Not a Fairytale (17 page)

“I’m sorry,” said Mother Toad, “but your daughter’s really pretty, and I want my son to marry someone beautiful instead of a relative. I want good-looking grandchildren!”

“So you kidnapped her? How dare you! Where is my child?”

Mother Toad hung her head and explained that the girl had been rescued by a fish and a butterfly from her lily-pad prison, and had escaped before the wedding ceremony could take place.

The woman had always been kind to animals before, caring for them, not eating their flesh, not even wearing their skins, but now she discovered a brutality in her character of which she’d been unaware; it was the fierceness of her maternal love. She placed her inelegant bare heel on the toad’s back and crushed the creature under her foot, hardly noticing the oozing slime that squelched beneath her sole as she strode off on her quest to find her daughter.

She began by interrogating the insects. Then she found a field mouse that had provided her daughter with shelter in exchange for housework and agreeing to marry the mouse’s neighbour, an elderly blind mole. The second arranged marriage proposition her poor child had had to endure. Mrs Mouse said a sick swallow had flown off with the girl before the wedding. The mother was livid on her daughter’s behalf. She made short work of Mrs Mouse and Mr Mole; they were soon in greener pastures. But still she could not find her daughter.

She hired a private investigator, she visited a psychic, she approached the media for help, but to no avail. Then one day the mother heard a knock on her front door, a rat-tat-tat that she recognised instantly. She rushed to the door and there stood her baby, her daughter, still small, but all grown up, with wings, and as lovely as ever.

“Mom,” she cried, and enveloped her mother in a hug as strong as a bear. Then she recounted her adventures, from the moment the toad (her mother had long ago got the exterminator in, and all the toads on the property had gone to watery graves) had stolen her from her mother’s side to her escape from the mole and the mouse (moles had been bombed underground, mice had been trapped) on the back of a kind swallow she’d nursed back to health. The mother decided not to mention the spell she’d been developing to ground and mute birds forever.

Then she shyly showed her mother a sparkling ring of hardened nectar. “My prince,” she said, “of the Blossoms. My choice; my own kind. I met him in a flower, and we’ve spent a lot of time getting to know each other. He’s given me wings as a pre-nuptial gift: I can fly close to the sun, I can feel its rays on my back, the infinite blue sky is my playground. I am small, but no longer locked.”

The mother was silent. Then she said, “Well, if you’re sure you’re happy, I’ll learn to tolerate a son-in-law.”

O
NE MORNING
,
SOME MONTHS AFTER RETURNING
from a prolonged visit to Zuhra, who was recovering from a breast cancer scare, Salena wakes up realising that what she feels towards Zain is more than spousal animosity: she truly despises him. She is sick of hearing how she doesn’t contribute to the household financially, how every possession belongs to him, and worn out by all the years of cleaning up after him.

For the first time in their married lives, they are the only people in the house. The years she has spent guiding her sons through school have paid off, although Zain does not consider her mothering worthy of the title “labour”. Muhammad has completed his medical studies but has decided to take a year off to travel before deciding which field to specialise in, and Raqim is fulfilling his dream of becoming a vet, studying at an American university full-time and working part-time to supplement his financial support.

She and Zain are alone in a five-bedroom, six-bathroom house, unless you count the
TV
s that Zain collects as living entities. They embody most rooms with their non-stop chattering channels.

She notices the three towels he scatters on the bathroom floor like empty sweet wrappers. She sees his socks forsaken in piteous piles. One pair at the bottom of the stairs, another pair in front of the lounge
TV
; once, incongruously, a single, smelly sock next to the stove.

In the morning, evidence of his bedtime snacks are lying on the floor next to his side of the bed. The curl of a naartjie peel. A packet of Marie biscuits with just one biscuit left. A half-empty bottle of juice. In his study, his jeans lie discarded on the floor, the shape of his bum still stamped on them.

She observes.

At night, in bed, while she reads, he cleans his nose, rubbing the snot between thumb and index finger before bouncing it onto the wooden floors.

She watches.

In the mornings, she sees the devastation in the kitchen. He has left five dirty glasses from the night before, with remnants of Coke or juice still in them. Then various breakfast plates, a coffee mug, un-eaten toast. He leaves a trail of crumbs and used cutlery from kitchen to dining room to lounge to bathroom, to bed.

