by Carol Gibbs
The next day, Mommy said it must be his strong constitution. We hoped he’d never find out about the powder in his dinner, because then Mommy would be in the wars again and she was already thirty shillings down the drain.
But now, back in the church, we sing hymns while we wait to see our mother.
Throw out the lifeline, throw out the lifeline,
Someone is drifting away,
Throw out the lifeline, throw out the lifeline,
Someone is drifting awaaay …
After what seems like a year she appears wearing a full-length cape. I wonder what she’s wearing underneath. Maybe they let her keep her petticoat on. If it’s a half-slip, what does she have on the top? Perhaps only her bust bodice?
The Gospel Hall stage floor has been raised and underneath there’s a big bath. The preacher stands waist deep. He has a long beard and looks holy like the disciples in the Bible. A fat lady makes such a big splash, we are sure there will be no water left for Mommy. When Mommy steps forward I have a moment of panic. What if she drowns? The preacher supports her neck the way Aunty Dolly does when she teaches ladies how to bath their babies at the Muizenberg Clinic. With his other hand he pinches Mommy’s nose closed.
“In the name of the Father” – dunk – “in the name of the Son” – dunk – “in the name of the Holy Spirit” – dunk …
We sit open-mouthed. If Grandma were here, she would say stop catching flies. Mommy splutters as she comes up for breath each time. Thank the Lord she’s still alive!
“Will the congregation please stand and sing hymn number six.”
There are the soft sounds of fingers riffling through pages and chairs scraping on the wooden floor as everyone stands to sing.
Trust and obey, for there’s no other way,
To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.
Desiree and I sing:
Cashmere Bouquet, for there’s no other way,
To be happy in Jesus, but through Cashmere Bouquet.
It was Miriam, my friend who comes from the holiest family in the whole wide world, who dared us to sing Cashmere Bouquet, but she is a holy sissy and she would never do anything wrong at her own mother’s baptism. When the singing stops we move to seats further back, in the middle of the hall. We know a thing or two. The lay preacher is going to preach of hell and damnation and his spit can reach as far as the fourth row.
The church is our place of safety in an up-and-down world. Gabriel becomes Mr Anderson’s right hand. He helps carry extra benches, hands out hymn books and puts out the chairs for Lantern Lecture night. Desiree and I have given our hearts to Jesus and we go to Sunday school regularly. When we sit in the church, there’s the smell of Grandma’s sewing room all around us.
Now that Mommy has been baptised in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, she never misses a prayer meeting at the Gospel Hall where she is always embraced and clutched to the bosoms of fifteen over-excited women. The first time Mommy meets the over-excited women they sit in a tight circle and they all say a prayer out loud. When Mommy’s turn comes around, her mind is blank and her face red. She says, “I pass,” in a small voice. “I pass” becomes our excuse to get out of jobs. But Mommy gets used to praying long prayers because, she says, she has so many troubles to pray about.
We can’t call her halfnaartjie because she’s a grown-up, so we call her Two-Coffee-One-Milk, the way my daddy does. The coloured people and the white people know her well, because she’s a friend in their time of need.
If you need my services, I’m at your service.
– Home Undertaker
Her real name is Cinta and she smells of blue spirits. Aunty Dolly says she sometimes works for the poor for nothing. “Just give me a dop, sweet wine will do.”
When she lays the bodies out she removes their false teeth and folds their arms across their chests. “I always put rouge on the cheeks of the deceased to make them look good and to cheer up the mourners.”
Her hands are smooth from rubbing oil into dead people’s bodies, like in the Bible. She plugs up all the holes with cotton wool to stop the number two and the pee from running out. Desiree and I get the giggles, but Gabriel says it’s disrespectful to laugh at the dead.
Two-Coffee-One-Milk wears black, with a mourning brooch at the throat, a big black cloak, and boots with buttons up the sides. When she passes our Doll’s House in her horse-drawn cart, she’s on serious business. She has her big brown leather Gladstone bag beside her. We don’t wave because you have to show respect. But on her way back, it’s a different story. Cinta holds a flickering candle in a brown paper packet to light the way, her shadow looming big and scary.
