‘ROOOREEEEE! Sit! Sit!’
‘Pa-aa. Uch Pa you’re frightening the wits out of my new little chum! Just ignore him dumb girl, he’s a pussy cat.’ Melissa shook her pink frosted finger nail at her father, winking at him while she filled his glass with scotch and sent me into the kitchen to get his ice.
While I was in the kitchen I stared out of the window while the ice cubes melted in my hands. The ice reminded me of building the snowman with my father. I was going to be eight years old soon and he still hadn’t come home. When I returned to the table and Edward Charles William looked furious at the sight of the tiny slivers of ice that were dripping in my hot hand. Melissa covered up for me.
‘Pa, ugh, Pa, why is it so hard to find ice that doesn’t melt in three seconds? What’s the science, Pa?’
If I had anything to ask my own father I would have to ask him in my head. When Melissa said, ‘Will you take me fishing?’ and her father said ‘Yes,’ I asked my father if he would take me fishing too? His ghostly answer was always, ‘Fishing is treacherous. You might get the hook stuck in your finger!’ Or I would say, ‘Dad, today I climbed to the very top of the tree,’ and he would say, ‘Climbing trees is treacherous. Don’t climb all the way up. Climb halfway and never look down!’
I guessed that Edward Charles William did not want me to be living with them in Durban but Godmother Dory told me that it was necessary for me to have ‘a stable home’ and that it was ‘the least she could do’ because she and my ‘poor poor’ mother had gone to boarding school together and they had taken it in turns to keep watch when they read books at midnight under the sheets with a torch.
I began to listen to how Edward Charles William spoke English, which was the language we all spoke. When he wanted his socks, he yelled at a servant to get them for him. When he wanted a towel for his evening shower he yelled again. He didn’t say the words socks or towel he just yelled the name of the servant. The name of his servant meant get me my socks, get me a towel.
When his shoes needed polishing, the man who did the garden polished them for him. Edward Charles William called him ‘boy’ even though he had four children and nine grandchildren and had silver hair. His name was Joseph and he called Edward Charles William, ‘Master’. The language Edward Charles William spoke to Joseph was the English language but his tone was like a whole separate language. For a start (and I never knew where to start) I could hear that Edward Charles William’s tone was enjoying something too much. I could hear that Edward Charles William needed to be less happy. This thought made me laugh, and every time I laughed I felt a bit happier, which was confusing my new idea about happiness not always being a good thing but there was nothing I could do about it.
One Sunday, Joseph gave me half his pie with gravy and we sat on the grass in the shade because ‘Madam and Master’ always went for a drive on Sundays. That was the first time I noticed he had two fingers missing from his left hand. When I asked him what happened to his fingers, he said he caught them in a door. He taught me to count to two in Zulu. One was Ukunye, two was Isibili. Or something sing-song like that. The idea that there was a door somewhere in South Africa with Joseph’s two fingers stuck in it began to torment me. Later, when I told him that my father was a political prisoner, he told me that an Alsatian dog had bitten off his two fingers when the police raided his brother’s house in Jo’burg. They were looking for Nelson Mandela. When I told him my mother and father knew Winnie and Nelson Mandela (who was in prison FOR LIFE on Robben Island) he instructed me not to ever tell this to Madam and Master — or even Billy Boy. And any way, he said, mopping up his pie and gravy with his thumb and two remaining fingers, what was the point of keeping a bird if it didn’t lay eggs? Amaqanda. That was Zulu for eggs. If Madam’s blue bird laid a blue egg, that would be a little meal.
Every night a grey blanket was placed over Billy Boy’s cage. I knew my father slept with a grey blanket over him too because he had told my mother in a letter.
‘Come here my little chum, you’re freaking me out the way you’re always staring at Ma’s budgie.’ Melissa clasped her arms around my waist and lifted me off the carpet.
‘Now say after me, I CAN SPEAK LOUD.’
‘I can speak loud.’
‘SAY IT LOUDER.’
‘I can speak loud.’
‘THAT’S NOT LOUD. I’m not putting you down till you scream.’
I experimented with a tiny scream. It sounded quite real and she put me down.
‘Lisss-ten, when you smile I know you don’t mean it. Smile for me with all your teeth. Ah that’s lekker. Let’s take the spaceship into town.’
The spaceship was Godmother Dory’s brand new car. She had grown so large she could no longer fit into the old one. I sometimes saw her in the kitchen at night lifting fistfuls of minced meat and potatoes into her little cupid lips. The spaceship was silver and shiny and had spotless cream leather seats. What if the tyres of the new car exploded and Godmother Dory crashed and no one was able to lift her up to take her to hospital?
‘Why is your Ma so fat?’
Melissa lunged towards me and stamped hard on my toe. And then she punched my shoulder.
‘Don’t be so rude, dumb girl. Ma’s a prisoner in her own flesh. She can’t get out of there.’
‘Why not?’
‘She’s dead but she came back as a zombie.’
‘No!’
‘You know Jesus is a zombie too? He died and came back to life.’
Melissa waved the car keys in my face.
‘Say sorry and I’ll buy you a bunny chow.’
‘What’s a bunny chow?’
‘It’s lekkkkker. But you don’t tell anyone where I’m taking you. Especially Pa. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘You said that nice and loud. Girls have to speak up cuz no one listens to them anyway.’
If Melissa had a secret life, I expected nothing less of a plastic person. Plastic people had things to hide and what Melissa was hiding was that she knew places to eat downtown where her Indian boyfriend lived. This place turned out to be a cafe in a side street full of garbage and flies. Old meat bones lay heaped in the gutter underneath a pile of potato peel and rotting carrots. When we walked into the cafe an Indian man reading a newspaper at the till looked up and shouted, ‘Hey Lissa! Is it bunny time?’ He was chewing something that had stained his teeth orange. When the man shouted, ‘Hey Lissa!’ the Indian families devouring plates of curry with their fingers all looked up and then looked down. I guessed they looked down because we were white and not supposed to be there.
‘Thanks Victor. And a bunny for my little chum too. She’s from Jo’burg.’
Melissa steered me to one of the tables and said, ‘Sit.’ I was furious when she told me to sit, as if I was a disobedient dog. She had some of her father’s tone in her, that was for sure. Melissa had caught ‘Master’s’ tone, she needed to take an aspirin and sweat it out of her. I started to sneeze. Victor carried over a can of Fanta and opened it for me while I was still sneezing.