That night, when he arrives home, he pours a glass of water, sips at it, discards the glass. Then he reaches for another glass, fills it with juice, and leaves the juice carton next to the sink. At the table, he pours a third glass, Coke, to accompany his meal.

He burrows into the plate with his right hand, food marinating his fingers to the uppermost knuckles, sauce saturating his chin, reminding her of Faruk’s table manners. In the middle of eating, he rises from the table, carrying puris and a chicken leg to the television, dripping food along the way, unperturbed.

She goes to bed.

The next morning, she hears from the en-suite bathroom the sound of him emptying his bowels, trumpeting out farts. Followed by the sounds of throat-clearing, gurgles and gargles in the shower. When Zain has left for work, Salena draws the curtains against the sunlight and spends the day in bed.

In the evening, he walks around his unspoilt domestic carnage, oblivious. She stands, casually clearing a space on the kitchen counter, shattering the soiled crockery on the floor. He grunts something at her from his space in front of a
TV
screen, but does not get up to see what has happened.

Salena crunches her way with bare skin over the shards, and walks upstairs to their bedroom. There are bits of crockery embedded in her feet, and she leaves a trail of blood. At the doorway, she catches her eye in the full-length mirror which is positioned against the far wall of the bedroom. Automatically, she straightens her shoulders, lifts up her neck, smoothes her hair. In front of the mirror, she lifts up her eyebrows to make her eyes widen and pulls back the skin at the outer corners of her eyes, narrows her nose and sucks in her cheeks slightly. She’s in her forties; there’s no stopping the ageing process now, unless she wants to indulge in cosmetic surgery.

In the mirror’s Mr Minned surface, she sees at least two possible futures for herself. In one, she has become her Aunt Polla, bitter and jealous and perpetually blaming others for her own wretchedness. In another, she sees red lights, brown boulders and metallic debris, molten glass – a terrifying scene, yet tempting.

Then, for the briefest second, she catches a glimpse of her beloved daadi in the mirror, and it gives her power. The mirror cracks, then shatters completely. Shards are flying around the room, but she closes her eyes, feels herself in her grandmother’s protective embrace. Peace envelops her.

After an interminable time, a whimper pierces her calm. She turns to face the sound, leaving a bloody shadow behind her, and sees Zain poised in the doorway, a shard of mirror trapped in his neck.

I know what they whisper behind my bac, I’ve seen their smirks: She used to tidy up after seven men before Prince Charming married her. Don’t they appreciate that cleanliness is next to godliness? Not one of them would know how to purify a pig-sty of a cottage let alone disinfect a dilapidated castle. Am I a domestic slave? Perhaps. But I’m not going to publicise the fact like Cinderella, self-condemned to cleaning up after others for eternity. I’ve got bigger issues.

Today, in the shadowy hours of the morning, as the enchanting mirror and I were adoring each other, I saw it. An ominous phantom, priming my snowy skin for its coal-lump future. It was nesting, near the outer corner of my right eyelid, like a viper. A hostile wrinkle casting a sickening shadow on the mirror’s satiny surface.

A howl escaped my red-as-blood lips, and the mirror sobbed its cold-comfort response, knowing I was forever changed; a crone in creation.

I have no one to turn to. At the wedding reception, the prince made my mother dance to her death in red-hot iron shoes. Mommy knew me best of all; Mommy loved me. She tried to murder me several times because she understood I could never endure the horror of maturing like a mould-ripened piece of brie, the way she had.

The prince admires my smooth flawlessness. He doesn’t want me resembling creased foil; he requires a stunning statue. At night when he slobbers over my body, he says, “Darling, don’t move, don’t breathe!” I have to pretend to sleep. It’s not that I mind indulging his necrophilic fantasies; I was at my happiest preserved in that magnificent glass casket, relentlessly beautiful, perpetually young. But then he came along and fell in love with my motionless shape. If only the dwarves had refused him, if only they hadn’t tripped while carrying my coffin, if only I hadn’t coughed up Mommy’s kind-heartedly poisoned lump of apple. If only I could stop the ghastly progression of time.

