I race up the driveway to Gemima’s room at the back. She’s in bed, propped up on some pillows, and she’s wearing my mother’s old dressing gown. The wireless my father gave her for Christmas is playing one of her music programmes. She opens her eyes when I throw myself on her. She smells of Lifebuoy soap and Vicks VapoRub.
“Go and soak your shirt in some milk and do your homework.” She pats my back. “Those stains won’t come out on their own.”
I glance down at the blue-stained cuffs and the ink on my hands. My school won’t let us use Bics or fountain pens, only the messy old dipping pens. Radiant Blue and I are deadly enemies. Gemima holds a handkerchief to her mouth as she coughs. It’s speckled red.
“Lucy’s been looking after me nicely all day. Like an angel. When the doctor gets home from work he’ll fix me up. Go on, I need to rest.”
I leave Gemima and fetch a book from my father’s study. Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary, his birthday present to me last year. I page through, searching for blood in the mucus – hemoptysis. Gemima either has tuberculosis or pneumonia. Dorland’s can’t decide.
I get my rope from my bedroom and skip up and down the street until the sweat makes me itchy under my pigtails. I toss my rope on the crazy paving and go next door to Benny. We don’t have a wall between our two houses, and I’ll sneak in the front door. Maybe I’ll surprise Benny. Scare the pants off him. But he’s already lying on the front lawn.
“First touch, Scumbucket.” I punch him on the shoulder. He’s got a pair of binoculars around his neck and he’s sucking something.
“Gimmee!” I snap my fingers at him and he passes me the paper bag. I take a black ball out of the bag. “So what colour’s your nigger ball?”
“Ag man, Mags. I’ve told you not to say that word.”
“Ball. Ball. Ball. Ball.” I chant and leap over him. Jump back. Over again.
Benny catches my foot as I jump and I topple onto the grass. “Not that word. Jislaaik, Mags, why do you always have to be so aggravating?”
We lie on the grass, sucking in silence, trying not to bite. Our tongues change colour, from green to pink, then white.
Waiting.
I’m waiting for my father to come home and fix Gemima. Benny’s waiting for his father to come back from his architect office in town. He waits for him most evenings, checking the pavement with his binoculars. The 15b Sandringham drops Mr Schaumbacher off in Louis Botha Avenue, and it’s a five-minute walk home. When Benny sees him, briefcase in hand, he runs to meet him.
If Benny doesn’t get sight of him by five-thirty, he gets fidgety. It’s already long past that. His freckles are smeared across his white face like he’s been splashing in a mud puddle.
“Any sign of your dad? I wonder if he missed the bus.” Mrs Schaumbacher switches on the stoep lights, settles a tray with two glasses of Fortris on the grass, and glances at her wrist. “It’s nearly ten past six. He’s not leaving much length for a hem.”
Like my mother, Mrs Schaumbacher is a keen seamstress. So she often talks like this. Benny and I work out what she means, then try to copy it. “His bobbin is running short of thread,” I say. But Benny’s not in the mood.
Mrs Schaumbacher chews the colour off her lips and peers across the low privet at a lime-green Beetle parked under a street lamp across the road. “There’s three of them today. Not just the usual two.” She gives a jerky wave. “Yes, I know you’re there.”
“You got visitors?” I look at the car.
She doesn’t reply, just shakes her head and sighs.
At the sound of an engine I leap up. My father’s black Chevy is pulling into the driveway. “See you later, alligator.” I punch Benny on the shoulder. “Last touch.” I run off home.
My father gets out of the car and reaches onto the back seat for his hat, his jacket and bag. He’s not alone.
“You better get home fast, Mr Schaumbacher. Benny’s having an absolute conniption.”
“A conniption indeed.” Mr Schaumbacher gives a faint smile, tugs at his beard, and checks his watch. “No, I just made it.” He stares up the road at the green car outside his house and watches as it goes off. “Thanks Doc, I would have been late if you hadn’t picked me up in the main road. You saved my hide.”
I drag my father round the back of the house. He must come and fix Gemima.
In the evening, after supper, I slip outside to the back room. The light bulb hanging from the ceiling is on, and it swings when I open the door. The shadows make my father’s face look old. He’s sitting on a chair next to the bed, a newspaper on his knees. He lifts a finger to his lips.
“Go to bed, she’ll be fine.”
Gemima is lying as still as someone playing a game of statues.
“Are you sure? Is it the tuberculosis?”
“It’s the same thing she had last year, Mags. Pneumonia,” he says. “I’ll make her better. I promise.”
I shift the newspaper and plonk myself on my father’s lap. I breathe in his lovely smell: English Leather, Ransom Select cigarettes and Brylcreem. He lets me read the comic strips. Blondie and Donald Duck are my favourites, but my father is mad for Doctor Kildare. I suppose it’s because he’s also a doctor, although my father doesn’t work in the criminal underworld.
I rest my head on my father’s shoulder as he reads the news stories out loud to me, his voice low and steady. The dominees are up in arms about the length of ladies’ dresses. The short skirts from overseas are the cause of the drought in the Northern Transvaal. My father gives a funny laugh, the one he makes when he’s annoyed. He says the dominees are a bunch of verkrampte old fools. He reads more stories, until I don’t hear his voice any more.
When I wake up, the winter sun streaming through my window, I’m lying under my bedspread. If Gemima finds me like this she’ll hit the roof. She always makes me fold the candlewick bedcover and put it on the chair before I get into bed.
Mima! I leap out of bed and slide down the wooden bannister because Gemima isn’t there to shout at me. I rush outside without my slippers on.
My father is still sitting on the chair, the newspaper at his feet. I stand at his side for a while and watch Gemima sleep. Later, I cook the Jungle Oats. While my father eats, I fry him some bacon and eggs sunny side up, the way Gemima does it. After breakfast he checks on Gemima. It makes him late for work.
He comes home early and sits with Gemima through another long night. Until he chases that tokoloshe back to hell.
JENNA
I stand outside the gate of 24 Pembroke Street. What’s left of the intercom is hanging from the wall so I can’t buzz the house to tell Aunt C-C I’m here.
The dog next door barks, throwing itself at the metal fence as a Neighbourhood Watch guy strolls towards me. He opens his notebook and whips out a pencil. A fifteen-year-old girl in school uniform loitering outside a house. Definitely suspicious. He watches as I take my phone out and make a call.
Aunt C-C eventually picks up. “But you’re early. I said three o’ clock.” She clucks. “Well, all right then. Just give me a moment, I have to come downstairs to open up.”
Minutes later, I hear a click and push open the gate. The gravel driveway takes me to the front door of a doublestorey house. Water drips from gutters rusted and choked with leaves. Paint peels in damp spots on mottled walls. Potential buyers wouldn’t need Holly to point out the flaws.
I skirt a puddle on the stoep and reach the front door. Aunt C-C stands there, a shadowy shape in the doorway. Holly hasn’t kept any recent photographs,