Then her eyes are back on the desk, where there’s a pad of paper that says ‘Fabriano’, plus there’s this huge glossy book called Africa Explores that’s got these Benin bronzes of Portuguese soldiers on the dust jacket, as well as some sort of bird masks carved out of dark wood. Cat starts to flick through the book, which is quite fun, because it’s got a whole chapter on these kind of modern paintings that get sold in street markets like in Congo and Malawi and places, with people getting their shoes shined, or looking in a grocery shop with lots of tinned food in the window and Coca-Cola signs, and sexy-looking women wearing sort of batik cloths, and some of them have got speech bubbles above their heads with writing in French. Then there are all these kind of spiky sculpture things from Zimbabwe.
But what’s most amazing, Cat thinks, is this whole chapter where the tenant’s like put in a bookmark from a shop in Milan, and it’s all pictures of these incredible tall, tall, very thin people dancing, like in a kind of procession, all in a line, and some of them are looking even taller – like about four metres high – because they’re dancing on stilts. And they’ve all got these kind of red skirts that it says are made out of special hibiscus flowers, because the red colour is symbolic and everything. And these like mask things – well, like sort of weird tall headdresses and masks all in one that completely cover your face and there are lots of different kinds. They’re like birds or animals, or other things like hunters, or trees, or spirits and stuff, and the whole person is called ‘the mask’, not just the mask.
What it says, like under the photographs and in the text that she reads a bit of, is that it’s about special mask festivals that only happen about once every twelve years and it’s to do with these people who live up in the hills in Mali called the Dogon, that she’s never heard of before, but – worse luck – you have to be a man to be ‘a mask’ and the women aren’t ever allowed to see you like while you’re spending weeks in secret making the costumes and you only speak to each other in a special mask language called Sigi-so but mostly you don’t speak at all the whole time and it’s all to do with a story about how like long ago the spirits had these masks but a bird stole them and dropped them, but then this woman found them and put them on to frighten her husband and make him do what she wanted, but then an old woman told him where she’d hidden it all. Bitch! So now the mask-making and the dancing gets kept very secret until the dancers enter the village from the bush, except that mostly in Mali there’s getting to be less bush and more and more desert because of climate change, and the Dogon are really poor, but at least the dancing people come from high-up villages where it isn’t desert.
But shit, Cat thinks, like this would be just er-MAZ-ing as a subject to do her project on. I mean, wouldn’t it? And wouldn’t it be like sucks to Michelle, who’s started doing this really stupid project on Ndebele houses, that she thinks is so wonderful, but everyone’s done it about a million times before. Plus she can’t even draw to save her life.
And then Cat looks at her watch, and panics, and flees, pausing only to square up the book and grab her shoes, and, of course, lock the French windows, leaving everything just as it was. But for Cat, everything has changed. For one, she’s really excited about the project and she just can’t stop thinking about the book and about how she’s got to get her hands on it. And also how this weekend, she’s definitely – but definitely – going to do the hair dye and eyelash dye and everything. Definitely. Everything about her is going to be black. Even like her nail varnish and her lipstick. And her underwear. And Alan can eat his heart out, because she’s going to be so cool. Just like that Giacomo. Just like that Giacometti.
All through the weekend, Cat is making her plans. First of all, on Friday night, she looks on her computer to see if there’s stuff about the Dogon, and there’s loads of it, as it turns out, but nearly all of it’s rubbish. Still, she prints out some of it anyway, but, even when it isn’t rubbish, none of it is as good as what’s in the tenant’s book. Then, on Saturday morning, she goes to the Musgrave Centre, because, just maybe, they’ve got that same book in the library, but they haven’t. There isn’t really anything much about the Dogon, just lots about the Zulus, but she takes down some references from African art books and also some anthropology books, so she’ll be able write a bibliography, which is where you have to make this list at the end of your project of all the other books you’ve pretended to have read.
