Читать книгу Shadow self - Paula Marais - Страница 7

I am 5 and I know 3 things about Mom:

1. Her eyes don’t match.

2. Being happy is hard for her.

3. She doesn’t like Asmita Ayaa. (Mom says she does but I’m not stupid.)

I know 3 things about Appa, my father:

1. He’s not always at the university when he says he is.

2. He shaves 2 times a day, so he must be super-hairy.

3. He has friends who are ladies who are our little secret.

I know 3 things about me:

1. I’m not beautiful like my mother.

2. I like numbers the best.

3. I hate secrets.

3 + 3 + 3 = 9 important family facts.

If you take 9 and make 3 groups, there are 3 in each group.

Also, a polygon with 9 sides and 9 angles is called a nonagon. See?

There are 9 planets in the solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, plus the sun, which is actually a burning ball of gas. Pluto is the furthest away from the sun. Mercury is the closest.

Cats have 9 lives. (But our cat, Marmite, has only got 7 left. Appa rode over him once, and once he landed in the swimming pool and got his head caught under the pool net.) Beethoven wrote 9 symphonies, but I don’t care. I hate classical music, but I love Abba, especially “Money, Money, Money” because it’s about counting.

Also, 9 sounds a bit like “new”. And Mom taught me 9 is neuf in French, nueve and nuevo in Spanish and neun in German.

I like the number 9.

It takes 9 months to grow a baby. So this means that when I count to 9, I can make a new start.

I would like a new start.

Mom cries a lot. We’re still in this godforsaken garden flat with not enough room to swing a cat (but Mom says don’t swing Marmite).

Oh, there’s another thing I also know about Mom.

3 + 1 = 4

She’s smoking in the garden under the blue gum that Appa wants to pull out because it’s Australian. Appa doesn’t like Australians. Also smoking. He says Mom smells like an ashtray. She carries Stimorols in her handbag to make her breath sweet but they’re burny and they make my tummy growl. Appa says she’d better give up the cigarettes, or else. I’m not sure what else, but I think Mom knows. She still smokes sometimes, but she tries not to. That’s another secret I have to keep.

Mom’s lungs are going black inside her body, but she told me it helps her relax. Relaxing is good, but smoking is not good.

I think I should rub her feet, but she doesn’t sit down long enough. Mom walks up and down the cottage like a trapped animal, peeking out the window. I don’t know what she is waiting for. Sometimes Annie comes down the path, and Mom’s eyes shine. When Annie leaves, Mom’s eyes are dull like my shoes after a long day in the dust.

I have another granny, but she and Mom aren’t friends any more so she doesn’t want to meet me. Mom says I’m not missing anything, but it feels like she is lying. There are 5 things I think I am missing:

1. The other granny’s beautiful house, which Mom talks about sometimes.

2. The other granny’s cooking. When Appa isn’t around, Mom sometimes makes food from recipes. I love oxtail, which is meat, but Appa doesn’t ever eat meat.

3. Mom’s old toys. She says when she was little she kept them carefully in a big wooden box at the bottom of her bed. Mom says this granny probably chucked them out, but I don’t think so. Why would someone throw away toys?

4. Other photos of Mom’s brother whose name was Robbie. He died when she was small. Mom only has one photo, which she took the night she left that granny. (Appa says Mom got kicked out.) So Robbie only looks like Robbie in that one photo. I don’t think anyone looks the same always, even if they’re dead.

5. The tree house Mom’s dad made for her and Robbie. Mom says that granny chopped it out of the tree, but I saw it. One day, Mom thought I was sleeping in the car, and she drove to this big-enormous-gigantic house and then she stopped and looked at the tree for a long time. She drove away quickly when the gates started to open. When she got home, she gave me to Asmita Ayaa, and got into the bath to cry.

When I cry, and I don’t cry nearly as much as I did a long time ago when I was 4, Mom holds me tight. She tells me she is filling me with love from her skin to mine. Sometimes she holds me too tight so I can’t breathe nicely, but I like the way her body feels, so I turn my face to gulp some air. Appa taught me that word “gulp”. He also taught me “polygon” and “nonagon”. Fishes gulp in the water. Snakes gulp down whole frogs. I saw that on TV. I like TV but my grandmother, Asmita Ayaa, says I must only watch for 1 hour total a day, and because it is her TV, I have to listen to her for my obedience star on my chart. I’ve been thinking about it. 1 hour is 60 minutes, and there are 60 seconds in 1 minute, so 60 x 60 = 360 seconds in 1 hour.

So it’s 360 seconds of TV a day. That sounds like more than 1 hour.

That’s why numbers are better than words, but there are a few words I really like:

1. Smile

2. Kangaroo

3. Aeroplane

They make me feel like hot chocolate in my tummy.

