I line up outside the big double doors. Above the door it says Aim High with an arrow pointing at the sky.
“I’m so glad you’re back!” Alice peers at me through her goggles.
Grandma can’t have us any more. Mommy said it’s all too much for her weak heart. So it’s back to the Gospel Hall and back to ‘Hou jou bek, stuk spanspek’ and ‘Screm, screm, blikkie jam’. Worse than that, it’s back to the angry words and threats and all that goes with it.
Spencer wants to cut all his hair off because the children at school call him Carrot Top.
“Your red hair is part of you,” says Aunty Dolly. “You’re half Irish.’”
I know how Spencer feels, because the children at school call me Skinny Legs all the time. His hands and feet are big like his daddy’s, but they look funny on him because he hasn’t grown into them yet.
He and I are sitting at the Finnerans’ kitchen table, clutching doorstops of white bread smeared with Aunty Dolly’s lemon curd. I brag about my ouma’s delicious boer bread.
“I helped to make this bread,” he brags with a full mouth.
He’s lying, I know it. All he did was help turn the handle on the sieve. The sieve has crossed wooden legs and looks like the crib of baby Jesus with fine gauze nailed to the inside. When you turn the handle the wooden paddles go round and round and the fine snow-white flour floats through the gauze, leaving the coarse brown meal behind. At school we are not allowed to tell and we have to eat our white sandwiches on the other side of the playground. My daddy complains and calls white bread spookasem, ghost’s breath. We finish eating our bread and lemon curd.
“Can I watch you do your number two?” Spencer asks me.
Before we start to play Cowboys and Crooks, Spencer reminds me. “Tell me when you want to go.”
Spencer has a toy guitar strung around his neck and when he gallops it jiggles back and forth. He tries to sing like Gene Autrey, his hero, but only strangled sounds come out of his mouth. And when he yodels I block my ears. I fart a rich, round, loud lemon-curd fart.
“Farting is a sign that your number two is coming,” says Spencer.
He walks round to the back of the lavatory and removes the little door the men use to take away the bucket. I sit on the seat warmed by the sun and my broeks dangle around my skinny ankles. While he waits, Spencer plays his comb. It’s covered with the special lavatory paper Aunty Dolly gets from the clinic in Muizenberg. I do my number two to the theme song from The Lone Ranger. He stops playing his mouth organ and calls out to say he can see everything. When I’m finished I wipe my bum on a piece of the slippery clinic paper.
“What does it look like?”
“It’s nice to see it coming out.”
I think he’s daft.
The next day Spencer appears at our gate with his bike.
“Can I come and play? Do you like boys’ ones or girls’ ones?”
“I don’t know.”
“I like girls’ ones. Can I see yours?”
“Only if you let me ride your bike around the house.”
The next day we are all in our room – Gabriel, Desiree, Spencer, Maureen and me – when Alice’s sister, Jennifer, knocks on the door. She has also come to play. The boys are playing submarines and the girls are playing with paper dolls.
“I’m bored,” says Spencer. “Let’s play doctor-doctor! Take your broeks off, Jennifer, and lie on the bed!”
Jennifer’s easy to boss. Spencer looks for something to examine her with.
“I know,” he says, “I’ll make a paper dart.”
We crowd around to get a better look.
“Knyp! Pinch.”
It only stays in for a moment and then it flops out. We’re soon bored and we go back to submarines and paper dolls.
A horse clip-clops past our Doll’s House.
“First luck for the white horse!”
Desiree licks her middle finger and touches the heel of her shoe. I do too, but I’m second again, second luck. Desiree has the edge over old Skinny Legs, but one day I’ll get her back. I’ll claim the luck first. She’d better watch out for me. I’ll be older, sharper and wiser.
It’s early Sunday morning. Daddy and Desiree are passing a sweet backwards and forwards from mouth to mouth. Desiree basks in the moment, enjoying Daddy’s good mood and smiles a slow, dimpled smile. It’s not fair. I’m going to the kitchen to find out where the sweets are coming from.
“Come, Bessie.”
Bessie wags her stump and dashes down the path, pink tongue lolling out of the side of her mouth. We walk past the school, all shuttered, barred and silent. The pine trees sway softly in the morning breeze and there’s a spider web caught in the diamond of the fence.
“Good morning, Mr Bells.”
“Top o’ the mornin’ t’ye.”
Mr Bells doffs his hat and makes me feel important. He stops to look at the spider’s web. “Just look at how the dewdrops cling to the delicate threads!”
“Come on, Bessie, walkies over.”
As I step into the steamy kitchen, Mommy is jiggling the pan, wearing her big white apron. There are onions frying, porridge is bubbling and there’s the smell of scalded milk. “It’s getting late. Come and eat.”
