Hanging in the Wind
Nasira Bhikha-Vallee
My sister Zoey and I were on the route our parents warned us against. A rigorous adventure over climbed fences spanning three blocks, past an abandoned car lot through the foothills of the Koppies, so we could get to school fifteen minutes earlier. I was thinking about the homework I needed to copy, silently going over the six times table when I walked headfirst into the thighs of the body. It hung from one of the sturdier branches of an ancient willow at the far end of the Koppies.
It was one of those mornings where the mist obstructed your view so that you could only see as far as your fingertips. I let out a squeal when my forehead grazed scratchy fabric. My nose stinging from the faint sourness where the trousers felt wet against my face. I looked up to see the outline of a head and torso drooping towards me. A man, slightly older than our father, hung from the tree with his feet suspended mid-air. I noticed the slightest sway of his body, his bare feet. Zoey was a few steps behind me, trying to divert a stream of ants from destroying a molehill she stumbled upon, when I let out a yelp that made the birds in the willow fly off in haste. She came running over, both of us stretching our necks towards the treetops, whilst our stomachs dropped down.
We stared at the body, saying nothing for the longest time. A breeze rustled the leaves around us, carrying with it the fragrance of wild poppies and a metallic scent so slight one could almost have missed it. Reverence, pure instinct, fear – all these factors combined to precipitate our stoicism as we took in the sight before us. I was first to break the trance, stepping in front of the hanging body to investigate further.
I found a three-legged stool lying on its side just next to the man. We had a similar chair in our Wendy house back home. I studied it, perplexed. This one was painted fire-engine red with a pink heart on the flat surface of the seat. The man’s shoes were placed neatly at the base of the tree trunk, his socks rolled inside the left shoe as if they still waited for his feet.
There was nothing extraordinary about the rest of him save for the grey pallor of his skin, and the slight damp that made his navy trousers cling to his legs, showing their outline. Zoey pointed towards the drops of blood from where the man’s nose had bled to form rust circles on the sand and she began to cry. We both knew this was a death. But we were nine and eleven years old and could hardly process what we were witnessing.
I took Zoey’s hand to stop her tears and we turned our heads back towards the sky. The man’s arms dangled like floppy plastic on the sides of his body. His back was arched so that his neck turned slightly upwards as if he were being elevated toward the heavens. His eyes were closed, and his mouth had a coating of white around the edges. The expression on his face jarred in its serenity. It seemed that the branch on which he chose to tie the rope carried him to safety.
Impulse propelled me then. I ran towards a bed of wildflowers tucked beyond the willow and began plucking frantically. “Come on Zoe,” I said, “we need to help him.” Zoey dropped the stick she’d been using to scare off the ants and ran towards me. She crouched in the sand and picked her bunch of flowers with care. I, on the other hand, grabbed handfuls of purple and white daisies and bundled them between my arms.
We placed the flowers in a circle under the man’s hanging body. Zoey whimpered, her breath making her stomach rise and fall as if she were trying to put a stopper on her fear. I began singing The Lord’s Prayer recalling it from when our neighbour died. His wife made us learn it for the night vigil and I was thankful now that I remembered the words.
When we were done with our flower garland, I placed the man’s shoes in the centre of the circle, directly under his feet. Then I stood behind his body and gave him a gentle push just under the buttocks. His body swung like a pendulum. Zoey ran to the front and caught his legs, then nudged him ever so gently back to me. We stood like that for a while, swinging the man’s body to and fro, my voice carrying in the mist. The Lord’s Prayer ringing over the hollows of the Koppies.
When Zoey looked at her wristwatch, she told me to hurry. We had already missed the first bell and our mother would be furious if they made us stay in after school. I ran a few metres from the willow then turned back to the man’s body. On a whim, I knelt down and pulled out the pair of socks tucked into his shoes. I shoved them in the inside pocket of my blazer right next to my chest. “Goodbye mister,” I said to the man hanging in the tree.
The day went by. I touched my blazer occasionally, felt the soft padding of the sock against my beating heart. The socks had a musty smell that made the saliva rise to the back of my throat. It made me feel as if I had swallowed an overripe peach. As the morning wore on, the waft dizzied me so that I could hardly concentrate on anything besides the bare feet of the man who had worn them not too long ago, now hanging in the wind. Zoey had not said much on our walk to school. I looked for her during the lunch break so that we could share our jam and cheese sandwiches, even though I hardly had an appetite. She normally waited for me at the entrance of the senior primary block, but she was not there that morning. When the final bell whistled through the classroom walls at the end of the day, I ran to find her. She stood with her shoulders drooped, her cheeks pale, braids dishevelled. I learnt that she had spent most of the day in the nurse’s room.
That evening, our father came home in a panic saying they had found an unidentified man’s body in the Koppies. “He took his life,” my father said. “What a tragedy. Can you believe he made this circle of flowers around himself before he jumped? I wonder if he was part of some strange cult. Tragic I tell you.”
Zoey and I looked at one another between sipping our soup and buttering rolls. Her eyes widened like orbs, and I gestured to her to be calm with a slight shift of my fingers. “You girls swear you don’t walk that way to school, hey?” Mom asked. She had found out about our secret route early on, warning us never to go to the Koppies by ourselves, so Zoey and I had become extra careful about wiping our shoes and dusting the sand off our bags before we got home.
“I swear Mom,” Zoey said, looking my way. I was the incorrigible one, but she was my forever Jiminy Cricket. We excused ourselves after dinner, but she did not come to my room to swap stories the way we did most evenings. When the house quietened, I sat on my bed with only the lampshade turned on. I took out the pair of socks, unrolled them, studied them. I brought them close to my nose to get a whiff of the man’s feet again, which now had a faint rubbery scent of the eraser that had kept them company in my pocket. They were a decent pair of socks, black with thin white horizontal stripes. I pictured the man taking them off before he stepped onto the stool. I thought of his body hanging in the tree, the way his hair looked tired. It lay matted against his closed eyes as if kicking the stool had been too much on the inside of his head to hold his hair in place. I rolled the pair of socks up again and returned them to my blazer.
Zoey and I did not discuss the matter further, though we took the longer route to school from that day on. A few weeks passed. The pair of socks became hot and heavy against my chest. Then one morning, when Zoey felt ill and I promised to follow our neighbour Tim to school, I found myself climbing over backyard fences and going past the car lot instead. A shiver tickled my insides as I ducked under the fence at the far end of the Koppies.
I began reciting The Lord’s Prayer as I reached the willow. It was empty. The area had been cleaned so that only the reeds and trees knew what had happened amongst them. I dug a hole under the branch where the man had taken his life, then opened my blazer and gave the socks one final kiss before covering them with earth. I hoped they would help him walk more comfortably as he searched for the place he wanted to go.
Nasira Bhikha-Vallee completed her Masters in Creative Writing at Rhodes University, South Africa. She is a writer, playwright and editor and has worked as a pharmacist for over thirty years. Her writing is influenced by her role as mother, by life experiences and the deeply human connection of living through Apartheid South Africa as a woman of color. She is committed to telling stories that focus on women. Nasira resides in Johannesburg with her husband and family who remain her greatest joy.