To tell you the truth, Cat’s quite relieved they haven’t got the book – the book – because, for one, it’ll mean no one else in her class is going to get hold of it, and another thing is that, although it’s like a really scary idea, it’s kind of magic, the idea of being in there in the annexe, sitting at the beautiful tenant’s silver desk for hours, and with all his beautiful clothes and things around you, and being able to work from his very own book without him even knowing. Or her mom, or anyone. Like just to be bunking off school and sneaking in there day after day for a whole week. So cool.
But first of all she’s just got to have the black hair and the black clothes and all. That’s for sure, so that’s her second reason for being in the Musgrave Centre that Saturday. She’s got to go to the pharmacy and check out all the dyes. So she goes and gets this box of eyelash dye that says it’ll do eyebrows as well, and then she goes to the shelves with all the hair dyes, only these are more difficult because there are so many, so she reckons she might as well just buy the cheapest. She gets two of these little sachet things with like dotted lines on them where you have to cut open the corners with scissors, and then she goes home.
She does the eyelash dye and the eyebrows in her bedroom that same day, with the door bolted, and it works really well, even though she’s terrified all through that she’s going to get this stinging stuff in her eyes, so she’s really careful. You have to put these pads under your eyes first of all, and then you use two separate lotions from these two tiny tubes, one after the other, and then you have to wait for about fifteen minutes before you sponge it all off. But, hey! When she’s finished it all looks so fab. Like even without any eyeliner or mascara or anything, her eyes look about twice as big as normal and her lashes are really long, like about nearly a centimetre, which she’s never even noticed before, because they were always so weedy and pale. Anyway, she puts on black mascara, just to make her eyelashes look really thick right to the ends, and she puts black eyeliner on her lids as well.
Then she goes downstairs, where her mom doesn’t even seem to notice, except that she gives Cat a kind of smuggy-looking smile, but it’s kind of pleased-ish in a vague sort of way, and anyway, at least it’s not that Oh-God-you-poor-social-cripple look that she’s been doing recently.
She just says, ‘You look so nice, Cattie-pie,’ but then she starts being chatty, just when you want to look in the fridge. Finally she says, ‘But I must go and work, sweetheart. Work-work-work.’ And then she’s like babbling about her ‘deadline’. ‘I’ve got corrections to do on my book,’ she says. ‘And I’ll not get much done all Monday, because Josh and I are planning a hookey day. We’re off to one of the lunchtime jazz concerts up at the uni, first of all, because there was no music department – believe it or not – when Josh was a student there, way back. Then, if there’s time, we’ll head out and do a stretch of the “Midlands Meander”, just as an eye-opener for him. Everything is so changed since he was last here. Shall we bring you back anything, Cattie-pie? Are you OK? Please tell me if I’m neglecting you. All right?’
‘It’s fine,’ Cat says. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Good,’ she says. ‘There’s a really nice baked-aubergine thing in the fridge if you’re hungry. How’s the art project, by the way? Have you decided on anything?’
‘It’s fine,’ Cat says, gritting her teeth. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘OK, sweetheart,’ her mom says. ‘I know you’ll do something good.’ And, finally – finally – like after taking nearly for ever, she goes tripping back upstairs.
And all
the time Cat’s thinking, So, OK, you’re not the only one who’s having a hookey day, smart-arse. You and your dear-old-midget-friend-from-way-back. Ha! Cat’s going to tell her dad all about the midget one of these days, except maybe they’re like already getting divorced? Else why isn’t he back from bloody Addis Ababa, or Accra, or wherever? And then she thinks, Hey, if they’re splitting up, maybe her dad’ll take her to Mali? Just him and her. Then she goes to the fridge and she pulls out this like whole family-size foil tray of tiramisu from the Italian deli that her mom’s put right at the back behind the snot-green aubergine thing, and she eats it standing up until she starts to feel really sick. And then she makes a dash for the downstairs lav.
