Crooks and Straights

by Masha du Toit

  “But where’s your bedroom?” said Fatima. “You still have to share with the little monster?”

  “That’s what Mom thinks,” said Gia as she closed the boxes and checked to make sure that no one could tell they’d been opened.

  “I’ll show you.”

  She led the way through the kitchen, into a narrow room that must once have been a pantry. It was lined all the way to the ceiling with shelves and cupboards.

  “These are still full of the previous people’s stuff. All kinds of odd things,” said Gia. “But we’ll look at that later. This is what I want to show you.”

  She pointed at a set of wooden stairs, almost as steep as a ladder, which ended in a trapdoor in the ceiling.

  “You. Are. Not. Serious.” Fatima looked up. “Up there?”

  “Come.” Gia climbed the stairs, and pushed open the trapdoor, a heavy wooden thing that slid back stiffly. She climbed through, and was soon followed by Fatima, who looked around at the tiny attic room.

  “Wow. Dusty! There must be like a kingdom of spiders up here.”

  “Come look at the view.”

  Gia walked over to the dormer window set in one of the slanting walls, and Fatima came to stand beside her.

  “Wow. Nice!”

  The sun was just about to move behind the mountain. The long, low, golden light of late summer spilled over the houses and streets. In the distance, the harbour lights were on, and below them Eastern Boulevard was a river of red brake lights.

  “That is awesome,” said Fatima. “And you could put your mattress on here, and sleep right here in the window!” She patted the broad window seat.

  “That’s what I thought,” said Gia.

  Fatima gave her a calculating look.

  “You want to move your stuff in here, make it nice to convince your mom to let you stay up here?”

  “You got it.”

  Fatima considered the room.

  “We’ll have to do some more cleaning first then. You go get a bucket and rags. And a vacuum cleaner. Look, there’s even a plug point, so we won’t need to run an extension cord. But how are we going to fit a mattress through that?”

  She pointed at the trapdoor.

  “We can scrunch it up,” said Gia. “I’m sure we can manage.”

  “O…kay, if you say so. Ben’s going to love this.”

  Gia was about to climb back down through the trapdoor, when she heard the ladder shake, and Mandy’s head appeared.

  “What’s going on here?” said Mandy. “I thought I heard something moving around. Ugh. Just look at those cobwebs. What are you up to?”

  Gia had hoped to keep things secret until the room was ready to show off, but Mandy might make a valuable ally.

  “I want to clean this up, Mandy, to make this my room.”

  “Your ma will have something to say about that.”

  Mandy, still only head and shoulders through the trapdoor, looked about the room. Gia said nothing, hoping that the challenge of a thoroughly dirty room would do more than any pleading words from her.

  Mandy gave a nod. “But you’ll have to purify it first. Once you’ve got the dust out. No knowing what’s magical goggas been living up here all these years. I’ll give you a salt mixture and show you how to do it. We should probably do a good smudge with some sage too.”

  “Just show us what to do,” said Gia happily. With Mandy on her side, the battle was half-won already.

  -oOo-

  Cleaning the attic room was a lot more difficult than either of the girls had expected.

  Mandy gave them old shirts to wear, after making Gia change out of her school uniform.

  It was satisfying to see the difference their work made. The floor appeared from under the dust of many years: dark, wooden planks. The walls, that were the sloping sides of the roof, had to be swept clear of cobwebs, but there were not many live spiders among them.

  Not that their cleaning was without excitement.

  Fatima, sweeping up a thick layer of dust from under the window seat, shrieked with surprise as a clot of dust bunched into a bundle and scrambled up the broom handle at her.

  Their screams brought Mandy up the ladder again, just in time to see Fatima slapping wildly with a cloth until the thing exploded in a puff of dust.

  “You make that much noise, Madam will be up here,” warned Mandy.

  “What the hell was that!” said Fatima, eyes wide.

  “Dust bunny,” said Mandy. “Haven't seen one that big for years. Keep the noise down.”

  “Looked more like a dust spider to me,” said Fatima with a shudder.

