by Carol Gibbs
“Colleen, when school finishes, sit on your suitcase inside the gate and wait. Grandma will fetch you. Don’t worry about Desiree. She’s staying behind for elocution lessons.”
Then Mommy’s gone and we’re left with the stern-looking nuns. They wear black dresses down to the floor, with a white half-circle of material over their chests, a funny thing around their squashed faces and a veil. It looks uncomfortable. They all have holy crosses dangling from their waists. I think of them all being married to Jesus. I hope my pee doesn’t come gushing out again in front of them. When the bell rings I join the line of bodies filing through the high arch past the font. The children dip their fingers into the holy water and touch their foreheads, their tummies and their shoulders. I don’t know what to do so, after the long walk, I just dab the cool water on my cheeks.
Sister Annunciata teaches us to count on an abacus, but I still use my fingers under the desk where she can’t see. We have a grey slate in a wooden frame and we have to learn the alphabet. My first day at the convent seems to go on forever and I’m glad when the bell rings. I sit on my suitcase and wait just inside the school gate. I gaze at the big statue of a man across the road behind the gallery. He stands with the earth balanced on his shoulders and he has no clothes on his body. He’s looking down at his thing sticking out.
I sit and I sit, but no one comes to fetch me. I drag a stick along the railings that line the lane beside the gallery, tick-tick, tick-tick. Then I see the sun glinting on the surface of the pond and the blue, pink and yellow water lilies. I wave at the little stone boy sitting on a dolphin in the arch that is his home, with white pigeon poep running down his face. I kneel down to watch the big orange fish glide silently by. A boy from the German school kneels beside me and, as he tries to catch a fish in his cupped hands, the heavy satchel on his back makes him topple into the pond, splashing me. But a young man walking past drops the parcel he is carrying and jumps in to save him. I will never lean over the fish pond again. I hurry past the soldier standing on a big stone, with his hand on his hip, through the big gate – and there’s my grandma’s house. She meets me, out of breath, on her red polished stoep.
“Good heavens! I was just on my way to fetch you! My watch stopped.”
My eyes are still wide from fright, but I dare not tell Grandma about the boy who nearly drowned. She helps me out of my uniform.
“Why you so damp?”
Aunty Katarina is very clever; she paints on velvet cushions. She paints cypress trees and full moons, dogs and cats, lakes with boats, and snow on trees. Aunty Katarina painted the two satin bedspreads in Grandma’s room, the ones we are not allowed to sit on. The ladies hold trug baskets filled with roses and on their heads they wear poke bonnets. There are roses strewn everywhere, right to the frill that reaches to the floor.
Aunty Katarina shares Grandma’s room, but she doesn’t like it much because she says Grandma snores and farts her heart out at night. Aunty Katarina often says how much she wants a child of her own.
One night Aunty Katarina and I are walking down Adderley Street on our way to Grandma’s house. Near St George’s Cathedral a Malay man falls to the pavement.
“Oh, no,” gasps Aunty Katarina. “Just look how he’s thrashing around!”
“He’s having a fit!” I tell her.
“Push his tongue down!”
“Lay him on his side!”
“Call a doctor!”
I tug shyly at Aunty Katarina’s skirt. “I know what to do. If you put him in a bath with a packet of mustard, he’ll get better.”
Aunty Katarina just smiles, takes me firmly by the hand and marches me along the avenue. When we get to Grandma’s house she hides me around the corner, as usual, and then knocks on the door.
“Come and see who I found along the way!” I step into the light.
“Good heavens! Where did you come from?” says Grandma, putting her hand over her mouth.
I love our little game and for a few days I can have them all to myself, me, the only child in the big house.
I hate it when Grandma sends me to her room to fetch something, because our dead uncle’s eyes follow you. Dead babies can do that. They try to speak because they were taken off the earth too soon. If he wants to use me to speak to living people I have to, but I’m frightened out of my wits. I put my hand over my eyes and squint at the blue patterned carpet through my fingers and stumble around until I’m done.
