Black Dog Summer (18 page)

“We don't
have
to get something to eat, you know.”

“I know.”

“I'm not even hungry anyway,” Bryony mutters, and Gigi says nothing. Bryony's sure that her silly little slice of toast and jam has worn off by now. “You can get something if you want, though.”

“There's nothing here that I'd touch with a ten-foot pole,” Gigi says. “It's all just animal products and carcinogens.”

“Ja,” Bryony agrees; even if she doesn't know what Gigi is on about, it sounds pretty bad. “There's a music shop up that way if you want to check it out.”

“OK.” And as one, the girls turn and walk down another iridescent corridor. Bryony notices that, even among the jostling crowds, Gigi is very cautious about whom she walks close to. She holds herself especially stiff, with her arms close in to her sides, when any black man walks past. Sometimes she even flinches.

“Are you a racist?” Bryony asks with genuine interest. She's been hearing about racists a lot at school lately because they are studying South Africa's history. As far as she's aware, the only racists now are just a few old people.

“What?”

“A racist, you know. Like apartheid and all that.”

“I know what a racist is, and no, I'm not.”

“The way you looked at that black guy—”

“Jeez, are you like some kind of undercover spy for the government or something?” Gigi snaps, and Bryony's face goes boiling hot. Gigi is the second person to accuse her of spying. This makes her think of Lesedi, and of what she said about darkness moving into their house, and her fingers go all numb and cold.

“Simone says that race is just an illusion anyway,” Gigi continues in a softer tone. “That we're all one.”

“One what?”

“Just one.”

“Oh, I see,” says Bryony, who doesn't. “So what's this Simone person like then?”

“She's very enlightened.” Gigi stops beside a shop window display full of mannequins in tropical-colored bathing suits, their plastic feet embedded in artfully arranged sand. “And beautiful.”

“Like how?”

“She has long, long brown hair, and she washes it with rosemary so it's always supershiny and never has any dandruff or anything.”

“Rosemary? Like you use to cook roast lamb with?” Bryony tries to imagine how you would wash your hair with a bunch of spiky little leaves.

“I guess so. Only Simone never cooks lamb. She cares for animals, she doesn't eat them.”

“Like you.”

“Ja, like me.” Gigi's cheeks go a pleased pink. “I'm a lot like Simone in many ways. Some people used to think that she was actually my mom.”

“Not Aunty Sally?”

“No, Mom looked more like you and Adele, same white-blond hair.”

“I can hardly remember her,” Bryony says. “Except that she didn't wear any mascara.”

“I'm going inside,” Gigi says sharply, and strides away from Bryony and through the music shop doors, flinching when the security guard that stands at the entrance to check people's bags and sales slips gives her a friendly grin.

Through the glass and between the promotional stickers advertising the release of the latest Pixar movie on DVD, Bryony watches her cousin march purposefully towards a shelf of CDs and then stop and stand, staring at nothing, her face hidden in shadow.

I stopped wearing mascara the year that Liam kissed me in the parking lot.

A decade later, when I was working on the farm and up to my armpits in dust and animal mess and hair and blood, mascara would've been ridiculous, but long before that, in that sticky Johannesburg summer, stopping wearing it had felt like an act of courage.

I didn't stop wearing it the very next day after the drunken kiss; at first I waited, breathless, to see what would happen. Would he tell her? Leave her? Kiss me in secret again? And then, when nothing at all changed and it became clearer and clearer that his decision had been made, and I was not it, I threw that little tube of black tar in the bin. The bin in my bedroom was the same one I'd had since I was about six, and still sported a silly girlish motif of flowers and kittens on one side; the mascara tube clattered very loudly against its metal sides when I dropped it in.

Unlike my sister, who would rather be caught dead than be seen without her makeup on, I was now the brave one who dared to show my true face to the world. When I arrived at varsity the next day, a number of people asked me if I was ill, but I shrugged it off and wore my pale lashes and indistinct eyebrows like some strange war mask in the silent battle that Liam had sparked off between my sister and me.

