Desiree and Gabriel aren’t home from school yet. I miss Desiree even though I come last when we play games together. I’m hanging upside down in the tree when Mr Gordon comes towards me, pushing a pram. He has war wounds and he lives on his own with a black cat named Felix. Aunty Dolly dresses his wounds for nothing.
“After all, he was born within the sound of Bow Bells,” she says.
“Why the hell don’t they all just go back to England, where they belong?” mutters Daddy.
Mr Gordon settles himself below me, resting against the tree. He reaches up and grabs the pram handle and jiggles it to settle the baby. His grandchild gurgles and kicks her little legs in the bright summer sun.
“Come down and sit with me.”
He sings my favourite song.
It’s a long way to Tipperary,
It’s a long way to go …
He pulls himself back up onto his feet and marches on the spot, swinging his arms back and forth.
“Would you like to push the pram?” he asks me.
I climb down quickly and take the handle. The pram bounces easily on big, sprung wheels. Mr Gordon places his huge hands over mine and pushes the pram into the unfinished house Mr Van Eeden is building next door.
“Let’s play housey-housey, Mommies and Daddies.”
There’s blue sky above our heads because there is no roof yet. He squeezes the tops of my hands as he steers the pram down the passage to the kitchen, where the wall is only half built. He parks the pram in the corner and searches for the dummy.
“Are you ready? You’re too small. Here, let me lift you up onto the wall.”
His big hands circle my waist and he lifts me up. Now I’m big like a mommy and I can see Johnny’s house, the washing flapping on the line, and Prince lying in the sun. I can see all the way to Mossienes and the babbie shop and the field where I catch my garden spiders. The baby cries softly and spits out the dummy. I watch as Mr Gordon pushes the dummy back into her mouth and sets the brake on the pram. He comes towards me. His big hands lift my dress and pull down my broeks. He touches my thing.
“Do you like that?”
My tongue won’t work. I know he wants me to say yes. I’m scared and I want to run. I dare not tell him I don’t like it in case it makes his eyes bulge and his veins stand out in his neck like my daddy. Please, Prince, bark! Please, Mrs Richards, come into your yard to check on your washing. Anything … please, save me! My feet are glued to the top of the wall. Mr Gordon cups his free hand under my bum. I stare at the creases in his forehead, wondering what to do. I want to scream, but the sounds won’t come out of my mouth. There are no sounds from Mrs Richards’s house, only ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas’ drifting across the yard and Prince scratching for fleas. Then the baby’s loud cry splits the air. Mr Gordon turns and in that split second I take my chance and pull up my broeks. The ground is a long way down, but I jump and run for my life. I run and I run and I run.
We are off to Froggy Pond near Simon’s Town, to the Cape Times Fresh Air Camp. I’m glad, because sometimes when Mommy isn’t home, Desiree and Gabriel bully me and call me ugly names. They tease me and make me frightened until I cry and scream. The camp is a place for children whose parents can’t afford a holiday. We have to be grateful to all the people who gave money to the Fresh Air fund, so we smile at everyone crowding the platform. It could be any one of them … the ticket conductor with his indelible pencil behind his ear or the barrow man.
“What comes after Simon’s Town?” Desiree asks as Mommy begins to button her cardigan.
“Simon’s Town is the end of the line. Don’t you go sticking your head out of the carriage window – just in case there’s a photographer around. And don’t even hover behind the other children when they are having their picture taken.”
Mommy doesn’t tell us why, but we know. Frank Hall is the man with Mommy on the pier. She doesn’t want Frank Hall or his lah-de-dah mother to see our picture in the newspaper because then they’ll know we’re so poor that we go to the Fresh Air Camp. So there are to be no photographs of us. Desiree finds it hard, because she loves the limelight. She will have to stay in the background for once.
Before I left home I had toothache.
“Clove oil will fix you up,” Edna had said. Now the shape of the tiny blue bottle in my pocket comforts me.
