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Re cbgn·i·tion.:. I
AN ANTHOLOGY OF SOUTH AFRICAN SHORT STORIES
SELECTED AND INTRODUCED BY DAVID MEDALIE

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Published in South Africa by:

Wits University Press

1 Jan Smuts Avenue
Johannesburg,2001
www.witspress.co.za
For Elizabeth and Terry Leaver,
Introduction © David Medalie 2017 Rosemary, Charles, Kerry and Adam
Published edition© Wits University Press 2017 with my love.
Short stories © Individual authors
Cover artwork© Mongezi Ncaphayi, Find My Way, 2013, monoprint with drypoint,
And in loving memory of
40 x 45.7 cm, image courtesy of David Krut Projects
Chris and Kathy van UJ!k.
First published 2017

ISBN 978-1-77614-036-7 (Print)

ISBN 978-1-77614-037-4 (Web PDF)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher, except in
accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act, Act 98 of 1978.

All stories remain the property of the copyright holders. The publishers gratefully
acknowledge the publishers, institutions and individuals referenced in 'Publishing History'.

Cover design by Fire and Lion, South Africa

Book design and typesetting by Fire and Lion, South Africa
 RECOGNITION

'Stay irresponsible,' you once told me. You thought great universal thoughts. I LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON
tried to keep up. That book is closed now, I guess. Time to begin another one. KOBUS MOOLMAN

You purposely lost us once, just to prove that it could be done. I don't know
if I can capture those moments again. In their place is a layer of loneliness
which pushes down on me. It may suffocate me if I'm not careful. Maybe
that's good. If I give myself over to despair, then I won't have to venture out
in the sunshine like the world hasn't noticed: the leaves, the flowers.
I emptied a tub of frozen yoghurt into the sink last night. It was the last
thing you ate before time stopped. Time stops when your heart stops beating.
The doctor said that you didn't suffer. Thank death for that small mercy. No
joy in observing that terrible monster. You joked about the ignominy of
slipping in the bathtub. My feet were flat, like a hobbit's feet, you said. We WE ALL HAD TO wait. While he waited for his toast to cool down. To get
pressed our feet together, yours brown, mine pale. We waltzed around the flat ice cold, in fact. So that he would be able to spread the butter. (One hundred
then, high on cheap champagne and the joy of being close. per cent butter, mind you. Mooi River Choice Salted. Never margarine.)
I stub my toe when I return the towel to the rack. No matter. It reminds Spreading it right to the edge, all the way round the slice of bread, then
me, I think, that I am alive.
folding back any portion of butter that had slipped over the edge with a
quick movement of his knife and smearing it into place. The bread that by
© Wamuwi Mbao 2013
now was so cold it was hard and brittle and in danger of breaking under the
force of his knife.
And all because our father claimed that eating toast which had become
soft following the application of butter when the bread was still hot gave him
constipation.
'Pain in the arse, more like it,' our mother said behind his back, and we
all giggled because she had used a dirty word. Something the family was
forbidden to do. Together with taking the Lord's Name in vain. And wearing
jeans. ('Only druggies do that.') And slamming the car door.
And ...
Even 'damn' and 'hell' were off limits to us. Unless, of course, they were
used in the context of the Bible. As in, 'All sinners (here read masturbators I
loose women I communists and atheists I people who wore jeans) will be
damned to hell!'
 RECOGNITION LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON

The shameful parts of the body were also strictly controlled through 'Remember to stand up and give your seat to an older person.'
language. So that 'bottom' took the place of 'bum', and 'little Johnnie' or (Unless, of course, they were the black maid, Sweetness, or her husband,
'winkie' were used by the boys in the family (my brother and I, even our Pancreas, who was the garden boy for the Bothas next door.)
father) to refer to our penises. I cannot remember the word we were allowed 'Remember to say your prayers in the morning and in the evening.'
to use for our mother and our sister's genitals. Probably because this part of 'And to pray for those in authority over you. That they may be protected
their bodies was never referred to. At least not in mixed company. from those who wish to do them harm.'
No doubt this accounted for the blank space between their legs that I was 'And remember never ever slam the car door.'
raised to believe differentiated all women from men. No doubt, too, this was I wished our mother had learned to drive. So that we didn't have to listen

