by Carol Gibbs
We spin around to face him.
“No,” we say together, “but we would love to.”
“We’ll need a bat.”
“Maybe we can ask Smuts for his knopkierie,” says Gabriel.
“What’s a nubkerry?” Chuck’s accent makes us start giggling all over again.
“It’s the stick Smuts uses for bonking people over their heads.”
“Golly gosh,” says Chuck.
We find Smuts on his back, fast asleep in the sun. Six hands shake him and he gets a fright and reaches for his knopkierie.
“Hau!”
“It’s all right, Smuts. It’s just us …”
Chuck sticks his hand out, chewing his gum nervously. “Howdy, how you doin’?”
Smuts flashes his white teeth and clasps Chuck’s fingers in a funny handshake.
“That’s neat!”
“Please, Smuts, can we borrow your knopkierie?”
“Yes, but bring it back before it gets dark or the tokoloshe will get all of you.”
“What’s a – how d’you say it – tukalashee?”
“It’s an evil spirit. If you look at it you die!” says Gabriel. “The tokoloshe is like Houdini. It can be invisible and you have to put your bed on bricks if you want to be safe when you sleep.”
“Jesus! This fella sure knows how to scare ya, guys.”
Using the Lord’s name in vain sends you on a one-way ticket straight to hell. Chuck is a sailor, but we don’t see him blushing.
“Jesus should knock on Chuck’s heart,” whispers Desiree.
We lead Chuck past the chickens, the mealies and the sunflowers, into the street. He holds Smuts’s knopkierie high above his waist, almost over his shoulder. “Pitch!”
Gabriel stands rooted to the spot.
“Toss the ball, Gabriel. Toss the ball!”
“Chuck the ball, Gabriel!” shouts Desiree.
Gabriel chucks the ball and Chuck misses.
“It’s not so easy with a nubkerry. Try again!” He hits the ball and runs to first base. I’m not sure what I’m meant to do and I scramble after him.
“Let’s switch. You try, Gabriel.”
Chuck pitches. Gabriel hits the ball.
Desiree and I shout together. “Run, Gabriel, run!”
“Now ya getting the hang of it.”
Farrell and Maurice come outside and join in. Soon the road is full of shouting children, us and some others who have come to see the American sailors play in the road. “Pitch! Run! First base, second base, home!”
Mommy sticks her head out the lounge window. “It’s bedlam out here. Come in for your tea.”
The excitement dies down. The other children leave and we run inside. The sailors have spots with my daddy. We have ginger beer and the ladies have tea. I run out with a piece of roly-poly cake for Smuts.
Chuck takes his cigarettes from his pocket and offers them to Daddy and Aunty Katarina. She’s brave now because Grandma isn’t here. Then Chuck does something the cowboys in the bioscope do. He strikes his match on the heel of his shoe. Gabriel’s eyes nearly pop out of his head.
“Please, can I do that too?” And so he does. Gabriel strikes the match. It lights. It’s magic! Chuck puffs and puffs on his cigarette until the end glows red and he blows blue smoke rings up at the ceiling. Then he gives his matches to Gabriel.
“I wish I could give you my hat, but I’m sure to get in trouble with the captain.”
“Can’t I have one of your shoes?”
The grown-ups all laugh. Farrell and Maurice feel sorry for Desiree and me. They fish in their pockets and come up with four sticks of Wrigley’s mint chewing gum, all the way from America. I unwrap the gum carefully, and pop it into my mouth. The stick is long and I have to fold it up with my tongue. The mint tastes cool in my mouth. I chew just like Chuck.
I wish the sailors could stay at our Doll’s House forever, but the sad moment comes. A bit unsteady on their feet, they collect their hats and shake hands with Gabriel. Chuck ruffles his hair.
“Goodbye to the boy with the name of an angel,” he says.
They bend down at the waist and one by one they kiss Desiree on the mouth. My mommy gives me the eye, but I don’t know why. They kiss me goodbye, too, smack-bang, on my mouth. The smell of the brandy lingers in the room and I can taste it on my lips. They’ve no sooner stepped out the door than Mommy is shouting.
“Get to the bathroom quickly and take that awful gum out of your mouths.”