  They were more careful after that, poking at the dust with the broom handle before sweeping it up, but no more dust bunnies appeared.

  Gia found a bundle of newspapers in the angle between the ceiling and a roof beam. It was lined with rags, and smelt strongly of cigarette smoke.

  “It looks like a nest,” said Fatima. “But what makes a nest like that?”

  Now that she looked at it, Gia saw there were other things in the bundle. Scraps of sweet wrappings, all bright colours. Bronze-red, golden-green, emerald, and many other shades, mostly metallic. There were also some lumps of crumbly white stuff that might be sugar, and a tiny plastic-framed mirror.

  She looked at these things doubtfully. The nest was already falling apart in her hands, and she could hardly put it back.

  “I’ll throw the newspapers away,” she decided. “But I’ll put these other things in an envelope, and put it back up there."

  Fatima stared at her. “You’re serious? And you plan to sleep up here, with some thing crawling about to get its stuff back?”

  She shuddered.

  “Well, rather you than me.”

  When they finished dusting and sweeping, Gia vacuumed while Fatima washed the windows. Then, under Mandy’s watchful eye, they purified the room with a mixture of salt and nutmeg, sprinkling the mixture all over the floor and sweeping it up again, careful to always sweep in the direction of the trapdoor.

  “Sucks up the bad luck,” Mandy explained. “And keeps the goggas away.”

  At the mention of magicals, Gia remembered her experience with the haarskeerder nest, and told Fatima about it as they worked.

  “Scary stuff,” said Fatima. “I didn’t know you still got them in the city. All magicals give me the creeps.”

  Getting the mattress through the trapdoor proved trickier than Gia had thought. Luckily her parents had taken Nico out to find if there was a park anywhere near for him to play in. Otherwise they would certainly have investigated the amount of noise that was made.

  It took Fatima pulling from the top, and Gia balancing on the ladder and pushing from below, and even so the mattress did not go through undamaged.

  “Shit,” said Fatima, inspecting the tear. “Well, we’ll just put the sheets over that and nobody will ever know.”

  At last, the room was ready.

  The mattress fitted on the window seat, and looked inviting, neatly made with blankets and pillows. Mandy had found a wooden box to act as a bedside table, and a lamp to go on top of it.

  Gia looked at it proudly. The room was small, much smaller than the bedroom in their previous house, but that did not matter.

  It was hers, and hers alone.

  They had even set up the tea corner like the one she’d had in her own bedroom back in Plumstead.

  On the floor, for the moment. An electric kettle, some mugs, several tins of tea, and a packet of biscuits.

  “So, are you going to show me the doll?” asked Fatima, sitting on the bed and stirring sugar into her tea. “You done more on her?”

  “Tons!” said Gia. “Hang on, I’ll get her out.”

  She closed and bolted the trapdoor, then opened one of the suitcases that stood waiting to be unpacked.

  “Your parents still don’t know about this?”

  Gia shook her head and lifted out a cardboard box.

  “There’s no point in talking to the
m about it. I’m sick of arguing. I’ve been working on her when no one else is around. Or at night. Which is partly why I can’t share a room with Nico.”

  She sat next to Fatima and placed the box on the bed between them.

  “You still going to take First Exit then?” said Fatima, as Gia opened the box and pulled back the layer of felt.

  “Yes,” said Gia. “Mom and Dad won’t like it, but they can’t stop me.”

  “Oh, Gia, you’ve given her hair!”

  Gia took the doll’s head out of its nest of felt.

  “Human hair,” she said. “It took me ages.”

  She brushed the fringe back from the doll’s forehead to display the tiny, regular pin holes. “I had to root each lock of hair separately. But it’s worth the trouble.”

  “She’s going to look fantastic when you put her all together,” said Fatima.

  She picked up one of the doll’s hands and examined it, holding it in her palm. “You painted this one again. The skin’s a different colour.”

  “No, that’s from firing,” said Gia. “Makes it change colour like that.”

  She stroked the doll’s hair.

  “Do you think she’s good enough, Fatima? Will they accept this as an apprentice piece?”