While we wait for the big bus to fetch us from the station, the children sing happy songs, like ‘Cruising Down the River’, but I don’t sing along because I’m worried about the lice they’re going to find. A lady shows us where we’re going to sleep, in long wooden bungalows, and from the tiny windows we can see the sea. And then comes the part I’ve been dreading. I step forward and drop my head. The lady – the same one who hands out the navy-blue boxer shorts, which I think are mine to keep, but which we have to give back at the end of the week – parts my hair and sends me to the queue on the left. The children without lice turn to the right and are allowed to play on the grass. The boxer-shorts lady puts stuff on my head that smells funny and burns my scalp. I wonder how the lice will die. Maybe they will drown. She combs our heads with a fine-toothed comb and then tells us to sit out in the sunshine. She says the same thing my mommy always says.
“If you don’t dry your hair properly before you go to bed, you can end up with a stink nose.”
Yvonne sleeps in the bed next to mine; she laughs and tells me how she pulls the legs off grasshoppers. She lives with her granny, because her mother and father don’t work and she says they drink a lot. I feel sorry for her, but I feel sorrier for the grasshoppers without any legs.
In the morning we sit on benches in the bungalow to eat our porridge, but not before we’ve listened to prayers.
Lord, let us find Thee in the beauty of the mountains, in the tranquil rivers and in the majesty of the crashing waves.
The words are hardly cold on boxer-shorts lady’s lips when the cold porridge slips down our throats. We are always hungry, which is why they treat us for worms. After breakfast we march in a long crocodile to the beach. Yvonne and I have to hold hands and I don’t like those fingers curling around mine, because I can hear grasshopper legs snapping. I don’t tell her how I hold baby chameleons by their tails and dangle them in my mouth. I’ll keep my secrets to myself.
After a week at the camp we are back on the train. I wonder if anyone missed us. Desiree has beautiful glowing skin, brown as a berry, like our daddy’s, but I’m all pink and peeling. Soon I’ll be home and glad to be back with Alice, my friend with the name of a princess, who doesn’t pull the legs off grasshoppers and watch them suffer while she laughs her head off.
Mommy takes me to Doctor West because I won’t eat. I refuse food for days. Every time I don’t want to eat Daddy holds out a banana and tells me to say thank you, but I won’t take it from him. He scolds me and calls me stubborn.
“We’ll have to put her on a tonic,” the doctor tells Mommy.
I get tired of hearing the words ‘open wide’.
“Just look at her,” says Aunty Dolly when she comes to visit. “Despite the supplements, she still has knobs for knees, knobs for elbows, knobs for wrists.” And then she talks to herself almost in a whisper “Poor Colleen. She’s so little and so vulnerable.” And now there are pains in my body that Mommy can’t explain, so Doctor West has to make a house call. I’ve been taken out of the three-quarter bed I share with Desiree. I love lying in my parents’ double bed. I gaze at the diamond pattern on the wardrobes. If you tilt your head to the side it draws you in. It’s like walking down a passage that never ends. I wonder what wardrobes have to do with the war. Mommy scrubs our basin in the bathroom until it shines and she opens a new cake of Lifebuoy soap. A clean blue towel hangs on the hook ready for Doctor West. Bessie has been sick on the floor and Edna picks the sick up and then she scrubs the spot with disinfectant and water mixed together. The smell makes me want to vomit along with the dog. Finally, Mommy is satisfied everything is clean and sweet-smelling for our special visitor. Daddy says if Mommy had a red carpet she would put it out on the steps.
The last time I was sick, I poked my pencil through the hot-water bottle and got into trouble because I flooded the bed. The postman has brought the first of Uncle Arthur’s Bedtime Stories and I’m so happy there’s no one to grab it from me. I’m even allowed to have the play-play bioscope, but I have to handle it with care because it’s on loan from my grandmother. I wouldn’t want to be in my boots if I do anything wrong. There’s a picture of Jesus carrying His cross on His back as He staggers across rough stones on His way to Calvary. Roman soldiers look fierce as they hold their big spears to pierce Jesus’ side. I can see stuff oozing from His side and the thorns on His head are outlined in blood. I feel sorry for Jesus, but I have my own sickness to worry about.
“Come up, Bessie.”
Edna is in the kitchen washing the dishes and Mommy is on the phone to her boss, Mr Rosenberg. I sneak Bessie under the blanket with her head resting on my daddy’s pillow and arrange her black, curly ears just so. Then I remember Bessie has sick ears that smell and I might get into trouble, so I give her a nudge. But she doesn’t care and jumps off the bed anyway and I’m alone again with Jesus and the pictures.
