Friction and Wear | Liesl Jobson
“Pay your debts off as fast as you can,” said my father 25 years ago. He arrived from Cape
Town where my parents lived to Johannesburg where I lived to attend a business trip. Dad
worked for the Rose Foundation whose aim was to prevent the irresponsible dumping and
burning of used lubricating oil.
My divorce settlement was being finalised after a 15-year marriage. His financial advice
was solid: “Best of all, don’t get into debt – apart from a home loan. Save up, pay cash and
negotiate a discount on all your major purchases.”
He offered to stand surety on a house that would have my name on the title deeds. It looked
north into acacia trees and every day, a flock of white pigeons circled around an ornamental
fountain in the garden. The birds alighted on the edge and bathed in the trickling water. I
took a 20-year bond and paid extra every month to reduce my debt. A year after purchase,
the lending rate escalated beyond my earnings and the rent combined. Dad helped me out
for a couple of months until I could manage again.
Apart from being generous, my father was prudent and thrifty. His blood was Scottish and
Dutch, so he had a double dose of close-fistedness. When I was in pre-school, he refused to
fork out for a plastic cooldrink bottle when I could reuse an empty lubricant bottle for my
juice. When I came home crying because kids teased me for drinking petrol, he told me to
laugh it off. He knew how to find a bargain. He found treasures costing next to nothing –
dented tins of unlabeled peaches, chocolate bars with printing errors on the packaging,
double toilet paper that would never tear straight due to manufacturing errors.
I knew we weren’t poor. I didn’t realise we were rich.
Growing up in the hilly suburb of Pinetown, outside Durban, my sisters and I had climbed
jacaranda trees. Frangipani, poinsettia, fiddlewood, guava, blue gum and camellias grew in
our tropical garden beside the Umbilo River. Vervet monkeys swung through the branches
and mynah birds squawked in the feathery leaves. Other kids had fancy trampolines but
Dad fixed a rope swing that spun and twirled.
Every November the jacaranda blossoms formed a purple roof above and carpet below. We
had peanut butter sandwiches in our lunch boxes, not crumb cake. Dad taught me to read
music, and helped me germinate an avocado by suspending the pip over a jar of water. It
grew a root that stretched to the bottom of the bottle. When the first frond grew upward, a
leaf opened toward the light.
My father was a chemist, a specialist tribologist. He earned well as a technical expert for an
oil company and took advice on investments. Before being promoted to an executive
position, he worked in a laboratory at the refinery. His boss, Oom Jan, had a bowl of
imperial mints on his desk. I’d stand at the door until he invited me in extending the bowl of
peppermints across his desk toward me. Years later after he’d retired, Oom Jan would
phone my father and tell him to turn on the TV when he saw me playing in the SABC
orchestra. Two years ago, I played at a local old age home. Oom Jan, then 90, attended the
concert in a wheelchair.
In my favourite photograph of him, my father wears a white lab coat and a hard hat. He holds a notebook and pencil in hand. Retrospectively I guess he would have been calculating the specifications for engines: aeroplanes, tractors, diesel locomotives, earth-moving equipment.
When we cleared out our childhood home, I found his old chemistry textbooks which he
had bought second hand in 1958. I inhaled the scent of the pages, detecting a whiff of the
laboratory. Curious combinations of letters and numbers formed lattices across the pages –
incomprehensible formulae and bonds. I stroked the tatty crimson cloth cover. It had
chapter headings like “Spectrophotometric Analysis” and held the weight of words like
“stoichiometry”.
Last year, Dad turned 79 and had four eye surgeries in three months. When he loses his
spectacles he howls in frustration, unable to figure out how to answer his iPhone, poking it
in a frenzy. He still likes to fix things, but the washers and wingnuts fall to the ground
where he can’t find them. When the sliding bolt of the door handle would not close
properly, he refused to wait till the builder returned. He took it apart and then grew tired of
the project. The lock lay in pieces on the table for a week.
This year, he lost his laptop so I changed all his passwords. He forgotten I’d done this so
his account was blocked after three failed attempts to access it. We called the bank and two
hours later we were finally able to retrieve access.
Before Christmas, Dad fell down the stairs of the new cottage we had just built so he could
come and live with us. He stepped outside to investigate the neighbour’s burglar alarm
without putting on the light. He phoned me, sounding scared. I hurried over and found his
shirt ripped and his head bleeding.
“You on a new project then, Dad?” I asked, observing his hand drill in the basin and a
selection of screws scattered beside the shower.
“I have no idea…” he said, his voice faltering. He had lodged the step ladder between the
toilet and the wall. A new coat hook had been affixed to the back of the bathroom door.
Dinner conversation when we were in high school featured the chemistry of interacting
surfaces. At our table now he tells me about the bargain he found at the charity shop. I crush
broken cookies from the factory shop over the ice cream and add a dash of coffee liqueur to
jolly it up.
My sisters are all overseas now. They talk to Dad on WhatsApp often, encouraging him to
take his vitamins, to take a nap, to get out for a walk, to take it slowly, to stop climbing
ladders. I wonder if they also talk about calculus over their breakfast cereal? Do they
classify compounds with their own children, scientists all?
I never lived in the house I bought after my divorce. I moved cities and rented it out.
During the pandemic (comma) the tenants lost their jobs and stopped paying rent. The
house is on the market now.
Dad recently gave me power of attorney over his affairs. If he becomes disabled, his bills
will be paid.
Today he asked me to scan and email his completed body donor consent form to the
University of Cape Town’s Medical School. He had initialled all the boxes and two
neighbours had witnessed it. He read it aloud, his magnifying glass hovering over the tiny
print: “I wish to be listed as a body donor, in accordance with the National Health Act, for
anatomical teaching, learning and research purposes.” He eyes me directly. His raised
eyebrow is a challenge, not a question. I meet his gaze and nod. I do not ask whether this is
his love of science talking, his affection for his alma mater, or a preference for dodging the
cost of cremation.
When I was a baby and my mother was pregnant with my first sister, she discovered a black
mamba curled in the sun on our dining room stairs. When my father returned from the
refinery, smelling faintly of oil, he swept the snake into a box, and tipped it into a pillow
slip. He sealed the opening with an elastic band and whispered, “Don’t be scared little
thing. I came all this way to help you.”
ENDS
Liesl Jobson makes art in Zeekoevlei on the Cape Flats where hippopotamus once roamed. Her writing appears in The Southern Review, New World Writing, Slush Pile Magazine, Flash Fiction International, The Common, Lichen, Adanna, Quick Fiction, Cutthroat and Herri. Liesl teaches poetry, plays contrabassoon with various southern African orchestras, and coaches women’s rowing.