Nut out of the cupboard and breaks off six blocks for herself and three for me. Beth is watching TV, so she’s not having any.
“You children, you make me so nervous!”
She shakes her head, and pops the chocolate into my mouth. She gives me a hug.
“I’m so glad I found you. Please don’t get lost ever again,” she says.
This is the best hug I’ve had in my whole life. My mom smells of chocolate and Colgate Apple shampoo. I melt into her softness as the chocolate melts in my mouth. I swirl it around.
After supper, Mom makes us pancakes with great gloppy spoonfuls of caramel from a tin. She says she wants to celebrate that she has three healthy children who are all still alive.
Chapter 5
Gran let Mom and Dad move into this house when they got married, but now it’s just us and Mom because Dad is dead. It has a room for each of us. Beth and I are upstairs, because she likes to look down on stuff, and Mom is downstairs with Gracie.
Sometimes, when people are being very mean to each other where Laetitia lives, she gets to stay here too, only nobody is allowed to know. Gran will have a heart attack if she hears, and other people might make trouble for us, so we have to hush.
Laetitia’s room is the old pantry next to the kitchen. She has a fold-up bed in there, a rail for clothes and a little black Philips radio. She’s used Prestik to stick a big poster of Brenda Fassie on her wall. She’s always singing, Laetitia, and she’s been teaching us “Weekend Special”, which we belt out on our beach bats when Gracie isn’t sleeping.
I love this house, and I know Gran is really proud of it. It’s where she grew up, too. That’s why the floors creak. They’re old and wooden. The house is painted pink, but it really has two colours, because of the stone. The bottom half of the ground floor is all stone, and stones curve around the tops of the arched windows. Upstairs we have a balcony, which is a nice place to sit when you want to be by yourself. Mom sits up there a lot, mending things, or sometimes just doing nothing, and stares at the sea. You can always hear it from our house, like breathing.
I feel safe, tucked between sea and mountain. In winter the mountain pulls its dark blanket over us early, and some nights, the sea turns to a frothy boiler. Once, the whole of the Brass Bell almost got swept away, and at times like that you realise how lucky you are to be just a little way up the hill.
The house has lots of secret places besides the balcony. Upstairs is a linen cupboard with a little round window in it, just like the one in my room. The smell of lavender sits lightly on everything in the cupboard, and Mom knows when I’ve been in there, because I have the smell. It’s a good place for reading. I can’t read properly yet, but I can look at pictures. I squeeze myself into the corner as far as I can, and page through my story books by the light of the little window. There’s Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and her twelve fairies, Cinderella, The Snow Queen, all books Gran bought Mom when she was little. Everybody is thin and beautiful, with high cheekbones and lots of blusher. They live in a world with snow, magic, everlasting love, pine forests, red squirrels, pink and green sparrows, and greenery everywhere.
The front garden goes down in steps. Gran calls it a terrace, and right in front of the house is a really big yucca tree. It’s super tall and ends in spiky, sticking-out leaves. The stem and branches look like they could explode with fatness. If that happened, I think the whole house would be covered in thick green slime, like what pops out when you squash a caterpillar. Beth and I did that the other day. She stomped, and we both watched the juice squirt out and land against a stone. I had a try stomping, too. It’s OK, because caterpillars are bad. They eat all your flowers, and if you’re not careful, they’ll ruin your whole garden.
Because our street is quiet, we’re allowed to play in it. Even from there you can see the sea, and the mountains on the other side of False Bay. Mom says those are the Stellenbosch mountains.
For us, the street’s more interesting than mountains across the water. But our favourite thing is the dip. This is where the street suddenly goes downhill, and where the tar changes to cobblestones. Beth and I both have plastic scooters that rattle over the dip. I should say rattled – after the neighbours complained to Mom about all the screeching and barking that went with the rattling (and the wailing afterwards, that last time), our scooters have been banned from the street. Now we have to use our God-given feet.
Our neighbours – not all of them complained about the rattling – are colourful. That’s Gran’s word. Anyway, what I like best about them is how they love music. The man on our left plays the cello, and sometimes, late at night, I hear the long notes in the dark. But he’s very shy, and I don’t even know his name. The house on the other side is all stone and arches in front. The woman who lives there is called Annabelle le Roux, and jazz is her thing. She plays records all the time. Gran isn’t sure about jazz, she says it’s like smoking and leads to a Beemian Lifestyle, What Next. But I think the jazz is great, and my favourites are “It Don’t Mean a Thing” and “It’s a Pity to Say Goodnight”.
One of Beth’s favourites is sung by a lady, and it’s called “Paper Moon”. We stand in front of Annabelle’s open window, which is too high up for her to see us. When “Paper Moon” comes on, we shake out our arms and legs to get ready. Beth has made up a dance that goes with the words, and we shake our hips at the part where she sings “treboo treboo treboo” and some other nonsense words. We also mime, but it always gets too exciting for Beth, and then we have to run to the back corner of the garden to perform to the nasturtiums, where Beth can sing at full volume.
“Say it’s only a paper moon,” we sing, our arms making the shape of a big round moon, “sailing over a cardboard sea,” and our hands shiver to show the waves. “But it wouldn’t be make-believe if you believed in me.” Here, Beth gets totally carried away and sings at the top of her voice: “Yes it’s only a candle sky, hanging over a Mus-lim tree, but it wouldn’t be make-believe if you believed in me.” My favourite part is the bit about the honky-tonk parade, though I don’t know what that is or what a candle sky or Muslim tree could possibly be.
Annabelle wears too many earrings and long, flowing robes and capes in purples and wine-red, something between Snow White and Little Red Riding Hood, except that she’s too old and fat to be in a fairy tale. There’s always lots of silver clanging jewellery brushing against the velvet. A woman like this can’t be trusted. Gran says she’s probably hiding a crystal ball and other heathen bits and bobs in the back. Even when her records aren’t playing, she’s making music just by walking around. So that’s why I like her, even if Gran has her doubts.
“She has chipped nails,” I once heard Mom say to Gran as she peered over her teacup. Mom’s own nails are always bright red, and she does them almost every day. Not just her fingers, but also her toes. We aren’t allowed to use her nail polish; she says that she’s a grown-up, and for her to go out with naked toes is far too naked, but for children it’s different. A lady must take care of herself, she says. She will sit with the painting for hours. Red is a difficult colour. I know, because I tried it once in secret. It’s impossible to hide when you make a mistake. If Mom paints over the lines, she says “Damn” and wipes the whole nail on a ball of cotton wool.
Me and Beth, we like to watch. We hold our breath and hover over Mom.
“Don’t hover!”
Mom usually doesn’t say much, but when she does it comes out really fast, “Don-tovr.” She’s too busy concentrating to look up, but she knows we’re there. We move just a little bit back, and then stare again. I always start breathing through my mouth, trying