The path forward is a slick tilt into old age, a second-by-second descent into unsightliness. At least I have no one to protect: I don’t have a daughter who needs me to rescue her. I have only myself to think of.

“I’
M IN HIGH CARE
,”
THE STRANGE MAN SAYS
, unprovoked. He smiles, showing fleshy red gums, his head tilted right, his eyes shining.

“That’s … nice,” Salena replies.

“Yes, it is. Here, we have special days for high-care patients. Which section are you in?”

“I’m, er, not sure.”

“Ah, so you’ll be waiting for your interview then.”

“Yes, I suppose …”

Salena walks away from him briskly, opening the patio doors that lead into the back garden with its broad view of the mountain.

As she strolls around the sanatorium’s grounds, Salena remembers Zuhra’s humid garden and the grave she’d dug to bury the mink coat. She remembers hearing the call of the lonely alligator from the nearby Everglades; it had seemed to echo the cry that lived in her own body. When Zuhra had gone inside to eat, she’d stayed behind to listen for the alligator. But it had never called out again.

When she got better, Zuhra said she and Salena should go on a road trip, but Salena declined. She’d spent enough time in the
US
. Besides, driving made her think of cops: on their first day out, with Zuhra at the wheel, they were stopped by a burly Floridian police officer. A routine driving licence check, he said, but Salena was reminded of the Afrikaner policemen of her youth.

In her dreams, Salena could still feel their thick red fingers on her arms, like iron bracelets, as the inquisitive eyes of a squirrel watched her from a low branch. The police had asked if she and Yaseen had had sex. One had said he would put his fingers up Salena to see if she was wet, to see if she was a virgin.

Salena had pleaded, “I’m not white, I’m not white!” But they wouldn’t believe her. Then Ma had arrived, with her Indian card, and she’d known it would be worse for her at home.

In the garden, she lights the menthols she’s stolen off the front desk. She’s never smoked before, and she splutters like an old car as she inhales. She can imagine Zuhra telling her to extinguish the cigarette on Zain’s eyeball, or some other ball, but instead she stubs it out on the base of her lifeline and watches impassively as the skin darkens and shrivels. Soon there will be a new scar to join the others.

She thinks, this is not her life, this is a role to which she’s forgotten the lines, and if she looks around suddenly, she will catch the audience, watching her, laughing at her. Zain says she needs help, that she is sick, she tried to kill him. She doesn’t argue. She can’t remember. Maybe she
did
try to kill him. Maybe she
is
sick.

She remembers her conversation with Dr Galsband earlier that day. He’s convinced she meant to murder Zain. He said that if Salena had succeeded in killing Zain, she would have died, too. Perhaps not physically, but she would have been imprisoned by that act forever, a kind of death.

“Like my marriage,” said Salena.

“Would it have been worth it?”

“Yes,” said Salena. “If only for the order and cleanliness left behind by his death. But, you know, I don’t believe I tried to kill him. Maybe I was trying to kill myself.”

Dr Galsband was not impressed with her answer.

It is he who has made Salena come outside with a pencil and paper, to sit on the bench under the oak tree in the back garden and write a list of things she would miss if she were dead.

Salena takes a bite out of the apple crumble she has saved from lunch. It is the only thing that looked edible. Then, ever-obedient, she follows the doctor’s orders.

Ten things I would miss if I were dead

1.  I would miss the smell of percolated coffee in the morning.

2.  I would miss sleeping.

3.  I would miss my sister and my sons.

She chews at the end of her pencil. There is a burst of wind through the garden, and a few crunchy leaves land on the bench next to her, clearing a space from the tree and her mind. She thinks of how good she has always been. How obedient, like a cow chewing her way to the slaughterhouse. Succumbing to her parents’ rules and regulations, her mother’s worry about what people would think. Submitting meekly to Zain – after all, he earned the money, and all she did was give birth to babies and cook and clean his house and have sex with him on demand. Never questioning his rights over her, crawling back into her body and living through her sons.

The nurse opens the patio door, beckons to her. But Salena shakes her head. Not yet. She is not quite ready. She can’t think of any more points to add to the list, but there is something else she needs to write before she can face Dr Galsband and his interrogations again. A letter.