Chapter 13 (Winter in Spring)
It was cold. The house was not insulated as those in England. I didn’t acclimatize. It was too cold, when the sun shone it was cold, on cloudy days, it was cold. In England, one wears thermal clothing, it rains a lot. That is a blessing from God. The smaller towns are lush, and plentiful.
“Auntie, are you unwell? Shall I leave?”
I shook my head no. “No my dear. I am getting cold.”
She fetched a warm bottle for me. A very considerate child, old for her age, I guess she had to grow up before her time. it’s such a pity, a youth lost.
We continued on the project we had started. “I shall answer you Gwendoline, however, I need your solemn promise to keep my secrets as your own.”
“I am not a gossipmonger. Auntie, I have few friends. I may say, I see you as a friend, you are different to the other adults. You don’t treat me as if I am bereft of a mind. I do see things. I cry alone. I am afraid all the time. Since you arrived. I feel better.”
I looked into her golden eyes, and my childhood exploded in my mind. I think Harry ignited this fire. I became violently ill, I couldn’t stop puking, I so wanted to speak with Gwendoline, but the sickness in me, fought to come out. Once I saw blood, I was alarmed. I tried to lie down, I was racked with bouts of violent sickness. Eventually all that came out of me was blood.
Gwendoline had called Harry. Henry was at work. He looked at me, turned around and closed the door. I still had the bucket, I couldn’t raise myself anymore to reach the lavatory. My head was pounding. My heart was not beating normally. At times it kind of stopped. I couldn’t stop what came out of me. I became too weak. I don’t know for how many hours I had puked.
Henry knocked. I was too weak to answer him. I could hear his footsteps fade into the wrong direction. My brain hurt, the light in the room was blinding me. I tried to lift my arms, my legs. I would turn to reach the bucket, by now I was too weak, I bled all over myself, the bedding, my clothes. I tried to shield my eyes from the light.
Gwendoline brought me my dinner. She dropped the tray, and ran. That’s all I can remember. Watching her run down the passage. All sounds faded. And the light went out.
Once again I need to emphasise that this is no exaggeration of the truth. I was admitted yet again. Henry had saved me. I remained in high care for two weeks. As to the cause of my affliction, I am not sure. The doctors used terms only known to their educated minds. This was not the last time I bled.
Once again, I was bedridden. Harry came to see me. To accuse me of seeking pity from his family, that I had intentionally made myself ill, and that I was a burned on all of them. “Nichole I dare say, I wish you had succumbed. Truly I do. You my dear should never have been born, you mother should have smashed your skull in the day you came out of her. That would have been a kindness.”
Yeah, I think Harry might have been right about one thing. I agreed with him for once.
Gwendoline and Ben returned to Boarding School. Henry had to work. I have not asked him to a full extent what he did. I have not had the chance. I was too weak to bathe myself, Harry revelled in degrading me. He groped me. Nights when we were alone, he would enter me. I would wake up with him inside me. I begged, but he had no ears to hear. I beseeched him to stop this behaviour, it only encouraged him.
As soon as I could stand, he forced me to cook and clean. He refused to have a person of colour in the house. I washed by hand. He refused to buy a washing machine. I was not unaccustomed to hand washing. It’s what I had to wash that sickened me.
I waited for Gwendoline to return home, yet again Harry had a hand in her fate. She was to return at the end of the year, and she would start her schooling the following year, in the town in which we lived.
I often stopped myself from thinking of Inkosi. In so many ways, I felt it would taint his memory if I thought of him in this place.
The final nail in my very full coffin came, when things escalated to buggering. He hurt me in ways, that shames me. The bleeding began, just from the wrong area. I would bleed for a week, at times two weeks. I often wondered when it would take me, when I would bleed to death. Maybe I welcomed it, not the bleeding. Bloody hell, it is painful. Death it was no longer a thing I feared, I welcomed it. Fate would not write it in my stars.
In an attempt to free myself, I sought out alternative healing measures. It was one way to get away. I had to return when my money was spent.
I did so for a year, hoping I would be cured, and praying I would be free.
It was still not written for me.
Once Gwendoline moved back home, I had a modicum of contentment. I made her a priority. It was a way of escaping within my cage. I don’t think I shall ever own a bird. Truth be told, I pity the little creatures.
Henry bought me a sowing machine. It was unbelievable what electricity could contribute to one’s life. Gwendoline and I sowed. It became our happy place. We made drapes, pillow covers. Christmas stockings. It was fun. It was just before Christmas one year, that I finally answered her the question she had asked me. I had not seen her in a year, she resided with an Aunt during holidays.
We were sowing decorations for the tree.
“You once asked me, if I loved him? Forgive me, if I don’t mention his name.” I tapped my ear, and she nodded. It would soon be her fourteenth birthday.
“Indeed I did. I had loved him, since I had some understanding of the word. He was kind, soft spoken. Brilliant, like you. I don’t think there was a thing on earth, he couldn’t learn, nor accomplish. He read every book, all my books. He would ask me a million questions. His favourites were Charlotte’s Web and Black beauty. He read Animal Farm, and he didn’t agree with the context of the book. He could laugh. His laughter would make me laugh.”
Gwendoline embraced me. “I am so sorry.”
“Thank you. I do not want tears shed. Not mine nor yours. It would be laughed at. I know I am the jester, and much nuances are found in my pain.”
“Auntie, why don’t you leave? Go. Don’t you have family that will love you?”
