Ruby Red Read online

  Johann let go of my hand and grabbed Desmond by the shirt collar; his movement was so swift that Monica let out a terrified yelp. Desmond’s eyes bulged from the tight grip Johann had on him.

  ‘Don’t you ever insult Ruby ever again, jy hoor?’ he said in a deep, quiet voice, his face just inches from Desmond’s.

  Monica and I stood silently glaring at each other.

  Within seconds Johann was hauled backwards by six or seven boys. The unexpected attack from behind forced him to release Desmond from his fierce grip, and Desmond catapulted back, knocking over the precious bowl of potato salad behind him, before slumping forward, gasping for air.

  ‘Kill the bloody Afrikaner!’ he yelled as soon as he’d found his voice.

  A veritable roar went out amongst his gang, and they all rushed Johann, knocking him to the ground.

  Monica glared up at me from her crouched position next to Desmond. ‘Now let’s see what becomes of you, Ruby!’ she spat venomously at me.

  In that fleeting instant I looked at her guarding Desmond protectively, flashing her almond-shaped eyes at me with pure hatred.

  Best friend. I once had a best friend. A long, long time ago, or so it seemed.

  How high does a bird have to fly before the noise of the city below fades to blissful silence? How fast do its wings have to flap until it cannot see the land below? How many miles must it travel until its past seems distant and the future glows pale and shimmers up ahead? That was what I wished on the evening of the Disco Ball. To be that bird, carried far, far away on lofty winds that embraced me and transported me away from all the hurt and humiliation of that night. A night where Johann was punched as many times as a boxer in a ring, a night where Principal Dandridge demanded that once I had cleaned up Johann’s bloody lip and eyes in the boys’ bathroom, with he himself standing guard outside the door to ensure that there would be no further incidents, we were to leave immediately. A night where, as we exited the gymnasium with Johann coughing uncontrollably and leaning heavily against me, Principal Dandridge informed me that I was to turn in my prefect badge first thing on Monday morning.

  I barely heard his words for by then I was already flying, circling high overhead, his strident voice fading further and further away as I pulled Johann and I into the safety of his Buick.

  We held each other in the dark leather confines of his car. His pinstriped jacket was shredded from the elbow down, his trousers stained with the blood from his fresh cuts.

  I did not know the words, nor could I find the voice to tell him that it was all my fault. My blind stupidity of wanting him to be with me, to be my date at a school dance, where acceptance of anyone from the outside, least of all a rival Afrikaner, was not tolerated by teachers and students alike. I alone had brought this upon him.

  Johann groaned and leaned back on the seat, his blonde matted hair falling forward. ‘I don’t think they liked me much…’ he chuckled. He reached for my face and ran a finger gently though my hair.

  A half laugh, half cry came out of me. ‘I’m so sorry… Johann, will you ever forgive me?’ I took his fingers and held them to my lips. He lifted my bent head and pulled me towards him. ‘I have been wanting to kiss you all night…’ he whispered, then touched his swollen lip, ‘but with this…’

  ‘Nothing is impossible…’ I leaned in and pressed my lips ever so gently against his. He reached for the back of my head and pulled me in even closer.

  ‘You are the most…’ he began, but our lips locked against each other so that he did not get a chance to finish his thought. We clung to each other, inhaled each other, with every kiss deepening, with every touch more ardent, with every caress more intoxicating.

  Johann’s desire for me lit up a longing. A loneliness. A wanting to feel alive, a purpose for striving and seeking and achieving. A yearning for acceptance of all that I was, the open and the hidden.

  Is there always that one kiss that makes us feel that we have finally arrived? It was not my first kiss, but it was the only one that mattered.

  We flew that night, Johann and I, higher and higher, to a place where there were no longer boundaries that kept us separate, English and Afrikaans, boy and girl. We were, in those moments, or perhaps they were hours, in the darkness, as one.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Dr Jacobs was used to being summoned by Mother to our house in the very late hours of the night to deal with an emergency of one kind or another, but he could not hide the shocked look on his face when, instead of a dark-skinned wounded man to tend to, he found a strapping eighteen-year-old white boy. And an Afrikaans one to boot. He was a true gentleman, and spoke quietly to Johann in Afrikaans as he sewed up his split lip and the deep cut above his eye, while Mother went in search of some clean clothes in Father’s closet for Johann to change into. I held Johann’s hand while Dr Jacobs applied a stinging salve to the newly stitched skin.

