Читать книгу The Elephant in the Room - Maya Fowler - Страница 16

Beth and I have to share a room. I don’t like it, because she moves around the toys on my bed. They’re Mom’s old toys, and we’re allowed to play with them because ours all got taken by the fire. I’m a little bit too old for soft toys, I reckon, but Beth spends hours arranging them, first mine, then hers, and she screams when I change them. Mom says I must just leave her, I must remember she’s younger than me. She says Beth used to do this at home too, but not so much.

The farmhouse has a stoep that goes all the way around. Two big white walls curl outwards like open arms on both sides of the old stone steps, which have patches of cement. The stoep floor is dark red. Oxblood, says Gran. That bothers me, so I try to tread lightly. I wouldn’t want them to have to slaughter another ox because of me wearing out the paint job.

Two gables guard the house, and the whole stoep is covered with a roof. I hate this, because it keeps the sun out of the rooms, and I need sunbeams. The house is painted white. The walls are brown sandstone at the bottom, the same as we had in Kalk Bay, and there’s a row of stones round the sash windows, like a frame. But this stone feels colder, and the windows rattle in a wind that blasts them with fine sand.

The best game on the farm is finding lots of new places. I like to go exploring, but not far. I always stay away from the beehives and the blue gum trees, and if I don’t feel like going outside, I sit in the kitchen with Gesiena. She makes us tea with three sugars, which we have with doorstop-slices of white bread spread with butter and syrup. Sally, who’s now joined Pietertjie the sausage dog, begs at the door when she sees this, and then Gesiena chases her away.

I feel at home in Gesiena’s kitchen. She lets me eat little pieces of dough when she bakes jam squares, and she teaches me songs. “Little boy, little boy, where are you going?”, “Vanaand gaan die volkies koring sny” and “The more we are together, the happier we are”.

Our room is down the passage from Uncle André’s room, but Mom is between us and him. Sometimes he screams and moans in the night. It’s because he’s not all right in the head. Mom won’t talk about it, but she said war can do terrible things to men, and it’s a terrible way to lose your innocence. I’ve heard her say to Gran that Uncle André is obsessed with innocent things. It’s not healthy, she says. We see very little of him, because Gesiena takes his food to him in his room. She always goes in and comes straight out. He has his own bathroom, so he doesn’t even have to come into the passage much. Still, sometimes he likes to go wandering, and then somebody will bring him back, so then you might catch a glimpse of him. Gran always worries when he goes off like this. She says, “André, you know you shouldn’t be wandering around.” Once I saw her slap him. And then she always goes to her room moaning or sighing and blowing her nose.

They say Uncle André was a difficult child. There was always something wrong with him. He got all kinds of diseases that the doctors hadn’t even found names for yet, but he made it every time. He was good at athletics, but didn’t get very far because he missed a lot of his races due to a nervous stomach. He’d still be sitting in the loo when he’d hear the starter gun go off. He didn’t want to play rugby because the scrum made him feel sick, and getting tackled made him roll up into a ball, which ruined the game because it caused both teams and the referee to laugh like a pack of hyenas – until one day, when the laughing made Uncle André punch his captain. After that, they let him play tennis, but no more rugby.

Everyone was very proud of him when he got As for all his subjects in matric, even after spending half the year in bed. They said he’d do very well at university, but then the war got him first. He’d just turned eighteen when he went.

* * *

Because we are heathens, Grampa has to read us stories out of the children’s Bible every night. After our bath, Mom tucks us into bed, and then Grampa strolls in with the heavy book under his arm.

“Ai-ja,” he sighs as he slowly sits down on my bed or Beth’s. The springs creak, and the blanket feels warm and friendly, like when a cat or a dog curls up on your bed.

In the beginning there was Adam and Eve, but they wouldn’t listen, and then there was a flood and then some people built a tower. Beth and I both cried when a man called Abraham was going to kill his own little boy, but then an Angel of the Law saved Isaac and thus Provided a Ram, all Entangled by the Horns. Then the ram got it instead, and that really made Beth cry. I just frowned and thought what a damn pity that the ram had horns, otherwise the Law would have never gotten him.