Of course, Adele had no idea that there was a battle at all. In her opinion, I was still good old Monkey, great for late-night chats and going shopping and helping her study.

It was only years later, in her and Liam's glossy kitchen, that she both woke up to the war and vanquished me in one terrible instant.

Gigi, thinking that she is unobserved, has made it out of the Wildings' front gate and is about to head up the road towards the silent sanctuary of number 22 when Tyler calls out to her.

“Hey,” he says, and she turns, flip-flops skidding on the ornamental pebbles beneath the fever tree. He trots up behind her, grinning, squinting eyes almost closed against the glare of the sun. “Where are you going?”

“Nowhere.” She shrugs and digs her hands into the pockets of her jeans. The heavy fabric is absurd and cloying in this heat, but she needs to hide the wounds on her legs (she's willing them to heal faster before school starts on Monday). She remembers Tyler's knee bumping into her bare leg that night in front of the TV and curls her hands into fists inside her pockets.

“Looks like you're on a mission.”

“Nope. Just getting some air.”

“I'll walk with you,” he says, but she just shrugs again and leans her spine against the slender trunk of the tree.

“Wasn't going anywhere.”

“Oh.” The shadows of the leaves and thorns make speckled patterns on his cheeks, and in the sunny patches Gigi can see the very beginnings of his soft blond beard starting. Johan had a blond beard. He used to tickle her with it when she was a little girl and make her
squeal and laugh. But this year, Gigi had found herself unable to look at Johan's stubble without a strange, melty feeling darting between her belly button and her crotch.

For weeks, Gigi kept herself awake at night, squirming in her bed as she imagined cupping Johan's jaw between her palms and tipping her head back so that he could lower his lips to hers.

She'd had no one to tell about her sudden crush, and the strange heat of it had built up inside her, swirling around her head and coloring all her thoughts until she was giddy with it.

Then, just last month, four days before the incident, they'd been crouching together in the dirt road as he showed her how to identify a duiker spoor they'd found and Gigi had sucked in her breath, turned towards Johan, and reached up to place her finger right in the tanned secret hollow at the base of his throat. Johan had yanked away from her touch, his eyes cloudy, before standing up and brushing the dust from his shorts.

“Let's get back now,” he'd said, turning towards the house. “Maybe we should give the bush walks a break for a while, hey? Your biology skills are pretty sharp already, and I think your ma wants you to spend some more time focusing on some of your other subjects.”

The stinging memory of his rejection is suddenly overshadowed by the more recent one of Johan's sliced-open shin. It had looked as if someone had pulled a zipper down the front of his bare leg to reveal gleaming red and bone.

For a moment, Gigi cannot breathe. Her arms and legs go cold. The blood can no longer circulate through her body properly; all its iron is concentrating on keeping her upright.

“You OK?” Tyler whispers in concern. “Sometimes when I think what you must've been through . . . I don't know . . . it's amazing that you're still—”

“What? Alive?” she snaps. Her breath comes back in a rush. “It's harder to die than you think, you know. The human body doesn't just stop because you've had enough; it fights to live.” She scowls down at the pebbles at her feet. There's a tiny beetle crawling slowly across the smooth white bulge of the biggest one.

“Have you seen someone die?” Tyler asks, and then his eyes widen
in shock: “Hey, they said you only arrived on the scene after it all happened—you weren't there like . . . before, were you?”

“Why would you think I'd want to talk about this, Tyler?” she says sharply.

“Sorry.” He swallows. “I'm an asshole. Forget it.” He feels the blush burning up his neck; it's the first time Gigi has said his name.

The silence between them blooms and swells into something huge and crystalline, and although they both ache to leave, they're rooted to the spot by its weight. A breeze ruffles the leaves above their heads, and its breath is followed by engine noise and then the arrival of a silver GTI. The car purrs up to the curb and idles in front of Tyler and Gigi as its occupants wait for their electronic garage door to open. The man smiles and waves, and the woman with the long braids in the passenger seat turns to smile too, and, when she does, Gigi feels as if all the shifting shadows inside her head are on display. She gasps and turns away as gooseflesh rips up and down her arms.