I look forward to evening and the sound of my daddy’s footsteps on the path. He may ask, “How is Colleen today?” And when she comes home from school Desiree will play housey-housey with me – real housey-housey, not like Mr Gordon’s horrible game. We are allowed to cut pictures from the Outspan when Mommy is finished reading it. We collect pictures of Dettol and oats, soap and packets of tea. Desiree sits on the other side of the room with her pictures and mine are spread on the bed. When it’s my turn, I have to say knock, knock. Desiree opens the door and says, in a hoity-toity voice, can I help you? My squeaky voice answers, yes, please, can I borrow a bottle of Dettol? At the end of the game the winner is the neighbour who has been the kindest.
Sometimes, when I’m not sick, Desiree pops into bed and I hover in the kitchen. She calls out shrilly, “Maggie, Maggie!” Then ‘Maggie’ runs into the bedroom and stands humbly beside the bed ready to serve. Bring me a sandwich with golden syrup and peanut butter mixed together. When she’s done gobbling that up she orders a bowl of oats mixed with apricot jam. ‘Maggie, Maggie’ is my favourite made-up game, because when it’s my turn I have the chance to order Desiree around.
When Doctor West arrives, he opens the front door and walks right in. He is the only person allowed to step into our house without knocking, except for André’s mother when André is having a fit.
“Mommy, why is Doctor West allowed to walk right in?”
“Doctors are always in a hurry because they are saving lives.”
I wonder how many lives he’s saved today, and I wonder if he will save mine. Doctor West sits on the edge of the bed and feels my forehead. He pushes my tongue down and I nearly vomit. His fingers are close to my nose and I can smell cigarettes. Pitch-black hairs grow out of his ears and on the backs of his hands. He makes me think of a monkey and I imagine a monkey dressed in a suit, a monkey smoking a cigarette, flying through the jungle and I have to stifle a giggle. Doctor West puts something cold under my tongue and I have to hold still while he puts something else in my ears, something with a tiny light on the end. Then he lifts my pyjama top and puts a cold silver disc on my chest. It’s joined to black tubes, ending in shiny bits that disappear into his hairy ears. He cocks his head to the side as he listens to the beat of my heart and he bends my neck until my head touches my chest and he shines a light in my eyes. He bends my joints, first my arms and then my legs.
“She’s one of those children born with a weak system. Keep her warm in bed for a few days and let her rest. She needs lots of fluids. She also seems to be anaemic, nervous and highly strung. If there’s no improvement after two days, she will have to be hospitalised.” And then he’s gone.
“Mommy, what are fluids?”
“Oros and barley water. It’s to stop you from drying out. I’m off to work. Edna will look after you. Be good and stay in bed.”
I know we don’t have any Oros or barley water in our house, but I’m sure my mommy will take a loan from Rosie and bring some home tonight. But by then it will be too late. First I’ll turn white as my purple blood spurts all over, on the walls, on the floor and on the ceiling. I’ll dry out and Edna will find me folded up, just bones and powder. When she rolls me over I will make a puff-puff sound and what’s left will fall off the bed and she’ll sweep me into the skoppie with a broom and put me in the rubbish bin with the vegetable peelings and the dog vomit. It’ll be pitch dark and there will be horrible smells all around me. She’ll put the lid on and I’ll die from lack of oxygen. I’ll get drawn into the passage that never ends … and that will be me gone. Pains in your body are a mystery. It worries me that I have a weak system. What will go wrong next?
The pains in my body have gone away and I’m lucky I didn’t die. I’m in the lounge with Mommy when there’s a knock on the door. Aunty Katarina is standing on our front stoep with her bright red lipstick and her blonde hair that comes straight out of a bottle. She has three smiling sailors in tow, dressed in tight white uniforms.
“That’s an American twang,” says Mommy.
They step inside, taking off their little upturned hats with the name of their ship on the front. Their teeth are as white as their uniforms as they chew gum.
“Howdy!”
We have only seen American sailors on the bioscope screen and once on the way to Grandma’s house and here they are, large as life, in the lounge of our Doll’s House.