  Father hovered outside the guest bathroom door and insisted on following Johann in his car all the way back to Randburg just to make sure Johann did not faint at the wheel from loss of blood.

  ‘I have been beaten up just as bad on the rugby field, Mr Winters,’ he told Father once he was dressed and ready to go.

  I could feel Mother’s eyes on me as I brushed a lock of hair out of Johann’s eyes. She seemed jumpy and nervous, and I knew that they were waiting for an explanation of what had happened at the dance once the three of us were alone.

  But I needed time by myself. To relive the night. To soak in all the earlier horror and all that later filled me with indescribable happiness. I needed time to relish and revel in the bliss that was Johann, but also to mourn the loss of all that had once been mine at Barnard High.

  I was a true outcast now and I did not want to think about what Monday morning at school would bring.

  Once Johann and Father had left, with Johann giving me a quick kiss on the cheek, since both my parents were watching, and telling me that we would talk tomorrow, I said a most sincere thank you to Dr Jacobs and a quick goodnight to Mother and bolted upstairs to my room.

  Julian’s painting was the first thing I saw as I entered my room. It was carefully propped against the wall next to my large window, waiting for Father to hang it tomorrow. I had invited Mother and Father up to see the painting earlier in the day and as they gazed upon the extraordinary depth and meaning of the work, they were both speechless. I knew Mother would really have loved to include it in the exhibition, but she said that it was a special gift from Julian to me and it most certainly would be bought if it were put out in public view.

  ‘I will never give it up,’ I told her ardently.

  ‘Of course you wouldn’t, darling. No one is suggesting that you do…’ She had reached for my hand to reassure me.

  ‘I think he’s your most talented artist yet, Annabel.’ Father stood admiring the painting and nodding his head. ‘Yes, I do believe you have a real winner on your hands…’

  I lay on my bed and looked into the upturned eyes of the little boy in the painting, but it was the purple crayon in his hand on which my eyes settled and remained.

  ‘Well, young Julian, can you help me draw my way out of this mess now?’ I whispered in the semi darkness.

  I fell asleep waiting for him to answer.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I did not ride my bicycle to school on Monday morning. Nor any other day that week, as it turned out. The weather had turned bitterly cold and I had come down with a terrible sore throat.

  Mother gave me lots of honey, lemon and hot water to drink before Father drove me to school on that dismal Monday morning. They had both been horrified to learn about the events that had occurred at the Disco Ball and were far more upset than I was about my impending loss of status as a prefect. Father, being the lawyer that he was, had demanded an audience with Principal Dandridge. It was granted for 7.15 a.m., fifteen minutes before the school day began.

  I coughed and spluttered and blew my nose, waiting in the corridor outside Prin
cipal Dandridge’s office on a hard wooden bench that sent wood slivers through my tights like biting red ants every time I shifted position. Occasionally I could hear the calm but raised voice of Father, but could not make out the exact words.

  Father emerged ten minutes later looking ashen and visibly angry.

  ‘I had no idea that you’d been excommunicated from your crowd. That there’s some sort of hate-hunt going on.’ Father ran a large hand through his hair. ‘Blast it, Ruby, why didn’t you tell us? I had no idea…’

  ‘You and Mother have had other things…’

  Father knelt beside me and grabbed me by both arms. ‘You are the most important thing in our lives, you hear?’ he said fiercely. ‘You, Ruby, no one and nothing else.’ He put his arms round me and I could feel his body tremble. ‘You’re not a prefect any more. Dandridge won’t budge.’ He held me tightly against his freshly ironed cream-coloured Oxford shirt. I could smell the Old Spice aftershave that he splashed every morning on to his just-shaven face.

  ‘It’s okay, Daddy,’ I said, and patted him on his broad back as he held me close. ‘It really doesn’t matter any more.’

  He released me then and looked at me through misty eyes. ‘Daddy. I haven’t heard you call me that in a long time.’ He pulled me to my wobbly feet. ‘Nasty cold for a nasty day.’ He shook his head. ‘Dandridge said for you to go in.’ He reached inside his jacket pocket and handed me his monogrammed handkerchief: DAW, David Adam Winters. I took it gratefully from him and turned in the direction of Principal Dandridge’s office.

