Sandra Jensen was born in South Africa but left as a child and has
lived in England, Canada, Greece and Ireland. She is presently based
in Berlin, Germany. Sandra has written for the theatre; short
non-fiction works have appeared in Utne Reader and Whole Earth
Magazine; creative non-fiction on-line at Verbsap. She has been
short-listed for the Canadian literary journal Event's creative
non-fiction contest. Sandra is cultivator of the on-line writer's
group at Zaadz.com called Diving Deeper: A Writing Workshop. She
leads Diving Deeper writing retreats in Europe and North America.
Sandra is currently working on a short story collection and a novel
set in Sri Lanka during the "Black July" of 1983.
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They came in the night. In my half-sleep,
diving deep but not deep enough. The corridor light is on, my door is open. It’s always open. I want to hear
the music. I want to know I’m not alone. But still they come. I can’t stop them. I try, but I flop about in
a soupy place. I can still hear the music but I can’t move. I’m pressed down into my body, drowning in my
own breath. They always come together. Not one, but two. I smell them first. It starts as a tingle in my
mouth, climbs up the back of my nose, a smell like no other. I try to describe it to Mummy but I can’t.
It’s a bit like the acid bath she uses for her sculpture. Sweeter, like burnt fruit.
I’m slipping, grabbing hold of the sheet but it can’t hold me up. I turn my
head but I know they’re here and if they’re here I have to look. I shut my eyes but they are already shut.
It makes no difference, I see through my eyelids so I might as well open them. Maybe this time looking will
scare them away. It works with the living room monster when I’m alone and the door is shut. Open quick, turn
on the light, look everywhere possible before it gets me. It never does. But not Stringman. Not Paperman.
They force me to look and that’s when they take me.
They came in the night, driving up and down Parkhurst Avenue until they find
Maria. She’s hot, going for a walk to cool off in the desert air. The Black Mariah pulls up on the pavement,
almost knocking her over. Three men get out.
—Passbook, one shouts, even though she is two feet in front of him. The other
two lean against the side of the van.
—Passbook at home Baas, she says, looking at her shoes, backing into the Anderson’s nailclipped lawn.
—You know you can’t go out without your passbook.
—Yes, Baas. Sorry Baas.
—Wat doen jy uit so laat meise? Says one of the men by the van, his stompie
sticking to his bottom lip. He sucks on it but it’s dead.
Paperman flattens out like he always does, pouring himself across my bed, my floor,
my ceiling, taking me with him. I flatten out, I become so thin I’m see-through. My body stretches across my bedroom
and my bedroom stretches across the house and the house stretches out over Parkhurst Avenue and Parkhust Avenue melts
into Johannesburg and Johannesburg is nothing but a flat city, tracing paper thin and I’m no different, we are
sprawled across the land, we are the land, my body saucering, my arms reaching out, fingers splayed, and all there
is is Paperman and nothing else.
—You know we must take you in, don’t you.
—Yes, Baas. No, Baas.
—What’s that, you poes disagreeing with me?
—Please Baas, my passbook is over there.
| "There’s noise in the kitchen. Voices. Crying. Shouting. I
stand in the narrow corridor. I don’t want to go back into my room and I don’t want to go into the kitchen.
I’m frozen solid, my bare feet turn to stone on the tiles. I look down." |
Maria points to our white bungalow. It has a tin roof but Mummy's going to fix that.
The man with the dead stompie takes her by the arm, squeezing hard. He doesn’t like to touch black flesh but he
likes to make them squeal. That’s what Barry told me. The stoop light goes on. Maria lets out her breath.
—Please, Baas.
My mother opens the front door.
—Maria? Is that you?
—Madam, Maria says. She’s trying to shout but it sounds like Marmalade my
cat who tore off half her tongue licking the edge of a tin of tuna. My mother’s walking hard across the lawn.
She’s got that look on her face.
Stringman pulls at me. He wants his turn. I can’t now. It’s too late. I looked
at Paperman first. I couldn’t help it. He was where my eyes went all by themselves. Maybe because Paperman is
wider, I don’t know. They both stood there at the foot of my bed and before I knew it I was Paperman, floating
across the universe, before I knew it I was the universe, flat as a pancake. Then I hear Maria scream and then
I’m awake with a rush, my heart in my mouth. My stomach’s like sour milk. I want to throw up. I can still smell
the smell. They are still here and I want to get out. I want Mummy.
