Why You Were Taken (19 page)

There is another door across the passage. Kirsten steps towards it and holds up her key. The light stays red, and the door locked. They step back into the elevator and study the plan etched into its wall.

  ‘Do you remember anything else from what you read about her work here?’

Kirsten racks her brain, tries to use Google on her watch, but there is no signal. She moves closer to the map and one of the buttons automatically lights up. Sub Rosa, it says, floor 36. She opens her hand to look at the key. The doors close and this time they move downwards, into the depths of the old mine.

When the door clicks open they enter a space that would look like a bank deposit box room if it weren’t for the floor-to-ceiling animated wallpaper. Huge rose buds and blooms (Rusted Carmine) caress the walls, as if alive. Kirsten tries to take a photo with her locket but it’s blocked. It feels like she is looking through pink mist. She should have doubled the caff in her coffee.

Keke takes the key from her and walks towards the wall of safety deposit boxes. It does its now familiar magic trick and a box on the right, just below eye-level, shows a blue light. Keke pushes it in, and it slides out like a drawer, the size of a shoebox. Inside is another box, with a keyhole, which Keke unlocks.

  ‘It’s like pass-the-parcel,’ whispers Keke.

  ‘Pass the what?’

  ‘Oh,’ says Keke, remembering that Kirsten didn’t have many early childhood memories. ‘Never mind.’ They both peer into the box, wary, as if something could jump out and bite their fingers.

  ‘It’s empty,’ says Kirsten.

As an act of desperation, she puts her whole hand into the box and rummages around, just so that she would have no doubt in her mind that the box was definitely, absolutely, 100% empty. But it wasn’t.

  ‘Hey,’ she says. The far side feels different. Not textured metal, but plastic. She gets her fingernails underneath the corner and rips it off, bringing it out of the box and into view. It’s a small plastic bag, like a sandwich bag, but four-ply and heat-sealed.

On the way home a white minivan comes into view, then disappears, then appears again. It looks like another communal taxi, but without the trappings: no dents or scratches, no eccentric bumper stickers, furry steering wheel or hula-girl hanging from the rear-view mirror. Instead: clean paintwork, tinted windows. Something about it bothers Kirsten.

  ‘I know I sound crackers but … is that van … following us?’ frowns Kirsten.

  ‘Please don’t start,’ says Keke.

  ‘Seriously,’ says Kirsten. ‘They’ve been behind us for the last ten minutes.’ Keke looks over at the vehicle, then turns back around and plays on her phone. The white minibus weaves aggressively and gets too close to the taxi. Kirsten starts to panic.    

  ‘They know we have it. They’re trying to stop us.’

  ‘Stop it,’ growls Keke, but as her eyes go back to her screen their taxi is knocked sideways. The minivan swerves away and then back to hit them again, causing the passengers to scream and the driver to grab his hat, fling it down, concentrate on keeping the vehicle on the road.

Metal screeches as the van pushes hard against the taxi, trying to force it into the guardrails. The taxi driver keeps his head, accelerates, takes the road back. Keke pushes Kirsten down and covers her. They are smashed again, harder, and they veer off the road, onto the shoulder. Their driver steers hard to not go over the rails, then overcorrects and crashes into a bakkie, almost rolls the vehicle.

They sway on two wheels, then land safely back on the tarmac. The white minivan speeds off. Cars all around swerve and hoot, people shout. Inside the taxi: silence, the caustic smell of burning brakes. Broken glass glitters.

Journal entry

15 April 1988

Westville

In the news:
A bomb explodes prematurely outside
Pretoria
's Sterland cinema killing the carrier and injuring a bystander. The passengers of plane-jacked Kuwait Airways Flight 422 are still being held as hostages – it’s been 11 days – the Lebanese guerrillas are demanding the release of 17 Shi’ite Muslim bombers being held by Kuwait.

What I’m listening to:
Chalk Mark in a Rainstorm – Joni Mitchell

What I’m reading:
Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ – I feel like this book is speaking directly to me, making me question my life.

What I’m watching:
Beetlejuice

My shrink says that it’s good to write my feelings down so here I go: the ugly truth. I don’t think the pills are helping. I love the babies more than life itself. I do, honestly, it’s like they are physically connected to my heart. I can’t imagine life without them.

But I also feel trapped. Isolated. I’m so young and here I am washing and cleaning and changing nappies while I should be out in the world, making friends and money and just LIVING. I feel like I am stuck in a life – that sometimes feels like a living hell of pee and poo and vomit  – that I didn’t choose.

I miss home and my family, even though we don’t get on that well. I’m sad that they haven’t come to visit the babies. I love P. Sometimes I think that he must regret marrying me, I can’t imagine how he finds me attractive when I am such a stretch-marked baggy-eyed zombie. Other times I think, I am so pretty and young (on the inside!), I should be out there dating a whole lot of different men, be taken to new restaurants and getting flowers and goodnight kisses.

I don’t want to eat because eating binds you to this earth in some way and I want to be free. I can see my clothes hanging off my body and it feels good to have an outward expression of the way I’m feeling inside.

I feel like I have wasted my life, that there is nothing to live for. Even though I know it’s not true, that is how I feel, and that’s why it’s so difficult to get up in the mornings. And then when I do get up the babies cry and cry and I just feel like jumping out of a window.

The sticky love for the twins is push-pull: sometimes I’ll be holding one of them and swaying and they’ll melt into me and I think that the moment couldn’t be more perfect. In the next minute something will happen: I’ll slip on spilled milk, the washing machine will pack up, Kate will vomit on my clean top, Sam will start screaming, then they’ll both be screaming and the kitchen will flood and I’ll realise we’re out of breakfast cereal and I can’t stand it so my mind just floats away.