“Most of them have emigrated, I have buried the ones I loved the most. I have you, Gwendoline, you are a solace to my soul. As long as you need me, I shall stay.”
I think we cried, we tried not to, it was utterly forbidden. We finished our work, and she would lie on the bed next to me, often she would rub my back.
“You were young, but not so young during the seventies, tell me how it was back then.” I had to smile.
“You make me sound like a dinosaur. It was magical, radical. I loved the music. The Bee Gees, Jim Hendrix, oh and Diana Ross. She can sing. Oh don’t give me that look, you asked, I shall answer. Well let me think. Oh yes, we all played with Hot Wheels.” I went on to describe in detail why we found the toys so fascinating. “Kojak lollipops. It had a bubble-gum centre. Mini-skirts, that was the height of fashion.” I was thinking. It all seemed like a dream.
Gwendoline was fast asleep next to me. I covered her, it was always so darn cold.
Harry walked in the door. I tried to use Gwendoline as a shield, I did that many times, to no avail. He would cuss at her, and the child would go to her bed crying.
I earned my keep. That’s what I would say to myself. I stopped feeling after a while. As I did with Veronica. I stopped any feelings from breaking through. I no longer cried. I bathed and scrubbed myself raw. That continued for a long time, I was hurting myself unknowingly. I became sick again.
I hid my illness, I couldn’t tell Henry, I didn’t know how to form the words. It only got worse, I stared bleeding, quiet uncommon for one without a womb. He still came. I still bled.
I wish I could say, I was completely immune, but the more my illness progressed. Fear returned and it ruled my very life. I couldn’t sleep, I tried to, the pain. My childhood would haunt my thoughts. I knew I was sick, fevers racked through my body. At times Harry would complain that I was too hot to the touch, he never once stopped to think that I was ill.
Gwendoline was the one that found me one morning under the bedcovers shivering. She called the doctor. I was not at liberty to tell him, why I had taken ill once again. I shall add, he was not a warm man. I was yet again accused of doing this to myself, I bathed too much. He had quite a list of the things I was doing that was making me ill.
Henry had found love; I would not burden him. I taught myself to bottle it all up, as I had with the bottle of sand.
Days turned to weeks, weeks into months and eventually years. I watched Gwendoline grow up into a beautiful young woman, Ben into a quiet, young man. Henry had found his destiny. I was happy because he was happy. I knew she would move into the house. I wondered if I had overstayed my welcome.
I packed and I left. I had to. Little did I know, one day I would be back. I tried very hard not to return. I knew what was waiting for me, if I did. I worked, I got ill, I worked harder, I became ill.
For a brief period, I found happiness. Looking back, I believed I was impulsive, naïve and infatuated.
I needed to love, I wanted to feel alive, he gave me all of that. He took away my sorrow and filled it with joy. He was not white. He believed as I did, prayed to the same God as I did. So many years had passed, and people still had to look. With him I was brave, I would walk in town, go to a restaurant. I think for a while I was invincible.
As I once said to Inkosi, love is only real if it’s reciprocated. I was wrong about this man. I believed he loved me, when his family warned me. I became apprehensive. It didn’t last. I thought I was free, however, he loved another, married another and had a child with her.
I tried not to go back to Henry. I don’t know if his marriage was doomed to fail, but it to did not last past a year.
Gwendoline was in her last year of High school. I know she needed me. She had asked me on several occasions to come back, I did.
She excelled. Without the duties of the house on her, she excelled. She won a scholarship, and she continued to study. I might not have borne her, nevertheless our lives were intertwined in ways I didn’t understand. I still don’t. Ben emigrated I wasn’t aware that he stayed in contact with his biological mother. He didn’t wait, the day he graduated high school. He left. We never bonded. In so many ways I was happy that he had gone. England was a place of opportunity. I blessed the day he left.
For a short while, I hid behind Gwendoline. She was my world. I lived because of her. I worked so I could provide the things, Harry deemed useless.
I cannot correctly recall how this came to pass. I wasn’t home, for a short period of time, I do use the word home, loosely. When I returned she had emigrated. I write to her. I miss her, however I shall never begrudge her, her life.
She is now married, to a wealthy man. He provides for her in ways I couldn’t. Gwendoline found her home. In ways that evaded me. I shall visit, I would love to visit. England holds a place in my heart, as it did in her. She often told me, that she would return. As much as her sudden departure shocked me, I was relieved for her. She owns her own company. She has prospered in ways I have only dreamt of. She continues to study. I often ask after Ben, I think the day he found his freedom, he ran.
He is the black sheep of the family. If you cage a dog for too long, it will retaliate when it gets loose.
I pray for him, I know, he has to do whatever it is he is doing. And one day, calm will once more claim his heart.
Henry is quiet these days. I have no right to infringe on his privacy, I am a guest in his home, once more. Why? Because I have other place to lay my head.
I am no longer the scape-goat for Harry. He has found his home. I wish him well, holding grudges isn’t good for the soul. I have no idea what the future holds. I can only bless those whom have cursed me. My circle is incomplete. I wake up, I work, and I repeat the same cycle. I am not getting younger. I have made peace, with my plight. If it’s written that I shall leave this world alone, then so be it. As much as I have loved, I have come to the conclusion, it bloody hurts like hell.
I can now think back, not too my childhood per se’, I can honour Inkosi’s memory. I do believe he watches over me. I believe it with all my heart.
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