She takes a drag and whispers, “Thanks,” as she exhales. Many people might have missed that, but I’m tuned in to her shrunken voice.
Slowly, she lowers herself onto the bed. The hair is no different from usual, but “nice hair” is an easy kind of thing to say when you’re searching for something, and it’s not as if she’s looking bad. I’m not lying this time. I could have said “nice outfit”, but that would have highlighted the “could have been a better fit” part, and my mother has always been sensitive about the weight that has apparently clung to her like gum to a shaggy carpet from the time she was expecting me.
I shouldn’t be so harsh. People can still recognise where Beth got her fine features. My mother’s are just a bit less edgy. I carry on with the make-up, and my mother blows little gusts at her nails. I’ve already lined both eyes twice. She sits staring at the Tretchikoff print on the wall, her red nails screaming at the pink Biggie Best duvet cover.
She gets up as slowly as she’d lain down. I take her place on the bed and watch as she fills the doorframe. I’m starting to feel weak. It’s been nil per mouth since breakfast. Some days I can do that, but those are the really good days.
I can almost always up my energy by having some coffee, so I go to the kitchen. As I stir the Frisco, the bitter, plastic aroma filters up towards me. It comes to mind that this is exactly what my pee will smell like in an hour or so. This chemical nothingness will rush through my veins, punch some life into me, probably leave a little plastic dust in my kidneys, and come out the other side smelling exactly the same as when it went in. It’s amazing what people are prepared to put into their bodies.
“What’s this?”
It’s Beth, interrupting my fantasy of the urinary tract. She’s pointing at the shawl, her wet hair stuffed into a pink Glodina turban.
“Was cold,” I say, looking at the teaspoon I’m whizzing around the mug.
“Hmm,” she arches a brow and gives me a quick once-over. She keeps her gaze on me as she goes to the fridge to get herself a glass of juice.
“Lily,” she sighs, “if you’re the eldest, why do I always have to check up on you?”
Beth thinks it’s her job to make sure the whole family is OK. Whatever that might be.
“You know, those colours won’t work. Tonight’s a big deal. There’ll be lots of photos. You should lose the gypsy thing.”
This is so typical of my sister. This is who she is. It’s her habit to inspect and reinspect the minutiae. She sinks her teeth into a tennis ballsized apple, which makes an echoing crunch.
“Thanks for the tip,” I reply, pinging my teaspoon on the side of the mug and rinsing it under the tap.
“No ways, your nails!” Her mouth hangs open for a second. My nails. I chew them up like you won’t believe. Apparently that’s not something that photographs well. I must admit, they are worse than usual and I’ve painted the little stubs red, hoping to improve things. Instead, I look like I’ve killed something. I ignore Beth, down my coffee in five gulps as usual, and head for the bathroom.
My scale is the hardest-working appliance in the house. It lives in its secret hiding place behind little pinewood doors, underneath the basin. It smells of 1990 there, and of rubber (from perished swimming caps), Betadine, Savlon – and expectation. It’s an old-fashioned Salton with a dial, and is marked off in one-kilogram increments, with multiples of ten in big, bold numbers. It’s made of metal, painted, with Novilon on the place where you stand. I haul it out of the cupboard and it lands on the tiled floor with a clang so that you can hear the insides groaning. They whirr as I step onto it, and the dial moves up and up. It hovers a little around the high forties; stops at 46 kilograms. That’s less than last time.
I go to my room to lie down again. My sister is right. It’s a big evening. My grandmother’s seventieth. I lie there chewing the insides of my cheeks, thinking about peppermint crisp tart, chicken pie and Caramello Bears.
Chapter 3
1987
Chapter 3
Every morning, the whole lot of us walk to school together. We live in Gran’s Kalk Bay house, but because she lives on the farm, we have the place all to ourselves. I’m in sub A and Beth is a year behind me in the pre-school class at Kalk Bay Primary, near where we live.
Mom pushes the pram, and it rattles over the cobblestones in the street. She has to hold on carefully or it will run down the hill, and that’s why we can’t hang onto her or hold her hand. Inside the pram is Gracie. Mom says it’s the last present Dad gave her before he went to heaven. I imagine Dad passing Gracie to Mom, with a big pink ribbon wrapped around her and a bow on her head.
When we walk to school in the morning, blanketed in the salty air, I watch Mom’s steps. Gran says Mom and I have the same walk. She says we should have both tried ballet. It would have fixed the walk and some other things too. Long, slow, tiger legs – that’s Mom’s walk. Her legs are short, like mine, but the way she stretches them out and forwards makes them longer. We move along slowly, and I look at everything. I see Mom does the same. Her head swivels and wanders.
Gran says I am my mother’s child because we’re both quiet. You can never know what secrets are brewing in a head like that. Gran isn’t a fan of Mom’s head in any way. She says it looks like a bird’s nest, and, what’s more, it’s the muisneste that got us where we are today. I think it means that Mom has something funny inside her head. And plus, Gran says Mom and I like the same trash music, and that’s another thing that makes us deurmekaar.
Gran doesn’t hate all music. She likes what Mom plays on the piano. She’ll sit and listen, with her back straight and her knobbly hand gripping her walking stick. She takes this walking stick everywhere. I’ve seen her without it, and she does fine. But she needs it to show people she’s an old lady, because old ladies deserve respect. Also, it’s a good way to get our attention when she’s cross. She bangs it on the floor twice, and then you know you must listen.
The music Gran doesn’t like is called Queen and The Doors. There’s also Simon and Garfunkel, Fleetwood Mac and Jethro Tull. And Abba, which is the only thing that makes Mom sing along, and then Beth and I join in, but Gran says it’s sentimental candyfloss. She says Simon and Garfunkel is a little better, because at least they can carry a tune, but you can’t trust those folksy hippies, they smoke dagga all the time, and plus they’re revolutionary, and look what that Paul Simon has gone and done now, singing all this native music with that black lot from Ladysmith.
Mom plays less of this music these days, because since Dad died and Gracie was finished getting born, Mom had to start working to put food in our mouths. So now she’s tired all the time, and has to lie down a lot. Before the tiredness, Mom used to dance with us sometimes. She’d put on a record and turn it up. We’d all get turns to choose the music, but Beth and I weren’t allowed to touch the records because they can get scratched and then you’re done for. Dancing meant holding hands and spinning around in a circle, which Beth called a rallentando. At the end, you all fall down, same as in Ring-a-Rosie. There were other dances that meant jumping up and down. Mom was never much of a jumper, but she laughed at us doing it. You could see her little pearl teeth shine.
* * *
It’s my special job to carry the house keys every morning. If the tlinka-tlinka sound stops, Mom stops in her tracks, and then looks at my hands. Sometimes the sound stops because I want to see if I can make it stop, and other times because I’m holding the keys up to the light, turning them slowly to watch the metal gleam. Then Mom asks me why I’m not moving, and she gives me a little push. But most of the time we just walk, and Beth asks Mom lots of questions.
Sometimes I stop listening, because the hush of the sea swims into my ears and whirls around my brain. It gets chopped up by cars roaring past on the main road. Kalk Bay is a quiet place, but it’s morning, and everyone has somewhere to go.