There’s noise in the kitchen. Voices. Crying. Shouting. I stand in the narrow
corridor. I don’t want to go back into my room and I don’t want to go into the kitchen. I’m frozen solid, my
bare feet turn to stone on the tiles. I look down. My feet melt, and all I can see is brown. I once held a
black man’s hand. I turned it over, showed the palm to Barry. Barry lives next door. He has hair like a shaving
brush, snot always crusted on his lip. – Look, I said. It’s as white as mine. I pressed my hand next to the black
man’s. He's the nice gardener from the other side of the road. He's leaning against the telephone pole, eating
his paloney sandwiches.
—They’re not even white, I said.
—Sort of pink. And blue. I traced the colours of our palms with my finger.
Barry snorted.
—He’s just a kaffir, he said and walked away.
The crying in the kitchen is louder. Men’s voices. Mummy’s voice. Daddy’s
voice. I’m not allowed to call him that. But I do in my head. I walk backwards, my legs dragging like Mummy’s
sacks of concrete. I want to see, I don’t want to see. I turn around, and walk past my door quickly. Not going
in there. I can still smell Paperman. Going to Davie’s room. The door is closed. Maybe he’s not there. I don’t
know what to do. I knock. Nothing. Louder.
—Is that you, darling? Mummy says, and then the corridor is stuffed with people.
Big people. I don’t know them. I want to get away, they smell bad, worse than Paperman. Mummy takes my hand and
pulls me close.
—It’s all right they are going now, aren’t you?
I don’t understand. Where am I going?
Stringman’s next. It happens that way. One and then the other. Whichever one is
first, well, the other one gets his turn. I’m resigned now. I know it will happen. There is no point in fighting
but I do. I think of putting toothpicks between my eyelids to hold them up but I fall into the almost sleep before
I know it and then there’s the smell. It’s filling me from my toes upward through legs and knees and belly and
chest up to my throat until it finds my nose and now I know it’s time. I don’t fight anymore. I just look. There
he is. Stringman. He doesn’t really have a face. How could he, being so long and thin, stretching down through
the floor up through the ceiling, I don’t know where he stops and where he begins, and now I’m stretching too.
I’m him, I’m so long I can’t see my feet, I’m reaching upward, pulling like toffee into evermore.
I drag my blanket with me, my pink flowered one with the satin ribbon around
the edge and it stretches up into Stringman, pulling my bed with it, my slip-slops, my Barbie doll, my room
and all my toys and now everything is thin and long turning like a string merry-go-round pulling in our bungalow,
the green lawn Sunday Times just mowed, the cactus by the copper gate Mummy welded, pulling everything and everyone
inwards and upwards. We are nothing but a strand. Even the stars are pulled in, even the dark plate of night is
sucked into length. And then, suddenly, it’s over. I’m dipping down, I’m falling into the crack of dreams where
neither Stringman nor Paperman go.
He comes in the night. I’m in my room, playing with Ken. I don’t like his plastic
brown hair but what can I do about that. He looks a bit like Daddy who I’m not allowed to call Daddy. I have to
call him by his name, Harold. I end up hardly calling him at all. Mummy’s screaming. I drop Ken on the floor. He
bounces once and then lies face down on one of my slip-slops. I sit very still, holding my breath. Then Mummy
stops screaming and there’s nothing but silence. I’m still holding my breath. I’m supposed to be asleep. The
light from the corridor is enough to play by so I did, not wanting to meet Stringman or Paperman again. I knew
I’d have to, if not this night another night. But I could play awhile, no one noticed.
My chest hurts. I have to let my breath out. I let it out in little bits, hoping
it doesn’t make any noise. Then I hear low sounds, man sounds. Mummy’s voice again. A shadow passes my door, running,
thump thump thump. I know it’s Davie because of the sound. He never wears shoes. Ever. I push Ken aside with my toes
and wiggle them into my slip-slops. They’ve got yellow daisies stuck to the V on top. I pick up Ken and walk with him
to the door. I stop to listen, it sounds okay. No more screaming. Just talking. I walk out the door, as quiet as I can.
