was so thin that her skin seemed nearly transparent, could eat. Vaselinetjie found it hard to swallow with so many eyes on her and when the matron wasn’t looking she quickly swopped her plate for Killer’s.
“Not great, but I ate,” Killer said with her mouth full, while reaching for Albie’s plate as well. Albie was in a huff and refused to eat. She had slid from her chair and was slumped halfway under the table.
“Why is our matron called Whiskers?” Vaselinetjie whispered to Killer, who was licking salt from the palm of her hand. She had painted the nail of her little finger white with Tipp-Ex.
“Are you blind or something?” Killer said and pretended to be combing a bushy moustache. For the first time Vaselinetjie giggled.
When lunch was over, everyone got up. The occupants of each table had to exit as a group, Killer said. Only the children who had to clear the tables and the stubborn ones like Albie stayed behind. Vaselinetjie was surprised to see that a few others were also refusing to get up from their chairs or come out from under their tables.
At the far side of the dining hall she noticed the small redheaded boy of the first evening. He hung his head and it looked as if he’d been crying again. She tried to catch his eye, but he didn’t look up.
The smaller children got up first because they came in to eat before the bigger ones. Some were so young that the older ones had to feed them. “Sometimes I help over there at the nursery, but it smells of pee,” Killer said and made a face. Vaselinetjie laughed again.
She forgot that she was supposed to sit up straight, and turned in her chair when the toddlers came past. A small coloured girl with lollipop legs and a very large bow on top of her head was holding a fat little black boy by the hand. His bandy legs were sturdy and his knees were wrinkled. When the little girl let go of his hand to wipe the ribbon out of her eyes, his arms reached out to the nearest person. “Up?” he said, waddling towards Vaselinetjie.
Her fear of being scolded forgotten, she got up immediately to pick him up. “Hello, big boy!”
“Put that klong down!” Auntie S’laki ordered. She was leaning against the doorframe, supervising the clearing of the tables.
“Ow!” Hastily Vaselinetjie put the little boy down, but he refused to let go of her pigtail and she had to prise the small fingers loose one by one.
1
The days became weeks, then months. Vaselinetjie couldn’t get used to the strange life at the children’s home with its wailing sirens, squabbling children and sullen matrons. She kept to herself as far as possible and spoke only when absolutely necessary. The September school holidays brought a measure of relief when some of the children left. She spent most of the time on her bed, reading her library books. She was glad when school resumed. At least the final term was a short one and there was the prospect of a nice long holiday just around the corner.
Oh, she was counting the days! Just wait till she told her ouma and oupa what it was like at this place! The swearing and the cursing, the second-hand school uniform and the cheeky, disrespectful children. She felt certain her oupa would remove her immediately and put her back in her old school.
When she lay on her back in her secret place – inside the swimming pool, which had been empty for years, and where no one would ever think of looking for her – the same pictures kept running through her mind. She’d be sitting in her own room, reading the back pages of You. It would be night-time and she’d open the window wide to listen to the cries of the nightjars. It would be Sunday and she’d go to church with her ouma and oupa and sit in the pew between the two of them and breathe in the smell of Stasoft. Ouma Kitta always poured in an extra measure when she rinsed Vaselinetjie’s clothes.
And then there would be the food. Lots of food. Everything she had been longing for. Golden, freshly baked rusks so big that they made your coffee mug overflow. Curried vetkoek and afval with large chunks of potato and a huge helping of soetpatat. Not to mention Jan Ellis pudding and Ouma Kitta’s home-made bread with thick slices of goat’s milk cheese and fig jam!
Her tummy growled when she thought of the food. Here at the home she never felt really full. The food simply stuck in her throat. Either because she was convinced that the other children were staring at her, or because she was too homesick to eat. And when she did manage to eat, the helpings were so small that she was still hungry when she got up from the table.
At night she sometimes dreamed of food, and in the morning Killer would tell her that she’d made weird chewing noises in her sleep. At school she saw the children from the home ask the town children for food, or stealing or simply taking their food.
Once she discovered someone’s sandwich on the hand basin in the toilets. Only one bite had been taken from it and she wanted it so badly that she waited until the last girl had come out of the cubicles before hiding it under her jersey. But in the end she was too ashamed to eat something that another person had chucked away. It made her feel like trash herself.
Sometimes she stood behind the tuck shop during break just to breathe in the warm smell of hotdogs and pies. At other times, when her hunger was almost unbearable, she avoided the tuck shop. What if she couldn’t control herself and ended up stealing something too?
Auntie Whiskers’ breath smelled like old cheese. Luckily her eyes were nearly always glued to the TV screen when she spoke to Vaselinetjie.Every matron had a diary in which she wrote down everything for which the head, the other matrons or the children might report her to the ANC.
Pictures of Steve Hofmeyr adorned Whiskers’ diary and all her files. She told the girls she would like to have his babies and made them listen to his CDs. Then Killer would make a face at Vaselinetjie and Albie behind her hand and pretend to get a violent stomach cramp and throw up. It was their private joke.
“Vaselinetjie, have you seen your social worker yet?” Whiskers asked now.
“No, auntie,” she answered, panic setting in.
“She means, yes, matron. Mr Kedibone has called her in. She just doesn’t know he’s her social worker.” Killer poked Vaselinetjie in the ribs.
Vaselinetjie remembered the black man with the scar on his forehead. All through the interview she had done her best to ignore it. The boys said someone had attacked him with an iron bar, and then he had killed the man and buried him in his back yard and built a chicken coop over the grave so that the police dogs would smell nothing but chicken shit.
“Why do I need a social worker?” Vaselinetjie whispered.
“Vaselinetjie, are you really such a fool? Wake up, girlfriend! And get with it!” Killer declared impatiently and stalked off.
After this Vaselinetjie became even more withdrawn. She spent most of the time lying on her bed and at school she sat in a toilet cubicle during breaks with her feet against the door to keep it closed. If Killer thought she was too stupid to be her friend, why would the other children want to be friends with her?
Nazrene and her group kept pestering her. “Hey, girl, don’t you owe me something?” Nazrene called over the wall while balancing on the cistern of the cubicle next door.
“Voertsek!” She was no longer afraid of the Diergaardt girl who refused to leave her alone. Her sorrow was far greater than her fear.
“Are you upset because you’re an orphan?”
“What
