Why You Were Taken

MAD FURNITURE WHISPERER ₆

Johannesburg, 2021

Seeing as James was away in Zimbabwe and Kirsten had no grind planned for the day, she decided it was time to do something she had been putting off for too long. She caught a boerepunk-blasting taxi to the south of Johannesburg and took a long, brooding walk from the bus stop to the storage garages in Ormonde.

As she walked she snapped pictures with her locket. She used to have a superphone with a built-in camera, had a collection of lenses for it, but lugging a phone around when you could snap a Snakewatch on your arm just seemed archaic. Now smartwatches were being replaced with Tiles and Tiles were being replaced with Patches. It seemed impossible to keep up.

The LocketCam was tiny, smaller than a matchbox, and was really only a lens and a shutter release. She’d get the pictures later from her SkyBox. It was great for scenes like this: an old bus depot painted white by the ratty pigeons that had adopted it as their home; a mechanic’s cheerful advertising mural painted on a brick wall; a poster for a Nigerian doctor with an unpronounceable name who could enlarge your penis, get your ex-lover back, make your breasts grow, make you ‘like what you see in the mirror,’ vaccinate you against The Bug, and make you rich. If he had that power, thinks Kirsten, I’m sure he wouldn’t be messing around with other men’s junk. Or, on second thoughts, maybe he wanted to mess around with other men’s junk, and that’s why he became a junk doctor.

When she reaches the storage building it looks all closed up. Not very promising. Then she sees their billboard, and the logo: a smiling Rhino. Ironic, and sad. Like a Dodo giving a thumbs-up, or a winking Coelacanth. Who would choose an extinct animal as their mascot?

Once the cops gave her the go-ahead to put her parents’ house on the market she paid a company to move all their possessions here. There was no way she could have faced doing it herself. It had been the first place she had found online, and she doesn’t remember the Rhino. Now she wonders if her parents’ things were really here or if they had been on the first truck out to some dodgy location: Alex, Lonehill, Potchefstroom.

There was no bell to ring or reception to visit. When she calls the number on the faded hoarding a telebot tells her it is no longer valid. She walks around the building and finds a back entrance, a simple fenced gate closed with a heavy padlock. She had been given two keys and had thought that they were identical, but she tries one now and the padlock springs open. She steps inside and locks the gate behind her.

The number on the cheap keyring is pink/purple-blue: 64 (Chewed Cherry Gum; Frozen Blueberry). She walks past a xylophone of colours before she finds her lot. The garage door is rusted and needs some persuading to roll up. It screams all the way and Kirsten is momentarily blinded by the red chevrons the noise causes in her vision. Then, silence: dust glitters in the sunlight.

She stands still, breathing, blinking, trying to cope with the onslaught of smells, colours, feelings, memories whirling around her. The lounge suite is closest to her, and she focuses on that. She lifts the protective sheeting and glimpses the arm, a familiar tattoo of faded chintz. Pictures in her head: her lying on the couch, eating milky cereal while watching TV, one throw-cushion behind her back, another under her knees. The base ragged where their decrepit cat, Mingi, used to sharpen his claws. She lifts a seat cushion up and looks at its stained underside where her mother once spilled tomato soup, never to be forgiven by the stubborn fabric.

The coffee table with a small crack in the glass top that had been there for as long as she could remember. The server; the kitchen table; the counter swivel chairs. The buzz in her head dies down. She can do this. Slowly, methodically, she re-acquaints herself with each object. She lays her hand on them as she goes, acknowledging each piece, like some kind of mad furniture-whisperer.

The huge steel angle poise lamp, the bedside tables, the antique oak bookshelf. Box upon box of books and files and folders. Her parental units were academics and personally responsible, she was sure, for razing at least twenty rugby-field-size portions of rainforests each in the amount of paper they used over their lifetimes.

