Family Lice
IT’S A WEDNESDAY MORNING IN THE DECEMBER HOLIDAYS, and Ma is cutting my hair on the front stoep. I want to go to a proper hairdresser but Ma says my hair is kroes, and she’s not wasting money on it. The sun burns down on my scalp, but she gives me a piece of Lunch Bar to munch on, and soon I forget what she’s doing. I can smell the red carnations from where they are planted near the garden gate – they’re my favourite flower. They smell of cinnamon.
I’m going to be in Standard Five next year. I hope my new teacher’s as nice as this year’s. Last week Ruks and I met at Elsies River Library, and we got two copies of Jane Eyre, which we’re reading together. Jane’s an orphan girl (I love stories about orphans) with a wicked aunty who reminds me of Polla-the-Prune.
Ma lifts the weight of my hair up from the nape of my neck with her left hand. The right one holds a silver pair of sewing scissors. With the hair lifted I can feel dozens of little feet on the nape of my neck, sending tingles up into my scalp. The scissors open and close in her hand, like a baby’s mouth searching for food. I hear the crunch as the scissor snip snip snips through my hair, munching, swallowing long threads of me, leaving my neck naked and cold and light. Free.
Ma turns me to face her and smiles at me and it feels like the static shock I got once when I was pushing the trolley in Grand Bazaars. I can’t remember when last Ma has smiled at me or anyone else. She looks different when she smiles. She usually looks angry and serious, with the skin above her black eyebrows in wavy lines. She tells me I look much brighter now, as if I’ve had a bath. I remind her that I’m not a baby anymore, that I’ve stopped bathing and only take showers. She shakes her head at me and looks sad again. She says she can’t believe I’m such a big girl. It seems like just the other day she told my father she was pregnant with me. Her eyes go hard again for a moment, and she stops smiling and turns me away from her.
Around the chair my hair floats on the ground in a dark puddle, still wet with my summer sweat, still moving with my lice. I watch the aimless journey of one louse, then another, then another, until there are dozens of them on this, their eviction march. I know how they feel. They walk up and down the strands, hunting for my missing scalp. They look confused. I lie down with my chin on the floor, so that I am on eye level with the lice, and then I put my thumbnail above one, bearing my nail down until I hear a soft click. My thumbnail is red with my own blood and bits of brown lice legs. Half the body is see-through, the other still holds onto my blood.
Ma comes back and sweeps my hair, a living, coiling mass, into the dustpan, and then goes off to bury it. I look in the mirror and a new face stares back at me. I don’t know who that girl is. But I know she is alone without her lice friends, and when I begin to cry Ma says not to worry, my hair will grow again. But I am not crying for my hair. I am crying for my homeless lice. Ma gives me a cup of masala tea.
Sometimes I don’t think Ma’s really a wicked stepmother. She’s definitely not as bad as Polla-the-Prune. Earlier today The Prune phoned to speak to Ma, and I shouted something like, “Your sister’s on the phone.” When Ma took the phone, Polla told her I was the rudest child she’s ever known. Now Polla’s told their cousin that I must be punished. I’m not allowed to be bridesmaid for the son or daughter who’s getting married next month. I’m so happy! She doesn’t know she’s done me a favour. I was dreading the thought of having to wear something purple and balloon-like, and putting make-up on my face. Rukshana says that when you’re a bridesmaid all the ugly boys and their uglier mothers watch you on the stage and decide if you’re good enough to marry. Polla-the-Prune thinks I won’t be able to get a husband if I’m not a bridesmaid. She’s an idiot.
That afternoon, when Ma sends Ruks and me to the post office to mail money to Polla (she’s poor because her husband left her for a coloured woman) I change the address on the envelope to the SPCA’s. Ma will think the post office stole her money, but Ruks says at least I’ll know a more deserving bitch got the money. If my Ma heard me say something like that she’d tell me I’m going to the Shaytan – never mind that she swears all the time.
Soothing Masala Tea
3 cups water
4 teabags
3–4 elachi pods, crushed
3 cloves
1 cinnamon stick
chunk of fresh ginger
9 tsp sugar (or to taste)
milk to taste
In a medium pot, add 3 cups of water, the tea bags and the coarsely ground spices. A mortar and pestle is best for grinding the spices. You should also add the sugar now, at least 9 teaspoons, but you can make it sweeter if you want.
