She started holding on to things the moment she learned to read. Candy Flower Meister was never conscious, she tried to be, but her conscious always went un. Her holding-on-ness started in grade one, words were like food and Candy was a skinny kid with worms. She ate up every word. At home her grandparents, who solemnly swore to raise her to the best of their abilities, were inventors of words. They spoke funny, smart, stupid, sad, serious… all at the same time. She loved them. She loved them most when they spoke sad. They could speak happy words like liewe Here and Candy would have to stop to get that ol’ something out of the eye, but then they died and Candy had to pack up and leave. She had to move from a place with mountains, water, trees where they belonged, to a place with her family, a mother who was a ninja, a father who was a fish and a sister named Polly Hester Meister. The family lived in a town named Simon, which really didn't belong to a person named Simon. It was a place and people never really belong to places. The family lived in the town named Simon for almost ten years and when Candy and her sister Polly were at the beginning of their adolescence, the family moved. The father who was also a fish, got a new job at Ford Samcor in a town named Graham.
It didn't take the sisters long to realize that the town named Graham did very well belong to somebody, not to the British general it was named after, but to the mountains. Driving into the new province, Candy felt that the mountains and trees welcomed her back. Rural was not a backward word for them. When the family arrived in the town named Graham, Candy knew that they had been sent there, for this town was going to maybe be the town for her.
With its old gothic churches and angels all around, it reminded Candy of her grandparents and their Sunday morning cooking in the kitchen, with Jimmy Swaggart's lp playing in the background: ‘we are standing on holy ground and there are angels all arooouund’ and ‘I'll never be looonely again, neeevveer again’.
Her sister Polly on the other hand was not pleased. She wanted to hip hop and rock ‘n roll. Polly tried to kill herself while driving around the town named Graham. She kicked open the car door and ‘jumped’ out, but it was more like a crawl out, the father was a slow driver and she barely scraped her knee. What made the situation worse, was that the attempt to end her young life occurred right in front of the Wimpy. The newspapers would have had a field day: ‘Polly Hester dead before the Wimpy’. Both sisters eventually made peace, Polly with a town named Graham and Candy with people named her family.
The family lived well in Grahamstown, it was a proper place to raise a family. Candy liked feeling miniature amongst nature but Polly, even at the age of 14, had an inflated ego. She kept comparing the Eastern Cape to the Western Cape, when really one should not compare places. Especially when the one place has a mountain that looks like a table and knows your name. Candy and Polly learned to walk barefoot, their feet later developed a pinkish-orange tint, which was a sign that the ground they walked upon, started to infiltrate them, like the Russian mafia or America. The sisters even made friends in Fingo Village, where the streets were name A, B, C; they drank banana flavored milk out of the carton. There were donkey cart rides and VG high school. Their lives were good. Their fathers whiteness, drunkenness and inadequacy faded into the background of their lives. Their ninja mother even stopped the violence and sang in their garden. She wanted to be happy and happiness wanted her too. Florence street Oatlands Grahamstown 6139 wanted the family too. Happiness to the Meister family was getting something you really wanted. Then the day came that didn’t care about what the family wanted. The day that decided to send all the angels and saints away.
Candy had a love for comic books and was staring at her collection in her room and Polly was watching television when there was a knock at the door. They were home alone; the parents were out to celebrate the father's promotion. The family never had visitors, so they immediately recognized that something was terribly wrong. Wrong is a weird thingy, it is always right. They opened the door to a policeman, who had that 'oh shit two daughters, I should've asked someone else to come and do this' look on his fat face. The sisters did not cry when they were told about the death of their parents, they silently collectively decided that parents did not belong to their children anyways. It was a forced relationship. When the sisters walked out of Fort England hospital, they took their shoes off and walked barefoot to their parentless house. That very night Candy threw away her comics and Polly picked up their dads love for whiskey, brandy, vodka and all things that made the big bad world seem misty.
