From the plane window I can see the land growing smaller, until it is beyond my recognition. I’m excited to be leaving, and only wish Salena were coming with me.
The Ties That Bind
I haven’t washed my hair in years. It stinks. I have split-ends that reach from the bottom of the tower all the way up to my waist. As for blow-drying it straight? Impossible without an army of hairdressers. It’s because of her that it’s in such a state – the spiteful bitch-witch. She placed me under this enchantment, gave me this ludicrously long hair. (Of course it’s not naturally long – hair grows about a centimetre a month. Do the maths. How old do you think I am?) The colour? No, it’s not my own, either. I used to be dark-haired, but she preferred this hue. How do the Grimms describe it? “Spun-gold”. Spun-gold, my arse. She gave me this length, this colour, but she never thought of the maintenance! And now she’s so old, she’s forgotten her own spells. Bitch. Witch.
I beg her. I say, “I’ll listen to all your ramblings, if only you’ll cut it!”
But she says, “No, if it’s gone, how will I get up here?”
I tell her, “Lady, you’re a witch, fly up on your bloody broomstick!”
But she says, “I can’t. I forgot where I parked it.”
My bitch-witch. Stupid as my father, dumb as my mother. Both selfish and into instant gratification. Never thinking about me, stuck in the middle of a forest with a hag. Exchanged me for a bit of plant. It’s no wonder I have self-worth issues.
So when he arrives, nervous, like a cat on crack, what can I do? He charms me, because I can’t compare him to any other man. I don’t know any men.
He says, “Your hair just gets in our way, let’s chop it off.”
I say, “Bitch-witch says men find long hair sexy.”
He says, “Maybe, but not me, and not this long.”
I ask him if he thinks I’m beautiful.
“Yeah, you’re gorgeous, but I didn’t fall in love with you because of your face. I couldn’t see your face where you stood, way up in the clouds, your features obscured by your blonde tresses. It was your voice, it was your maudlin song; you vocalised my sorrows, my despair at being a prince in this dark land of hard-working heroines, wicked wolves, abusive parents, gold-grabbing kings and murderous tots.
“Your singing is sublime,” he says. “We’ll get you a record deal when I get you out of here.”
He cuts my hair, as efficiently as any skilled barber. My nape is naked, and I am free of vermin and other hangers-on. He says, “Let’s leave this place,” and I say, “How?” He says, “Let’s indulge in the power of positive thinking, or a spell: you must have learnt a thing or two from the witch?”
And I have. We clasp hands, we picture a white light around ourselves, we take deep cleansing breaths as the tower crumbles around us, and I am on terra firma again, free for the first time.
He says, “Let’s go.” And I say, “Listen, I know it’s traditional for the heroine to marry her rescuer, but I can’t marry you. You’re the first man I’ve seen. I need to do some sexual experimenting first.”
And he says, “Okay, I’ll wait. And if you don’t choose me, at least we’ll make music together.”
I sit on the front of his horse, my dress pulled up, my thighs spread on its furry, warm brown body, the back of my sparkling head resting against the prince’s beating chest. My bitch-witch walks by. She doesn’t even glance at us: she still can’t see me.
He says, “Should I kill her with my sword?”
I say, “Nah, she’s already dead to me.”
New Beginnings
I’M IN LOVE WITH LONDON BOOKSHOPS AND THE SPEED of the Underground, and I think of the joy the clothes and shoes would bring to Ruks and Maria.
I’m so happy staying with Aunty Anjum. She dresses in jewel-coloured saris, like Salena told me our daadi used to wear and, like her mother, she also loves telling stories. Aunty Anjum has heaps of children and grandchildren – I can’t remember all the cousins’ names – and they all live together in a huge house on the outskirts of London, like one Big Happy Family. Aunty Anjum never got to see her mother again after they married her off at fifteen (to her first cousin – she didn’t even have to change her surname) and our daadi came to South Africa. She looks sad talking about her mother. I try to sympathise. But I can’t imagine longing for Ma.