“Thank your lucky stars you’re alive. I feel so happy I could dance.”
It’s because she’s done a good job of getting a dead person into a box. Daddy says it’s the dop. We’re brave now and we wave.
“Have you ever seen a dead person, Gabriel?” asks Desiree. “No, but you want to touch one? Here, hold your finger up and put it against mine. Now feel our pressed-together fingers.”
“Ag sis!”
“I bet you don’t know the bodies fart before she puts the cotton wool in! How would you like to be locked in a room with dead people farting?”
“Do dead people’s farts smell different?”
“Sis, man, don’t be revolting.”
But we really don’t know about dead people. All we know is what we learn when we’re over at the Finnerans. Two-Coffee-One-Milk and Aunty Dolly sit at the kitchen table drinking tea out of Aunty Dolly’s best teacups, the ones with the English cottage and the hollyhocks. When Mr Finneran comes home from work, he doesn’t care if Two-Coffee-One-Milk is sitting in his house, even in his favourite chair, drinking cups of tea with Aunty Dolly. Daddy is disgusted when he hears things like this.
“If they lived overseas, he could have married Two-Coffee-One-Milk, no questions asked. She even calls him Connor to his face without blushing. It’s ridiculous!”
Cinta sees us out of the corner of her eye. “Wie’s hulle? Who they?” she whispers to Aunty Dolly.
We hear Aunty Dolly tell her our sad story.
“Sweet kids, but my heart goes out to them. Nervous wrecks, all three of them. You don’t want to know how their father carries on. They’ve been through so much. I wish I could do something.” She shifts in her seat and blows her nose.
Cinta says, “Ag, siestog, now I see who they are. They are the children from across the street. We have lots of the same thing going on in Mossieness. It’s a terrible business. Verskriklik!”
Aunty Dolly says, “What worries me is what is going to happen to them when the anger and frustration get too much for them. Someone is bound to get hurt. Someone has to be the scapegoat.”
“Ooo, God-ta,” Cinta nods.
Aunty Dolly sighs the biggest sigh we’ve ever heard, and carries on with her stories. She tells Cinta how she used to sleep in her uniform when she was a student nurse because she was afraid of being late for duty.
Cinta says isn’t it funny that she, Cinta, has no training at all. Not at Groote Schuur Hospital, or a nursing college, or anywhere else in the world. But, she says, she’s a natural.
“I just love to hear the things people talk about before they die … the mystery of life and death. At first you gril, but you get used to it. When you are alone with the deceased, you feel happy to be alive and the least you can do is take your time and do a proper job. While you’re washing the dead, their whole life flashes before your eyes, from the cradle to the grave.”
“I don’t mind sitting with the sick, but I don’t think I’m cut out for your job.”
“Sometimes it’s a secret you’ve kept close to your heart for years,” winks Cinta. “You know what I mean, like here comes the bride, all fat and wide …” and she laughs. “Then you have to take a decision whether to tell the family or not, before you leave the death room.”
The children from Mossienes say she has s
pecial powers like a witch and she can turn you into smoke or a baboon or anything she wants. They say the smell of death clings to her, so the klonkies outside the babbie shop hold their noses when she goes in to buy her spirits.
“Jou ma se proverbial!” she says crossly, giving them some of their own medicine. “And your grandma’s proverbial too!”
When we ask Mommy what the big word means she says Two-Coffee-One-Milk knows they are too young to understand, but it gives her the satisfaction she needs. We don’t understand that either. Aunty Dolly says she’s trying hard to be a lady and to have some standing in the community, but we’ve heard her use big swear words when some skollie interferes with her. She gives them a piece of her mind.
“Oppas, ek het my Afrikaanse tande in vandag. Ek is vuil met my bek maar my koek is op sy plek!”
Aunty Dolly asks her what it means.
“I told them I have my Afrikaans teeth in!” she laughs. “That means I can swear better! Those skollies, they understand our Mossienes sense of humour! I’m fond of my people, but sometimes they really get on my coloured nerves! I told them I might have a foul mouth, but my nether regions know how to behave.”