Sundays are serious days, pious days – and castor-oil days. There’s the lazy sound of aeroplanes flying over our yard from Youngsfield air-force base. We feel the drone of the engines in our tummies. They sometimes dip a wing and we fling our arms up and wave.
“Come for your castor oil. Open wide.”
I hate the smell and the spoon is too big for my mouth. My vomit wants to come long before the castor oil has slid down my throat and settled inside, but I have to swallow because it gives me open bowels. Gabriel says if you don’t swallow the stuff, your shit comes out of your bum like bricks.
“Where do y-you think sh-shitting bricks c-comes from? Y-you only have a round h-hole down there. You don’t h-have to be a genius to w-work it out.”
I bet it hurts, but I don’t say anything because I see Mommy give him the evil eye as she unties her apron. It’s time for church, so she pats her hair reflected in the glass of the back door and puts on her lipstick.
Mommy says that even though our Doll’s House is small, we are the envy of lots of people because it is between the church and the school.
In minutes we hear the hymns.
Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus going on before!
Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe;
Forward into battle, see his banners go …
Why would Christians have anything to do with war?
The Gospel Hall is full.
“And now something for the children,” says the minister.
Desiree and I sway slightly to the rhythm as we sing:
Jesus wants us for a sunbeam
to shine for him all day …
We love to sing together, holding the hymnbook between us. Mostly we get on well, me and Desiree, but every now and then something goes wrong, and we fight like cat and dog. Mommy locks us in our room. “Go on, scratch each other’s eyes out. When you’re done you can come out.”
Sitting in church, I burp castor oil. As Mr Anderson drones on about Absolom, I think of the round hole and the shit shaped like bricks. The shit must make a big splash in the bucket. Spencer would like to watch, but he better watch out because he will get pee in his eyes. My mind wanders until the benediction.
“Amen.”
The minister beams at his flock. The grown-ups shake hands and head for home and their lunch. They all look happy in their Sunday best, carrying their Bibles under their arms. We have to stay behind because we are practising for the Sunday School Anniversary. Fourteen children have been chosen to hold hearts for Jesus. Our hearts spell JESUS LOVES ME.
Two of the children are spaces. They have to stand between the words and hold their hands together in prayer with their eyes closed. We all hold our hearts for Jesus, but I hold mine upside down and the children laugh at me and carry on like it’s the biggest sin. Mommy takes a picture of me with my upside-down heart. I start crying and Mrs Uys, the Sunday-school teacher, comforts me. “Don’t cry, Jesus still loves you and He understands.”
We get home with hymns ringing in our heads, feeling holy.
“Don’t forget to take your dress off after lunch. I don’t want you running around and getting it all ruined. It’s your best one.”
I watch Mommy cook the rice with yellow sugar, salt, a knob of butter, a handful of raisins and a teaspoon of borrie. The roasting pork smells delicious. The castor oil has given me open bowels and there’s a big hole in my stomach just waiting to be filled. We’re having tapioca – frogs’ eggs – for pudding, and who could ask for more?
After lunch Mommy and Daddy rest and Lord help us if we make a noise. Desiree is fiddling with her knitting and Gabriel is flying his kite. Later today Daddy will take us to the Sturrock Dry Dock. We are the only ones who haven’t seen it yet.
I’m excited because I have planned a surprise. The flower sellers in Cape Town sell bunny tails dyed bright colours and today when Mommy and Daddy open their eyes they will see the glass basket vase filled with coloured bunny tails. Bessie follows me into the veld. I hold her tight and I can feel her hot breath on my face. The grass is alive with butterflies, lizards and ladybirds and there’s the lazy hum of bees going about their business. The bunny tails are backlit as they sway in the afternoon sun. I can just picture them in orange and green.
I pile the bunny tails on the marble-topped washstand and rummage through the Christmas decorations, the silver slipper with the red bow, pine cones smothered in glitter and the bag of tired cotton wool we use for snow. At the bottom of the box there’s a nest of orange crinkle-paper streamers. I put them in a basin of water and plunge the heads of the bunny tails into the bright orange dye.
It splashes on my precious dress, the dress Grandma made with her own hands, every stitch. She cut each hole in the cloth and sewed around the holes in satin stitch and she won first prize for her efforts. I know I’m in for it, so I fetch Edna’s scrubbing brush from under the sink. That and a splash of bleach should do the trick. Soon I have a hole the size of a shilling in the fine lawn fabric. My bunny tails are drying in the sun and I’m quaking in my boots.
Before I have time to take off my dress, Mommy and Daddy wake up.
“What have you done? How am I meant to face your Grandma again!”
I rush outside, collect my bunny tails and present them with a flourish. Thank heavens they save me from red trails on my bum.
“We’re going to visit the Parkers in Lansdowne.”
