passing around a box of Romany Creams. We each have one. My mom has three.
“Thanks, Annabelle. Sorry, my blood sugar’s taken a turn for the worse.”
“It’s the shock, man, I told you! Here, have another drink,” she offers.
I think Annabelle is also very shocked, because she pours three more biscuits down her own throat.
Almost everything is gone. All our clothes, toys, books, all our photo albums except for the one that was next to Mom’s bed. My baby pictures are gone. Everything that Mom screamed to us about: Don’t mess that up, don’t break that, don’t get that dirty, we need it to last! All I saved is my handbag, and some things I forgot on the stoep this afternoon.
Tomorrow Gran is coming to fetch us. We’re going to the farm. Mom says we need to make a plan, so we have to stay with Gran for a while. So our schoolwork isn’t interrupted. I’m going to standard one after the holidays, so school is serious for me now.
Chapter 11
Beth and I have to share a room. I don’t like it, because she moves around the toys on my bed. They’re Mom’s old toys, and we’re allowed to play with them because ours all got taken by the fire. I’m a little bit too old for soft toys, I reckon, but Beth spends hours arranging them, first mine, then hers, and she screams when I change them. Mom says I must just leave her, I must remember she’s younger than me. She says Beth used to do this at home too, but not so much.
The farmhouse has a stoep that goes all the way around. Two big white walls curl outwards like open arms on both sides of the old stone steps, which have patches of cement. The stoep floor is dark red. Oxblood, says Gran. That bothers me, so I try to tread lightly. I wouldn’t want them to have to slaughter another ox because of me wearing out the paint job.
Two gables guard the house, and the whole stoep is covered with a roof. I hate this, because it keeps the sun out of the rooms, and I need sunbeams. The house is painted white. The walls are brown sandstone at the bottom, the same as we had in Kalk Bay, and there’s a row of stones round the sash windows, like a frame. But this stone feels colder, and the windows rattle in a wind that blasts them with fine sand.
The best game on the farm is finding lots of new places. I like to go exploring, but not far. I always stay away from the beehives and the blue gum trees, and if I don’t feel like going outside, I sit in the kitchen with Gesiena. She makes us tea with three sugars, which we have with doorstop-slices of white bread spread with butter and syrup. Sally, who’s now joined Pietertjie the sausage dog, begs at the door when she sees this, and then Gesiena chases her away.
I feel at home in Gesiena’s kitchen. She lets me eat little pieces of dough when she bakes jam squares, and she teaches me songs. “Little boy, little boy, where are you going?”, “Vanaand gaan die volkies koring sny” and “The more we are together, the happier we are”.
Our room is down the passage from Uncle André’s room, but Mom is between us and him. Sometimes he screams and moans in the night. It’s because he’s not all right in the head. Mom won’t talk about it, but she said war can do terrible things to men, and it’s a terrible way to lose your innocence. I’ve heard her say to Gran that Uncle André is obsessed with innocent things. It’s not healthy, she says. We see very little of him, because Gesiena takes his food to him in his room. She always goes in and comes straight out. He has his own bathroom, so he doesn’t even have to come into the passage much. Still, sometimes he likes to go wandering, and then somebody will bring him back, so then you might catch a glimpse of him. Gran always worries when he goes off like this. She says, “André, you know you shouldn’t be wandering around.” Once I saw her slap him. And then she always goes to her room moaning or sighing and blowing her nose.
They say Uncle André was a difficult child. There was always something wrong with him. He got all kinds of diseases that the doctors hadn’t even found names for yet, but he made it every time. He was good at athletics, but didn’t get very far because he missed a lot of his races due to a nervous stomach. He’d still be sitting in the loo when he’d hear the starter gun go off. He didn’t want to play rugby because the scrum made him feel sick, and getting tackled made him roll up into a ball, which ruined the game because it caused both teams and the referee to laugh like a pack of hyenas – until one day, when the laughing made Uncle André punch his captain. After that, they let him play tennis, but no more rugby.
Everyone was very proud of him when he got As for all his subjects in matric, even after spending half the year in bed. They said he’d do very well at university, but then the war got him first. He’d just turned eighteen when he went.
* * *
Because we are heathens, Grampa has to read us stories out of the children’s Bible every night. After our bath, Mom tucks us into bed, and then Grampa strolls in with the heavy book under his arm.
“Ai-ja,” he sighs as he slowly sits down on my bed or Beth’s. The springs creak, and the blanket feels warm and friendly, like when a cat or a dog curls up on your bed.
In the beginning there was Adam and Eve, but they wouldn’t listen, and then there was a flood and then some people built a tower. Beth and I both cried when a man called Abraham was going to kill his own little boy, but then an Angel of the Law saved Isaac and thus Provided a Ram, all Entangled by the Horns. Then the ram got it instead, and that really made Beth cry. I just frowned and thought what a damn pity that the ram had horns, otherwise the Law would have never gotten him.
The problem with Grampa’s reading is that the stories are quite long and he always starts missing his pipe, which makes him jump up, shouting, “Finished!” with a big smile, before slamming the book shut. We think it’s only the middle of the story, and this makes us squeal, especially the other day. Grampa did this same trick again, and Beth squeaked, “But we want to know what happens!”
“Another day, my girl!” Grampa said.
“But we want to know if Jesus really dies on the cross!”
He shook his head and smiled. Then he sat down again. When we found out that Jesus did die, Beth wailed, “But he was so nice!”
Grampa patted her on the shoulder.
“Don’t worry, wait till you hear what happens next!”
We’re waiting.
* * *
In her room, Gran has lovely treasures. Beth and I like to sneak in and take a look at the dressing table with its perfume bottles and make-up. There’s pink powder with a nice fat brush, which we use to powder each other’s cheeks. We can understand why Gran is so fond of this stuff that always makes her cheeks look like roses in full bloom. We’ve heard Mom tell Gran she wears more rouge than anyone else in the district, and they all say it’s because she’s eccentric English.
“So be it,” Gran says, and raises an eyebrow. Then she creeps to the nearest mirror, and wipes her cheeks with the backs of her hands.
Sprinklings of pink land on the rosewood, dusting our arms and clothes. Beth and I take turns brushing each other’s hair with an old silver hairbrush while we stare into the mirror with our pink cheeks.
“Hyt, wat maak julle twee daar?” Gesiena asks us from the door. “Die merrem sal mos vir julle twee slat!”
Our two pink monkey faces blink at her blankly.
“The