  Fatima considered the head.

  “Well, I think she’s gorgeous,” she said at last. “But the thing is, they might not see it as an artwork at all. She’s so pretty. And she’s a doll. Maybe you should— I don’t know. Plunge a knife through her neck and make her all gory, or something like that. Say it’s a statement about violence against women.”

  Gia laughed. “Or make her lots and lots of hands,” she said. “And sew them all over her body. Except, hands are a mission to make. And anyway, I don’t want to do something like that to her.”

  “I know,” said Fatima.

  They both looked down at the doll head in Gia’s lap.

  Is she really good enough? wondered Gia.

  Maybe I do have to do something to make her more of an artwork, and not just a doll.

  The image of the blood-red beads in her mother’s box returned to her. That was the effect she hoped to capture: beautiful and unsettling.

  Even just one bead might be enough, if I combined it with embroidery. But I can’t ask Mom for them without explaining what I want it for, and she’ll notice immediately if I just take one.

  The doll was her apprentice piece, her chance to win a scholarship and gain admission to the Ben-Haspeth School of Arts. That was the plan she’d been working towards for more than a year. Instead of finishing high school, she would take First Exit and join the art school as an apprentice. Her parents would never give permission, but that did not matter. She was sixteen, and she could take First Exit without their consent.

  As long as the art school accepted her, of course. And that would only happen if her apprentice piece was good enough.

  Both girls started as somebody hammered on the trapdoor.

  “Open up, Gia,” shouted Mandy.

  “Coming!” Gia hurriedly tucked the doll back in the box, and put it away.

  She opened the trapdoor.

  “Madam’s home,” Mandy said as she climbed through.

  “Gia!” came Saraswati’s voice from below. “Where are you?”

  “I’m here, Mom,” called Gia, feeling a flutter of nerves. “Come have a look.”

  There was a silence. Then her mother’s voice, much closer.

  “Gia? Where— ?”

  “Here, Mom. Up here.”

  The stairs creaked and her mother appeared, head and shoulders through the trapdoor.

  “What’s this, Gia?” Saraswati looked around at the room, frowning.

  “Move on up!” came Karel’s voice from behind her.

  “Just wait, Karel—” But Saraswati had to climb all the way through and move aside to make way for Karel and Nico, who were both impatient to see what was at the top of the ladder.

  “Just look at this!” said Karel, coming through the trapdoor. “Did you girls clean this up now? Looking pretty good!”

  Nico was wide eyed. He looked far too interested for Gia’s liking.

  “This is my room, Nico,” she said. “Just like back home. No sneaking in and messing with my stuff, understand?”

  She caught her mother’s disapproving eye. “I wish you would not talk to your brother like that. And we’ve decided this already. You are to share the room with Nico—”

  “No obvious leaks, and the floor's quite safe,” said Karel. He stamped a foot. “Solid. Are the windows warded?”

  “Iron wards,” said Mandy. “Old-fashioned, but nothing wrong with that. Won’t go down in a power failure like these new-fangled electric system, anyhow.”

  Saraswati turned on her with a frown. “Mandy? Did you help them do this?”

  Mandy met her gaze blandly. “You all need more space here, Madam. Nothing wrong with the room. And little Nico will do better on his own, you know that. We’ve just got him used to sleeping by himself.”

  Saraswati seemed about to argue back, then she laughed despite her irritation. “True enough. Our one victory.” She looked around the room again, rubbing her hands over her upper arms. “You’re sure it’s safe, Karel?”

  “Absolutely,” said Karel. “Floor’s solid as a rock. No signs of leaks, but we’ll know for sure when it starts raining. I can put some bars over the windows, if you like. You’ll need some shelving, Gia.”

  “It seems the decision is made then,” said Saraswati. “But I wish you’d asked for permission, Gia. I don’t like this sneaking around behind my back.”

  Gia gave a little jump of joy, and high-fived Fatima.

  “Thanks Mom! That’s fantastic!” She stepped in for a hug. For a moment her mother was stiff in her arms. Then she relaxed as she relented.

