Not a Fairytale (5 page)

Finally, curiosity makes him move forward to the table, to pad up to the body, to touch the face with an interested paw, to prod it gently. He waits for my father to react, and so do I, but nothing happens. The face remains still, the eyes do not open, the hand does not swipe the cat away, so I edge forward and pick up the confused feline, and my mother notices me and says to put on a scarf, but in the voice she uses in front of other people.

I find solace in my bedroom with the twins and Muhammad, and behind the locked door we watch their favourite video,
Charlotte’s Web
, softly, so no one discovers our sacrilegious behaviour.

And even when the body is gone, it is not over.

The men come back from the graveyard, and they eat and drink and talk and talk and shout. This is not what I thought mourning would be like.

Days later there are still visitors arriving to offer their condolences to Ma. People who were at the funeral and people who weren’t. They all expect food and tea and Coke and coffee.

Ma gets the death certificate with my father’s name on it and it says “Never married”, and she screams and screams and people explain that Islamic marriages are not legal, but she will not be calmed.

Afterwards, I go to school, and everyone looks at me funny and says sorry. I don’t know why. I’m not sorry.

Easy Falooda Milkshake

1 cup cold water

2 tbsp sugar

2 tbsp rose syrup

1 tsp agar-agar powder

2 tbsp falooda seeds

½ cup boiled water

2 l full-cream milk

2 tbsp rose water

½ cup rose syrup (less or more depending on your preference)

½ tsp elachi powder

more sugar to taste

Boil the cup of water, sugar and two tablespoons rose syrup. When it begins to boil, add the agar-agar and stir until it thickens. Remove from heat, pour into a bowl and refrigerate until firm like jelly. Place the falooda seeds in the boiled water until they are swollen. Strain, and allow to cool.

Once the jelly has set, grate it roughly. Pour the milk into a jug, add the rose water, rose syrup, elachi powder and sugar to taste. Pour into individual glasses, add some grated jelly, a teaspoon of falooda seeds, and stir. You could add ice-cream if you need the sugar rush and chopped nuts if you want to pretend it’s healthy. Not that falooda isn’t good for you, especially this recipe, with agar-agar (made from algae) instead of gelatine, which comes from the bones and skins of animals. Yuck! Falooda is refreshing on a hot day, and it’s full of calcium, especially if you add fresh cream.

P
APA
’
S BEEN DEAD ALMOST A YEAR
. The shop’s been sold to a cousin-brother and Ma’s bossier than ever now because she got the money from the sale of the shop and she’s in charge of the capital Papa inherited from Daadi – riches that our grandfather left Daadi and which she grew through wise investments. At least that’s what Salena tells me. Salena says if Papa had been in charge of the money, he’d have lost it on the horses long ago. That’s why our daadi had it put in a trust fund. I didn’t know Papa gambled.

Ma seems taller, or maybe it’s that she walks with her back held straighter, like my new PE teacher is always trying to get us to do. I hate the new high school Ma’s forced me to go to. I miss Rukshana and all our calm nun-teachers. My new teachers are stupid.

Today we had to do “free writing” in class. Of course it’s not really free, because it gets marked and the dumb teacher gives us the topic. We had to describe our family. It was harder than I expected. Eventually I started describing Salena, because I thought she’d be the easiest. I wrote about how she spends most of her time cooking, cleaning and running around after her boys, even now that there are only two of them. I didn’t write about how in the middle of all her work she never misses a chance to throw a glance at herself in the nearest mirror. She’ll pause, suck in her narrow cheeks, arch her brows, puff out her skinny lips (nothing like mine!), smile politely at her reflection and then go on chasing after the boys. It’s a weird habit.

Then I moved on to describing Ma and became completely stuck. What could I write about Ma? How when I was little, Ma would scrub me daily, during my hated bath, as though she was determined to wash away my dark skin and reveal my fair self? Or maybe I could describe Ma’s convoluted classification system, which would rival the government’s own labelling categories. For example, Rukshana has a rich father (+ + +), and she’s skinny (+ + +), but dark, aka a darkie (– – –).

In the end I decided to write about Ma’s food. It’s funny: even her cooking has changed now that Papa’s dead. Everything she makes seems to taste better, and she often cooks my favourites, like veggie breyani, and soji for dessert.

I couldn’t decide if I should say anything about Papa. So I just wrote that he is dead. I’m sure that made the teacher feel awkward. I hope so.

Generally, the teachers at my school are an odd bunch. Another thing to thank the government for: divided education. There aren’t enough Indian teachers in Cape Town because the Indian community here is small, so they import these cast-offs from Natal who pay back their college tuition by accepting jobs in the Cape. The interesting ones never stay long.

This year there was Miss Naidoo, who taught us English for three weeks. She was about six foot tall and really clever. But one day she just disappeared: she was there on a Tuesday, and on the Wednesday she was gone. Apparently she went to study in England. Then there was Mr Jeenah, her replacement, who taught us for a single week. He wore the same white shoes, cream pants and green shirt with a matching green tie for the duration of his stay, and he never once looked up from the book he read aloud in a whisper. I was riveted. The rest of the class seemed equally hypnotised: no one said a word during five periods of English. But the next Monday he too was gone.