We stick our gum under the marble-topped washstand. But we don’t brush our teeth – it’s still much too early to go to bed. The sun hasn’t even set and we still have to give the knopkierie back to Smuts or the tokoloshe will get us.
Mommy is still cross when she comes into the bathroom behind us.
“What have we done wrong?” Desiree’s the bravest.
“You allowed the sailors to kiss you.”
“But Oupa kisses us when he says goodbye!”
“That’s different. Oupa is allowed to soengroet you. He is family.” Mommy shoves a soapy facecloth in my mouth. “Rub the facecloth round and round. Desiree, do the same – scrub your lips, hard!”
“It’s sore, I can’t do it any more!” I wail.
“Do as I say!”
“Why?”
“Because sailors have germs.”
Germs on cups, germs on mouths, germs in tummies, the whole world is full of germs!
“You must learn to shake hands like men, then you won’t have to wash your mouths out with soap!” Gabriel laughs.
In between scrubbing our mouths and lips, we sing, “Gabriel, Gabriel, sissy angel!” He sticks his tongue out and walks away.
“No good will come of this sailor thing, you’ll see. Chewing gum! It’s common.” Daddy is really cross. “And Katarina must watch out. If there’s any trouble, you won’t see the Americans for dust!”
“Jacob, what do you mean trouble?”
“Well, you never know. Maybe they got intimate.”
“Jacob!”
“Well, I wash my hands of the whole debacle,” Daddy shrugs his shoulders.
Later we climb into bed with sore lips and our gum in our cheeks. We all want to live in America when we’re big.
“Don’t fall asleep with your gum in your mouth,” warns Desiree in a whisper. “If you swallow your gum it can stick in your insides and even Doctor West won’t be able to get it out.”
So I fall asleep with my gum between my fingers and my packet of Wrigley’s mint under my pillow.
“Where’s Gabriel?” asks Mommy. “I need him to go to Chong’s.”
“He’s in the bathroom …” Desiree tells Mommy. “And he’s got Daddy’s Brylcream,” she whispers to me so Mommy can’t hear.
Desiree and I slip off and peep through the window. Gabriel is cutting his hair with Mommy’s sewing scissors. Mommy has strictly forbidden us to use those scissors for any purpose other than cutting material and thread. We can blackmail him for a nigger ball at least.
“He wants to look like Chuck,” says Desiree, “but he’ll never get it right because of his bullet-shaped head.”
Desiree giggles so loudly she has to stuff her dress in her mouth. But it’s too late. Gabriel hears, looks up and sees us peeping through the window. He puts curses on us. We run as fast as we can, falling over one another to get away. When Gabriel is cross, he twists your arm behind your back until your eyes water and you feel the pain for a week. Nazi torture he calls it, and he means it.
When Gabriel has gone to Chong’s we go back into the bathroom and ask Mommy to read what it says on the Brylcream bottle.
Fixes the hair in any desired position.
Packed in South Africa for
County Perfumery Company.
London, England.
“Is England and Britain the same place?” I ask.
“Yes, but why do you ask?”
“Because Uncle Nicholas always says, ‘British is best.’”
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nbsp; Mommy has bleached, wrung, hung and strung the washing on the line to dry. I am lying under the flapping sheets. Mr Wind makes the sheets billow like the sails of a ship. It’s a hot day, but the cold drops of water from the socks fall on my face and there’s no place I’d rather be. I’m out at sea where no one can get me.
“Colleen, where are you? We have to go to Chong’s for French polony for lunch.”
Bessie follows us and then lies down on the grass verge with her pink teats and her big tummy and she won’t budge. We leave her lying there.
Mr Chong slices our polony and then we cross to Mr Abdullah’s babbie shop to buy our soup greens for supper. It’s a quick skip to Berg’s. If you buy Bosco Chocolate Spread you get a free mug. We’ve nagged for weeks and weeks for the glass mug with the orange bear on the front with his head in a jar.
At last Mommy says yes. “But don’t forget – you have to share!”
On the way home, we find Bessie giving birth to a black puppy, a tiny blind creature wrapped up in a tight white bag. Bessie’s pink tongue licks away at the little wet bundle until the puppy is clean and the black wavy hair glistens in the sun. Mommy fetches Gabriel to carry Bessie. He lets me carry the puppy with a piece of white string still hanging from the puppy’s belly button. He finds an old overall of Daddy’s and puts it beside his bed for Bessie to lie on.
