Devil behind closed doors An edited excerpt from Ekow Duker’s Dying in New York

HEARD the blows later that night long after Sister Daniella had left. My father must have got some perverse satisfaction from keeping my mother dangling in cruel anticipation. I lied. I did care.

Or at least I was curious. I couldn’t sleep until I heard the dull thud of his fist on her flesh echo through the house.

A sharp cry followed and then another blow, punctuated by terse whispered dialogue between the two of them. It was bizarre the way my parents spat at each other in low voices while he beat her like an animal. Anything to avoid alerting the neighbours, I guess.

We Malemas were not those sort of people. My mother fell silent but every now and then a muffled sob escaped her and I lay there hoping he was f****** her.

Because then he wouldn’t come to my room and f*** me. I don’t know how long it went on. I fell asleep before he was done.

The next day was Easter Sunday. I knew because the church at the corner of Bram Fischer Drive always changed the peal of the bells on Easter Sunday morning. I think that was the only day of the year the bell ringer was allowed to cut loose.

Today he started off with a glorious sequence of rolling cascades before fading away into plaintive solitary notes.

There was something uniquely African about it. It reminded me of a cow-bell calling out in the fields.

ISoon afterwards I heard my father getting ready to go to church. He was an elder at the church and they called him Brother Thabo. Oh, I’d seen the way some of the women looked adoringly at him when my mother’s back was turned. Actually, a couple of them didn’t care if my mother was looking or not.

They’d hug my father for a moment longer than necessary and push themselves into his body as if they were the last interlocking piece of a jigsaw puzzle.

Of course I didn’t go to church anymore. My father put a stop to that before he had me straighten my hair.

The window frame rattled as my father’s heavy Chrysler pulled out of the driveway. He polished the car every weekend until you could see the sky and the clouds reflected in the paintwork.

When I was smaller I used to think of it as our very own magic chariot because even the street vendors would turn and stare respectfully whenever we drove past.

It wasn’t a magic chariot anymore. It was just my father’s car and I was glad he was out of the house, at least for a few hours.

The key turned in the lock with practised ease and the door swung open. I didn’t recognise her at first and I had to sit up in my bed to be sure. “Ma?” Her face was all puffy and one eye was no more than a slit in a lop- sided pudding. She stood there in the doorway with her upper lip swollen and burst open like an overripe fruit.

She seemed unsure of what to do or even where to go. She walked, no she limped, towards me, dragging one leg behind her as if it had grown a few inches longer than the other. I walked like that sometimes after my father had finished f****** me.

My mother sat on the edge of my bed, with her hands clasped in her lap, looking down at them. She had beautiful hands, my mother did.

They were long and slender and with an impossibly delicate network of veins that glowed through her fair skin.

“I’m so sorry, Lerato,” she said softly. She was still looking down at her hands.

That’s when I lost my temper. Even after so many years I still cringe when I remember the things I said to my mother that Easter Sunday morning. You see, I had a cruel streak in me. I got that from my father.

“Sorry for what, Ma?” I screamed. “Sorry for not being able to control your own husband? Or sorry that you go along with his lies! How long has it been, Ma?”

She shook her head as if to say she didn’t know.

“Well, let me tell you, Ma,” I added angrily. There was a tightness in my chest and my mouth was as dry as sand. Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t have stopped the words spilling out of me in an angry torrent.

“It was the 29th of June last year when your husband first f***** me. And the 15th of July when he put this chain on my leg. In between he came to my room every night. Every night, Ma! Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten! Don’t tell me you didn’t know!” I flung off the bedcovers and grabbed the chain and shook it so violently that for a moment the links became a dull blur.

My mother still couldn’t look at me. Her hands were trembling as if she’d suddenly contracted malaria.

“I haven’t forgotten, Lerato,” she replied quietly. “I thought you were asking when he started beating me. I can’t remember when that was.” She paused. “But I remember the 29th of June. And the 30th and the 1st and every night after that.”

“Oh please, Ma!” I shot back with as much sarcasm as I could muster. I even did the side-to-side head roll I’d seen black American women do on TV. “I heard what you said to Sister Daniella last night.”

I switched tone swiftly and mimicked my mother’s little girl voice. “Oh yes, Sister Daniella. Lerato is so depressed.” I paused to catch my breath. “You’re pathetic, Ma,” I said finally. “You’re just a pathetic b****!”

I’d never used those words before. I wasn’t even sure I knew what they meant. I must have heard my father calling her those names, but I was so full of rage that morning. My mother lurched as if I’d kicked her in the stomach.

Then she let out a long drawn out sigh. Her shoulders slumped and I swear she shrank before my eyes, like a party balloon does when you let the air out of it.

Now it was my turn to say I was sorry, but the words just wouldn’t come out. I watched in silence as she stood up and walked quickly to the door. I noticed she wasn’t limping anymore.

“I’ll bring your breakfast up in a little while,” she said in a calm voice. Then she shut the door behind her and was gone.

Suddenly I felt more alone than I ever had in my life.

Hot tears gushed out of me in a bitter flood. Of all the broken people in our household, I despised myself most of all.

My relationship with my mother changed completely after that. We tiptoed around each other like wary cats, neither of us knowing how to speak about that dreadful Easter Sunday. So we didn’t. It was easier that way. She would bring me my meals on a tray and leave again without saying a word. I could tell she was hurt, but I simply didn’t know how to say sorry.

I began to dread hearing her footsteps outside my door because I knew she’d bring a cold, accusing silence into my room. I found all this so hard to bear.

My mother didn’t go to church anymore and none of my father’s threats could make her change her mind.

“You’re determined to give me a bad name, Maria,” I heard him complain one Sunday morning. “Don’t forget I am an elder and an elder must always have his wife by his side.”

She didn’t talk back and I must say my father didn’t argue his point for very long. I guessed this was an opportunity for him to move in on one of those pliant jigsaw piece women at church. He still came to my room at night, though, albeit less often than before. He’d grown in confidence or perhaps it was just sheer recklessness, I’m not sure which. He’d arrive home late at night and march straight up to my room smelling of a perfume my mother didn’t have.

He took to leaving the light on and my door ajar while he rolled me on to my stomach and climbed on top of me.

You see, my father was an exhibitionist as well as a bastard. He brought me gifts, a box of nougat one night, a small pair of lace panties the next.

The nougat I ate but I ripped the underwear into little pieces and scattered them outside the window. He’d have torn the panties off me anyway.

After a while he took the chain off. There was no need for it anymore. He knew I wasn’t going to run anywhere. I was too well trained for that.

Every morning my mother would bring me my breakfast of eggs and porridge all neatly laid out on a tray as if nothing untoward had happened during the night. But the words we couldn’t say to each other screamed at us until my head hurt.

This is an edited extract from published by Pan MacMillan. It was launched this week.

About the author: “I’m an oil field engineer turned investment banker turned parttime author, with an insatiable passion for writing. Educated in Ghana, the UK, the US and France, I now live and work in Joburg, a city I love dearly. “

Duker was among four finalists for the 2011/2012 European Literary Awards for his book