Bred in the Bone
One day when I was about six, a dirty - looking man knocked on the kitchen door. His hair was almost down to his shoulders and needed a wash and his clothes were really old. The kind my Ma wouldn’t even have given to the gardener. Not until she washed them, anyway. He was like a street person, only he had all his teeth, not like Gawie who comes every week and Ma gives him some bread and two rands and tells him to bugger off and not bother her any more
I knew I wasn’t supposed to let people into the house so I opened the door just a tiny bit and said, “Can I help you?”
And he said, “You must be my niece Marie. And aren’t you a pretty little girl!”
Well. I didn’t know that I had an uncle, only Auntie Gail who lived in Joburg. She sent me R10 in a birthday card every year but I didn’t even know what she looked like. Ma said her rubbish boyfriend got into trouble with the police and she wanted to stay up there so she could visit every Saturday.
Anyway, Ma came into the kitchen and when she saw the man she stopped dead still and kind of whispered, “Mannie, is that you?”
And he said, “Hello Arlene. Jislaaik, but my little sister’s put on a bit of weight, eh? So, how’s things?”
Well, no one ever calls Ma fat, not in front of her anyway, but she didn’t even give him a klap, she just smiled all over her face like she’d just won the Lotto and told him to come in and she’d make him some coffee and where had he been for so long and why did he look so terrible?
So he came inside and said, “It’s a long story.”
He sat at the kitchen table and to tell the truth he smelled pretty bad. Like the inside of our rubbish bin on a hot day. But Ma didn’t seem to notice, she poured him some coffee and opened a packet of the chocolate biscuits that she only kept for the Dominee and said, “OK. So, tell me, Mannie.”
Then Uncle Mannie took off his filthy old coat and we saw he only had one arm. The sleeve of his long –sleeved shirt was pinned up against his shoulder.
I got such a fright my tummy felt all sick inside and Ma kind of moaned in pain.
But he just grinned and said, “Got you there, ladies!” And pulled out his whole proper hairy arm from under his shirt.
It was a trick. He kept that arm against his body and just pretended!
“This gets them every time,” he said. “Losing my arm was the best business decision I ever made.” He winked and waggled his fingers at me. His nails were very dirty.
And Ma smacked him on his head and told him he was a mad bugger but she was kind of smiling so I could tell she didn’t think he was.
“But I can see you aren’t exactly making a fortune with this one- arm trick,” she said. “What happened to your job in the mine? And where’s Sanita?”
“Gone,” he said. “She only lasted until the money ran out.”
“I knew she was a little gold digger,” said Ma triumphantly. “I could just see it. All that lipstick and brassy hair.”
“Sanita had pretty hair,” said Uncle Mannie. “I’ve always gone for blondes. Like little Marie here.”
He smiled and stroked my hair but I moved away. I suddenly didn’t like him any more.
“Anyway, the mine got too bloody dangerous,” he went on. “Pal of mine got his legs chopped off when a tipper truck overturned two k’s underground. After that, I hit the road.”
“Couldn’t you find another job?”
“Wrong colour,” he said briefly. “Then one day when I was really on the skids, I found an old You magazine in a bin. And there was this guy who’d had his leg eaten off by a shark. And people were just lining up to give him stuff. Money, clothes, even a job. So the penny dropped.”
“You tell people a shark ate your arm off? Give me a break, last time I looked you couldn’t swim!”
“Sometimes I say it’s a shark, if it’s a young guy. Surfers and swimmers, they’re good for a couple of rand. Sometimes I say it was blown off in Namibia. Cassingana. I tell them I had to be airlifted out, the whole army story. That works with people old enough to remember that stuff.” He chuckled. “The best is my croc. I tell ‘em I was a game ranger at the Kruger and I was rescuing a girl who fell into the river. And a croc got me but I saved the girl. They love it.”
“God will punish you one of these days,” said Ma. “You should speak to the Dominee and tell him what a sinner you’ve been. He works wonders with sinners, you just have to repent.”
“I’m not talking about repenting, I’m talking my career here,” said Uncle Mannie irritably. “If I could work out a way to have only one leg as well, I would. Double my income.”
Ma shook her head and changed the subject.
“Seems like you don’t find a bathroom very often. You want a nice hot bath? Let me wash those filthy clothes you’re wearing.”
“Thanks, Arlene. But don’t wash these things, I need them for the street. Old clothes work better than good clean stuff. Hasn’t Danie got something I could wear?”
“Danie’s history,” said Ma, looking at me sideways. She was always pretending that my Pa was working in Bloemfontein and would come home any day, but by now I knew he never would. I’d stopped hoping.
But Ma was friends with Uncle Robbie so he always helped her do the stuff Pa used to do like fix the plugs and that. Sometimes he slept over to help her start her car in the morning. So she wouldn’t be late for work at the launderette.
Anyway she found an old shirt and some trousers of my Pa’s and Uncle Mannie looked much better once he’d bathed and put those on.
Ma said she’d make spaghetti for supper but then she opened a box of that yellow wine she liked so much and the two of them sat in the lounge telling each other what a good time they used to have when they were little. Stuff like swimming kaalgat in the river and riding their bikes around the place.
So in the end I made myself a peanut butter sandwich and they carried on telling stories about how when they were kids.
Then it got late and my Ma started getting upset. She often got upset when she drank wine. And she was carrying on about her own Pa and how he’d been an evil old sod and she wished he’d died sooner than he did and Uncle Mannie was telling her to calm down, what’s done was done and it was water under the bridge.
And she shouted, “You were no better than he was, you think I don’t remember?”
And Uncle Mannie got up and said he was going to bed, he’d had enough of her nonsense. I think Ma slept on the sofa, she was too tired to go to bed.
Early the next morning Uncle Mannie came into my room. He didn’t knock or anything polite like that. I hadn’t got dressed yet and I was sitting on my bed brushing my Princess Barbie’s hair and he came and sat on the bed too and said “Hello sweet Marie,” and began to stroke my hair. Like I was a dog.
So I got up but he pulled me back and started to put his big hands all over me, sort of grabbing my nightie and pulling it. My nice one with kittens on. His nails were still dirty even though he’d had a bath.
But I managed to wriggle away and shouted for Ma as loudly as I could, and he told me to shut up, he was only playing. But I knew he wasn’t playing, he was going to do Bad Stuff to me like what happened to Anneline next door when that man came in to steal their TV and he got her.
So I ran out the door and down the path and yelled at Ma to wake up. But she didn’t. And Uncle Mannie ran after me, shouting at me not to be silly. And I just ran across the road to go to Auntie Eileen’s house and all the cars hooted but he followed after me and then I heard a loud bang.
And a car stopped and the driver jumped out and said, “It wasn’t my fault, he ran right in front of me.”
So they took Uncle Mannie to hospital and guess what, his leg was so badly smashed up they had to cut it off. Right at the top.
God’s punishment.
About the author
Ginny worked as a graphic artist in the UK, a char in Australia and a tutor of English in Hong Kong, before cominge home to South Africa and starting to write fiction
Did you enjoy the story? Would you like to shout us a coffee? Half of what you pay goes to the author the other half goes to expenses e.g. Maintaining the web site and setting up The Best of Café Lit book each year.
No comments:
Post a Comment