Hard with slip-slops. They slop. Maybe I should just go barefoot but Mummy says I shouldn’t because of the iron filings
from her metalwork. She shows me her hands. Her fingertips are lined with black ridges.
—I could use them instead of sandpaper, she laughs. I don’t know why it’s funny but I laugh too.
Sunday Times is sitting at the kitchen table with an axe in his head. It’s a small axe,
the handle ringed with tiny coloured beads like the bracelet Maria wears. His face is nothing but two big eyes and blood.
He’s smiling, so there’s teeth as well. Mummy’s picked up her handbag and got her car keys in her fingers.
—No, Madam, says Sunday Times. —It's nothing.
—It’s not nothing, Sunday, Mummy says.
Daddy, I mean Harold is nodding his head. He’s leaning against the big white fridge,
his arms crossed. He sees me.
—What are you doing up, Miss Muffet?
—I heard a noise, I say, clutching Ken to my chest. It hurts because Ken’s feet are sticking into me.
—You should go back to bed, darling, Mummy says, but she’s not looking at me so I
pretend not to hear. Davie’s talking to Sunday Times and I want to hear what he’s saying, I don’t want to go back
to bed. Sunday Times is laughing, his mouth a big wide hole, dark red like his face.
—What happened, I whisper to Davie.
—He’s got an axe in his head, he answers. I glare at him.
—I see that. Who did it?
—Maria.
Maria? Sunday reaches out for me but I step back into Mummy.
—Is okay, is okay, he says, —Maria shouts at me and I shout at her and she shouts
back and I hit her and then she put the axe in my head. He laughs again. —She a good woman, he adds.
No one says anything for a bit and then Daddy says,
—At least let them take a look. You might need stitches.
I look at Daddy and then back at Sunday Times. He won’t want stitches. They hurt. I
had nine. Mummy stares at Daddy.
—He’s not got papers, you know that.
Daddy, I mean Harold, looks away.
| "I’m wide awake now and the Sandman is sitting on my bed sprinkling
sand into my eyes. It stings but not as bad as I thought it would. I wait for him to dig out my eyes. I wonder
if he does it with those fingernails. I wonder if it will hurt, I wonder if I will look like Sunday Times that
night with the axe in his head." |
—Christ.
—No worry, Massa.
—It's Harold, Sunday, Harold.
—I’ll go to the sangoma, Massa. He always fixes me good, Sunday Times beams at
Daddy. Daddy throws his hands up in the air and Mummy puts her keys in her handbag and puts her handbag on the table.
—At least let me take a look.
Sunday Times' white shirt is polka dot red. He looks up at Mummy. His eyes are like
Jackson’s, the Anderson’s cocker spaniel. I wanted a dog but we only have Marmalade.
—Go back to bed, darling, Mummy says.
—What about Davie?
—He’ll go too.
I look at Davie and know he won’t but I leave anyway, I don’t want to stay here.
Daddy pats me on the shoulder and says,
—There you go, Miss Muffet.
I hate that. I don’t know what it means. What is a Muffet? And I don’t like spiders.
We have a huge black one in the bath and I hate to go in there and I hate to see it go down the plug when Mummy turns
on the tap. I don’t want it dead but I don’t want it in my bath.
I don’t sleep. I’m not going to sleep. I don’t want them to take me. I sit up in bed
and hold Ken and Barbie close. It doesn’t help so I put them in their shoebox house and pick up Floss. She’s a stuffed
poodle dog and I love her very much. I hear Sunday Times and Mummy talking and then Sunday Times shouts something in
Zulu. I know it’s Zulu because he told me and he told me never to say what he said to another black man. I’m not sure
if I like Sunday Times. He smokes a lot, nearly as much as Mummy and he never changes his shirt. He lives with Maria
in a tin room in the back yard. The room smells of sweat and kaffir beer. He came with the house. Mummy didn’t want
him but he made a fuss. Maria arrived later. Mummy wasn’t happy at all but when Maria said she had her passbook Mummy
said okay.
