‘Ag no, child. Not so loud – and stop running inside the house – it’s not nice!’
We wait outside on the stoep while her granny lumbers back down the passage. Nellie wants to show me the Big Surprise in the corner of the voorkamer. Ma says that’s another name for a ‘lounge’. Grandpa MJ and Granny have got a parlour. We’ve got a lounge.
The Big Surprise stands in its corner every year at Christmas time. Every year, I stand with my hands on either side of my face, my breath fogging and smearing the window while I gaze in wonder at the shimmering Christmas tree, its gold baubles and flashing green and red lights. At the very top, on the spiky tip, a great, golden star glitters and winks. Strings of silver tinsel are draped around the branches of the fir tree and iced gingerbread men and small wooden toys swing among the exquisite balls hanging from the dark pine needles.
‘My granny says you can’t come inside to look at our Christmas tree,’ Nellie whispers the first time she shows it to me, ‘’cause you’re not a true believer.’
‘What’s a true believer?’
‘I don’t know.’ She shrugs. ‘My granny says only Afrikaners are true believers, so only they can have a Christmas tree. You and your ma and pa and your sister aren’t Afrikaners. So – what are you, then?’
‘I don’t know. What’s an Afrikaner?’
‘I don’t know. We’re Afrikaners. You’re not … my granny says so.’
‘Oh. Okay. You want to come and play at my house?’
‘Ja, orraait.’
In the house next to us lives the mysterious, reclusive Mrs Fensham, her venetian blinds drawn against the world outside, her life almost invisible in the pristine rooms of her silent home. Her garden path is lined with exquisite miniature roses and, even though we’ve got lots of roses in our garden too, none are as dainty or as perfect as those leading to Mrs Fensham’s front door.
Perched high in the syringa tree in our back garden, I can see her sitting on a chair outside, a cardigan around her shoulders, her back to the sun-warmed wall of her kitchen, nodding and smiling to herself, gazing out at her garden. Sometimes she leans forward, her head to one side as if she’s suddenly heard the voice of someone she’s long been waiting for.
‘Stop bothering Mrs Fensham,’ Ma says. ‘Don’t ask if you can pick her roses and don’t talk to her about Mr Fensham – mind your own business. She’s so quiet and refined. Such a perfect neighbour …’
Ma says I’m not allowed to shoot my bamboo arrows across our split-pole fence. They might hit Mrs Fensham, or tear her Monday washing flapping on its windy wash line.
‘I think Mrs Fensham’s waiting for my arrow, Ma. Maybe she’s waiting for me.’ I look up at her through my fringe. ‘Maybe she’s waiting for Mr Fensham …’
Ma tells me I’m talking rubbish.
On the other side of our new house, Ma likes to pretend we don’t have any neighbours at all.
‘Those people! That house!’
That house, with its dank maid’s room and garage, paint flaking off the walls, squats on the other side of Sara’s room. That’s where Mr and Mrs Le Roux-next-door live. Mr Le Roux is a taxi driver. His wife is a drunk. They don’t live in their house; Mr and Mrs Le Roux live in their maid’s room. It’s at the bottom of their garage where Mr Le Roux parks his taxi. Only its bonneted snout pokes in through the wooden doors. Its broad rump is always outside. Exposed to the elements.
‘But why do they live in their maid’s room, Ma? They’ve got a proper house – why don’t they live in it? Hey, Ma?’
‘Don’t ask me,’ she sniffs. ‘There’s just no accounting for some people …’
When the drought bites and times become hard, some farmers pay their chemist account at Pa’s chemist shop with live chickens.
‘Isak.’ Ma’s voice is stern. ‘You must slaughter the chickens around the side of Sara’s room, okay?’
In the gloomy space between Sara’s room and the Le Rouxs’ garage, no one can see the blood from the chickens’ severed necks pooling and clotting, soaking away into the red ground.
But sometimes Isak just chops off the chicken’s head on the grass under the wash lines. Bloody gobs spray up out of the severed neck and the chicken’s headless body careens, lurching and staggering just like Mrs Le Roux-next-door when she’s drunk. Isak and I sit on our heels, hugging our fists under our chins, rocking and laughing, the bloodstained axe on the grass at Isak’s side. When she hears us, Ma storms outside.
‘Isak! I told you to slaughter the chickens around the side of Sara’s room! Hose down the grass immediately!’
Isak catches my eye. He doesn’t smile, but his eyes are bright. I know he’s laughing with me. He’s my friend.
Every morning Mr Le Roux shuffles duck-footed out of his garage, mumbling and coughing. Nodding feebly, he touches the peak of his taxi driver’s cap in the direction of our house and Ma. Then he clears his throat, long and loud. I look across the breakfast table at Ma while she tries to ignore the sounds of his gobs of snot and yellow phlegm plopping down on the ground outside.
The drink makes Mrs Le Roux-next-door violent and vulgar. The air crackles as she roars, clumsy as a badger, screaming and throwing crockery, flailing against her close walls. When she staggers outside, she continues her diatribe against her husband, her ungrateful children, the natives, the Jews, the sky that is too blue, the birds that sing too loud. She prides herself on her marcelled waves she keeps firmly in place with clips that pull at her dyed hair. She calls them ‘vaifs’ in her thick Afrikaans accent. She wears a doek on her head like a maid. It keeps her elegant look intact.
‘… so my vaifs stay perfect,’ she purrs when she sees Ma on the other side of the fence. She pats her curlered head, lumpy under its covering. ‘I only take it off when I go out.’
But we never see her leave her house.
She paints her chipped nails with thick red polish, and slashes oxblood lipstick, dark as a wound, across the gash of her mouth.
‘Ag, I used to be such a beauty,’ she sighs.
When Mrs Le Roux is drunk, I like to stand in the cubby house at the bottom of the garden and listen to her swear. No one can see me in there. Isak sawed a stable door and windows out of a huge wooden crate. The cubby house has a real cement floor. Ma said I could garden along the sides of the path leading to its door. I’ve got a peach tree and every year I plant radishes and marigolds and nasturtiums. Ma says they’re foolproof. Not like the calabashes that look so pretty on the seed packet. I plant them every year, but so far I haven’t had a single one.
When Mrs Le Roux is drunk, she swears a lot. Much more than Uncle-Leslie-on-the-farm does. Uncle-Leslie-on-the-farm is Ma’s brother. She says that means she’s allowed to tell him what to do. She tells him he mustn’t swear so much, I’ll pick up his bad habits. He fought in the Second World War Up North in a tank in the desert. In the smooth, thick photographs he sent home to Granny and Grandpa MJ, he’s the handsomest man I’ve ever seen. He can shout very loud, especially when we’ve been naughty. He’s got a very bad temper just like Grandpa MJ and he’s got a magic tooth. It’s right in the front of his mouth. He can pop it in and out when he feels like it. He’s very strict. I love him very much. He lets me go where I want on the farm – he never thinks I can’t do something just because I’m a girl. Ma and Pa don’t swear, except sometimes. They say damn or hell or bluddy.
Pa says, ‘Bluddy mowron!’
Sometimes Ma says, ‘Blithering idiot!’
Grandpa MJ says, ‘Blaaady. Don’t be a blaaady fool!’
Only prickly pears grow in our neighbours’