Daddy isn’t home yet. I lie in bed stiff with fear, waiting for the sound of his hand on the doorknob. I’m trying to sleep with my eyes open, so nothing can happen to me without me knowing. With a bit of luck, we will only have to put up with Afrikaans singers at top volume, not his voice. There’s the familiar sound of the key in the lock, but there’s another voice too. Desiree and I are up in no time, Gabriel trailing behind.
“Make yourself at home,” we hear Daddy say. “Sit down, loosen your tie and have a drink.”
“Is that the debt collector?” I whisper to Gabriel.
“Daddy w-wouldn’t be so s-stupid as to bring the S-scarlet Debt C-collecting man h-h-home from the pub.”
Everyone knows about the bright red van with Scarlet Debt Collecting Agency painted in black on the side. The man knocks at the door without any warning. If you manage to duck on a Friday night he’ll be back to collect his dues any time of the week he pleases.
“Hot feet?” asks Daddy. “Take off your shoes and socks.”
He leads the barefoot stranger into our bathroom and fills the basin. We watch as they sway. The man does a little dance as he tries to lift his leg. He staggers and holds on to the tap, almost pulling the basin off the wall, but the foot washing goes on. They sit on the side of the bath smoking a cigarette and laughing as Daddy dries the strange man’s feet. I watch in wonder and think of Jesus. Daddy finds the nail-clippers in the medicine cupboard. Bits of toenail fly around our bathroom. I’ll never eat coconut cakes ever again without thinking of the man’s toenails. We lie in the dark listening to their laughter, while Daddy plies him with drink. As my eyes droop, I hope he will drop some money when he goes to the lavatory.
In the morning we rush to the lounge. The stranger is asleep on our couch. He’s on his back, snoring open-mouthed, sour-smelling, with big, fat, blue brommer flies buzzing around him, but at least his feet are clean. At the front door I put my suitcase down and run to the lavatory for a last pee. I find a penny overlooked by Desiree.
“He spent a f-free night on our c-couch with special service,” Gabriel frowns. “Even b-barbers like Uncle N-neels don’t wash y-your feet and cut y-your toenails as a b-bonus. He’s a ch-chcheapskate.”
When we get home from school only his smell and his toenail clippings remind us he was ever there.
Daddy allows us to keep bantams. We love the chicks’ fluffy yellow feathers and the smell of the mash, but we can do without their number two. It looks like the little heaps of ground that the hum-dum-dawlies push up.
“Hum-dum-dawlie, come out your hole.”
When you put a stick into the hole and stir it round and round, a big earthworm magically pops his head out.
But then Desiree and I come home from school to find two bantams lying flat on the ground.
“It m-must have just h-h-happened. Their bodies are still w-warm. H-hold their heads up to r-r-resurrect them like in the Bible.”
Desiree holds the soft, yellow bantam against her cheek, holding the delicate neck.
“Please wake up and take a breath. Your mommy will be glad.”
“Wake up, wake up!” I say. “Jesus died for your sins and will give you everlasting life.”
Desiree stands up and sings.
Stand up, stand up for Jesus …
I stand up and sing with her because Desiree always knows best, but the chicks won’t wake up.
“Let’s bury them.”
“Not yet, mine might still come alive.”
Desiree tells the mother hen how sorry she is that she hasn’t been able to revive her children like Jesus did in the Bible. She sticks her tongue out in the direction of the Gospel Hall.
“I’m cross with Mr Anderson and Gabriel! They tell lies!”
I trail behind Desiree.
“Their heads have to point to Mecca, the babbies do that.”
We sing our funeral song for dead animals.
All things bright and beautiful, all creatures big and small,
All things bright and beautiful, the Lord God loves them all.
We jam our crosses into the ground, above their little heads.
Then, happy that we’ve given them a good funeral, we go and play with our paper dolls. Desiree makes beautiful clothes: full skirts with purple flowers and bunches of cherries and ball gowns by the dozen. Once she starts she can’t stop. She gets into trouble at school because all her exercise books have pages torn out the back.
