Becoming
Wendy Clark
Š Wendy Clark 2015 First published in 2010 by New Africa Books ISBN 97-0-86486-717-9 Republished in 2015 by BK Press ISBN 978-1-928245-21-6 Prepared for publication by Ginny Porter All characters in this work are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, translated or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the author.
The lights were on a round drum in the middle of the ceiling. I lay looking up at them, aware of the nervous prickle of sweat along the small of my back, the clamminess of my palms. My fear was almost enough to make me forget the embarrassingly skimpy thing I was wearing, its frayed edges, its stiffness against my skin, and the drysweet smell of starch cloying in my nose. A face peered at me. Kind brown eyes scrutinised me intently over a turquoise mask. A nurse, also masked, put a bit of dirty-yellow tubing around my arm, and tightened it. I felt a swelling sensation, as though the limb was blowing up to gargantuan proportions, but when I looked at it, it was still just plump and white and normal. ‘This isn’t going to hurt at all,’ said a voice behind the mask. ‘Just a little pinprick.’ I wanted to scream that I hated pinpricks and that they always hurt, but I couldn’t. My mouth was too dry to talk. My tongue felt queer and big and swollen. The nurse removed the stiff sheet over me. Deep within me there was a fear of something I couldn’t name because I had never felt anything like it before: it constricted my throat, it swelled in my head, it shot arrows of panic to my bowels. The man was touching me now, his hand in its horrid sausage-skin glove alien on my arm, tapping the base of my wrist, powdery balloon on paper. The needle burned like fire, and I gave a little whimpering cry, all I could manage with that weird, cotton wool mouth. Inside my stomach, fear danced like reckless autumn leaves on the last winds of summer. A moment later, something that felt like hot syrup began to swim through the veins on the back of my hand, and I felt the pounding, pumping pressure in my arm letting up. I was still staring up at those bright, round, silvery lights when the darkness came.
COCOON
One In your role as a wife, you will be expected to honour and obey your husband. The good wife knows how to keep the peace in the home, and defers to her husband’s wishes. That’s why it is so important that you should choose a life partner worthy of your deference and respect. Walter Newton M.D.: Becoming – A Life Guide for the Young Christian Woman (1954)
R
aymond has a new business associate. His name is Stan Nicholson. For the last ten days I have heard nothing but Stan Nicholson this and Stan Nicholson that. Raymond is hoping to get contracts through him. He’s an architect, and recently business hasn’t been too good for a small one-man practice. Stan is a building contractor, and a very successful one at that. He’s built most of the Laguna Beach Estate on the North Coast. Raymond would love to break into that scene and thinks his contact with Stan might help him. They also intend playing golf together. We’re in the kitchen, and he’s watching me get the supper ready. ‘I’d like to invite Stan over for dinner.’ He looks at me as I spin-dry the lettuce in the plastic salad spinner he gave me last Christmas. ‘And his wife too, of course. Would that be okay?’ Oh, no. Please, no. I don’t say it, of course. I’ve had time enough to prepare myself for this moment – I’ve been expecting it ever since he’s started bringing Stan’s name into every conversation. I wish he knew how much I detest these polite dinner parties we have to give for the people he wants to impress. They’re tedious, and stressful. I don’t mind the work involved – I like cooking and enjoy decorating the table – but I find the actual party an ordeal. I never know what to say to our guests,
1
and I spend the evening tense on the edge of my chair, trying to be polite, and inwardly feeling I’m failing dismally. ‘Of course,’ I say. My voice is neutral, giving away nothing of the things which surge within me. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I told him how I feel. But whenever I’m tempted to speak my mind, I remember it’s a wife’s duty to keep the peace in the home. A part of me rails against this as a piece of sexist propaganda, but at the same time I can’t deny that this platitude has served me well over the years. Raymond and I have never had a serious argument in the twenty-three years we’ve been married. ‘Good,’ he says, going over to the fridge and getting out a can of beer. ‘Friday, then?’ ‘Friday’s fine.’ I open the spinner, and watch the plastic inner basket judder to a halt. From behind me, I hear the cracking sound of the beer can opening as I begin sprinkling lettuce leaves into the wooden salad bowl I got for Mothers’ Day. ‘Could you do a roast? And make your crème brûlée for dessert?’ ‘Okay.’ I wish he knew how much work crème brûlée is, and a roast, come to that, but of course he’d point out the valid fact I don’t have a job. We agreed I should stay at home once Justin was born, and later I was grateful; I’d have missed out on so much if I’d gone rushing back to work after three months like everyone else did. I remember how cut up my sister was when she had to go back after her babies; she says it broke her heart. Remembering Justin’s first day at school, I can believe it. I felt almost guilty to have the whole morning to myself, and I turned up at the gates half an hour early to collect him. Over the years I’ve got used to it, of course. Justin’s in grade eleven now, and God knows, before we know where we are, he’ll be off to university. He’s keen on Medicine, and he might get a bursary if he’s lucky, so he may end up studying in another town. I don’t let myself
2
think of that time, because the house will seem horribly empty without him. But of course life goes on, and I can’t begrudge him any opportunities that might come his way. Raymond says it would do him good to cut the apron strings, and maybe he has a point. All the same, when the time comes, I’ll have to find something to occupy my time. What? The bookclub meets only once a month, and pottery lessons or art classes don’t appeal to me – certainly not as a substitute for being a full-time Mom. It might be time to think about going back to work. I’m a qualified librarian, and I don’t think too much has changed in seventeen years. There was something restful and fulfilling about the orderly rows of books on shelves, and the flat, musty sweetness of yellowing paper. I love the smell of old books, and browsing around in second hand bookstores is one of my passions, though Raymond can’t stand it. He only reads architectural journals and The Bible, while I’m an avid fiction fan. Curling up with a good book – and, of course a furtive bar of chocolate I can quickly slip under the pillow if anyone comes into the room – is my idea of bliss. ‘Your crème brûlée is tops,’ he says, breaking in on my drifting thoughts, and I smile up at him, pleased. ‘You’re the best cook I know, Alison.’ ‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘Even better than your mother was?’ He laughs. Warmed by the compliment and stung by the prospect of having to entertain Stan Nicholson and his wife, I slice tomatoes, dice up the last of the feta, and sprinkle it in along with some calamata olives. In the oven, the lasagne bubbles under its browning crust of melted cheese, filling the kitchen with a savoury aroma. I wish I could make such a simple dish the night the Nicholsons come to dinner. It would mean less time in the kitchen. Mind you, being stuck here wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Raymond wants me to be friendly to his friends’ wives, but I can’t relate to them. Even though most of them have children, once we’ve
3
exchanged the facts and figures about how old they are and what schools attend, the conversation dries up. Most of them have jobs, and their lives and their talk revolves around their work. The last one was an advocate with a successful divorce practice. There was nothing I could say to her. She didn’t want to hear about home making, and I didn’t want to hear about the multi-million rand settlement she’d negotiated that morning for her client. We sat silent while our husbands did the talking. Even that wouldn’t have bothered me, but afterwards Raymond chided me, saying I ought to broaden my horizons a little, as I appeared to have nothing to talk about. He didn’t explain what he meant by ‘broadening my horizons’, and I didn’t ask. After that I volunteered to bake muffins for our church’s Sunday morning get-togethers, vaguely hoping it would help. But though it brought me into contact with two other bored housewives, it didn’t give me anything to discuss with a divorce lawyer. The salad is ready, and I carry it through to the dining room. I laid the table earlier, using a fresh cloth and a vase of pansies from the garden. Laying the table properly is something Mom taught me, I’ve done it every day of my married life. A well-prepared meal needs to be enjoyed in the right setting, not eaten off plates in front of the TV. The only thing I don’t do very well are fancy serviettes. To get them right they need to be stiffly starched, and the smell of starch is something I can’t bear. ‘The food’s ready,’ I say. ‘Let’s eat.’ Raymond calls Justin, and I fetch the lasagne from the oven. * The Nicholsons are coming around tomorrow. I’ve bought a piece of beef sirloin, and I’ll do it with roast potatoes and Yorkshire pudding, baby carrots and mange-tout peas. I made the crème brûlées this afternoon. They turned out well, and are now chilling in the fridge, awaiting their brittle topping of burnt sugar. For a starter, there’s 4
