Gran doesn’t give me this stuff, because I’m normal, and Gracie’s just a baby. Me and Mom, we need to wait for a meal time to have pudding.
When Gran takes Beth off like this, I go to look at the treasure. It’s not really a treasure, that’s just my name for Gran’s special display cabinet. She’s got lots of beautiful things in there. Things that make my eyes burn from not blinking, things so lovely they make my mouth water. Gran’s favourite is a little statue of a girl with a swan and some flowers. She tells us her mother, our great-grandmother, brought it all the way from England on a ship. We stay away from the cabinet, and never touch, because we’ll get a big, big smack if anything happens. It will be Trouble. But I like to just look.
I think Mom is scared of going to the farm because of Gran, but for me and Beth there’s only really one scary thing about the place, and that’s Uncle André.
* * *
The Consol bottle goes plink-plink-plink as the butterfly tries to escape. Beth has put the bottle up on the dressing table. Because of the mirror, you can see the butterfly from two sides. It’s a black-and-yellow one. After a while she just sits in one spot, opening and closing her wings. Gran wants Beth to let it go, but she won’t listen.
“You’re making the Butterfly Queen very angry,” Gran says in the dark that night. The door is open a crack, and there’s a wedge of yellow light behind her, but Gran is just a voice coming out of a big, black statue. We say nothing.
“Beth, listen, you need to let this creature go.”
Beth sighs. “But why, Gran?”
“I told you. The Butterfly Queen. She’s seen that you’ve hurt one of her little ones. Did you see that she’s lost one of her legs?”
We are both dead quiet.
“Beth, I’m warning you, if you don’t let that butterfly go, the Queen will come in the night, and pull off one of your legs, like you did to this innocent butterfly. It’s your decision, so live with the consequences.”
The door creaks shut.
Beth whispers to me, “Lily, do you think it will really happen?”
“I don’t know. But what are we going to do if you only have one leg?”
We lie and think about it. After a while, Beth throws off her covers, grabs the bottle, and tiptoes past Uncle André’s room. I don’t hear her coming back, but the next morning she wakes up in a wet bed, for the first time we can remember. We know Gran will be cross, so we take the sheets to Gesiena and beg her not to say anything.
Chapter 6
1988
Chapter 6
Jane’s house is more fun than mine. Jane is my friend, and we’ve been in the same class always. Her mom always brings us tea and biscuits. Also, she has three Barbies and four My Little Ponies.
Since I stopped playing with Faye from down the road, Jane is my best friend. When Faye still lived close by, I often played at her house after school. But the problem with her was that she was a champion sulker. If she couldn’t be the princess, or we were playing the wrong game, or I wouldn’t share my money with her, she’d stop talking to me and stare into a corner with her arms folded. Or, sometimes, she’d start crying. That was the worst, and it was very boring to play her games or give her my stuff all the time.
In the winter holiday last year, when we were in sub A, Faye went away to visit people, and that’s when Jane and I started playing together. Jane’s house is a train ride and a short drive away from mine, or else just a longish drive. There’s another school close to where she lives, but her mom used to be a teacher at Kalk Bay, so that’s how come she goes to school there with me.
The house is big, with high ceilings. Jane says it’s a Victorian. There aren’t that many Victorian houses in Plumstead, Jane says, but her house is actually in Timour Hall, which is almost Plumstead, but much better. It’s painted beige with white icing. The ceilings are so far above your head it feels like you could breathe clouds into them. But the floorboards creak like mad, so there’s no such thing as sneaking around at Jane’s house. The garden is big with good hiding places behind plants, and a Wendy house at the bottom of the garden where we can pin up the pictures we draw. All Jane’s old toys are in there. We’re not babies any more, but we still like to play with her old Fisher-Price Activity Centre. My favourite is the fat plastic button you hit to make a bean shoot up a tube to make a bell ring. I love the squidginess of the button. Also the high-pitched ring, like a bicycle bell, only shorter: ping. Next to the tube is a picture of Jack and the beanstalk, with the plant running all the way to the top, where the bell is. Jane says her mom says the picture is in relief. I wonder why. We had a relief teacher for a week once. Maybe it meant she wasn’t real.
We play school, and take turns at being the teacher. We practise writing and drawing. We draw wave patterns called curly cuh. One day Jane whacks her teddy with the ruler because he’s making double lines on his letters. Afterwards she gives him a hug and whispers to him, “I’m sorry that I had to hurt you, Teddy. It’s for your own good. I love you, so I want you to learn to be neat and tidy.”
Sometimes Jane’s brother, Matt, comes in and rolls his eyes. That’s all. He just rolls his eyes when he sees us, and then leaves. He’s in standard three, so he thinks he knows everything, but most of the time he leaves us alone. When he has a friend over, we hear a lot of crashing and roaring coming from his bedroom, unless they’re watching Matt’s A-Team videos in the TV room. When they come out of there, you hear a lot of “suckuh fool” and “I piddy the fool”.
Just like us, Matt likes to draw pictures. Jane’s mom puts them on the fridge. There’s a castle I drew once, with pink flags, a shiny blue river and a unicorn, and lots of Jane’s princess and pony drawings, and Matt’s rockets and explosions. Some are just whirls of orange with messy red lines going off the page. “Abstract art,” their dad chuckles, and ruffles Matt’s hair. It makes him frown, and suddenly he doesn’t look so big, with a giant hand on top of his little blond head.
At the end of the passage is a tall mirror. It shows me a little girl with stubby legs and frizzy hair held back by an Alice band. The girl licks her lips and pulls on the skin until it bleeds. A pink ring, ringworm, I think, surrounds her lips. I wish the stubby legs would get longer and thinner, like Jane’s, which go up and up like poles into her shorts.
“Hey, you should stop that licking,” Jane warns. “My mom says that’s what makes your skin all raw.”
Sometimes we swim, and we watch TV. Jane’s maid, Eltrude, brings us cheese and Marmite sandwiches in front of the TV, with Coke, which is Forbidden at my house because Gran says it will make your teeth fall right out of your head. I know Jane would never tell.
We always take a toy to the TV. Jane likes to take her Pound Puppy, and I like Tropical Barbie. I play with her long blonde hair, and can’t stop touching her dress. The colours are so beautiful, I want to suck them up through my fingers, the lilac and dark purple. I’d love to have my own Barbie, but my mom isn’t sure it’s a good idea.
The Barbie, I love, but my very favourite toy is also at Jane’s house, though it usually stays in her room. It’s a yellow plastic squirrel on pink wheels. It has a really fat, curled-up tail, and diamonds for eyes. I can look at these eyes for ages. I love shiny stuff, but this is the best.
Chapter 7
The sea has spat out a stew of kelp and sponge, and Beth and I are kicking up sand as we run in circles, throwing strings of rubbery seaweed at each other.
On Saturday mornings, Laetitia’s off, and Mom lets me and Beth walk down the Norman Road steps, all the way to the tidal pool next to the Brass Bell. If only Gracie were old enough, Mom could have complete peace, but for now the two of us have to go alone.
On your way down, you watch the lighthouse getting closer