—I don’t want servants, Mummy said to Daddy when they thought I wasn’t listening but I was.
—Well, if you don’t take them someone else will. At least we can make sure they are okay.
—Okay? Mummy said. That tone in her voice. They were going to start shouting so I climbed
back onto my chair and asked for a glass of milk.
—They’re not okay! It’s not okay. You know that. If I have them here what will the others
think? I can’t go to the meetings and say I have servants!
—Well don’t go to the meetings then.
Daddy, I mean Harold, was really angry I could tell because his face went red even though
his voice didn’t change. He got up from the table and poured me a glass of milk. He pulled his chair out to sit down again
and it made a scraping sound so bad I had to cover my ears quickly and on the way up my elbow knocked my glass of milk over.
—Jesus Christ, Daddy said, and walked out.
They came in the night. I know them in the day, they come sometimes. But one by one, never more.
It’s not allowed. I don’t know why but that’s what Mummy told me. The tall man talks at me and then laughs over my head like I’m
the funny one. He winks but I’m not sure it’s for me or for Mummy. John I really like a lot. He has a beard like Father Christmas
and he’s very nice. The beard tickles. The tall man has a strange name, Geert, which Mummy says is German. I don’t know where
that is but it’s not here. Somewhere where there is snow and snowmen and gingerbread houses. I’ve woken up between Paperman
and Stringman and I hear the voices from the kitchen and I want Mummy. I walk to the kitchen and Geert has his shirt off, his
back twisted round so everyone could see.
—Fuck, says Daddy.
No one notices me so I just stand there.
—You have got to be careful man.
—Did you get a tetanus shot?
—Where am I going to get that without some fucker informing?
—You don’t have to tell them how you got it.
—They’ll ask.
—Just say you were protecting your wall from the blacks with barbed wire. Everyone does it.
—Yeah right. No one’s going to believe that. I’m listed. They know what I do. They just can’t prove it.
Mummy sits down and lights a cigarette. They are all sitting in the dark now. Why don’t they put the lights
on? I see little red dots like fireflies drawing zigzag lines in the air. I don’t want to go in, I don’t want to go back to my room. My
feet are stuck again so I crouch down. I like to hear the voices. I feel safe. And then Geert shoots up, yelling,
—What the?
They all turn around at once, sucking air in like a Hoover.
—It’s only Lucy, John says.
—Come here sweetheart.
I do, but I can’t, I’m stuck there on the floor. Geert’s staring at me and Daddy turns on the corridor light.
—Hey man, be careful, Geert says and then looks at me again.
—Do you know what happens to little girls who don’t go to sleep?
I shake my head. Something tells me I should have nodded, but it’s too late now.
—The Sandman comes. Do you know who he is?
I shake my head again.
—He throws sand in your eyes and you know what happens then?
Mummy’s looking at him, smiling. Daddy, I mean Harold, is picking his fingernails with a fork.
—Well?
I shake my head again.
—Hey, don’t give the girl a hard time, John says, but Geert carries on.
—The sand makes your head bleed and then your eyes fall out and the Sandman gathers up all the eyes
of the children who don’t go to sleep and takes them to his iron house on the moon.
—Geert! Mummy says and Daddy laughs.
John walks to me and holds my face in his hands.
—Don’t listen to him, he’s just playing. There’s no such thing as a Sandman, he says, but I don’t believe him.
He comes in the night. He lives on the moon. He knows I don’t want to sleep. He knows I don’t want to
meet Paperman or Stringman. I think about the Sandman’s iron home. I think perhaps he collects up all Mummy’s iron filings and makes
a nest. I think about my eyes. Davie once asked me if I’d like to go blind or deaf and when I said I don’t want to go either he said
I had to choose so I chose deaf. Maybe blind wouldn’t be so bad, I’d not be able to see Stringman or Paperman but somehow this
doesn’t feel comforting right now. I try to sleep and then I try to stay awake but my eyes hurt. They feel scratchy and I wonder
if he is here already. The music is on. It’s the one the Mummy calls Lady Day. I can hear Mummy banging something. She’s got an
exhibition soon so she’s very busy. I sit up, Ken and Barbie on my lap, poodle dog Floss in my arms. I can’t stand waiting anymore
I have to do something. Mummy won’t listen to me while she’s working, and Daddy’s away in Pretoria for an important meeting. I
put Ken and Barbie on my pillow and keep hold of Floss. I put my slip-slops on and go to Davie’s room. The door is open, his
light is on.
