5

There’s a loud banging on the gate the following morning.

‘Mama Ponga, it’s me, Melody. Curfew has been lifted!’ a hoarse female voice calls out.

‘Hallelujah!’ Grandma Ponga shouts and rushes out of the shower. From the bedroom window I watch her hoist a radio onto her shoulder and dance around the compound, a chitenge wrapped around her body and a pink shower cap on her head.

I spend the morning at the tavern, watching Melody boil then deep-fry cows’ feet to sell to the customers. She seasons them with salt and red chilli powder to boost sales. ‘The salt makes the customers thirsty, so they buy more beer to quench their thirst,’ she explains as the trotters crackle and spit hot oil out of the pan. When the hooves turn the colour of honey, Melody scoops them onto a tray lined with newspaper.

For lunch I have rice with gummy hooves, which stick to my teeth, and a big cup of water to cool the fire the pepper lights in my mouth. When Ma arrives to pick me up she finds me halfway through my second helping.

‘Totela, don’t let him turn you into a drunk,’ Grandma Ponga tries to whisper as she walks with us to the car. ‘And pin him down on a concrete financial agreement. He needs to clearly state his intentions for support.’

‘He sends his driver with boxes of food and money.’

‘Wake up!’ Grandma Ponga snaps. ‘Since when did a box of sweets and biscuits and an envelope of small change raise a child? If he decides to stop sending the box today, what happens? You need something legal and binding.’ Then she turns and hugs me before I get into the car.

It’s good to be back in my bed. To put my head down and smell the Sulfur 8 pomade from my hair on my soft pillow. Now that the curfew has been lifted there seems to be a lot of noise around. I can hear the security guard’s radio playing outside and I’m sure Ponga’s Tavern is full. I imagine the regulars dancing and snacking on hooves. I picture Grandma Ponga sitting on a stool behind the counter, rising discreetly every now and then and wandering back to the house to stuff the takings between the green encyclopaedias.

I count the days in my head. It’s been exactly fifty-seven days since Tata last came. Usually when he’s going to come I get a feeling. I haven’t had it for a long time. Maybe now the curfew has been lifted the feeling will come again.

A sound wakes me up. I sit up and try to listen through the sound of the raindrops that are falling outside. It’s coming from Ma’s bedroom.

Scrambling out of bed, I run to her room. She’s perched on the edge of the bed, her hands on her stomach. Vomit has splattered onto the bedside rug and some of it is on floor. ‘I’m okay, go back to bed,’ she says, breathing fast as if she’s been running.

The room is hot and smells like the inside of Grandma Ponga’s tavern. Opening the window I rush to the kitchen before I realise that the mop is outside in the rain. I go to the toilet and pull the toilet roll from its holder.

I unwind a wad of paper from the roll, and try to sponge the warm slime off the floor. The paper soaks up the vomit and disintegrates into wet blobs with green bits – Ma ate spinach for dinner. I pick the slimy bits of tissue off the floor and drop them into the waste basket under the dressing table.

Ma tips onto her side. ‘Pumpkin, go to bed,’ she slurs. ‘Go to bed.’

The toilet roll finishes and I go for another. Two toilet rolls later the floor is dry.

‘You’re a good girl, Pumpkin,’ Ma says. She has no idea of the number of times I’ve taken coins from her bag to buy sweets from the school tuck shop.

In the bathroom I hold the rug under the running tap; the gush of water sweeping the bits of spinach down the drain. The rain has started falling heavily, and it’s drumming on the bathroom window. I hold the mat so that the water doesn’t touch my hands. Someone, I can’t remember who, once told me not to touch water when it’s raining because it increases your chances of being struck by lightning. The same way someone once told me not to wear red when it’s raining because lightning strikes red things. Quickly, I shake the rug and hang it, flat and soggy, over the edge of the tub.

I check on Ma one last time. She’s fallen asleep on her side; her mouth is slightly open and her legs dangle to the floor. I lift her legs onto the bed, and feel a patch of vomit on the bedspread. I can’t remove it because she’s lying on the bed, so I cover the patch with a towel.

I switch off her light and go back to my room. As I jump into bed Tata’s car horn sounds at the gate. My heart makes one hard beat and I swear it stops for a second before it jolts into a wild gallop.

The gate clangs and I hear the security man calling out a greeting. Leaping out of bed I run into the bathroom and grab the can of air freshener sitting on the toilet cistern. I zoom from room to room, spraying spurts into the air. Then I change my mind. I reach for the bug spray on Ma’s bedside table and hit the nozzle. Ma starts to cough and sits up just as I hear the car door slam. I push the cans under the bed and the key turns in the door. Ma cocks her head at the sound. She looks at me and I see a question in her expression, then I see fear register on her face.

‘Pumpkin?’ Tata calls.

I find him peering into my empty room. He turns round to me. Tata has a birthmark on his right earlobe; it makes him look as if he’s wearing an earring.

‘What’s happening?’ He walks towards me. I’m standing in the doorway of Ma’s bedroom.

‘What’s that smell?’ Tata twitches his nose, rubs his natural earring.

‘Tata, I sprayed too much Target, by mistake.’

‘This time of the year the mosquitoes are a problem.’ He shakes his head. ‘What is that smell?’