As we sail past the Kritz Bioscope, we try to catch a glimpse of the new posters, but Daddy’s driving too fast for us to make out who the film stars are. The Parkers live in a small iron house with the paint peeling from the walls and the front gate hanging on one hinge. We hate going there because they are always drunk. The grass and the tangled weeds are so tall it looks as though no one cares.
Mr Parker is acting funny. His face is red, his chair rocks under him and his fly buttons are all undone. Mrs Parker ignores her two skinny children and they’re both shivering. Mommy finds their jerseys while Mrs Parker drinks with the men. Mr Parker is a bricklayer for the PWD and Daddy says when his head is clear he lays bricks like a demon and the man mixing the dagga can hardly keep up with him. Mommy doesn’t like visiting the Parkers either, but she keeps the peace. Daddy tells her the big problem is you don’t drink enough, and Mommy always answers, imagine if I did. As the evening wears on, Mrs Parker gets floppy legs. Mr Parker laughs a lot and if he isn’t careful his false teeth will fall out.
The bottles stand in rows on the back stoep. Some of them have pretty labels. We’ve seen them before, when the man from Osrin’s bottle store delivers them to our front door.
“There are twenty-four booze bottles and lots of big brown beer bottles!”
“They must have lots of booze bubbling in their veins.” Desiree thinks she’s funny.
“They pee it out when they’re drunk.”
“They pee wherever they want.”
“You lie!”
“Cross my heart and hope to die! I’ve seen Mrs Parker pull her broeks down and pee in the yard.”
Gabriel joins us and he lets out a loud whistle when he sees all the bottles.
“Why do drunk people pee anywhere they want?” I ask him.
“Because they get lost.”
“I told you so!”
“They’ll get a-a-alcohol poisoning. Your arms go l-l-ame and you smell as though you’ve s-swallowed a dead r-at. Then you try and f-fix it with the hairs f-from a dog.”
“Poor Bessie would be bald!”
Later that afternoon the grown-ups pile us kids into the car. The Parkers follow us in their battered old Ford. We haven’t gone far when Mr Parker stops outside the Lansdowne Hotel. We know it well because we have waited here many times before. He comes over to our van. “Let’s have a quick one.”
I’m a bundle of nerves because his false teeth could fall out at any minute and land in the gutter with a clatter. With his fly buttons still undone, he flings his arm around Daddy’s shoulder and together they disappear through the swing doors. The sun slips behind the mountain and it’s getting dark. Our beds are calling, but Mommy can’t go in to get Daddy, because ladies aren’t allowed into the men’s bar. It’s a place where men swear and swill their beer and tell rude jokes.
Mr Parker should have stayed in the bar, because Mrs Parker is waiting for him just outside the swing door. She holds her high-heel shoe above her head and swears under her breath. He comes out of the bar laughing, the light behind him. Mrs Parker rushes at him, screeching and swearing, and her children cling to her skirts and scream with her. Mr Parker tries to duck, but she hits him on the forehead. I wonder if Mr Parker will have to go to the Lansdowne police station with a bandage on his head. People spill out of the bar and crowd around them.
“Get him, lady! Klap him! Moer him!”
“Voetsek! Go make your fokken’ noise elsewhere!”
“Leave the blerrie man alone.”
My daddy tries to break up the fight. “Enough!”
Wide-eyed, we watch the drunken brawl. Mommy tells us to get back in the van and not to look, but we take turns watching through the porthole windows. As we drive away I can see Mrs Parker’s shoe lying in the gutter. She walks like a cripple, one foot up and one foot down, with her children trailing behind her, and I’m very glad I’m not one of them.
“So gemaak en so gelaat staan,” mutters Daddy, as we weave our way home. “They’ll never change, those two.”
“You’ve got room to talk!” mutters Mommy softly.
We never see the Parkers or the shivering children again. Mr and Mrs Parker will probably die from alcohol poisoning, because they don’t have a dog to save them.
Ask your mother for sixpence to see the new giraffe
with spots on his neck and a pimple on his …
ask your mother for sixpence …
I’m on my way to Miriam’s house, but I linger at the gate when a furniture van stops outside our house. The man asks Edna where he must put the desk.
“The house is so small,” laughs Edna. “Master said put it in the lounge.”
The man slides his palm over the smooth shiny top. “Imbuia, solid as a rock. Best you can get.”
On the pavement I’m taking big steps, stretching so my feet don’t touch the cracks.
Step on the crack,
Break your mother’s back.
On the way to Miriam’s house in Second Avenue, I stop to pick the beautiful pink blooms of the hibiscus that hang over the fence of Major Fitzgerald’s garden. But I have to make sure the Major doesn’t see me – if he does, his stick will come down over my back and he will chase me down the street. When I’m safely out of sight, I do the naughty thing: I pull the petals off the hibiscus flower, one by one, and then the dress is gone. Then I remove the broeks and squeeze the hairy thing in the middle and the number two pops out.
