d left her at home, driven to the school and met with the headmistress, doing my best to explain. Simone had lived in an abusive home. We’d drawn a black line under the past. She no longer had any friends from her previous school. It was hard on her. Without knowing any of the details, the headmistress had agreed to the cat’s accompanying Simone to school, at least for a few days, so long as it was in a cat box and didn’t disturb class activities. The following day Simone had sat next to me in the car, her freckles darker than usual against the pallor of her plump cheeks, her forehead peppered with angry-looking pimples, the seat belt and her arms protectively around the box with Truschka in it. A couple of days later she’d stuck her head into Truschka’s fur and muttered darkly that she was lucky not to have to go to school for the rest of her life, and the cat-at-school episode was over.
Now, as I got up to leave, the headmistress spoke. ‘We found out about the knife through a note left in my pigeonhole. That usually means some rivalry between the girls is playing itself out, but that’s not my concern. What is my concern is the possibility that a troubled girl commits an act of violence on my school ground. My job is first and foremost to protect the school, its pupils, and its reputation. You do understand that I hope, Mrs de Luc? There can be no exceptions.’
I tell Simone about my summons to the headmistress’s office while we’re making supper that night, determined not to provoke a confrontation I can’t win. We have both chosen this relationship − even though it was thrust upon us, there were moments of choice at which we paused, considered, and went on. Simone has always made it clear she agreed to be my daughter, and gave me permission to be her mother. I hold onto that and remember the photographer on an animal programme face to face with his waking dream, a grand crocodile deep in his ancient papyrus lair. I instruct my heart to beat steadily.
‘Do you think I have a knife, mom-person?’
I don’t back down from her gaze. I will not allow myself to be frightened of my own daughter.
‘You were careless. Heidi says a knife gives you the element of surprise if you have to defend yourself. But not if everybody knows about it.’
Heidi has a big Afro, rides a super bike, and runs security for some Very Important People across the political spectrum. Heidi is also Nathan Khan’s sister. Soon after Simone first came to me, she ran away, and it was Heidi who found her and brought her back.
I see Simone’s eyes narrow. She turns away and spins the lettuce at maximum velocity, as if it were the tattletale’s head being sliced and diced.
‘They can expel me if they want. Who cares? They’re so full of themselves. I can do Oxford A-grades on the Internet any time I want. I only go because you want me to go.’
‘Well, that’s something,’ I say, my heart suddenly a feather in the salty wind.
Simone is the light of my life and she is the dark of my life.
Tell me a secret (V)
https://secrets.net/chatlounge/
(Everyone. Has one. What’s yours?)
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diable: |
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Everyone. Has one. What’s hers? |
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butterfly: |
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It’s me who has secrets not her |
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diable: |
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Listen to the devil. He always knows best. The locked door hides her secret. You just haven’t found it yet |
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butterfly: |
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What’s in it for you? |
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diable: |
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To lead the innocent into the light. Doesn’t daddy’s princess want to know what daddy’s been up to? |
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butterfly: |
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Maybe. Your turn |
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diable: |
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Mommy sleeps around. The names are in a little book |
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butterfly: |
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Do you have your demons flying after them? |
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diable: |
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There is nowhere for them to escape |
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butterfly: |
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I feel almost sorry for them. Good night devil |