Liesl Jobson

Liesl Jobson was born in Durban, South Africa, and currently lives in Cape Town. She is a writer, photographer and musician. She edits Poetry International South Africa and is a senior correspondent for BOOK SA. She says of ‘It Isn’t Pretty’: ‘I have the rare capacity to coax sweetness from a contrabassoon but am always relieved when this beleaguered instrument does not intrude upon my fiction.’

It Isn’t Pretty

Your hair is beautiful, Ouma, like jacaranda blossoms in October. Did Mom colour it for you? Here, your mirror. Can you see? The angle right? Mom says you can’t speak but sometimes you sing. How does that work? Never mind. I know how hard answering questions is when you can’t talk. Even if you want to. Especially so. My tongue has become shy. In the group sessions at Tara, the hospital where I’ve been admitted, they call that resistance; they call it passive aggression.

I’ve brought some photos I took on outings for good behaviour. Took them with my new camera, the one I bought with the money you gave me for my birthday. It’s bigger and heavier than the old one, has a great chunky lens. At first I could hardly hold it steady. I must have clicked a hundred times. Maybe five hundred. That’s possible with a digital camera. Delete the blurred images, the tilted horizons, the overexposed subject from a light too bright.

I picked out the best ones. Mom said to bring no more than ten. She said not to overwhelm you. I could put them on your wall. Here, beside your bed. I have a picture of Barrister next to my bed. I miss him. A lot. Especially his thumping tail that whacks against my legs when he’s pleased. Do you miss Pixie? I should smuggle her in here, tell the nurse she’s your pet therapist. Mom says you’re like a child now. Is that right? And if it is, how old are you? Two? Or four? A little older?

This first one is of the dilapidated jetty at Zoo Lake. We went there on the first outing after my admission. I’d earned my place on the old beige bus by gaining 200 grams. If your weight goes up you get treats and privileges, like being allowed to wash your hair or take a walk. If your weight goes down, hard luck, you lose the right to go to the toilet unsupervised. I don’t think about that too much, but I do think about my work. There are photos to make of the lost and found, of containers and holding places. I’m preparing a portfolio for my next exhibition. I prefer the viewfinder even though the digital camera has a viewing window that displays a bigger version of what you’re looking at. It’s simpler looking at the world in a limited way.

This next picture is a close-up of the hull of a rowboat. I wanted to capture the texture of the algae against the shiny yellow paint and the inky black water. The colours, so vibrant against the dull trees and dark water. It works, don’t you think? You’d have loved boating. We rowed out on a brilliant green boat, right up to the fountain in the middle of the lake. I went with Safiya and Sherezade who are twins and patients in the unit. Joined at the hip, says the nurse. They took turns at pulling the oars while I took pictures.

They told me how every weekend they go there with their whole family, a right tribe of nieces and nephews and aunties and uncles and their grandmother, tottering in heels. What a matriarch she is telling everybody where to go, what to bring, where to set the picnic and light fires, when to start cooking, chasing the children off to the swings, and so on. No disrespect, Ouma, but you were never a matriarch. You were scared of my mother too, weren’t you? Still are, I guess. Hey! Did you wiggle your finger? You agree? Oh Ouma, that tells me I’m right.

Once we’d docked again Safiya and Sherezade stood side by side on the rocks at the water’s edge. Thuli, the African model, who reminds us daily that top fashion photographers are killing themselves to shoot her, pointed out the bridge where the Face of Africa was filmed last year. She was a finalist, she says. She’s the next big thing, she says. The next Alek Wek, the next Tyra Banks, the next Liya Kebede. She claims it was dehydration that got her rushed to hospital and eliminated, but it wasn’t that. I know her secret. What can I tell you? Photographers see everything.

The rocks, would you believe it, are not genuine. A high-traffic spot on the path had opened up the exterior and caught Thuli’s stiletto. Beneath the fibreglass shell, frayed netting, like string packing bags for oranges and gem squash, filled with concrete showed through. While Thuli clucked at her scratched heel, I took a photo of the interior of the fake rock. I used the macro settings. I didn’t bring it, though. It isn’t pretty.

