Davu’s cord
by Tamanda Kanjaye
The year Davu turns eighteen, three conscientiously crucial things happen to her. They are each separate in their own way and yet one of the same. They come together religiously like her own holy trinity.
The first is this:
The anger she carries in her blood starts to decay. The rot permeates so thickly in the air around her that if anyone cared to notice they would wrinkle their nose at the odour.
The anger started to manifest on an ordinary cold evening when Davu was six. Her momma had burst into her room like a gust of wind as she slept and slammed the door behind her. It startled Davu awake. But before she could even begin to comprehend what was going on, she heard her father’s voice – draped like a thunderstorm – bellow through the house and settle into her bones like the chill of winter.
“Thandie, where are you?” There was the unmistakable slur that she had become accustomed to drenched in his voice.
Even though she didn’t understand completely, Davu knew her father was somehow hurting her precious Momma. She had traced enough bruises and love bites on Momma’s body – sunken and discolored on her otherwise smooth brown skin. She might not have known the gravity of it all, but Davu at least knew that her father took things from Momma that she didn’t want to give.
Momma dragged her trembling body into bed next to Davu and gathered her in her arms.
“It’s okay baby,” Momma said before proceeding to quietly hum to Davu while her father shook through the house.
They stayed that way for a long time – until the house settled so silently that Momma thought Davu had fallen asleep. But Davu was awake through it all. She heard as the wrath of father morphed into drunken snores. And as the hums of Momma transformed into silent weeps. The sound would forever break her heart- and she would forever resent her father for being the cause.
#
The Second is this:
She steals the cord from Momma’s crooked throat in a futile attempt to save her.
On a bright and oddly quiet day, Davu snuck into the room where Momma slept deep and heavy. She traced her fingers on the rough fibers of the beating thing around Momma’s neck then whispered to it. She told it how it would have a far much better use for anger than it did for despair.
The cord purred at her words before willingly unwrapping itself from Momma and snaking its way around Davu’s arm, knotting once around her neck and slithering down her other side.
Davu carries it everywhere. She vows to never return it.
The cord is thick and pulsating. It’s very much alive. And it weighs down on her. #
Davu loves to fight.
More accurately, she loves to be beaten badly. She relishes the moments when her trainer, Juno, crashes his heavy body against her small one on the scratchy gym carpet.
The pain always brings clarity. And with clarity comes resolve.
In those physically painful moments Davu picks her brain apart for archives of her father. There’s a particular one she loves to dwell on. She remembers it with stark vividness.
It’s the one which starts as her father sauntered into the kitchen and made himself some tea. He was heavy and clumsy that morning, banging into the corners of things and massaging the temples of his head.
“It’s too loud today,” he grumbled.
Davu just ignored him as she usually did. She got off the dining table and went to put the bowl she was using for cereal in the sink.
“You know kid,” her father loomed behind her, “we need to start getting along since it’s just us now.”
Davu couldn’t believe the audacity of him.
The cord coiled. It sunk into her flesh leaving harsh welts on her skin.
At the time, Davu had never fought a day in her life but something overcame her. Something hot and vile that squeezed at her chest.
She spun around and threw a punch at her father’s nose, successfully breaking it but bruising her wrist in the process. But even with blood gushing down his face, her father didn’t flinch. Davu saw the fury, similar to her own, brewing in his eyes. His hand shot out and wrapped itself tightly around her throat, cutting off her circulation.
“You little brat! You’re worse than your mother.”
He bared his teeth at her in such a deep and animalistic way that it made Davu think he needed to be in a cage. Better yet, put down.
She tried to claw at him but it was futile. Her father continued to tighten his grip.
When she felt consciousness start to leave her, she heard Momma scream like a banshee.
Amidst hearing momma’s wails and seeing her father’s feral expression, something clicked in Davu. She suddenly knew what she had to do to save Momma and herself from this terrible terrible mess that was their life.
When he finally let go, Davu fell to the ground – a breath away from fainting. Everything was a blur. As she watched her father walk away, muttering under his breath, Momma rushed and took her into her hands. She slipped her fingers into all the places the cord dug into Davu’s skin and tried to tag the two apart. The cord hissed, refusing to let go.
Frustrated, Momma gave up and started to hum to her like she always did when Davu was younger. In that moment Davu realised Momma had nobody’s arms to fall into when her father took and took. Her lungs were on fire so she couldn’t find her word, but if they weren’t, Davu would have promised to take Momma away from all of it.