The problem with Grampa’s reading is that the stories are quite long and he always starts missing his pipe, which makes him jump up, shouting, “Finished!” with a big smile, before slamming the book shut. We think it’s only the middle of the story, and this makes us squeal, especially the other day. Grampa did this same trick again, and Beth squeaked, “But we want to know what happens!”

“Another day, my girl!” Grampa said.

“But we want to know if Jesus really dies on the cross!”

He shook his head and smiled. Then he sat down again. When we found out that Jesus did die, Beth wailed, “But he was so nice!”

Grampa patted her on the shoulder.

“Don’t worry, wait till you hear what happens next!”

We’re waiting.

* * *

In her room, Gran has lovely treasures. Beth and I like to sneak in and take a look at the dressing table with its perfume bottles and make-up. There’s pink powder with a nice fat brush, which we use to powder each other’s cheeks. We can understand why Gran is so fond of this stuff that always makes her cheeks look like roses in full bloom. We’ve heard Mom tell Gran she wears more rouge than anyone else in the district, and they all say it’s because she’s eccentric English.

“So be it,” Gran says, and raises an eyebrow. Then she creeps to the nearest mirror, and wipes her cheeks with the backs of her hands.

Sprinklings of pink land on the rosewood, dusting our arms and clothes. Beth and I take turns brushing each other’s hair with an old silver hairbrush while we stare into the mirror with our pink cheeks.

“Hyt, wat maak julle twee daar?” Gesiena asks us from the door. “Die merrem sal mos vir julle twee slat!”

Our two pink monkey faces blink at her blankly.

“The merrem will hit for you, you mess,” she says, swishing the powder into her dust pan. Her eyes land on the brush. “Ooh glory, put back this, Merrem will be cross.”

She checks it and pulls out our long, twisty hairs. Into the dust pan.

When we hear Gesiena’s slow steps tramp down the passage, we get back to our treasures. I stare at myself in the mirror. From the corner of my eye, I see Beth blueing her eyelids out of a small, silver compact.

Like a pond on a windy day, the mirror isn’t quite smooth. It makes Beth’s nose longer, and her chin shorter. I am impressed with my bright new cheeks. Even on this rippled pond they look lovely. They make me different, and I like that.

We find all Gran’s earrings and brooches. Gran says we are two little starlings, and that’s why we can’t take our eyes off shiny things.

“Eyes on, hands off,” she says, clip-clopping into the room in her town shoes. She’s wearing a skirt that ends just below her knees, and a long-sleeved blouse with a bow at the neck, even though it’s a hot December day. I’ve never seen Gran wear short sleeves in any weather. She ignores our clown cheeks.

“Gran, please can we brush your hair with this?” Beth asks.

She holds out the brush, but we both know what the answer will be. Gran doesn’t like us to touch her, especially not her hair, which takes a long time to wave and style.

“What an outrageous request,” she chuckles, straightening her blouse. “I have a better idea. You can choose a brooch and earrings for me to wear.”

This is really exciting, and we want her to wear all three brooches, and the four pairs of earrings we’ve chosen for her. She picks one pair. I’m happy enough, because they’re the ones I chose. And she takes Beth’s flower brooch, sparkling with orange stones.

* * *

There’s a hill I like to go to with my little white treasure bag. It’s a place where I can sit in peace in my own garden. I know that Gran will complain about the green stains on my jeans, but it’s worth it. Green plants with purple flowers stand guard, and when I sit down they hide me almost up to my head. Grey-green ones with yellow flowers attract white butterflies, and soft little vines sprinkled with red and pink flowers wind around the rest.

