The power went out. Loadshedding was the new normal and no one had any energy left to complain about it. So, they sat in the dark waiting, thinking of what words they could conjure up using the few tiles they had left to play on the board. Vicky, the matriarch, went around the table lighting the candles. At each one she paused as if in a trance, waiting for the top of the flame to become a needle point, before moving on to the next. It all felt very ominous to Peter, her son-in-law. They were playing Scrabble – a game he had very little experience with – in the glow of what resembled a séance.
Vicky sat down and picked up her letters, her eyes darting back and forth between the ivory tiles in her hand and the Tetris-like layout of words on the board in front of her. It was her turn and she was stuck.
“Pass,” she said stiffly after ten minutes of being unable to formulate a decent-scoring word. She was the most competitive of the lot and she’d rather pass on her turn than put down a word she wasn’t entirely happy with.
“It’s your turn dad,” Emily, the only teen at the table said, turning to her stepfather. She was keeping score, her page divided into four columns with each of their names written in pencil at the top. Under Vicky’s name, she drew a large zero.
Her mother, Jenny, straightened her back and crossed her long, silky legs one over the other.
Peter loosened another button. His shirt was halfway undone already, but still he felt like a stuffed tomato. Jenny had insisted that he wear the blue and white striped top to dinner. It made him look slimmer, she’d said. More sophisticated.
He cleared his throat and then, taking two of the five tiles he had left on his rack, placed them on the board.
Jenny threw her head back and laughed. “Well, that’s apt,” she said, a tear rolling down her cheek. Vicky smirked.
The word he had made was ape.
∞
They met in a bar off Rivonia Boulevard. With her raven-black hair and red suit, Jenny’s presence commanded the attention of half the room. The men imagined what she’d be like under them, and the women envied her for that. Peter was at a table with a group of his banking buddies, smoking cigars while downing Castle beers because it made them feel important. Warren, the only one among them who was still married, elbowed him and nodded towards her.
“Bet I can bed that one in two days,” he claimed, a mischievous gleam crossing over his left eye. Peter could never understand Warren’s need to sleep around with other women when he had Sarai. Sarai was Peter’s high school crush and the only woman he had ever truly loved. He never stood a chance next to Warren though, not with his friend’s Chris Hemsworth looks and high-flying job.
“Think I’m going to give it go,” Warren said, taking a swig of his beer and resting the bottle on the table. He got up, winked at Peter and loosened his tie before marching off with confidence in Jenny’s direction. Peter watched him from where he sat, an uncomfortable feeling settling into the pit of his stomach. It was jealousy, if only he’d paid close enough attention to himself.
Warren stood next to Jenny with one arm leaning casually on the bar. He said a few words then sat down next to her. She smiled, a straight line of teeth, and they spoke for a few minutes before he stood up again and left. Peter frowned. That was an unusually quick conversation and by the look on Warren’s face as he made his way back to the table, he wasn’t happy.
“What happened? Is she married?” he asked as his friend took a seat and picked up his beer again. Warren downed what was left in the bottle in one long, steady movement, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.
“She’s not interested in me. She’s interested in you,” Warren replied. He seemed not just annoyed, but genuinely perplexed. He’d been rejected by a beautiful woman for a man who looked like a Teletubby.
“In me?!” Peter asked, spitting his drink all over his shirt. He turned to look at the woman in red. She waved at him. He lifted his hand up slowly and waved back. “I don’t even know her.”
“Well, she knows you. She mentioned you by name. Even knows where you work and what you do for a living.”
Peter’s ego had been rubbed the right way for the first time since his divorce six years ago, so he didn’t bother investigating how this woman had come to know all this about him. He reveled in the idea that she had chosen him over Warren, so he walked over to her with an extra spring in his step and allowed her to charm him into bed first, and then marriage.
∞
Sexual – that’s the word Jenny put down. It earned her a triple word score of forty-five, which Emily proudly scribbled under her mother’s name. Peter stared at the word like it was a knife. There was nothing sexual about their relationship in over a year. Ever since they’d gotten married, everything had changed.
“You’re killing it mom!” Emily shrieked. She’d been tallying up the scores. “You’re definitely going to win this game.”
Jenny looked chuffed. She picked up the long stem glass she’d been drinking wine from and took a sip, smiling slyly to herself.
Peter pulled out his phone. He’d been keeping a record of all Jenny’s words. Thighs, sweat, heated, ecstasy, lover – these were just some of what she had put down. He stared at them, his chest tightening into an asthma attack. He pulled out his pump and inhaled. It didn’t help much. The pain was still there.
