A Kind of Cousin

By Suenel Bruwer-Holloway

A Kind of Cousin is a daring collection of short stories by Suenel Bruwer-Holloway that whisks readers on a journey through the raw and unapologetic facets of human experience. Like a fresh breeze, blowing irreverently through old taboos, sweeping away the cobwebs of political correctness, Holloway shatters the confines of political correctness, delving into the resilient and complex spirit that pulses through her homeland, a place of beauty, sorrow, and resilience.

From the wily old woman in ‘The Statistic’, cleverly hoarding her exit from this world, to the candid wisdom of a child in the titular ‘A Kind of Cousin’, and the unflinching gaze cast upon society’s underbelly in ‘The Healer’, these stories are as provocative as they are enlightening. ‘The Right Therapist’ delivers a satirical jab at the mental health profession, while ‘Horseflesh’ pays homage to the enduring spirit of an old donkey, a symbol of unyielding courage in the face of adversity.

Strap in and prepare to be swept off your feet as Bruwer-Holloway tackles subjects often muffled by societal discomfort—farm murders, religious zealotry, the deep-rooted connections of the Afrikaner people to their land, and the poignant realities of aging and death. A Kind of Cousin promises a literary escapade that’s as thought-provoking as it is entertaining.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Apr 26, 2024
• ISBN: 9798889108696

Suenel Bruwer-Holloway

Suenel Bruwer-Holloway has published dramas for youth and audition pieces for theatre schools; some plays were performed at national arts festivals and abroad. Her poems have won awards and appear in several anthologies. Her children’s verses were put to music for the National Parks Braille Trail. She is involved in the annual poetry festival in McGregor. She works as a textbook writer and academic editor. Her wonderful children and grandchildren keep her on her toes. Suenel lives in a small village in the Cape Winelands of South Africa.

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About the Author

Suenel Bruwer-Holloway has published dramas for youth and audition pieces for theatre schools; some plays were performed at national arts festivals and abroad. Her poems have won awards and appear in several anthologies.

Her children’s verses were put to music for the National Parks Braille Trail. She is involved in the annual poetry festival in McGregor. She works as a textbook writer and academic editor.

Her wonderful children and grandchildren keep her on her toes. Suenel lives in a small village in the Cape Winelands of South Africa.

Dedication

To Muriel Rukeyzer, who wrote that the universe is made up of stories, not atoms.

Copyright Information ©

Suenel Bruwer-Holloway 2024

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Ordering Information

Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

Bruwer-Holloway, Suenel

A Kind of Cousin

ISBN 9798889108689 (Paperback)

ISBN 9798889108696 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023922193

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published 2024

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street, 33rd Floor, Suite 3302

New York, NY 10005

USA

[e-mail]

[phone]

Acknowledgment

My eternal gratitude goes to my readers and friends who know stories heal and that every word I write is true: I make it all up myself.

1. The Linguister

I was quite big before I realized that the Afrikaans word for bilingual, tweetalig, did not refer to some sort of interrogatory light. Twee means two, lig means light and taal means language.

I blithely assumed that it meant one shines the light of two languages into whatever subject matter was under scrutiny, or into the psyche of the audience. Dinky light, that. I knew I wasn’t quite the same person in English and in Afrikaans.

Afrikaans is a far more emphatic vehicle of expression. Afrikaans people were honest and down to earth, but one shouldn’t question the authority of the government and the church when you tell them something.

English people were Philistines when it came to the Arts, and one had to make allowances when music, paintings and theater were discussed, but they are soppy about animals. Also, one had to talk around a thing for them; one couldn’t just come out with it.

So, I learned to formulate everything twice. But one couldn’t do that without integrating the different world views. My life experiences were limited, of course, as most children’s are, so I had to imagine much of the lives of other people in order to be able to share a thought.

I made pictures in my head, a gift TV-raised children seem to want. Later on, as an adolescent, when we tossed ideas around like balls, I found that I simply had to do it twice, and that the dual medium meant I could accommodate more aspects of other people’s reasoning, and balance my balls like a juggler, keeping several in motion with equal integrity.

When I was about five, I started piano lessons. The sheet music with the black or hollow notes looked exactly like birds on a fence. And the notes also would not sit still. When my fat fingers tried to find the ivory and the black rectangles that were represented by these birds on the line, and I’d glance down to calculate the relationship to middle C (there was a little brass keyhole underneath it), the birds seemed to bunch and flutter.