From after school until Daddy comes home, the street belongs to us. We know every pebble in the tarmac.
“Let’s play hopscotch!”
I’ve just jumped into ‘home’ when Mrs De Gouveia calls from over the fence. She’s the Portuguese lady who has just moved into the house next door.
“We’re going out,” she calls. “Maybe you two look after Antoniosh?”
“Please can we look after Antonio?”
“Yes, and if you’re in trouble you can always scream,” laughs Mommy as she pokes her head from behind the door. “You’re both good at that.”
Mommy means the lift. We had once visited her at work, in Namaqua House, just off Green Market Square. We were alone in the old-fashioned lift that looked like a cage when the lights went out. As the lift hurtled down, all we could see was a blur of concrete and faces. We were hysterical, but our lungs still worked. I don’t know who stopped the lift and how they got us out, but it was frightening.
“Haven’t they experienced enough terror in their young lives?” Aunty Dolly said.
“We leave radio on for you,” says Mr De Gouveia. I can’t keep my eyes off his face because perched on the end of his nose is the biggest, blackest mole you’ve ever seen in your life.
Desiree and I have both lost our front teeth and we smile our haasbek smiles.
“And Antoniosh will soon be asleep.”
And then they’re walking down the path, holding hands to the strains of Mr Mantovani, Mommy’s favourite, playing sweet music on the radio. We tiptoe into Antonio’s room. He has his thumb in his mouth, his eyes all heavy and droopy. He is nearly asleep.
We tiptoe back out of the room, and into the De Gouveias’ kitchen.
“I’m hungry,” I tell Desiree, lifting the lid of the bread bin.
“Nothing there,” Desiree scoffs. “Mrs De Gouveia is a stingy Portuguese.”
“Let’s play I Spy.”
“I spy with my little eye, something beginning with K.”
“I know – key!”
“No. Kettle.”
“I spy with my little eye, something beginning with T.”
“Tap.”
“No.”
“I know – tin, the tin on the top shelf!”
“Yes.”
“What’s in the tin?”
“Don’t know … Let’s look.”
We climb on a chair to reach and Desiree pries off the lid. There’s a picture of a girl in traditional Voortrekker costume, framed by proteas. Inside is the top layer of a wedding cake, with a tiny bride and groom and a pair of white icing-sugar doves with gold rings in their beaks.
“If that cake were in our house we would have gobbled it up long ago!”
“Shall we cut a small piece?”
“Thou shalt not covet they neighbour’s things.”
“It’s no good leaving a cake in a tin.”
“It’s Mrs De Gouveia’s own fault – she’s snoep.”
“What about Jesus feeding the people?”
I start singing, loudly.
I will make you fishers of men, fishers of men …
“Shush, you’ll wake Antonio.”
“Just one slice. We’ll share.”
“Mmm! Marzipan icing!”
“Das schmeckt sehr gut,” I giggle, copying Aunty Beryl.
“Would they miss another bit?”
“No, they won’t notice …”
The bride and groom’s island collapses fast. We chisel away at the cake until they have nothing left to stand on. We leave them lying flat on their backs, their blank eyes staring at the lid above them, with only the two white doves for company.
Mrs De Gouveia never asks us to look after Antonio again.
We’re gathered around the kitchen table waiting. Mommy isn’t home from work.
“Maybe Rosie kept Mommy late.”
“Y-you’re not allowed to c-call him R-rosie.”
“Mommy calls him Rosie.”
“Y-yes, but not to his f-face. He’s the b-boss. Y-you have to show him r-respect … especially if y-you want his t-tickey.”
“What a funny name!”
“He’s Jewish, like the p-people in S-Sea Point and the place Aunty Beryl calls Jewsenberg.”
“What does Jewish mean?”
“J-Jews wander all o-over the world. I c-can show y-you a plant called a W-wandering Jew.”
If we hang around the office long enough waiting for Mommy, Mr Rosenberg gives us a tickey to get rid of us. It’s cheap at the price, but he’s stingy. He makes a big show of finding the tickey and his watch chain stretches tight across his tummy before he lets go.