There’s been no one interesting since then, unless you count the revolting Mr Ramphalsingh, or Rumpelforeskin, as we call him, because of his diminutive height, childish temper and perverted ways. His favourite “punishment” is to run his hand down the backs of his female pupils and snap their bra straps. Even the boys in the class have grown out of this game. I tried to tell Ma about it once, but she wouldn’t believe me. “At an Indian school? You must be imagining things. You need to stop reading all those books – they’re giving you ougat ideas!”

Rukshana says I should make a voodoo doll of him and stick pins in it. I don’t know how she knows this stuff. I wish I was still at the Catholic school – I’d rather deal with crazy nuns than be at the mercy of an evil dwarf.

Y
IPPEE!
T
HE
J
UNE HOLIDAYS ARE HERE
– three teacher-free weeks and two and a half years before I’m over and done with school. Oh bliss. Oh joy. Every time I tell Salena I’d love to leave school and get a nine-to-five job so I can be free to pursue the really important things in life (like eating lip-smacking food and reading till the early hours of the morning) she looks at me in horror. Like I’ve suggested we hack Ma to pieces and bury the chunks in the back garden with Tommy-Tiger and Ginger and those comics Faruk-Paruk used to stash in the ground like family skeletons. I’m glad that he and that annoying wife of his have finally run off to Australia.

I’m spending a few days with Salena and the boys because Zain is away on business. Of course I’d never sleep over if Zain were at home. He reminds me of a cross between Rumpelforeskin and a zombie. Last Eid, when Ma and I came over for lunch, his entire extended family was there, and he kept introducing me to his repulsive relatives as his second wife. Not even the vomiting noises I made put him off. He’s disgusting.

The boys and I are playing hide and seek in the garden. They’re supposed to be hiding, although I can clearly hear their whispers from where they’re crouching behind the stump of the loquat tree. I can’t understand why Salena had the tree chopped down – I used to love picking off the loquats, still warm from the sun, and popping them into my mouth. Like eating bread straight from the oven.

Raqim’s black cat Peanut Butter and I are meant to be looking for the boys, or pretending to look, but we’re both too lazy to get up from the swing. Actually Peanut’s the real reason I can’t get up. He’s washing himself and it’s rude to interrupt someone at their ablutions, especially if that someone is a cat. Cats are very particular about cleanliness, like Salena. One of my favourite stories from madressa is about the Prophet (Peace-be-upon-Him), a cat-lover, who, legend has it, cut away a piece of his clothing so that he would not have to disturb his cat, Muezza, who was napping on a part of his robe.

I’m conducting an experiment to see how clean cats are. Each time Peanut’s done licking and sucking at one pristine paw and moved on to the next, I stroke the recently cleansed paw. Immediately he stops washing the one he’s busy with and resumes licking the other. To get rid of my scent. I’ve seen Salena do a very similar thing: clean her bathroom, then shower, and then after that, clean her bathroom again. But I must stop torturing the cat. I can see two pairs of boy-eyes watching me. Ready or not, here I come!

I
CAN
’
T BELIEVE
I’
M ALREADY IN MATRIC
. It’s strange: I can remember the fluffy duck I used to play with when I was three and the first time I sat in a black-tyre swing, but I can’t remember most of high school. It’s as if I’ve been asleep and am waking up a few years later from a dull dream.

Aren’t your teenage years supposed to be the best years of your life? I go from home to school to the library to home to school, and my greatest thrill is the weekly trip to the new shopping mall and its sweet-smelling shiny bookstore. I’ve discovered all sorts of women writers that I never knew existed, and who don’t write about love affairs and marriage and children. Two of my classmates have dropped out of school because of unplanned pregnancies. Of course the new daddies don’t have to leave school; they walk around with a swagger, like they’ve accomplished something.

I can’t imagine wanting to touch a boy’s body. Most of the boys in my school look like they bath on special occasions only. Some of them have brought dagga to school, but the thought of having to pay money to swallow smoke seems absurd to me. I’d rather spend my pocket money on books.

Getting up each morning for school is like watching the same horror movie over and over. Monday mornings are particularly gruesome, and they begin on Sunday afternoons as the weak Sunday light seeps away to make way for the new school week.

I can’t wait to leave this school, especially to see the backs of certain teachers, like the hateful Mr Rumpelforeskin, who’s become a whole lot worse this year. He’s really losing it now: he stinks of alcohol all the time. And he’s added a new dimension to his favourite punishment. Now, when he snaps our bras, he sticks his frosty parchment hands right down the inside of our school dresses, poking our skin with his bony knuckles as he hunts for the strap.

Why do we put up with it? We’re almost grown up. But when he sidles closer, it’s as though we’ve been turned to stone, immobile and without tongues. One day I tell him to fuck off, but he seems to find that a real turn on, and I get singled out two days in a row. At the end of the second lesson he tells the class we have to come in the next day for extra lessons, even though it is Saturday.

I oversleep that morning, so Ma drops me off and, because it is raining, she gives me one of Papa’s old umbrellas to use when I walk home. I open the classroom door and look into the faces of my classmates, who are wearing identical expressions of horror and amusement.

Rumpelforeskin is standing at the head of the class as usual and, as usual, he is wearing his white lab coat, like the GP he will never be, but today it’s open … and there’s nothing underneath it! He is naked, displaying an anorexic abdomen and grinning like a demented gnome, exhibiting an obscene caterpillar of a penis swaying in a patch of pubic hair. He appears to be discussing the periodic table, and is oblivious to his audience.