The adult me cannot but see the birds on the fencing around the wheat fields as sheet music. There is always a peregrine on a fence post, a bass clef, and a rest that soars above, not landing at all.

Somewhere, an absent baton lifts and swarms of birds spread out along the lines; the baton swoops and they take off, stretching a symphony across the sky. I thought all people had this twinning impulse, this dual interpretation of life.

A German family moved into the neighborhood, and a cousin married a German man. I saw that Germans were terribly sentimental about families. And so, the next impulse to interpret the world for people was awakened.

Then, after moving to Cape Town, I acquired Xhosa friends. It took some adjusting, but after I had given up my initial resistance to the morphing nature of that grammar, I came to have fun with the lack of gender specificity, and better still, a whole new world of intra-lingual puns opened up.

Imagine my delight when Xhosa phonology facilitated a tree full of beds. (‘Bird’ and ‘bed’ are pronounced exactly the same way.) Getting into the psyche of ones listener or reader and then distilling the observation in such a way that it is palatable for the imagined recipient, is a kind of job. I think that is what is meant by writing being a calling.

We translate across cultural and semantic barriers. Stereotyping has acquired a very bad press in our time, but it is an essential survival skill. We all know that recognizing your tribe, as well as the cohering attributes of other tribes, were life-and-death codes, so why transgenerational realities must be beaten into submission for the sake of some political correctness that claims we are all the same seems sad to me.

It is the contrasting differences among cultures, creeds, genders and ages that supply flavor and (sorry) color. Only Jewish people, when discussing an ingrown toenail and a cold sore, can string together two sentences like, Two Jews in pain. Let my people go already, and nothing hits home like chutzpah, schmuck and schlep.

In South Africa, we know that a koffie-moffie is far more delicious than a camp male waiter and that a katelknapie and a loslappie perform essential services. Voertsek! And Suga Wena! are more satisfying than ‘You should go away’.

Babbalas is a serious Zulu hangover and sounds exactly like the mush in one’s head in the aftermath of a serious binge. Toyi-toyi is a kind of protest where you sing and dance, and it is almost impossible to imagine Polish or Chinese mineworkers protesting with dance.

A gogo is a most comforting granny, a sangoma has better outfits than a doctor and surely, an indaba has to be less boring than a conference. Only the German psyche can come up with the one-word concepts schadenfreude (pleasure in other’s misfortune) and Vorfreude (the anticipation of pleasure).

The English have promising terms for dull realities like bubble-and-squeak, Yorkshire pudding and toad-in-the-hole, when you could have a more substantial vetkoek and koolbredie.

Yet, the marvelous words ‘defenestration’ and ‘exsanguination’ that conjure dramatic images of death via vampire or window, make up for some of my major childhood disappointments.

Afrikaans spookasem (ghost’s breath) is far more seductive than candy floss, the concept kattebak conjures graphic images that even the most spacious boot could not compete with, while for me, Wouter and Jim are perfect twins, full off fun—wouterklouter and jungle jim!

I could never immigrate to Australia, because ‘Ag Shame!’ If you gave somebody a snotklap down under, they wouldn’t know what had happened to them, and if they give me porridge when I long for pap with my smoor, I will weep.

In the light of (sorry, bad pun) load-shedding disasters, I see ‘eskomplicated’ trending, but how can one appreciate that if you are not allowed to notice the phonological joys of accents, one of the gifts of a multi-lingual society?

It took me a while to work out what adios process was, (it sounded rather nice, some farewell ritual akin to a Mexican wave), and I was disappointed when I realized it was merely an arduous process.

I thought the Weather Focus was quite a catchy heading, only to realize it was the Weather Forecast. Similarly, being on the perry ferry sounds rather jolly, whereas being on the periphery describes a sad state of disenfranchisement.

Our ex-president liked referring to the Rule of Flaw. Let’s face it, we daily see that code operating in his favor. He seldom seemed to have read his speeches beforehand, and as if pushing his glasses up on his nose with his middle finger, a universally rude hand sign, is not embarrassing enough on World News, it sometimes coincided with the turning over of a page.

South African viewers would cringe in anticipation of collective shame. One of the prize expressions was, It is a white, turn the page, spread problem. With stresses like these, I would find it difficult to get through a day without the satisfying exhalation exclamation, Eish! And lately the exasperated mother’s, My fok, Marelize, a multi-applicationary line that we can all identify with, especially as the amateurish footage is patently not a kulkiekie.

