Granny Bobbeh smells of apples. Her arms are soft and white. She twists her thick red plaits around her head. At night her hair hangs down to her waist.
‘Mein shveetie dahlink,’ she calls me. ‘Mein Stück diamond.’
There’s a big koppie next to Granny Bobbeh and Grandpa Zeideh’s house.
‘No, mein kind, you mustn’t go there.’ She waggles her finger at me. ‘Tsotsis live there in the wild grass. Bad men.’ She shakes her head. ‘Very dangerous.’
When Pa was a little boy, Granny Bobbeh planted cherry trees in their garden. We don’t visit when the cherries are ripe. Pa doesn’t want to climb the ladder to pick them. He’s got better things to do with his time.
I think Pa’s too scared to climb up high.
Granny Bobbeh makes cherry jam so good and special, only grown-ups are allowed to eat it.
‘Ah,’ sighs Pa, ‘your cherry jam and black tea, Ma … ambrosia of the gods!’
She makes beetroot and walnut jam, too, but I don’t like eating beetroots in jam. Granny Bobbeh picks the walnuts in the orchard at the back of her house. Pa’s hands are so strong he can crack two walnuts in the palm of one hand. The walnut trees grow next to the pen where Granny Bobbeh’s turkeys gobble and rush, their lumpy wattles and snoods wobbling and swaying, their stiff mottled feathers rustling as they stalk the flimsy fence. I don’t like them.
Granny Bobbeh’s got a smoking oven in the wall on the side of her garage. It has a small, green-painted door. It waits there patiently until the turkeys are big and fat. Then she stokes the fire in it until it’s hot and ready.
Pa shouts at Granny Bobbeh on the phone.
‘Why does he shout at her, Ma? I don’t like it when Pa shouts. Doesn’t he love Granny Bobbeh?’
‘Of course he loves her, silly! He does get a bit impatient at times, but he loves her, don’t you worry.’
My skin prickles when Granny Bobbeh’s got a doek on her head; that means she’s got a very bad headache called a ‘migraine’. She puts slices of raw potato inside the doek.
‘It makes the pain better,’ she says.
‘For God’s sake!’ Pa shouts. ‘Stop behaving like a bloody peasant!’
His voice is rough with wishing.
Uncle Sam and Uncle Max are Pa’s brothers. When they speak to Granny Bobbeh and Grandpa Zeideh, their voices are warm with love. Pa’s in-between Uncle Sam and Uncle Max. He shouts at them, too. He doesn’t like his brothers either.
Granny Bobbeh told me that, long ago, she had more children.
‘Where are they, Granny Bobbeh?’
She lifts her shoulders.
‘Dead, mein kind. All gone.’
When she and Grandpa Zeideh came to South Africa with Pa and his brothers, all she brought to remind her of her past were her memories of her dead children and a portrait of herself in an oval wooden frame. In the photograph on the wall above the fireplace in her lounge, she was sixteen years old. She came from a country called Lithuania. That’s very far away from the Free State. She was very beautiful. Pa and Ma say I look like her, but she didn’t have any freckles.
Granny Bobbeh always makes Pa’s favourite food when we come to visit. She likes to spoil him. He’s her boy.
‘He isn’t a boy, Granny Bobbeh,’ I tell her. ‘He’s my pa.’
‘Nehm tsvey,’ she urges, her hand on his shoulder. ‘Take two … noch ah Stückele … another little piece.’ The fork in her hand heaps his plate with smoked and stuffed delicacies.
After we’ve finished our lunch, Pa says he needs a walk.
‘Come on,’ he says, holding his hand out to me. ‘Let’s go to the playground.’
In the park near Granny Bobbeh’s house, there are swings with wooden seats and a roundabout with a splintery floor and red handles. In the middle, a maypole reaches for the sky. When it turns around, wooden seats on chains fly out in a wide, clanking circle. I’m still too little to ride on the maypole. Ma and Pa say I’ll fall off. I don’t mind – I like the slide the most. It’s shiny and very high. I have to climb lots of little steps to get to the top. Every step is covered with small crisscrosses that fill with dew in the night.
‘That’s where the dragonflies come to drink in the mornings,’ I tell Pa. ‘See all the little puddles of water?’
When I get to the top I sit down where the great, silvery curve of the slide begins. I hold on tight to the handles on either side, stretch my legs down the polished slide. If I lean back too far, my bottom starts to slide down. I like to sit at the top of the slide. I turn my feet towards each other; tap my toes together. Pa looks small down there on the ground.
‘Stop dawdling!’ he shouts. ‘Come on, slide down!’
I can see far away. The light is glittery, and in the high grass I can see the cats from the nearby houses flat against the ground, spying on the fat pigeons.
Sometimes I go on the seesaw. Pa leans on the opposite side. When he pushes it down, he tips me up high. My bottom bounces on the rubber seat. When he lets up his side, I drop to the ground with a big bump. I like the swings too.
‘Higher, Pa! Swing me higher!’
He laughs.
‘I can’t – you’ll fall off, sail into the air to the sun – I might never see you again!’
But the best thing in the playground is Dobbin. Dobbin is the name of the grey horse that rocks backwards and forwards. I like to ride behind his head and wavy wooden mane, chipped and flecked with lots of different layers of paint. Pa says I’ll get splinters if I try to peel them away. Dobbin’s even bigger and better to ride on than Marta, I think. But I’ll never tell her that because I love her, even when she won’t let me ride on her back. Dobbin’s got place for four children on his saddle. The place behind his head is mine. No one else is allowed to sit there. I close my eyes. Hold tight to the iron hoop reins.
‘Gallop fast, grey Dobbin! Gallop fast, great stallion!’ shouts Pa.
I’m going to fly over his head. Up into the sky and the wind.
Pa gives Dobbin sweets to eat. I try. He won’t open his mouth for me. Only Pa. When we leave the playground, I sulk all the way back to Granny Bobbeh’s house. Next time, I’m going to feed Dobbin first.
When we leave, Granny Bobbeh stands at the gate waving and waving goodbye. Blowing kisses into the wind. She runs along the pavement waving until we’re far away down the road, just a speck in the distance. Far away until we turn the corner and we’re gone.
Side by Side
Kathleen May is my English friend. She’s in the composite class at school where all the English-speaking children are crammed into the same classroom with their harried teacher, Mrs Harvey.
According to Ma, the composite class is for those children whose parents don’t care whether they learn the language of the Free State or not – or much of anything else, for that matter.
She says she’d just die if I were in that class. She’s prepared to overlook this terrible transgression on the part of Kathleen’s parents because they come from England. That makes them different, but in a good way.
Ma loves our Queen and everything English, but she says Afrikaans is the true language of the Free State, and everybody who lives here should be able to speak