Not a Fairytale (11 page)

I hope Salena gets here before Nazma asks for the toilet. We’ve got too much luggage to make a public bathroom trip anything but an ordeal. Surely Salena hasn’t forgotten about me. I am her only sister, after all. Maybe she’s had an accident. Maybe her car won’t start because she’s left the lights on. No, that’s something I would do, especially now that I have Nazma to distract me.

What am I going to do? I look up to see a strange woman smiling at me. I smile back automatically and my eyes slide over and past her until my brain catches up. Salena!

No way.

Hair short, with coppery highlights, styled, no longer in a neat bun, swishing across rosy cheeks and fringing shiny eyes. Straight away, I know. Salena’s in love!

Dear Ms Hood

You don’t know me, but I’ve been watching you for years, since you were a little girl, all through high school when you had that rebellious phase with the biker boyfriend. Yes, I know there were many other boyfriends, but he scared me the most – I know you loved him. Then you left for college, and my heart broke. I thought you were lost to me forever. So imagine my delight when I heard that you’d returned, that you’d graduated as a vet. I am filled with pride at your accomplishment. I admire you so much.

I know I must sound like a common stalker, but I don’t have an altar to you in my lair, the walls of my home are not covered with photographs of you. I carry you in my heart and in my head. I wake each morning with your name on my lips, dripping like drool from my jaws. I know I’m risking ridicule with all these revelations, but my therapist says it is important that I tell you everything.

Yes, I have loved you from afar all these years, from the shadows of the woods. I first saw you one day when you were a little girl, taking a basket of goodies to your sick grandmother. My mouth watered at the sight of you. It was all I could do not to gobble you up right there and then, but I thought, Why not follow you and have your granny, too?

But by the time you got to your grandmother’s house, something in my consciousness had shifted. I knew I loved you, but that I did not have to consume you and your relations. I started therapy. I stopped chasing the three little pigs (that was part of my self-destructive youth). I became vegetarian. I noticed you always had your hair covered, and I wondered if you were Muslim. I spent years studying Islam in the hope that this would impress you.

I understand I have little to offer you, aside from my sharp teeth, my warm fur, my keen night-time vision, my undying devotion, and the knowledge that grey wolves mate for life, unlike the boyfriends of your past. I am hoping that as a vet you will not be adverse to an inter-species relationship. I am praying you will accept my invitation. A cup of coffee, next full moon. Ten minutes of your life, a chance to woo you: that is all I ask. No strings attached. Feel free to discuss it with your mother and grandmother – they are your pack, they have wisdom.

I await your response. However, if you choose not to reply I will understand. I will be unhappy, but I will understand. You owe me nothing for loving you, it has been my opportunity for growth.

Yours faithfully

Wolfie

N
OW THAT
I’
M ON THIS EXTENDED HOLIDAY
, Ma seems to think it’s only right that I become her personal chauffer. Why did I imagine I could come to Cape Town and live outside of Ma’s freaky control?

Today she wants me to take her to the city. She wants to visit a kramat but she won’t drive into town because of the taxis. Ma says she’s told The Prune time and again to go to the kramat to get rid of her bad luck, but Polla won’t listen. Polla’s always having car troubles, money troubles, man troubles.

On the drive here, Ma was waxing eloquent about my big sister. Apparently, she’s forgiven her for divorcing Zain, because now Salena takes Ma out once a week for tea. Which, Ma says, is something that never happened when Salena was married to “that man”.

At the kramat, I park the car close to the kerb and Ma goes inside the burial room to pray. Papa never allowed her to visit kramats because he said she was praying to the saint, instead of directly to Allah, which made her no better than a worshipper of idols. Ma denied this but could never make Papa believe her. Papa didn’t get that Ma loves the ritual of lighting an incense stick and the peace of prayer, particularly because, she tells me, as a woman she’s been made to feel uncomfortable in a mosque.

I sit in the car until the heat forces me out. Behind the square of the kramat’s resting place is a girls’ school, and in the hazy distance I can see a few uniformed figures throwing balls about. A door in the building behind me opens, and two white-haired women in flowery dresses make their way haltingly towards a wooden bench, where they gingerly collapse and the dusty smell of talcum powder reaches out to me. They clasp each other’s hand. I wonder if Salena and I will grow old together like that.

Ma’s back, looking optimistic. Have her prayers been answered? We get into the car. She says she understands why we have to pray five times a day. It was Allah’s way of getting the dirty Arab men to wash regularly, and forcing them to focus on something besides chasing women. I’m beginning to like Ma.

M
A
’
S CUPBOARD OPENS AND HER SMELL WAFTS OUT
: a heavy floral scent. I remember when these smells were a comfort to the child-me, when I would lie, pimply with chicken pox, my nose buried in her nightgown.

The week before, I went to visit Papa’s grave – for the first time ever. That day I got as far as the dusty, gravelly parking lot, before my courage almost deserted me, but I persevered. I sat in the car, clutching the flowers I’d bought at Woolies, already wilting in the heat. I didn’t know you could purchase bunches of the stuff outside the cemetery for a fraction of the price. I turned the car back on and put the air-conditioner on full blast.

I don’t see the point of flowers on graves. I don’t see the point of graves. I plan on being cremated. Ma said she would never allow this. What would people say? It never occurred to her she’d die before me. Ma believed she was immortal, that dying was something other people did.