So, anyway. First thing after the weekend, Cat’s going to do the hair dye and then she’s going to make a start on the tenant’s book. So she watches until the tenant goes out and then she goes down the garden, all in her school uniform. That’s after she’s given her mother this bullshit about how she’s decided to start using her bike for school, which is like kept in the garage, down the bottom.
So then she has to wait for her mom and the midget to go out as well, which is quite early, and after that she goes back and collects up the sachets and a pair of scissors and two clean towels from the linen cupboard and she gets into the shower, where, first of all, she washes her hair, ordinarywise, like it says on the instructions. Then she snips the corner of one of the sachets, but it like spills all over her hands and goes under her nails and everything, because it’s so much more runny than she expected. Anyway, she quickly squeezes it all on to her hair, which she’s forgotten to towel dry, so it starts dripping into her eyes and on to the floor of the shower, even before she’s got round to snipping open the second one. Shit. Anyway, she grabs one of the towels and wraps it round her head to stop the drips and then she uses the other one to scrub all the black off the shower, which, thank God, comes off right away, only the towel’s pretty buggered, but so what? She can just throw it away – and the other one as well, nobody will notice. Then she quickly does the same routine, only with the other sachet, and she puts the towel back on her head.
But then, when she’s trying to comb it all through, she can see she’s got these kind of horrible runnels all down her forehead and round her ears and that, so she doesn’t even bother to rinse her hair, like it says on the sachet. She just picks up the two revolting towels and she dashes out to lock herself in her bedroom, where she sits down at the dressing table and stares at herself. Shit. Her hair’s gone this kind of horrible charcoal matt colour, with her scalp all full of charcoal blotches, and her forehead’s got these like hideous charcoal streaks, like dirty rainwater, that won’t come off.
So she’s just sitting there shivering and staring at herself and it’s all so disappointing that she starts to cry. Then she thinks – of course – to phone her Aunt Lettie on her cell phone, because Lettie will be like just about ready to leave her office for home right now, and she won’t have picked up her kids yet. So, anyway, all through the phone call she’s crying into the phone like mad, but Lettie is just great about the whole thing and she talks to Cat in this like joky, half-Afrikaans lingo, just to cheer her up.
‘Ach, cookie, moenie worry nie,’ she says. ‘Auntie’s going to fix it for her favourite niece, isn’t it? I’m coming to get you now-now. Just you put on a doek over your head, all right? Just in case I faint. Liewe Hemel! Or maybe a paper bag? Ach sies, I’m only joking. But don’t you know about how gentlemen always prefer blondes? OK. I’m on to my hairdresser for you right now. Right now, cookie.’
So then, about fifteen minutes later, Lettie’s there, hooting, in her four-by-four and they drive all the way to Westville, near where Lettie lives, and she drops Cat at this hairdresser’s, where all three of them, even Cat, have a bit of a laugh about the ugly charcoal hair, because the hairdresser says it’s no worries, she can fix it so that it’ll look really nice.
Then Lettie goes off to get some novels for her book club from Exclusive Books at the Pavilion, and after that she goes to collect her kids from school, while the hairdresser is taking about two hours to do this amazing hair-dye job on Cat’s head, with special brushes and rubber spatulas and lots of different little plastic bowls. Because as well as the dyeing she first gives Cat this fantastic haircut, like all sort of feathery, so when it’s all finished, it’s like a bit like Meg Ryan, only black, of course – really black-black and shiny – and she’s even managed to get off most of the charcoal runnels, but she also calls over the in-house beautician, who shows Cat how to use this like concealer-stick thing and she does a manicure and she paints Cat’s fingernails kind of pearly purple-black while she chats to her about conditioners and moisturisers and about how Cat should drink three litres of spring water a day, instead of all the Diet Coke, and about not eating sugary food. She tells Cat she’s really lucky to have such beautiful skin at her age, with no enlarged pores or spots or anything, and she says to keep it that way Cat should make smoothies for breakfast with Cape raspberries and a banana and some grape juice, and just to get her ma to buy her a stick blender if she hasn’t already got one.