Grandma also taught Aunty Katarina to sew and sometimes she makes clothes for our dolls from scraps of cloth.
“Did you know,” asks Aunty Katarina one day, “that your grandma was born in McGregor? She learned to sew at the knee of her German mother and won all the prizes at the Robertson Agricultural Show.” Now, though, because Grandma can’t see so well, Aunty Katarina has to thread the needles, make the buttonholes and cut the threads after Grandma has stitched.
Desiree and I are happy because now we can see Uncle Nick and Aunty Bubbles whenever we want to. We’ve also got the hothouses and the museum as our playground. The Company Gardens are Paddy’s lavatory, so we get to know every corner. The best part for Desiree and me, though, is being able to lie in a safe warm bed, with not a thought of having to spend the night outside.
Aunty Bubbles often sashays in and tells us stories of the olden days. She always ends with Fee, fi, fo, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman! Then we close our eyes, cover our heads with our blankets and scream.
“Stop it, Bubbles,” says Aunty Katarina. “You’ll give them nightmares!”
Then Aunty Bubbles finds our armpits under the blankets and tickles us until we shriek like the mad people in Valkenberg.
“Now they’ll never sleep.”
We don’t mind, though. We love having our aunties around. We watch how Aunty Katarina makes the beds, polishes the floors, and lays the tables for the boarders. In the morning the sun streams into the dining room and when it gets too hot Aunty Katarina closes the big white inside shutters. Desiree and I peer at the pictures of ladies in a garden next to a fountain. Cupid hovers above their heads with bow and arrow at the ready. Aunty Katarina stares at the pictures for a long time and her fingers trace the outline of Cupid.
“Aunty Katarina, why do you touch the pictures?” asks Desiree.
“I’m dreaming of an old love and waiting for my new prince to come.”
“What do you think he will look like, your prince?”
“Tall, dark and handsome.”
We feel sorry for Aunty Katarina and we wish her prince would come.
“Does Grandma have a prince?”
Aunty Katarina doesn’t answer, and Desiree elbows me in the ribs. But I already know that Grandma sends letters, so maybe she does have a prince somewhere … Grandma never writes her own letters, though. She sits in the chair belonging to a queen with her hands folded in her lap and talks faster than anyone. When Mommy’s with us, she sits opposite her in a straight-backed chair, writing Grandma’s words as quick as her wrist can move. The squiggles look like the markings of drunken spiders, dipped in ink, tottering across the blank page in scattered lines.
“Who do you think Mommy writes the letters to?”
“His name is Uncle Johnny and he is a sheep farmer in South West Africa.”
Desiree is so clever.
Grandma spends most of her time in the kitchen, cooking and humming happily to herself with Paddy at her feet. She peels piles of vegetables and kneads dough in big enamel basins. Her short hair hugs her head and the odd curl sticks to her forehead. She makes us cups of sweet tea.
“God help you if you don’t wash your cup and saucer,” she says without fail.
At night, when the boarders have finished in the bathroom – it is always clean and tidy because everyone’s scared of my grandmother, including the boarders – Grandma soaks the sheets in the bath. The next morning Aunty Katarina helps her load the sheets into the round drum of the Westinghouse and then, when the washing is done, they put the she
ets through the wringer. If I stand too close the wringer will gobble me up and I’ll get flattened, like the people in the cartoons at the bioscope. Desiree says I’ll end up flat as a mat on the floor.
At suppertime, Desiree and I sit on the staircase in our pyjamas and watch the boarders. We giggle at Mr Francis because his gums squeak when he eats his cheese. The lady we nicknamed Sourpuss shovels her food in and makes no eye contact with anyone.
“Don’t ever eat like that!” warns Grandma.
The boarders also take food from the table to their rooms.
“Who can blame them?” shrugs Grandma. “They are far from their homes in Pretoria. They work at the Houses of Parliament for six months at a time and they get homesick, so they eat for comfort.”