This one is though. Safiya and Sherezade held hands as they looked down into the water, so still that it offered back a perfect reflection. I shot the photo from the bridge, angling it to frame the quartet. Did Safiya see herself or her sister when she looked in the water? Who does Sherezade see when she looks in a mirror? You can hardly tell them apart. Identical. Up close, there’s a scar on Safiya’s cheek, shaped like a tiny, cupped palm. If you know where to look.

It was my first outing since my admission. A reward for good behaviour, but I felt wobbly, like my legs couldn’t stand up to people’s stares. The waitresses at the outdoor café whispered behind their hands. We walked three times round the lake before stopping to buy sugar-free gum. Sherezade said we shouldn’t overdo the exercise. We shouldn’t lose weight on an outing. That wouldn’t do at all. They’d already exerted themselves on the water.

You can’t see, Ouma? Shall I help you with your specs? Talking about outings, this isn’t exactly an outing. It’s something like goodbye. Mom says you’ve only got days, maybe hours. They let me out for that. Could this be news to you?

The peculiar thing about Safiya and Sherezade is their rhythm: they wake up and fall asleep at exactly the same moment. They bathe and dress simultaneously, wearing identical clothes and hairstyles. They even stir and sip their tea in unison. We ordered herbal tea. Safiya said it’s sophisticated. Slimming too. So she said, while fingering sugar sachets with spidery fingers.

Were you there when I was born, Ouma? Did you see my twin sister? I wish you could tell me more about our birth.

Later we watched the ducks checking us out, trying to decide whether we were good for any scraps of bread. You could tell they were hungry. They did that thing where they just stand and sway, staring, looking about to faint. The slow walk I recognised. It’s how I move when each step hurts and it’s too much effort to lift my foot another time. The ducks seemed reluctant to swim, too tired to get in the water.

But when a young mother arrived at a table next to us, setting the brake on a stroller before lifting her baby out, they perked up. The baby toddled towards them grasping a heel of bread in his chubby fist. The ducks, which were as tall as he was, pecked the bread rudely, nipping his hand. He screamed until his mother hitched him onto her hip and kissed his knuckles. The ducks, all hissing and swaying necks, clamoured about with their creepy impenetrable stares until a waiter shooed them off with a tray.

The baby eased off his sobbing as his mother spooned applesauce from a round glass jar into his open mouth. He waved and kicked, greeting each spoon eagerly. Distracted by the applesauce escaping onto his bib, his mother didn’t notice the bee hovering over her cheesecake, which then landed in her mango juice. Midway through the next spoon, while waiting for him to open his mouth, she leaned over her drink and sipped on her straw. I raised my arm in a warning gesture. I tried to say, No. I tried to say, Stop. But before I could speak she’d sucked the bee up the straw. She jerked in horror, hands flying to her mouth as it stung her tongue. The spoon catapulted over the stroller and the jar of baby food bounced off the table into the dirt. The woman squealed, Ow, ow, ow! Her baby banged his fists, enraged at this new insult. I dashed over to comfort the baby, wanting to hold him. But he was too heavy and slipped from my embrace, screaming louder.

His mother flapped me away like a pesky duck. I backed away to our table, ashamed at my incompetence, unable to hold back my tears. Safiya felt sorry for me but she misread my grief. She said I probably haven’t done permanent damage to my reproductive system. Sherezade patted my arm, saying, You can still have a baby ... But it wasn’t that. I don’t want a baby of my own. I’d failed to comfort him.

This photo shows the occupational therapy projects, the pencil boxes and octagonal jewellery holders in various stages of découpage. After painting our boxes we glued pictures cut from magazines or wrapping paper. Then we painted modge-podge followed by layers of varnish. Thuli, the model, whines about the mindlessness of it all. Expanded nursery school programme, she grumbled. Then she sang off-key, Idle hands are the devil’s playthings, the devil’s playthings, the devil’s playthings … It beats fidgeting around a Monopoly board for hours with odd cards and vague houses missing from the box. Safiya and Sherezade painted matching purple jewellery boxes.

Safiya paged through a Living & Loving, ripping out pictures of babies to stick on her box so that her mother could use it for storing ear buds or nappy clips. Sherezade wanted none of it. She found a large sheet of giftwrap decorated with dragonflies, and pushed it over to her sister. Then she spun the scissors across the tabletop.

