Frozen water

Colleen Hay

My favourite childhood activity was to sit in the kitchen and watch Ma baking. And one day something happened that awoke my consciousness, and it was this point at which my long-term memory began.

The coils on the stove-plate glowed bright red and I sat on the kitchen counter with the smell of dried raisins, sultanas and citrus rinds mixed with heating sugar and melting margarine rising up my stout little nose. Ma was dressed in a floral-print dress, covered in front by the faded blue apron with the Hobbytex flowers painted over her breasts. The sweet, fruity mixture had to be heated until boiling point and then removed from the stove and stirred until cooling and firm. Then the biscuits could be added.

Even as a two-and-a-half-year-old, I knew - I sensed - that I was the centre of Ma's world. Pa had left when I was one, but Ma kept his photographs scattered around, and I still can't tell if I remember his face from the photos or from real life.

That day, while Ma was stirring away in the pot, I looked up and focused my attention on the back of her, thinking it strange that I could see her without looking into her face. I realised without the ability to express it that we two were quite separate and I was no longer the centre of her being. A twinge of separation anxiety made me blink my big round eyes. I must have leaned over slightly to the right and was about to topple, because I spread my arms - splaying my fingers - and brought my right hand down, my palm experiencing the angry, red-hot stove-plate first-hand.

Fifty years later I can still remember the force with which my consciousness was jerked to life while my senses remained confused. I screamed out in pain even before I felt the instant blisters swell up from skin contact with the dry heat. Expressing my pain consumed all of my attention, and I couldn't cry and remove my bright red, blistered hand from the stove-plate at the same time.

In the meantime, Ma had dropped her pot and the wooden spoon - the rich, saucy mixture oozing into the sink towards the drain, making a slow escape - and her hands clamped me under the armpits as she lifted me away from the stove and held me on her hip while she frantically popped ice cubes out of a tray in the freezer.

That day I learned the values of both hot and cold, and the afflicting pain of both extremes. Ma's hand gripped my own while I reluctantly clutched the ice cube and whimpered, hot salty tears flowing over my dark pink cheeks. My childish mind failed to decide which pain was worse: the flesh-roasting stove-plate or the bone-numbing ice cube, its white cold slicing into my delicate toddler hands.

"Always ice, never butter." Ma repeated, "Always ice, never butter. Ouma says to use butter, but ice will make it better, and butter won't."

I didn't ask why Ma was right and Ouma wasn't. Ma's word was gold and Ouma was too far removed and vague in my mind for me to take her proverbial words seriously.

That was the first but not the last time during my evolving years at home that I was reminded to use ice instead of butter. Cake pans handled without oven-gloves: this was me trying to assert my independence and sense of responsibility (taking the cake out of the oven when the ringer went off), but naively allowing stupidity and a lack of forethought to ruin my egotistical sense of self.

Years later, I learned true kitchen finesse, and my hips and breasts - which were firm and plump - bore testimony to this. First it was Norman who began to visit me and Ma more often - me in particular. And when he stopped coming round, it was Philip who couldn't resist the cooking in our little house.

Then Cedric, who would arrive with roses for Ma and a glittering smile for me. He would have his cupcakes and eat them too; spend evenings out on the front stoep drinking short whiskeys with me. After enough bouquets of roses for Ma and more than enough glittering smiles, Cedric produced from his pocket a diamond ring that outdid the brilliance of his smile by a thousand sparkles. The whiskey said yes to the ring and I left Ma and moved in with Cedric and his dazzling smile.

My daughter, Claudette, was three years old when she spilled boiling tea on her arm, and I quickly grabbed some ice from the freezer. She wailed as the red burns inflamed her forearm. So I rubbed the ice, melting it over her tender skin, and said, "Ice will make it better, my baby. Ice makes the bang go away."

Her big green eyes looked up at me, streaming with pitiful little tears. She was silent for a few moments, examining my expression - my own tears welling up - before she said, "Then why don't you put ice on your face, Mommy?"

It was two years of the drinking, the yelling, and the hitting that I had fixed with butter. Incensed and inflamed by Cedric's audacity to hit me, I had kicked him out like a mangy dog that just came back again and again. I would feed the dog and it would bite my hand and then I would kick it out. Every time it came back with its tail between its legs and I would feed it again. Cedric's penchant for making me forgive him and believe his stricken promises rendered me like butter on a burn: soft and warm. I showed him compassion and he showed me what a right hook was, and it gave me shining black eyes and a red jaw.

"Claudette," I said to my little girl, "we're going to Granny's house for a little while, okay?"

She obediently packed two sets of her clothes into my bag while I phoned Cedric at work. I told him that I'd had enough. I could hear that the burden of his hangover fogged his head when he spoke. "No, Sweedy, don't leave," he begged, smiling falsely against the receiver, "it won't happen again, I promise."

I closed my eyes and shame filled me. How could I have believed that for so long?

"You can speak all you like, Cedric. I don't trust you and your drinking any more. You wouldn't leave, so now I will."

I heard his imitation smile drop and in its place formed a scowl, and he spat a harsh whisper into the phone, realising his impotence. "Cold bitch," he said, and as I put the receiver down without saying goodbye I whispered to myself, "That's because ice makes the bang go away."

Ma was glad to have me back again and she began teaching the finer art of kitchen finesse to Claudette. Ma was seventy then, and when she put her fingers into hot caramel by mistake, pain hissed between her teeth. Claudette gave Ma some ice and her little words were as soothing as the frozen water.

"Ice will make it better, Granny," she said, and Ma looked at me and smiled.

This story will appear in the short story collection Amazing Anecdotes, published by South African Short Publishing Association, later this year.

Colleen Hay I was born in Newcastle, studied in Grahamstown, and I am now living in Krugersdorp ... which is why most of my friends call me a perpetual small-town girl. I, at 23 years old, am officially unemployed, although I do the laundry and ironing in return for a place to stay, food to eat, and a rather generous amount of love. My name appears on two degree parchments which do nothing more than make me nostalgic. An article in the January 2005 issue of Marie Claire relieved some of my debt, and I am currently working on two big projects that might see my name in publication within the next two years (though I pray it's sooner). I've also been drawing and painting for as long as I've been writing (about 10 years). The novel I'm working on at the moment ... is a secret, 'cos Stephen King said so.

LitNet: 08 June 2005

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