The Monster's Daughter (9 page)

Andrew explained to her that the British invaded because they wanted the country's gold. He also told her about the Boers shooting their own people if they thought they were traitors, how pride made them refuse to give up, how many women and children died in camps from disease and starvation, and how black people like Sarah suffered, treated badly by both the British and the Boers. He had dropped his head in shame as he talked about what people were capable of doing to each other. “Remember, Theresa, we all have bad and good in us. Don't only surround yourself with people who think like you. Listen to everybody before you decide what is right.”

Tessa ventured farther up the mountain, wondering if she could find the lookout again. Small moths and other insects flew up as her steps disturbed their hiding places. There was a faint smell of smoke, which grew stronger as the workers' wives started cooking evening meals. Tessa's own stomach rumbled in response. She climbed on top of an enormous tree trunk that blocked the path, taking note of the scorched parts at the base where it had snapped. Lightning was common in the mountains, the spring storms particularly bad. Her foot caught as she jumped down the other side, propelling her face-first into the mud. Tessa opened her mouth to cry, tears already blurring her vision. Her Sunday dress was ruined. Sarah would be so mad.

“Hey you,
sharrap
.” The urgent whisper came from close by.

Tessa blinked hard to clear her vision, the high-pitched distress call halted mid-vowel. On the other side of the trunk crouched two brown children, a boy and a girl, maybe six or seven years old. They both had sullen dark eyes, the boy's hair cropped close to his head, the girl's tied with a white bow. They both wore pants with suspenders and
shirts made from meal sacks, patched in various places. Tessa immediately felt envious. Their clothes were much better for running around in than a stupid dress. The boy held one index finger to his mouth, pointing into the distance with the other. Tessa turned her head, clamping both hands over her mouth when she saw what he was pointing at.

A leopard moved languidly through the underbrush ahead, swaying gracefully with each step. It seemed to float from tree to tree, its lower body disappearing in the tall grass. Tessa wondered at its thick muscled neck and legs, its big head, the way its spotted hide glistened in the afternoon sun. She had never seen anything as beautiful before in her life. For a moment the beast looked right at her. Tessa felt her heart skip a beat, time disappearing until the two of them were the only living things in the world. She ached to know the creature, feel what it was feeling, live inside its skin, if only for a moment. As fast as it appeared, the mirage disappeared into the underbrush.

“It's watching us,” the boy said. “They do that before they jump you.”

The girl's eyes grew wide. “What do we do, hey Poena?”

“We move slow, Grietjie. No running, hear? Otherwise it will chase us.”

Tessa pulled herself up. “It doesn't matter. It's gone now.”

“What do you know?” Grietjie's chin jutted out defiantly. A knowing glance passed between the siblings.

Their hostility confused Tessa. “Can't you see?” She pointed in the distance. “It crossed to the other side of the mountain.”

“You're lying,” Poena said. “Nobody can see that far.”

“
Ja
, nobody,” Grietjie echoed, her nostrils flaring. “Besides, we go to school, you don't, so we're smarter.”

Tessa had asked Andrew if she could go to the farm school down the road, but he said she wasn't old enough. Tessa was almost nine, but her body was short and pudgy. She had watched the coloured women with their babies from afar, had noticed the babies growing older, growing bigger. Every time she asked Andrew or Sarah why her body didn't change the same way, they answered that she was growing exactly the way God wanted her to. Tessa wondered why God didn't just make everybody the same. This would solve so many problems.

The two siblings turned in unison and retreated with comical slowness, their walk exaggerated into huge steps, their faces knotted in concentration.

“Can I come with you?” Tessa called after them.

“You go to your own house,” Grietjie fired snippily. “You
mos
live in the big house with the
baas
and that
meit
that thinks she's so grand.”

“
Ma
doesn't think that.”

“You think she's your
ma
?” Grietjie looked at her brother and rolled her eyes. She put her hands in her sides, her body issuing a challenge. “You're thick, hey. She's a black.”