He undid the last button on his shirt and got up. Jenny shot him a disapproving look.
“Where are you going?” she demanded to know. “We’re almost done here.”
“I need water,” he said, running a sweaty palm over his bald head.
“Well, don’t make us wait for you. Your turn is almost up.”
He marched off to the kitchen, poured himself a glass of cold water and gulped most of it down. He had an old habit of leaving tumblers a quarter full. The window above the sink was swinging back and forth in irritation. A storm was brewing outside so he reached over and closed it, catching a brief glance at his own reflection in it. It looked foreign to him.
Sexual – the word cut deep. He felt a sharp pain shoot up his arm and he tried to move his fingers, to feel them … nothing.
“Peter, it’s your turn!” Vicky screamed from the next room. A random thought flashed through his mind. His mother-in-law was a bitch. Why hadn’t he voiced that earlier? It could possibly have saved him countless hours in her presence.
“Ape, get your ass over here!” Jenny roared. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
His stepdaughter could be heard giggling and that hurt even more. He’d made sure she was educated at the best private school in the country and trained at the best dance studio so that she could have at least some chance of becoming a professional ballet dancer. Truth was, she lacked a considerable amount of talent. Why had he indulged her?
Peter took a step forward. His legs felt heavy. He clutched at his chest and tried to call out for his wife, who was still laughing at his expense. Then he collapsed, crashing to the floor with the quarter-full glass in tow.
The laughter stopped. A deafening silence ensued.
“Peter?”
“Ape!”
“Dad, are you okay?”
Frantic footsteps on porcelain tiles. Hysterical screaming. Calls for an ambulance bouncing off the expensive wallpaper. Diluted blood splattered all over the white tiles like a Jackson Pollock.
“I hope it doesn’t leave a stain,” Vicky thinks out loud. “Just use Jik,” Jenny says while dialing the emergency number at the back of the medical aid card. The pandemonium continues until the paramedics arrive and declare Peter dead at the scene.
∞
It was a big, black funeral. Faces – some familiar, others not so much – gathered around the gravesite like a murder of crows. They peered down at the coffin being lowered into the ground. Down with it went their hope of completing that diploma they were in the process of attaining, that house they were hoping to redecorate in three months’ time, and that salon they were planning on opening. Peter had been a generous sponsor of many dreams but his own. Nearby, his solicitor watched the scene unfold in solemnity. He was gathering the courage to speak to his client’s wife.
“Mrs. Labuschagne,” he said when the crowd had worn thin. “We need to discuss the condition of your husband’s estate at your earliest convenience.”
Jenny, who had been staring blankly into the distance, waved her hand dismissively at him.
“I’m sure he left a fortune for Emily and I to live off. He promised me that much when we got married.”
The man cleared his throat and shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
“I’m afraid ma’am, that this is not the case. Your husband was drowning in debt at the time of his death. He squandered his wealth in the past couple of years and lived beyond his means.”
Jenny looked up at him, her eyes widening in disbelief.
“You’re saying that we have nothing?”
He nodded. “Everything belongs to the bank, except the condo in Camps Bay. That property, if you recall at the time of your marriage, was a conditional bequest.”
The condo, a four-bedroom, sea-facing property was to be hers when he died, but only on the condition that she remain faithful to him throughout their marriage.
She frowned, confused. “I’ve never cheated on him.”
The solicitor pulled out his phone and showed her the last correspondence between him and Peter. She squinted at the pictures. They were of the Scrabble game they’d been playing on the evening of his death.
“Your husband suspected that you were having an affair,” he explained.
Jenny’s legs gave in under her. “But it was just a silly game. I was having a bit of fun, that’s all.”
He shrugged and let out a heavy sigh. “Well, ma’am, I’m afraid that in this case, words have consequences”.
Nadia Cassim describes herself as a free spirit and an independent thinker. She obtained an honours degree from the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand in 2008, but chose to pursue a career in fine arts instead of city planning. She has already held two solo exhibitions and her paintings have been on display at the iconic former women’s jail at Constitution Hill. While she continues to paint on commission, she has also taken on the role of financial advisor as well as that of writer and editor. One of her short stories has been included in the anthology Riding the Samoosa Express (published by Modjaji Books) and she has edited the online magazine Irtiqa of which she was also the founder. After running this magazine with the aim of empowering Muslim women in her community for eight years, she has taken a step back to focus on writing her first novel.