#
The final crucial thing is this:
She decides she’s going to kill her father with her bare hands. #
Juno has trained many people who carry all sorts of ropes around their necks and even more with anger rotting in their blood. Most of them are men who don’t have the gusto for both.
Davu does.
When Juno first asked Davu what she wanted to achieve in the gym, she assessed his bulging thighs and brutal arms with an unwavering air of menace.
“I want to be able to take someone like you down,” she said.
Juno threw a fist, stopping mere inches from her face. The girl didn’t even flinch. Even the men blinked. It made him wonder what sort of horrors she had etched in her skin.
“Impressive,” he said. “However you’re small, so you have to learn to be fast.”
Every evening when they spar and Juno leaves Davu an aching bag of scattered bones and blood, he notices how the stench of anger around her gets stronger and how the cord grows.
Davu gets up every time, even when Juno has baptized her to the ground with his fists. Even with the cord and anger creaking her bones.
“Again.” She swallows the blood in her mouth and challenges Juno straight in the eye. It would be such a brilliant display if it wasn’t so goddamn terrifying.
#
When she isn’t physically exerting her body to new limits, Davu is in the library, willing her brain not to give up on her in the third year of med school.
The year is punctuated with bruises and stellar grades.
She doesn’t go home when the first semester is over. Instead she gets a part time job tutoring secondary kids math and biology on weekends. She saves all her earnings and the pocket money she gets.
Momma never got her college degree. Never got a job that could sustain Davu let alone herself if she left her father. Never got a winning chance to escape. If Davu is going to save her, she needs to be able to care for her when they start a new life.
Davu does all these things for Momma. She gets her body and mind terrorised because she will never forgive herself if she fails to save her.
#
Seven months into her exile from home Davu gets a text as she is writing the final paragraph of her pediatrics assignment. It has words such as “father,” “counseling,” and “fixed.” It mentions things about thinking long and hard and how he should have never attacked her. It tells her she is missed back at home and this will be the fourth month her father will be celebrating sobriety.
“I hope you can find it in your heart to let what happened go,” it writes. “When you get home it will be good.”
The pen in her hand snaps. The cord constricts and the anger expands. She remembers his sharp bearded jaw and handsome smile; of his demeaning height and broad shoulders. She thinks of the sturdiness of his big strong hands that once carried her around the house as he sang to her.
Davu goes back to a time and a place when she was four and they used to be her favourite feature of his. That was until they tried to cut the circulation of air from momma’s throat.
There is a stinging at the back of Davu’s throat and a fog in your eyes. Suddenly it’s too hard to breathe.
Don’t think about him.
She remembers his scotch stained breath when he tossed her momma to the floor like a rag doll. The way he hastily removed his jeans. The way momma lay broken and bruised as she looked away from him, her eyes glossed over with hopelessness and misery as he grunted and groaned. She remembers the emptiness in them when they made eye contact with her where she was hiding under the bed.
Don’t think about him.
Davu remembers the rage she felt. How palpable it was. The helplessness. She wished she could have crawled out from under that bed and attacked her father. Shaken him up and beat him to a pulp. She wished she could have strangled him.
The bile rises in Davu’s throat. She looks at her own hands. They are long and dainty like her momma’s. Nothing masculine about them. They are bandaged and weak. Obviously, they never stood a chance against her father.
She buries her face in them and tries not to weep #
Juno is packing for the night when Davu bursts into the gym- a whirlwind of wrath and brilliance.
“Do you have time for one more spar?” her eyes are puffy and red.
He doesn’t go easy on her and the more blood she swallows, the better she feels. When Juno once again brings her to the ground, he chastises her with his hand on her throat.
“You keep hesitating. You can’t take me down with brute force alone. You need to be fas-“
Davu doesn’t let him finish. She brings her hips up, using her thighs to hook the arm that is choking her in the way that reminds of her father. She shifts her body, grappling him in a hold that threatens to break his arm.
The anger pulsates. The cord breathes.
There’s a fury to her that conducts its way deep into Juno’s bones. It threatens to scorch him and the entire gym to ash. If she wanted, Juno realises, Davu could bring devastation in her wake.
She pulls his arm harder and for the first time in seven months, her trainer, whose brutish build rivals that of her father, taps in surrender. She doesn’t let go immediately. She keeps him there for a moment. She’s never felt more powerful.
“Good job.” Juno pats her shoulder as they are packing up. The wrath of her sizzles on his palm.