*

Mom has been acting a bit funny. She is sad all the time. She wakes up sad. Even sunshine doesn’t make her happy. I love sunshine – it’s better than rain. When I go to see Mom, I open the curtains to let in the sunrays to make her feel happy, but it doesn’t work. Sunshine always works for me. And chocolate, and bubble baths, and making biscuits in Asmita Ayaa’s kitchen, because Mom’s kitchen is too tiny.

I heard Appa talking to Asmita Ayaa. He was very angry with Mom; really, really furious – like when I spilt paint on his computer when I was supposed to be helping Mom hang up the washing. Why is he angry that Mom is sad? Why doesn’t he hug her and make her better? Asmita Ayaa found me behind the door and told Appa he must calm down. He pinched his mouth together and picked me up, but he didn’t send me love through his skin.

Appa doesn’t enjoy cuddling me, but he likes cuddling my teacher at Humpty Dumpty’s. He thinks I don’t know. When she looks at him, her eyes are all gooey like in the cartoons. Appa doesn’t get all gooey. He’s got lots of ladies who like him. Once he saw some ladies on the side of the road and he stopped to say hello. Their boobs were popping out, and they had long silky legs and very high shoes. They looked in the window. One of them was chewing gum. Mom says chewing gum is not for children because they can choke. The ladies had shiny bits of gold in their smiles. I liked their make-up. It was pretty, like in the movies.

I also said hello.

One of the pretty ladies’ faces changed.

“What kind of a jerk are you?” she said. “With kids in the […] car?”

She said a bad word, and I wasn’t “kids”. There’s just one of me.

“Calm down, love. I forgot she was here.”

So that hurt my feelings. I was driving with him all afternoon telling him my news about the plastic containers we need for collecting buttons, and Melanie’s new doll that has hair that really grows. Also, I was telling him that “dog” begins with “d” and rhymes with “frog”. I know all about rhyming, you know. 1 = fun.

“Well, I have kids and I don’t bring them out here, mister. Go home to your wife.”

Appa drove away and then he looked at me.

“Your mother can’t even fetch you from school,” he said. “Doesn’t she know how busy I am? Now, don’t tell Mom about this. It’s just our little secret, okay?”

Years ago, when I was actually 3, I slept in the same room as Mom and Appa in the cottage. But then I heard Mom saying, “No, no, no.” They were playing wrestling. Appa was on top of Mom and she pushed him back so he hit his head on the wall and then he said a naughty word and smacked Mom on the face. She cried very quietly but then I got out of my bed to hug her and tell her I was awake.

“I love you, Mom,” I said. “Do you know how much I love you?”

Mom wiped her tears and smiled for me, but it didn’t look like a real smile because there was blood coming from her lip. She said, “I love you too, poppet.”

Appa said nothing. He lay back on the bed and switched off the light. He grunted like a piggy pig. Mom took me outside and we looked at the moon. She smoked a cigarette, but I didn’t tell Appa. When we got back to the cottage, he was snoring. I don’t like that because he sounds like a train going through a long tunnel.

I didn’t fall asleep the whole night. Seriously. Children can do that, you know. I got up in the morning and I wasn’t even a tiny bit tired. I don’t know why I always have to go to bed so early.

I’m not allowed to sleep in the cottage any more. Asmita Ayaa made up a pink room for me in the house. Mom and Appa said I needed my own space.

These are the things in my bedroom:

1. Bookshelf with 5 shelves

2. Bed

3. Cupboard

4. Fairy lamp

5. Bedside table

6. Toy box

7. Art table

8. Blackboard with photos stuck on

9. Kiddies chair (purple)

10. 13 stars on the ceiling

I like my room, but Mom can’t understand why we can’t get our own flat where we can all be together in the same building. She doesn’t actually mean all of us, because she wants to leave Asmita Ayaa and my grandfather Kandasamy Ajah behind, and be just 3:

1 = Mom

2 = Appa

3 = me

Appa gets cross when she says this, because why waste money when we have a perfectly good place to live and we’re all very comfortable? Money doesn’t grow on trees, and why doesn’t she bring in some cash of her own and stop lying in bed feeling sorry for herself? Then Mom says she’s 24 and married 5 years and we can’t be tied to Appa’s parents forever. Then Appa says she knew what he was like when she married him, and after 5 years she still doesn’t make a decent curry.

I like Mom’s curry.

Some days are very bad. Every day when I wake up, I always run to the cottage to say good morning, but sometimes Mom doesn’t even open her eyes. I know she’s not dead, because I can see her breathing with her lungs. Her lungs are inside her body getting rid of the bad air and giving her blood beautiful fresh oxygen.

Appa is normally gone when I wake up, but sometimes he has breakfast with my grandparents and me. When I don’t have Humpty Dumpty’s on Saturdays and Sundays and holiday time, I like to crawl into bed with Mom. She moves over without waking, but I can hear her sigh. Moving over for me is good. I can hug Mom as much as I want to, even if she doesn’t hug me back.