Ma warned me about the grave cleaners hanging around the cemetery. Not that she ever went there herself; the man she hired to maintain my father’s grave told her. He said there were men, mostly illegal immigrants, who made money cleaning the graves for visitors. So when I got there, I wasn’t surprised to see men walking around with little shovels. They looked creepy in their white coats, like living ghouls. I wondered if they lived in the cemetery, like the squatters in Cairo who have moved into the graveyards for lack of urban space.

Eventually I got out of the car, only to be surrounded by a group of grave guards. But I’d come prepared. I was covered from head to toe in a burqa, with horizontal slits for my eyes. Of course this meant I had no peripheral driving vision, which had made the drive here somewhat dicey.

Salena had said Papa’s grave would be easy to find – against the wall, seventh row from the front. As I searched, an insistent guard followed me, nattering incomprehensibly. From the safety of my black shroud, I stuck my tongue out at him and shook my head vehemently from side to side. It didn’t help. He was undeterred, and followed me until I reached the meticulously kept grave.

Ma was surely getting her money’s worth. There was a suitably severe headstone, all covered in pretty roses and carnations, displaying Papa’s name, date of birth and date of death. I felt slightly faint crouching there in the 32-degree heat and my heavy, black attire. I didn’t know what to think. All I could see in my head were visions of my father beating Salena until bruises like violets covered her pallid skin.

Then, as I turned to go, I noticed the name on the gravestone next to Papa’s. Mrs Julayga Slamang. I looked around. In the grave behind him lay Gamiet Salie. My father had Malay neighbours! I choked on hysterical silent laughter. I searched further. Parker, Rawoot, Narkar, Karjiker. Indian village stalwarts buried in between Matthews and Fredericks.

The proximity of his bones to those Malays must be killing him all over again, daily. I’ll confess: I went back to my car much lighter. Now all I can think about is that Ma will be Papa’s neighbour, too. I wonder if they’ll get along better in death than in life.

We don’t know what happened. Salena found her in the lounge.
Oprah
playing on the
TV
, a cup of tea next to her, as cold as her skin. Salena says she felt bad interrupting Ma watching
TV
, knowing how much she loved Oprah. So Salena watched the show along with Ma and when the credits began to roll she phoned me.

I know I should cry. It’s the right thing to do.

Potpourri

4 cups rose petals

1 tsp powdered aniseed

1 tsp powdered allspice

1 tsp powdered nutmeg

6 long cinnamon sticks, coarsely broken

1 tsp powdered ginger

¼ cup whole cloves

1 tsp ground cinnamon

2 vanilla pods, cut into 2 cm pieces

20 drops essential rose oil

1 cup coarse sea salt

Cut flowers may wilt quickly in the summer heat, and transforming them into potpourri is a way of lengthening their too-short lives and making them productive instead of merely decorative. Mix all of the ingredients together in a large bowl and place it in a room or in the middle of a house that needs its spirits lifted, particularly after a bereavement.

I was alone, for a short time, while Hansel went outside to play with his new collection of pearls, rich rubies, diamonds and other jewels. I wanted to make sure she was dead. When I opened the oven door, I found her, the tough old bird, already overcooked, but still tempting. And I thought: Just a nibble, a suck. After all, she was going to eat Hansel. She tasted burnt, but her skin crackled pleasurably on my tongue, and I chewed delicately as her once-solid flesh became mine.

At home there was much rejoicing, and we three settled into a comfortable life, no one mentioning our stepmother. It’s strange, now that I think about it after all these years: we never asked father how she died. Simply celebrated her absence. Had he killed her in a fit of guilt over dumping us in the forest? Did she run away with a man who could feed her? Did she die of hunger? What’s even odder is that we never blamed him for our abandonment. It was always her fault; she was the villain in our story.

We delighted in the presence of the abundant food. Each morning, I cooked an enormous breakfast: porridge, scrambled eggs, fried bread, flapjacks sweating honey and cream. Hansel insisted on elevenses: triangles of cheese-and-tomato sandwiches, and samoosas with dhania chutney. Then lunch. Soup and salad for starters. A leg of lamb, curried chicken and basmati rice, fish almost swimming in butter and lemon juice. A pudding of yellow custard and brown syrupy fruit. I drew the line at cooking supper. They ate leftovers or cornflakes with thick slices of banana. Father grew a belly. Hansel spurted into a long-limbed teenager and took up weight-lifting; he grew as sleek as a forest cat. But I found the food unsatisfying: often, I left my plate untouched. I had other longings.

Then Father sickened and died. The doctor said it was an extreme case of heartburn. I convinced Hansel that a cremation would be less expensive. Now that he was wealthy, he hated to spend any of our ill-gotten gains. It’s funny how having lots of money can make a man stingy. He found pleasure in playing with his jewels, but he hated converting them into hard cash and spending the stuff – even on food. I said it would be cheaper if I burnt Father myself. Hansel left me to it, and I held back a thigh, to roast and season at my leisure. That hit the spot.

Without Father to bind us, Hansel and I drifted apart. I saw him watching our neighbour all the time, a moronic girl, always asking Hansel to help her get rid of mice, tweaking my nose as though we were friends.

Hansel and I divided the remaining loot, with him taking the lion’s share – I didn’t care. I needed to move out. I went back to her gingerbread house, threw out her ashes, put potpourri in all the rooms, and restored the place to its former scrumptious glory. I took up cake-baking to cover my living costs, to keep me entertained and busy. I’m a perfectionist: I’ve been known to throw out a perfectly good sponge if there’s a little hollow in the centre, one that only I can see.