Blues as usual

By chance she landed up in a the worst place in the world, a shopping centre… she wasn’t sure how she got there, all she knew was that she wanted to get out. Her feet throbbing from a long walk and baking in the sun all day; walking around searching for god-knows-what… as she walked through the shopping her feet cooled on the tiles and she felt slight relief, stood in one spot and smiled at the crazy sensation she got from her body cooling; then continued to walk right through the mall to a parking lot and lit a cigarette.

People stared at this barefoot girl, huffing and puffing a cigarette. She used the exit for cars with the security guards to scared to stop her, she strolled right through the boom gates and made her way up the road. She walked, her feet became hot again and soon enough she was numb to the heat and just kept stomping to nowhere. The sun slowly set, the pavement became cooler. She reached her mother’s house eventually, realising that she was not going nowhere after all.

‘My child… where have you been?’

Suddenly feeling tired, she retreated on the couch and fell asleep. As soon as she woke up at 5am, she removed her childhood blanket her mother had placed over her. She stepped out for a cigarette, huffing and puffing as usual.

‘This habit of yours, just like your father! Smoking every two seconds!’ her mother says as she hands her cup of coffee.

‘Morning to you too… Why are you up so early?’ she takes another pull from her cigarette.

‘Ag, I just like to see the sun rise…’ she sits on the stoop, ‘oh! Those cracks on your heals! You should soak them in salt water. Why were you barefoot anyway?’

‘I don’t know.’ Natalie looked far away as she spoke.

‘Oh no my child,’ she says, touching her daughter’s cheeks.

‘I am okay mama!’

‘Are you eating drugs again?’

‘I don’t know about eating them…no I am not taking any,’ she lies.

‘I think you should go back to Father Paul…’

‘Father Paul? Mama… do you know what that man did?’

‘He runs a rehab clinic, of course when he doesn’t give what you are addicted to it doesn’t make him a bad person.’

‘He is a bad person! He used to torture me in the name of Fucking Jesus!’

‘What did I tell you about speaking like that about the name of God…’

‘I am a grown woman, ma!’

‘It doesn’t mean you can speak to me like I am one of your Jozi Maboneng friends!’

Natalie throws her cigarrete bud on the grass, sighs and sits on the stoep. The two women stare at the sun rising, occasionally sighing, looking at each other, fiddling, tapping toes and fingers…

Natalie breaks the silence, ‘on the farm… Father Paul’s farm. My first day was not filled with a lot of activity because I stayed in my room frustrated and sad. I couldn’t believe where I was… then the next day I was craving a cigarette, I decided to get out and ask a few people there. I was told we not even allowed to smoke cigarettes, I couldn’t take it and I rolled a joint with a page from the bible and cow dung.’ she sneers, ‘it was yucky but I was smoking…’

her mother shakes her head and looks at her daughter, as if to say she isn’t ready for what she is about to hear.

‘He caught me in the veld, while I was smoking grabbed me by the ear and put me in solitude. No food, just a tot of water a day and a slice of stale bread, saying that he was teaching me lesson. ‘”smoking is bad for you!” he’d say.’

From there on, Natalie revealed stories of torture in the rehab centre, her mother listened to her daughter, telling her she’d been tied to a chair several times in the dining room because she wouldn’t eat. The traumatic experience of being told that she was a failure because she did drugs and she told herself that the first thing she’d do when she left is light a joint right at the gate she came in through on her first day.

‘I thought you signed yourself in…’ her mother said in broken voice.

‘I did… I guess things didn’t work out so well, afterall.’

‘But you stopped doing drugs… didn’t you.’

‘I did but sometimes… mama the point is that I am not going to see that man ever in my life.’

‘But he is…’

‘He is what, ma?’

‘Morning honey!’ a voice emerges from the house, Natalie would know that voice from anywhere.

‘Father Paul? Mama?’

‘We’re seeing each other…’ her mother says standing up as if escaping something. She escapes the venom that is spat out from her daughters eyes.

Father Paul steps out into the veranda, kissing Natalie’s mother passionately, without taking notice of Natalie at all.

Natalie retreats to her childhood bedroom and cries…