Appa doesn’t enjoy cuddling me, but he likes cuddling my teacher at Humpty Dumpty’s. He thinks I don’t know. When she looks at him, her eyes are all gooey like in the cartoons. Appa doesn’t get all gooey. He’s got lots of ladies who like him. Once he saw some ladies on the side of the road and he stopped to say hello. Their boobs were popping out, and they had long silky legs and very high shoes. They looked in the window. One of them was chewing gum. Mom says chewing gum is not for children because they can choke. The ladies had shiny bits of gold in their smiles. I liked their make-up. It was pretty, like in the movies.
I also said hello.
One of the pretty ladies’ faces changed.
“What kind of a jerk are you?” she said. “With kids in the […] car?”
She said a bad word, and I wasn’t “kids”. There’s just one of me.
“Calm down, love. I forgot she was here.”
So that hurt my feelings. I was driving with him all afternoon telling him my news about the plastic containers we need for collecting buttons, and Melanie’s new doll that has hair that really grows. Also, I was telling him that “dog” begins with “d” and rhymes with “frog”. I know all about rhyming, you know. 1 = fun.
“Well, I have kids and I don’t bring them out here, mister. Go home to your wife.”
Appa drove away and then he looked at me.
“Your mother can’t even fetch you from school,” he said. “Doesn’t she know how busy I am? Now, don’t tell Mom about this. It’s just our little secret, okay?”
Years ago, when I was actually 3, I slept in the same room as Mom and Appa in the cottage. But then I heard Mom saying, “No, no, no.” They were playing wrestling. Appa was on top of Mom and she pushed him back so he hit his head on the wall and then he said a naughty word and smacked Mom on the face. She cried very quietly but then I got out of my bed to hug her and tell her I was awake.
“I love you, Mom,” I said. “Do you know how much I love you?”
Mom wiped her tears and smiled for me, but it didn’t look like a real smile because there was blood coming from her lip. She said, “I love you too, poppet.”
Appa said nothing. He lay back on the bed and switched off the light. He grunted like a piggy pig. Mom took me outside and we looked at the moon. She smoked a cigarette, but I didn’t tell Appa. When we got back to the cottage, he was snoring. I don’t like that because he sounds like a train going through a long tunnel.
I didn’t fall asleep the whole night. Seriously. Children can do that, you know. I got up in the morning and I wasn’t even a tiny bit tired. I don’t know why I always have to go to bed so early.
I’m not allowed to sleep in the cottage any more. Asmita Ayaa made up a pink room for me in the house. Mom and Appa said I needed my own space.
These are the things in my bedroom:
1. Bookshelf with 5 shelves
2. Bed
3. Cupboard
4. Fairy lamp
5. Bedside table
6. Toy box
7. Art table
8. Blackboard with photos stuck on
9. Kiddies chair (purple)
10. 13 stars on the ceiling
I like my room, but Mom can’t understand why we can’t get our own flat where we can all be together in the same building. She doesn’t actually mean all of us, because she wants to leave Asmita Ayaa and my grandfather Kandasamy Ajah behind, and be just 3:
1 = Mom
2 = Appa
3 = me
Appa gets cross when she says this, because why waste money when we have a perfectly good place to live and we’re all very comfortable? Money doesn’t grow on trees, and why doesn’t she bring in some cash of her own and stop lying in bed feeling sorry for herself? Then Mom says she’s 24 and married 5 years and we can’t be tied to Appa’s parents forever. Then Appa says she knew what he was like when she married him, and after 5 years she still doesn’t make a decent curry.
I like Mom’s curry.
Some days are very bad. Every day when I wake up, I always run to the cottage to say good morning, but sometimes Mom doesn’t even open her eyes. I know she’s not dead, because I can see her breathing with her lungs. Her lungs are inside her body getting rid of the bad air and giving her blood beautiful fresh oxygen.
Appa is normally gone when I wake up, but sometimes he has breakfast with my grandparents and me. When I don’t have Humpty Dumpty’s on Saturdays and Sundays and holiday time, I like to crawl into bed with Mom. She moves over without waking, but I can hear her sigh. Moving over for me is good. I can hug Mom as much as I want to, even if she doesn’t hug me back.
Thea: A mother’s sense
In jail I have a lot of time to think, and I don’t always have control over where my mind wanders. A lot of the time, and despite myself, I think about Clay: how much I loved him, the mistakes I made.
So many mistakes! My daughters. My little boy, Joe.
But my thoughts aren’t always completely clear. I think through gauze, through filters. Being locked away minute after minute, second after second (for that’s how slowly time passes) has made me realise that I’ve spent my whole life in a fog. Some days it’s like parting a thick black curtain in front of me, and just when I manage to open it and see a little light, the curtain falls closed again and I’m left in the dark.
Most people want to know where this all started, and I sometimes wonder that too. Perhaps it began the day I was conceived. I wasn’t planned, nor even a wanted baby. My birth mother came from Glencairn, near Fish Hoek. Mother said I inherited my high cheekbones from her, and my breasts. The beauty spot on the right side of my face just above my top lip, the one Mother said I would tempt a man with, and my eyes – one hazel, one a blue-grey – are apparently mine alone.
But how would Mother know really? She used to tell me she only ever saw my birth mother once.
My parents adopted me when I was six weeks old. I swear I can remember my time in the womb. A hostile place, churning with bitterness and fear. At the age of sixteen, my birth mother didn’t want me. A therapist once told me that even as a foetus I must have felt the intensity of her rejection. I’ve spent a lifetime seeking approval, and after what I’ve done, I’ll never get it.
Once my dad told me that my birth mother called me Sofia. When I was adopted, our maid’s name was Sophie, so that had to change – quickly. I’m not sure if I’ll ever grow into Thea. Sofia seems so soft and pliant, with just the right bit of haughtiness and disdain. I wish I was Sofia. I’m not Thea, not Sofia, but something vague and impossibly in between.
I had a brother once. Robbie. He was three years older than me. He was my parents’ genuine flesh and blood: my mother’s blue eyes, my dad’s blonde hair, my paternal grandfather’s mannerisms. I remember how Robbie used to stick his tongue out the side of his mouth as he cut paper shapes at the kitchen table. Same as Gramps. Robbie was kind, and protective. Once he hid me under the stairs while we waited for Mother to calm down because I’d thrown wet toilet paper onto the ceilings down the passage – huge globules of loo roll stuck fast. When Mother started breathing again, Robbie told her that he’d done it as an experiment. And in Mother’s eyes, Robbie could do no wrong.