Читать книгу Shadow self - Paula Marais - Страница 11

My mom has lines on her wrists. They’re pale white, like spider webs. I’ve counted them. On the arm with the watch on, she has 7. On the right (the one she writes with) she has 5.

7 + 5 = 12

There are 12 months in the year. 12 in a dozen, which is how Mom buys eggs. But you want to hear something funny? A baker’s dozen is not 12, it’s 13! That’s because bakers in England a long time ago, maybe even when there were dinosaurs, used to give away extra bread in case they got into trouble for being mean. So if Mom had 13 lines on her wrists, she’d have a baker’s dozen. Numbers are so cool!

When I ask my mom where her lines come from, she says they are scars from getting hurt.

“How?” I say.

“What?”

“How did you get hurt?”

“It was an accident,” she tells me. “Like when you fell off your bike and broke your tooth.”

“My tooth is going to grow back,” I say, putting my finger in the hole.

“Lucky you,” she says with a smile.

“But if I break it again, no more chances,” I tell her.

“Who told you that?” she asks.

“Asmita Ayaa. She says I must act like a lady, and not go too fast.”

“Mmphhh,” Mom says. “I used to go on my bike down our driveway with Robbie. We had races. I won sometimes, but mostly only after he got sick.”

“Maybe that’s where you got your lines,” I offer.

“No,” Mom says, very clearly. “That wasn’t it at all.”

Then she starts tickling me on the grass and I giggle.

Today we are at Kirstenbosch. Mom doesn’t have any tourists, so she has lots of time for me. We already packed a picnic, with real junk food! Viennas. Chips. Jelly worms. And Melrose cheesies. Also apples and naartjies, and a big bottle of passion fruit juice. We put a big blanket on the lawn and we watch the view. It’s a sunny day, and we look for animals in the clouds. I find a lion and lizard, but the lizard has wings. Mom sees a unicorn, which is a horse with a horn like a rhino.

It’s nice, just us. And then this man comes running along, and stops. He’s very sweaty. He’s dripping like a tap when you forget to turn it off properly.

“Thea?” he says.

And Mom answers. “Hi Clay! You look thirsty.”

“I am,” he says. “Been along the contour path.”

“Keep running,” I say, very, very softly, because I want him to go away.

“Sanusha!” Mom says with her scary voice. “Would you like some juice, Clay?”

“Sure,” he says, but I didn’t like the look of his big eyes that stare at Mom.

“This is my daughter, Sanusha,” she says.

“Hello, Sanusha. You look just like your granny.”

Boring! I stuck my tongue out the corner of my mouth. Who is this guy?

“Clay manages the coffee shop where I have my coffee in the morning,” Mom tells me. “He makes pictures in my cappuccinos. It’s a new type of art!”

“So what?” I say, and Mom’s face goes hard like a piece of rock.

“Please just ignore her,” she says to the sweaty man, and holds out a cup of juice.

“A quick sip,” he says, “thanks.”

He sits down next to Mom. His hair is going grey at the edges, and he has very big muscles on his arms and legs. So I’m a bit confused. His face looks quite young but his hair is old.

He has to drink from Mom’s cup because we only brought 2, which is a pair. You get lots of things in pairs – socks, shoes, trousers (because there are 2 legs), stockings. Even a knife and fork make a pair because there are 2.

“How old are you?” I ask.

“Twenty-seven,” he says. “How old are you?”

“I’m 6.”

“Wow, six,” he says. “You’re so old, you’re almost a teenager.”

“That’s rubbish,” I say. “Teenagers are 13. That’s, like, only in 7 years. There are 7 days in the week. And 7 colours in the rainbow. They are red, orange, yellow –”

“Sanusha,” Mom says, which is her way of telling me to keep quiet.

I get up and go to a tree to hang myself upside down, close enough to hear what they are saying.

“You haven’t come in for a few days,” the man says.

“Lots of groups, and I’ve been busy with the family.”

“How is Rajit?”

Mom doesn’t say anything, so I shout from the tree: “Appa’s fine! He’s got this big fancy job in the city and I went to his office and I photocopied my hand and it looked exactly the same as the real thing except it was black and white.”

“Cool,” says the man. “Maybe you could show me some time.”

“Why?” I say. “You’re not even invited to our house.”