I love Aunty Anjum’s cooking, especially her moong dhal curry with rotis. It warms me up better than the central heating. While I’m scoffing her food she tells me stories, some about Papa. Apparently, back in India, my grandfather used to thrash my father and leave him hanging from a tree overnight. Well, that explains a lot – too late. She talks about people long dead as though we were all friends together, and sometimes she lapses into Urdu, forgetting I don’t have a clue what she’s talking about.
Aunty Anjum does her chores with one hand, the other holding her tasbih, praying silently. In the darkness of the morning I hear her reciting her prayers and it fills me with peace. Sometimes I watch her from the window of the attic, which is my bedroom, as she rakes leaves in the garden, still wearing the incongruous sari, her only concession to the freezing weather a minute pearly-pink cardigan.
Unlike Aunty Anjum, my cousins, at least the unmarried ones my age, are more English than Muslim. (Ma wouldn’t be impressed with their love of pub-culture.) They don’t seem to carry a sense of guilt about being Muslim at home in front of their mother and being like the rest of society when they’re at school or at work. I suppose it’s not that different from the schizophrenic life I led with Ma.
Then I find him, or, as he says, he finds me, although neither of us was lost, only a little misdirected. He’s called Jim, and he lives a street away from Aunty Anjum, and the first time I see him I’m walking home from the café and he’s putting up lost-and-found posters for the ugliest cat I’ve ever seen. It’s black, with one eye and one and a half ears. He says it’s not really his cat: it belonged to his dead mother. I like the idea of a dead mother, but what I like even more is the way he looks down into my eyes, and the soles of my feet respond by burning. We have a conversation about cats, but I don’t think I’m making much sense because my brain is trying to regulate my heartbeat and blood pressure, and my hormones have gone mad.
Days later the cat is still missing, and I can’t get through the day without hearing Jimmy’s voice. Part of me knows I am behaving like a stupid girl, and that part whispers cynical things in my ear, but the stupid-girl part muffles the whispers with loud sighs. I don’t feel cold any longer, my skin is burning up, and Aunty Anjum suggests a trip to the local GP because I look feverish and I keep putting the sugar in the fridge. I mumble something about the library and leave the house to meet Jimmy’s train.
It takes me a while to understand what he does, because every time he talks I focus on his lips: they’re pale pink, a bit like the lipstick Ma wears to weddings, but without the frosty sparkle, and the top lip’s a little longer than the bottom. Eventually I understand that his business has something to do with hotels and laundering linen. I’ve managed to listen long enough to know he’s an orphan (yippee!), twice over, in fact. Adopted when he was two from an orphanage in Guernsey and brought over to London by a wealthy middle-aged couple, who both died in a car accident a few years before we met. It’s the dead father’s business that Jimmy manages, but he says it can run itself. His passion is technology, and as a hobby he’s restructuring his friends’ businesses through the more efficient use of computers.
He’s nine years and two weeks older than I am, and he’s had three serious relationships. Ma would like the fact that he’s pale and straight-haired. My favourite thing about him are his eyes. They’re the same shade as the milky chocolate that keeps appearing on Aunty Anjum’s doorstep, wrapped in silvery layers of paper.
Our first kiss is polite and strained and a letdown after all my fantasising, but when I finally manage to block out Ma’s voice lecturing me about hymens, I’m happy.
&nbs
p; Aunty Anjum’s Moong Dhal Curry
1 cup moong dhal
¼ cup water
½ tsp turmeric
1 tsp salt
2 tsp oil
1 tsp mustard seeds
1 tsp cumin
4 curry leaves
4 green chillies
2 pods garlic, cut into small pieces
1 tsp ginger
½ onion, chopped into small pieces
1 ripe tomato, cut into small pieces
dhania for garnish
Wash and soak the moong dhal overnight, or if it’s a spur of the moment decision, place it in water in a microwave-safe dish and cook on high for 10 minutes. Place the dhal in a pot, cover with water, add turmeric and salt, and boil until soft.
In a pan, add the oil, mustard seeds, cumin, curry leaves, green chillies, garlic and ginger, and sauté them for a minute. Add the onion and fry until brown. Add the tomato and cook until soft. Now add the moong dhal mixture. Cover the pan and cook, for about 10 to 15 minutes.
