Hum If You Don't Know the Words

by Bianca Marais

  “I’m Robin,” I said, and then pointed next to me. “And this is Cat.”

  King George giggled and nodded. “This dagga is strong, hey. Makes King George see all sorts of kak too. This is a kangaroo,” he said, pointing off to his side.

  “And this is my concubine.” Morrie laughed as he wrapped his arm around thin air.

  I couldn’t help but notice that King George’s skin was a strange shade. Too light to be black but too dark to be white, I couldn’t quite figure it out. I wanted to ask him how that had happened—if he’d started out black but got paler, or if he’d been born white and then got a deep tan—but couldn’t hold on to the thought long enough to express it. Mr. Klopper, a teacher at my old school, once told us that all black people wanted to be white, because they stupidly believed that white people were rich and happy just because of the color of their skin. He said they used all kinds of skin lighteners so they could become white, and we’d all laughed at how stupid black people were. Maybe that was what had happened with King George.

  When Cat and I finally got back to the flat after we said good-bye to Morrie, a note had been slipped under the door insisting that Edith call Wilhelmina. We scrunched it up and threw it away. A quick peep into Edith’s room confirmed that she’d slept through the ordeal and was still snoring loudly. I was suddenly ravenously hungry, and after I’d finished the last four stale slices of bread, Cat and I curled up on the couch and fell asleep.

  • • •

  The plan to cheer Edith up was put into action the next day. I kicked it off by drawing a few silly pictures for her, mostly ones of the “gatekeepers of hell,” which is what she’d taken to calling the women who’d interviewed her. None of the drawings, not even the ones where the women had devil horns on their heads and spiked tails coming out of their butts, made Edith smile when I showed them to her. In an effort to distract her from her misery, I asked for details about her ornaments and even feigned an illness. It didn’t work. She just emptied a packet of Grand-Pa Headache Powders down my throat and followed it with a spoonful of Borstol cough syrup. The mixture was revolting and I vowed never to try that tactic again.

  Cat and I were forced to get creative with the meals we made for Edith. The only thing she’d popped out for was liquor, and like Old Mother Hubbard, our cupboards were bare. The piccalilli and half-cooked spaghetti concoction we made for breakfast wasn’t well received, and neither were the Rice Krispies and tomato sauce cakes we tried for dinner. We tried twice to entice Edith out of her room by filling up the bathtub with an elixir of potions, but each time the bathwater cooled until it was a murky brew.

  No amount of compliments cheered Edith up and our knock-knock jokes all bombed.

  Elvis was my only company besides Cat, and even he seemed to be suffering from depression. His feathers fell out, at first just one or two and then whole heaps of them, and the only song he’d sing was “Don’t Cry Daddy,” which would make Edith sigh harder and pour even bigger drinks. We tried blasting Elvis records as loud as we could and then thrusting our hips around and twitching our lips like we’d seen Elvis do at the movies shown at the Top Star drive-in, but Edith just came out of her room, took one look at me, exclaimed, “God help me!” and turned back around and went to bed.

  Even though none of our plans worked, at least worrying about Edith, coming up with plans and measuring her decline by the incremental increase in her alcohol consumption gave us something to do. It provided a distraction from our own pain. By then, I’d already worked through a complex process of reasoning regarding what was acceptable and what was taboo as we tried to come to terms with our grief. Talking about feeling sad or expressing that sadness in any way that our parents could see or overhear was not allowed.

  “Just think happy thoughts,” I told Cat one day when we felt especially lonely and she started crying.

  “I have been thinking happy ones,” she sniffed.

  “Like what?”

  “I was thinking about the time Mom read us a bedtime story and she did the funny voices and let us do the funny voices back.”

  “That’s a good one. And what about the times when Dad would sit me on his lap and use a pen to join the dots of my freckles while calling out the names of the constellations he could find?”

  “I remember. It made me wish I had freckles just like you.”