“You are lucky chiltren. Say tank you for de tickey.”
One day I was on my own visiting Mommy’s office. Mr Rosenberg dug deep in his pocket, but all he could find was a sixpence. I tapped it against my teeth to make sure it was real. The paper bag was crammed with sweets when I left the corner café opposite Green Market Square. I forced the last one into my mouth. Feeling sick, I watched the art students making copies of paintings in the museum on the square. My tummy churned as I dodged round the easels and raced up the steps to the balcony to get some fresh air, but I couldn’t hold back my vomit. It slid down the drainpipe and into the street. When I found the courage, I walked down the steps and looked at my vomit lying in the street. We had Irish stew the night before, but I couldn’t see any bits of carrot or potato lying there, just a mess of brightly coloured sweets. It was like a part of me left on the pavement in Cape Town, for the whole world to see.
The streetlight shines brightly, but there’s still no sign of Mommy. Or Daddy. I’m nervous and I’ve bitten my nails to the quick because if Daddy isn’t home that means we could be in for it later.
At last there’s the clickety-click of Mommy’s high heels on the path. She takes off her coat and gloves and flings them on a chair, kicking her shoes aside and rubbing her feet.
“With the Jewish holidays coming up, Rosie kept me late.”
She sits down heavily, pulls the tasselled zipper on her leather bag and removes a wad of notes. It’s a wondrous sight and our eyes grow big. Suddenly, Mommy gives a high-pitched shriek and throws the money in the air. “We’re rich! We’re rich!”
We clap our hands and squeal with delight.
“We’re rich! We’re rich!”
Crisp one-pound and five-pound notes flutter down in slow motion, rocking gently from side to side, landing soft as feathers on every available surface.
“God bless Rosie!”
“G-God b-bless Mr R-Rosenberg.”
We scamper around the kitchen gathering up the money, under the dresser, in the kitchen sink and on the wooden draining board, careful not to miss a pound note or, worse still, a five-pound note.
“Look, Bessie has a pound on her a head!”
Mommy lets us count the money and we lay it in rows, like playing cards, one row for each of us.
The Queen was in the counting house counting all the money … Desiree skips to the last line … Now wasn’t that a dainty dish to set before the King?
“I’m hungry,” complains Gabriel.
We have pig fat and apricot jam on homemade bread. Then Desiree puts the kettle on for coffee. But the best is yet to come. We fill our cheeks with crispy kaaings. Aunty Dolly calls them pork scratchings, but what’s the diff? They still taste good. Even though Christmas is still ages away, Mommy promises us a Christmas to beat all Christmases. We go to bed with visions, not of sugarplum fairies dancing around our heads, but one-pound and five-pound notes, landing soft as feathers on our beat-up kitchen table.
Here come the Malays! We watch the sea of red fezzes from the safety of our garden. The men are carrying a body, shifting the weight of the scary white-shrouded figure from shoulder to shoulder. Two-Coffee-One-Milk is trying to get through with her cart. Daddy is hot on her heels, coming home from work.
“Why do those people have to parade the body for the whole world to see, blocking the streets? Death is a private matter!”
Desiree and I sprawl on our tummies on the lounge carpet, doing our homework. He sits down and pats the seat. Mommy sits beside him.
“Well … spill the beans.”
“I’ve resigned from the Public Works Department.”
“What? Jacob, have you lost your mind?”
“You still have your job to keep us going.”
“What d’you mean?”
“I’m opening my own business.”
Mommy’s dead quiet for a moment, then she says softly, “Be it on your own head!”
“Don’t you start with your sharp tongue!”
“I’m only expressing my opinion.”
We can hear Daddy is excited. “I’ll have cards printed: Jacob Le Seuer’s Electrical Services. No job too big or too small.”
“It takes discipline, Jacob.”
Now we’re sitting up straight and watching their faces, but they don’t even notice.
“I promise I won’t drink on the job.” Mommy just shakes her head.
“What about materials? You think we have a money tree growing in our back yard?”
“There you go again with your sarcasm. I’ve taken a loan from the bank.”