  ‘I’m proud of you, Ruby… don’t ever forget it!’ he called after me. I could not see the pain in his face because my back was already turned, but I could hear it in his unsteady voice.

  ‘As I am of you, Daddy,’ I whispered.

  My father’s handkerchief got me through the day. I clutched on to it as I handed back my prefect’s badge to Principal Dandridge with my free hand. He wanted me to know that he thought it was a great shame that I was losing this honour, but student government had backed his decision and after bringing a ‘violent date’ to the dance he felt I no longer had the capabilities to use my better judgment, an essential trait for a prefect. The majority of student government was made up of Desmond and his supporters. I said nothing in defence of myself. There seemed to be no point and, it seemed, I had lost my voice from my terrible sore throat.

  I moved through the rest of the school day like a silent and invisible being. Fellow students, who used to smile and call my name as I went by, looked right through me in the school halls as if I did not exist. No teacher called upon me to answer a single question in any of my classes, a fact of which I was glad since my voice was practically non-existent.

  At lunch break, Janice came to find me on the rugby field where I sat amongst the pine needles alone. I had made the decision, as I traced my father’s initials over and over again on the handkerchief, that completing the school year at Barnard High was no longer an option. There was a perfectly good all girls’ public school, Parktown High, that was just as close to where we lived. My grades were all solid As and I hoped the fact that I had lost my status as a school prefect would be overlooked because of my strong academic record. I did not feel that leaving mid-term was a cowardly act, rather it was an act of acceptance. I no longer belonged at Barnard High. It was time for us to part company.

  ‘Ruby.’ Janice crunched heavily across the dried pine needles and stood in front of me. She twisted uncomfortably in her black patent-leather shoes and made no gesture to sit down. I watched her clasping and unclasping her pudgy hands as she spoke, ‘Oh this is sooo hard for me.’ She closed her eyes and took a deep breath as she blurted out what she needed to say. ‘My mother said that it’s not a good idea for me to be your friend any more. I’m unpopular enough.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I managed to get out in a raspy-thin voice but the effort to speak over inflamed tonsils made my throat ache even more.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ She looked down at her feet. ‘I really like you a lot, Ruby, but my mother…’

  I held a hand up to stop her and smiled weakly up at her. She looked so painfully awkward and uneasy and I wanted to end this unpleasant task for her quickly.

  ‘I understand,’ I whispered, because my voice could offer up nothing more.

  ‘Really?’ She sounded pitifully relieved. She leaned down and suddenly kissed me on the cheek with a loud smack. ‘Thanks for being such a pal!’ She turned quickly and made a hasty exit. I thought back to Clive, who earlier had walked right past me with bobbing curls and downcast eyes as we passed each other in the corridor between classes. I was somehow not surprised.

  I opened and closed my fist round my father’s handkerchief. It was the only thing that felt solid and real to me at Barnard High.

  Pal. My mouth silently formed the word in my mouth. I was glad that Janice had said ‘pal’ and not ‘friend’ for that was all they both had ever been to me.

  Chapter Twenty

  Mother picked me up from school in her champagne-coloured Jaguar. She was bubbling over with exuberance and excitement about the list of attendees who would be coming to the exhibition and barely noticed how pale and quiet I was. I felt my skin shrinking like cling film, tighter and tighter round my legs, my arms, my torso. And a cold clamminess cloaked my body. When we pulled in through the gates Mother turned to look at me.

  ‘Sorry, darling, I didn’t even ask you how your day was.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘That bad. And your throat’s killing you, right?’

  I nodded.

  She came to an abrupt stop outside the house. ‘Right then, off to bed you go. I’ll get some tea and honey up to you right away. I need you to be your usual perky self at the exhibition.’

  I slept fitfully most of the afternoon in a haze of sweaty unease. It wasn’t just the sore throat and throbbing head that kept waking me. There was something deeper that was churning in me, then seeping its way out through my pores. It was an uneasy sense of loss for something unnamed that I had yet to lose. I tried to force the dark feelings away with tender thoughts of Johann, but even those were laced with guilt. How could he want me when I had put him through hurt and humiliation already? Thoughts of Julian were no better. He too seemed to always suffer in my presence lately. And, as for school, there was no one who would come near me. I was treated like a diseased leper by everyone now. I was tainted by a sickness they could not see but did not want.

