I don’t get a hiding. Someone calls for a doctor and someone else puts ice cubes wrapped in a cloth on my forehead. I lie back on the pillows and catch Salena’s black-ringed eyes in the mirror. She shuts one eyelid. A wink. I wink back. But I can’t do it properly yet, because both my eyes narrow at the same time, and then Salena smiles at me. “I love you forever,” she whispers before they come in to take her away.
The doctor says I can’t go to Salena’s wedding. He says I should stay in bed. I don’t mind. When they’ve all gone to the wedding and only me and the new maid Rosie are left behind, I climb into bed with my Nancy Drew book that I got from the library, and I’m glad I don’t have to eat the wedding cake.
That night, my first night sleeping alone, I dream of hundreds of colourful eyes, opening and shutting and staring past me.
Ma Judas
I’M OLD, ALREADY NINE, AND IT’S EID and I keep forgetting to breathe, I’m so excited. Everything I’m wearing is new. I have on pink panties with a small bunch of red cherries embroidered on the right-hand side, a new white vest, fluffy white ankle socks, black patent-leather shoes with a T-bar and, best of all, a white dress that Ma finished sewing last night.
I was scared she wouldn’t finish it in time. I lay awake listening to the sewing machine growling till my ears were too scared to listen anymore. The dress comes down to my knees, white satin and lace with puffy sleeves and a big satin bow at the back.
My black hair is pulled up into a ponytail tied so tight that my eyes look like Ginger’s, and my hair swings from side to side with each bouncy step I take. After lunch we’re going to visit Salena and her new baby, Muhammad.
Lunch is at the house of one of Papa’s brother-cousins (not blood family, just same-Indian-village family). At least I think so, but in the car my father explains that the man we are visiting was on The Ship with him. I’ve heard about The Ship so often I feel like I was bombed by the Germans and left to drown in the icy ocean. During World War II, Papa and his mother, my daadi Bilqis, were travelling from India to Port Elizabeth when the enemy struck. They spent three days at sea, in lifeboats floating on the freezing water, before being rescued along with a few other survivors. I’ve been with Papa at weddings when he’s met up with other survivors, and the women always cry and dab their eyes with the corners of their saris as they talk about not being eaten by sharks.
I wish Papa had been munched up by a shark. At least then I wouldn’t have to listen to him breathing during supper, and if he were dead he wouldn’t be able to shout at me all the time.
When we arrive in Rylands there are cars parked on both sides of the narrow road, and Papa squeezes his gold Mercedes between a bakkie and truck with extra care. He doesn’t want this car, the love of his life, to be hurt. I push my book under the front passenger seat and make sure my door isn’t locked in case I want to read in the car after lunch.
There are so many people in the house, it feels like a wedding. All the girls are wearing pretty, colourful dresses, and I love the women’s gold and black beaded necklaces. I’m glad I nagged Ma into letting me wear her old dangly earrings and bracelet.
I greet everyone in the lounge and an old woman tells me to go to the back yard where the other children are going to watch the qurbani. I have no idea what she’s talking about but I smile politely and do as she has ordered. The back yard is huge, filled with loquat trees and grapevines and six woolly sheep making baaing sounds. I have never seen sheep in real life. No one else seems surprised by them, and some children are even petting them. They smell funny. I’m not going to touch them.
Near the sheep there’s a hole in the ground that someone has dug. Like a grave. Not that I’ve seen a grave, except in films, because girls aren’t allowed to go to graveyards, or so Papa says. Then there’s a man in white robes with a large knife in his hand. I think of the three blind mice. This must be a carving knife. And then there are more men and they are reciting from the Quran and I move forward and the man with the knife has his arm wound tightly around the sheep’s head and, as I watch, something warm splashes on my satin dress. The smell slaps my face along with the baas of the other sheep. I run. Through the house, down the road, till I find the car and crawl into the back seat. In my mind I can still see the sheep moving even after its throat is slit, and I feel blood entering the top of my nose and the drops fall slow and heavy onto my lap, hiding the sheep’s blood.
