Читать книгу Shadow self - Paula Marais - Страница 9

One day, Auntie Annie took Mom to the doctor and he gave her some happy pills. They’re like magic, because some days Mom smiles a real smile even more than once. She even laughs. When Mom smiles she is really, really pretty. When she doesn’t smile she is still pretty, but not quite as good. I’m not pretty even if I smile. My mom is tall and skinny – she has the longest legs. I am short and round. I look like Asmita Ayaa and even though I love Asmita Ayaa around the world 10 times, I’m not happy that I look like her.

Here are the 5 top things I know about my grandmother:

1. When we rent a video, Asmita Ayaa sits next to Appa on the couch with Kandasamy Ajah on the other side. Mom sits on her own or sometimes with me.

2. Asmita Ayaa plays with Appa’s hair and calls him “my boy” even though he is a grown-up. Then Mom gets irritated and bites her nails.

3. There is more of Asmita Ayaa to cuddle than there is of Mom.

4. Asmita Ayaa was a lawyer once. Now she is the boss of us. Mom wants her own house so she can be the boss of us instead.

5. Ayaa’s skin bumps up and down like the moon, and make-up doesn’t help it look better. I’m not allowed to talk about that.

Asmita Ayaa and Mom get on better when Appa is away at the university. When Appa comes home, it feels like a running race of who’s going to get to Appa first. Mom kisses him (on the mouth) and Asmita Ayaa hugs him. He smiles and picks me up and tells me I am his princess. Then he goes to the cottage for a shower and a shave. When he is finished, the dinner is on the table. (We hardly ever eat in the cottage.) Appa eats fast and smacks his lips so it sounds like girlfriend-and-boyfriend smooching on TV. He has food dripping on his chin, but he doesn’t clear it off like he’s supposed to. We all eat with our hands, except Mom, who uses a knife and fork. At the end of dinner, Appa is tired and doesn’t help clear, because that’s women’s work.

I don’t understand about Appa’s job. Mom says he’s studying and working to pay the bills.

Since the happy pills, Mom has also been studying. She’s a tour guide and now she is going to use her French that my other granny made her learn at school.

In the mornings Mom goes to a place in town where she says “bonjer” and “ohrevwor”. Sometimes she brings back children’s books from the library and reads to me in French. I like the pictures. Mom says she is going to make something of herself, but I don’t know what you can make when you are already something. And when will she spend time with me if she’s so busy making it in this world?

Now that Mom smiles sometimes, she takes me to the park after Humpty Dumpty’s. This means I get to slide and swing for an extra hour every day unless it’s raining. I like the ladder that goes right into the branches of a tree the best, but because I’m so short, it’s difficult for me to get back down. Mom has to catch me and she doesn’t even care if I get mud on her clothes. We get home all dirty and we jump in the bath together. Mom’s skin is lighter than mine, but it isn’t perfect under her clothes. She has bruises. They change colour: red, blue, green. One of her newest ones is the shape of Africa, and Mom showed me Egypt and tells me about the pyramids where there are stacks of dead bodies wrapped up in white cloth. They’re kings and queens, so they don’t go into the ground or get burnt like Amoy Ayaa, although I’m too young to remember her. Mom says she is very clumsy because she bumps herself when she tries to go to the toilet at night without switching on the light. I wish she would be more careful.

“You could turn on the light,” I say, touching the bruises on her tummy.

“What?”

“Turn on the light, when you go for a wee.”

She looks at me, but she’s only pretending to smile.

“Good idea,” she says. “I’ll try that.”

With Mom, both of us pretend a lot, because she pretends to listen and I pretend to believe her.

When we get out the bath, we choose clothes that match. We like to wear the same colours, and my favourite colour is pink. Mom’s favourite colour is also pink, so that’s good. We wear pink all the time, and yesterday Mom bought a new jersey, which is soft as a bunny rabbit. She looks extra beautiful in it and she touches it like she loves it as much as I do.

Here are some other favourite colours:

1. Appa’s favourite colour is black, but I don’t think that’s a good colour. Black is dark and scary and night.

2. Asmita Ayaa loves red like a fire engine.

3. Kandasamy Ajah says why am I bothering him, a colour is a colour. So I think that even grown-ups can be wrong. A colour is not any colour, or why would we choose different paints at Humpty Dumpty’s?

Mom is not studying all the time. Some mornings, when she isn’t learning “bonjer”, she takes tourists around Cape Town. A tourist is a visitor who doesn’t live there. If I was in Durban, on a sight-seeing boat that’s what I’d be. In Cape Town I am not a tourist so I am not allowed to go with Mom on her special bus rides. I don’t think that’s fair because buses have lots of seats and I am only little. But Mom says these strangers like to be private and don’t want other people’s children on the bus. Meanies. Asmita Ayaa said it’s good manners to share but maybe they have different manners where these people come from.

Appa drops Mom off at the bus so she doesn’t have to leave her car where the buses park. He always says hello to all the tourists and tells them he is Mom’s husband. Sometimes I wait in the car.

I have another word for bus: coach. Appa and I read it off the side of the bus. Coach tours. That means going round Cape Town with Mom.

These are the 7 top things to do in Cape Town:

1. Table Mountain. You can go up in a cable car, which is like a train hanging from a rope that goes up to the top and down again.

2. Greenmarket Square. You can buy things there and there are lots of people, so you mustn’t let your mom’s hand go. You might get lost or stolen by baddies.

3. 2 seas meeting. You drive a long way to see 2 seas mixing. It’s the tip of Africa, but not really because Mom says there’s another tip somewhere else. You can watch divers swimming in the water with seaweed and baboons can steal your picnic because one baboon ate my bread roll and it was cheese and jam, my favourite.

4. Kirstenbosch. This is a big garden with proteas and bushes, and mountains in the back. There is a bath we are not supposed to climb in. (Once Appa let me put in my toes.)

5. Grape farms – if you drive for like 2 years you get to this place where people drink wine in little glasses you get to keep. Children don’t drink wine, of course. We drink grape juice. Red is the best. I already said colour is super-important.

6. Company Gardens. The man built a castle and he also planted fruit trees to feed the sailors so they wouldn’t get not-enough-vitamins disease. There are lots of old-fashioned buildings there. My best place has all those paintings. We go there sometimes when it is raining. Mom tells me stories and makes me laugh.

7. Seal Island. You can visit it on a boat that leaves from Hout Bay. I went once and the seals are cute but very smelly. I saw a dead one floating.

When Mom comes home from her work, Appa always asks her lots of questions because he is very curious. Appa likes numbers like me, so he asks things like: How long did you spend at Kirstenbosch? How many people arrived? How long did it take to get back? He also likes to know a lot of things about them: Where do they come from? Were they a family? Will Mom be meeting them again?

Mom answers all the questions, but she looks bored. When Appa can’t drop Mom off, we go to the coach (new word!) with Asmita Ayaa. Mom says thanks quickly, and jumps out. Sometimes she forgets to kiss me she’s in such a hurry.

Sometimes Mom takes a small group with a driver, who is a friend of Appa’s, called Lankesh. Mom takes the tourists and Lankesh waits in the car. If they have lunch in a fancy restaurant, he eats takeaways in the car. Mom doesn’t like Lankesh. He’s not handsome like Appa, and she says he smells funny. Appa laughs and says she’s a fussy little thing. No one knows the back streets like Lankesh. I wonder where the back streets are, and if they are the back ones, where do you find the ones at the front?