TUNED OUT

Watching television. It’s the only thing helping them to carry on now. Early morning, the man washes, and wears his well ironed formal clothes, the ones he normally wears whenever he gets a call from the employment agency. The factory shut down a few months ago. They want a matric certificate each time he goes to agents to apply for work. Or, they hire only the young ones now. “What is he saying, the president?” the man says, sitting down at the table to join his wife. “He says R20 an hour is not a good thing for workers,” the woman responds, slightly annoyed at the mild deafness of her husband. She’s the one who likes the news best and she never wants to miss anything. The hair salon is always closed now. Customers no longer come. She believes it’s all to spite her since her salon was the only one thriving. Age is also against her to get employment but not old enough for a pension grant. The news channel goes to an ad break. The husband answers a phone call. “It’s the SABC people; they want me to pay the TV licence. Where do they think I get the money? But they know to laugh when I ask them to give me a job instead!” He looks at the wife incredulously. “I tell you always to ignore them,” says the wife, pointing the remote at the TV to increase the volume.

Eating breakfast. The last of the potato and tomato soup cooked a few days past is dished in their plates. It was the first thing they prepared when the money started running out. A bunch of tomatoes for R5, onions R5, and potatoes R5. Cook them all together with water and oil and you get a staple, nutritious soup. Eat it with stiff pap and your stomach tightens. Though their hearts do not get filled, it’s the only affordable food to buy at the nearest fruit and veg stand. “Potatoes must be growing inside our stomachs by now,” the husband says, spooning his food. The wife does not say anything. She swallows, then croaks, “its seven now, the electricity.” The husband pauses from entering the spoon in his mouth. Blinks. Throws the food in. There is audible chewing. A person laughs in the TV.

Things started running out not too long ago. Shortly before the factory closed down, the husband was given his provident fund. It was not much, having only worked for one year in one place after a series of piece jobs. Every Saturday he went grocery shopping. He went alone because his wife said it was unnecessary to be seen carrying full bags in their neighbourhood every weekend. “Thank god I paid the electricity,” he would say, feeling good about paying the bill on time. Then he would go out and laugh and talk loudly with the other men. When the money ran out he started losing weight. No longer able to afford a bottle of beer, he began pulling away from the other men and they never came asking for him either. When he no longer woke for work in the morning, washing dishes, wiping dust where there was none, and fixing kitchen appliances that needed no fixing became a coping mechanism. It didn’t matter that his wife got irritated; he needed to do something.

Since he was not yet eligible for a pension grant, he decided to apply for a grant because of his mild deafness. “I’m starving here! When do you expect me to get the money by then!” he said, speaking to a clerk at SARS offices, who was informing him about the procedure. People turned shocked eyes at him, but he did not notice. He stood up and marched out. “I can help you to speed up your application baba,” one clerk tapped him on the shoulder before he could step out. He looked at him, relieved. “How?” The clerk rubbed his thumb and index finger together. “It will cost you.” The husband made a loud empty laugh and stepped out. He walked talking by himself to his house.

With the money she made from the salon, the wife loved going to a spa for massages on her Saturdays. But it also made her feel secure whenever she made monthly payments for their funeral insurance. Having been married for more than twenty years and miscarrying five times, she started losing her weight a long time ago. Back when her Sundays used to be about church, she would prepare a Sunday lunch in the morning, wear her usual white full dress, covering her arms and ankles, wrap her hair in a white doek, fix her face without putting on any makeup, take her bible without carrying it inside a handbag, walk out.

At church she would pray hard for a child. Her tithe was honest. Whenever she missed her period she would use the oils her pastor gave her to rub on her belly, each time praying aloud. It didn’t matter that she could feel her husband’s pitying eyes on her or disapproving with a shake of the head. When it was her turn to have the pastor come to her house she would bake scorns the day before church. His presence restored her hope. It didn’t matter that her husband refused to shake the pastor’s hand, look at him, smile back, increased the volume on the TV during a prayer or spoke, to no one in particular during their meditations on a verse about how he slaves for other men to come in his house and finish his food. None of those things mattered to her. “Oh pastor, you know how some people are not strong enough in their faith,” she would make a little laugh, her eyes shifting this way and that.

