“Mine!”
Desiree slams her hand on the picture as her shout rings out over the quiet back yard. We’re sitting on the back steps of our house in Sir George Grey Street. Gabriel is turning the pages of an Outspan magazine.
“Mine!”
“Nine all.”
Gabriel is the eldest and he keeps the peace between us. He slaps his hand on an advertisement that shows a woman in a bust bodice.
“Mine!” he giggles.
My hand comes down in a flash.
“Mine!”
I have my hand on a building jutting out into the sea.
“Where’s this?”
“Let’s ask Mommy,” says Desiree.
We find Mommy wiping the washing line with a cloth.
“Where’s this, Mommy?
“The pier.” Mommy gets a faraway look in her eyes. “It’s called the pier. It was at the bottom of Adderley Street … It had pretty gas lamps that looked like the ones in Paris. You want to see some photographs?”
Mommy wipes her hands on her big white apron and we traipse behind her in single file into the kitchen. “Get my memory box from the top of the wardrobe.”
We settle around the kitchen table.
“Look, here’s a snap of me promenading with my beau!”
“What’s promenading?”
“What’s a beau?”
“On Sundays we dressed in our best and strolled up and down the pier with our boyfriends.”
We peer over her shoulder. Mommy and the man have their arms linked. She has her eyes fixed on his face and she’s smiling. It’s a black-and-white photograph, but we know she has beautiful thick blonde hair and the bluest eyes, the colour of the forget-me-nots growing in our garden.
“What’s his name?”
“Frank Hall. Isn’t he handsome?”
Mommy looks sad, although she is smiling.
“Why didn’t you marry him?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Where did you meet Daddy?” asks Gabriel.
“At a party in Parow.”
“Where was your wedding?”
“We got married in the magistrate’s court in Cape Town. I wore a blue two-piece and a hat.”
“Did you get any presents?”
“Only a few pillow slips,” laughs Mommy. “Even new, they were so thin you could shoot peas through them.”
Desiree is still staring at the photograph. “Didn’t your legs get tired? Walking up and down the pier, I mean.”
“No, you could sit down and listen to beautiful music played on a baby grand piano.”
“Is that like the piano in Aunty Gertruida’s house, the one that’s played by a ghost?”
“No,” Mommy smiles, “Aunty Gertruida’s piano is called a pianola.” And then she says, “I wanted to be a concert pianist.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Circumstances.”
“What does that mean?”
“It doesn’t matter.” She pushes her chair out and stands up. “I have to hang up the washing or it’ll never get dry. Hold the photographs by the edges so you don’t leave finger marks in the middle.”
Mommy looks as though she’s in a bit of a huff.
“What have I done?” I ask, but nobody takes any notice.
Desiree takes over Mommy’s chair. “Look at this one.”
It’s a picture of our mommy with her five sisters. “It looks like they’re promenading.”
They are striding along arm in arm, wearing pretty dresses made by my grandmother.
Mommy comes back from the washing line. “Put the photographs back in the box.”
“Please, Mommy, tell us who comes first.”
“First there’s Ruby. Then Aunty Catherine-Jean, then there’s Mavis. That’s me, May.”
I say the name May. It sounds funny to be saying my mommy’s name.
“Then there’s Rita, Katarina and Bubbles. See, you’ve got four fingers left over.”
“What about Uncle Charles?”
We always forget about Uncle Charles, because he’s the only boy. My grandmother loves to tell the story of his birth. He was so small they couldn’t find him and he had to sleep in a shoebox. Everyone came to see the miracle baby just like baby Jesus in the Bible. His skin was so thin that you could see the veins carrying his blood round and round and throbbing in his head where the hole wouldn’t close. He had to stay bare because there were no clothes to fit him. He had no fingernails or eyelashes. His toenails were still soft like jelly. When Grandma tells the part about the jelly I feel sick. And then, when he was old enough to walk, they noticed he had a funny foot, but they were just glad that it wasn’t his head that was funny.
Mommy is over her huff, and it’s not hard to get her to tell us about the olden days.
Her grandfather had a shop in Leeuwen Street, in the Bo-Kaap, and she could have as many sweets as her tummy could hold. My mommy and her brother and sisters were born above her father’s own shop, the one in Wandel Street. Before she even started school, she had to mind the shop and if a customer came in she had to shout “Shop! Shop!” at the top of her lungs. Then Grandpa would come scurrying back. Mommy talks about the Sea Point Pavilion, hansom cabs and picnics in Bains Kloof. But most of all she talks about the pier at the bottom of Adderley Street.
“You know you were born the year the pier came down?” says Mommy, looking at me. “At the Booth Memorial Hospital, in Upper Orange Street, same as Gabriel.”
“Tell about the skinny legs,” says Gabriel.
“The scale tipped at five pounds. Colleen was born with skinny legs, like knife handles, and weak ankles. That’s why she has to wear boots.”
Gabriel laughs.
“She can’t help it,” Mommy scolds my brother.
“And what about your bullet-shaped head?” Desiree reminds Gabriel.
“He can’t help that either.”
“What about me?” asks Desiree. “Where was I born?”
“It was New Year’s Eve and we were having a big party at our house in Parow. The midwife barely made it.”
“Why was she at the party?”
“She came to bring you into the world. And do you know what she said when you were born? She said your baby girl has danced into the world on the night of so many parties. She’ll be fleet of foot and spread her magic wherever she goes.”
“Tell us more!”
“Desiree was born with beautiful deep dimples. And now Gabriel has beautiful even white teeth and Colleen has the most beautiful curly blonde hair. But never mind about all of that,” she mutters as she packs the last photo back in the box.