I have often spoken of death.
Sometimes it comes as a loud scream, a deliberate big bang, but sometimes it is strangely silent as if there is royalty in its element. And then there is the earth where we physically bend the body, dust it and pay our respects or the ash we have on our hands. And then, when the family gets together to eat, to have dinner, to break bread, there are many things that I suppose they give up, that they let go or not. Head underwater is the only place where I can drop all these things. There is no echo, nothing to distract me here, I evaporate like smoke. And it is the only place where I find God. It’s not pouring rain, serotonin wires, dopamine, electrolytes popping out of my head, nightmares that come to me in the middle of the night that worry me so much, and illness.
His skin was red, orange and green, it tasted like butter. A mango is delicious from the first time you taste it. I tried my first proper mango in Swaziland (all that goodness came with its warmth, that sweetness in my breath, juice on my clothes, sticky fingers, but the shadows must be found somewhere and all I wanted to see was London). I remember the mangoes you kept for me until I came home from school (you put them in the fridge until it cooled down, the orange strings of the pulp). We would have avocado toast or French toast with fresh coriander leaves fried in creamy butter or hot dogs and chips as only you could make them where Swaziland was my home for a year. You died before your time, my second mother. Your pale hands, dark hair and as you got sick with more weight you lost but you were still beautiful to me. The leaves shake and rot in the fall, they go round and round. You were my shining star among all souls. I miss you epic every day. There is a loss that comes with breathing. But the stranger in the ghost house has no voice. It does not speak of self-help, lifespan. A double life, red dust, dead parakeets, sweat running down his wife’s back, Liberace’s madness and despair. Something is not anchored but it still works wonderfully, it is productive. It’s called family and the consciousness of coming home, a flag was planted here in the southern desert where a genocide took place, there is whiskey in a glass, a cocktail in the afternoon. Books that are a sanctuary. An Eric Clapton record is playing. The red dust in this county doesn’t speak of self-help. There is a suicide. Death in a river. And the police have arrived. This is August: Osage County.
The police arrive in the middle of the night. Like the plainclothes detectives who came to my house in the middle of the night when my brother took a knife and stabbed my father. There is nothing romantic about it. About the onslaught of death, of me catching up with you like a thief in the night, a cat thief, a cat drowning in a bag with its kittens, this is how I felt like a drowning visitor. I saw guns that night that I led a double life. I pretended not to see or hear anything and inside I was numb. When I saw my father’s blood. It had an oppressive quality like everything in my life until now. The drugs refused to work. So I drank more and more and slept all day and all night.
The double life of the romantic jasmine. Live, die and live and die as people. I can talk and talk and no one will listen to my conversations, they will eavesdrop. On the winter road I met men looking at goats. Men who were good dancers or American soldiers who took German lovers during the war. Men who were good actors, some were heavy drinkers in my mind, and philanthropists. The knife was sharp. It hit the air over and over and over again. And then it anchored itself in the skin. I did not yell. I was the knot of a scout. I ran in my sandals to the neighbor’s house as fast as my feet could carry me. Outside, the air felt cool as rain. How do I wish it had rained? But that night it did not rain and they called the police.
There is no romance in death. Hair and meat loosen. And still dad stood, unafraid. My brother was prancing around all of us, smirking, smirking deceptively, tall was eating his cake and eating it too. He pinned Daddy on the bed with his arms like shark teeth. My mother had run away in the dark. I was left with notes of mourning, a stem and a route to follow. A blooming heart that bleeds in waves, beating fast. It was Christmas. But there were no gifts, just a wintry road to follow.
To hell if I never fall in love. It is a case of much ado about nothing. I lost my mind and recovered in the hospitals. Once again, anchor yourself to reality in recovery. I have no brother and I have no sister. I have no mother and I have no father. They live their own life, that’s why they have fun, you all selfish. As long as they keep me protected in Pandora’s box. It’s a box full of romantic villagers of my own making. What a comfort they are to me. I am an orphan on the hungry path of Okri. I am the Lolita of Nabokov and Kubrick. And soon I will be forgotten as a breath. The movable is a party of sex, romance and death. Damaged, spoiled, spoiled but I must not talk about it.
It will be my death and I will have to live without the disease, the stain of trauma for a while longer, sit on my throne, pick up bones like arrows that fall from the sky. Curiosity has killed me. Men have killed me extraordinarily. But I have nine extraordinary lives and I am left smiling like the Cheshire cat.
This is the brother I’m supposed to love. I no longer admire him. I feel nothing for him when I remember that night from hell. House of hunger. House of hell, madness and despair. If I had a gun, we’d all be dead. I cut the onion, seduced by its layers. And I cry for the lost, gems each. There are diamonds in my eyes and I blink to return them. My youth, my youth, my youth and there is no ring. No ring on my finger, all those chronic wasted years. Now he is Lucifer manning the door to the halls of hell. My beautiful and dear child, what has become of you?