Tessa felt a pang. She had a memory, the first one, of a woman with blond hair and sad eyes. But Sarah had raised her, loved her. “Come home with me, then,” Tessa said. She desperately wanted Poena and Grietjie to like her, to meet Sarah and see that she was good.

“My
pa
will
bliksem
us if we set foot in the
baas
's house,” Poena said.

“Why?”

Poena's eyes narrowed. “You just don't. We live in our house and the
baas
lives in his. White people eat with white people. Coloured people eat with coloured people. That's how it works.”

Grietjie's face scrunched into a scowl. “My
pa
said there's something wrong with you. That we should stay away from you.”

Poena and Grietjie stared at Tessa as if she was something dirty. They know I'm not like them, Tessa thought. The idea that they could hate her that much just because she didn't look like them seemed so unfair. She turned and ran from them before they could say anything else, tears of hurt and anger blurring her vision. She wished the leopard would come back and eat Poena and Grietjie and their
pa
for dinner. The world away from Andrew and Sarah suddenly felt cold and hostile, full of people who hated for stupid reasons.

Tessa stumbled a few times as she descended the narrow path into the valley, her shoes scuffing against the rocks, but she barely noticed. In the distance she could see the house, a white dot in a blanket of green. As she drew closer, she saw Andrew in the doorway, talking to a short man in black clothes. A warning flashed in Andrew's eyes as Tessa approached. The man turned around and looked straight at her, a snarl deforming his lips. He had a big head and his nose was
a different color than the rest of his face, as if it belonged to someone else.

“Theresa.” Andrew put himself between her and the man. “Where were you?” He picked her up, carrying her on his hip back into the house.

“I saw a leopard,
Pa
,” Tessa's excitement burst. “It was so big.” She held her hand above her chest, fingers brought together, pointing up, the way Sarah had taught her.

“Mr. Morgan.” The man's voice sounded like thunder rolling over the mountains. “This is a serious matter.”

“
Dominee
, I can assure you that nothing immoral happens in this house.”

“Witnesses have come forward.”

“Witnesses? Trespassers with designs on my land, you mean. You can tell them all that I will never sell.” Andrew's expression was stern, but Tessa felt the quivering in his body. She had only seen him that mad once before, when baboons had destroyed his vegetable patch. They had spent a whole afternoon after that stringing cans together to make noise and scare the mischief-makers off.

“Cutting yourself off from the church and hiding in your house won't protect you from your sins, Mr. Morgan,” said the man in black. “God sees all. Your type will never be welcome among good people.”

Andrew's grip on Tessa grew uncomfortably tight. “Get off my property, sir.”

“This is not done.” The man's face turned red. He raised a shaky finger in the air. “There will be consequences to your debauchery. And the child—”

“Go now,
Dominee
, or I will help you do so with my rifle.” Andrew's narrow face was white, his teeth exposed beneath his trimmed mustache.

“It is against God's law, Mr. Morgan, fornicating outside your kind,” the man yelled as Andrew closed the door. “It is unnatural. We cannot allow this to go on in our midst.”

Tessa wriggled loose from Andrew's grip. Fear had written itself on Sarah's face as she stepped out of the dark bedroom. She took Tessa from Andrew and hugged her close, her tears wetting Tessa's cheeks.

“We were worried sick, Theresa,” Andrew said, the anger still in his voice. “Don't ever go off like that again. These people—”

“He'll be back,” Sarah interrupted. She looked pleadingly at Andrew. “He'll bring others with him.”

Andrew nodded. He sank down on a chair, his head in his hands.

“I'll leave. They'll stop if I'm not here.”

“No.” Andrew grabbed Sarah's hand. “This is our land, our home. They can't force us off.”

“Don't go,
Ma
.” Tessa started crying, feeling as if someone had inexplicably blown a candle out in her life without asking and she was sitting alone in the dark. “Don't leave me.”

“It's all right, little one.” Sarah kissed her on the cheek. “Maybe it will only be for a little while.”

“It's not only you,” Andrew said. A meaningful look passed between him and Sarah, an unspoken secret Tessa wasn't supposed to understand, though she did.

Andrew stood up, his body straight and resolute again, like long ago when he had confidently marched into battle. “We leave tonight. Together.”