  “If you’re thinking of the good times, then why are you still crying?”

  “The good times make me sad.”

  I realized then that too-happy memories led to despair, so they had to be medium-happy ones. It was like being on a seesaw; too much weight on either side of the emotional spectrum could tip the scales. I had to make sure that Cat maintained the equilibrium.

  So medium-happy memories became the moments Cat and I were allowed to give the most airplay to, ones in which our family ate meals together, went for drives or planted seedlings in the garden.

  “Do you remember when Mabel—”

  “No talking about Mabel,” I reminded her. “That makes you cry as well!” I had to be hypervigilant.

  Even as I tried to stop Cat from crying, I knew how illogical I was being. My parents had never been able to see her, and so any tears she cried didn’t really count. It was only my tears that counted; it was only my tears that had to be checked and dried up and held back. If anything, Cat needed to cry; she needed to shed tears and grieve for the both of us, because it helped somehow—it helped ease the terrible pressure in my chest a tiny bit—when I knew Cat was crying. I just couldn’t watch her doing it.

  I started leaving the apartment and I forbid Cat from following me. My mother’s mascara tube went wherever I went; it made me feel braver, like nothing bad could happen to me so long as it was in my pocket.

  I began venturing out to the park to sit on the swings or to the grocery store to buy sweets. Mr. Abdul, the owner, looked at me with sad eyes because Edith had told him about my parents, and he would let me buy lollipops on Edith’s account, though I suspect he never actually charged her for them.

  Mr. Abdul wasn’t white but he also wasn’t black. He wasn’t quite the same shade of brown as King George either, which was confusing. If people didn’t come in the right colors, how would we know who to be scared of?

  The hairdresser, Tina, called me into her salon one afternoon when she saw me passing.

  “I got your job application, Robin,” she said. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t hire you because you would’ve been terrific! I just needed someone with more experience and hairdressing qualifications. But why don’t you let me cut your hair for you? I’ll do it for free!”

  “Okay,” I said. I’d never been to a hairdresser before; my father always cut my hair in the bathroom at home. “Thanks. Just don’t do anything with my fringe.”

  “But it’s getting so long and you have to peep out from behind it.”

  “I like it this way,” I said but what I actually meant was that I didn’t want her messing up my father’s cut.

  After a quick wash, I sat in the chair—on two pillows to prop me up to the right height—and felt Tina run her hands through my hair. The reality of her fingers blended with the memory of my father’s, and I was taken back to the last time he made me sit on a footstool in the bathroom while he sat behind me on the edge of the bath.

  “Close your eyes, Freckles,” he said just before he sprayed my hair wet, the mist from the spray bottle settling over me like a sigh. The comb’s teeth tickled against my scalp as he gently brushed the knots out.

  “Keep them closed,” he instructed as he placed a bowl upside down over my head.

  The scissors were cold against my forehead as my father was guided by the rim of the bowl. The snick of the blades was like a lullaby and it made me sleepy. Strands of hair fell into my upturned palms, and I imagined it was snow settling into them. I drifted off to sleep and was woken by blasts of my f
ather’s breath as he blew hard to get rid of the bristles of wet hair caught in my eyelashes.

  The memory of my father—of the scent of his aftershave, and the mint of his chewing gum, and the sturdy warmth of him pressed against my back—made me sad, and the traitorous tears began to prickle again.

  I have to get out of here.

  “I forgot that I don’t have the time for this,” I said as I hopped out of the seat. “I need to get home.”

  Tina called after me as I ran out of the salon, my hair dripping wet, but I didn’t turn back.

  Mr. Papadopoulos, when I went inside to check if he’d read my application, said he wasn’t allowed to hire children but insisted I take home free fish-and-chips wrapped in newspaper. He also asked me nicely never to repeat the Greek phrase Edith had taught me. Apparently it was very, very bad. Without a job, I couldn’t make myself of any use to Edith and so the last of our plans fell through.

