Not a Fairytale (14 page)

His home is filled with books and mirrors. Why would a beast like him need mirrors? I do not know the woman his mirrors tell me I have become. She is gorgeous. She is without truths. So I read and I escape for hours into the only reality I have.

Still, each day the sun sets and I must trudge up the stairs to the black bedroom where he waits. He says I am his light. In the dark I see gleaming eyes worshipping me the way a sunflower follows the sun.

When he loosens my auburn hair, his claws scrape at my skull. He says I should not brush it; he wants birds to nest in it. He says my skin feels like warmed silk. I think of mulberry silkworms existing in captivity, boiled alive in their cocoons to ensure the extraction of the lengthiest strands of silk. He says he wants to clean me with his tongue. I tell him water and soap work better, but he doesn’t hear me.

I find a use for the diamonds: they can cut like his raspy tongue. They can slice open layers of skin, exposing fat and muscle and sinew and the marrow in bones. There will be lumps and ridges when my skin knits together. He won’t like it if I’m beastly.

E
ARLY MORNING
,
BEFORE SUNRISE
,
SHE HOLDS THEIR HEADS
, one in each hand, as they guzzle at her breasts, making little grunts of bliss, their bodies tucked around hers. She’s sitting up, propped against pillows, and she can see her older child sleeping at the bottom of the bed, like a puppy, his bottle dangling from a milk-swollen lower lip. He has kicked off his comfort-blankie and she can see goosebumps on the skin of his calves where the pants of his pyjamas have ridden up. She grasps the soft quilt that her daadi made her before she was born between the toes of her right foot and gently covers him.

The four of them have been sharing a bed since the twins’ birth six months ago. Zain doesn’t like the nightly squeals of feeds and nappy changes caused by the trio. They interrupt his sleep; he says the nightly disturbances are making him look haggard in the morning. He reminds her that he is the one earning money to feed all of them, so he’s taken to sleeping in the bedroom at the far end of the passage.

She barely sees him anymore, except when she makes him breakfast. He insists on cooked porridge, no packets of convenient cold cereal, and eggs fried sunny-side up, the way his mother makes them. Sometimes she bumps into him when she goes to make Muhammad a bottle at two in the morning. He’ll be sitting at the kitchen counter having a Coke, reading yesterday’s newspaper; he might even acknowledge her with a glance. Usually she tries to hold her breath, but sometimes the odour of his earlier pursuits hangs over the kitchen like fog, impossible for her to avoid, reminding her of the cheap perfume he gave her when the twins were born. She used it once – it made the babies sneeze.

Her days are heavy with the babies. Milk feeds, then runny cereal for the twins and his father’s leftover porridge for Muhammad. She bathes and dresses them individually, singing loudly to placate the others, then puts them down for a morning nap. She rinses, sterilises, washes the previous day’s nappies, cleans the kitchen, gets lunch ready – pureed vegetables for the twins, fingers of fish and peas for Muhammad – and there are still the rooms to clean and Zain’s supper to prepare.

Most days go by without her seeing or talking to another adult. Sometimes she wakes up from a half-doze and can’t remember her name, or why she is surrounded by small bodies.

S
ALENA DRIVES TO THE BEACH AND LETS THE BOYS LOOSE
on the blue waters. They shriek and shiver, and her eyes follow their every move, watching the drops of clear water that twinkle on their eyelashes and run down their soft skin. She remembers the sea, the beach, as a swirl of shadows, recalls singing a lullaby to Zuhra as they waited for their father’s anger to subside.

She is twenty-three years old but feels middle-aged. Every day she ticks the same tasks off her imaginary list; each day is the same. Often she thinks she would welcome death with a soft sigh of relief, a deserved reward. But then she remembers the children, her anchors to this life.

Most mornings the boys wake early, demanding breakfasts of porridge and sticky fruit juice, after which they need their bums washed, their teeth brushed, their bodies covered in goblin-sized clothes. Muhammad must have his vest and underpants turned inside out, or the labels will itch him. Raqim needs his socks perfectly aligned over his little toes or his takkie will be unhappy. Makeen will not wear anything that has red in it, not even a red cotton thread, and will not wear shoes on his feet, only his hands.

Her brain manages through automatic functioning – remembers to tell the heart to beat, the lungs to inhale and exhale – but all waking and sleeping thoughts are controlled by the three boys who tug at her heart and twist her, like the dough they play with and mould into distorted animal shapes. She is their willing captive; they imprison her each night anew with their sleepy smiles.

If Salena could gaze into her future, she would choose to pause her life forever at this moment of bliss and boys, because the future holds a tragic blow.

In a few weeks’ time, while Zain sleeps dreamlessly on his mother’s brown leather couch, his body full of her steak and sweet yellow rice, Mrs Parker will take her much adored grandchildren into the garden. And she will leave them alone briefly as she retrieves letters from the postbox.

Little, last-born Makeen will toddle away from his brothers, pushing past the unlocked gate, and will slip into the pool, trying to reach a mysterious yellow rubber duck. His tears will mingle with the chlorinated water, and he will float to the surface like a dead leaf, waiting to be discovered by his hysterical grandmother and disbelieving father.

Salena will not accept Makeen’s death. She will not believe that the warm sun continues to light the world while her boy lies under layers of damp, dark soil. She will continue to shop for three boys, throwing out Makeen’s old clothes and replacing them with new garments, never to be worn. His room will become a shrine to him and a sanctuary for her. Everyone else will avoid the room; she’ll spend her waking hours lying on the carpet, waiting for him to come back.

In the years ahead, Salena will dream of Makeen’s last moments, hear his water-logged cries in the middle of rainy nights, and wake up to count the breaths of her living boys, until they are long grown, until they leave her house.