When the water’s boiled, lower the heat and let it simmer for a few minutes so that you can smell the tea even if you’re in another room. Then add the milk until the tea is the colour of caramel toffee. It shouldn’t be too white and milky. This is a good time to look for biscuits, something plain, like shortbread.
When you think the tea is ready, take it off the stove and use a tea strainer as you pour it into your cup. The tea strainer makes sure you get all the flavours with none of the yucky bits (if you bite on a piece of elachi, it’s disgusting!).
Ma always used to give me masala tea when I got wet in the rain walking home from school. It warmed me up every time. Salena told me that our daadi said if you’re ever scared you should make masala tea and recite Surahs Falaq and Naas over your cup before you drink it, to protect you from harm, envy, black magic and, of course, the evils of the Shaytan.
The Thirteenth Floor
WHEN MA ANSWERS THE PHONE SHE BECOMES HYSTERICAL. She screams, she cries and then she smacks me. I have no idea why till she babbles crazily that Papa is in hospital. She phones Salena and then forces me into the car with her.
When we get to Groote Schuur, my father is hooked up to tubes and bossy beeping machines and he can’t speak because there is an oxygen mask over his face. His body is black and navy blue like a rotten banana from all the holes left in him by the tubes sprouting out of his skin. You can see the blue-green veins just underneath his milky-white skin carrying his blood.
I have been left alone in the hospital room with him, to guard him like a Rottweiler, while Ma talks to the doctors. I don’t want to be this close to my father. He stares at me with his cow-brown eyes and makes cutting gestures with the fingers of his left hand. I understand: he wants me to bring him scissors, to cut off the tubes, and I nod in pretend agreement. I am thirteen years old, and the cleverest in my class, but which person in white is going to give me scissors?
I go into the passage and my mother has her back to me and the doctor is saying, “Nothing to do, morphine,” and Ma is nodding and agreeing, and she seems sad, but when she turns towards me there is a wild gleam in her eye, like I’ve seen in Ginger’s eyes when he’s fighting for the affections of a she-cat in heat. Then she sees me watching and the shutters come down over her slit-eyes.
I go off to play in the cavernous lifts of the hospital, imagining all the bodies that have been in them, living and dead, ghosts and people. I have a newfound fascination with lifts, since Papa’s accident. He went into town to fetch something from an office in Strand Street, and when he was leaving, got into the lift. The doors were open because they were doing maintenance, and someone had forgotten to put up the warning signs. Papa fell thirteen floors. One for every year of my life. Ironic, as my English teacher would say.
The hospital lift takes me down and up and down again, and I wander through the emergency section. No one stops my explorations. In one room I see nurses and doctors scurrying around frantically, while someone applies what looks like jumper cables to a body on a gurney.
Back in Papa’s room, his cousin-brothers are sitting at his deathbed reciting from the Quran in serious voices. Salena is there with her husband, Mr Boring-Lawyer, and her three boys. The twins, dreamy Makeen and noisy Raqim, are identical boy-dolls, and Muhammad is really clever. I’m teaching him to read. Sadly, Faruk-Paruk is there too, reading
Papa’s medical information. The show-off. He’s even worse now that he’s emigrating to Australia with his irritating wife, who pinches my cheeks all the time. He’s already putting on a fake Australian accent. He makes me sick. He probably makes lots of people sick, so it’s a good thing he’s going to be a doctor soon.
I have to get away from the keening prayers and the sharp antiseptic smells, so I escape with Muhammad, and together we play in the lifts – up and down, down and up. And I think of my father.
Then Faruk-Paruk finds us, and says I have to say goodbye to Papa. When we get back to the room, he’s dead. Dead but not gone, and they tell me to kiss him. What? There is a voice laughing in my head. I’ve never kissed him before. He’s never touched me, unless you count the odd smack. Now I have to touch my lips to his face. They must be crazy. I lean forward, my long curly hair hiding my face, acting as a curtain between my father and the deathbed audience. I make a loud dramatic smacking noise before turning away.