the reason why- sitting opposite my father at the formica kitchen table, hands to this lecture every single day. And so that we could get to school at a

folded in my lap, waiting for his toast to cool down, my head bowed, staring at normal time; instead of an hour and a half earlier, when, in winter, the school

the bowl of ProNutro in front of me, watching the pale-brown powder darken building was still closed and we had to wait outside the gate in the cold and

and dry as it absorbed all of the milk - this was the reason why I couldn't stop the dark. But father refused to let mother learn in his vehicle. What if she

thinking about the naked mannequin in John Orr's street window. reversed into a streetlight? Or turned in front of an oncoming car? How
I was in Standard Three. I wore a little black cap and a black blazer to would we be able to pay for the damages on his meagre storeman's salary?

school, with a black-and-red striped tie. The crest on my little black cap, 'Let me get a job then,' she would always counter when he came up with

and on the pocket of my blazer, was a bright orange flowering aloe. I did this argument. 'Then I can buy my own car. And bump it as many times as

not know how to do a tie. My mother would do it for me. She would first I like.'
put the tie around her own neck and do it (left over right, right under left, But her impertinence only got her an icy stare.
take the long end and slip it through . . . and there I would get lost) before Father never once raised his hand against our mother. (He reserved that

opening it carefully, just enough so that it could slide over her head, and then privilege for my brother and me.) He had other ways of getting her to do

placing the still fastened loop over my head and tightening the knot. My what he wanted. Chief among these alternative strategies was his stare. The

mother had done this for me every day of my young school career. Silently. Dead Eye, my sister and I called it. It was a hard, feelingless look. A look that

Without protest. Then she would run her hand quickly through my hair - took over the whole of his face, not just his eyes. A look that sat in his mouth
and in his jaw and in his narrow cheeks even. It was a look more frightening
not in a perfunctory way, but more as if she were doing something she could
than a chicken's small red eyes. More frightening because sometimes, if you
be caught out for - and pat me on the bottom.
were close enough, then you might actually see yourself standing small and
'Run along now,' she would say. 'Don't keep your father waiting.'
dark in the centre of his pupil. As if you had been swallowed somehow,
Our father drove us to school - my sister and I. Sitting in the back of his
brown Ford Cortina, each of us staring out of our respective windows while without your knowledge, and trapped there.
he intoned: Forever.
Of course, thinking back upon it now, from the sad heights of adulthood,
'Remember to walk, not run, when you cross the road.'
I can see that my father probably wore that stare of his more as a mask than a
'Remember to always be grateful for what you have.'
 RECOGNITION
LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON

