Jimmy gets home-help, Spanish-accented Gregoria, whose voice sounds like she’s permanently on the verge of catching a heavy cold and who wears long dark dresses in a heavy fabric, with long sleeves, even in the Floridian heat, because she wanted to be a nun but her agnostic father wouldn’t allow it. Instead she has made a career out of caring for other people’s children. She says Nazma might be her last baby; she’s searching for a cloister that will accept her although she is approaching her fortieth birthday. Nazma likes her. She naps in a sling against her body for hours, and I am free to sleep, but find it impossible to do so. I’m jealous of Gregoria’s competence. But by the time Nazma turns a year old and Gregoria bakes her a gingerbread house birthday cake from scratch, I am prepared to bow to her domestic agility.
She takes control of the house and it preens under her attention. Even the taps sparkle in a way I never could get them to do. Gregoria hates crowds and goes shopping at midnight when the supermarket is near empty. I get used to her unpacking groceries in the early hours of the morning. She teaches Nazma to talk in English and Spanish. She takes all my favourite recipes and meticulously types them up and has them printed and bound into a book, protected by plastic sheets. Then she learns to cook them better than I ever could. Gradually the bits of my brain that Nazma has not turned to sludge reappear, and I go back to my neglected dissertation. Life is peaceful.
Fatherhood
She promised me her firstborn; I’d come to collect. I was happy, I was delighted, I was thrilled. I would have a child of my own to love and nurture, and protect. Some little being who would look up to me even if he outgrew me. I pictured us in front of the fire, him asleep in his crib, me smoking my little pipe, both of us content.
I expected her to kick up a fuss, and was surprised when she didn’t.
“Ah, it’s you. At last you’ve come for the child. Took your time, didn’t you?” She glanced irritably at her wristwatch. “Yes, it’s a girl. You said firstborn. You didn’t specify gender. I don’t suppose you have a wet-nurse yet? No? Well, that’s fine, I have one. This here is Sarah, and her little one, Mimi. What? Well of course they’ll have to go with you. She’s only a few days old, she’ll starve to death otherwise. Mimi? Yes, her too, she’s Sarah’s kid. Wet-nurses always have their own children, otherwise they wouldn’t be wet-nurses. Yes, the babies are noisy. No, you don’t get used to it. At least I haven’t.
“The smell? Just a bit of baby pooh. You’ll stop noticing it soon enough. Besides, she’s breastfed; the smell would be worse if she were on formula. Which reminds me: these three bags contain her nappies. The other ten have her clothes – mostly presents. I haven’t had time to sort them out, I thought you could do that. Then if you’ll look out the window— What’s that? Oh right, let me pick you up. My, you are a heavy fellow, aren’t you? Anyway, that lot downstairs are the toys.
“The crying? Colic. Should go away in three or four months, or so the baby magazines claim. Sarah? No, dear, she’s the wet-nurse, not the parent, you’ll have to deal with all the other aspects: the bathing, the putting to sleep, the entertaining. And of course Sarah doesn’t do the 3 am feed. She expresses breast milk the night before.
“Now, I’ve drawn up a schedule for each day of the week. Let’s begin with Monday. That’s your bowling night? Don’t be ridiculous. No, there’ll be none of that. You’ve got a child now: you need to be responsible. There’ll be no more movie nights, no book club, no AA meetings, no full-moon spell nights. Listen, you wanted the child, now you’ve got to live with your decision. You made me promise. A verbal contract. What? You don’t want the baby anymore? Well, I’m not sure if I do either.”
Burial
MY BREASTS HAVE BEEN FEELING STRANGE FOR A WHILE: warm, and the skin has changed, like they’re developing cellulite. At first I think it’s hormonal. Even though Nazma’s almost three years old, I imagine it is somehow linked to my pregnancy, or that I am pregnant again. I keep putting off seeing a doctor until the occasional twinge becomes pain.
Now I know. I have invasive breast cancer but it’s been caught in the first stage. I’ll need some form of surgery; a lumpectomy as the tumour is still small. They say I’ll need radiation therapy as well.