He’s dead, but things are just beginning. A cousin-brother has brought his bakkie, and they take the body downstairs. Papa is wrapped in a hospital sheet but the staff won’t let their sheet leave the hospital. Another cousin-brother comes to the rescue with a blanket from the boot of his car, and they wrap him in that, but it is too short and his grey-white veined feet stick out.
They stuff him into the bakkie and speed off, and one by one the other cars drive away and I’m alone in the hospital parking lot. They’ve forgotten me. Maybe the funeral will be all over by the time they realise they’ve left me behind.
But then Salena and the boys are behind me, ushering me into her car. On the way to Cravenby she stops to buy the kids and me faloodas. She says we need the sugar because of the shock. As I slurp mine up it tastes like Sunlight soap because I can’t get the smell of hospital out of my nose.
At home, someone has covered all the mirrors with sheets. I think they’re scared my father will catch a glimpse of himself in the mirror and be trapped forever in the house. Or maybe my mother doesn’t want to see the look of joy in her reflection. She’s got to go on pretending to herself and everyone else, or what will people say?
The men are carrying cotton wool and buckets of water into the guest bedroom, where they’re washing the body. The body who was my father. My Father Who Art in Heaven. I’m so glad that, because I am a girl, I’m not involved in the washing. Faruk-Paruk has to deal with that, precious son. I catch a glimpse of him wearing his serious “As a Med student I deal with dead people all the time” expression.
Mental note to self: do not be in the country when Ma dies. I don’t want to help with the washing of her body. It’s bad enough catching her when she’s asleep, her mouth empty of teeth as her and Papa’s dentures swim in a glass of water next to their bed.
When the men are done washing Papa, his body resembles an Egyptian mummy, wrapped in layers of white cloth. His face still shows, with cotton wool stuffed up his hairy nostrils and pushed deep in his ears. They roll him out on a stainless-steel gurney, to the dining room, where they sit around praying, their bodies rocking backwards and forwards in a hypnotic rhythm which I can’t bear to watch. I will certainly never eat in this room again. In fact, I might develop an eating disorder. I am the right age, according to the magazines Rukshana lends me.
I amble around the house trying to find a peaceful corner. Ma is handing out wads of money to her sister and, for once, The Prune’s face is lit up, like a chandelier. Of course, she’s probably plotting to overcharge my mother in some way for the food she says she will make. Another cousin-brother has brought in two huge gleaming pots. Salena’s twins waste no time in jumping in, one to a pot. Mmmm, boy-curry.
The kitchen is filled with the smells of oil and garlic and onions frying for the akhni, and I feel ill. Food is cooking while my father lies in the dining room with cotton wool stuffed up his nose. Maybe they don’t want him to smell the food.
I don’t know what to do, where to go, and though I wander through the house avoiding my mother’s “Wear a scarf, what will people say?” I still find my way back to the body. Papa is exerting a form of magnetic control over me. I have to make sure he really is dead.
I watch from a corner of the room, from the floor, and Tommy-Tiger finds my lap the perfect base from which to observe and spit hate at all the strangers in his house. He’s become very antisocial now that he’s about a hundred cat-years old.
Finally, curiosity makes him move forward to the table, to pad up to the body, to touch the face with an interested paw, to prod it gently. He waits for my father to react, and so do I, but nothing happens. The face remains still, the eyes do not open, the hand does not swipe the cat away, so I edge forward and pick up the confused feline, and my mother notices me and says to put on a scarf, but in the voice she uses in front of other people.
I find solace in my bedroom with the twins and Muhammad, and behind the locked door we watch their favourite video, Charlotte’s Web, softly, so no one discovers our sacrilegious behaviour.
And even when the body is gone, it is not over.
The men come back from the graveyard, and they eat and drink and talk and talk and shout. This is not what I thought mourning would be like.
Days later there are still visitors arriving to offer their condolences to Ma. People who were at the funeral and people who weren’t. They all expect food and tea and Coke and coffee.
Ma gets the death certificate with my father’s name on it and it says “Never married”, and she screams and screams and people explain that Islamic marriages are not legal, but she will not be calmed.
Afterwards, I go to school, and everyone looks at me funny and says sorry. I don’t know why. I’m not sorry.
