Embrace by Mark Behr

Author:Mark Behr [Behr, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Coming of Age
ISBN: 9780349113005
Google: yRpVHQAACAAJ
Amazon: 0349113009
Publisher: Abacus
Published: 2001-02-01T13:00:00+00:00

It was a sweltering day and Bokkie said we were not leaving the house without hats. Bok sat in the lounge reading the newspaper. He asked whether we wanted a lift to the beach and we said no, we’d walk. The girls shaved their bikini lines in the bathroom and I collected the cricket bat and tennis ball from the servants’ quarters that served as our store room. When the girls came into the kitchen dressed in shorts and bikini tops Bokkie told them to go and cover themselves because they were not walking to the beach looking like tramps. What has become of the spirit of Christmas, my mother moaned as she rinsed the empty cool-drink bottles. Christmas no longer exists, she answered herself, it’s nothing more than a holiday for fun-seekers and sun-worshippers, that’s all, for crass commercialisation and expensive presents. A far cry from the days when they were too poor in the Molopo to even think of gifts — let alone imagine themselves strutting through neighbourhood streets half nude. What is becoming of this world, she asked, the writings on the wall, just as the Bible says: no more morals, instead a civilisation worshipping Mammon and the sun! I resented Bokkie for what I knew was her hypocrisy. The minute we disappeared and her housework was done, my mother would be in her shorts and out working in the garden, soaking up the sun on her bare arms and legs. If it were not for her bad ear and the fact that she couldn’t swim, she’d spend her every free moment in the pool. She, more than even the girls and I, loved the sun, loved walking half naked. In the bush she would wear the teeniest tops and shorts or minis. On occasion she would hang washing clothed in only her panties. It was clear that our code of dress had nothing to do with our own morals. Instead morals had everything to do with the eyes that might witness us in a state of undress. My mind shot back to Umfolozi and Mkuzi, where I could clearly remember my mother as a less complex woman. Where she smoked; where she and Bok danced at night — before the Dutch Reformed Church taught us it was a sin to dance, a sin to enjoy food, to smoke, to dream. To live.

Already from St Lucia I had loathed Sunday school; in Toti I had started hating church, finding brief pleasure only in the drama of the occasional prayer meeting where I would be the one child who prayed aloud amongst the adults, reading off prayers — for rain, for peace, for love, for forgiveness, for the poor — which had taken hours in the writing. But since leaving the bush, Bokkie had seemed to buy into the Church lock, stock and Bible. What had become of the mother I had liked as much as I had loved? Now I loved her, but felt unsure about whether I actually liked her.

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