When my father starts bringing things over from the big Georgian house in Wynberg to my small cottage at Zeekoevlei I see trouble ahead. Logically, a one-room flatlet cannot contain the contents of a five-bedroomed home where a family of seven lived in various configurations for almost 50 years. Dad picks the ugliest wall unit that was dumped on him by my mother’s bete-noire. Neither my mother nor her old enemy have either the language or presence with which to settle their old grudge. Where do such threads of enmity go? All the rage and tears have become as inconsequential as dust motes in a weak and wintry sun.
I want him to take one of the twin beds that had belonged to my grandparents. He refuses. He tramps around in his too big sheepskin slippers, tripping over the mat, huffing and puffing as he drags and packs crates of tins and bags of spices from my mother’s kitchen. The expiry date on the bottle of olive tapenade is 2006. I say, “Dad, this is the Year of Our Lord, 2022, and that bottle expired precisely 16 years ago.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he replies. “Olives live forever in sealed clay urns.” I don’t bother objecting that this is not a sealed clay urn, but a humble glass jar with a questionable tin lid.
My father buys a “thingamajig” for five bucks at the church charity shop after the midweek service. When I tactfully point out that we should be taking stuff to the church shop, not bringing it back, he does not disagree. He points out that this particular thingamajig aids the infirm in the removal of the shell of a boiled egg. He’s not wrong.
The velvet teal armchairs were always too large and too bold for my mother’s consulting room with its extraordinarily high ceilings and vast bay window looking up at Devil’s Peak. They were the right size for her psychotherapy patients who recalled their dreams every week, but they are certainly too big for a small cottage. Dad settles on two little arm chairs which slot neatly into the tiny living room. These also belonged to my mother’s bete-noire and are, at least, pretty.
My sister will arrive from the UK during her spring break to sort out the museum of riffraff. She arrives with 200 first year chemistry exam scripts to mark in her brief case. She whistles through them in her spare time. She also sorts through the beautiful dressers and the kist. She whizzes through stacks of compact discs and knows what to do with the cabinet full of my grandmother’s crystal.
She eats the crackers with brie and olive tapenades and pronounces them delicious. Before my sister dispatches the chunky teal armchairs to the auctioneer, I open the heavy taffeta curtains in my mother’s consulting room for the last time and sit in one of the rockers. I remember talking to her. With my eyes closed I can sense her nodding. Lips are turned up in an almost smile, as if to say, “Seems you could have some decent fun at last…”
The late afternoon light falls over the arm of the chair. Something that has held on tightly for a very long time loosens its grip, as if looking at the door, as if gesturing, “Go on now. What are you waiting for?”
I stroke the nap of the velvet backward, releasing particles of old fur in the weak sun. It’s easy to leave while the sunbeams dance. I must go without looking back, before smoothing the velvet back down.
~
Liesl Jobson makes art in Zeekoevlei on the Cape Flats where hippopotamus once roamed. Her writing is forthcoming in Pink Ochre, Silkworm Poetry, Quibble Lit, Literary Cocktail Magazine, Full House Literary and the In Other Stories anthology She plays contrabassoon, teaches writing, coaches women’s rowing and is a community activist in Cape Town.