ABSTRACT
There are things I don’t tell her private things, a garnet necklace slipped between black silk and cotton. My new friend gives me an African name writes letters often; one comes with a spicy bun, a can of black grape and an old photo of she and her sister— two black girls side by side in identical white lace dresses big bows on their nappy (a word I’ve just learnt) hair and ankle socks. So clean. Black people are hot on hygiene. White people sleep with cats and dogs. I don’t talk about these things. My past is locked in a travelling trunk. Inside: Sabena, my nanny, my mother her long black fingers shine like reeds lit by moonlight; my house; the swimming pool; my old white public school. I’m ashamed. I didn’t think much sometimes I see the black man’s face at the window, coming to get us. My mother is white. My father is white. My lover is white. At night we lie like spoons breathing the same cold air inside the room with two outside walls. We snuggle under blankets, sometimes turn in unison our bodies all mixed up. We can only meet here in bed my fingers inside her high tide she making a rivulet run through me in a rush, a gush till we are both beached up. When my family first met her they thought I was undoing my past through her. It’s not like that. I love her. Not like I loved Sabena. I love lying next to her the dark of her skin, the pale of mine. Sometimes I want to tell her if you knew what it was really like: servants living in corrugated huts outside no electricity, no running water you wouldn’t be lying here kissing my breasts. I keep it hidden. Locked—a photo inside a locket that never opens In the morning I wake before you the pale winter light peeps through our skin, side by side, in sharp relief. Something I’ve been reading in Midnight Birds makes me feel like Judas; I get up make toast and tea. I am five years old again looking out this kitchen window. Somebody turns the palm of my hand up and asks why it isn’t black. Is your bottom black someone sniggers. Then they all laugh. I put loose leafs in the teapot. Let them brew. Last night we talked into the small hours again. You said they used to call you specky. The toast burns. I pull it out furious. It is not the same. It is not the same. I don’t want to play it out on you. You get up for breakfast. ‘I’m always making the fucking toast’ before you rub the sleep out of your eyes. Yesterday I said a terrible thing. My tongue is full of old ideas. Sometimes they slip out like falling rocks. Warning. Landslide. I can’t repeat it. She’ll repeat it for me. Often. So that I don’t forget. This is a nightmare: the soft laughter then this sudden storm. I don’t know where we go wrong. I am all that. True. I lived it. Now I live with her. Together. Not as servant and Madam. No. Not like that, I don’t believe her. As lovers, as lovers, as lovers. Words chase me like bullets overhead. Kaffir. Wog. Kaffir. Wog. Between tight teeth I whisper. I hug say sorry let’s go back to bed. We’re too young. This is too heavy. I’d like to stop seeing white like whitewash on hospital walls like a blank projection screen; black like onyx stones or moist earth. What am I doing with you if all I want is to make you eat shit for your ancestors? It’s better for her now down here in London. Yet still with her friends I shake a little when I’m pouring tea. Waiting for discovery. They disapprove I’m sure of the two of us together. At clubs we separate for the evening come back together in bed much later where no eyes watch like marbles. Tonight while she sleeps. I lie thinking of home. I miss the land. The red dust roads the jacaranda tree, picking ripe avocadoes or mangoes. I miss the words, the whole tutti. I don’t talk of this. Even memories lead to trouble. Especially memories. Which school. What house. Which friend. We were brought up on different worlds: she on mince and potatoes, drizzle, midges; me on mealies, thunderstorms, chongalolas.