  Father came up to check on me in the early hours of the evening. Mother must have come in and drawn the curtains when I was sleeping because my room was veiled in darkness. I knew it was Father by the faint, tired, lingering smell of his aftershave. He groped his way over and I felt the bed sag slightly from his weight as he sat down close to me.

  ‘Ruby,’ he whispered softly in the blackness that surrounded us. ‘I’ve been thinking all day… maybe we should think about you leaving Barnard. There are other schools…’

  I found his hand and squeezed it. He held on to mine tightly. ‘These are such awful times.’ He sighed. I clutched his hand even harder than I had held on to his handkerchief all day and felt a single tear slide down my damp cheek. ‘Things will get better.’ He patted the bedcovers as if to reassure me.

  ‘When, Daddy?’ I whispered in the darkness. ‘When?’

  ‘Soon. I promise.’

  But I knew it was a promise that was not his to make.

  Loretta called while I was propped up in bed eating a bowl of chicken broth, the only thing that felt good sliding past my swollen, raw tonsils.

  ‘She can barely talk. Poor thing’s got a nasty tonsillitis,’ Mother informed her before she handed me the phone.

  ‘Ruby, ek is jammer dat jy siek is, sorry for your illness

  ‘Thanks,’ I croaked.

  ‘I will talk quickly then. Pa is very angry about what happened to Johann at your school dance. He is forbidding Johann and me to see you any more. But me and Johann, we ta
lked and this is not going to be. I am your friend, jou vriendin, Ruby, no matter what anyone say…’

  I gulped back tears but they came anyway.

  ‘Johann says he will call you later… Pa is just getting home. Totsiens and feel better.’ She hung up the phone quickly but I held the cradle against my heaving chest long after she had gone.

  ‘Thank you,’ I whispered into its small dark holes, which had carried the precious word I longed to hear.

  ‘Friend’.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I awoke the next morning with such excruciating razor-sharp pain in my throat that there was absolutely no possibility of attending school that day. Speaking was barely possible and I even had a hard time getting soothing lemon-flavoured tea and honey past my fist-like tonsils. There was something pleasantly calming about having lost my ability to speak. I could, for this brief voiceless time, live inside my own mind, undisturbed. It gave me the luxury to travel into nooks and crannies that I had long since overlooked, where I could stop and take out a forgotten thought or memory. I unpacked moments in my life, dusting some off and holding them out to be admired or unfurling one, only to roll it up quickly again. I lost track of time and even managed to stop feeling the sharp edges of my searing throat. I went through a myriad moments and memories, lingering with some, feeling their fabric soft and comforting and drawing quickly away from the rough-textured others. But there was one memory, although abrasive and harsh, I stayed with the longest.

  ∗

  I am standing on the only shopping road in Parkview. I am ten. I am waiting for my mother who is busy parking her car. We are here to buy a new pair of party shoes for me. There are lots of upcoming birthdays of girls in my class. I am leaning against the wall outside the shoe shop when a little girl with a pint-sized companion passes by. He is black. They are holding hands. The late afternoon sun catches her wavy blonde hair and his dark, tightly curled head. Suddenly a large woman walks towards the small pair. She sees their hands clasped together and shakes a big fat finger at them. Not allowed! The little boy and girl stop dead in their tracks. Then the large woman takes her chubby hands and separates the little boy from the little girl so that their fingers are no longer touching. I can see by their small little bodies that they are afraid. The little girl hunches forward. The little boy turns this way and that in little half-circles and I get a quick glimpse of bewilderment on his small dark face. What did I do wrong? Why is the lady angry? The big woman, satisfied that she has accomplished what needed to be done, moves on. She goes into the shoe store that I am soon to be in with my mother. I can smell her overpowering musky perfume as she strides by me. I watch the small boy and girl walk away but they are no longer holding hands. They probably won’t ever again. When my mother shows up a few minutes later I tell her that I feel sick and don’t want to buy shoes today. ‘What do you feel, sweetheart?’ she asks. Sad, I say. Sad sick.