“Jacob, Mavis, this is Chuck and Farrell and this is Maurice. They’re homesick and they’re on shore leave from the US Morrow.”
My daddy shakes hands with the sailors. “How often do you have shore leave?”
“Not very often.”
“Don’t you get bored?”
“Yes!” they say together.
“But the captain does let us down the gangplank,” says Chuck, “to play baseball on the quay.”
“We South Africans are more for rugby,” says Daddy.
“Baseball’s a great American game,” says Chuck. “My name’s Chuck, what’s yours?”
“Gabriel.”
“Gabriel is the name of an angel,” says Chuck as they shake hands.
“I’m named after my grandfather,” says Gabriel, who is eyeing their upturned hats. “I’ve seen a hat like that! It belonged to a sailor who was kotzing his heart out. I should have picked it up.”
Our Doll’s House lounge is too small for so many people.
“Go outside and play and stop giggling.”
We leave, giggling all the way.
“Chuck is such a funny name.”
“Chuck it away!”
“His mother must be mad!”
“Shush, he’s right behind us!”
“You know how to play baseball?” Chuck calls out.
We spin around to face him.
“No,” we say together, “but we would love to.”
“We’ll need a bat.”
“Maybe we can ask Smuts for his knopkierie,” says Gabriel.
“What’s a nubkerry?” Chuck’s accent makes us start giggling all over again.
“It’s the stick Smuts uses for bonking people over their heads.”
“Golly gosh,” says Chuck.
We find Smuts on his back, fast asleep in the sun. Six hands shake him and he gets a fright and reaches for his knopkierie.
“Hau!”
“It’s all right, Smuts. It’s just us …”
Chuck sticks his hand out, chewing his gum nervously. “Howdy, how you doin’?”
Smuts flashes his white teeth and clasps Chuck’s fingers in a funny handshake.
“That’s neat!”
“Please, Smuts, can we borrow your knopkierie?”
“Yes, but bring it back before it gets dark or the tokoloshe will get all of you.”
“What’s a – how d’you say it – tukalashee?”
“It’s an evil spirit. If you look at it you die!” says Gabriel. “The tokoloshe is like Houdini. It can be invisible and you have to put your bed on bricks if you want to be safe when you sleep.”
“Jesus! This fella sure knows how to scare ya, guys.”
Using the Lord’s name in vain sends you on a one-way ticket straight to hell. Chuck is a sailor, but we don’t see him blushing.
“Jesus should knock on Chuck’s heart,” whispers Desiree.
We lead Chuck past the chickens, the mealies and the sunflowers, into the street. He holds Smuts’s knopkierie high above his waist, almost over his shoulder. “Pitch!”
Gabriel stands rooted to the spot.
“Toss the ball, Gabriel. Toss the ball!”
“Chuck the ball, Gabriel!” shouts Desiree.
Gabriel chucks the ball and Chuck misses.
“It’s not so easy with a nubkerry. Try again!” He hits the ball and runs to first base. I’m not sure what I’m meant to do and I scramble after him.
“Let’s switch. You try, Gabriel.”
Chuck pitches. Gabriel hits the ball.
Desiree and I shout together. “Run, Gabriel, run!”
“Now ya getting the hang of it.”
Farrell and Maurice come outside and join in. Soon the road is full of shouting children, us and some others who have come to see the American sailors play in the road. “Pitch! Run! First base, second base, home!”
Mommy sticks her head out the lounge window. “It’s bedlam out here. Come in for your tea.”
The excitement dies down. The other children leave and we run inside. The sailors have spots with my daddy. We have ginger beer and the ladies have tea. I run out with a piece of roly-poly cake for Smuts.
Chuck takes his cigarettes from his pocket and offers them to Daddy and Aunty Katarina. She’s brave now because Grandma isn’t here. Then Chuck does something the cowboys in the bioscope do. He strikes his match on the heel of his shoe. Gabriel’s eyes nearly pop out of his head.
“Please, can I do that too?” And so he does. Gabriel strikes the match. It lights. It’s magic! Chuck puffs and puffs on his cigarette until the end glows red and he blows blue smoke rings up at the ceiling. Then he gives his matches to Gabriel.
“I wish I could give you my hat, but I’m sure to get in trouble with the captain.”
