The beginning

One second we were hosting a poolside soiree, and the next it all changed.

My mother, with her pearls and sparkly earrings, holding her bumpy ostrich skin bag, is the first to start moving and screaming. Not her usual somewhat muted but sheathed in melodious steel call to the waiter to bring plates or drinks to a guest, but a hyena screech that would raise goosebumps on a grown man if he heard it in a tent at night. The mosquito I had been swatting suddenly slows in motion, so I can see each wing flap past my eyes. All sound stops, except for the buzzing whine. I turn, knowing I will hear that hyena scream in my dreams for years to come.

“Mama!” someone screams. Of course it’s me. Fundi is asleep on the sofa inside. I instinctively want her to come back, come to me, knowing I’m losing her with every crazed step she was taking away from me.

In the space of one breath, she pushes aside a waiter, who teeters and falls, landing with a crack on his ankle. Unnoticed. Collateral damage. She jumps the last four feet into the pool, her scarf flaps uselessly, her heels not enough to give her adequate purchase, and her hip catches the edge and she lands badly in the water. Her hair clip launches to the side on impact, black stands flapping free, but she doesn’t notice. My father intent in his conversation, jerks a bit at the commotion behind him, and his eyes absently flick. What he sees sends a shockwave through this face. His eyes bulge, his mouth twists, his fingers clench, and then his knees finally start moving and he pushes his beloved barbeque grill aside to get to her. It tips, sparking a separate batch of screams from those strafed nearby. He can’t run, he just launches himself from where he’s standing towards them. My mother has already reached, bag still under elbow, gold chain catching the pool lights, clutching the baby to her chest, continuing to scream as body tries to catch up with brain. She realizes she doesn’t know what to do. My father’s belly slaps the surface of the water loudly, his blue evening jacket instantly soaking purple like a bloodstain. He pulls the baby away from her rudely, wading back to the side with urgent clown-like leaps despite the water weighing him down. She’s left standing in the shallow side, shirt hideously see-through outlining all her stomach folds, unable to move as the rock waterfall happily sprays water behind her, and she continues to scream, watching.

“Mama!” I have another lungful now to holler again. Everyone is blurred through my tears. I want her to come to me, help me understand what was happening. Her eyes finally go to me, but she doesn’t see. Her eyes are black, dead. The reality of my mother is suddenly more frightening me than any ghost story Fundi has whispered to me under the covers at night. 

I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand, and notice a little arm flop out from under my father’s cuff-linked wrist, perfect little fingers the size of a matchstick. The nails look wrong, tipped purple. He starts CPR. I knew it was CPR because I had just seen a Tom and Jerry cartoon just that same afternoon, and Fundi had explained it to me.

Other people around me have started screaming now, catching up to the chaos. Staff are running here and there. Guests agape, the injured holding various body parts but everyone, everyone, arrested by the scene of our family breaking apart atom by atom in front of them. Every white knuckled pump, thump, desperate grunt from my father in his ocean of silence, trying to save his youngest son, seems to echo through the party.