“Are you mad?”
Desiree and I are so excited. To have your own business means to be rich like Mr Chong, like Mr Rosenberg. Maybe I will get my own bicycle after all. Desiree will have ballet lessons and tap shoes and Gabriel can have penknives by the dozen and whatever else his heart desires.
So it is that Daddy buys a ton of pipes and switchboxes, rise-and-fall light-fittings and miles and miles of purple flex, all in the hopes of getting hundreds of jobs. Two months later our lives haven’t changed at all.
“Why are you at home again?”
“Jobs don’t grow on trees, you know …”
“That’s not what you led me to believe. The children tell me you’ve been entertaining again. I don’t suppose it was a tea party either.”
The miles and miles of pipe stand up straight in the corner of the hokkie like soldiers on duty. Every time Daddy drives round a bend we have to dodge the boxes of rise-and-falls, switchboxes and electrical fittings that slide around in the van. The pipes start to rust, the rise-and-falls gather dust and the flex lies in the corner like a coiled-up snake. Our dream of being rich kids fades with every drunken party. For weeks and weeks we eat nothing but soup. We almost scrape the pattern off the bottom of our plates. Pig fat and apricot jam on bread fills the gaps. We survive, but only just. It’s going to take years to pay for the rusty pipes and the rise-and-falls, not to mention the snake of purple flex.
“So much for starting your own business,” says Mommy, her lips pursed, jaw clenched tight.
And, almost like she wants to get back at Daddy for wasting our money, she makes a decision then and there that makes Gabriel and Desiree and me sit up straight, eyes wide.
“Our dinner plates are odd colours and shapes,” says Mommy. And she’ right – our cups and saucers are mismatched and some have cracks. “I’m tired of being poor and making do … It’s time we got some decent china. Tomorrow, in my lunch hour, I’m going to march straight into Fletcher & Cartwrights in Adderley Street and put a dinner service on lay-by.”
“Please can we have pink?”
“We’ll have to wait and see. Oh yes, supper will taste so much better and we won’t be ashamed when Aunty Martha comes to dinner. We might even have to buy a bigger table.”
Aunty Martha is well off. She lives in Green Point. She married a German man, Uncle Gottfried. Mommy says she fell with her bum in the butter, because Uncle Gottfried owns his own hairdressing salon in a big building in Adderley Street. He has a dent in his head, but he never talks about it. It can’t be from the war because he left Germany a long time ago. Aunty Martha says he was innocent, but the South African government sent him to Koffiefontein with all the other German men. So the dent in his head will remain a mystery forever.
But six months seem like forever. We mark the months off on the fly-specked calendar we got from Mr Chong.
“Tell us again, Mommy.”
“It’s a sort of cream colour. It’s stamped Castle on the Lake underneath. It has a pretty wavy edge, trees, and fluffy clouds overhead. The castle is very grand, towering above everything else, and there are red and yellow roses with the odd green leaf. You’ll love it. It’s so romantic.”
“I can’t wait!”
“You just have to be patient.”
Mommy and Aunty Beryl are sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee.
“Jacob says if I give him another son, he’ll never drink again.”
“And you believe him?” Aunty Beryl lifts her eyebrows. “Two pairs of big ears.”
“Make yourselves scarce,” Mommy shoos us off.
Alice is playing at my house. We climb the tree and settle on our favourite branch.
“I have a secret,” Alice whispers.
“Tell me!”
“My mother is going to have another baby,” she blurts out.
Don’t they know thirteen is an unlucky number?
“You want a boy or a girl?”
“Boys fight and kick up a racket.”
“Where is your mommy going to have the baby?”
“At home.”
“My daddy is back with Public Works. If we have a baby, they will pay.”
When Mrs Haroldson’s tummy starts to grow no one bats an eyelid. But when my mommy’s tummy bulges, we all sit up and take notice. Mommy has bought skeins of blue wool and Desiree and I have to wind it into balls. She knits furiously every night and baby patterns lie all about the house. In the morning we stand outside the lavatory door with our legs crossed, listening to Mommy vomiting her heart out.