I phone Salena, across time zones, mountains and oceans, until I am in her bedroom, at midnight, her time. I tell her why I need her to visit me. She thinks I’m catastrophising. But when she finally believes me, I hear her unspoken fears, and this unleashes my terror, as though I’ve rubbed the magic lamp in which it was imprisoned. I imagine her cradling the phone under her ear while her fingers caress the phone’s cord, as though it were my one of my curls, and I’m comforted. She agrees to visit. I feel buoyant. Even though Jimmy has been wonderful, I need my sister.
Then Salena is with me. She holds my hand in the hospital’s corridors and she sits with me at night in the hospital’s muggy garden listening to the frogs. The doctors have asked me to stay on another day or two, like they’re hotel managers who can’t bear to let me, a favourite guest, end her vacation with them.
At night, after Jimmy has left the hospital and my spacious private room is covered in moonlight, she tells me stories of our daadi, who died a year after I was born.
I know my dead grandmother only by the shiny bangles my mother wears on her wrists, bangles Daadi left for Salena, but which my mother claimed as her own. The bangles were all that was left of my grandmother’s jewellery. The other pieces went missing mysteriously, according to Salena.
Salena says Daadi told Ma that one day she had put on all her jewellery in readiness for a wedding, but as she went outside a great black bird swooped out of the sky and ripped the jewellery off her fingers and throat. She said the bird had the face of a demon, but she recited her Quls and the bird grew smaller and smaller, until it turned to dust, along with her jewels.
She lost every piece except for the bangles on her wrists, which nothing, not even soap and water, not even magic, could get off, because she hadn’t taken them off since our great-grandmother, her mother-in-law, put them on her skinny bride-wrists.
Salena says Ma cut the bangles off the corpse of our grandmother, and the 22-carat gold was so soft, the knife slid through it like butter, slicing through each of the dozen bangles. Six from each arm. Ma had the bangles repaired the very next day, and then added them to her own heavy arms, already filled with jingly bracelets. The first time I saw an American Christmas tree, all garishly decorated, I was reminded of my mother – a Christmas tree in court shoes, too weighed down by decorations to ever move freely.
But there’s another story about how our granny’s missing jewellery went missing. It happened in a park.
It was an ugly council park, protected from the invasion of certain children by its metal green-linked fence and its WHITES ONLY signs. I can remember peering at the park from behind the fence, but I never dared go in. Of course Salena, with her fair skin, could pass, as could Daadi.
On the morning that Daadi’s jewellery went missing, it was a brilliantly sunny day. The unwelcome children gawked wistfully through the fence at the deserted black-tyre swings, and the park’s two adult occupants. The first was a plump, elderly woman, dressed in a gaudy scarlet sari and seated on a green park bench. The children recognised her. She was the motjie, Aunty Bilqis from Hanif Paruk General Dealers, the corner babbie shop on Albert Road. She snuck them homemade burfi, Sunrise toffees and Chappies bubblegum when her stout son left the café for his afternoon nap.
The second occupant, known only as Poison-Parkie, was the poor-white park keeper whose job it was to care for the grass and feed the goldfish which swam fatly in the murky waters of the park’s immense fishpond. The children hated him; he always chased after them with his spindly legs and his brown stick.
Poison-Parkie stopped weeding the perfect grass carpet when he noticed the woman. Milky skin. Straight hair. She must be white. But, still, she was wearing one of those funny dresses, and you could see the bare, fair, fleshy rolls of her
stomach. Sies! Now he recognised her. How dared she sit on his bench? Who did she think she was? Just because she could pass for white. He heard the children laughing behind him.
“Voetsek,” Poison-Parkie shouted at them and they ran off, shrieking.
He turned back to look at the woman. She was no longer sitting on the bench, but standing near the fishpond. He watched as she threw something into the water. It landed with a splash.
“Hey, you! Lady!” Poison-Parkie hated cleaning the slimy fishpond and now here was this bladdy non-white woman throwing things in the water.
Poison-Parkie marched towards her. Just as he opened his mouth to shout at her again, he saw her undo a red and yellow collar from her neck and drop it into the pond. He froze. Next, she poured the rings off her fingers into the willing, waiting water.