The drive out of Grahamstown was especially tough on the sisters. Polly broke down when they passed the Wimpy, she still gets emotional when she passes a Wimpy to this day. Candy on the other hand, refused to open another book; she just stared at the covers, making up what was inside. The town named Graham wanted her to be its book and she wasn’t going to allow herself to be read by another place. Especially not the placed named Cape Town, it’s one thing to lose your heart to a place that you loved but another to lose it to the place that loved you.
Years later, the sisters were young women in their twenties and had nothing more in common but a town named Graham. Life decided that it was time to bleed and took its jagged edged knife and cut the little the sisters had to pieces. Candy fell asleep with a cigarette in her hand and burned half of her house down. The other half was okay but the thing that really got to Candy was that she killed her cat. Her cat was named Ted, after Ted Hughes. Ted the cat lived on the other side of the house. Candy was weird like that: even though she adored Ted the cat, his place was the other side of the house. Love did not automatically constitute the abolishment of one’s own bubble. So, the one side of the house burned down, with Ted the cat and all Candy's books, the books she chose not to read. Candy was treated for smoke inhalation which she found a rather pussy way to almost die, since she was a smoker. Nonetheless, Candy woke up in hospital two days later. Waking up meant that she had to face what had happened. She had to face her face, the face that has been dodging mirrors since adolescence. That is when she asked for her little sister. Sometimes siblings ask for each other. The doctor called Polly and that is when the shrink sessions started. Shrinks have their place in society, even if only to turn mirrors.
‘When she was little she used to collect leaves, but only fallen ones, she could not bear leaving them laying underneath their homes,’ says Polly while she crosses her skinny ankles and slumps back into the ugly green couch. ‘Dr Swartz, my underfed sister needs to make her own appointment if she needs to discuss a problem,’ says Candy, calmly while stroking the ugly green fringed suede pillows on the hideous green couch. ‘Oh dear , was that supposed to be a insult? says Polly and flings her 25 year old, 1.5 m long and 45kg body straight up. Her frizzy hair hysterical. ‘Why am I here?’ she asks. ‘Don’t you remember? I asked for you, we are sisters, you are the only family I have left,’ says Candy still and calmly. ‘Whose fault is that? You made our parents leave,’ says Polly. ‘Dude, they died in a car wreck, dad was drunk,’ says Candy. ‘Okay, ladies, that’s great you are communicating your feelings,’ says Dr Swartz and turns over a page on his notepad. ‘Uh, ohm, do you think Polly? Uh ohm, I mean what do you think Polly?’ he asked softly. ‘I think doc that my lovely sister is just in need of attention. She has always been but especially since the death of our parents.’ Candy slowly stands up and stretching her 1.75m tall, 60kg, 27 year old frame, she runs her long slender fingers through her straightened hair. ‘Yes, Candy, how do you feel?’ asks Dr Swartz.
‘Well doc, it all started in a small town where people never grow up. We were both born in Simonstown in the Cape. Our mother had us at home. She was a ninja and didn’t believe in hospitals. Our dad was a good dad but he was a fish. One day, when I was five and Polly was three, the fish came home and told us to pack up, we would all be moving to a town named Graham. Those were the years when parents did little explaining and kids knew their place. We, we being myself, my imaginary friends, Lola, Dolly and Hector and my then still un-evil sister and her hoard of hallucinatory homies were totally stunned and with a ninja for a mother we dared not ask anything. It seems like we packed up that day, that very moment. The moment our ninja mother said: ‘We are moving!’, we moved. Our dad did not help us pack, the ninja told him to: ‘GAN TIEP JOU FOKKOLWERD!’ He always went to gan tiep because he was fokkolwerd. Anyway, doc, I will allow my now evil sister to continue as I do not wish to be the one telling her and my story simultaneously. We both moved to the town named Graham from a man named Simons town, in our own capacity,’ says Candy and slowly walks off toward a window.