#
That night Davu’s mother visits her. She is smiling softly and her eyes are more alive than Davu has ever seen them.
She rests her head on momma’s lap. Momma runs her fingers through Davu’s hair. “Davu, I have to go,” she says.
“Please don’t leave me,” Davu replies. “That’s on you, isn’t it?” momma says.
No sooner do those words come out that her eyes start to glass over as she fades away. Davu tries to reach for her, but the bandages on her hands unravel and start to bleed.
“Don’t go!” Davu cries out. “Please don’t go!”
Her vacant eyes are the last to disappear. And suddenly Davu is all alone again with blood on her hands.
#
Davu’s father picks her up at the end of her second semester. She notices Momma shrinking into the back seat. It’s as if she isn’t even there.
Davu sits in the front, next to him, stalking him as a predator does its prey. It’s been ten months since she last saw him. She sneaks glances from the corner of her eyes and realises there are noticeable differences that weren’t there before. The savagery that once clung to her father seems to have disappeared. He has shaved off his beard, and it surprises Davu how that alone softens his facial features.
Good, she thinks. There will be nothing to cushion your jaw from my fists.
#
There are certain things a parent notices about their child. And as Davu’s father looks at his daughter through the corner of his eye, he notices many things.
She’s all sinew and muscle. Her eyes are untamed and all her skin is raw. She looks like an animal. He recognises the wildness that’s now borne in her because he used to possess the same things once upon a time. He lets out a long exhale.
“Those are some bruised knuckles,” he says deliberately. “I took up boxing.” Her words are equally measured.
He grips the steering wheel more tightly. The statement unsettles him and he’s taken back to the time when his own daughter broke his nose.
He wants to apologise and tell her that he’s a changed man but the words turn to cement in his mouth.
None of them says another word the rest of the four-hour drive home. #
Davu’s father is the first one out of the car when they arrive. He starts unloading the luggage. He thinks to himself, “my own daughter, flesh and blood, hates me. How can I fix this?”
Davu looks at Momma through the rearview mirror. “I’ll fix this,” she whispers before following him.
When he turns to grab the last suitcase, Davu is right behind him. She doesn’t hesitate in roundhouse kicking her father’s ribs with all the anger she inherited from him and some she made of her own. A sickeningly satisfying crack resonates through the air. His expression is one of shock and pain as he doubles over. Her fist immediately connects with his chin and the feel of his clattering teeth fuels her on. As he stumbles back, she throws a jab at his nose, breaking it for a second time that year.
Davu pounces with a velocity that would make Juno proud. She reaches for her father’s throat and brings him down.
She straddles him. Her hands and the heaviness of the cord go for his neck. She squeezes. Hard. Something unhinges and Davu snarls with a ferocity she never knew she possessed.
Violence becomes her. She stares directly at him and relishes in how hopeless and empty he looks. Davu wants to take and take from him, the same way he took and took from Momma. She squeezes harder and the cord tightens.
Davu’s father reaches for her hands and claws at her arms but she does not give. He tries to bolt up, but his ribs hurt so damn much. As his vision blurs, he sees his daughter clearly for the first time in years. All the fight in him dissipates. He wants to cry so badly but he can barely keep his eyes open. He wants to reach out to Davu and tell her he’s sorry – he’s so very sorry – but the darkness consumes him.
Davu holds on to her father’s neck long after he has gone limp. It’s her momma who approaches her and pulls her away from the destruction and into her arms. “Are you happy with what you’ve done?” she asks.
“I’m sorry that I couldn’t save you.” Davu replies instead.
“It’s okay, baby. You’re okay,” Momma cooes.
She slips her hand between the flesh of Davu’s neck and the scratchiness of the cord. “I’m taking this back now,” she says. “You’ve carried it long enough.”
It gives out beneath Momma’s hands and she takes the heavy bloody thing and wraps it round and round and round her neck, leaving the remaining length to trail behind her.
She looks exactly the same way Davu found her a year ago – on a warm day in their empty house.
Momma starts to disappear. She shatters into a thousand tiny pieces before the wind carries her into the sky forever.
Something inside Davu releases. The anger that held on to her starts to bleed out. It spills slowly and rotten from being kept too long. And a hollowness takes its place.
Davu falls to the ground – drained. She has lost a lot of rotting blood. And although ugly and decayed, blood is blood.
Her skin is red and tender to the touch. Everything hurts.