Easy Falooda Milkshake
1 cup cold water
2 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp rose syrup
1 tsp agar-agar powder
2 tbsp falooda seeds
½ cup boiled water
2 l full-cream milk
2 tbsp rose water
½ cup rose syrup (less or more depending on your preference)
½ tsp elachi powder
more sugar to taste
Boil the cup of water, sugar and two tablespoons rose syrup. When it begins to boil, add the agar-agar and stir until it thickens. Remove from heat, pour into a bowl and refrigerate until firm like jelly. Place the falooda seeds in the boiled water until they are swollen. Strain, and allow to cool.
Once the jelly has set, grate it roughly. Pour the milk into a jug, add the rose water, rose syrup, elachi powder and sugar to taste. Pour into individual glasses, add some grated jelly, a teaspoon of falooda seeds, and stir. You could add ice-cream if you need the sugar rush and chopped nuts if you want to pretend it’s healthy. Not that falooda isn’t good for you, especially this recipe, with agar-agar (made from algae) instead of gelatine, which comes from the bones and skins of animals. Yuck! Falooda is refreshing on a hot day, and it’s full of calcium, especially if you add fresh cream.
Nuns and Dwarves
PAPA’S BEEN DEAD ALMOST A YEAR. The shop’s been sold to a cousin-brother and Ma’s bossier than ever now because she got the money from the sale of the shop and she’s in charge of the capital Papa inherited from Daadi – riches that our grandfather left Daadi and which she grew through wise investments. At least that’s what Salena tells me. Salena says if Papa had been in charge of the money, he’d have lost it on the horses long ago. That’s why our daadi had it put in a trust fund. I didn’t know Papa gambled.
Ma seems taller, or maybe it’s that she walks with her back held straighter, like my new PE teacher is always trying to get us to do. I hate the new high school Ma’s forced me to go to. I miss Rukshana and all our calm nun-teachers. My new teachers are stupid.
Today we had to do “free writing” in class. Of course it’s not really free, because it gets marked and the dumb teacher gives us the topic. We had to describe our family. It was harder than I expected. Eventually I starte
d describing Salena, because I thought she’d be the easiest. I wrote about how she spends most of her time cooking, cleaning and running around after her boys, even now that there are only two of them. I didn’t write about how in the middle of all her work she never misses a chance to throw a glance at herself in the nearest mirror. She’ll pause, suck in her narrow cheeks, arch her brows, puff out her skinny lips (nothing like mine!), smile politely at her reflection and then go on chasing after the boys. It’s a weird habit.
Then I moved on to describing Ma and became completely stuck. What could I write about Ma? How when I was little, Ma would scrub me daily, during my hated bath, as though she was determined to wash away my dark skin and reveal my fair self? Or maybe I could describe Ma’s convoluted classification system, which would rival the government’s own labelling categories. For example, Rukshana has a rich father (+ + +), and she’s skinny (+ + +), but dark, aka a darkie (– – –).
In the end I decided to write about Ma’s food. It’s funny: even her cooking has changed now that Papa’s dead. Everything she makes seems to taste better, and she often cooks my favourites, like veggie breyani, and soji for dessert.
I couldn’t decide if I should say anything about Papa. So I just wrote that he is dead. I’m sure that made the teacher feel awkward. I hope so.
Generally, the teachers at my school are an odd bunch. Another thing to thank the government for: divided education. There aren’t enough Indian teachers in Cape Town because the Indian community here is small, so they import these cast-offs from Natal who pay back their college tuition by accepting jobs in the Cape. The interesting ones never stay long.
This year there was Miss Naidoo, who taught us English for three weeks. She was about six foot tall and really clever. But one day she just disappeared: she was there on a Tuesday, and on the Wednesday she was gone. Apparently she went to study in England. Then there was Mr Jeenah, her replacement, who taught us for a single week. He wore the same white shoes, cream pants and green shirt with a matching green tie for the duration of his stay, and he never once looked up from the book he read aloud in a whisper. I was riveted. The rest of the class seemed equally hypnotised: no one said a word during five periods of English. But the next Monday he too was gone.
Not a Fairytale Page 3
