when he was being affectionate – “can’t we try again? I promise, no booze,” he told her one night.
“I wish I could believe you, Hendrik,” – she always called him Hendrik, even when she was being loving – “but I can’t. I’ve met a man who’s like me. He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke. He doesn’t like rugby or cricket or fishing. He’s well off and he can look after Anna and me.”
“Sounds more like a moffie than a man,” my dad grumbled.
I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Anna! Hendrik!” my mom rebuked us. “I love him, Hendrik.”
“But what about me? What about Anna?” my father asked.
“Anna is and will always be my responsibility. What we had was over long ago. You know that. If you have any feelings left for me, you’ll allow me my happiness. I don’t want you to come here any more. You only confuse Anna and create expectations that you can’t meet.”
“Don’t you think it’s good for Anna to see that her parents can still be friends?”
“No, I think that the truth is better. We can never be friends.”
He stopped coming in when he dropped me off or picked me up.
“Anna, I know you would like it if Dad and I got married again,” my mom tried to explain. “But it can’t be. A leopard can’t change his spots.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that before you know it he’ll leave us again for another woman. Look at him. He knows I hate it when he wears jeans and that beard, but he still does it.”
“He’s got a doctor’s letter for the beard. It’s his skin.”
“A lie, that’s all it is.”
Uncle Danie did make my mom happy – she laughed more and more. As a bonus I surprised her with an A-plus average. Ten of the school’s best students were photographed for the local paper. Me too. My mother carefully cut out the photo, framed it and hung it in my bedroom.
My mom and Uncle Danie took us to the beach for my tenth birthday. It was a beautiful, cloudless day and the sea was a deep blue. I wore the shocking pink bikini that my mom had laid out for me on my bed the previous day. The gold chain with a heart that had my name engraved on it was around my neck. It was a birthday gift from my mom.
“What do you want for your birthday, Anna?” she’d asked the week before.
In the past I would’ve just shrugged. The excitement of not knowing what your present would be was sometimes more exciting than the gift itself. But this time I knew what I wanted.
“Clothes, please, Mom.”
“Clothes?” she said, surprised. “But you have a cupboard full of dresses.”
“I don’t want to wear dresses any more. I hate dresses! I want a pair of shorts, and jeans and T-shirts.”
“Anna.” My mother put on her here-comes-a-lecture face. “A woman must always look and feel like a woman. Jeans and shorts are fine for the beach, but otherwise they won’t make you feel feminine. A woman must be soft and giving. Pants make a woman look masculine. And we don’t want that. You’re a girl and you must look like one. Anyway, you’ve got a nice pair of pants for the winter, and your tracksuit.”
It wasn’t the same, but I kept quiet. It didn’t help to argue with my mom. You could never win. I got the gold chain. It was very pretty but I would’ve preferred clothes. She bought the bikini as a compromise. “See, this is wonderfully feminine. You’ll see – when you wear it, you’ll feel and look like a real princess.”
Uncle Danie was so sweet that day. He played with me and Danie Jr. He tickled me until it felt as if the laughter had squeezed all the air from my lungs. He didn’t mind if we threw sand at him. We laughed so much. Danie Jr and I ate ice cream and our hands got all sticky. We swam.
When Mom and Uncle Danie crawled under the umbrella to escape the worst of the sun, Danie Jr asked me to climb the highest dune with him. The sand scorched our feet, and with each step we dug our feet deeper in search of the coolness below. We reached the top and, as we hopped from one foot to the other on the hot sand, Danie Jr took off his T-shirt so we could sit on it to stop our bums from burning. We sat down close to each other, our feet buried in the sand. Out of breath, we scanned the beach for our mom and dad.
“You know they’re going to get married, hey?” he said.
“Who says?”
“My dad says. But not now. Later. He says they have to get to know each other really well first. He doesn’t want to make the same mistake he did with my mom.”
“My mom also always says my father was a mistake.”
“I like your mother.”
“I like your father.”
“I like my own mother more.”
“I also like my own father more,” I trumped him.
“If they get married, I’ll call your mother ‘Mom’.”
“Why?”
“Because I like her. Because my father would like it.”
I sat for a while and thought it over. What would my father say if I also called Uncle Danie “Dad”? Perhaps I shouldn’t tell him.
“Then I’ll also call your dad ‘Dad’.”
We looked at each other and burst out laughing.
“Then we won’t have to be ashamed at school any more because our parents are divorced or because we don’t have a brother or a sister,” Danie Jr said.
“Ja.” I’d never been ashamed of that. But that day I felt like agreeing with everything Danie Jr said.
After supper, Uncle Danie surprised us with a video he’d rented. “For the birthday girl because she looked so pretty in her bikini today.”
“Come on now,” my mom shooed us along, “put on your pyjamas and then we can watch.”
I ran – which was strictly against the rules – to get to the bathroom first. Mom didn’t scold me this time.
The television was in my mother’s room. The two adults lay on the bed and Danie Jr and I lay on the floor in front.
“Anna, come and lie here with us,” Uncle Danie said. “We can’t let the birthday girl lie on the floor.”
He moved over so that he could lie in the middle with my mom on the one side and me on the other.
I don’t know how it happened. At first I thought I was dreaming, but it was all too real. When I really became aware of it I realised that he’d slipped his left hand – the hand closest to me – under my panties. He was rubbing me – there, between my legs. I was numb with shock.