spanspek melon and wafer thin Parma ham, there won’t be much to do tomorrow night, except the gravy, the Yorkshire pudding, and laying the table. Raymond wants to make the right impression. He talked about the Nicholsons again after dinner. They live in Martha’s Vineyard, one of those expensive new complexes in Umdloti. Stan told him the granite in it is worth over a million. That kind of thing always impresses Raymond. I said that I don’t envy Stan’s wife having to polish it, but I dare say they have a full time maid. Stan’s wife, whose name is Marilyn, works, though Raymond isn’t sure what she does. It’s funny how a word or a name can suddenly make you think of someone or something. Hearing that Stan’s wife is called Marilyn brought back a sudden wave of nostalgia that washed through a gulf of memories. It took me back to my first year at university. I’d come to Durban from Port Shepstone by dint of having won a bursary, and though I wanted to stay in one of the university’s residence halls, my parents were adamant I had to lodge in Huis Maria van Riebeeck. It was an institution run by the Dutch Reformed Church, and although we weren’t Afrikaans or Dutch Reformed, they believed it was the only suitable place for me. A home from home for decent young Christian women, my mother said the day they left me in Durban. They were deeply concerned about my spiritual welfare, and thought I’d be safer there with Huisvader Oosthuizen and his wife to act in loco parentis. Huis Maria, as it was called, was in Lower Glenwood, within far walking distance of the campus, and from the outset it depressed me. These days there seems to be a cheap housing complex on the site, shoddily built little whitewashed simplexes that nonetheless look infinitely more cheerful than it ever was. Back in 1975 everyone was into modern, colourful decor, but Huis Maria was housed in a grim, ill-lit old building to which an extra wing had been added. Mercifully, my room wasn’t in the dismal main house, but I had to have breakfast and
5
supper in the gloomy communal dining room. The huge flamboyant tree is still there, though, peeping over the wall with its topping of electric strands and barbed wire, and every time I drive past I think of its scarlet blossoms blazing outside my window, their vibrant colour clashing with the thin, unlined lilac floral curtains. Sometimes on windy nights the long wooden pods fell down on the corrugated zinc roof above me, waking me with a start. My parents dropped me off on the Friday evening before the orientation week was due to start, saying I needed to settle in over the weekend, and I spent two miserable days in a strange town with very little money, no friends, and an uncertain future looming. I’d looked forward to leaving home and starting my studies, but the reality was isolation, boredom and insecurity, and I remember crying myself to sleep the first few nights. Despite my mother’s blithe comment that she supposed I would soon get to know lots of young people, some of whom might become lifelong friends, I had little in common with the other girls at the hostel; they were all Afrikaans, seemed to know each other already, and made no effort to make my acquaintance. On the Sunday morning, depressed, gorged with chocolate and close to tears, I caught a bus to the place where the local branch of The Waters of Galilee held its services, at that time the Umbilo home of Pastor Bacon. Pastor Bacon was a friend of my father’s. He had started The Waters of Galilee as an offshoot of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, and it had subsequently spread to Port Shepstone, Pietermaritzburg, and one of the towns in Zululand. My father was an elder in the Port Shepstone congregation, and had often met Pastor Bacon at church synods. When I received the bursary and chose the University of Durban, my parents asked him to keep an eye on me, as they believed I was moving to a metropolis where sin was rife, and where a young girl might easily be led astray by improper influences. And as I arrived at the house that first Sunday morning, having followed directions on a map drawn by my
6