“I hope Mommy isn’t vomiting the baby up,” says Desiree.
Soon Mommy can’t even bend to pick up a dishcloth and big burps come out of her mouth.
“Don’t s-steal Mommy’s p-prunes. Forget about v-vomiting. Being c-constipated is f-far worse.” Gabriel rubs it in. “Constipation m-means you will have b-bunches of grapes h-hanging out of your b-bum, like Aunty Beryl. Think of the prunes as m-medicine then y-you won’t be tempted to t-touch them.”
We know about shitting bricks, so we treat the prunes with respect. Aunty Beryl had to have an operation on her bum and when she came to visit us she had to sit on a round red rubber ring that smelt of hospital. My bum is sore just at the thought of it.
When I’m lying in bed, I hear Mommy and Daddy talking.
“I can’t believe it … another white rat! Are they mad?”
So much for Alice’s secret.
Mommy is in the garden picking flowers to put in the glass basket vase because Ouma is coming to visit.
“Can we wait for Ouma at the station?”
“Okay, but only after you’ve all had a wash and tidied your hair.”
Gabriel pulls a face.
We see Ouma’s familiar bent figure as she makes her way towards us. She’s wearing her old brown coat and bits of wispy grey hair peep out on either side of her felt hat. Ouma hardly ever gets new clothes. She says there’s nothing wrong with the old ones as long as they’re clean and mended. She puts her parcels down and leans her stick against her skinny hip and then, one at a time, takes our faces in her bony hands and kisses us. In her broken English she asks us how we are, and how we are managing at home and at school. We all say fine, although it’s a lie. Gabriel picks up her parcels and Desiree and I skip along the platform beside our hobbling ouma. It’s not every day that Ouma comes to stay and Mommy warned Daddy that he had better behave himself. That means no brandy and a peaceful weekend for the rest of us.
Ouma pulls out her hatpin and takes off her blue felt hat. She eases herself onto the couch and we crowd round her knees. I can see thick ropey veins through her Lyle stockings. We call them Ouma’s very cross veins and giggle behind our hands. Ouma smells of KWV Eau de Cologne and oranges. She can peel an orange in one go and the peel uncurls like a long orange snake. She sticks a few cloves into the orange peel and hangs it next to the enamel soup ladle on the nail beside the stove. She says it will give our kitchen a spicy smell, just like our own babbie shop. Ouma has brought big Ball jars from her pantry. For Daddy there’s beetroot and piccalilli and for us there’s grape jam and a loaf of proper boer bread. Ouma never wastes and always puts leftovers to good use. She sewed her bag from the leftover material from the day bed on her stoep and it has a flour-sack lining. We know there are sugar mice in there, with black liquorice eyes and long string tails, but she keeps the bag on her lap, clutching the wooden handles to her chest. My mouth waters at the thought of biting into the fat sugary mice. At last she opens the wide mouth of the bag, peers inside and then feels around with her skinny hand.
“A-nee-a, eina. Ouch!” she cries in mock surprise. “The mice have sharp teeth today!”
One by one, she takes the mice from her handbag, doling them out in the same order as last time.
“Three green mice for Gabriel, the boy with the beautiful teeth; three pienkes for the girlie with the pretty dimples; and last, but not least, three chocolate mice for my little darling who looks just like me.”
Ouma has skinny ankles, and knobs for knees and wrists, just like me.
“Slim as a racehorse,” Oupa always says.
Gabriel makes his mouse jump from his open palm and he chases us around the kitchen table while we scream in play-play fright. Ouma looks old and small as she sinks further into the couch. Mommy and Ouma talk about family history, births and deaths, and skinner stories, so we play just outside the door to make sure we don’t miss the latest scandals. Daddy says they’ve both been injected with a gramophone needle.
“I feel sorry for you,” I hear Ouma sigh, balancing her cup of tea on her knobbly knee. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Maybe one day things will be better. Ai!” Then she changes the subject. “I love your children so much, especially Gabriel. Ek het ’n soft spot vir hom.”