And then they laugh and laugh.
My daddy, though, has the last word.
“Ook maar mens,” he says. “She’s only human. She does people a good service, and you can’t spend the rest of your life being scared of someone.”
Sometimes I love my daddy. On Sundays when he takes us for a drive to Blouberg in his van, I’m not scared of him. I’m only scared of him when he gives me a hiding or when he smells of brandy and his eyes bulge and the veins stand out in his neck. Then I’m more scared of him than of Cinta and the dead people who lie with their arms crossed over their chests.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Clean hands, faces and broeks. Colleen, clean your boots. We’re going to visit Grandma in her new house in Cape Town.”
Nobody knows what to expect, but everyone is excited.
“Eighty-two, Queen Victoria Street.”
“Must you always mess white shoe shine on the floor?”
“Please, Desiree, help me do my laces up.”
Eventually, we trudge up Adderley Street.
“There’s the Old Slave House and St George’s Cathedral,” Mommy points to the big fancy church, but we’re more interested in the trams that whizz by, making funny sounds.
“Why can’t we ride on the tram?”
“Because trams cost money.”
“Why can’t we walk through the Gardens?”
“We don’t know which house it is. I’d rather walk along the street. Look at the nurses,” says Mommy.
“Why are their dresses so stiff?” asks Desiree.
“They’ve been starched.”
“They’ve got red capes like Superman,” says Gabriel, when a sailor is caught in the spinning door, holding on to two giggling nurses for dear life.
“Oh, to be so carefree,” mutters Mommy to herself. She doesn’t think I can hear.
The nurses spin the door round again, with the sailor inside. He doesn’t know if he’s coming or going. As the opening slides past us we can hear snatches of a song the nurses are singing about a drunken sailor and what to do with him. I’m glad I’m not him. The nurses give him a shove. Desiree tugs at Mommy’s skirt.
“Look, Mommy, the sailor man is vomiting.”
“Serve him right.”
The nurses stand around him, pointing and laughing. His round sailor’s hat has fallen from his head. Gabriel dashes to pick it up, but Mommy speaks sharply.
“Come along!”
“Here’s The City Club,” she smiles. “Some people just call it the Gentlemen’s Club,” she says pointing. “Look at the carved angel faces! And the South African flag and the Union Jack on the balcony! And here’s the Supreme Court where they make the laws.”
“What building is this?”
“It might be pretty,” laughs Mommy, “but it’s only the gents’ urinal.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It’s for men to do their pee in.”
“Why can’t girls go in?”
“Because you’ve got a different thing,”
“Gabriel, don’t be rude to your sisters.”
Mommy talks out loud as she walks. “Nineteen twenty-seven, Rhodes’ House. At last! Here’s Grandma’s house, right beside Holyrood Flats, number eighty-two: Mrs K Lourens – Dressmaker. Look, right opposite the museum, the art gallery and the Gardens.”
“It’s a double-storey!” we chorus together.
We climb the big steps to the front door.
“Thank heavens polishing Grandma’s stoep isn’t my job any more,” says Mommy. “It always made me late for school and I had to hide my red knees.”
Desiree pushes her hand through the letter slot and, for her trouble, gets a fright when it snaps at her fingers. Gabriel grasps the big brass lion-head knocker in his small fist and gives a sharp rap. Grandma opens, kisses us hello and we follow her inside. She is wearing her pompom slippers and her short grey hair is in tight curlers. A wide staircase sweeps to the top storey and in the entrance hall there’s a hat stand with a lift-up seat and a mirror to see your face in. We don’t know anyone else who lives in a double-storey house with stairs inside.
“Can we go up the stairs?” asks Desiree, but Grandma ignores her.
“I’ve opened a boarding house,” she tells Mommy.
“You’re going to kill yourself.”
“Katarina helps me a lot.”
“But we worry about your weak heart, Ma.”