On these days I have the urge to just run away. To leave P and the twins. Not to be a coward, but to be brave, to save my life. I get anxious in the car on these days because my body and mind want to push that accelerator as far as it will go and just go anywhere that isn’t here. Another province. Another country. Or even into the side of a bridge. But then I pull over and breathe and try to listen to my heart, which is connected to the babies, the sweet babies, my beautiful Sam and Kate, and it tells me to stay.

BORROWED

SCRUBS

19

Johannesburg, 2021

The man dressed as a nurse puts his latex-covered fingers on William Soraya’s wrist, feels his pulse. It is slow and steady. There was no need to do it: the athlete is hooked up to all kinds of monitoring equipment. He fusses about the room, rearranging giant bouquets of flowers and baskets of fruit and candy. He admires the medal – Soraya’s first Olympic gold – on the bedside table. Its placement seems a desperate plea:
You were once the fastest man in the world, you can beat this. Please wake up.

The nurse takes what looks like a pen out of his pocket, clicks it as if he is about to write on Soraya’s chart, and spikes the tube of the IV with it. It is slow-acting enough to give him the ninety seconds he will need to leave the hospital. No alarms will be going off while he is still here. He takes the medal and slips it into his trouser pocket as he moves. It is cold against his thigh.

It’s a bitterbright feeling for him, leaving while his mark is still breathing. Doesn’t feel right, especially after the accident he engineered didn’t prove to be fatal. Still, he thinks, there will be others. He walks down the passage as quickly as he can without alerting anyone. He breathes hot air into his medimask, requisite for any doctor, nurse, patient or visitor in the hospital. It’s large and covers most of his face, which is most fortunate. Ironically, hospitals are one of the easiest places to kill people. His borrowed scrubs cover his other distinguishing characteristics, apart from his generous build, and height. But no one will say: there was a nurse in there with a burnt arm.

PIRANHAS

20

Johannesburg, 2021

Seth gets home at midnight. He’d been drinking at TommyKnockers and is a bit unsteady on his feet. A cab had dropped him off, courtesy of Rolo. Upstairs on the 17
^th
floor, he punches in the code – 52Hz – and his retina unlocks his front door. It clicks open, and Sandy greets him. He shows the speaker his middle finger. He checks all the security screens, sees the place is empty.

Knowing he’s had too much to drink, he shrugs, pours a few fingers of vodka into a tumbler with ice. Takes it to his Tile to check for messages. He’d been checking throughout the day to see if Fiona had tried to get hold of him, but
nada.

All he saw was update after update about William Soraya’s death in hospital. He tried to block the story in his feed but it kept on coming up on his screen, as if to haunt him, as if to say: this could have been you. You think you’re indestructible; so did Soraya. Now he’s lying on a slab with multiple organ failure, because that’s what happens to people like you.

Not being able to get hold of Fiona was adding to his anxiety. He didn’t know where she lived, didn’t know who her friends and family were, which made it impossible to get hold of her if she didn’t come to work, and didn’t answer her phone. It nagged at him: Fiona wasn’t the kind of girl to screen calls or not come to the grind for two days in row. He takes her Fontus access card out of his hoodie pocket, looks at it. His guilt accentuates her clear blue eyes, the salmon of her cheeks. No one had mentioned her absence at work. Piranhas.

He turns on the Tile, takes a slug of vodka. The green rabbit flashes; LL had bumped him earlier in the evening.

LL>Hey SD, what’s/hold-up? Thought u’d hve Fontus in bag by now.

He knew she was kidding, but felt the pressure nonetheless. He’d been there for weeks without much progress. He’d figured Fiona would be his ticket, but she’d gone MIA. His drinking tonight had had a purpose: to wipe out any inclination that he was worried about her. It hadn’t worked. The more he drank, the more it became clear that, for the first time in his life, he cared about someone else.

He replies to LL:

SD>> Making headway, shld hve s/thing soon.

Without washing his face or brushing his teeth, and still in his jacket, he gets into bed with his slippery glass of vodka. Takes a bottle of pills from the pocket, pops two, washes them down with the spirit. Spreads a throw untidily over his body, and falls asleep with the lights on.      

Outside the building, a large man is walking his dog. The dog pauses to sniff the innards of a pothole. The man uses the time to look at the entrance of the building, get an idea of the security system. Backs up, looks up to the corner apartment of the 17
^th
floor where a light is still on. Having seen enough, he makes a kissing noise: pulls the protesting beagle along, firmly, but not unkindly.

*                  *                  *

Kirsten’s watch rings; it’s Marmalade. Oh shit, she thinks, looking at the time, then at the two empty bottles of wine on Keke’s desk. The clockologram clicks in disapproval. She touches her earbutton to answer the call.

  ‘Hi, sorry I’m late,’ she says, her voice gruff. Gives Keke the grimace of a schoolgirl in trouble.

  ‘And you haven’t called,’ he says.

  ‘And I haven’t called. Sorry.’

  ‘I was worried about you.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘When are you coming home? I made dinner. Four hours ago.’

  ‘Ah, sorry! I didn’t know. You should have told me.’ She stands up, throws two empty sauce-stained Styrofoam shamburger clamshells in the bin.

  ‘I wanted to surprise you. Do something nice for you.’

  ‘I’m really sorry. I’m with Kex,’ Keke gives her a soft kick in the shins. She winces and hops up and down. ‘At The Office. We’re working on a … story.’

  ‘Well, wake me when you get home.’

  ‘It’ll be late.’

  ‘Wake me, Kitty. I miss you.’