Finally, the Matsunyanes' garage door is open and the GTI moves away.

“Our neighbors,” Tyler says. “They're pretty cool. About the only people in this place who aren't stuck-up snobs.”

“Uh-huh.” Gigi realizes that he's not going to leave her in peace, and number 22 will have to wait. She starts to move back towards the Wildings' house, but Tyler stops her with a touch on her arm. The feel of his hand is gentle and electric at the same time and sends little sparks of confusion darting over her skin.

“I'm sorry about before, about making you think of all that stuff that happened, Gigi.”

“You didn't
make
me think of it. I'm always thinking about it.” She walks back through the garden gate.

Adele closes her bedroom door and stands for a moment with her back to it. Her eyes are closed and the lids look tissue-paper thin, their veins very blue. I recognize the large old photo album with its brown cover and bent corners that she hugs to her chest, and
remember the argument we had over who should keep it, back when she and Liam had just gotten married. Of course, Adele won.

Adele goes over to the bed and clambers up onto the vast king-sized mattress with its dove-gray coverlet and curls her legs beneath her as she used to do when she was a little girl. Slowly, she opens the album, breathing in the familiar scent of the old pages. There's Adele and me at Umhlanga beach in our 1970s crocheted swimming costumes: she is two years old, round-tummied and white-haired, and I am four and sensible, holding her dimpled hand to stop her from running off.

Adele touches the clear plastic sheet that covers my face; her fingers are trembling. She turns the page, and then another: family Christmases with wilting tinsel and glass bowls of tinned fruit cocktail; Mom in graphic print dresses and clogs; Dad in an outrageous blue suit that I can't remember him ever wearing; me with two long, white plaits and a grin on my first day of school. The pages turn.

“Addy?” Liam calls out before pushing open the bedroom door. He is pink and damp from the golf course and brings the sharp scent of sweat and grass into the room.

“Hey,” says Adele, but she doesn't look up; she's staring at the picture Dad took of us in the tipuana tree. Adele is perched like a slender bird on the lowest branch, just twelve but already beautifully put together in red shorts and a white T-shirt with round red apples printed on it. I am clinging to the trunk, fourteen and awkward and not quite smiling, with a terrible eighties haircut and a big bulky top that hides my rather insignificant breasts.

“Shit . . .” Liam breathes as he comes up beside his wife. “Look at that.”

“I look like Bryony, don't I?”

“Ja,” he agrees, and turns the page: Adele in a school play as a mermaid, made up with swoops of green, glittery eye shadow. Liam gives a little laugh. “What a cutie.” He sits down on the bed, and Adele says nothing about the dirty streak he leaves on the duvet.

On the second last page is a picture of me and Adele that was taken during the holiday before I went to university and met Liam: we're at the beach again, Cape St. Francis this time. Mom took the
picture. By that stage, Dad wasn't well enough to do much but sit on the balcony of the sea-view apartment we'd rented for the summer. Even while we were on it, that trip became known as our “last family holiday.”

Liam stares down at the two girls with their arms around each other in the photograph and feels a terrible tightness in his chest. The sisters are both very tanned, and their hair is almost white from the sun, their heads tilted towards each other so that it's impossible to tell exactly where one head ends and the other begins. They are both so clear-eyed and beautiful that his breath catches in his throat and for the first time ever he knows.

He knows why he chose Adele.

If he'd gone with Sally, Adele would've moved on, found someone else (or many someone elses, more likely), and he would've had only one of the sisters in his life and that wasn't good enough. It was not a conscious decision that he could remember making, but somehow, nineteen-year-old Liam knew that, if he chose Adele, he could have the petite, slant-eyed, sexy one, and still be best friends with the tall, loving, funny one. Sally didn't demand to be the center of attention the way Adele did. She would stay on the sidelines (doglike and loyal), and, in his way, Liam could keep them both.

He gets off the bed so suddenly that the album bounces against Adele's knees.

“Liam?”