You can garnish with fresh dhania leaves if you like. Guaranteed to take the chill off your bones, and perhaps invite love into your heart.
Travelling
WE’RE ON THE LONDON UNDERGROUND. I’m holding Jimmy’s hand and the train is coming in two minutes, and the other commuters are complaining about the wait. Are they crazy? I remember my endless train journeys while studying at UCT. Ma would drop me off at campus in the mornings but I’d travel home by train. First there was the walk to Rondebosch station, then the journey from Rondebosch to Salt River and the endless wait in the middle of the day for a connecting train to Parow (until I learnt to spend my afternoons in the library). These Londoners are spoilt rotten.
Generally, I prefer trains to buses. I can read on trains and planes and even ferries, but buses are impossible; all that stopping and starting makes me nauseous.
When I was little, I would trundle upstairs to sit at the top of the bus, or at the back, if it was a single-decker. Sometimes Salena would sit in the front, at my urging, just for the sake of being naughty.
I recall one bus trip in particular. We boarded in Parow, and I begged Salena to sit in the front, right under the nose of the white conductor. I remember feeling excited, clutching a plastic bag filled with some of Salena’s sugar biscuits for the trip. We were travelling to Mowbray – I can’t remember why. And then, just past Elsies River, the bus stopped, and the conductor got off and was replaced by another, calling out, “Tickets, please.”
My sister was the third passenger from the front. I was right at the back, against the window. She turned around and looked at me, her face filled with owl’s eyes. I realised that I had the bus tickets in my pocket. I had insisted on buying and keeping our tickets. The conductor was still chatting to the man in the front seat, but any second he would be upon my sister.
How would she explain that a non-white child was carrying her ticket? I wished the bus would have an accident. Anything to make the ticket collector stop his journey to my sister. I clutched both tickets in my slippery-with-sweat hand.
Then an angel appeared. Right there on the bus, sans wings, but wearing a huge black doek. She took the ticket from me, and as my sister looked up helplessly into the white face of the ticket collector, she called out, “Here Miss Sarah, I have your ticket,” pretending to be my sister’s maid, and Salena came to the rear to fetch it, her eyes speaking her thanks. And when he was gone and had clicked my ticket too, I turned to the knowing gaze of the woman. “You children play dangerous games, just like my Sammy, and what did that get him? A bullet in his back.” Tears came to her eyes. She took out a fluffy white handkerchief and wiped them. “Don’t do it again, my girl, you can get your sister into a lot of trouble.”
My voice squeaked out, “How did you know?”
“Ag, my girl, anyone with half a brain can see you’re family. You look the same. Okay, this is my stop, and now you be a good girl, alright?”
I nodded. She smiled at me and lumbered off.
The woman had left me with a puzzling problem. I’d grown up knowing I was dark and therefore ugly. Compared to Salena, I was a brown gnome. How could this stranger have seen a resemblance? But she had.
In another hemisphere, the train arrives, and people push between Jimmy and me and we’re separated, and I’m in the train but he’s not and, “Mind the gap,” says the robotic voice, and I stare at Jimmy through the glass and he mouths, “Get off at the next station and wait,” and I nod. But I’m so afraid, my mouth is bitter, my armpits are tingling, and I think, “He won’t come,” but I get off and wait, and then he’s there, and I cling to him as though we’ve been separated for years, and he laughs. He thinks I’m play-acting, and I smile too and giggle, and say, “They’re tears of laughter,” and I know I can’t leave. I love him.
He’s suggested, a bit too casually, that we get married. I think he’s as afraid of rejection as I am of love. When I’m with him, we make perfect sense. When I’m not with him, I remember he’s a white man. Jimmy says I’m nuts; it’s just about him and me and our future together. I wish it were that simple.
Bear Hugs
GOD, I HATE THIS BLOODY WEATHER; IT’S NOT NATURAL. And I’m tired of studying. I’m doing my honours in English through Unisa, and finding it quite a challenge juggling coursework, a new job (even if it is only a part-time teaching position) and a husband!