Miss Ivanavich wears wide-bottomed gabardine trousers, in houndstooth check. Her hair is cut short in an Eaton crop and she always has a cigarette dangling from her lips. She sits on her own in the dining room and doesn’t talk to anyone, but the people in the dining room whisper about her. Desiree smiles her dazzling dimpled smile at Miss Ivanavich and Miss Ivanavich smiles back. She takes us outside and lets us sit on her big motorbike. She says she likes children because they are not prejudiced. We don’t understand the big word, but we’re happy she likes us.
Grandma is so busy pleasing other people and working hard for her living that she never has time for herself and that’s why she sometimes sulks. But we think Aunty Katarina works just as hard. In the mornings, she empties the slop-buckets into the upstairs drainpipe. She says it’s a disgusting job, but someone has to do it. We smell the pee as it splashes down and lands right beside us where we’re playing. When the pee hits the wall we run for our lives.
“Sis, everyone had full bladders last night.”
“Imagine Mr Francis’s pee all over you.”
“If Sourpuss’s pee got onto me, I would scrub my body three hundred times a day, until my skin was raw.”
“Do you think Uncle Nick’s pee smells like brandy?”
“Ask Aunty Katarina to check before she pours it into the upstairs drainpipe, then you’ll know.”
Today the nuns are taking us to St Mary’s Cathedral. We have never been to a cathedral before. In the hat room we cram hats onto our heads until we find a panama that fits. As I step through the arched door into the giant space in that big, old church, my mouth hangs open in disbelief and my eyes dart from one beautiful thing to the next. Fat candles burn on the altar and there are huge statues of Jesus. There’s blood coming out of His side and it looks as though He’s been shot. The nuns line up in their funny clothes in front of the statue of Jesus, their husband. All the colours of the rainbow shine from the stained-glass windows onto the snow-white walls. I lift my eyes up to the high ceiling and there’s a dove circling. I hope the dove doesn’t poep. People arriving late bend their knees and make the sign of the cross.
An old priest leads people down the aisle. He is wearing a cloak and a big gold-and-silver hat on his head. A man who looks like Old King Cole carries a brass box swaying on the end of a pole with funny-smelling smoke swirling in blue-grey patterns. We watch in wide-eyed wonder as the choirboys, with their scrubbed faces and slicked-back hair, sing in sweet high voices. I love the cathedral but I don’t understand the strange, boring words. The cathedral makes our Gospel Hall look very small, but still I miss the Gospel Hall, where we hold hearts for Jesus, win prizes at Sunday school, and sing in plain old English.
When we tell Mommy that we miss the Gospel Hall and home, she tells us she misses us too. She breaks the rules and takes us home for a Saturday night with a promise to have us back at Grandma’s house in good time for school on Monday. Daddy behaves himself for once and brings us peanuts from the Grand Parade. It’s good to be back with Gabriel and our dog and our cat and tomorrow morning we will see Mr Anderson and all our friends at the Gospel Hall.
Mommy and Daddy are sitting at the kitchen table drinking their coffee and we’re in bed. Eavesdropping is second nature to us.
“I feel sorry for Katarina. She’s the only one left at home to help with the boarding house. My mother says Katarina owes it to her, but why can’t she get married like the rest of us?”
“You still ask! She’s used goods. Who would want her as a wife?”
“Don’t be so cruel, Jacob.”
“I told you those American sailors were nothing but trouble.”
We hear Mommy push her chair back and busy herself with the dishes. “I don’t wish to pursue the subject.”
Daddy takes no notice.
“You can’t blame your mother for being hard on her. She made her bed – now she must lie in it.”
We’re afraid they’re going to fight, but instead they put out the light and go to bed.
When we get home to Grandma’s, it’s business as usual: school on Monday and back to the everyday routine. At least we get to eat the same first-class food as the boarders, says Desiree. Grandma makes delicious sandwiches and we go with her to buy fruit on the Grand Parade.
“How do you know that Malay with all the gold teeth?” asks Grandma when Mr Essop waves.
We tell her about sour figs and the best peanuts in the world. My legs have filled out and there are no more mutterings about nervous wrecks. Our cheeks glow pink and life has never been better, even though Grandma can be really stern sometimes. Mommy says she rules with an iron hand, but we still love her.