“Bessie’s had six puppies,” Mommy tells Daddy, “and they all look like proper spaniels.”
“Thanks to my intervention,” retorts Daddy.
Bessie’s puppies are all grown up and the time has come to sell them so Daddy is teaching Gabriel how to dock the puppies’ tails.
“Come on, Gabriel, turn the handle. Faster!”
Daddy holds his penknife against the grindstone until the blade is sharp enough to cut the puppies’ tails off. Desiree and I take turns to fetch the puppies from Bessie and their tiny mouths make plopping sounds as they leave Bessie’s pink nipple behind. We lay them on the kitchen table under the rise-and-fall light with its shade like a Chinaman’s hat on the long purple flex. Daddy pulls the light down low over the kitchen table while Gabriel holds the puppy still and Daddy says the same thing every time: “Have you got butter fingers?”
Gabriel grips the puppy in his small fist. “I-I’ll hold them t-tighter.”
Mommy is worried about Gabriel, because he’s started to stutter.
Desiree dances round the kitchen table singing. Three blind mice, three blind mice …
“Be quiet, Desiree. I can’t hear myself think.”
Desiree quakes in her boots and falls silent. Daddy counts the bones, one, two, three, then he presses the knife down. We put our fingers in our ears when the puppy squeals.
“Next.”
Now there are five done and one left.
“Come, Gabriel, your turn. How else are you going to learn?”
Gabriel feels for the bones. One, two, three. His fingers are all thumbs. Desiree and I stand in the shadows feeling sorry for him.
“Press down now,” says Daddy.
Gabriel closes his eyes tight and pushes down on the knife.
“You see … That wasn’t so bad now, was it?”
Gabriel’s task is not yet done. He has to put oil on the stump left behind.
“They’ll heal in no time.”
After that day with Bessie’s puppies, Gabriel thinks he’s all grown up. He’s not, but we – me and Desiree – let him think he is.
He sharpens his penknife the way Daddy taught him. Now he even kills moles. He says it’s okay because Oupa says they are vermin and they have to be taken off the face of the earth. Today he is determined to kill another one before the sun goes down. “Come and see! It’s a big one.”
The sharp spikes stick through the mole’s body. It’s a gruesome sight but we’re used to it. The teeth are sharp and ugly, and I don’t want to be anywhere near that mouth. When the skins are tanned and clean I love to stroke the soft fur and lift the pelt to my cheek. Gabriel says when he has enough pelts he will make a skin kaross like the one on Oupa’s bed, the one he made for Ouma when she was his young bride.
Gabriel’s mole skins pegged to the washing line make me think of the dead hairy creature living in my mother’s wardrobe. The mouth is clipped to the tail and the staring glass eyes shine in the dark. Sometimes when Mommy hides from Daddy she climbs into the wardrobe with the dead animal. It’s scary. Aunty Dolly calls it a tippet, but Mommy calls it her fox fur. Aunty Beryl wears one when she comes to visit. Desiree and I can’t understand why anyone would want to carry a dead animal wrapped around their neck all the way from the station.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Daddy comes into our room singing. I dream of Jeannie with the light brown hair …
When he sings in the morning, we know he’s happy and that makes us happy. He pulls the faded chintz curtain aside and flings the window wide open. The sight of the pink Dorothy Perkins roses meets our eyes.
“Stop smelling your own poeps. Get up – we’re going to St James,” Daddy calls to us before he carries on singing.
He promised to buy me a bunch of blue ribbons to tie up my bonny brown hair.
His smile is big and white and his dark hair falls across his forehead, just like my paper doll daddy’s. We have a whole new day and a whole new daddy from Sunday through to Thursday, our five days of safety and sanity.
Desiree and I tumble out of bed and race for the lavatory. While I wait my turn I look up at the mountain shimmering in the morning haze. It’s a beautiful beach day. We dash back inside to scrabble in our drawers for our bubble bathing costumes and rubber bathing caps.
“Don’t forget to take your poke bonnet,” says Mommy. “If the frill doesn’t cover the back of your neck, you’ll get sunstroke.”
“Let’s take our Rosebud dolls.”