I can’t believe that I waved goodbye to Ma a mere two years ago, and I’m already a synthetic Salena. Well, not quite. Salena doesn’t have to work or study. And at least we have a cleaner who comes in twice a week. Tilly worked for Jimmy’s parents for ten years before they died, and is a bizarre source of information about the human body, on topics that range from in-grown toenails to premature balding in women. She wanted to be a nurse but dropped out after a term because “our Jenna was in the oven”.
Tilly loves paging through our wedding album. Ma couldn’t come for the wedding: she’d had an operation on her varicose veins. I never knew she had varicose veins – I don’t think I’ve ever seen Ma’s legs. She sent Aunty the money for the ceremony and gave me a set of jewellery that Papa had bought her when they got married. Salena, her two boys and Rukshana came for the wedding, or rather weddings. Aunty arranged the nikah – red sari, orange hands, dripping borrowed-gold, food and people everywhere – and Jimmy organised the legal ceremony.
Jimmy loves the idea that now he belongs to a huge family. The cousins are seduced by his endless chatting and his questions and his interest in learning more about every person he meets. I think he might even talk his way into Ma’s heart if she can forgive him for not being a doctor.
Sometimes I wake up during the night and find Jimmy’s arms and legs wrapped around my body and I’m convinced he’s trying to kill me with his love. I’ve explained to him that while I shared a bed with Salena when I was little, as an adult I’ve only ever slept with a cat, and I like some space to breathe. Still, night after night I wake up clutched to his hairless chest, like I’m a human teddy bear. He’s terribly cheerful every morning, bringing me the bitter coffee he’s taught me to love while I pretend to be asleep, and many an evening he comes home with a gift. A book of love poems, a Russian doll in the shape of a cat, Belgian chocolates. I don’t have the heart to tell him that I hate love poems, the nesting doll makes me think of coffins, and I no longer have a sweet tooth now that I’m on the pill.
But one weekend he goes away on a business trip, and I can hardly wait until bedtime to stretch out luxuriously in the centre of the bed, relishing having it all to myself. Only I cannot sleep, and I find myself longing for his overheated presence.
Teacher’s Pests
TWO YEARS LATER I AM STILL WORKING AS A TEACHER’S assistant at a primary school ten minutes’ brisk walk from home. I have to clean up after the kids (seven-year-olds), pack away books, wash paint brushes, straighten chairs and desks. The kids seem to vomit a lot: I believe it has something to do with eating too much chips and
eggs fried in lard. I master the art of cleaning up vomit in three swift moves of a cloth while holding my breath to prevent the addition of my own undigested meal to the splodges on the floor.
They have no interest in the fairytales I try to read them. They ask me why Rapunzel didn’t call the coppers. Did Cinderella at least get pocket money for all the work she did? Could I get them the video next time? I make them run around the classroom whenever I am left alone in charge of them. It keeps them quiet for a few minutes. One of the kids has an asthma attack during an indoor jog and the parents complain, so they move me to an older group.
I prefer the eleven-year-olds. They’ve been in school since they were five but some of them have managed to avoid learning to read and write, which is an impressive feat of subterfuge after more than six years. I am assigned to teach two boys and a girl how to decode the mysteries of the alphabet, and at the end of the first week I believe that I would have a better chance of succeeding in this task with a cat.
I can’t teach them, but they teach me a great deal. About sex. Jimmy is impressed with my new knowledge. Education does broaden your horizons. I also learn to swear with true conviction. Jimmy is less impressed by this.
Finally we have a breakthrough when I walk into the girls’ toilets and come across several variations of the word “fuck” written on the back of a cubicle door, all bizarrely misspelt. When I return to my pupils, I ask them to brainstorm all the swear words they can think of and all the sex positions they can name. I write these down on three pieces of paper, one for each child, in big block letters. We begin to learn the alphabet based on words that would make Jimmy cringe.
Before long, my little group can read and write their favourite words. I am delirious with pride; it’s as satisfying as teaching Macbeth. We move on to words in their syllabus. Soon they can read at the level of eight-year-olds. The class teacher, Mrs Rutherford, an ancient thirty-five-year old with a permanent tic in her left cheek, is impressed with the improvement and asks me about my methods. I am vague and dismissive. They give me another group and a small increase.
Not a Fairytale Page 5
