Читать книгу Queen of the Free State - Jennifer Friedman - Страница 15

My Sub B teacher, Miss Potgieter, has her favourite pupils and, unless she happens to owe Pa lots of money on her chemist account, I’m not one of them. Now we’re in Sub B, we’ve already learnt to count up to one hundred and, when my best friend Gerda hears she’s come first in our class, she brags that means she’s the cleverest of us all. I don’t know why she thinks so, because we all know that bigger numbers mean more, and more’s always better. I’m sure you have to be much cleverer to come tenth in class – like me – than first.

We sit at our wooden desks drawing wavy patterns so we can learn how to do real writing. Tongue tips poke through pursed mouths, punctuating the slow squares of time in our school day. Miss Potgieter shouts:

‘You! Stop writing with your left hand! Only stupid children write with their left hand! Do it again!’

If we’re good, we’re rewarded with short break, followed by lunch break, and then home time, hallelujah! (Miss Potgieter says in the Bible that means you’re very happy.)

I wish I could be class captain … I’d be so well behaved if only Miss Potgieter would choose me. Miss Potgieter owes Pa money, but not that much. She only permits her favourites to help her gather our exercise books after our lessons. She takes our books home to mark with her stern red pen, or to decorate with gold or silver stars. I quite like the coloured stars, but Ma says she only wants to see gold stars in my books. I try to write the letters in the same neat, round way Miss Potgieter does on the blackboard, but my hand doesn’t want to do them that way. When she’s not looking, I hold the pencil in my left hand, watch it crab-sidle across the page.

‘I can see you there!’ Miss Potgieter shouts. ‘Stop that at once! Your handwriting’s disgusting – I can’t mark this rubbish!’

Ma says I have to practise and practise writing with my right hand. Even though it feels wrong, Ma says it’s the right hand to write with. When she says that, I have to think a bit about everything being right, when it all feels so wrong. I tell her I like Wednesdays because they feel green; that number seventeen fits the middle of the green day like a cherry in the middle of a biscuit. Thursdays are a bit brown, though sometimes they can be quite bright and orangey. Mondays are blue. Not a nice sky-blue – more the colour of a bruise. Tuesdays are silver. Eleven is a Tuesday number. I like to say the number and see the colour that belongs to each day.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ asks Ma. ‘Stop talking such nonsense. I’ve never heard anything like it – people will think there’s something wrong with you.’

Every day, once she’s decided which one of the wildly waving, hands-in-the-air children will help her, the pushing and elbowing for the truly favourite – the absolutely best position – begins: Miss Potgieter will hold the hand of one child who will proudly escort her to the teacher’s car park where her trusty blue Volksie is parked all day, where it sits patiently boiling up its potent bouquet of hot, sweating plastic seats and cheap, perfumed deodorant. Though my hand waves desperately every day, she doesn’t even glance my way.

One day – perhaps because she remembers she hasn’t paid Pa for a few months – Miss Potgieter notices me. Finally she grants me the ultimate honour: I’m allowed to walk her right hand back to the car park!

The home-time bell has rung at last. I’m so excited I can hardly breathe. I’ve waited in agony for the end of this long day to arrive so that I can slip my grubby little hand into her large, moist palm. Hand in hand, savouring every intense minute of the walk down the dusty pathway, my shoulders are back, my cheeks tight with excitement. I walk as close as I can to her stiffly swirling, petticoated dress. Even my plaits are rigid with pride. Today I’m the Chosen One; the special favourite for all to see and envy. I gaze up at her adoringly. She smiles down at me graciously. I duck my head, bring her coveted hand right up to my face, and bite it hard, sinking my teeth into the fleshy underside of her thumb.

Miss Potgieter howls, tries to yank away her hand. I hold on grimly, determined not to let go one minute earlier than is my due. She screams, throws me on the playground. Frightened children run away. Teachers rush to her rescue. Nobody helps me. I sit in the dust, tears drawing worm trails across my face.

‘It just looked so juicy, Ma!’ I try to explain. ‘I just wanted to know what she tasted like.’

‘What did she taste like?’ Ma sighs.

‘Kind of bitter, Ma,’ I reflect. ‘I thought she’d taste really sweet – like a pink-toffee, you know? But now I’ve got this horrible, bitter taste in my mouth …’

Pa’s angry. At the end of term, he gives Miss Potgieter a really big discount on her chemist account, and I come last in class – really last.