“Sanusha!” Mom says and she gets up and pulls me down from the tree and gives me a paddywhack on the bum. It isn’t even sore, but she never gives me hidings so I start to cry and I make it go really, really loud with real tears. Then she puts me on the grass, and tells me to keep quiet right now or so help her, she will not take me to the park for 2 weeks. That is 14 days, which is a lot, so I shut my mouth and reach for a jelly worm and Mom smacks my hand and says enough of that – I can have an apple and say sorry to Clay for being such a rude little girl.

“Sorry,” I say.

“It’s okay,” he says, but I can see I’ve hurt his feelings so I am glad.

But by then Mom’s scarf has untwisted and I can see the man looking at the ugly blue mark on her neck. She quickly rolls it up again.

“Mom is very clumsy,” I tell him. “She, like, bumps herself all the time. I told her she should switch on the light.”

“So I see,” the man says.

“It really is nothing,” Mom says.

“If you say so,” Clay says.

“I do.”

That man slurps his drink and he doesn’t even say pardon and then he stands up and says he must go because he’s meeting his friend for a braai and he’s already late. I can see he thinks Mom is pretty, but he also looks sad.

“Come in for a drink at the coffee shop, Sanusha,” he says. “I can make you a number 6 in a cup of hot chocolate, just like how old you are.”

“You can?” I say, because actually that sounds quite awesome.

He doesn’t touch Mom or touch me, but waves at us and says enjoy your picnic and don’t eat too many worms, Sanusha, but didn’t he hear Mom say I have to eat apples now?

Mom waves a little and then looks miserable, like Mr Miserable who hasn’t learnt to turn that frown upside down.

“I think we should go, baby,” she says. “Asmita Ayaa asked me to get some carrots.”

“That man shouldn’t have had our passion fruit,” I say to Mom. “And it was supposed to be just us at the picnic. That’s why we left Asmita Ayaa behind.”

“It’s kind to share, Sanusha. And you don’t need to mention this to Appa. He’d be a bit upset if he knew we went on a picnic without him.”

“Appa hates picnics. They make his pants dirty.”

“That’s right, darling, he does.”

*

At the house Asmita Ayaa and Mom peel the carrots. Sometimes they talk while they’re working and sometimes they don’t – today is a quiet day. Mom turns on the radio and Asmita Ayaa hums softly. Asmita Ayaa can peel 10 carrots in 3 minutes – I timed her with the clock on the wall. You have to watch the second hand, the fast one, and each time it goes past the 12 then that counts as 1 minute. The peels shoot in all directions, even on the floor. She doesn’t pick them up till afterwards and sometimes I step in them and pretend to fall down like I’ve skidded on a vrot banana.

Mom peels neatly and slowly. She holds each vegetable like a fragile little baby (fragile means it can break easily – just like Mom) and then curls the peels off, one by one. She makes neat stacks on the newspaper, and when she lifts the paper up, you can’t even see where she was working.

Then they chop the onions. I don’t like onions. They make me cry, and not because I’m sad. They make Mom and Asmita Ayaa cry too, and soon we are all there, the Moonsamy women, crying in the kitchen while the sunflower oil gets hot, hot, hot. The fan above the stove goes hummmmmmm, so we can’t even hear the radio. That’s why we don’t hear when Appa drives into the carport because he doesn’t have a garage for his car, which is quite new. He got it for his fancy job in town. Mom got his old car, which smells of off milk when it gets sunny, because I spilt my bottle once when I was a baby.

Appa walks into the house, and we only see him when he puts down his keys on the kitchen counter.

I wait for Mom to run to him like she used to, so she can beat Asmita Ayaa to say hello, but she doesn’t look up from her onions. Asmita Ayaa puts down her knife, wipes her hands on her apron, and hugs Appa.

“Hello, my son. You’re home early.”

From behind his back he pulls out a bunch of flowers. Pink ones. Mom’s favourite.

“I came home to see my family, and to give my wife some flowers,” he says.

Mom turns the pot, tipping in the last of the onions. They sizzle. (A good word. It sounds like what it means.) She stirs.

“You can put them in a vase, Rajit,” Mom says.

“Now, now,” says Asmita Ayaa, “is that the way to thank your husband?”

Mom looks at my grandmother. “What do you want me to do? Screw him?”

I don’t know what that is, but Asmita Ayaa’s face drops like Mom spat at her. It’s very bad to spit even though it is really cool to see how long it gets before it breaks.

