Rhythm of the Valve Drum

"Hearts are deeper than the ocean- who knows their secrets?"Punjabi Proverb~


Something near my bed sounds to my ears like the beat of a heart. I wish I could put my finger on it and make it stop. Every time I move, wriggling under the covers to get my blood-drained feet warm, I hear it again. Closer each time, like maybe it’s coming from my bedside table where the lamp and glass candleholders sometimes rattle under gravity. So I steady my hand against the wood and listen for the noise. For a split second it’s gone, but it’s quick to come back faint yet certain in the dark of the room. Like the thud of a heart I think. So regular. Every time I shift my weight, starting first with my hands and elbows, then letting my legs follow at will it is there to greet me. And now I think it’s coming from my creaking headboard. It grates on my nerves, like a loose bathroom tap, but yet the sound strikes me as that of a heart. Thudding. How odd. Is that really what a heart would sound like? Maybe only in my wild, crazy, furtive imagination; maybe only in the dark like this. Maybe…if I heard it one more time I could locate it, make it stop. The noise is blunt; the soft thud is what I’m looking for. I stop and strain my ear against the boundless walls of this night. The room looks so much bigger with daylight gone and everything I see, more threatening. And this sound...this sound there is nothing melodious about it yet I can stop thinking ‘Heart song, Heart song, Heart song…’ Just like a, just like a, just like a….heart. And just like that, picturing my booming heart in its chambers, I fall asleep knowing that tomorrow this piece will be born, Rhythm of the Valve Drum.

Pink-Palmed Black Hands

I fell upon the phrase not in the most unlikely places. After all her voice rings through these pages as cold and removed as the apartheid she writes of. And the phrase fits perfectly in the world she creates. Where Claudia and Harald, the disjointed couple operate in different spheres. Where Black and White meet only at the fateful moment of crisis and chaos. A world turned upside down by the unspeakable act of the only Son. He did it, no question in the writer’s cold, businesslike tone. Only the two parents question. He/she. The House Gun in his hands; this is the world I step in; this is the context in which I encounter the phrase: Pink-palmed Black hands. The way she writes it reminds me of the confusion my own used to raise in the questioning eyes of my whites friends. “How come” they used to say, “How come your palms are pink?” And for those who didn’t dare ask, I knew what the rest of the question was: “How come your palms are pink, but your skin BLACK?” Pink-Palmed Black hands that was the surprise that annoyed me. Such an unlikely combination it jumps off the page at me, leaving me surprisingly startled. I can’t seem to remember whose hands she was referring to, if it was Khulu’s hands or Motsamai’s. But I do remember staring at my own, for these hands are mine too. Pink-palmed Black hands. The beautiful alliteration belongs to me. Pink-Palmed, Pink- Palmed; Pink-Palmed Black hands.