The nuns seemed to have devoted their lives to helping me learn how to read and write. Every day they knelt by my side in the class room, gently rolling plasticine A’s and B’s and C’s in their soft white hands. When they asked me to name the letters, I lowered my head like an orphan saint should do, and whispered ‘Ay, bee, sea,’ while they nodded encouragingly. I thought it might be rude to tell them I had learned to read and write two years ago. In fact I understood all the signs on the golden mile without the help of plasticine.
THIS BATHING AREA IS RESERVED FOR THE SOLE USE
OF MEMBERS OF THE WHITE RACE
Sister Joan told me her rosary was threaded in sections of ten beads and the ten beads were called decades. A decade was ten years. What if my father was away for a decade? What if I was swimming in the bathing area reserved for members of the white race for decades but never saw my father again? I would be alone with the white race who were not normal. I would be totally alone with them and at their mercy like the surfers were at the mercy of the Great White Sharks who managed to get through the gill nets in the subtropical sea.
The oldest nun passed me an M.
‘M for Melissa’, I whispered dutifully.
‘Yes, How is Melissa?’ Sister Joan was now rolling out an N which I knew came after M. I had known this since I was about four.
‘She’s at secretarial college.’
‘And is she doing well at the tech?’
‘She’s learning Pitman’s code.’
I did not tell Sister Joan that Melissa (two S’s in Melissa but we were only on N at the moment) had been banned from driving for a month. This was because she hijacked the spaceship and drove Ajay to see his uncle. Last night when Edward Charles William saw the car was missing at 1.15am he made Godmother Dory wake me up. She dragged me in to the living room and Edward Charles William squeezed his face so close to mine that he squashed my nose.
‘Do you know where fat face is?’
I shook my head and stared into his glass eye.
‘Is she seeing a boy?’
‘No.’
‘An Indian boy? ‘
‘No.’
‘I’VE GOT A BLARRY KAFFIR LOVER FOR A DAUGHTER! YOU’VE COME TO STAY AT THE RIGHT HOUSE, HEY?’
‘Get away from her,’ Godmother Dory squealed in a begging sort of way, ‘Leave the child alone. What am I to say to her poor mother?’ Meanwhile Ginger cat lay asleep on the sofa with its soft paws crossed over each other.
When Edward Charles William put his hand over his glass eye I was terrified it was going to fall out. A sentence formed in my mind. It resembled the sign on the beach:
THIS GLASS EYE IS RESERVED FOR THE SOLE USE
OF MEMBERS OF THE WHITE RACE
Edward Charles William told me he was going to call the police to find Melissa. The police? The same men who had taken my father away? When the spaceship swerved in to the driveway, Melissa beeped the hooter at the police car that had arrived at the same time as she did, rolled down the window and waved like she was on holiday.
‘Hey guys! I didn’t steal my ma’s spaceship honest. I was abducted.’ The policemen laughed but Melissa went crazy after they left. She called her father ‘a fucking Nazi’ and told me that now she couldn’t drive it was hard to find a place she could meet with Ajay. South Africa was shit, Ginger was shit, Rory was shit and I was a dumb freak.
‘Do you still want to be a dolly like your horrible little Barbie?’
‘Yes.’
‘How can you be a dolly and a saint? You know there was a saint called Lucy who plucked out her eyes? But she could still see things because you never stop seeing things until you die. I want to die if I can’t see Ajay.’
Sister Joan was now smiling at sister Elizabeth who didn’t notice because she was busy making a plasticine O. I nodded piously and copied her smile, which was half a smile, as if she had decided a whole one was going too far. She passed me the O. It reminded me of Melissa and Ajay’s smoke rings of love but I said quite loudly, ‘O is for orange. There is one O in God and one O in mother.’
‘Yes. Well done. And are you happy staying with your godmother?’
Happy? I gazed at my ugly black regulation school shoes. Happy? There were two P’s in happy. I could already see Sister Elizabeth rolling out the plasticine P. Perhaps it made the nuns happy to play with plasticine? Perhaps they should roll out plasticine all day long while I read a book? Did they know I actually read books, lots of them, all the way through? Did they think I was dumb like Melissa thought I was dumb? Was I happy? Was I supposed to be happy?
After a while Sister Joan took my hand in her own holy hand and asked me if I believed in God.
The picture of God I held in my mind was connected to the snowman I had built with my father. The snowman was God. He was cold and dead but I thought about him all the time. By way of answering, I opened my satchel and showed her a letter my father had sent to Durban. It occurred to me that I should read it out loud to her so we could stop making plasticine letters.
My darling,
I’m glad the nuns are so nice. Be sure to say your thoughts out loud and not just in your head.
Kisses to the sky.
With all my love from your Daddy.
Sister Joan squeezed my hand.
‘When your father says say your thoughts out loud, he means for you to speak louder.’
‘Speak louder to God?’
I waited for her to say, yes, but she was silent. That was the first time I understood the phrase, ‘Read between the lines.’
5
I had been told to say my thoughts out loud and not just in my head but I decided to write them down. It was five in the morning and I could hear Rory barking at the reed frogs in the pond. I found a biro and had a go at writing down my thoughts. What came out of the biro and onto the page was more or less everything I did not want to know.
Dad disappeared.
Thandiwe cried in the bath.
Piet’s got a hole in his head.
Joseph’s fingers got bitten off
Mr Sinclair hit my legs.
The watermelons grew and I wasn’t there.
Maria and Mom are far away.
Sister Joan might not believe in God.
Billy Boy behind bars.
Billy Boy was my main thought. I put the biro down and then I opened my bedroom door. I would have to be quiet otherwise Edward Charles William might think I was a burglar and do what was written on the sign outside the house:
ARMED RESPONSE
If I was going to do what was ‘between the lines’ of what I had written down, which was to free Billy Boy, then so might Edward Charles William do what was ‘between the lines’ of the words ARMED RESPONSE. Were words just threats or were they serious? Was it true that sticks and stones were more dangerous than words? What was the point of just writing things down, any way? What was the point of writing, BUY MORE PINKIES, but not buying them because writing it down had replaced the desire to actually buy them?
I crept into the dining room. On the polished table were four bowls, four silver spoons, four cups, an empty toast rack and four china plates. Would Goldilocks have broken in to the bears’ cottage if she’d seen a sign on the gate that said ARMED RESPONSE?