The secrets we keep are memorized. They are lessons about the needs of the people around us, a lesson in obedience, sometimes even wisdom. And it takes bold work for us to realize that the future is bright when we are sometimes challenged, when we have to achieve my glory. And make it a ceremony. There are deep ingredients that are used to make spaghetti bolognese. Family is, of course, the first priority. Next the butcher, the mint from the garden and the limes for the cocktails. Steps on the stairs and laughter scribbling in the air.
Perhaps avocados were the first fruits (food for thought) in the Garden of Eden even before Eve was made from Adam’s rib through the maturation of a human soul and a moving vortex. Sun and moon. They are miraculous angelic beginners every day. Daughters nicknamed this way for jasmine and yesterday, today and tomorrow. And then, as if awakened from a dream, the day begins.
Head under water. Silently pushing himself off the wall of the pool in lap after lap. This is where I find my sanctuary, my second home, and the comfort of the outside world. I am not like the other girls. They are all younger, slimmer and more confident even though they are still flat chested and flirting from where I am standing. Dip back into the water. I pray that tonight will not be the house of hell again. I’m watching movies, reading books, cleaning my father’s ass (there are no secrets between us). We talk about our past lives, our nine lives, the love and measure of it, how the devil made work for the idle hands during apartheid, during the Group Areas Act, the Nazi warlords, the Hotel Rwanda. We talk about the women in his life, past and present, the first woman he loved and lost, and the measure of it. I get distracted. He gets distracted and I get up to make cups of coffee, warm coffee. We are talking about Valkenburg (the mental institution in Cape Town where he resided for a few months).
The first social worker you ever met. This is all because of the book that I am writing. Following in their footsteps. Night after night I cook a casserole and we both sit down to eat at the kitchen table. Walk, drag your feet, walk and drag your feet. Sometimes he sits outside with Misty, the dog in the sun. He’s forgetful, stutters, has a short attention span, but I guess memory loss comes with age. Last night he wet the bed. There are people who would scoff at this situation, but when you’re knee deep with someone you love, intimacy is nothing, acknowledging that he is getting old is everything. I have become an old woman overnight. Suddenly I have gray hair, the wisdom of a lake, a slight tremor in my hands, I suffer from anxiety and I cannot sleep at night. He calls me in the middle of the night. He needs me and that teaches me that I am not cruel. Now I am a woman. Something has replaced the darkness in my life. I have discovered the root of meditation.
His face, his journey, the trip of my life in this crowded house and tears. My mother washes the clothes. After all, she was not such a terrible woman. If only all women could be like her. Hard. Made of holy guts, an insatiable instinct, almost a clairvoyant instinct. Live like a nun and eat like one these days. He eats like a bird making soup, after soup after soup that only the three of us eat. As an adult, I fell in love with the wonderful goodness of barley and the healthy protein of lentils. The split peas remind me of eating a homemade meal in the evenings at my paternal grandmother’s house in the afternoons. My paternal grandmother’s hands were beautiful. Withered from arthritis, dark brown. Warm with the texture of the sun and freckled. She was my moon, my moonlight and elegant. She offered us bowls of soup with homemade bread that tasted more nutritious and filling than store-bought. My mother promises us all a long life if we drink herbal mixtures.
Dried rosemary, tinctures, tonics, homemade green smoothies with parsley, spinach from our garden and coconut milk. Head under water I reflect, I meditate, I breathe calmly. I swim with the fish, shoals of them in this pool. Light a candle in my heart when I drink water. My brother makes stews with his homegrown carrots and corn. All I can do is spaghetti. Frieda’s spaghetti. It’s so cold now. The world feels so cold I feel like Iraq has fallen back into my thoughts. Sarajevo. Rwanda and the children of northern Uganda. I am a young woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I must be strong to keep going, be brave, act bold. Sometimes I can listen to Tchaikovsky. My father has gone to bed. Depression (William-Styron type) again. I wonder if John Updike ever suffered from depression. I know Hemingway certainly did. What about JM Coetzee, Radclyffe Hall, Vladimir Nabokov, Kubrick? What about heavy drinkers, filmmakers, writers, poets?
But I leave that up to God for your comment, all those signs. I am old before my time. I am an old soul. Complicated, empty vessel, envious of beauty like any woman, of youth, of girls, of children in childhood. My babies are my books.
And sometimes I feel dead inside (not numb or cold). Like I have a crossed subconscious mind. Like he’s lame, pathetic, stupid, and has a blue eye. Blue like the sky on a wild Saturday and the other green. As green as a mocking sea, shoal of mocking fish that continue, surf, swim by their own survival skills with their world in a terrible blue silence.
With the fingers of the sky so far from them.