It was her last profit she made from the salon as customers were already becoming scarce that she made a sacrifice with to the church. Her hope was to restore her clientele and get with child. It was a huge sacrifice, this. And the pastor kept threatening that if you do not make a hard, honest sacrifice and cheat god, he will not grant your desires. “It’s my money, I can do what I want with it,” the wife shouted back at the husband as he stood over her, trembling with anger at her sacrifice. “How do you give money to some church? Forget about your own home!” “I am trying to create a home for us!” the wife got up, cried on the bed. For some time, no words passed between husband and wife.

Her salon having run completely out of business and her waking up one morning with a bloodied night dress, the wife became quiet, comforting words from her husband slipping off her earlobes. This was the fifth time god cheated her. She got up. Wiped her face. Scanned at all the bottles of oils lined on the bedside table. Some came in green oil and some in red. Then they were flying across the house, spilling and splashing. She stood breathing loudly, trembling. Her ears deaf to her husband’s alarm, she took the bible and sat on the bed. Held it against her chest. Rocked back and forth. As if she just remembered something, she opened it, tore out chunks and chunks of pages. After what felt like a long time, she only then noticed her husband’s concerned eyes in front of her as he shook her by the shoulders. Hers were empty. She got up, opened the closet, and took out her white dress and doek. Her husband followed her as she marched outside. A bottle of paraffin in one hand, her outfit in the other. Only when she saw the flames burning and blackening did she feel like she had gotten her revenge. She was not sorry to see the pastor getting punched by her husband one Sunday as he was about to step inside their house. But both their routines had ended, having run out of working, money, business, faith. They were not surprised when friends no longer visited or answered their phones.

The wife was the one who calmed anxieties by tuning in the news. The husband took some time to get into this new routine. He would sit shifting many times on his chair while the wife sat still. Sometimes he would be staring at the TV with far away eyes. Minutes later, he would take his phone and stare at it as if he just remembered something. Other times he would slam the phone on the table just after speaking with the SABC people and leap up to stand at the door. It was always at the door, never outside. “I’m expecting a call about work here!” “I tell you always to give yourself some peace and watch here with me. They will call you eventually,” the wife would say. But the husband would howl, “I don’t know how to bum around all day, me I want to work!” But the restlessness ran its course too. And he slowly learnt to surrender like his wife to the TV.

Then the teabags ran out. They kept reusing them until they no longer coloured the water and the sugar ran out. The mealie meal was one of the things to be finished earlier on. The last cooked stiff pap kept being reheated until they ate it all. Now they are just finishing on chewing the last crusts. The last drop of fish oil went into making this last soup. It doesn’t have salt. It ran out. “Crusts can taste delicious sometimes,” husband says as wife clears the dishes away. Later on, as the evening news come on the television, the husband walks around searching for something. “I’m shaking,” says the wife. “Me too, that’s why I’m trying to find any coins.” “The potatoes and tomatoes with onions were bought with the last ones.” “What?” “I said we bought that veg with the last coins.” Don’t you remember?” “Oh,” the husband freezes, turns back to the table. After their last viewing, they switch off the television. “Supper will be sleep then,” says the husband. “Super will be sleep,” agrees the wife. Husband and wife both head to bed.

Three weeks from that day. There is talking, shouting, barking and laughing outside. Inside their shack, husband and wife are sitting at the table, listening to the complaints coming from their intestines. Though there is no more soap or toothpaste or deodorant, they still start their day with the washing and cleaning, husband always dressed in ironed clothes as if going somewhere. The TV is playing in front of them. The wife snorts, “Now our president tells us R20 an hour is an achievement.” The husband shakes his head, “I can’t remember drinking my high blood pills.” “You can’t take them without eating first,” the wife rests her cheek on her palm. “Do you think I should run and borrow from next door?” “Do you really think these people will borrow us money? How will we even pay it back? I warned you against grocery shopping every weekend. Now it’s hard to even show a head outside.” “I heard you! Do you think I like this?” Both husband and wife breathe heavily, feeling exercised as they toss eyes at each other and glance them back dully at the television. It continues playing, immersed in its own world.