  Then one day—sick of Edith’s travel books, Cat’s blubbering and being on the constant lookout for the social worker—I took some change from Edith’s nightstand and caught the bus by myself to the Johannesburg City Library. I hopped off on the corner of Commissioner and Simmonds streets when the driver told me to, and then paced outside the huge Italianate building for an hour before I worked up the courage to go inside.

  Once inside, I found the children’s section easily enough, and I walked along the rows and rows of books, running my fingers along their spines and inhaling their musty scents. I pulled volumes from the shelves, seeking out my favorite authors and my most beloved characters and tales, and piled them up one on top of the other until my arms ached from the strain. I found an empty table and hefted the pile down, preparing to do what I must have been subconsciously wanting all along; I lost myself in those books. I don’t know how long I sat there for, but as I turned the pages, reading snippets and studying the illustrations, I forgot how sad and lonely I was.

  Instead, I smiled at the antics of Moonface and the folk of The Magic Faraway Tree, cheered as the Secret Seven solved another mystery and forgot that to laugh was to feel guilty for a stolen moment of happiness.

  After I turned the last page of the last book, I remembered the reason I’d wanted to come to the library in the first place. I didn’t know where to look though, and the catalog system scared me, so I decided to ask a librarian for help.

  When I got to the counter, the librarian was talking to an old woman who had a big cardboard box set down next to her. It sounded as though they were saying their good-byes. After a few minutes of my standing there, the librarian finally excused herself from the conversation and turned to me.

  “Yes, can I help you?”

  “Hello. I need help finding some books, please.”

  “I’m in the middle of something right now, but if you could come back—”

  “No, that’s all right, Karen. I’ll help her. This kind of thing is just up my alley,” the old woman said.

  “But you’re on your way out.”

  “This will be my last book scavenger hunt. I’m just going to leave my things here if you don’t mind.” She then turned from the woman and looked at me.

  Her blond hair was cropped short along her jawline, and she had kind, periwinkle blue eyes that were intensely focused on my face.

  She smiled and reached out her hand to introduce herself. “Hello there. I’m Maggie, the head librarian.”

  I shook her hand shyly. “Hello. I’m Robin.”

  “How lovely to meet you, Robin. Now, what kinds of books are you looking for?”

  “Books about orphans.”

  “Orphans? Well now, you’ve picked the perfect subject for some really good classics. Take a seat and let me see what I can find for you.”

  I went back to the table I’d been sitting at and watched as Maggie moved around the stacks, plucking books from a shelf here and there, and then marching on to the next one. It was clear that she knew exactly where everything was.

  “Here you go,” she said when she returned, her arms laden with books.

  She plopped them down on the table and then sat on one of the chairs across from me, sighing comically as she tried to fold her adult shape into the tiny chair.

  “Right. Here we have The Secret Garden, Heidi, A Little Princess, The Boxcar Children, Pippi Longstocking, Anne of Green Gables, The Jungle Book, Cinderella and Peter Pan to get you started. Do you want to check them out?”

  “Yes please, but I only just moved here. I belonged to the library in Boksburg but not this one.”

  “Ah. Well, we can sign you up here too. Let’s go to the front desk so I can get a form for you. You’ll just need to get your parents to sign it.”

  I nodded, eager to please, and then it hit me.

  I don’t have parents. I don’t have a mom and a dad to sign the forms for me.

  The sum total of everything I had in the world was one drunken aunt and one imaginary sister. They were the defective safety net separating me from the abyss, the gossamer spider’s web I clung to. It came then, seemingly out of nowhere, the crushing weight of my loss pressing against the bones of my chest.

  Mommy and Daddy are dead and being dead means you never come back. They promised they would come back. Mommy promised—she promised!—but they never came back and now they never will.