weapon. It was something he used to cover up his own deep insecurities. Over her. Because father never allowed us to have any more. You ate what was on
his pathetic salary. (More than forty years, eventually, in the same unvaried your plate as it was served to you, whether it was cold or hard or dry or bitter
job.) Over his sad fashion sense. (Safari suits and cravats and long polyester or salt-less. And you ate it all.
socks.) And his wretched education. (A mere Standard Eight.)
The only way I could swallow that dry paste was to think of something
But that knowledge did not help me when I was ten years old; my first else. So I told myself a story. It was a trick I used to help me fall asleep
year of writing double digits on the front page of my exercise books. When at night. I would recall episodes from my favourite radio programme with
I was more afraid of his Dead Eye than of his small pale hands. No matter myself as the lead. Or I would invent fancy combat vehicles that could fly
how many coat hangers he broke upon my back.
or go underwater, and then I would choose from my friends at school who
Because, despite all his faults, when it came to the members of his family, would be the driver, who would be the navigator, the machine-gun operator,
father was impartial to the T. It did not matter that my brother was only six. the big cannon worker, the radio controller ... But I did not have enough
He got the same thrashing as I did. It did not matter that I wore special boots friends to adequately staff these elaborate vehicles. So I was forced to come
- raised six inches because my right leg was shorter than the left. I got the up with simpler designs.
same thrashing as my brother. No matter what we had done. And my sister My favourite story, however, involved the discovery of a secret formula
and mother got punished equally with exactly the same icy stare. for turning myself invisible. I would imagine drinking this fizzing green stuff
'All right. Let us say grace. Then we can eat,' father said.' Vir spys en drank in a test tube and then walking into the girls' change-room at school or the
se ons U !ofen dank, liewe Here. Amen.'
public swimming pool in Pine Street, where I would sit quietly in a corner
Father was the only one in the family allowed to say grace. He used an (holding my breath, of course, so that they did not hear me) and watch them
old prayer of his own father, who had lived with us in the front room of the getting undressed. An interesting feature of this story, though, was that I
house until his death two years earlier. In the same room. The room that my never got to see what the girls looked like when they were naked; whether
brother and I now shared. With our matching single pine beds and pine there was indeed a blank space between their legs, or something else. And
bedside tables.
this was not because I fell asleep before I reached that point. Every time the
We called our father's father Oupa. He had lived on a farm for most of his girls in the story were about to take off their small underpants (that was how
life. He hardly spoke. At least not to us children, who only spoke English. He I thought of them), something would jolt my narrative and jerk it back to the
worked every day in his small vegetable garden at the back of our property, beginning, right back to me drinking the fizzy green potion.
crouched over the bare brown earth in his matching long pants and long- It was like what happened sometimes during the school films screened at
sleeved khaki shirt. He belittled our father for wearing a short safari suit. the end of term in the cold assembly hall when the film snapped or the reel
According to him only boys wore short pants - of any description. came to an end, and everything would go bright suddenly and flicker with
'Would you like more milk in that?' mother asked me, referring to my strange patterns and there would be a slapping sound from the loose end of
bowl of solid ProNutro.
the film going round and round, before the teacher switched the projector
'Me too,' chimed my little brother, who always copied everything I did. off and called, 'Lights, please!', and one of the prefects roused himself and
My sister said nothing. As the eldest she always did what was expected of flicked the room back into colour.
 RECOGNITION LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON

A jarring disorientation. and walk down to the mid-point, from where we had originally set out. In
I never got to see what the girls looked like when they were naked because this way we would cover both sides of the main street and not miss a single
I could not imagine what they would look like. Because I did not know, and shop - even though it might take us two hours.
so had nothing to imagine with. The whole thing bored me and I quickly grew tired, falling further and
But since having seen the naked mannequin in John Orr's street window further behind the others. Until it seemed that I was not part of their group
a few days earlier I now had something concrete to make my story out of. at all but belonged entirely to myself. Mother loved window shopping so
Mother liked to do what she called 'window shopping'. On a Friday much that she hardly noticed how far back I dropped. But I didn't mind. I
evening, after supper, the whole family would jump into father's Ford Cortina liked pretending that I didn't belong to them. That that was not my mother
- my sister and I at our respective windows, and our little brother sitting in the in her crimplene dress below the knee (my father forbade her to wear pants)
front on mother's lap - and we would drive to the centre of town, to Church and her fl.at shoes, transfixed by all the beautiful outfits that she would never
Street, slowly so as to conserve petrol. ('Money doesn't grow on trees,' father be able to afford; that the man in the short brown safari suit carrying my
loved saying.) We would look for a parking space more or less in the middle little brother (in his own small blue suit) was definitely not my father; that it
of the street. OK Bazaars was the ideal spot, where they sold lucky packets in was not my sister, trying so very hard not to want all the short skirts and long
three sizes: Jumbo, Regular and Small. Throughout our childhood, our parents boots and eye-shadow in blues and greens and fancy eye-liner that she would
could only ever afford the Small one for us each. The stores, of course, had all only ever be able to wear over our father's dead body.
closed at five o'clock, but that didn't matter. We weren't there to actually buy Apart from Jackson's Sports store with its show of cricket equipment (I
anything. We just walked down the street looking into all the shop windows often felt a twinge of shame outside this window because the closest I ever
and going 'ooooh' and 'aaaah' over all the special deals, discount, reduced, half- got to playing for the school cricket team was as official scorer) and Reggie's
price, final clearance sale (which we still couldn't afford); saying 'Check that Toys where I always stopped to stare at a set of plastic Cowboy and Indian
out' and 'Check at this' over all the brand-new, first-in-the-country, only-two- figurines fighting around a small wagon, none of the shop displays interested
per-ctistomer products like toasters that popped your bread up once it was me at all.
ready (so that you didn't have to open the little doors every few minutes to The little plastic figurines in Reggie's fascinated me, although I knew it

check on your toast and risk burning your fingers), or alarm clocks that made was pointless drawing my parents' attention to them. It would just elicit the

you coffee when they went off and were a radio at the same time, and washing same tired argument from my father: 'We can't afford it. Money doesn't grow

machines that did not require you to take everything out after the first cycle on trees, you know. I work hard to put food on the table and clothes on your

and transfer it to the next tub to be spun. back.' On and on.