Despite being part of the original e-reader generation, they preferred their reading style old-school, and pen and paper to glass or projections. ‘It just feels more real,’ her mother used to say when Kirsten sighed at her for writing down her shopping lists on the back of old receipts. ‘Smartphones exist for a reason,’ Kirsten would say, showing her over and over how she could have a virtual shopping list, how she could send it to the store and have her groceries picked and delivered for her. Her mother would give her a tight smile, and she would know that she would never win this particular battle. When Cellpurses and then smart watches came on to the market it was just too much for them. They used to wield those old smartphone bricks as if they were something to be proud of, like the burning bras of the 60s. An image of a particularly ugly bra in flames comes to Kirsten’s mind; she doesn’t know where it comes from. One of her university courses? An ancient Fair Lady? Picstream? Webpedia? Flitter? Sometimes she feels as though her brain is a giant, multi-dimensional reflector, filled with the world’s random pictures. Where did they come from? A parallel life? A previous life? Someone else’s life?

The only exception to her parents’ fear of progressive technology was when she had given them a Holograph: a 3D-photo projector loaded with her Somali Pirates pictures. It was before the collection had won any awards. They were so proud of her, kept the projector running on loop, despite its rather macabre content: they had pirates in their lounge for months. The Holograph never moved from the mantelpiece, even when it stopped working.

There, she thinks, there’s a good memory to hold on to, until she remembers that the Holograph was stolen in the burglary, which makes her see the crimson comets again.

She battles to tear open the buff boxtape, cursing herself for not thinking of bringing a pair of scissors, when she finds in the third carton a neat little pocket-knife (Royal Sky). It is, fittingly, a sharp taste, a stab of bitter on her tongue, a hint of cyanide, like chewing an apple seed. She remembers this taste exactly, and gets a poke of nostalgia. Her father would keep this knife in his pocket and bring it out on special occasions: when a bottle of wine needed de-corking at a neighbourhood braai, or a loose thread threatened to unravel a dress. There would always be a calm measured-ness on these occasions. A slow inspection of the problem, a thoughtful diagnosis, and the retrieval of the magical object from the deep recesses of his trousers. A slow opening of the blade, a glint of light when it was revealed, and then at last, the careful incising where it was needed. Never forgetting the cleaning of the tool afterwards, a sleeve-shining of its insignia, and its eventual evaporation. Considered, calculating, careful.

She remembers specifically an occasion when she was battling to free a new baby doll from its suffocating plastic shell. The way he had achingly-slowly dismantled the packaging and kneeled down to hand the toy to her. The way he had looked at her, almost with sadness, as if he had some kind of prescience that she wouldn’t be able to bear children of her own. The memory, before fond and with pretty edges, now stings her with its poignancy. She swallows the hard stone in her throat.

Kirsten was never allowed to touch the knife, it was forbidden. She flicks it open and starts ripping into the boxes.

Seth knows before he opens his eyes that he is late for his grind. He groans and stretches for the Anahita water bottle he keeps next to his swingbed. Switches off his dreamrecorder. A few gulps later he turns on his Sunrise. Throughout the apartment all the curtains open, allowing the morning light to bleach the inside of the rooms, and what feels like the inside of his head. The apartment voice, which he has nicknamed ‘Sandy,’ wishes him a good morning and proceeds to play his Saturday playlist.

It’s his last day at Pharmax so it shouldn’t be too much of a problem if he’s a few hours late. It takes him a while to remember why his head feels like it had been left on a township soccer field: Salvia pills, cocaine drops, ShadowShots, a beautiful girl with sequins for eyes. Having sex with the shining girl behind one of the curtains in the club, but bringing another girl home. Rolo calling them a private cab. Long chestnut- and blonde-striped hair, palest skin, beautiful tits, cosmic blowjob. He yawns and rearranges himself, has another sip of water.

Shit, he thinks, he didn’t even check her ID for her Hi-Vax status.

That was dumb, but lately he’s done worse. He was either getting less paranoid or more self-destructive. Maybe it was the Salvia. Stretching his arms above his head, he makes a verbal note for his Pharmax report. Seth reaches over for his jacket, lying on the floor, and checks the inner pocket. He shakes the white bottle: almost half of the pills gone. He’ll need to top up today before he says his goodbyes.