“Can’t I have one of your shoes?”
The grown-ups all laugh. Farrell and Maurice feel sorry for Desiree and me. They fish in their pockets and come up with four sticks of Wrigley’s mint chewing gum, all the way from America. I unwrap the gum carefully, and pop it into my mouth. The stick is long and I have to fold it up with my tongue. The mint tastes cool in my mouth. I chew just like Chuck.
I wish the sailors could stay at our Doll’s House forever, but the sad moment comes. A bit unsteady on their feet, they collect their hats and shake hands with Gabriel. Chuck ruffles his hair.
“Goodbye to the boy with the name of an angel,” he says.
They bend down at the waist and one by one they kiss Desiree on the mouth. My mommy gives me the eye, but I don’t know why. They kiss me goodbye, too, smack-bang, on my mouth. The smell of the brandy lingers in the room and I can taste it on my lips. They’ve no sooner stepped out the door than Mommy is shouting.
“Get to the bathroom quickly and take that awful gum out of your mouths.”
We stick our gum under the marble-topped washstand. But we don’t brush our teeth – it’s still much too early to go to bed. The sun hasn’t even set and we still have to give the knopkierie back to Smuts or the tokoloshe will get us.
Mommy is still cross when she comes into the bathroom behind us.
“What have we done wrong?” Desiree’s the bravest.
“You allowed the sailors to kiss you.”
“But Oupa kisses us when he says goodbye!”
“That’s different. Oupa is allowed to soengroet you. He is family.” Mommy shoves a soapy facecloth in my mouth. “Rub the facecloth round and round. Desiree, do the same – scrub your lips, hard!”
“It’s sore, I can’t do it any more!” I wail.
“Do as I say!”
“Why?”
“Because sailors have germs.”
Germs on cups, germs on mouths, germs in tummies, the whole world is full of germs!
“You must learn to shake hands like men, then you won’t have to wash your mouths out with soap!” Gabriel laughs.
In between scrubbing our mouths and lips, we sing, “Gabriel, Gabriel, sissy angel!” He sticks his tongue out and walks away.
“No good will come of this sailor thing, you’ll see. Chewing gum! It’s common.” Daddy is really cross. “And Katarina must watch out. If there’s any trouble, you won’t see the Americans for dust!”
“Jacob, what do you mean trouble?”
“Well, you never know. Maybe they got intimate.”
“Jacob!”
“Well, I wash my hands of the whole debacle,” Daddy shrugs his shoulders.
Later we climb into bed with sore lips and our gum in our cheeks. We all want to live in America when we’re big.
“Don’t fall asleep with your gum in your mouth,” warns Desiree in a whisper. “If you swallow your gum it can stick in your insides and even Doctor West won’t be able to get it out.”
So I fall asleep with my gum between my fingers and my packet of Wrigley’s mint under my pillow.
“Where’s Gabriel?” asks Mommy. “I need him to go to Chong’s.”
“He’s in the bathroom …” Desiree tells Mommy. “And he’s got Daddy’s Brylcream,” she whispers to me so Mommy can’t hear.
Desiree and I slip off and peep through the window. Gabriel is cutting his hair with Mommy’s sewing scissors. Mommy has strictly forbidden us to use those scissors for any purpose other than cutting material and thread. We can blackmail him for a nigger ball at least.
“He wants to look like Chuck,” says Desiree, “but he’ll never get it right because of his bullet-shaped head.”
Desiree giggles so loudly she has to stuff her dress in her mouth. But it’s too late. Gabriel hears, looks up and sees us peeping through the window. He puts curses on us. We run as fast as we can, falling over one another to get away. When Gabriel is cross, he twists your arm behind your back until your eyes water and you feel the pain for a week. Nazi torture he calls it, and he means it.
When Gabriel has gone to Chong’s we go back into the bathroom and ask Mommy to read what it says on the Brylcream bottle.
Fixes the hair in any desired position.
Packed in South Africa for
County Perfumery Company.
London, England.
“Is England and Britain the same place?” I ask.
“Yes, but why do you ask?”
“Because Uncle Nicholas always says, ‘British is best.’”