‘Okay,’ says Dr Swartz. ‘You are so fucking unbelievable Candy!’ shouts Polly and throws an ugly green fringed scatter cushion at Candy by the window. Sometimes people throw things because one can’t throw feelings. ‘Why, can’t you just be real and stop your bullshit. Grahamstown? Grahamstown, motherfucking Grahamstown is the reason you are depressed?’ says Polly. ‘Okay, yes, thank you,’ says Dr Swartz. ‘You've always been the more violent one Polly, like mom,’ says Candy. Sometimes siblings push each other’s buttons because they can't rely on strangers. ‘Ja, I do and getting violent towards you is fucking easy like your boyfriends,’ says Polly. Candy turns her face toward her sister. The girl they named Polly Hester Meister, can’t be easy living with a name like that. She looks older and tired with her crazy big hair, like their mother, always fighting. Candy remembers the day when it all happened, the day when they realized that siblings were different people.
Their ninja mother used to clean white people's homes in a place named Durbanville, which was not in the coastal city of Durban but was a suburb of Cape Town. The family she cleaned for had six kids, both parents, two cars and a pet rat. That was how their ninja mother used to line things up other better people had. She used to do that to their fish father, line things up he didn’t have ‘Look at Johann, that man is a father, a provider and protector of his family and you, you nothing, you work a job you hate, you half white, you drink like a fish, you like a excuse I’m still yet to make’. Their mom would say whenever she had a bad day. The sisters felt bad for the fish.
One day their mother brought home a box full of throw away things, it was old books. Candy felt hurt, books were like love, no one should throw them away but happy she was that they had a home for them. Amongst the magazines, was a copy of JM Coetzees Dusklands and even deeper in the box was beat up copies of Les Ethiopiques by Hugo Pratt Tintin au Congo by Hergé. Polly chose Coetzee and Candy opted for Pratt and Hergé. The sisters began to be their own people and yet belonged to each other. Sisters always tend to belong to each other. Since life came and cut the crap out of their lives, they didn’t really understand what to do to each other. Love is a given. The thing that drove the Meister meisies apart was not death but love. Love made them weak; unlike other siblings they were much weaker together. Candy recalls how one day their mother came into their room and tore down all their posters, she shouted, scold and tore down the famous faces they admired. They were both sitting on Polly's bed and just looked at their mother, deranged, hating Hollywood, calling Marilyn Manson Satan, beating paper on walls. During that chaotic episode they turned to each other and became each other’s buttons to push. Forever they will see her in each other. Sometimes mothers turn into air and daughters breathe them in.
‘You always act like we need us,’ says Polly as she senses her sisters drifting thoughts. ‘Like we haven’t been through enough together, when I look at you all I see are the two girls without parents in this fucking country,’ she says. ‘You always see what hurts most, Polly,’ says Candy. ‘Pain, beauty is the same fucking thing. Bukowski wrote: “I am a fat man being eaten by green trees, butterflies and you”, when I look at you Polly, I see my pain and my beauty," says Candy. ‘Okay girls, now I think we're headed in the right direction. Talking about the pain, not projecting it on one another,’ says Dr Swartz. ‘They hated each other,’ says Polly, ‘mom and dad.’ ‘I know,’ says Candy. ‘Dude, they moved us up to the suburbs and got themselves killed,’ says Polly and smiles. ‘Gmf, I know! Like, that’s what happens when people don’t know where they “hoort”,’says Candy with a giggle in her voice. ‘They really wanted to belong somewhere so badly, I guess they tried,’ says Polly.
Polly remembers how easy it was for the two of them to say ‘I love you’ to each other. Their parents never said it, but she and Candy didn’t want to be like them, they wanted to be told that they were loved. Love shouldn’t be a silent thing between families. Polly also remembers how her older sister would always stand in front of her when their ninja mother beat them; she always got the bulk of the beatings. One day she asked her why she did that. ‘If I didn’t protect you, who would?’ Candy would always say, covered with bruises and always anxious. There comes a time when kids have to write their own histories. When a family is a family but broken, people could create whole families.