  “Just don’t fall down that ladder in the dark,” she said into Gia’s hair.

  -oOo-

  Fatima left, after a last attempt at getting Gia to go out with her.

  “I’m sorry, Fatima,” Sariswati had said. “Karel and I have to go out tonight. Meeting a new client. We can’t leave Nico on his own.”

  So that was that.

  Gia sat on her parents’ bed, watching her mother get ready.

  The house was quiet now. Nico was in bed, listening to a record to help him fall asleep. Karel was downstairs in the studio, working on something. Mandy had left for the day.

  That was another change.

  In Plumstead, Mandy had only gone home on weekends, to see her grown-up daughters and their grandchildren. Now she would be travelling every day, taking train and taxi to get to work here in Walmer Estate.

  “Gia, would you brush my hair for me?”

  Saraswati sat with her eyes closed, rocking slightly as Gia pulled the brush through her long, black hair.

  Gia loved her mother’s hair. It was so different from her own, which was short, brown, and tended to curl in unwanted directions. Saraswati’s hair was ink-black, dead straight, and hung to her waist. These days it was laced with a few silver strands among the black, but Gia thought those were beautiful too.

  “Are you going to put it up?” she asked as she gave back the brush.

  Her mother smiled at her in the mirror. “You like that, don’t you?”

  She reached back and twisted her hair expertly into an ornate loop. Gia handed her the two long wooden pins which Saraswati stuck in at just the right angle to secure the hair.

  “There,” said Saraswati, tucking an escaped strand behind her ear. “That will do.”

  Gia watched as Saraswati put kohl around her eyes and deftly applied a touch of lipstick.

  She always thought that Saraswati looked like someone from the Tales of the Arabian Nights. Maybe not a princess— her hooked nose and firm chin were too fierce for that. She dressed simply too, and wore no jewelry except for two wide silver bracelets that reached almost from elbow to wrist.

  Gia had never seen Saraswati
without her silver, and the bracelets seemed as much part of her mother as her hair.

  Dressed in white linen, her coiled hair emphasising the graceful length of her neck, Saraswati looked like a queen.

  “Gia, could you stay down here with Nico until we get home?” she said, gathering her things into an evening handbag.

  “I know you want to go up into your new room, but if Nico wakes and—”

  “It’s okay, Mom. I’ll stay.”

  Her mother gave her the lightest of lipstick-saving kisses, surrounding Gia with her jasmine-and-sandalwood scent.

  “Thank you, my darling. We’ll try not to be out too late.”

  -oOo-

  The record reached its end, filling Nico’s room with its rhythmic bump and scratch until Gia lifted the needle.

  She stood over to the bed, and saw that Nico was not yet asleep.

  His unhappiness was apparent in the lines of his skinny body lying stiff and tense under the blankets. His eyes were wide open, large and dark, staring up at the ceiling.

  She sat on the bed and took one of his hands, which was promptly jerked away again.

  Poor old Nico. What was it like for him?

  It was going to be a while before he really got used to things. There were going to be some bad dreams tonight.

  If only he would talk more.

  Gia pictured all the words that Nico did not use building up inside him, looking for ways to escape. No wonder he got so twitchy.

  She wondered what went on inside his head. He could speak and understand perfectly well, but he used the words one or two at a time, or strung awkwardly together, as if he were signalling with flags.

  Careful to keep her voice to a low monotone, she started reciting: “If all the seas were one sea…”

  She waited.

  Nico stopped twisting his head, and stared up at the ceiling. For a few moments she did not think it was going to work. Then he whispered, “What-a-great-sea-that-would-be.”

  Gia smiled, and continued. “If all the trees were one tree.”

  Once again a pause, and then the response, a little louder this time, “What-a-great-tree-that-would-be.”

  They continued like that, call and response. Gia let her eyes wander over the room. The fish tank was bubbling quietly, the skeekers visible as busy little shadows, swimming about inside. Occasionally one of them would pulse with light. Poepie scratched about in his cage, restlessly moving his bedding around.