The découpage must dry properly between stages. Then one rubs it with fine sandpaper till it’s smooth and even. It’s the perfect leisure activity for the obsessive compulsives of the world. Thuli uses her hairdryer to perfect her finish. She uses it on her nails too when she paints them the colour of burnt toast. The other shade she likes is coffee grits. I rushed my project and now it’s wrinkled.

This photo is of Safiya and Sherezade’s feet, Ouma. Look here, even the curl of their toes at the pointy part of their shoes is the same. Both wear down on the inside of the heel first with their matching long-legged gait. How do you suppose it works – that twin thing? If I could watch my twin do all the things I do, I would know what made me me. If Marly’s right sneaker also wore out at the toe first, wouldn’t I know what’s bothering this body? I’d be able to see myself.

You want some water? Here. That enough? Need another sip?

For example, I’d know why I can’t control my pinky when I sew. It spikes out doing this jerky clown dance when I’m stitching. We were embroidering bookmarks for Mother’s Day. Safiya and Sherezade were creating identical funky chain-stitch patterns in white on matching strips of turquoise cloth. They don’t say anything to each other. They seldom talk anyway. They simply started stitching without looking at each other’s work. Their needles pricked through, forming the loop and pulling the tail in smooth gestures, no tugging or fuss. Like musical instruments playing a melody at the same tempo, in the same key.

I couldn’t concentrate on my own bookmark at all. The nurse came along and said, I know you’ve got issues with your mother, but you must complete this project. You don’t have to give it to her, you know. Keep it for yourself on Mother’s Day. You’re becoming a mother to yourself now, aren’t you? Make something pretty for you. So, I started my bookmark, but there was nobody to pace myself with, no exterior rhythm, no internal drive. They both cut new threads and knotted them simultaneously. While rethreading their needles, Safiya looked up and noticed my little finger waggling in and out.

I giggled with them. Their laughter wasn’t unkind. But an hour later Safiya and Sherezade had the same eccentric daisies swaying across their bookmark and I was tumbling across an abandoned field, light as a dandelion. I wanted to talk to that other me, my walking mirror that should be out in the world. I wanted to ask her why she does all the sick things she does. I’d say to Marly: Why are you here, in the hospital? Why won’t you eat?

You see, Ouma, I know I’m not fat. They say anorexics have a distorted body image. Not me. I know I’m emaciated. I look like a victim of a concentration camp. My nose and jaw and forehead are too big for my face. The art therapist had us lie on huge sheets of paper and drew a line around our bodies. Then we had to fill in all the beauty inside us, separating it from the hurt outside. We were told to clothe our stick-like limbs in beautiful intentions. I’ve read the textbooks. I go to therapy. I have shame issues, control issues, boundary issues and repressed sexuality issues. Could the list be more boring? But it isn’t the truth. Despite my sub-optimal cognition, compromised as it is, I really do know that what I’m doing is stupid. I get that I’m starving my brain cells, closing the door on future options.

Oh, goodness, you need a tissue. Here, I’ve got it.

What does Safiya say to Sherezade when they’re alone? They never talk to each other when people are around. They don’t even talk through other people, like Mom and Dad do. I sneak into the bathroom when I know they’re in adjacent bathing cubicles. They never talk over the divider like other patients. They just swing their matching towels, the colour of bruised aubergines, over the top of the adjacent doors as if in one movement, then switch the taps on, then off, at precisely the same moment, as if marking the steps of some erratic ballet. Then they emerge, wearing the same outfit, the same jasmine scent.

At visiting hour, their mother bustles in, surly and hairy, trailing their six younger brothers and sisters, a toddler at her knee, an infant on her hip and a new bump in front. The middle ones in their gymslips and polished school shoes, the older ones wearing headscarves over their jeans. She frets because her eldest girls are supposed to write matric this year. She frets because they are bringing shame on the family. The prospective in-laws want to know that there will be a string of little brown babies and the girls haven’t had their periods in over a year. They’re enrolled at a prestigious private college and share the class medals equally between them. She frets about that too. Clever girls are no great blessing as far as their mother is concerned. Or at least that’s what Safiya says in group therapy.

