Читать книгу Queen of the Free State - Jennifer Friedman - Страница 16

Pa’s still the odd man out after my youngest sister is born. I’ve just turned seven.

‘Thank God for the dog,’ he says, ‘or I’d be the only male in this family!’

I’ve wished and wished, but my sister and the baby refuse to go away. Ma says I have to move out of my bedroom.

‘Babies need a room of their own, love. You and your sister can share the double room – you’ll get your own room back one day.’

The new baby is plump, pretty. Everyone makes a big fuss of her. My middle sister doesn’t like her. She cries and whines. Tries to sit on Ma’s lap when she’s holding the baby. Wets her bed at night. I’m busy with other things.

My sister may be younger than I am, but she’s infinitely more cunning. She’s Ma and Pa’s good girl. She does as she’s told. She never gets smacked – she’s too scared to ever be bad. It makes me cross. The better behaved she is, the more wayward I become.

‘If you don’t stop doing that, you’re going to get a hard smack!’ Ma shouts. ‘Honestly, what am I going to do with you? I don’t know where you come from, you’re so cheeky.’

Ma’s mouth is a tight little purse.

We go to the bioscope, sit in the dark. If I lean forward and push back my bottom, my seat tilts up. Tries to swallow me.

‘Sit still,’ Pa hisses.

We see a movie about a man called Davy Crockett. He wears a cap with a tail on his head. It’s made from the fur of a raccoon. Ma says we don’t have raccoons in the Free State. She thinks it looks a bit like a cat. I wish I could have a hat like Davy Crockett’s, but Ma says she doesn’t have any spare bits of fur lying around. I pretend I’m Davy Crockett anyway, gallop around the garden on my bamboo horse. Shoot arrows at my Red Indian enemy sister. I make bows and arrows from the bamboo growing at the bottom of our garden, and build log cabins with the spare fence poles stacked behind Sara’s room.

‘Clear that log cabin off the grass,’ Ma shouts from the lounge window.

‘But I’m playing Davy Crockett, Ma!’

‘Then take it down when you’ve finished – those poles are ruining my lawn!’

I sigh. If only Ma knew how hard it was to build a log cabin … I jump onto my bamboo horse, gallop across the lawn, sing my favourite song over and over.

‘Daavy, Daaavy Crockett, king of the wild frontier!’

I really like that song – it makes me feel strong and brave.

I make kites, cover them with the butcher’s paper our meat’s delivered in. They never fly, only drag their string tails across Ma’s silky lawns. Pa says they’re too heavy. I draw houses and planes in the dusty street outside our house, float leaves and paper boats down the ditches of muddy water. Send secret messages in bottles that sink in the sucking mud, only to find them later, marooned, stuck fast in the cracked slabs of wet earth when the ditches have dried out.

This year, Ma decides to combine our birthday parties. I’m turning seven. My sister will be four. Ma knows we spend all year looking forward to our very own Special Day when everyone fusses over the birthday girl, and Ma arranges a garland of bright flowers around her place at the table. Birthdays are when Ma and Pa give us bought presents. Neither of us wants to share the limelight with the other.

‘She doesn’t even know how to play birthday games, Ma,’ I grumble. ‘We want to play pass-the-parcel, a-tisket-a-tasket and musical chairs. She’s still too small – she can’t even count properly yet!’

‘No, sweetheart. This year’s different. You’ll see – you’ll have fun.’

‘I don’t want to have fun with her, Ma. I want to have fun with my friends. If she’s going to be there, she’s just going to cry and spoil everything!’

‘Oh, do stop whining, love. Birthdays are meant to be happy and exciting and you two are going to have a happy and exciting birthday party together this year. I don’t want to hear any more about it. Go on – run along now before I give you a smack.

‘Start making lists of all the children you want to invite, the games you want to play. Off you go – you’ve got lots to do!’

Excitement wakes me up. In the light from the moon, I can see the curtains’ nursery-rhyme patterns against the windows. There are two big boxes on the floor between our beds. I roll to the edge of my mattress. The springs squeal. I stretch out, touch the nearest box with my toe. I can hear the bullfrogs’ deep voices booming in the swamp. Sandy’s sleeping in the loggia, stretched out on the cool black slate. I know how he likes to lie, his legs straight out behind him, his long ears pooling on the floor. Dreaming, listening for me. My foot rests on the wrapped box next to my bed. My eyes are wide in the dark. I can hear myself breathe. I push myself up onto my elbow. Look across at the box next to my sister’s bed. It looks identical to the one next to mine. I ease off my mattress. Switch the boxes, quiet as a spider. Smiling into the shadowy dark, I slide back into bed.

The sun is creeping under the curtains when I wake up again. I jump off my bed, tear away the wrapping paper on the box at my feet. Inside is a beautiful doll with shiny brown hair, brown eyes that open and close, and a tiny pink rosebud mouth. She’s wearing a yellow-and-white polka-dot dress with a lace collar, white socks, and white, round-toed plastic shoes with teeny straps across the insteps. Rosebud – that’s what I’m going to call her! I don’t really care that she’s got brown hair, though everyone knows dolls with blonde hair are the prettiest and most special … If you’ve been a really good girl, you’ll get a gorgeous, blonde, blue-eyed doll. You can give blonde dolls names like Annabelle or Snowdrop or Rosebud. Dolls with brown hair are called ‘Betty’ or ‘Mary’. But she’s different, I think. I love her, even if she hasn’t got blonde hair and blue eyes …

My sister wakes up, rips the wrapping paper off her birthday present, and pulls from the depths of the big box a gorgeous, blonde, blue-eyed doll.

Ma comes into our bedroom to wish us a happy birthday. She looks from my sister to the doll in my arms. She narrows her eyes. Her sharp gaze comes to rest on me.

‘How do you like your birthday present, Jennifer?’

Ma only calls me ‘Jennifer’ when I’ve been naughty. I can’t help it. My eyes slide involuntarily across to my sister, cradling her pretty blonde doll in her arms. Her eyes are wide with excitement. She beams at Ma.

Something small pinches me inside.

‘Oh yes, Ma, I love her! Look, her hair and eyes are brown – just like mine!’

I hold my doll up in the air and turn around to show her to my sister.

‘Her doll doesn’t look at all like her, Ma.’

My sister frowns. Looks down at the doll in her arms. Then she smiles a small, tight smile and hugs her doll close.

‘I don’t care,’ she whispers. ‘I don’t care. She’s got blonde hair and her eyes are blue and I got her because I’m a good little girl.’

Ma smiles.

‘Well, I think my doll’s special too, Ma. I’m also a good girl and I’m going to give my doll a special name: I’m going to call her Rosebud!’