That night we drive home, and in the boot there is a bloody newspaper parcel filled with our portion of the sheep’s body. The next day my mother will cook it into a curry and my food battle with her will begin. Until I learn to cook, I refuse to eat anything but Rice Krispies and cheese sandwiches. My mother tells everyone that I’m just going through a phase. She says it’s because I’m spending too much time with Hindus like Rukshana – even though Ruks is Muslim like us (and some Hindus do eat meat, just not cows!). But Ma doesn’t trust her because she’s dark-skinned.
After that day I notice things I hadn’t seen before. Cows in trucks turning into a long driveway in Maitland, near Polla-the-Prune’s ugly house. When I ask my mother, she says they’re going to the abattoir. I look up “abattoir” in the dictionary – it’s a slaughterhouse where animals go to be killed.
I phone to ask Salena how the animals are killed in the abattoir, and she tells me. A sheep (or a goat) is trained to lead the others to their deaths. Usually this is a young ram, and when he has lived in the abattoir long enough and is used to the smell of blood, he leads the other sheep up the ramp into the slaughterhouse. The sheep follow, he escapes through a side gate, and they die. Later, when he gets older, they get a new Judas goat and the old one follows him to his death.
Salena says our mother and other women like her are Judas goats. They let girls follow them into the marriage-abattoir. I don’t understand what she means, but she is sad when she says it. I wish I could make her happy.
Yummiest Cheese Sandwich
Take 3 pieces of your favourite cheese (mine’s Gouda), 3 or 4 tomato slices, a few pieces of cucumber and some lettuce. Put them on buttered wholewheat bread and add lots of salt and pepper. Mmmmm!
Poor Skollie
FOR THREE FRIDAY NIGHTS IN A ROW, Ma’s yellow Mazda has been broken into. It has to stand outside in the driveway because my father parks his gold Mercedes in the garage.
The first Friday they broke her passenger window and stole her radio. The second Friday they broke her driver’s window and stole the replacement radio. The third week she left her car doors unlocked, but they still broke the window. Ma says they just like the sound of glass breaking.
I say “they”, but Ma thinks it’s just one skollie – she found only one set of footprints in the sand next to her car, near the cement driveway. She says they’re the print of sandshoes. Everyone knows skollies wear sandshoes so no one can hear them prowling around at night.
My father is tired of the skollie, and Ma’s swearing Big Bad Words every Saturday morning, so he’s gone to the architect to start plans to build another garage. But Ma wants blood. I’m scared, but I’m glad it’s the skollie’s blood she wants and not mine. Poor Skollie.
That Friday afternoon, the fourth Friday afternoon since the start of the break-ins, Ma sends me to the cornershop to buy two bottles of cooldrink, but it’s closed because of a death in the family. We drive to Grand Bazaars in Parow, the closest supermarket. She parks in the parking lot behind Voortrekker Road and gives me strict instructions. I must buy one litre of Coke and one litre of Fanta and nothing else. Not even my favourite caramel dessert with its bright-white creamy topping. She gives me a two-rand note, and off I go.
Ma stays behind in her yellow car, in her yellow safari suit, wearing big black sunglasses that leave only the tip of her pointy nose exposed. Ma wears a black hairpiece so she can have double-storey hair like the women in the movies and so that no one can notice her bald spot. She looks pretty. Usually she doesn’t wear her scarf when we go to Grand Bazaars, so the white p
eople won’t know she’s Muslim. But today she is wearing a big flowery scarf and only her fringe is exposed. I know she’s in disguise, and her plans for Skollie have something to do with the cooldrinks. Poor Skollie.
We go home and Ma opens the Fanta and Coke and starts muttering. I realise she’s making a potion for Skollie. Salena will love this! I am torn between wanting to watch Ma and the need to phone Salena, but I decide to watch. That way I’ll have more to tell Salena.