A KFC advert comes on. Their eyes now blink rapidly, their intestines announcing their resentment. They are the ones in the TV now, the ones in the KFC advert. They are sitting across each other at a table. The golden fried chicken piled on their plates together with the golden crispy chips. The husband takes the tomato sauce sachet from his wife and helps to open it for her. He smiles, handing it back to her. The wife pours it all over the chips. Sprinkles the meat with the spice. Her eyes look lovingly at her healthy looking husband. The brown colour of his skin restored. The fullness of his face. The whites of his eyes no longer dirtied with the redness. She hands him a serviette now as he sucks grease off his thumb. The husband wipes, then feeds a chip into his wife’s mouth. He notices her afro, crowning her head in shining full bodied hair. The glowing dark chocolate that is her skin, her lips no longer chapped, ample chest revealing a cleavage in place of bones like lines you can count across the chest. Husband and wife both bite on the drumsticks, the thighs, breasts, wings. The cold Coca-Cola drink moistens their throats and tightens their stomachs.

People are talking and laughing around them at their tables. The sun is bright outside. Sated now, husband and wife chew on the bones piled in front of them, taking their time to suck out the marrow from each bone. The talking around them becomes louder now. The people’s voices shout over them and almost imprison their table with screams. They lower their heads and close their eyes but the noise continues. When their heads come up at the same time, their eyes open. Surprised. “Were you falling asleep too?” the husband asks. “Yes,” the wife yawns, “my head hurts.” When the day changes to evening the wife walks back to the table after gulping down glasses of water. She sits down, her face twisted in pain, feeling like her stomach is about to burst. “The electricity is down to five,” she says. The husband says nothing. Two people argue with raised voices in the TV.

Saturday. Two gaunt faces stare at each other across the table. “Do you think if we had any children they would work for us now?” the wife asks. Husband looks up with moist eyes. “We don’t know that mosadi wa ka. We don’t know why anything happens and does not happen.” Husband and wife stare back at the TV, looking far away. They sit until their heads fall on the table. Sleep.

Sunday. At first, the noise sounds like it’s faraway. Sounds such as music, laughter, loud exclamations, moving cars, screaming and crying reach them slowly. The man’s eyes open. His head lifts slowly, weakly. It feels dizzy. His body feels stiff. He wonders why he can’t remember taking a bath and ironing his special clothes this morning, in case he gets a call from the employment agency. From across the table, the woman raises her head. She yawns lazily, her eyes wincing as she feels the cracks on her lips stretch wide. Her body hurts. Head dizzy. She wonders why she can’t remember washing and cleaning today. The ruffled clothes worn by her husband in front of her. The noise sounds clearer now. The TV. Wife and husband both turn their faces towards it, as if noticing it for the first time. They can hear faintly the noises of life coming from outside as well. Both their mouths do not feel like opening to speak greetings, exclamations. Their bodies do not feel strong enough to rise. The other world continues showing images in front of their distant tired eyes. As the day wears on, it ends by slowly stealing the sun from the shack dwelling packed near the N2 outside Cape Town. An airplane flies off from the airport nearby, the noise announcing its farewell inside each shack. A group of small boys run around kicking a ball. A mother yells at her child to come back inside from the playground. A man carrying two yellow pails hurries to collect water from the communal tap. A barking dog chases after a group of teenage girls walking past its owner’s house. Behind a toilet building, two young people share a first kiss. Inside their shack, husband and wife remain sitting across each other, silently wondering if the thick heavy darkness lying outside has brought the stars along with it. Together they take one last breath. The last of the electricity goes off. The television shuts.

New Contrast 186, Volume 47, Winter 2019