‘Go well, now,’ she says, and she gives Cat this little bag of like sample lotions and gels to play with at home.
So then, when Lettie comes back with all the cousins, who are much younger than Cat, because Lettie’s the baby of her family, just like Cat is, and she was the last to get married, they all jump up and down and shriek with excitement while Lettie goes and pays this massive bill.
Then she says, ‘So now we better go and get madam here some sexy new clothes to go with the new hair, OK?’
Lettie’s really fun to shop with, because she’s like a seriously big spender and she just tells the store’s ‘personal shopper’ to gather up mounds of stuff for them. Then she gets both of them these plunging black lacy bras and special Lycra magic pants that make them look really skinny and the underwear all says ‘Le Bourget’ on the labels. Plus they buy Cat these black Armani jeans and really nice black T-shirts.
And in the changing room Lettie pats her bum cheeks and she says, ‘You always had a bum like me, Cat, and now it’s like you’ve got someone else’s bum. A nice little film star’s bum, maybe? Cookie, you look like straight from Bollywood, no kidding.’
And on the way back to Cat’s house, Lettie tells all her kids, when they ask about why everything’s got to be black, that Cat’s going to a funeral, that’s why.
‘She’s going to a witch’s funeral tomorrow,’ Lettie says.
‘Is it Meg’s funeral from Meg and Mog?’ says the youngest one anxiously.
‘Ach no, Snoekie,’ Lettie says. ‘Ach sies. As if Meg could ever die, my baby.’
She even comes into the house when she drops Cat back, and Cat’s mom is there, worse luck, having a cup of tea with the midget.
‘Hi there, Hattie,’ she says. ‘Now look, I don’t know where your Cat’s gone, but I found this one on my way home. She’s like maybe one of those cute Muslim girls from Mayville?’
And because her mom’s in such a good mood from having the midget with her, she just laughs and says, ‘Hey, Cattie-pie, you look really great! Gosh! Wow!’ And that’s it. She doesn’t even ask about school.
School. Cat’s not been anywhere near her school all week and now it’s Friday. She’s been getting into her school uniform and sneaking down to the annexe every morning with the new jeans and one of the T-shirts in her schoolbag. Then she changes in the shed before she goes to sit at the tenant’s desk. Giacomo’s desk. Because having the black hair and the new black gear and all is making her feel much more poised about what she’s doing and she’s been working really hard. Much more than she’d ever have done at school.
So far she’s done six really nice drawings on lovely thick cartridge paper, because she’s always been good at drawing. She’s done the stork mask and the stilt mask and the tree mask as well as the healer mask with the four figurines on the headdress and the hunter mask
and the antelope. And she’s made lots of notes as well. But, even so, she’s kind of known all along that, come Friday afternoon, she’s going to have to sneak out the book and photocopy some of the colour pictures, and also some of the text, because she’s running out of time.
So, anyway, she’s got it all worked out, because Friday is when the tenant stays out about an hour later than usual, and the plan is, she’ll sneak in early afternoon at about five past two, after she’s seen him go. That’s because he usually comes back between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. for some lunch. So she’s tipped everything out of her A3 art portfolio and taken it with her to the shed to put the book in because, that way, if her mum sees her coming back with it, she won’t start smelling a rat. Anyway, it’ll be quite easy to stick the book in the portfolio, although it is quite big and heavy. Well, it kind of weighs like a ton of bricks, to tell you the truth.
So she takes the bus one stop to the photocopy place in the Musgrave Centre, which is a bit of a piss-off, because if her dad was there she would be able to get him to scan it for her, but as it is she doesn’t yet know how to do it. And like last time she wanted to scan something that slimy Alan insisted on doing it for her. Anyway, when she gets there to the photocopy shop, they tell her she’ll have to come back in an hour – and that’s after this guy gives her a whole lot of shit about copyright and stuff, like what’s she going to use it for etc, but eventually this manager girl comes up and says for God’s sake, it’s only for a school project, so they agree to do it.
Sex and Stravinsky Page 15