In private Safiya told me about the pact they made to stave off the orchestrated double wedding. They were betrothed to suitable boys on their tenth birthday, but they both want to go to university to study engineering. Makes sense, doesn’t it? There’s a clear-cut reason for them. It has a beautiful, if painful, logic. They’re on a hunger strike to claim their intellectual, social and sexual freedom. How clever do the doctors have to be to figure that out?

Ouma, are you comfortable? Can I plump your pillows? I hope the doctors looking after you are smarter than the ones looking after us.

When the nutritionist said – did you notice they are called nutritionists, and not dieticians? Too many negative connotations to the word ‘diet’. ‘Nutrition’ is a word with nurturing rather than punitive associations. Ha! Anyway, the nutritionist was saying that even after treatment, normal menstruation never returns in twenty-five per cent of cases of severe anorexia. The twins smirked. As if that was their ultimate goal – to put on just enough weight to get out of here so that they can return as fast as they can to starving themselves under the protection of their burkas.

As I was saying, Ouma, in this photo, I’ve focused on the straps of their shoes, which peel over at exactly the same spot. I wish I could look at my sister’s shoes. Apparently I ate her before I was born. That’s what my mother told me. She said I came out fat and round and red from swallowing all her blood. Marly was tiny and thin, pale and eternally perfect. We went to her grave again last weekend. We go on the first Sunday of every month. We left fresh lilies with their buds still tightly closed in the vase cemented to her headstone.

My parents always fought on the first Sunday of each month. For as many years as I can remember my mother would call my father an insensitive brute and he would beg her to stop resurrecting the dead. After the celebration of our 21^st birthday last year, my father refused to go ever again. The party’s over, he said.

I stood beside Mom while she adjusted the lilies and sobbed into her handkerchief. Then she asked for private time. I wandered through the other graves. The ones that always intrigue me are the ‘double bed’ arrangement, where a name and date are engraved on one side, and the other side is empty, waiting for the partner left behind. It’s pragmatic. There’s no space for me beside Marly. Besides, even if there was, I can hardly be buried in the infant section now.

This photo is from the ward kitchen, Ouma. The camera felt solid in my hand that day. My arm felt stable; stronger, maybe. Notice how the light from the window catches the dents in the pot? The steam curls rising out, the dents in the side, the sliver of onion caught on the edge. We made vegetable soup to sell to the patients in the other wards. It was a fundraiser. We are supposed to contribute to the expenses of the outings and Safiya suggested the idea. Then there was a quarrel about what kind of soup to make. Thuli suggested pea and ham. Safiya and Sherezade wrinkled their noses at exactly the same moment and Safiya said the Jewish and Moslem patients couldn’t eat pig. Thuli said in her fake American accent that educated people say ‘pork’ not ‘pig’. Another girl said we should make chicken soup for the soul. But then someone else said it wasn’t vegetarian. So they agreed on minestrone. It’s hard to photograph minestrone when it’s hot. The steam condenses on the lens. Food photography is pure bamboozlement and hoodwinks, Ouma. You cannot imagine the dirty tricks of kitchen studios, the glycerine, toothpicks, white glue and paintbrushes.

Are you warm enough? Want a shawl on your shoulders?

Thuli had commandeered the pot, one thin dark hand stirring, the other grasping the pale wooden handle of the pot, which appeared fat in her grip. I’d adjusted the setting to cancel the flash, thinking of the natural light, but when she heard the shutter click she threw the ladle at me, screeching, calling me a fucking wannabe snoop. She’s wrong on all counts. I’m no wannabe. I’m published, Ouma. My byline is everywhere, Getaway, Weg, Africa Geographic. I have exhibited. Just because I’m not a fashion photographer, doesn’t mean shit. But, why even entertain her idiotic questions?

If the nurses knew that Thuli was sniffing cocaine under their nose, they’d call the cops and have her arrested. But she’s sly. She waits till everyone’s asleep. Her bed is in the corner, opposite mine. She shuffles off to the loo two hours after lights out, once the night nurse is dozing. On her return, she leans over my bed to check if I’m asleep. I keep my breathing slow and deep. She prods me, calls my name. I fake a loose-jawed snore. Then she reaches into her cupboard, brings out a sandal she never wears and unscrews the heel. She removes a tiny baggie and forms a line, on the top of her bedside table. She uncaps a cheap Bic, removing the nib and back end before snorting. I’m the only one who knows what she’s up to. Photographers see everything, Ouma. That’s the truth.