It’s an open secret Gabriel is her favourite. She bought him his first school satchel and, when she can, she puts a few shillings into a post-office book in his name. Ouma doesn’t know how Gabriel and Desiree bully me when Mommy isn’t home. I wonder what she would say?
“You look so thin!” says Mommy. “When last did you see a doctor, Ma?”
“Ag, I have my Lennon Dutch Medicines and there’s always Heynes Mathew to fall back on. But how is Catherine-Jean? How’s the little girl?”
Mommy puts her finger to her lips and a look passes between them.
Ouma always does the mending and the darning when she comes to visit. So it’s not long before she and Mommy move to the kitchen. Ouma sits at the kitchen table putting a patch on Gabriel’s school shorts.
“A stitch in time saves nine.”
She approves of turning collars and darning socks. In our family, brassieres get handed down too, but not the broeks. That’s private territory. Ouma slips a sock over the darning mushroom and her hand flies back and forth. Bessie is lying quietly under the kitchen table, snapping at flies. Ouma starts singing church songs softly and then her voice gets louder and louder.
Werk want die nag kom nader …
She says the hymn tells us to work harder because it’s almost night time. She mends all day, but never on a Sunday, because if you push a needle through cloth or make a stitch on the Sabbath, you stick the needle right through the eye of God.
“I can’t wait for the baby,” she says to Mommy. “Another boy would be nice. You’ve got two pretty girls.”
Ouma doesn’t know there’ll be no more drinking if it’s a boy.
But when she’s here things are different. Daddy shaves and is on his best behaviour. Our supper is roast leg of lamb, with little slits to hide cloves and bits of streaky bacon.
Ouma is going to sleep in our room tonight, in Gabriel’s bed. Gabriel wants to know why he can’t sleep on the floor so he doesn’t miss out on the fun, but Daddy says it’s disrespectful for a growing boy to sleep in the same room as his ageing ouma.
“Isn’t Jacob coming to church?”
“He left to check on the job at Plax Chemist.”
“I didn’t bring him up like this!”
Daddy says he’s not changing his tune just because his mother is visiting. After our porridge we pinch our noses and swallow our castor oil. We watch Ouma get dressed. She screws the top off her KWV Eau de Cologne bottle. Her slender fingers remove the small black rubber stopper, and she dabs a little on to her lace hankie, then tucks it up her sleeve. Before she pins the pink brooch at her throat, she holds it up to the light, so we can see the picture of the pretty lady with her hair swept up. She calls the brooch a cameo.
And then we’re off down Third Avenue to the Gospel Hall, reverently clutching the pennies Ouma has given us. As usual, I’m lagging behind.
“Come on, old Skinny Legs!”
“Don’t worry, my child,” says Ouma, “the last ox also ends up in the kraal.”
We join the other voices praising the Lord. Ouma holds our hands tightly between her bony fingers as we pray, her tiny birdlike eyes screwed tightly shut. She has borrowed Mommy’s Bible because her own Bible is written in Hoog Hollands and it’s no use in an English Church. She slips a silver leaf into Mommy’s Bible as a bookmark on the page that says in heaven there will be no tears. After the service, Ouma shakes the minister’s hand. Her face is glowing and she says there is nothing like going to church to make you feel part of God and part of the human race.
Trust and obey, Cashmere Bouquet, for there’s no other way …
But then after lunch Ouma has stomach cramps and palpitations.
“You have any Lennon’s? Bring bietjie behoedmiddel if you have any. Thank you, my child.”
“Here, take the bottle with you and take the teaspoon too,” says Mommy. “We can get the teaspoon back the next time we visit you.”
We walk to the station with Ouma. She puts her bag down on the platform and kisses us one by one. Just before the train leaves, Ouma thrusts three perfect silver leaves at us.
“Goodbye until next time,” she shouts as we run beside the train. “Totsiens tot weersiens.”
She waves her skinny arms back and forth until she’s just a speck. Then she’s gone and we dream of the next visit and icing sugar mice with black liquorice eyes and long string tails.