My introduction to and lifelong love affair with Shakespeare was initiated by Uys Krige’s Afrikaans version of ‘Twelfth Night’. I adored it and could not believe it could be any better in English. I have taught and watched this play many times, and yebo, it is better in Afrikaans.

I also recall Lorca’s ‘House of Bernarda Alba’ in Afrikaans, and ja no definitely, the Afrikaans resonates better with the Spanish—more libretto than play script. The English remains too amabile whereas the Afrikaans is sufficiently con fuoco and dramatically lacrimoso when required.

I frequently stop my bakkie and knowingly buy some rather vrot fruit at the robot just because a lively exchange with the intrepid traffic dodging vendors is lekker. Mind you, I have bought some bargains there too, from braai wood to black bags, a Strelitzia made from beads, a neon onesie cozzie for my little nephew and lately, there is a Slamsemeisie along my route that sells the most delicious halal boerewors dogs and koeksisters.

Maybe, multi-lingual people are more versatile in interpreting the world too. After all, they have several lexical items for every one concept, so surely they can encompass greater, apparent if not actual, contradiction and apply different or opposing cultural associations to ideas.

In the same way one translates and edits life for the reader. This rewriting impulse gained me a reputation as a liar. People with perceptions that are un-nuanced are on the whole, also terribly ungrateful. They try to correct me, which makes me gatvol and dikbek, conditions that are not at all akin to being fed up and grumpy, although a dictionary would tell you otherwise.

Sha’p, sho’t left, sommer, nogal and nè are terms I simply could not communicate without. In fact, I used one of them just now and no doubt, will do so again now now.

Still, it was strange to me when people started asking me to write things—play reviews for magazines, subject related verse for children, theme programs for drama exams, speeches for twenty-first birthdays, ethnographic research papers, community newsletters and even obituaries.

Lately, I have been writing content for websites. One gets given keywords relating to issues of the day, so it seems that I am not alone in this quest to make meaning with words; at least twice for every subject matter. How else does one give the world a manageable shape?

So, I am a writer, I suppose. I confess I hear my loyal readers (all three of them) roar laduma! Like at a soccer match when somebody scores. In Zulu, it literally means ‘it thunders’. Yes! I am a writer.

Although, my reputation as a liar still outstrips my prestige as a writer.

2. The Statistic

I sit beside the bed. I look at the beloved face, briefly asleep during this ceasefire, but it is a false peace. By now, I have full knowledge of what morphine can and cannot do. One knows in an abstract sort of way that pain is a big leveler.

The thing is, when one is in pain, one usually knows it is going to end. One cannot think clearly because a kind of nausea sets in (that surprised me when I was giving birth) and the best one can do to get through it is to compartmentalize it.

What nobody warned me of was the unthinkable torture of watching the pain of somebody one loves. What no life experience had prepared me for is the humiliation of old age. And here we are; both of us old and one of us utterly dependent. The other one, well, how long can my vestige of autonomy possibly last?

How well do we know our own lives? So many taboos have become null and void in the span of my life; so many dreams and hopes come to naught. Earth-shattering events sweep with a sort of momentum that carries one along, but time’s slow decay merely disheartens; more Life and Times of Michael K than Bonfire of the Vanities.

I don’t really speak any more, or I would contend with complacent statements. I used to, even though I know full well the futility of engaging in discussions. One’s reality is one’s reality and basta. It amazes me when people start a statement with, I would never, and then cite something they find abhorrent.

I envy such certainty, but somehow, I have never gotten away with it. I have tried to duck-and-dive around ‘the difficult question’. In conversation with a friend who had done his homework in terms of therapy (and I do mean the real thing, not some ready-made self-improvement technique), the issue of autobiography came up.

There is the story we tell ourselves, which sometimes coincides with the story we tell others, and the truth. Of course, some things are too painful to look in the eye, and a survival tale evolves around it. We cannot sustain the intensity of too much truth; we would implode.

Yet, this friend advocated the path to truth, to facing one’s demons, and posed the challenge; ask yourself the most difficult question you can think of. If you can find the courage to do that, you can cope with the hard questions life flings at you.

He loved and admired his father. His father, who was an alcoholic, had been a prisoner of war under the Japanese in Indonesia, and like with so many others, the damage hid underground and emerged as distorted affect or substance abuse.

My