The stripey-haired hook-up hadn’t been happy when he had asked her to leave at around 3AM but that was pretty much the standard reaction. He had made the night more than worth her while, so he told her to suck it up as he pushed taxi tokens into her hand and closed the door behind her, opening it again just to turf out a lone red boot that smelled of Givenchy and old carpets.

As always, he was surprised by the hurt expression. Honestly, how could she expect him to get a decent night’s sleep with a total stranger in his bed? Some creeps were Fucked Up.

He gets up and wraps his raw silk dressing gown around himself. He doesn’t like walking around the place naked, even though he lives on his own. He finds people doing mundane things in the nude – like eating breakfast – distasteful. Naked is for showering and sex, for God’s sake, not for frying eggs and pressing wapple juice. He switches on the kettle, pours Ethiopian javaberry grounds into his antique espresso maker, and puts it on the gas stove to percolate. While he’s waiting he supercharges his Tile, steams some double-cream milk. Makes seedtoast with almond butter and wolfs it down. Makes some more, and takes it to his tablet along with his mug of fragrant coffee. Just as he had hoped, a small green rabbit blinks on his screen. Someone from Alba is online and bumps him. He types in his password, ‘52Hz,’ to gain access to the thread.

He takes a sip of his coffee, dusts crumbs off his fingertips, and types a reply:

Out of nowhere, his left thumb starts tingling. He examines it, rubs it on the top of his thigh, and carries on typing.

The green rabbit disappears.

Kirsten’s left thumb is bleeding. She hadn’t realised you could get a (double) paper cut from double-walled cardboard. After swearing a great deal in every colour she can think of, she kicks the box that had inflicted the damage. She wants it to go flying, but it’s heavy and all she manages to do is nudge it off the pile. It lands with a thud of disappointment on the concrete floor.

The corner of a white card sticks out from underneath the box. She pries it loose. Smaller than the palm of her hand, tacky double-sided tape on the back: it’s the kind of card that gets sent with flower deliveries. The illustration is of a lily, printed in sparkling pink ink (Strawberry Spangle), which she bleeds on.

Inside, in a script she doesn’t recognise, it says ‘CL, yours forever, X, EM.’

Her watch beeps. It’s a bump from Keke, wanting to meet up for drinks next week. Says she has something to celebrate. Somewhere dark and clubby, she says.

‘Affirmative,’ Kirsten replies, ‘Congratulations in advance for whatever we’re celebrating. Let’s bask in our mutual claustrophilia.’

Bumps, or chatmail messages, are getting so short nowadays they can be impossible to textlate. Sometimes Kirsten uses the longest word she can think of, just to rebel against the often ridiculously abbreviated chat language.

She realises that this probably makes her old, and wonders if it is the equivalent of wielding a brick for a cellphone. Even her Snakewatch is now old technology. She doesn’t have the energy to upgrade devices every season. Maybe she is more like her mother than she has ever realised.

She flicks the card back into the box and sucks the side of her thumb, where the skin is dual-sliced, and waits for the red to stop. She feels hung over, even though she didn’t drink that much the night before. Another sign of aging? She sometimes feels like she’s ninety. And not today’s ‘90 is the new 40!’ but real, steel, brittle ninety. Grey-hair, purple-rinse, hip-replacement ninety.

So far she had flipped through what felt like hundreds of files and documents, most written in jargon that she doesn’t understand. She had to page through a library of notes before she found her birth certificate. Onionskin paper, slightly wrinkled, low-resolution print, ugly typography, but there her name was in black and white: Kirsten Lovell; daughter of Sebastian and Carol Lovell. Born on the 6^th of December 1988 at the Trinity Clinic in Sandton, Johannesburg.

So she does exist, she thinks, even though it should seem clear. Cogito ergo fucking sum.