—I can’t sleep, I say.
He’s on the floor playing Cowboys and Indians. He doesn’t look up but he doesn’t tell me to go away.
—Can I play too?
—Okay. You be the Indian, he says, handing me the little man.
I like the Indian. He looks like the gardener across the road only with long hair in a plait down his back.
—He’s called Samson, I say.
—That’s not an Indian name. He has to have an Indian name and I’m going to shoot him.
I start to cry but hold it back.
—Can we play a bit first?
—Okay.
I curl up on my side, holding Samson in one hand and Floss in the other.
—Do you know about the Sandman, I whisper. Davie looks at me.
—That’s just silly.
—Do you know what he looks like?
Davie gets up and opens the tin trunk by his bed. He scrabbles around a bit and then pulls out a
book. He opens it, and then hands it to me, pointing at a page.
—Here.
I don’t want to look but I do.
They stop coming in the night. Mummy’s crying. She’s been crying since yesterday. I’m playing
Cowboys and Indians with Davie on the stoop. He hasn’t shot Samson yet. Sunday Times is digging a pond for goldfish, his head
all wrapped up in a bandage. A Black Mariah drives past, stops, and reverses and parks outside our gate. Two policemen get out,
push the gate open without looking at Davie or me. They grab Sunday Times by the collar of his grubby white shirt and drag him
across grass to the van. There are no windows, only at the front. Sunday is screaming, Mummy comes running out and shouts,
—You wouldn’t do this if my husband were here!
The men ignore her and shove Sunday Times inside the van and close the doors. Maria’s kneeling on
the front lawn holding her stomach, leaning backwards and forwards, her face all scrunched up like a walnut.
—Don’t look, Davie says, but it’s too late. I’ve already seen. He takes me by the hand and we go
around back where the swings were.
Mummy’s been at the police station and then on the telephone all day. Something bad has happened.
Worse than Sunday. She won’t tell me but she doesn’t know I’m listening. I’m supposed to be asleep but I don’t do that anymore.
I think the Sandman won’t come if I’m with Mummy. I’m sitting in the corridor, by the kitchen door, Floss in my arms.
—They’ve taken Geert, she whispers into the telephone. — No, he’s not gone on holiday, stupid, she
starts to shout. And then she says, — Oh, and puts the phone down quickly.
She sits there for a while, smoking in the dark.
He’s going to come in the night. I’m lying in bed. Waiting. I think it’s better to be Paperman or
Stringman than have Sandman come and take my eyes out so I try to go to sleep. Perhaps it’s good to be Paperman. After the first
bit I quite liked floating across Johannesburg, I liked stretching out across the countryside, everything gathered up into one
everwide circling sheet, spinning round and round, stretching out and out, my edges curling in the wind, the wind spreading
into me until all I am is flat air and I can stretch no more, I am forever and then it goes dark, all dark, and then the dreams
come and I’m lying in my bed again, my face pressed into my pillow.
He comes down through the ceiling. He turns my head with his hands, his long curling fingernails
tangle in my hair and he looks at me. His pointed hat is askew, he has sticky-out ears and a big nose like Geert. He leans close
and I can feel his hot breath, it smells like cheese and I wish I could smell Stringman but I don’t. It’s too late for that. I’m
wide awake now and the Sandman is sitting on my bed sprinkling sand into my eyes. It stings but not as bad as I thought it would.
I wait for him to dig out my eyes. I wonder if he does it with those fingernails. I wonder if it will hurt, I wonder if I will
look like Sunday Times that night with the axe in his head. I wonder where Geert is. Maybe he’s up there in the Sandman’s iron
nest in the moon, waiting for me. I wonder if Davie will shoot Samson when I’m gone. There’s a lot of things I wonder about but
then it’s all black and I know the Sandman has taken out my eyes so I just lie there in the dark, wondering what’s going to
happen next.
* * *
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