Tata circles the small square landing, peering into each of the four doors leading off it in turn: the living room, my bedroom, the bathroom and Ma’s bedroom. The plastic mat on the landing floor squelches under his shiny black shoes.

‘Pumpkin, what’s that smell? And why are you not asleep?’ His eyes weigh down on me.

I look at the floor and pray that he can’t see the fear in my eyes.

‘What’s the matter?’

Now I can keep quiet or I can tell Tata the truth. I can tell him that nowadays Ma doesn’t send me to the bottle store to buy her six bottles of beer and one quarter bottle wrapped in a newspaper. Nor does she call me to get her a chilled bottle from the fridge. Now she drinks when she thinks no one is watching. The other day I went to throw the rubbish in the dustbin outside and I found a plastic bag of empty bottles. And I often find full ones in her handbag and amongst her shoes in the bottom of her wardrobe. I can tell him that sometimes, late at night, I hear her open the kitchen and I hear the bottles jingling. And that when her friends visit she serves them beer and drinks Coke with them in the living room. Then, when she goes into the kitchen, she sips from her small bottle hidden in the cupboard above the sink.

But I don’t tell him this, instead I say, ‘I’m okay, Tata. I woke up to spray the house because a mosquito was buzzing around my ears.’ I hope my smile will straighten out the crease on his forehead.

‘Pumpkin, it’s late. Go back to bed,’ Ma says from behind me and does a stupid thing. She tries to sit up.

Then it’s my turn to be stupid. I rush up to her and say, ‘Ma, don’t!’ I say it just a bit too loud.

‘What’s going on?’ Tata asks, stepping into the room and turning on the main light.

Silence. I keep my eyes on the floor and pray Ma stays put. She doesn’t; something possesses her to try and get up. She swings her legs over the side of the bed and pushes herself upright with her arms. Or, at least, she tries to push herself upright, but her feet slide out from under her and the rest of her body follows. She lets out a gasp and throws out her arms so the top part of her body lands on the bed.

‘You’re drunk!’ Tata’s eyes open wide. ‘That smell!’ He lifts the bin from under the dressing table and tips the wet tissues onto the floor. ‘Pumpkin, who cleaned up in here?’ Tata doesn’t give me a chance to reply. He orders me out the room before I can move to help Ma to her feet. ‘Get all your things! Pack them all! I’m taking you with me!’ he says.

I don’t believe him. Then he says it again. ‘Pumpkin, I said pack. I’m taking you away from this drunk.’

I rush to my room. Tata is shouting at Ma. I worry that everyone in Tudu Court can hear him. He calls Ma ‘loose’, ‘finished’, ‘a drunk’. He says she’s not responsible enough to look after me, so he’s taking me away. He says she had better find a job because he is not going to give her any more of his hard-earned money so she can throw it down her throat. He keeps saying ‘my daughter’, ‘my daughter’, in a way I’ve never heard him say it before. It makes me feel warm inside.

‘Where do you think you are taking her?’ Ma sounds like her mouth is full of water. ‘You can’t even take her in your car when she’s standing stranded by the roadside.’

‘You think I can’t take my daughter?’

‘Your daughter? You wanted me to get rid of her so I could finish my degree –’

‘Shut up!’ Tata says, turning away from her and walking towards my room. ‘Watch me. She’s my daughter; I’m taking her to my house.’

The warmth in my stomach turns to ice. Tata sounds serious.

Ma laughs. ‘I dare you!’ she taunts.

Tata storms into my room with Ma’s car keys in his hand. I want to ask him not to take Ma seriously, to remind him that Ma is just drunk, but his eyes are wide open and he’s breathing heavily, so I keep quiet.

‘Let’s go,’ he says, squashing the clothes I’ve heaped onto my bed into my case and shutting it. Fear prevents me telling him the fasteners on the suitcase don’t work. He snaps them down and they snap back up again. He swears loudly, lifts the case under his arm and carries it out to the car. The sleeve of my pink blouse hangs out, swinging behind his back.

I follow him, cradling my doll and Fluffy, my black-and-white stuffed dog. The rain showers on the shoulders of my gown. Tata opens the back door for me, then, once I’m seated, he puts my case in the boot. He slams it hard. Then he walks slowly back into the house and comes out carrying our new TV, which he puts on the front seat. Taking off his jacket he folds it on top of the TV before walking around the other side of the car and climbing in.

Huddled in the back of the car, I feel the ribbed seat hard and cold against my skin as Tata drives out of the compound. Yellow beams from the street lights break intermittently into the blackness inside the car. The car tyres swish on the road.

Tata keeps telling me I’m his daughter. As if I ever need reminding.

Questions whirl in my head. I ask the back of Tata’s head, glistening with shiny drops of rain: When will I see my school friends again? Who will lock the front door? Is it true you didn’t want me? Can I please go back for Cindy’s white shoes – they’re on the bathroom window sill?

‘Tata, where are we going?’ I ask.

He pulls his jacket off the top of the TV and reaches back. ‘Here, cover yourself with this,’ he says.

The shiny lining of his jacket is colder than the car seat, but I wrap it around my shoulders anyway. It smells of cigarettes.

The car wipers squeak rhythmically as they swipe at the raindrops that trickle down the windscreen like tears. Sometimes I imagine that the tears we cry on earth rain down on a world somewhere below us.