Perhaps the autopsy report was wrong? They could have mixed up her mother’s body with someone else’s, easy enough to do when so many people are dying of the Bug. Or the discharge note from the hospital could have been wrong; they got the date of her hysterectomy wrong. A sleep-deprived nurse on her midnight shift could easily have written down the wrong year. Perhaps absent-mindedly thinking of her own surgery, or the birth of one of her own kids.

Getting tired of hunting through the boxes now, she finally finds the one she had come all this way for. It’s a bit squashed on the edges, and grubby with handprints. Sealed with three different kinds of tape, it has clearly been opened and closed a number of times over the years. ‘PHOTO ALBUMS’ is scribbled on the side in her mother’s terrible handwriting. When Kirsten catches sight of the scrawl she feels a twinge of tenderness and has to sit down for a breath.

She opens the box with a little more care than she had the others. Twelve hardcover photo albums take up the top half of the box, and the bottom is lined with DVDs. They only started taking digital photos when she was in high school, so it was safe to say what she was looking for would be in one of the paper albums.

There is a specific picture of herself as a baby that she wants to find. She guesses the photo was taken when she was around 6 months old. Somewhere outside in the sun with a tree, or trees, in the background. Her hairless moon of a head decorated with a silly, fabric-flowered headband. Back slightly arched and an arm outstretched to someone off-camera, a pale pink starfish for a hand.

Slowly she pages through each album, trying to not get caught in the webs of emotion they contain: Rhubarb crumble, ash grey, Peppermint (the colour, not the taste), coconut sunscreen, soggy egg sandwiches (Sulphurous Sponge), some kind of flat sucker with a milky taste – butterscotch? Butterscotch with beach-sand. Marshmallow mice – available only at a game-hall tuckshop at a family holiday resort in the Drakensberg. Ammonia, baby oil, cherry cigars. Silk carnations, flaking slasto, ants that taste like pepper. She snaps the last album shut and looks for another box of photos.

This can’t be all there is, she thinks. We’re missing 3 years. The first 3 years.

Kirsten, now driven by a fierce energy, attacks what is left of the boxes. Her mind races with possible explanations. Maybe they didn’t own a camera. Maybe they believed it was bad luck to photograph a baby. Maybe the photos were lost, stolen, burnt in a fire. There are no baby clothes either. No baby toys, but she’s sure they must have been given away – there were hundreds of orphans in those days – abandoned babies: unheard of today. She feels wet patches bloom under her arms as she scrabbles through the contents. Her hair begins to bother her and she ties it up roughly into an untidy bun. As the boxes start to run out, her anxiety builds. She finds no more albums, but in the second last box she opens she discovers some framed photographs. Of course! She thinks, it was framed! That’s why it’s not in an album. A calming finger on her heart.

And there it is, almost exactly how she remembers it. She clutches it, searching it for detail. The heat of her hands mist the silver frame: heavy, decorative, tasteful. The picture not exactly in focus, but close enough. A blue cotton dress (Robin Egg) puckered by the tanned arm holding her up. She has no aunts, no grandmothers; that must be her mom’s arm, although she doesn’t recognise it.

She expects the photo to make her feel some kind of relief, but it has the opposite effect. Some small idea is tapping at her, whirring in her brain. Something feels off the mark. She scans the picture again.

What is it? The texture. The texture of the paper is wrong. It isn’t printed on glossy or matt photo paper, the way it would have been in 1987. It’s grainy, pulpy. Kirsten turns the frame over in her hands and pries the back loose. A quarter of a glamorous cigarette print ad stares back at her, its bright blue slashing her vision.

Kirsten turns it over and over again, battling to understand, not wanting to understand. It’s not a photo of her. It’s not a photo at all, but a cutting from a magazine. The autopsy diagram flits into her mind with its careless cross over her mother’s lower abdomen.

She glances over at the cheap looking birth certificate, and then down to the piece of paper in her hands. Perhaps her photo was published in the magazine for some reason? Living & Loving, the cutting says, ‘New Winter Beauties,’ July 1991. She had been three years old when this issue had been printed.