‘No, no, we can’t come inside, kleinmies – we are not allowed to.’
‘Why not? Why can’t you come inside? Come in, so we can sit down and have cake.’
They look at me blankly. Talk quietly. Shake their heads and back away. I’m standing in front of them, holding the heavy cake tin against my chest. I want them to stay. I put the tin on the seat of a chair. The lid is tight, difficult to open. They’re looking at me through the open door.
Finally the lid comes off, and inside is my fifth birthday cake. It’s the best, most beautiful cake I’ve ever seen – it looks like a rondavel, just like the one we’re standing in! The thatched roof is a cone of chocolate icing. Pink and yellow roses climb around the front door and the windows. The door is red and white. My fingers touch my daisy necklace. The children are crowding in around me now, their faces expectant, voices hushed with wonder. It’s the most beautiful cake any of us have ever seen.
‘Oh, Ma,’ I sigh. ‘Oh, Ma, it’s so beautiful!’
‘Hau! Can we eat it?’ someone asks. The spell is broken.
A knife! I have to find a knife to cut the cake. I can’t find one anywhere and I’m just about to start breaking it into pieces when I remember Pa’s black toothcomb. I run into the bathroom and climb on top of the lavvy’s seat. Pa’s comb is lying on the shelf above the basin.
Many fingers are busily poking about inside the cake tin. Some of the little roses have already disappeared.
‘Wait! I’ve found something to cut the cake – just wait! Just let me do it!’
With Pa’s comb in hand, I saw away at my beautifully decorated rondavel cake. Everyone’s crowding around me, grabbing at the broken slices. A sticky layer of crumbs and smears of icing coat the floor and Ma and Pa’s beds where my friends have been sitting. Suddenly everyone’s quiet. The doorway darkens. My friends scatter like dry seeds. I’m left standing over an empty cake tin, a cake-clogged comb in my hand, and Pa and Ma.
‘What have you done? We were going to have a party for you with that cake!’
‘But, Ma, I did have a party – didn’t you see all my friends? And, Ma, my cake was just like our rondavel here, only with teeny little roses and the door was red!’
I look around the circular walls. Breathe in the sweet smell of thatch. I beam.
‘It’s like living inside my birthday cake, Ma! How did you know? And Ma, my friends loved my cake. They all said, “Au! Au,” when they saw it, and it was so delicious, they just gobbled it down. I wish I could have saved some for Sandy and Marta …’
I look up at her.
‘And for you and Pa, of course …’
Ma’s mouth twitches. She breathes in deeply and closes her eyes. When she opens them again, she shakes her head. She kneels down, takes Pa’s comb out of my hand, and holds me close. I put my arms around her and squeeze her neck tightly. I think I can feel her laughing against my chest.
‘That was a very kind thing to do, sweetheart.’
Pa gazes at the empty cake tin. His eyes settle on his clogged comb. He runs his fingers through his wavy hair. His eyes meet Ma’s. Their shoulders start shaking and they burst out laughing. I’m happy too.
Pa takes his comb from her and examines it closely. He’s not laughing so much any more.
‘Is Pa cross with me, Ma?’
‘I’ll be in the bathroom cleaning my comb,’ he says. He doesn’t look at me.
My eyes fly to Ma’s face. She stands up and closes the tin. She looks down at me, her head tilted to one side.
‘You weren’t supposed to open this tin before your birthday, you know. Now you and your friends have eaten all the cake and there isn’t even a crumb left over. Pa was so looking forward to tasting it.’ She sighs and shakes her head again.
In the tiny bathroom, the tap is running in the basin. I can hear Pa scrubbing my birthday cake down the drain with his nailbrush.
I Love Marta
Just as she does every Monday morning, Marta leans her shoulder against the flyscreen on our back door. The heavy buckets of hot water in her hands heave and slop. She struggles down the back steps, her head thrust forward, grunting with effort.
‘Au, eh-eh …’
Negotiating her way through the cement yard out to the mown grass in the back garden, she pours the steaming water into the galvanised tin bath and on her knees – her skirt tucked in around her – she bends over the frothing suds. Her hands move the heavy sheets up and down while she soaps and rubs them against the wash-smoothed patterns on the wooden washboard. Its deep hollow defines its surface, reflecting the stories, the histories of our lives, the mishaps and celebrations, events exciting and mundane. Along with Marta’s lamentations over her labours, they have all left their mark on the soap-polished wood grain. She kneels on the grass, humming and sighing. The lap of her overall is dark, saturated with rocking suds. She heaves at the wet sheets, groaning against their weight. Up and down, up and down, she marks the rhythm of her day.
On Tuesdays, she walks back again to do the weekly ironing still strung wrinkled and stiff along the sagging wash lines. She spreads the threadbare brown rug over the wooden table in the garage, covers it with the yellowed ironing sheet. She stands on a potato sack on the cement floor, ironing Pa’s cricket whites bleached clean after their soak in Reckitt’s Blue for the Whitest Wash after the glories of his Sunday match. Isak, a rolled brown-paper cigarette stub smouldering in the corner of his mouth, keeps her company while he whitewashes Pa’s grass-clotted white cricket boots on the grass under the plum trees.
In the winter months, Marta warms her hands against the heavy sad-irons crouching over the hissing primus stove on the corner of the ironing table. She tests each one’s promise of perfection against the tip of a spit-wet finger. Each iron’s temperament is a covenant; one of the many cautiously nurtured secrets she collects and hoards. She croons her Sotho hymns as she pokes the nose of a sad-iron into corners and sleeves, pressing down hard on collars and recalcitrant cotton creases. The clothes hiss under the heat, and her arm is stiff and straight as she strains towards the far corners of the old ironing table.
Sandy is asleep against the back wall of the garage. Next to his head, the small, blue-painted baby cupboard is sticky with dust, the lamb decals on the doors rubbed and faded. His ears are cocked, waiting for the fall of my footsteps. His stubby tail swishes backwards and forwards on the dusty floor like a perpetual metronome. The roof ticks under the sun.
Four houses away on the corner of our street, Jane’s deep voice booms, rolls to a stop against the garage walls. Jane is Marta’s friend.
‘Hau, Marta, Ma’M’Pho has gone to the shops?’
‘Eh, Jane. Ma’M’Pho has gone to the shops.’
‘How long will Ma’M’Pho stay at the shops, Marta?’
‘I don’t know, Jane. Maybe one hour?’
‘Maybe one hour, Marta? Maybe Ma’M’Pho will be longer?’
‘Ja. Maybe you are right, Jane. Maybe Ma’M’Pho will be longer.’
On and on, over and over, our comings and goings circle around the washing lines in the fenced and walled backyards.
On Friday mornings, Marta folds a ragged towel into a small pad and slowly lowers her thin knees onto it. She arches her back. Her bottom juts out square as an apple as she settles herself on the floor. The house is quiet. Dust motes float in through the open windows. The air is sweet with the syringa tree’s lilac perfume. Isak planted it in the back garden the day we moved into our new house. Doves are hooting and