I don’t mind school, but I don’t like Sister Finbar’s elocution lessons. She expects me to speak the Queen’s English with a stiff upper lip like Aunty Dolly and my Uncle Nick. She stands next to my desk in her penguin outfit and she gets so cross her whole body shakes and the holy cross fastened at her waist sways from side to side.
“Don’t say watermalon,” she says with her round pink mouth. “Watermelon. Open your mouth. Form the lips. It’s jelly. Jilly is a girl’s name.”
“Hou jou bek, stuk spanspek. Screm, screm, blikkie jam,” I mutter under my breath.
The bell rings and saves me from Sister Finbar’s big round pink mouth. When I get home Grandma finds me in front of the mirror looking down my throat.
“What in heaven’s name are you doing, child?”
“I’m trying to see where the words come from.”
CHAPTER NINE
Aunty Katarina is tired. She’s emptied the slops, made the beds, and laid the tables for lunch. There are fresh flowers on the tables, picked early in the morning in the Company Gardens before anybody’s around. Paddy has had her walk and she’s done her number two. The washing is flapping on the line and the yard is swept.
“It’s time to sneak a smoke,” she mutters, but Grandma has other ideas.
“Katarina, I need you to go to the babbie shop in Long Street for the greens, and to the pet shop for meat for Paddy.”
Aunty Katarina puts on her hat and coat. “Colleen, why don’t you come with me?”
I look at Grandma.
“Off you go then,” she says.
As soon as Aunty Katarina closes the yard gate behind us she lights a filter tip. She only sucks on it twice and then puts it out, because it’s not lady-like to smoke in the street. The grown-ups say you could be mistaken for a lady of the night. We walk round the corner where the Spiritualist Church looms big, then past Timoney’s garage and the Long Street Baths, where my mother nearly drowned when she was seventeen. Our feet cross the worn doorway of the babbie shop. Aunty Katarina says our entire family has shuffled through the door and helped to wear the threshold down and when the babbie closes the door at night the wind whistles underneath.
The shop bell tinkles a welcome and the budgies chatter in their cages and the Polly screeches. The smell of rabbits, chicken mash and pee makes us wrinkle our noses.
“Mr Abrahams, can’t you teach your Polly something less nerve-shattering?”
“Do you think I can sit with a parrot all day?”
“What’s eating him?” mutters Aunty Katarina, but she’s interrupted.<
br />
“Tim Birch, at your service.”
The man wipes his hands on his striped apron, and gives a salute. He has sad eyes, dark wavy hair and pale skin and he’s standing behind the chopping block with a cleaver in his thin white hand.
“Can I have a pound of liver for my dog, please?” Aunty Katarina blushes.
“What’s your dog’s name?”
“Paddy. She’s a water spaniel.”
“I’d love to meet her. I live in Victoria Mansions just across the street.”
“I walk her in the Company Gardens at six-thirty.”
“A romantic place!” He winks. “Shall I meet you under the statue of Cecil John Rhodes?”
“I’ll bring my niece.”
I think Aunty Katarina has forgotten about me, but she takes my hand and drags me out with her.
Back at home, she fidgets all afternoon, doesn’t sit down for a minute.
“It’s time. Come, Colleen … Come, Paddy.”
She doesn’t tell Grandma about Tim Birch and I know it’s because Grandma is very strict.
“It’s so warm and just look how bright the stars are! An evening made in heaven!” she says once we’re out of the gate and out of earshot.
In the Gardens, there are men and ladies lying together under the trees, their arms wound tightly around one another.
“Aunty Katarina, why do people lie on the grass under the cypress trees? It says don’t walk on the grass.”
“They’re in love and when you’re in love nothing matters.”
I don’t understand why I get a good smack if I so much as put my big toe on the grass, but grown-ups can lie there with their bodies covering a huge patch. When I’m big and in love I’m going to do the jitterbug and cartwheels all over the green grass in the Company Gardens.
We walk past the rose garden and the fish pond, Aunty Katarina all smiles and a bit breathless.