Once we got to the bottom of Church Street, we would cross over onto Perhaps the little figures fascinated me because they reminded me of a

the other side (only at the robots, of course) and walk slowly back up looking picture I had seen as a young child in the musty lounge of my father's cousin

into all the shop windows on that side, making more or less the same sounds who lived on the outskirts of a small town about three hours away from us.

and exclamations over more or less the same special deals and new products. (Actually only an hour and a half away but father drove so slowly it always

At the top of the street we would cross back to the side we had started on, took us twice the time to get there.)
 RECOGNITION
LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON

The picture hung above the fireplace. It was in a heavy black frame, and
shirts. There were balls of paper and plastic wrapping and pieces of brown
it depicted a group of men with long beards and women with dresses that
tape scattered across the red-carpeted floor. It seemed to me that whoever
reached down to the ground and bonnets (father called them kappies) who
had been working on the display had been called away suddenly to answer
were struggling to get a small wagon down the steep slope of a mountain. The
a telephone - perhaps their child had fallen on the concrete quadrangle at
men were holding onto the wagon with long ropes. Their backs were bent as
school and broken an arm. Behind the two children stood a male figure in a
they strained against the taut ropes. They were in their rolled-up shirt sleeves.
long safari suit. He had a brown tweed golf cap on his head. Father owned
The muscles in their arms were bulging. The tent on the wagon was :flapping
just such a cap. Though he never played golf. He was a rugby man. He wore
crazily in the wind. Any moment the ropes would break.
his cap always, to protect his bald head from the sun. He was frightened of
And right then the Indians attacked!
getting skin cancer and went regularly to have the moles and freckles on his
Spears and arrows were flying everywhere. The women were screaming.
arms and hands checked. His own father - Oupa - laughed at him for this.
1he men with long beards could not hold on to their wagon and defend
Oupa did not believe that the sun could cause cancer. Cigarettes did. (But
themselves and their women at the same time. One bare-chested brown
not smoking a pipe.) And eating processed food, of course, any fool could
warrior dashed forward and grabbed a young girl in a faded pink dress.
see that.
Whooping, he threw her over his shoulder. Her bonnet came undone her
Beside the male figure in his safari suit was the bottom half of a woman.
long brown hair loosed in the wind, as the half-naked savage ran off with' her.
Stark naked.
'Come along! Stop daydreaming.'
She had been sawn completely in half. With one quick slash of a very
Mother had halted in front of John Orr's, and was standing waiting for
sharp blade. The blade had left no mark whatsoever. No tears. No jagged
me. It was dark just there where she stood because the streetlight was out.
edges to the skin where the teeth of the blade had caught and pulled against
But the bright store window lit up her face. Her floral dress, which previously
her pale, pink flesh.
had seemed to me so ordinary and inferior, shone now with a translucency I
The bottom half of the woman stood there all by itself and looked at me.
had not seen before.
Its skin was smooth all over.
'Hurry up,' she said, though with a smile, and turned and walked after my
There was nothing between the legs.
father who was carrying my brother in his right arm and holding the hand
Just smooth and constant flesh all the way from the instep of the slightly
of my sister with his left.
raised left foot to the fiat top just above the hips.
I hurried after her. Half-skipping, half-dragging my heavy right shoe.
'Stop playing with your food!' father said, and clipped me across the head
In the unlit spot where she had been standing I stopped and caught my with the spoon he had been using to scoop the red mixed-fruit jam onto his
breath. The street was silent. A slight wind stirred some dry leaves and pieces
toast. 'Oupa's spoon' we called it, because it was the one he had used every
of old newspaper in the gutter. I looked into the window of the shop that had
morning and every night to eat the mealie-meal porridge made for him by
illuminated the face of my mother a few moments earlier. The display was
mother each day twice a day. And heaven help anyone else who used it.
unfinished. A fluorescent tube flickered above two mannequins - a boy and a
I wiped the sticky jam from my hair.
girl- in school wear. Grey shorts, grey skirt, grey socks, black shoes and white
'Sorry, pa.'
 RECOGNITION
LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON

I put another spoon of ProNutro into my mouth. But the dry paste would behind fast boats, and Albert Falls Dam had fishermen and yachts, and
not go down. I thought of the naked mannequin again. Was that really what Petie's Lake ... I'd never heard of Petie's Lake.
girls looked like? A doll, basically. Like one of my sister's dolls that now My little brother got all excited and tried to say something, but my sister
accumulated dust on the lilac pelmet in her room. But how did they urinate kicked him under the table.
then?
Father stood up slowly. We all looked down. We did not want to see his
'Hurry up! We haven't got all day.' Father again. 'Just because it's Saturday Dead Eye. We did not want to see what the Dead Eye did to mother. How
doesn't mean you can sit around doing nothing. I want to cut the grass today. the light in her green eyes collapsed and went cold. Like his.
So you've all got your chores to do.'
'Sweetness!' he called.
Father's weekend duty was cutting the grass. We had an old reel-type Sweetness hurried in from the back stoep. She had an apron over her
push lawnmower. ('Petrol costs money, you know, but muscle power is free,' short pink skirt and a pink doek on her head. I did not lift my head, but stared
father used to say.) Mother's job was to come after him and rake the grass instead at the bottom half of her body.
into piles. My sister then put the piles into cocoa sacks which father had got 'J a, baas.;»
from the Nestle factory where he worked. My little brother helped her, when 'Clear my plate. I'm finished.'
he wasn't playing in the piles, or crying because he had been clipped across Sweetness had been ironing our clothes for the week ahead: a pair of grey
the head for playing in the piles. Because I could not stand for a long time, shorts and a white shirt for me, and a grey skirt and white shirt for my sister.
my job was to sit on my bottom and trim the edge of the lawn with a pair of Plus a pair of brown, and a pair of blue, safari suits for my father, which he
rusted clippers.
wore throughout the week on alternative days, beginning with the brown
This was what every Saturday morning looked like in summer in our pair on Monday.
house.
Father's life was held together by routine. The routine of cold toast. The
And then, in the afternoon, father would sit in his Lazy-Boy chair in the routine of short safari suits in blue and brown. Of black Rooibos tea with
lounge and listen to Gerhard Viviers commentate rugby on the Afrikaans one and a half sugars. Of Spys en Drank en Lof en Dank. Of buckling up and
service of the SABC.
sitting still and not slamming the doors of the Ford Cortina. Of the push
'Can't we do something different today?' mother said, looking around lawnmower that got stuck over and over again on a clump of grass or jammed
the table, her eyes bright with adventure. 'What about going for a drive by a stone or clod of sand and had to be pulled back and cleaned and pushed
somewhere? It's such a lovely day. We can go to Midmar Dam or Petie's again. And jammed again.
Lake or Albert Falls. What do you think, kids?' On a hot Saturday morning.
It was a mistake on mother's part to draw us children into an argument Stuffy with the smell of mown grass. The damp smell of the earth where I
between her and father. And it was an even worse mistake to think that the sat on my bottom and trimmed the lawn edges with the rusted clippers that
sacred weekend routine could be altered.
gave me blisters on the insides of my soft hands. Thinking. Clip-dip. Of the
We didn't dare say anything. Though we were all dying to do something fizzy green potion that would make me invisible. Clip-dip. Thinking of the
different, too. And Midmar Dam had girls in costumes who water-skied naked mannequin. Was that really what girls looked like underneath? Clip-
 RECOGNITION LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON

clip. The coconut smell of mother's suntan lotion that she put on before she 'I'll show you.'
raked the grass. Up and down. The tiny blades of grass that left no tear, no 'No. Tell me first,' she insisted.
mark whatsoever. Only smooth, only constant skin, all over. 'No. I'll show you.'
Clip-clip. 'No. Tell me first.'
And right then I made a decision. I would just ask my sister to lift up her 'I can't.'
long skirt and pull down her underpants and show me. Yes. Simple as that. 'Why?'
That is what I would do. To find out. 'I can't.'
Ifl could find the right way to approach the subject I knew she would not 'Tell me why.'
be able to refuse me. 'It's a secret.'
So afterwards, when the cocoa sacks of grass were neatly stacked at the 'I know your kind of secrets,' she said. 'And I don't like them. They just end
back of the garage, to be taken to the municipal dump in the boot of father's up with someone getting hurt.'
car the next weekend, lying on sheets of newspaper so that they did not make I didn't know what she was talking about.
a mess, when mother was lying down with a damp cloth across her forehead 'No. This is different. You have to come with me.'
(for her headaches, which were becoming more frequent and more intense) 'Why?'
and father had showered and changed and was listening to Gerhard Viviers 'Because Mommy said so.' I had her now. Oh, yes. 'Because Mommy said
on the radio, I decided to lure my sister to the bottom of the garden. you must look after me.'
And ask her to show me. But when she saw where we were going, where I was taking her, past
Simple as that. the fig tree and the plum tree and the tap that dripped perpetually, past the
The bottom of the garden was where father kept the old wooden poles wash-line (deliberately out of sight) with its hanging vests and petticoats and
and metal rods and bricks and sheets of corrugated iron that he was saving underwear, past Oupa's vegetable garden that was overgrown with tall weeds,
for one-day-you-never-know-when. I was terrified of this part of the garden. then my sister stopped and refused to go any further.
There were spiders and lizards that skittered over everything. There were 'No! Daddy said we not allowed to go there.'
invisible webs. And large beetles. And big birds with hooked beaks and black 'Come on.'
wings. Birds that called your name. Over and over. 'No!'
'I want to show you something,' I said. 'Come with me.' And that was that. She stomped off.
'Where are we going?' she asked. I sat down on the grass. It was long and it pricked my bare legs. Father

'Just come with me, I'll show you.' did not like to mow here at the back of the garden. It was where Oupa had
'Tell me first.' held sway, amongst his tall mealies and his potatoes and green beans. Where
I didn't want to tell her. Father had said we were not allowed to go to the there were invisible webs.
bottom of the garden, where the corrugated iron could cut us and the metal I lay back in the grass. The sky was a blue sheet that hung still. A pale

rods could pierce our soft white skin. blue sheet put out to dry by Sweetness because I had wet my bed again. I
 LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON
RECOGNITION

I stared only at the bottom part of her body. I could smell Palmolive soap
remembered lying like this years before. After one of my operations. When
all over. I was the kleinbaas. There was no way she could refuse me and still
mother had spread an old blue blanket at the back for me, so that I could
get out of my stuffy room and get some sunlight on my skin. She took my keep her job.
'Ukhamba lufuza imbiza,' was all that she said afterwards.
shirt off. The clouds moved slowly that day. Father was at work. I could hear
But of course I did not have the faintest idea what she was saying.
trains shunting in the distance. There was the heavy smell of chocolate in the
air from the factory some blocks away where father worked. Mother left me
alone. She went inside to talk on the old Bakelite telephone to one of her ©Kobus Moolman 2014

friends . Or to make a cup of tea for Mr Fletcher, who made the build-ups
on my shoe and came around often when father was at work. The sky moved
slowly above me. Sweetness came out with a basket of washing to hang on the
line. It was my pyjamas and my blue sheet.
'Hello, kleinbaas,' she said.
Sweetness had come as a young girl with Ou pa when he had arrived from
the farm after his wife died. She always used the Afrikaans term kleinbaas
when talking to me because I was the second eldest male in the family. This
made me feel important, because it confirmed that I was the inheritor of
something. Even though I wore special boots.
And now there she was again. Coming down the path, past the fig tree
and the plum tree, past the tap that dripped perpetually. Carrying her basket
of washing: the vests and petticoats and the underwear, underpants for the
boys and underpants for the girls, to hang them up out of sight to dry.
The sky held its breath.
The sky waited to see what would happen next. When I asked her.
'Sweetness,' I said, 'you know I am the kleinbaas?'
'Ja, kleinbaas,' she said.
'You know you must always do what I tell you?'
'J a. ,
I did not look at her face. She had been sawn completely in half. With
one quick slash of a very sharp blade. A blade that had left no mark. No
jagged edges to the skin where the teeth had caught and pulled against her
flesh.