“Andrew, no.” Sarah held a hand up in protest. Andrew grabbed it with both of his.

“I don't see another way, darling.” Andrew encircled both of them in his arms. “We can start over, go where nobody knows us.” He patted Tessa's back. “It will be all right.”

“But this is our home.” Tessa hiccupped the words.

“It is only a house, Theresa. Only things. You understand, don't you?”

Tessa nodded even though she didn't. She wondered where they would go. Perhaps to the lookout. It was a good hiding place.

“There's a man on the next farm over, Terblanche. He was interested in leasing the orchards.” Andrew put his hat on his head. “Take only what we can carry. If we leave by midnight we'll be well on the road by morning.”

Sarah looked around the room. “This is too sudden. Can't we wait a few days? See if—”

Andrew shook his head. “The sooner we go, the better.”

They left in a donkey cart under the cover of darkness. Tessa tried
to remember everything she could about the farm: the smell of the thatch on their house, the greenish-brown color of the duck pond, the sounds of baboons calling in the hills. Andrew had once told her that land binds you to a place. He had bought the farm, he said, so there would be a place she could always come home to. But if she didn't belong here anymore, would she belong anywhere?

As far back as he could remember, Benjamin had slept in
Saal
1 on a steel cot with chipped paint. But he wasn't a baby anymore.
Matrone
Jansen fetched him one morning and told him that he was moving to
Saal
3, and that was that. She picked him up in her bony arms and carried him down the hall. Benjamin held on to his blankie and his brown teddy bear. The bear had been donated by the Ladies' Church Group, who came every Christmas with gifts and treats and always said what a shame it was as they held their hands over their mouths. Benjamin wasn't so sure what they meant by that, but he liked the funny hats they made everybody wear, so he always smiled back.

Saal
3 was down two corridors and to the left.
Matrone
Jansen had put Benjamin down on a thin blue mattress in the corner of
Saal
3 and told him that it was his bed now. The whitecoat, Pieter, had complained that he had enough work already, but
Matrone
Jansen gave him one of the scary looks she gave when you were really in trouble. Everyone knew better than to say something back after
Matrone
Jansen gave you that look.

Saal
3 smelled the same as the rest of the hospital, thick and sweet. The air refused to move through the barred windows in summer and the older nurses all walked around fanning themselves with books and sheets of paper. In winter, the sun's heat didn't penetrate the thick stone walls and
Matrone
Jansen gave him a pair of extra socks to keep his feet warm. The walls in
Saal
3 were a shiny yellow. But not yellow like the crayon Benjamin used to draw the sun, more like the yellow of the inside half of the small round squash they served at the hospital for Sunday lunch. It was easy to wipe blood off those shiny yellow walls. He knew that because he'd seen the whitecoats and nurses do it many times.

Benjamin had asked
Matrone
Jansen why she didn't take him to
Saal
2. Two came after one and before three,
Matrone
Jansen had taught him that.
Matrone
Jansen said he didn't belong in
Saal
2. It was for the children that didn't look like the rest of them. The whitecoats called them defects and monsters, making strange faces and walking funny with their arms close to their bodies and their tongues hanging out whenever they talked about
Saal
2. Benjamin wondered why they allowed monsters to live in the hospital. He worried that they would escape from
Saal
2 and come after him.

Benjamin learned to do everything Pieter said, otherwise Pieter would
bliksem
him. Pieter had done it a few times after Benjamin had moved to
Saal
3, but never when any of the nurses or
Matrone
Jansen were around. Pieter's light beard and pockmarked cheeks always deformed in a lopsided smile whenever he saw nurses walking by. Then he would disappear for a long time. At that point, the other children in
Saal
3 began to make noise, like monkeys, Benjamin thought, though he'd never heard a monkey. Some of the children cried when the lights went off at night too. Benjamin couldn't understand that. Noises scared him, but he liked the dark. He'd learned, in
Saal
1F
, that grown-ups couldn't see in the dark, not like him. When it was dark the whitecoats and nurses would stay away. In the dark, it was always safe.