brush. “Ooh glory, put back this, Merrem will be cross.”
She checks it and pulls out our long, twisty hairs. Into the dust pan.
When we hear Gesiena’s slow steps tramp down the passage, we get back to our treasures. I stare at myself in the mirror. From the corner of my eye, I see Beth blueing her eyelids out of a small, silver compact.
Like a pond on a windy day, the mirror isn’t quite smooth. It makes Beth’s nose longer, and her chin shorter. I am impressed with my bright new cheeks. Even on this rippled pond they look lovely. They make me different, and I like that.
We find all Gran’s earrings and brooches. Gran says we are two little starlings, and that’s why we can’t take our eyes off shiny things.
“Eyes on, hands off,” she says, clip-clopping into the room in her town shoes. She’s wearing a skirt that ends just below her knees, and a long-sleeved blouse with a bow at the neck, even though it’s a hot December day. I’ve never seen Gran wear short sleeves in any weather. She ignores our clown cheeks.
“Gran, please can we brush your hair with this?” Beth asks.
She holds out the brush, but we both know what the answer will be. Gran doesn’t like us to touch her, especially not her hair, which takes a long time to wave and style.
“What an outrageous request,” she chuckles, straightening her blouse. “I have a better idea. You can choose a brooch and earrings for me to wear.”
This is really exciting, and we want her to wear all three brooches, and the four pairs of earrings we’ve chosen for her. She picks one pair. I’m happy enough, because they’re the ones I chose. And she takes Beth’s flower brooch, sparkling with orange stones.
* * *
There’s a hill I like to go to with my little white treasure bag. It’s a place where I can sit in peace in my own garden. I know that Gran will complain about the green stains on my jeans, but it’s worth it. Green plants with purple flowers stand guard, and when I sit down they hide me almost up to my head. Grey-green ones with yellow flowers attract white butterflies, and soft little vines sprinkled with red and pink flowers wind around the rest.
It’s the same bag I had around my neck the night of the fire. I like to wear it across my chest. Gran made it for me before any of the others were born. That means I was still a baby when I got it, but Gran wanted to try out new patterns, and I already had jackets, a hat and booties. Inside my bag, I keep a small mirror with a bright pink plastic border. The border has a pattern that I love. Mom says it’s scalloped. The mirror has broken in two places, so there’s a short crack and a long one going this way and that right across it. It looks like the palm of my hand. My next treasure is a little yellow compact with a white rose pattern on the front. It has clear stuff in it that looks like Vaseline. It smells like a rose, but most of all like pink Turkish delight. I don’t really know what it’s for, and I’m scared to ask anyone because it’s a mystery. I don’t know how it got in my bag. I’m worried that if I talk about it someone will say, “Hey, that’s mine, I was looking for that!” So I just open it in secret sometimes when I’m alone, and then I have a good sniff. I also have a turquoise stone (from the time Jane went to the Scratch Patch), a lucky-packet diamond ring (that I’m careful not to wear on my ring finger), a Hello Kitty badge, a pencil with gold patterns on it, and a little round disc I asked my mom to cut out of an eraser for me because of the rabbit picture on it. That’s why I like to go to the hill by myself. I can unpack all my stuff, look at it, move it around, and then pack everything up again carefully.
On my way back, I need to climb through a barbed-wire fence. I notice a sparrow stuck on one of the barbs upside down, its thin legs folded tightly into its body, sharp little nails curled inwards; the eyes are squeezed shut. The breeze ruffles its chest feathers. At school we heard about something called the butcher bird. It stores its prey on barbed-wire fences like this. We had to draw a picture of it in our nature-study books, and I drew locusts, flies and spiders pinned on the barbs. I felt pleased that the world was being rid of these pests, but I’d never have thought that sparrows would be getting it too.
* * *
The kitchen is all steam and rush when I get back, and the smell of lamb roasting makes my mouth water. Gesiena’s kitchen is always very noisy, even though she’s so quiet. She lets the clanging plates, clinking silver and whirring egg whisks do the talking for her.
Eggshells lie in the compost box, and in a corner, a lip-smacking Sally laps up leftover krummelpap. This morning’s breakfast dishes wait bone-dry in the drying rack.
Gesiena wipes her forehead with the back of her arm. Her uniform shows dark patches under the arms.
Usually, the first thing I do when I get in here is look in the pots. When Gesiena notices, she says, “Hyt, agie!” and then carries on chopping or stuffing or scrubbing or scraping.
Today’s cauliflower shoots a cloud of steam into my face as I lift the lid. She’s too busy chopping into a pumpkin to notice. I know she’s concentrating hard, because she’s sucking through the gap between her two front teeth. They say her sister lost a finger cutting up vegetables, so I can see Gesiena is being extra careful.
A pot of rice sings on the stove. Gesiena stomps over to it. This is not rude stomping like when Beth and I go to our room for a sulk. Gesiena has a problem with walking because her legs are so stiff. Mom says Gesiena is only a little older than her, but look, the arthritis has got her already, and if it happened to Gesiena it could happen to anyone, so we’d better watch out and not give her grief to make her sick.
Gesiena lifts the lid and adds a little yellow spice powder to the rice. She stirs in two handfuls of raisins. Yellow rice makes me happy, because I know what comes with it. Roast potatoes, pumpkin, gravy, cauliflower with white sauce, and an afternoon of grown-ups sleeping, which means you can do what you like and explore wherever you want to.
On Sundays we always have a nice, fat roast. It’s a reward for sitting still in church for hours and hours, where it’s very boring and scary for children. This is not something we did at home with Mom, but Gran says we must. Only, today we didn’t go. Gran isn’t feeling very well, because Uncle André climbed onto the roof in the middle of the night and scared the living daylights out of everyone. Gran didn’t even finish her eggs in white sauce at breakfast time.
When Gesiena cooks, the food is very good, but when my gran has something to do with it, it’s dry and bony. Gesiena knows all the best recipes. She learnt them in the kitchen where her mother worked, and as soon as she was old enough, she started helping. She’s been cooking her whole life. “From morning till night, Miss Lily, from morning till night,” she sighs when she talks about it, because when she’s finished with the lunch dishes it’s time to bake, or make soup or melkkos for supper.
Pumpkin fritters, carrots with butter and sugar, roly-poly pudding, meatballs wrapped in bacon, waterblommetjiebredie, beef stew with carrots and potatoes – she knows everything. I tell her I love her cooking, and she smiles so that her cheeks move right up under her eyes. They sit there and shine.
“Food tastes that way when you put your heart into it, Miss Lily.”
Gesiena smiles, showing gums the colour of morning glory flowers.
Chapter 12
“Have you ever gotten a really good look at him, huh?” Beth is asking about Uncle André. “As in, in real life?”
The