Grandma takes a big key from her pocket and unlocks the lounge door. On the walls there are pictures in wide black frames. Above the fireplace there’s a cross-stitch picture of pine trees, heavily laden with snow, and a bridge with a frozen river underneath.
“How do you like my Scottish cows standing amongst the heather? And look at my white swans floating down the Thames.”
“Where’s the Thames, Grandma?”
“In England.”
“I had almost forgotten how much you like English things,” says Mommy. “That’s why you gave us English names, like the film stars.”
“Well, what if one of you had ended up in Hollywood?”
When Grandma laughs you can’t see her eyes at all.
Desiree and I are gazing with our mouths open. We’ve already named the two statues on the mantelpiece Desiree and Colleen. The skirts of their green dresses are lifted to form pouches full of wriggling little silver fish.
“Grandma, why they holding fishes in their dresses?” asks Desiree.
“Maybe they had a sardine run, like in Durban,” laughs Grandma.
Desiree and I look at each other, and silently agree that next time we go to Blouberg we’ll make pouches from our dresses and catch little silver fish.
I lower myself into one of the straight-backed chairs. The seat pricks the back of my knees. I think I might get a scolding, but Grandma just says, aren’t they the prettiest chairs! They’re filled with horsehair. On the dining-room table there are cups shaped like tomatoes that stand on saucers that look like lettuce leaves.
“Who’s coming to tea?”
“No one,” says Grandma. “I can’t pack them in the pantry yet. I just like to stand and gaze at them.”
We wait while Grandma locks the door behind us when we leave. She takes us past the pantry under the stairs, which has doors of red and blue glass and pretty patterns like lace. Grandma’s bedroom has a high pressed ceiling and twin beds with satin bedspreads that we are not allowed to sit on. There’s a big picture of our dead grandfather on the wall. Alongside him there’s a picture of a child, our uncle, in his blue romper, taken before he died.
“How do you like my Queen Anne chair?”
Before I can ask why Grandma has the Queen’s chair in her bedroom, my eyes light on a doll sitting on top of the wardrobe. She has sleeping eyes, and she’s dressed in blue hand-knitted clothes.
“Would you like to hold her?”
But it’s barely in my arms before Desiree shouts, “My turn!” and the doll is gone.
“One day she will be yours,” says Grandma, winking at me.
Grandma shows us the long cemented yard with a gate at the end. There’s not a blade of grass in sight.
“It’s a short cut to Dean Street and Long Street when I have to go to the babbie shop.”
Lying in Grandma’s greenhouse is a dog.
“Paddy is a pedigreed water spaniel and she’s about to have puppies.”
“Please can we have a one?”
Grandma says yes straight away.
We can’t believe our luck! We got an answer, just like that.
The washing line stretches from one end of the yard to the other and we can see into Grandma’s bedroom through the open sash window. The block of flats next door towers above us and makes us dizzy when we look up. Gabriel is bored and he plays with his spinning top. We wish Grandma would put the kettle on for tea but she is still showing us the house.
“This is the bathroom and, as you can see, I’m strict with the boarders.”
PLEASE LEAVE BATHROOM AS FOUND.
“And this is the dining room.” She pushes open a door and shows us a long cool room with white inside shutters. We can’t believe our eyes because there’s a twin staircase at the back.
“Bubbles and Nick are back from England and living in the flat, but only until the baby comes,” she explains to Mommy.
What baby? Aunty Bubbles doesn’t have a fat tummy. But I dare not ask.
“Remind me to tell you about Nick,” Grandma says to Mommy. “Now, this is Berne’s room … She’s a teacher at the German school. It’s the only one with a balcony.”
We stand on the balcony with Table Mountain brooding in the background. The museum and the Gardens loom big across the street and we’re itching to get there.
At last we’ve seen it all and Grandma puts the kettle on for tea. Desiree takes her chance and races to the top of the staircase, turns around and rests her hand lightly on the handrail. Holding her dress out daintily, she floats down, one step at a time. Then she loses her footing and does a bollemakiesie down the stairs. I stand at the bottom of the stairs clapping and laughing.