I don’t dare tell Miriam what I do, because she is holy. Her mother is also holy and her father is holier than both of them put together. Miriam is pale, tall and thin and she’s always neat as a pin. You can’t miss their house because there’s a big pale blue van parked in the driveway. It says Jesus Saves on the sides and there’s a picture of a big black man breaking the chains on his arms, with broken links flying all over the place. In big red letters it says: Repent. The end is nigh.
Whenever the Lord calls him, Mr Morris will be ready. His tank is filled with petrol and the front wheels face the street so he doesn’t even have to reverse. Miriam calls him The Chosen One. He potters around in his garden, just waiting for direction from above, planting rows and rows of hubbard squash and pumpkins for the starving millions. Always having to be at the ready for a sign from the Lord above puts a big strain on Mrs Morris down here on earth. She presses his suit with a hot iron and a cloth so the bum doesn’t shine and she uses a jar with little holes punched in the lid to sprinkle water on the cloth. It’s a wonder she uses water from the tap and not holy water from the Lord Himself.
“Mr Morris is mad to try to save the savages of Africa,” says Daddy. “Those people can’t even think straight, let alone repent. Why doesn’t he save his petrol and his energy and get a proper job? And stay at home with his wife and children, where he belongs?”
“Leave the man alone,” says Mommy. “To each his own.” When Miriam comes to my house she pulls faces and wrinkles her nose when Daddy smokes his pipe.
“Your body is your temple and smoking is evil. You should tell your father to stop.”
Is she mad? He would knock my block off. If she only knew what goes on in our house, she would never put her foot over the threshold ever again. Smoking a pipe is nothing. I could keep her busy for a week with swear words like shithouse mechanic, and things she’s never heard of. Uncle Nick says the words that fall from my daddy’s lips defy description. Miriam’s blonde hair would stand up straight and her nose would stay wrinkled forever. She would run straight home and bury her face in her mother’s apron and sob. They would have to give her lots of sugar water.
Sometimes Miriam and her mother go with Mr Morris into the Dark Interior. Miriam tells me how her father takes stacks of Bibles with him and how he baptises thousands of heathens in the river. I wish I could go too, but I don’t stand a chance of passing the holy test, especially with my visions of number two popping out of hibiscus flowers. Miriam quotes from the Bible all the time and says, Honour thy father and mother. She doesn’t understand what it’s like when your father hurts your mother and you’re too little to do anything about it.
Mommy screams and we leap out of bed and run. We watch as he brings his fist down and slams it into her temple. As he leans over Mommy, we hit him with the patent leather bags we got for Christmas. Our bags are just a blur of red and white as they flash back and forth, but he doesn’t even turn around. Desiree and I are hysterical. Gabriel is long gone. Daddy badgers Mommy, swearing, pulling at the blankets and Mommy’s nightie, egging her on to get up and fight back, to stand up for herself.
Desiree and I have hatred in our eyes and murder in our little black hearts. We don’t see Gabriel for dust – not until all the fighting is over.
Then, just before Daddy comes home from work, we dig a hole in the back yard, just Desiree and me. I squat down and do a number two. It’s soft and brown and smelly and the steam rises into the twilight sky.
“Watch where you put your feet!”
Desiree squats over my pile. Her face goes red as she tries and tries, but nothing comes out.
“Push! Harder! If it’s only mine, I’ll get into trouble.”
Gabriel is cleaning his fowl hok.
“Please help,” we beg.
“I c-can only g-give you a p-p-pee.”
He arches his back and thrusts his skinny hips forward. The stream of pee makes a silver arc in the fading light. He does up the fly buttons on his khaki shorts and then he pats his fly. “There, don’t ask me to do any m-m-more. I don’t want to be here when he s-steps into that hole.”
We cover the hole with branches and bits of grass.
Later, when we hear the car door slam, we rush out.
“We’ve got a surprise for you.”
Desiree ties the dishcloth around Daddy’s eyes. I glance at his feet. He is wearing his best shoes, the ones with little holes punched in the sides and swirling patterns on the toes. We take his hands, one on either side, and lead him past the mealies and the sunflowers. He smells a rat, but then he smells more than that and does a quick side step. He can’t see the blackness of our hearts, but surely he can see the hatred in our eyes.
“It’s your fault! Your number two smells!”
We don’t have the pleasure of watching him struggle to get the number two off his two-tone shoes and he didn’t break a leg, but he’d better watch out. We will get him next time. Our hearts will stay black forever, for as long as he hurts our mother.
We try not to cry and to be brave. “Leave me alone. Leave me alone.” We’re all going round the bend. Drunken laughter, children shivering, adults dithering. Days come and days go. The sun comes up and the sun goes down. And the screaming, the pleading, the sobbing continue. Can’t anyone wave a magic wand?