The old woman didn’t even look at him, just turned and walked away. She must be bladdy mad, he thought. He knew that babbie women wore real jewellery, not the fake stuff his wife bought from OK Bazaars in Adderley Street when they went shopping on Saturday mornings. It was like winning the jackpot. He’d make a fortune. Much more than the pennies he got when stupid courting couples threw their money into the pond on wasteful wishes.
Poison-Parkie was thigh-high in green water, trying to retrieve the jewellery with thirsty fingers. He had one gold ring, but the bigger piece, the necklace, was eluding him, drawing him down, further into the water. His head went under.
The children snuck in. Each to a designated target. A black swing. A red slide. A yellow seesaw.
In the pond that he had neglected for too long, Poison-Parkie’s feet slid out from under him, and his head knocked against the grey, concrete wall. Slimy green water turned ruby red, like the jewellery he would never reach. He heard the children’s giggles bubbling faintly in his ears, saw his world turn black.
Bilqis Paruk paused at the gate. Should she go back to get her jewellery? Keep it for her grandchildren, Salena or Faruk? No, she wouldn’t. She wanted to teach her son Hanif a lesson after he’d asked her for the trinkets to give to his wife, as though they were his due, as though she owed him anything. After all, what had she lost? Just a few worldly possessions, duniya things. She strolled out of the park, the children’s laughter following her home.
Of course, Hanif hit the roof when he couldn’t find his mother’s jewellery, but by then Bilqis had moved on.
I love Salena’s stories; I could listen to her for hours, but eventually I am free to go home. Nazma greets me at the door, lugging what looks like a bird cage behind her. Perched inside it is a giant lizard. Her birthday present from Gregoria. I pretend enthusiasm.
In my bedroom, I settle into my extra-sized bed with its view of the back garden, the pool and the lake beyond the fence. I’ve decided that what I need is a sacrifice to heal my sick body, and while I can’t bring myself to agree to an animal slaughter, I have the next best thing – a mink coat Jimmy bought in a moment of lavish forgetfulness. While I’m not exactly an animal activist, I am vegetarian, and I wouldn’t be caught dead in fur, not even fake fur. So I tell Salena we have to bury the coat in the garden as a means of atoning for my sins, real or imagined. Salena looks dubious but is prepared to indulge me.
I lounge back in one of the pool chairs and watch Salena dig. She’s chosen a spot near the fence, which separates the pool from the glossy man-made lake. Through the links in the fence, I can see three toads observing Salena’s progress, occasionally croaking and ribbeting encouragement.
I go into the kitchen to soak some bread for them. When I get back, Salena is nearly done with the digging. I surreptitiously push the bread through the fence. I don’t want the neighbours to report my transgression to the home owners’ association. Salena tells me to stop feeding the toads. She says I’m destroying the local ecosystem: they should be eating insects, not bleached white flour. Of course she’s right, but I feed them anyway.
The shallow grave is complete and I dig out the incense sticks which I burn every Thursday night, the way I was taught to do as a child. The smoke makes Salena cry. I lean against her for support, hold her hand, and we offer up a prayer for the souls of the dead minks. I wonder if they were Everglade minks. If so, then at least they’ve come home. The toads continue to croon, and in the encroaching dusk we can hear an alligator crying out for a mate.
From inside the house the smell of the potato samoosas Gregoria is frying wafts out to us, a subtle invitation to eat, to live, to pray. I hope she’s made dhania chutney too.
I swear the burial helps, because I go into remission.
Dhania Chutney
¼ cup lemon juice
¼ cup water
4 bunches dhania, washed and coarsely chopped
2 tsp fresh ginger, finely chopped
2 red chillies, chopped
1 tsp honey
¼ tsp black pepper
½ tsp salt
Combine the lemon juice, water and half a cup of dhania in a blender. Blend until pureed, and then add another half cup of dhania. Repeat until all the dhania has been pureed. Add the rest of the ingredients and blend until perfectly smooth. You could add more salt or honey if desired. You can eat it immediately or store it in the fridge for a while. Delicious with samoosas but also good on toast.