First, Ma throws some of the green pellets she uses to kill snails into the grinder. She turns the pellets into a fine dusty powder that makes me sneeze three times in a row, and then adds equal amounts of the dust to both bottles. Then she adds Brooklax, the stuff she takes when she can’t pooh. This she also grinds to a powder before she adds it to the bottles. She tells me to check the bottles to see if they have changed colour. (She needs spectacles, but she won’t wear them. Salena says it’s because she doesn’t want to look old.) They haven’t. She adds a bit of sugar to both bottles, which makes their gas bubbles rise, and then she closes the bottles tightly and puts them back in the Grand Bazaars packet.
After supper, Ma goes out in the dark and places the Grand Bazaars packet on the back seat of the car, so it looks as if someone has left them there by mistake. I ask her what will happen if the skollie gives the drinks to his children. She says that’s his problem, not hers.
The next morning I’m up early and I rush outside to the car. I’m disappointed to see none of the windows are broken, but I investigate and find that the back door has not been closed properly. I open it, and the shopping packet is gone!
I run in to tell Ma. I am so excited, I can hardly eat. I imagine Skollie is in hospital, even dead! Ma says I’m not allowed to write about this in my News Diary at school on Monday. Now the wait begins.
The following Friday no one breaks into the car. Or the next. My mother, the skollie killer. And she didn’t even know him. What could she do to me? I decide to stop drinking Coke at home.
Adopted
IT’S THURSDAY NIGHT, HOLY NIGHT, SAYS MA, and tells me to recite from the Quran. I say no. The words are meaningless old Arabic that I’ve memorised like a nursery rhyme. And at the age of eleven, I’m too old for nursery rhymes. I’m already an aunt to three children!
Ma says I am too big for my boots because of all the books I read. When I still refuse to say the words, Papa gets angry and smacks me. The yellow ring that he has recently taken to wearing on the pinkie of his left hand grazes my cheek and it begins to bleed. The sight of the blood seems to satisfy Papa. Then he tears up some comic books that are lying around the house. The funny part is that they aren’t mine, they’re Faruk-Paruk’s, and the even funnier thing is that Papa can’t read or write in English. At school, my teacher tells me I’m very clever. I can spell any word she gives me, even backwards.
S-D-R-A-W-K-C-A-B.
Faruk-Paruk screams at Papa when he gets home and they have a big fight. Later Faruk-Paruk gets me alone and tells me I am adopted. He says my real mother and father left me in a bin. I hope that’s true! Faruk-Paruk says Ma took pity on me and my ugly lips and kept me. I wish she’d left me in the bin. Just to make sure, I ask Ma for my birth certificate, but she says she’s lost it.
Now I know why Ma hates me. Why she always lets Faruk-Paruk lick the cake bowl and gives him seconds, when I’m only allowed one portion. It explains why I’m so dark and Salena’s so fair. Ma, I mean my evil stepmother, is always comparing us. Telling me how white Salena is and how black I am. Ma says I should stay out of the sun or I’ll end up as dark as my Hindu friends. She caught me comparing our noses today. Mine is as flat as a pancake compared to hers. Obviously she cannot be my mother. But why do people say I look like Papa? What if Papa is my real father but he married a second wife and she died and he gave me to his first wife, Ma? No, that’s not possible. Ma would never have allowed my father to marry anyone else, unlike Rukshana’s mother.
A few days later I visit Rukshana at home. While we’re eating the cake her mother made, I ask her if she thinks I could be adopted. Ruks says Ma is much too mean to ever look after another woman’s child. She says I have to be her real daughter. She says Faruk-Paruk must be lying. I suppose she’s right. Rukshana’s father has two wives, and they live right next door to each other. He spends one night with Rukshana and her brothers and mother and the next night with his second wife and their children. They’re neighbours, but Ruks says her mother won’t let her play with her father’s other children.
Rukshana says I should ask Salena. She should know. She was ten when I was born. But when I phone Salena the next day she can’t understand me. Ever since the twins were born, a year after Muhammad, she always looks half-asleep. When I speak to her she doesn’t seem to hear me and it’s impossible to have a conversation on the phone because there’s always a baby crying in the background.