Mommy has bleached, wrung, hung and strung the washing on the line to dry. I am lying under the flapping sheets. Mr Wind makes the sheets billow like the sails of a ship. It’s a hot day, but the cold drops of water from the socks fall on my face and there’s no place I’d rather be. I’m out at sea where no one can get me.
“Colleen, where are you? We have to go to Chong’s for French polony for lunch.”
Bessie follows us and then lies down on the grass verge with her pink teats and her big tummy and she won’t budge. We leave her lying there.
Mr Chong slices our polony and then we cross to Mr Abdullah’s babbie shop to buy our soup greens for supper. It’s a quick skip to Berg’s. If you buy Bosco Chocolate Spread you get a free mug. We’ve nagged for weeks and weeks for the glass mug with the orange bear on the front with his head in a jar.
At last Mommy says yes. “But don’t forget – you have to share!”
On the way home, we find Bessie giving birth to a black puppy, a tiny blind creature wrapped up in a tight white bag. Bessie’s pink tongue licks away at the little wet bundle until the puppy is clean and the black wavy hair glistens in the sun. Mommy fetches Gabriel to carry Bessie. He lets me carry the puppy with a piece of white string still hanging from the puppy’s belly button. He finds an old overall of Daddy’s and puts it beside his bed for Bessie to lie on.
“Bessie’s had six puppies,” Mommy tells Daddy, “and they all look like proper spaniels.”
“Thanks to my intervention,” retorts Daddy.
Bessie’s puppies are all grown up and the time has come to sell them so Daddy is teaching Gabriel how to dock the puppies’ tails.
“Come on, Gabriel, turn the handle. Faster!”
Daddy holds his penknife against the grindstone until the blade is sharp enough to cut the puppies’ tails off. Desiree and I take turns to fetch the puppies from Bessie and their tiny mouths make plopping sounds as they leave Bessie’s pink nipple behind. We lay them on the kitchen table under the rise-and-fall light with its shade like a Chinaman’s hat on the long purple flex. Daddy pulls the light down low over the kitchen table while Gabriel holds the puppy still and Daddy says the same thing every time: “Have you got butter fingers?”
Gabriel grips the puppy in his small fist. “I-I’ll hold them t-tighter.”
Mommy is worried about Gabriel, because he’s started to stutter.
Desiree dances round the kitchen table singing. Three blind mice, three blind mice …
“Be quiet, Desiree. I can’t hear myself think.”
Desiree quakes in her boots and falls silent. Daddy counts the bones, one, two, three, then he presses the knife down. We put our fingers in our ears when the puppy squeals.
“Next.”
Now there are five done and one left.
“Come, Gabriel, your turn. How else are you going to learn?”
Gabriel feels for the bones. One, two, three. His fingers are all thumbs. Desiree and I stand in the shadows feeling sorry for him.
“Press down now,” says Daddy.
Gabriel closes his eyes tight and pushes down on the knife.
“You see … That wasn’t so bad now, was it?”
Gabriel’s task is not yet done. He has to put oil on the stump left behind.
“They’ll heal in no time.”
After that day with Bessie’s puppies, Gabriel thinks he’s all grown up. He’s not, but we – me and Desiree – let him think he is.
He sharpens his penknife the way Daddy taught him. Now he even kills moles. He says it’s okay because Oupa says they are vermin and they have to be taken off the face of the earth. Today he is determined to kill another one before the sun goes down. “Come and see! It’s a big one.”
The sharp spikes stick through the mole’s body. It’s a gruesome sight but we’re used to it. The teeth are sharp and ugly, and I don’t want to be anywhere near that mouth. When the skins are tanned and clean I love to stroke the soft fur and lift the pelt to my cheek. Gabriel says when he has enough pelts he will make a skin kaross like the one on Oupa’s bed, the one he made for Ouma when she was his young bride.
Gabriel’s mole skins pegged to the washing line make me think of the dead hairy creature living in my mother’s wardrobe. The mouth is clipped to the tail and the staring glass eyes shine in the dark. Sometimes when Mommy hides from Daddy she climbs into the wardrobe with the dead animal. It’s scary. Aunty Dolly calls it a tippet, but Mommy calls it her fox fur. Aunty Beryl wears one when she comes to visit. Desiree and I can’t understand why anyone would want to carry a dead animal wrapped around their neck all the way from the station.