One day, travelling on a plane to be by Zuhra’s sickbed, Salena will meet an American traveller. Deep into the dark flight, she will listen as her neighbour, his tongue loosened and made maudlin by the free liquor of South African Airways, blurts out the story of his baby’s death. He will tell her of his one-hundred-and-one-day-old daughter, forgotten in the rush to get to work, entombed in his car in a stripmall parking lot, a mere five metres from his dental offices. Salena, watching the child die in the flickering heat of the car, will listen and weep for both children. Accidents happen. She will stop blaming herself; she will realise her need to be healed.

But all this is in the future. Today, at the beach, Salena has her three boys around her, and the sun pours its rays like honey over her children, turning their yellow skins brown, brightening their smiles.

M
UHAMMAD WAKES HER UP FROM A REVERIE IN
an old garden chair, where she’s been sitting for an hour or more. She’d been aware of the boys playing noisily behind her in the old limbs of the loquat tree, but only notices the silence when Muhammad shakes her shoulder hard.

Raqim has climbed to the top of the tree and swung himself, like an agile monkey, onto the flat roof of the garage. There he squats, immobile, wide-eyed, looking down at her like a trapped cat. Her heart contracts painfully but she tells him calmly that she is going to get the stepladder from inside the garage and bring him down, instructing Muhammad to chat to his brother while she fetches it.

She carries the ladder outside, props it up against the garage wall, and negotiates the dozen or so steps to the edge of the roof. She motions Raqim to her and he rises, as obedient as yeasty dough. With her right hand she pulls him to her and settles his body against her hip, before retreating down the ladder in reverse, holding onto it with her left hand: a slow descent that seems to cover many miles. Back on the ground Muhammad shakes his head.

That night Salena wakes up a few minutes before the witching hour, confirming the time with a glance at the clock next to her bed. She waits. Punctually, at midnight, his screams shatter the silence. She glances over at Zain’s side of the bed, undisturbed. She drags herself out of bed, her body rising along with the screams, but when she gets to his room she is too late; Muhammad is already there, climbing into his brother’s bed.

She stands in the doorway, watches her eldest son cover Raqim with the duvet, pat his brother’s back, whisper words into his ear. She feels a lump in her throat; she wishes she could be consoled like that. As abruptly as he wakes up, Raqim goes back to sleep. Still, she waits until both boys’ breathing becomes regular before leaving.

Back in her own bed she hugs a pillow to her body, aware that she won’t be able to sleep for a while. Raqim’s nightmares began three years ago, shortly after Makeen’s death. Night after night he wakes up bewildered and howling, a lost puppy. Sometimes she gets there before Muhammad and holds Makeen, rocking him back to sleep, slowly silencing his pain. Some nights he will only accept reassurances from Muhammad. Zuhra has suggested she get Raqim a cat, something warm and furry and alive to cuddle at night.

The next day Salena takes the boys to the local animal shelter where they tell the woman in charge to choose a kitten on their behalf. She brings in a tattered black beast, with half a sagging tail. He’d been dumped from a moving car on the nearby freeway and brought in to the shelter by a driver who had witnessed the incident. Raqim reaches for him, murmuring into his raggedy fur. Peanut Butter. They become inseparable and, after a few weeks, night-time in their house is peaceful, only interrupted by Zain’s clumsy early-morning returns.

T
HE EARLY MORNING WINTER LIGHT CLIMBS THROUGH
the kitchen blinds to play in the soapy water. Salena is at the sink, washing the serving dishes in preparation for Zain’s guests. She gazes up occasionally at her reflection in the kitchen window, milky with raindrops.

It’s Ramadan, and Zain has invited three of his colleagues and their families to eat at their house. Salena can’t decide what to make as a main meal, but her sons have inappropriately suggested gingerbread boys for dessert. She decides to phone Zuhra for some suggestions. Her sister tells her she’s an idiot to be wasting her cooking skills on people she doesn’t know or care about. Zuhra, her first semester of university behind her, proposes that Zain is a chauvinistic moron and that Salena should insist that he take them all out for supper.

She hasn’t used this crockery set in years, not since Makeen’s death. She wipes away the excess dust before immersing each dish in the water, wishing it were so easy to wash away her memories. If only she could make a gingerbread Makeen-boy and breathe life into him.

Behind her, at the breakfast nook, the boys are eating porridge with the rapidity and relish of growing bodies. She turns and catches Muhammad licking his snout joyfully. Raqim offers up a bowl, cleaned of all food debris, ready, he says, to be returned to the kitchen cupboard.

Salena still cannot believe, five years after Makeen’s death, that life continues to surge ahead. Each day, when she looks at Raqim, she imagines the stark contrast between this breathing boy and his replica, now skeleton and teeth, in his small, once-white shroud. There are days when Makeen’s absence weighs heavily on her. Without the boys’ incessant chatter and demands, she doubts she would ever get out of bed.

She stares out the window that she cleaned the previous day with newspapers and methylated spirits, watches the rain run off the glass, and falls into her favourite reverie, the one in which she has three sons.

In her dream it is late at night. Her three sons are asleep in their beds, while outside, beyond the safety of the house and garden, cars splash through puddles of rising water. Lightning bolts brighten the sky like fireworks during Diwali. Salena is alone in the kitchen – Zain is still at the office, working late, as usual.

In her imagination it is not the phone that transmits the news, the way it did when Makeen died. Instead, the doorbell rings, and at the door are two policemen.
I’m sorry, your husband has died in a car crash
. And she cries, but not too much; her mascara does not leave black streaks on her cheeks.

The rain stops, a little sunlight shines through the window. It is not midnight, and behind her there are only two boys, and Zain is still breathing, somewhere, with someone else.

Burfi

500 g Nestlé powdered milk

1 can Nestlé cream

250 g icing sugar