Читать книгу The Elephant in the Room - Maya Fowler - Страница 8

1987

Chapter 3

Every morning, the whole lot of us walk to school together. We live in Gran’s Kalk Bay house, but because she lives on the farm, we have the place all to ourselves. I’m in sub A and Beth is a year behind me in the pre-school class at Kalk Bay Primary, near where we live.

Mom pushes the pram, and it rattles over the cobblestones in the street. She has to hold on carefully or it will run down the hill, and that’s why we can’t hang onto her or hold her hand. Inside the pram is Gracie. Mom says it’s the last present Dad gave her before he went to heaven. I imagine Dad passing Gracie to Mom, with a big pink ribbon wrapped around her and a bow on her head.

When we walk to school in the morning, blanketed in the salty air, I watch Mom’s steps. Gran says Mom and I have the same walk. She says we should have both tried ballet. It would have fixed the walk and some other things too. Long, slow, tiger legs – that’s Mom’s walk. Her legs are short, like mine, but the way she stretches them out and forwards makes them longer. We move along slowly, and I look at everything. I see Mom does the same. Her head swivels and wanders.

Gran says I am my mother’s child because we’re both quiet. You can never know what secrets are brewing in a head like that. Gran isn’t a fan of Mom’s head in any way. She says it looks like a bird’s nest, and, what’s more, it’s the muisneste that got us where we are today. I think it means that Mom has something funny inside her head. And plus, Gran says Mom and I like the same trash music, and that’s another thing that makes us deurmekaar.

Gran doesn’t hate all music. She likes what Mom plays on the piano. She’ll sit and listen, with her back straight and her knobbly hand gripping her walking stick. She takes this walking stick everywhere. I’ve seen her without it, and she does fine. But she needs it to show people she’s an old lady, because old ladies deserve respect. Also, it’s a good way to get our attention when she’s cross. She bangs it on the floor twice, and then you know you must listen.

The music Gran doesn’t like is called Queen and The Doors. There’s also Simon and Garfunkel, Fleetwood Mac and Jethro Tull. And Abba, which is the only thing that makes Mom sing along, and then Beth and I join in, but Gran says it’s sentimental candyfloss. She says Simon and Garfunkel is a little better, because at least they can carry a tune, but you can’t trust those folksy hippies, they smoke dagga all the time, and plus they’re revolutionary, and look what that Paul Simon has gone and done now, singing all this native music with that black lot from Ladysmith.

Mom plays less of this music these days, because since Dad died and Gracie was finished getting born, Mom had to start working to put food in our mouths. So now she’s tired all the time, and has to lie down a lot. Before the tiredness, Mom used to dance with us sometimes. She’d put on a record and turn it up. We’d all get turns to choose the music, but Beth and I weren’t allowed to touch the records because they can get scratched and then you’re done for. Dancing meant holding hands and spinning around in a circle, which Beth called a rallentando. At the end, you all fall down, same as in Ring-a-Rosie. There were other dances that meant jumping up and down. Mom was never much of a jumper, but she laughed at us doing it. You could see her little pearl teeth shine.

* * *

It’s my special job to carry the house keys every morning. If the tlinka-tlinka sound stops, Mom stops in her tracks, and then looks at my hands. Sometimes the sound stops because I want to see if I can make it stop, and other times because I’m holding the keys up to the light, turning them slowly to watch the metal gleam. Then Mom asks me why I’m not moving, and she gives me a little push. But most of the time we just walk, and Beth asks Mom lots of questions.

Sometimes I stop listening, because the hush of the sea swims into my ears and whirls around my brain. It gets chopped up by cars roaring past on the main road. Kalk Bay is a quiet place, but it’s morning, and everyone has somewhere to go.

This morning, I notice a tiny pink flower sprouting from a green frill that has poured out from the crack between the tarred pavement and a stone wall. It stops my breath for just a second. I can’t believe this beautiful thing in between all the hardness and greyness. It’s a miracle, so I grab at it and pull it out of its home. I feel bad about this immediately, but I must have it.

I trot to catch up to Mom and Beth. They never even noticed I was gone. Mom is sighing because she has to answer so many questions, and I know she doesn’t really like to talk. Just like me. I sniff my flower, and it’s my turn to sigh. No smell. I was expecting a thick, deep perfume to come out of this little flower, but no such luck. Still, I’ll keep it and press it in the phone book.