The Choice
Between Us
Edyth Bulbring
Tafelberg
For Mike
MARGARET
24 Pembroke Street,
Sydenham,
Johannesburg.
17 May 1963
My name is Margaret Beatrice Channing-Court and I am nine years old. I would like to be your pen pal. My hobbies are reading and collecting stamps, and I am a Brownie. I am trying for my sewing badge next week. Hold thumbs.
My finger rests on the page as I stop writing. “I can smell you, Benny Scumbucket. Don’t even think about creeping up on me.” I sit back, flip the page over, and twist the cap of the fountain pen. I wait for him to show himself.
Benny breaks the silence. He breathes out through his nose, making a whistling noise. “Ag, no man, Mags. How do you always do that? I don’t stink. And you must stop calling me Scumbucket.”
I turn around and give him my bored face, making one eye squiff. Benny crouches on his knees behind my chair, ready to pounce. He’s all red in the face and his lip lifts in a snarl. My mother says Benny’s got a harelip and it’s rude to stare. I’m used to it now and most times I hardly notice.
I don’t call him Hairy-lip or Fang. I also never say: “Eat with your mouth closed.” Or, “If you make that ugly face the wind will change and you’ll stay like that for ever. Ag, shame, too late, hey?”
Other children say things like this to him all the time and think it’s funny. I just call him Scumbucket. He whines about it but I know he secretly likes it.
“What you doing?” He gets up off the floor and wanders around the room, fiddling with the things on the shelves. He can never keep still, always fidgeting.
“None of your beeswax.” I’m not going to tell Benny about my new pen pal hobby. If he knew, he’d copy me and beat my stamp collection. I’ve already written seven letters. Fingers crossed, in a few weeks’ time, I’ll be getting replies from places like Sweden, Australia and England.
I’ll use the kettle to steam the stamps off the envelopes, and then stick them in my album. Benny uses special sticky tape because he says glue damages the stamps and I won’t be able to sell mine one day. I don’t care, I’ve got more stamps than him.
“Out of your daddy’s study. Out of here.”
The annoying voice belongs to Gemima. My mother says everyone has a cross to bear. The cross my mother bears is her poor health, mine is Gemima. She’s my nanny and I’ve known her since the day I was born at the Marymount Hospital nine years and three months ago. I came early. Gemima says I couldn’t wait to get out into the world and start causing trouble.
I spent the first couple of years of my life strapped tight to Gemima’s back with an old towel my mother gave her because it was too shabby for our bathrooms. As soon as Gemima put me down, I’d start crying and she couldn’t get the housework done. For twenty-four months, my face was squashed against her. Awake, I stared up at her doek.
I didn’t start walking until I was two, and never learnt to crawl. I just pulled myself across the floor on my bottom. My father says children who don’t crawl have learning difficulties at school. I’m terrible at sums. I blame Gemima.
The first word I said was “Mima”. I wish I hadn’t because it made Gemima as pleased as punch. She was forever telling the other nannies this story. But she told my mother my first word was Mama, which sounds like Mima.
If she’d told my mother the truth, it might have hurt her feelings. Mothers can be so sensitive. Mine spends a lot of time in her bedroom with the curtains closed because she suffers from ghastly headaches. When she feels better, she sews like a maniac until her head explodes. I’ve got clothes for Africa.
“Come on, outside with you! Your daddy will be home soon.”
Gemima shoos us out of the study, her fingers flapping at the back of our legs. She shuts the door behind us. “Supper will be ready just now, so don’t you dare go near that loquat tree.”
Benny and I go out into the garden and head straight for the tree. We stuff our faces until we each have a fistful of pips. I make sure we’ve got the same amount. Benny wants to go first, but it has to be fair.
With a tap on my chest, I begin: “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, catch a …”
Benny grabs my finger. “Stop. My mom doesn’t like it when you say that word.” He bends my finger back. “Anyway, you know when you start with yourself I’m always out. So just go, okay?”
We stand apart and take turns, three goes each, spitting pips at each other. Every time I score a hit, I take one step forward. When I miss, I take one step back.
The sky is red. Red in the night is a sailor’s delight. Red in the morning, a sailor’s warning. Johannesburg is a million miles from the sea so we don’t have sailors, just mine dumps. In a few minutes, the orange sun will slip down behind the koppie and the street lights will flicker on.
By five o’ clock, some of the nannies are on their way home to the location. Not Gemima. She stays in the room outside our house in the back garden just to torment me, I know. Even though she says her home is too far away. It’s on my Uncle Frank’s farm in Natal.
“Fine, you win,” says Benny. “What do you want to play next?” He tosses his pips on the ground and spits one out of the side of his mouth.
It’s my turn to decide. Yesterday it was Benny’s. We played hide and seek. I went first, and hid above the cupboard in my bedroom. I fell asleep and only woke up when Gemima came to put the washing away. She said Benny went home and swore he wouldn’t play with me any more. He’s forever saying he’ll never, ever, ever play with me again – but then who else would play with him?
I pretend to think, but I already know what I want to play. “Tok-tokkie. You can go first.”
I make a smile as sweet as golden syrup. Benny’s a cowardy custard and he never wants to go first.
His face flushes and he kicks a pine cone across the lawn through the spray of the sprinkler. “I’m not allowed. If I get caught again my mom’s going to punish me.”
Mrs Schaumbacher doesn’t believe in beatings or sending children to bed without supper. When she punishes Benny, he isn’t allowed to read his comics or listen to his programmes on Springbok Radio. I’d take the sjambok any day.
Benny’s father goes away a lot, for months sometimes, so Benny’s mother says she has to be two parents in one. She’s being a dad when she punishes Benny. If she’s not strict with him he’ll go to the dogs. When she comforts him at night because he’s scared of the bogeyman, she’s being a mom. It must be jolly confusing trying to be two parents.
“We won’t get caught. Come on, man, don’t be a drip.”
Benny nods. “But nickies not on.”
“Scaredy-cat, catch a rat. Put it in your Sunday hat.”
His face twists. Sometimes he gets so cross with me he just goes home. It’s no fun playing tok-tokkie on my own.
“Fine, I’ll go first.” I give him a smile full of teeth to make him nice again.
Gemima comes across the lawn towards us, dodging the sprinkler. She’s tied her doek neatly, and she’s wearing a clean apron over her pink uniform. “I’m just going over the road to Sophie, I’ll be back now-now. You two play nicely here.” She tucks her church sewing bag under her arm and walks a few steps. She turns and wags her finger at me. “Quietly, hey. Your mummy’s head is worse today.”
Sophie is also a nanny, and she’s got a room at the back of the house across the road. They belong to the same church. Methodical Methodists, that’s what my father calls them. Gemima goes to church every Sunday after clearing away the breakfast