Polly thinks of her thirteenth birthday and how she and Candy stole their dad’s six-pack of beer and drank it in their room. They had a very intellectual conversation about colonialism and religion. Candy decided that the greatest mistake the western world made was to believe in themselves. Individualism is the single greatest mistake made by mankind. The moment they all decided to be gods, that’s when they fucked this planet up forever. Polly just sat back and could listen to her sister’s theories for hours. Candy had the biggest heart and wanted love to rule the world, which was probably the most selfish thing about Candy. Love, love, love. It probably had something to do with living with their grandparents, they were hippies. Mostly, Polly thought that her sister Candy and her love beliefs had something to do with the fact that she believed them. Then there was their anti-family theories, they decided that DNA was for forensic detectives to catch murderers and criminals. Family, family was beyond that. ‘Western ideas forced upon people, what made them think that the non-western cultures did not do it right, the Native Americans, the Indians, the Khoi-Khoi, the Indians in the Amazon, those cultures held the key to happiness, today, we know too much, the less we know, the less we expect,’ Candy would always say. They came to the conclusion that because they were products of the imperialists; they would take what they had and make it their own. Family was the thing that made them hurt the most and they created their own standard and concept of what they thought it was supposed to be. Now, years after their naïve but pure ideals they were in a cold doctor’s office trying to find their way back.
‘I know they tried, Polly, but they tried for the wrong reasons, they did not love each other, maybe if they did, they could have loved us,’ says Candy. ‘I think for once your love theory may be valid,’ says Polly and smiles at her sister. Sometimes siblings need to go back to what they thought and not what they were taught. ‘I love you, you know,’ says Polly. ‘I know you do Polly, I actually know that, you know,’ says Candy and smiles back at her sister.
‘I think we've actually made progress, ladies, I think that this is a step in the right direction,’ says Dr Swartz, but he is lying, that’s not what he has been thinking during this session. He has been thinking about his own siblings and how most of them are dead and how unimportant they were to him. He’s thinking of how happy he was when he left their family home to live on his own. How happy he was to go out into the world and create his own reality. How he never even thought about being part of a family and just wanted to create his own. He thought of the big wedding his parents made him have. He wonders if they did that to show how happy they were to let him go or maybe they were happy that he was now going to become just like them. A man with a family. A good man. A son to tell people about. A doctor. A husband. A father.
Dr Swartz thought of his own children, his three beautiful daughters. What a careless wholesome childhood they had. He thought of these two sisters sitting in his office and how much more they knew about being happy than he ever thought possible. His own three daughters all had big weddings, he thought that was part of the parental duty, giving big weddings and teaching good morals. Protecting them from the evils of the world, teaching them how to be good people, not to judge, not to discriminate and to love. He thought of these two sisters in his office and how they lived their thoughts, hoards and hoards of thoughts how these girls lived it. Without fear of being perceived as abnormal. How brave it must be to live your thoughts. Dr. Swartz thought of what his life would have been like had he lived his thoughts. He would never have married his wife, he would have played the bass guitar, he would have had long hair and he would have been a smoker. He would never have been a doctor or even been happy. But he would have loved his life. The freedom of life would have been enough.
He looks at the sisters with their odd names Candy Flower and Polly Hester, the jokes must have been endless. His daughters would have changed their names long ago, had he given them such names. He would never have been brave enough to give his children such names. ‘Your names, just for interest’s sake,’ asks Dr. Swartz. ‘What about our names?’ smiles Polly. ‘I was born on my grandmothers birthday, our mother spend the day making candy flowers for her party when she went into labor,’ says Candy. ‘I was born when our mother worked at a textile factory. She had this thing about naming us after the last thing she thought about before she had us,’ says Polly. ‘Would you ever change it?’ asks Dr Swartz. ‘To what, doc? To Jane, to something more normal?’ asks Polly. ‘No, we would not dare, I think you may have got us wrong, just because we complain about our parents and their flaws doesn’t mean we want to change who we are or what they were, all it means is that we can be different from them if we wanted to,’ she says. ‘And what is that you two want that is different from your parents?’ he asks. ‘Everything and nothing doc, the one thing we do want is to move like they did, they stayed for nothing and yet moved for everything.’
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