While we made soup I watched Safiya peeling potatoes with military precision, each peel exactly one inch long. I saw Sherezade pick up a fleck of grated carrot and put it in her mouth. She chewed it twenty times, then spat it into a tissue and threw it in the bin.

Anyway, my camera was taken away for three days after the ladle-throwing scene. It felt like my hands were chopped off, my arms so empty I couldn’t sew, couldn’t take notes in the nutrition lectures, couldn’t even brush my hair. I could hardly bear to pick up my food, but if I lost a gram, I’d never get my camera back. I could have ratted on Thuli, but I couldn’t be bothered. It’s not that I don’t want to talk; it’s more like I can’t. The psychologist tries in our twice-weekly sessions. Her top lip quivers when I finally respond to her questions. Then it tightens again in forced empathy and my bones contract with the wrong answer.

It’s as if that dead baby I consumed is still inside me, eating all my words and spitting out the rejects. My language limps off my tongue, out of kilter when I try to speak. I don’t mean what I say; I can’t say what I mean. It’s all jumbled. The nutritionist warned us about this. She said brain scans indicate that parts of the brain undergo structural changes and abnormal activity during anorexic states. Some people return to normal after weight gain, but others never go clear. She flipped her chart and wrote in spiky red letters: Studies show that brain damage may be PERMANENT.

I can’t help wondering: if our birth had been different, if Marly were alive today, would her feet hit the ground like mine do? Would she also listen to Leonard Cohen, knowing how the end of the world sounds like a famous blue raincoat? Would she also wear only cotton and refuse polyester or nylon? Would she detest liquorice and aniseed? Would she hold a camera balanced in the pad of her thumb, legs crossed and braced for stability? Would her hip and elbow jut out for balance?

And this photo, Ouma, is of the fishpond filled now with dry and papery leaves. A patient from Ward Eight drowned. He went out for a cigarette after dark and ambled down a path on a moonless night. Maybe he stumbled on the uneven ground and fell into the water, too dazed to save himself. He’d had shock therapy that day; he was confused. Maybe they fried his survival instinct by accident. Maybe it was suicide. How do you drown in knee-deep water, Ouma? Can it be so easy? If you had the choice, would you leave?

When I saw two policemen in a van talking to the guards at the entrance as I jogged around the grounds early that morning, my first thought was, Yesss! They’ve come for Thuli; the vain bitch is going to jail. Horrid, aren’t I? But the van didn’t stop outside our unit. It rattled on down the road, heaving over the bumps, to the wards at the bottom of the hill. I followed it down the road and waited behind a big pin oak, catching my breath, while the ward manager described his grim find. The officers radioed for the mortuary van before setting off on foot. I ran on, passing the old fountain where a posse of doctors stood in the cold, stamping their feet. His jacket, like a skin, floated on the surface. I almost wished I’d had the idea first. They’ve drained the pond now, not wanting copycats.

There’s a schoolgirl who filmed her suicide, Ouma. She blogged about it. Told the world what she was going to do. Now that is macabre. Her mother was watching The Bold and the Beautiful in the next room. Her father had been to the station to buy smokes. He found her on his return, hanging from the dog’s leash strung up from the ceiling. She’d set up the video on a tripod. Do you suppose she’s at peace now?

I have photos that I can’t show and didn’t bring. I used the timer to create self-portraits. You’ve never judged or condemned me, never ordered me to eat. You never said I was making Mom suffer. You never called me manipulative. Your heart ached, though, I know. I hope this isn’t overwhelming. But, those photos, the ones I probably shouldn’t talk about, I take them, Ouma, to search myself. I want to see what’s under my skin. Is she there? I open myself up looking for her. But there’s nothing, not even a lock of her hair. All I find is soft netting, wet concrete.

I look at those pictures and pretend that I’m Marly. I imagine her now: fat, red and devouring, staring back at her anaemic other. As I look at those pictures I’m transfused, falling through a mirror.

You can’t take the photos over, Ouma, but maybe a message for Marly? Please sing her a lullabye, Ouma, my jacaranda hair Ouma. Please hold my sister. Please ask her to stop?