Waiting
IT’S NAZMA’S FIFTH BIRTHDAY, AND WE’VE DECIDED to come to Cape Town for an extended holiday. I can’t imagine moving back here forever, but I miss Salena. It’ll be fun to be in closer proximity, just for a few months. I even miss Ma. Sort of. Okay, I have grave doubts about staying in the same city as Ma, but she is older now. Maybe she’s mellowed.
We’ve been travelling almost twenty-four hours, and this dreary wait at Cape Town International is not endearing me to my sister. Salena must have forgotten we’re arriving today although she insisted on coming to fetch us now that she’s learning to drive. I’ve put Nazma back in her harness, and she’s barking at all the passers-by, while simultaneously chewing on the cookies she refuses to leave home without, and clutching the weird blonde doll Gregoria gave her as a birthday gift. For a woman who still occasionally makes noises about joining a nunnery, Gregoria has a strange taste in gifts. Last year she gave Nazma a Spiderman gun that oozed goo, which was an improvement on the previous year’s Komodo dragon. No matter what Jimmy says, I know he convinced her to get that creature.
I like missing Jimmy. I like the way he woos me over the phone and I adore the letters he writes me. I fall in love with him all over again after a long absence. When he’s around all the time he tends to get on my nerves. Even now, after all these years, he still wraps himself around me at night as if he’s tinfoil and I’m a piece of leftover pumpkin pie.
Departing Florida, I was subjected to another so-called random search at the airport. My Muslim surname must have triggered off the computer’s alarm bells. It’s not my fault; it’s my father’s surname. I should have taken Jimmy’s simple English last name, but I kept saying, “No way will I change my name! We’re getting married; he’s not adopting me.” See where my feminist principles have got me!
The flight has exhausted me and, thanks to Nazma, the dungarees I’m wearing are covered in chocolate and spilt coffee and coke. On flights before Nazma was born, I used to sit in a window seat, plug in my headphones, pop a sleeping pill and fall asleep over a book. Travelling with a small human who needs the toilet at thirty-minute intervals has changed flying forever.
I hope Salena gets here before Nazma asks for the toilet. We’ve got too much luggage to make a public bathroom trip anything but an ordeal. Surely Salena hasn’t forgotten about me. I am her only sister, after all. Maybe she’s had an accident. Maybe her car won’t start because she’s left the lights on. No, that’s something I would do, especially now that I have Nazma to distract me.
What am I going to do? I look up to see a strange woman smiling at me. I smile back automatically and my eyes slide over and past her until my brain catches up. Salena!
No way.
Hair short, with coppery highlights, styled, no longer in a neat bun, swishing across rosy cheeks and fringing shiny eyes. Straight away, I know. Salena’s in love!
Yours Faithfully
Dear Ms Hood
You don’t know me, but I’ve been watching you for years, since you were a little girl, all through high school when you had that rebellious phase with the biker boyfriend. Yes, I know there were many other boyfriends, but he scared me the most – I know you loved him. Then you left for college, and my heart broke. I thought you were lost to me forever. So imagine my delight when I heard that you’d returned, that you’d graduated as a vet. I am filled with pride at your accomplishment. I admire you so much.
I know I must sound like a common stalker, but I don’t have an altar to you in my lair, the walls of my home are not covered with photographs of you. I carry you in my heart and in my head. I wake each morning with your name on my lips, dripping like drool from my jaws. I know I’m risking ridicule with all these revelations, but my therapist says it is important that I tell you everything.
Yes, I have loved you from afar all these years, from the shadows of the woods. I first saw you one day when you were a little girl, taking a basket of goodies to your sick grandmother. My mouth watered at the sight of you. It was all I could do not to gobble you up right there and then, but I thought, Why not follow you and have your granny, too?
But by the time you got to your grandmother’s house, something in my consciousness had shifted. I knew I loved you, but that I did not have to consume you and your relations. I started therapy. I stopped chasing the three little pigs (that was part of my self-destructive youth). I became vegetarian. I noticed you always had your hair covered, and I wondered if you were Muslim. I spent years studying Islam in the hope that this would impress you.
Not a Fairytale Page 7