Mom switches off the stove and holds out her hand to me. “Come, Sanusha – I want to go for a drive.”

I don’t know what to do because Appa looks like he needs a hug.

“Go on your own, Thea,” Appa says. “The kid needs a bath.”

I’m not the kid. I’m Sanusha.

Mom just ignores him and marches us through the front entrance. She straps me in, and I wave at Appa, who’s followed us out to the car, his face scary like a big storm.

“You watch how you drive with my daughter,” he shouts at her.

Mom slams her door and makes the engine go grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. We drive down the street and I can see Mom is crying.

“Are you hungry, angel?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“How about a big, meaty burger and then a movie?”

“In the middle of the week?”

“Sure. Why not?”

Mom lights a cigarette and opens her window, blowing smoke out in big clouds. It’s already getting dark so I can see the red tip of her cigarette glowing as she moves her hand. Appa would shout if he knew she was smoking with me in the car. Mom reaches over to turn on the radio. She makes it so loud that my ears hurt and I can’t even ask her to turn it down.

“You’re having us followed?” she shouts, all of a sudden, and she swings her head so she can look behind our car. She turns down the music, and flick-flick, she moves sideways across the road.

“Okay there, darling?”

“Yes.”

Then she shouts a really dirty word over and over again, and changes to the left. “Leave me alone!” she says. “Leave me alone!”

But Mom isn’t alone – she’s with me, and we’re going for a burger and a movie in the middle of the week. Mom leans over. She’s looking in her handbag.

“Where is it? Where is it?” she says.

“Where is what?” But she doesn’t hear me, because she has to swing the car around a bus filled with faces with mouths like big O’s.

“Jesus,” she says, and I’m very confused because she doesn’t talk about him except at Christmas, which is his birthday, 25 December. This is a good day because 5 can go into 25 exactly 5 times.

Mom throws her cigarette out the car, which I know for sure is a naughty thing to do. She’s a litter bug damaging the environment. Then the world will end and we will have nowhere to live.

Mom’s car is going grrrrrr, grrrr, grrrr. My seatbelt squeezes my shoulder when we turn a corner.

“It’s too fast, Mom,” I say. This is true. I saw a big sign and it said 60, which means 60 kilometres an hour. She’s going to get a speed fine! Maybe she doesn’t hear me because she doesn’t slow down, and she turns another corner so fast I think I’m going to fall out the car. I push down my door lock button.

“Go away,” she says. “Piss off.” (That’s another word for wee, so I think this is also a dirty word.)

“Where are we going, Mom?” I shout.

“I need to get to Annie.”

I like Auntie Annie. She once bought me a book about a guy called Newton who had an apple fall on his head and he worked out why it fell. I had an acorn hit me on the head once, but I didn’t think up anything clever after that.

“Don’t worry, Sanusha – we’re going to be fine.”

I just want Mom to slow down.

“Slow down, Mom!” I say.

“We’ve got to lose him,” she replies.

I don’t know who she’s talking about.

“Lose who?”

“The man who’s following us. We need to get to Annie.”

My stomach goes grumble, grumble like Winnie-the-Pooh when he needs honey.

“What about our burger?” I ask. “You promised me a burger and a movie in the middle of the week!”

“We’ll get to that once we’re safe. I’ll keep us safe,” Mom says, but her voice sounds weird.

Grumble, grumble, goes my tummy.

“He’s there!” Mom shrieks, and the car jerks forward like flicking an elastic band. “Hold on, Sanusha – the next turn I see, I’m going for it!”

Going for what?

I hold on to my car seat. Tyres squeaaaaaaaaaalllllllllllllll. Mom’s screaming. I’m screaming.

The car goes round and round.

Then we hit something. Hard. Glass falls over Mom in a big shower. She’s covered in blood. Bright red like my jersey.

I’m not in my car seat. I’m lying near Mom, but I don’t know how I got here. My arm hurts – it’s hanging funny like a sleeve.

Mom’s eyes look strange, but she’s breathing so she’s not dead.

“Mom? Mom?”

She doesn’t say anything.

1, 2, 3, 4 …

“Mom?”

Shouts and some lights and some people running. They open up the door at the front.

… 31, 32, 33, 34, 35 …”

“You okay, little girl? We’ve called an ambulance.”

I point at Mom with my good hand. “She’s not dead,” I say. “But she was going for it.”