  All the weeks of pretending, and filling the silence with chatter, and telling myself not to think about it, all those weeks had been for nothing, because they had led me to that moment in which my heart was breaking. Panicked, I looked for Cat to save me. She knew how deep the well of our grief ran and how bitter the taste of our tears. She knew how corrosive abandonment was and how it rubbed you raw. I needed her to express our pain, to cry for the both of us while I comforted her, but Cat was nowhere to be found.

  Without her there acting as the pressure valve to my expanding emotions, the first tear escaped and then the second. I was horrified by how warm and startlingly wet they were, and I held my hands up to my eyes to try to stem the flood.

  Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.

  I knew even as I did it that the gesture was futile; I may as well have been raising my fists to stop a thousand waves breaking on the shore. So I did then what I hadn’t done in the six weeks since I lost my parents; I surrendered and gave in to my grief, and I sobbed and sobbed like the frightened and abandoned child I was.

  Maggie was startled by the force of my emotions that had come seemingly out of nowhere. “Oh, my goodness. Oh, my word,” she said. “What’s wrong? Robin, are you okay?” She tried to coax my head up so she could see me, but I buried my face deeper under my arm on the desk.

  My mother’s words came back to me: You’re ugly when you cry.

  “Robin, please can I see your face?” Maggie asked. “Please will you look at me and tell me what’s wrong?”

  “No,” I hiccupped. “Don’t look at me!”

  “Why? Why not?”

  “Because I’m ugly!”

  “That’s not true! You’re beautiful. You’re a beautiful little girl.” She said it with such conviction, such utter sincerity, that I almost believed her. I wanted so much to believe her, to be as sure as she was.

  I dared lift my head.

  “That’s better. That’s so much better. Look at that lovely face.”

  I smiled through my tears.

  “Now, why don’t you tell me what’s wrong?”

  I sniffed and rubbed my leaking nose against my arm, and then I started talking. Maggie kept stopping me with gentle reminders to take deep breaths so she could hear what I was saying, and I’d take in great big gulps of air before starting up again. She held my hands, squeezing them in her own as I hiccupped my way through the relaying of my tale, telling her almost everything since the police arrived until that very morning when I’d walked in on Edith, lying drunk on our
bed, her South African Airways stewardess uniform slung across the duvet with photos of my mother flung like confetti over it.

  “And now I’m crying,” I gasped. “I wasn’t supposed to cry.”

  “Why ever not?”

  I shuddered between breaths. “Because my parents are watching and my mom always told me not to be a crybaby and now she’ll think I don’t love her because I’m not acting like a big girl.”

  It took further gentle coaxing from Maggie to hear the full story of how I hadn’t cried since my parents died; how hard I’d tried to live up to an ideal my mother had tried to get me to uphold mere days before she was murdered; how I’d allowed Cat to do our crying because my mother couldn’t see her.

  “And when did this all happen, Robin?” she asked. “How long ago?”

  “Forty-one days,” I said. “It’s been forty-one days.” Even in my denial and through my constant insistences—don’t think about it, don’t think about it—I’d kept track of every day.

  Maggie’s eyes glistened. “My dear, dear child,” she said, “your mother would never, ever expect you not to cry under these circumstances.”

  “She . . . she wouldn’t?”

  “Absolutely not. These are exceptional circumstances, which can in no way be compared to falling and scraping your hand, though, I for one think a good cry and maybe a curse word or two when you hurt yourself is just the ticket.” She allowed the thought to sink in before continuing. “Your mother and I disagree on that one point, but I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we would be in perfect agreement on this: When someone you love dies, it causes immense pain, an emotional pain so much deeper than any mere physical hurt, and that hurt is made tenfold when it’s both your parents who have died and under such terrible circumstances too. The best way, the only way, to express that pain and show them how much you love them is by crying.”

  “Really?”

  “Absolutely! There’s no doubt at all. I know your mother would have no objection, none whatsoever, to these tears because they come from a place of deep, deep love. She’d be happy to see these tears because they show her how very much you miss her. And your father too.”