After the cake we have to stay out in the garden because it is Tuesday and Rukshana’s father has customers. They come to him to get rid of the jinn who have possessed them. I don’t like the sweet smell of the incense he burns while he works. When we were younger Rukshana and I use to chase the incense smoke, pretending it was a ghost. He gets paid a fortune for removing the jinn and putting them in containers – jars, bottles and metal boxes. Rukshana says that’s why he can afford two wives and so many children.
Once, Rukshana’s father found us rubbing a jinn-jar, hoping that if we released it the jinn would grant our wishes. Her father explained that these jinn are made by Allah, from smokeless fire. They are not like the jinn in Aladdin’s Tale, although they can fly around the world in the blink of an eye. They were created along with angels and people, and they can be good or bad and make their own choices. Sometimes a bad jinn slides into a person’s body and starts to control them. It’s Rukshana’s dad’s job to remove jinn from people and trap them so that they can’t cause mischief.
Why would you choose to live in someone’s body when you were free to fly? If I could fly, I would escape and try to find my real parents. Rukshana has just finished reading a book about an orphan boy called Oliver, who’s just like me. She says I’m going to miss her when Ma puts me in the new high school. Rukshana’s father wants her to stay on at the Catholic girls’ school, so she won’t get ideas about boys. Why are parents so stupid? Rukshana doesn’t even like boys.
Cinderella’s Wish
Once upon a time there was a little girl called Cinderella, who was treated very badly by her family. Her father had two wives, and whenever he went away with her mother he would leave Cinderella behind with his first wife and their two daughters. As soon as her parents left, the stepmother would hand Cinderella a uniform of rags to wear and give her a list of jobs to do in her father’s cornershop.
Sometimes, when she was finished sweeping the shop, filling the paraffin bottles, packing the fridges with cooldrinks and washing out the drinking straws, her stepsisters would ask her to play with them. But they could not find a game to play that made them all happy. The older step-sister wanted to sit in front of the mirror and get the younger girls to paint her face with make-up. The younger stepsister wanted to catch butterflies and tear off their wings. Cinderella wanted to play school-school. Since they could never decide on one game, they soon stopped trying to play together or even talk.
One night Cinderella got into bed feeling fed-up. She was tired of her step-mother making her work in her father’s shop and she hadn’t seen her parents for months. As she tickled her cat Tommy-Tiger under his chin, she said to him, “I wish I had a different life!”
Suddenly a bright light filled the room and Cinderella watched as Tommy-Tiger jumped off the bed, stretched his furry muscles and turned into a woman, the same height as her, dressed in a loose silver burqa which left her emerald eyes showing.
“Tommy-Tiger, you’re a woman! How could you keep a secret like that from me?” cried Cinderella.
“No, you silly child,” said the voice behind the shiny ma
terial. “I belong to the jinn race. I’ve been watching over you for years. You have a very brave heart. I’m here to grant you a new life. You’ll have new clothes, jewels, and of course a prince for a husband, and you’ll bear him many fine sons. Let’s begin. First, you’ll need— What’s wrong? Why the sad face?”
Cinderella looked into the jinn’s green eyes.
“It’s kind of you to give me a new life, but I don’t want to get married, and definitely not to a man I’ve never met, even if he is a prince. My mother and stepmother are married, and they don’t seem all that happy.”
“So you don’t want me to change your life?”
“Oh I do, please Tommy-Tiger! I want my wishes to come true. I wish,” Cinderella looked down at her palms and then spoke in a small whisper, “to study.”
“Well, Cinderella! That’s the strangest wish I’ve heard in all the hundreds of years I’ve been granting wishes, but I’ll do it.”
Cinderella reached over and hugged the cloaked figure; it was like holding warm, perfumed air.
“Will you stay with me, Tommy-Tiger? You’re the only creature in the whole world I love.”
“Of course I will! I’m your guide forever, and I love you too. Now take a step back, child, and look at your surroundings.”
Cinderella let go of the jinn and her mouth dropped open. Her bedroom had vanished, and they were standing in the middle of a gigantic library filled with books. Cinderella wept for joy.
Not a Fairytale Page 2