We roll our bathing costumes in towels like big, thick sausages. Our sandshoes fly across the tarmac to get to the station. As my daddy buys our tickets I look into the eyes of the man who wants to see the lady’s tits wobble.
“Enjoy your day at the beach, little girl,” he says.
I blush pink because I just know he would like to come along with us and peep into the bathing boxes to see the ladies’ tits when they take their clothes off.
We can’t wait for the train to round the bend and Desiree and I lean forward and look down the line.
“Don’t be so stupid,” says Daddy. “Stand back or you’ll fall onto the track.”
“B-b-efore y-you know what’s h-h-happening your brains will be all over the show, and you w-won’t have your Velvet ice cream to look f-f-forward to.”
At last the train snakes round the bend. We pile in with blanket, bathing costumes, buckets and baskets overflowing. The door closes behind us with a sharp click. The whistle blows as we crisscross the carriage.
“Kry nou julle rigting,” says Daddy. “Settle down.”
We have to change trains at Retreat station and carry our blanket, bathing costumes, buckets and baskets overflowing over the big steel bridge to the opposite platform.
“Why is it called Retreat station?” Gabriel asks Daddy.
“I suppose because soldiers retreated here during the war.”
At last there’s another sharp blast on a whistle and then the conductor shouts at the top of his voice, All stations to Simon’s Town! Sometimes Daddy says let’s go all the way to Simon’s Town, just for the hell of it! I love it when he says that, because it sounds so daring.
We steam past Kalk Bay Station and the harbour, sniffing salt air into our nostrils as we watch people carrying their Sunday things. Heavily laden men carry blankets and Thermos flasks and big round watermelons in their strong arms. Children on skinny brown legs, clutching slices of spanspek, dart in and out of shady tents made from blankets and a few sticks. Boys chase stray dogs and seagulls while other children run races and do bollemakiesies on the soft white sand.
“With a bit of luck, we may see a warship sailing past,
” says Daddy.
Gabriel only has to hear the word war to fire his imagination. He sits at the window with his pretend cannon and blasts all the rocks on the side of the railway line until we get to Simon’s Town, the end of the line. And then we catch the train back to St James.
When we reach St James, we thrill to the sound of the ice-cream bell, as the man comes down the hill on his three-wheeled bicycle, shouting, Polar ice, wafers and suckers! The ice-cream man makes funny faces to make us laugh as he takes our pennies. His pockets jingling, he smiles and waves goodbye. We hear him calling to other children, further down the road. I feel the sand between my toes as the ice cream melts on my tongue, and it’s like angels singing in the heat of the day.
I feel the hot sun on my back, the sights and sounds and tastes and smells begin to wash over me, over us. I can taste the tomato sandwiches. The seagulls make their seagull sounds as they swoop down to hover above the heads of all the children clutching their slices of bread. Then juice runs down my chin as I bite into a big, sweet slice of pink watermelon. I feel the empty bucket in my hands as it leaves the first perfect sandcastle on the sand. The soft white sand takes the shape of our bodies, packed like sardines on our blanket. Trains rumble past, clickety-clack on the railway track. People stick their heads out of the carriage windows and wave. We hold shells to our ears to listen to the murmur of the sea and when we put our rubber bathing caps on they squash our ears. There’s the cracking sound of ball on bat and the crashing sound of sea on sand.
The sky is blue, because my daddy carries a map of the weather in his head. Daddy says farm boys are never wrong, because they belong to the land and the sky. He says he doesn’t know why he left that life behind him.
We work all day with sand and pebbles to build the biggest dam in the world, and the sea rushes in to fill it. But Gabriel, the dam-buster pilot, flies towards us, arms outstretched, and making buzzing sounds. Sand gets into everything. It gets into Mommy’s knitting as she sits on the rocks with her pattern, planning her next masterpiece. Sunday sober, our daddy paddles, handkerchief knotted tightly around his head, grey flannel trousers rolled up, showing his white hairy legs. Desiree and I hold hands as we team up with other sunburned children gambolling in the waves. We shriek as the swells roll towards us and I jump as high as I’m able with my skinny legs. We find pools hidden in the rocks, teeming with little silver fish, sea anemones, starfish and crabs scuttling for their lives as our busy hands uncover their secret hiding places.