It’s the same bag I had around my neck the night of the fire. I like to wear it across my chest. Gran made it for me before any of the others were born. That means I was still a baby when I got it, but Gran wanted to try out new patterns, and I already had jackets, a hat and booties. Inside my bag, I keep a small mirror with a bright pink plastic border. The border has a pattern that I love. Mom says it’s scalloped. The mirror has broken in two places, so there’s a short crack and a long one going this way and that right across it. It looks like the palm of my hand. My next treasure is a little yellow compact with a white rose pattern on the front. It has clear stuff in it that looks like Vaseline. It smells like a rose, but most of all like pink Turkish delight. I don’t really know what it’s for, and I’m scared to ask anyone because it’s a mystery. I don’t know how it got in my bag. I’m worried that if I talk about it someone will say, “Hey, that’s mine, I was looking for that!” So I just open it in secret sometimes when I’m alone, and then I have a good sniff. I also have a turquoise stone (from the time Jane went to the Scratch Patch), a lucky-packet diamond ring (that I’m careful not to wear on my ring finger), a Hello Kitty badge, a pencil with gold patterns on it, and a little round disc I asked my mom to cut out of an eraser for me because of the rabbit picture on it. That’s why I like to go to the hill by myself. I can unpack all my stuff, look at it, move it around, and then pack everything up again carefully.

On my way back, I need to climb through a barbed-wire fence. I notice a sparrow stuck on one of the barbs upside down, its thin legs folded tightly into its body, sharp little nails curled inwards; the eyes are squeezed shut. The breeze ruffles its chest feathers. At school we heard about something called the butcher bird. It stores its prey on barbed-wire fences like this. We had to draw a picture of it in our nature-study books, and I drew locusts, flies and spiders pinned on the barbs. I felt pleased that the world was being rid of these pests, but I’d never have thought that sparrows would be getting it too.

* * *

The kitchen is all steam and rush when I get back, and the smell of lamb roasting makes my mouth water. Gesiena’s kitchen is always very noisy, even though she’s so quiet. She lets the clanging plates, clinking silver and whirring egg whisks do the talking for her.

Eggshells lie in the compost box, and in a corner, a lip-smacking Sally laps up leftover krummelpap. This morning’s breakfast dishes wait bone-dry in the drying rack.

Gesiena wipes her forehead with the back of her arm. Her uniform shows dark patches under the arms.

Usually, the first thing I do when I get in here is look in the pots. When Gesiena notices, she says, “Hyt, agie!” and then carries on chopping or stuffing or scrubbing or scraping.

Today’s cauliflower shoots a cloud of steam into my face as I lift the lid. She’s too busy chopping into a pumpkin to notice. I know she’s concentrating hard, because she’s sucking through the gap between her two front teeth. They say her sister lost a finger cutting up vegetables, so I can see Gesiena is being extra careful.

A pot of rice sings on the stove. Gesiena stomps over to it. This is not rude stomping like when Beth and I go to our room for a sulk. Gesiena has a problem with walking because her legs are so stiff. Mom says Gesiena is only a little older than her, but look, the arthritis has got her already, and if it happened to Gesiena it could happen to anyone, so we’d better watch out and not give her grief to make her sick.

Gesiena lifts the lid and adds a little yellow spice powder to the rice. She stirs in two handfuls of raisins. Yellow rice makes me happy, because I know what comes with it. Roast potatoes, pumpkin, gravy, cauliflower with white sauce, and an afternoon of grown-ups sleeping, which means you can do what you like and explore wherever you want to.

On Sundays we always have a nice, fat roast. It’s a reward for sitting still in church for hours and hours, where it’s very boring and scary for children. This is not something we did at home with Mom, but Gran says we must. Only, today we didn’t go. Gran isn’t feeling very well, because Uncle André climbed onto the roof in the middle of the night and scared the living daylights out of everyone. Gran didn’t even finish her eggs in white sauce at breakfast time.

When Gesiena cooks, the food is very good, but when my gran has something to do with it, it’s dry and bony. Gesiena knows all the best recipes. She learnt them in the kitchen where her mother worked, and as soon as she was old enough, she started helping. She’s been cooking her whole life. “From morning till night, Miss Lily, from morning till night,” she sighs when she talks about it, because when she’s finished with the lunch dishes it’s time to bake, or make soup or melkkos for supper.

Pumpkin fritters, carrots with butter and sugar, roly-poly pudding, meatballs wrapped in bacon, waterblommetjiebredie, beef stew with carrots and potatoes – she knows everything. I tell her I love her cooking, and she smiles so that her cheeks move right up under her eyes. They sit there and shine.

“Food tastes that way when you put your heart into it, Miss Lily.”

Gesiena smiles, showing gums the colour of morning glory flowers.