Not a Fairytale (2 page)

Salena’s white like Papa, but her skin’s see-through like the plastic cover of a book. You can see the veins and blood underneath. I used to think Ma wished for Salena like Snow White’s mother wished for her daughter. Then one day I overheard Ma tell Polla-the-Prune that there’s only ten months between Salena and Faruk-Paruk because she had to have another baby quickly, as the first one was a girl. I don’t like Polla-the-Prune.

Faruk-Paruk looks just like Papa. They could be identical twins, except Faruk’s shorter and fatter – like he’s been drinking from Alice’s magic shrinking potion.

As usual, Faruk-Paruk’s gobbling up his food. When he sees me looking, he opens his mouth wide to show me his tongue with half-eaten food on it and kicks me under the table. Pig. I hate him. Usually I don’t do anything back. I’m scared Papa will smack me. But this time Papa sees what Faruk-Paruk has done. Without looking up or stopping his chewing, he reaches over with his left, clean hand and hits Faruk-Paruk on the head.

I lean back, in case there’s a blow meant for me, but Papa’s gone back to his plate of meat. He doesn’t usually pick on Faruk-Paruk, because he’s the favourite. I can’t wait to start school next week so I can learn to read by myself. The school’s not far from our house. Salena took me there yesterday to find out about my new uniform, and we met my teacher. I can’t remember her name but her eyebrows are the colour of the sun, and she was wearing a long black dress. She said that she and the other nuns who are going to teach us are the brides of Christ.

Rukshana, a girl who’s going to be in my class, said that maybe Christ is Muslim and that’s why he has so many brides. Rukshana’s father has two wives. I think Rukshana and me are going to be best friends.

Rice Krispies with Bananas

Take a big soup bowl and pour in the Rice Krispies. Slice a banana into the bowl, add 2 teaspoons of sugar and cover with cold milk.

You must eat this as soon as you’ve poured the milk, or the Rice Krispies get too soft and you can’t hear them going snap, crackle, pop.

F
ARUK
-P
ARUK CALLS ME WORSIE LIPPE
. I hate him. I wish he would die. He doesn’t know, but I saw him bury his comics outside in the back yard. First, he put them in black rubbish bags and then he dug a hole to bury the bags because he doesn’t want me to read them. Why would I? I hate silly Superman. I mean, he’s got blue hair. How stupid is that? But I hate Faruk-Paruk more. When is he going to grow up? He’s old now. Seventeen. If you say his name fast enough, with lots of rrrrrrs, it sounds like a frog croaking. Farrrrukparrruk. I think he is a frog, or a toad. Something slimy and cold.

I wish Salena wasn’t getting married today, because my rose-pink dress is turning red as my nose drips drops of blood onto the lap of my skirt. I’m too scared to move. I don’t want Ma to see that I’ve messed on my skirt. I don’t want a hiding on Salena’s wedding day.

I’m in our bedroom with Salena. She’s sitting in front of the dressing-table mirror, her green eyes locked with her mirror-eyes. Aunty Polla keeps talking about how lucky Salena is to be marrying a lawyer. Ma says she’s not sure if lawyers are as good as doctors.

Maybe I need a doctor. My lap is getting wetter. My blood is purplered, like the bunch of roses Salena has to carry today when she walks up the aisle. Aunty Polla has finished making Salena’s hair stand up as high as the wedding cake waiting in a white cardboard box on the floor for someone to take to the hall where the reception is going to be. I’m not going to eat the cake. I saw Tommy-Tiger stand with his back to the cake and lift his tail up high and let loose his yellow spray. I just hope the cake goes before the smell gets to Ma’s Nancy Drew nose.

I think I’m choking, my throat feels thick. I push the little finger of my left hand into my right nostril. My madressa teacher said you can only clean your nose with your left hand because that is the hand the devil uses.

My finger finds a rubbery piece of blood. I pull it out and it plops onto my lap, a lump almost as big as my palm. At least I don’t feel like choking anymore. Maybe Ma will feel sorry for me now. The blood is pouring from both my nostrils like the water in the tap I forgot to close the day I flooded the bathroom. That day I got a really good hiding.

Ma and Polla-the-Prune are fighting about Salena’s hairstyle. Ma doesn’t like what Aunty Polla has done. She wants Salena’s hair flat and straight. Polla-the-Prune wants it high up in the air, so high that the planes flying over our house to the airport will smash into it.

I don’t know what Salena wants. She’s still staring at herself in the mirror. I try to move slightly so that maybe someone will notice me. Last week I had my first nosebleed. It happened at school. The teacher made me put my head back all the way on my neck so I could feel the blood drip into my throat. It tasted warm and salty like the spiced beef Ma cooks on Sunday mornings. Rukshana said she read that you should keep your head forward and pinch the bridge of your nose. I didn’t know my nose was big enough to hold all this blood. Or is it coming from my brain? What if my brain leaks onto my dress and I become as stupid as Faruk-Paruk?

If only Salena would look at me, I’d feel better. Maybe now that she’s getting married she’ll forget about me. I wonder what will happen to me when Salena is no longer here to help me, to stop Ma shouting at me every time she has an argument with Papa.

There’s a little blood-dam in my lap. It’s going to soak through my skirt onto my white pantyhose. Ma calls them stockings. She bought me this pair with white roses on them all the way from Joburg, where she went to get her own dress for the wedding. Her dress is orange and gold.

Ma turns away from poking at Salena’s head and looks at me. She curls back her lips, but before she can swear at me I burst into tears. Then everyone is around me and they’re pinching my nose so I have to open my mouth to breathe, and Ma’s dragging off my dress and putting me into the bed Salena and I shared till last night. Last night, when she said, “I don’t want to marry him, I don’t want to marry him,” over and over like a nursery rhyme, even though she was fast asleep.

I don’t get a hiding. Someone calls for a doctor and someone else puts ice cubes wrapped in a cloth on my forehead. I lie back on the pillows and catch Salena’s black-ringed eyes in the mirror. She shuts one eyelid. A wink. I wink back. But I can’t do it properly yet, because both my eyes narrow at the same time, and then Salena smiles at me. “I love you forever,” she whispers before they come in to take her away.

The doctor says I can’t go to Salena’s wedding. He says I should stay in bed. I don’t mind. When they’ve all gone to the wedding and only me and the new maid Rosie are left behind, I climb into bed with my Nancy Drew book that I got from the library, and I’m glad I don’t have to eat the wedding cake.

That night, my first night sleeping alone, I dream of hundreds of colourful eyes, opening and shutting and staring past me.

I’
M OLD
,
ALREADY NINE
,
AND IT
’
S
E
ID
and I keep forgetting to breathe, I’m so excited. Everything I’m wearing is new. I have on pink panties with a small bunch of red cherries embroidered on the right-hand side, a new white vest, fluffy white ankle socks, black patent-leather shoes with a T-bar and, best of all, a white dress that Ma finished sewing last night.

I was scared she wouldn’t finish it in time. I lay awake listening to the sewing machine growling till my ears were too scared to listen anymore. The dress comes down to my knees, white satin and lace with puffy sleeves and a big satin bow at the back.

My black hair is pulled up into a ponytail tied so tight that my eyes look like Ginger’s, and my hair swings from side to side with each bouncy step I take. After lunch we’re going to visit Salena and her new baby, Muhammad.

Lunch is at the house of one of Papa’s brother-cousins (not blood family, just same-Indian-village family). At least I think so, but in the car my father explains that the man we are visiting was on The Ship with him. I’ve heard about The Ship so often I feel like I was bombed by the Germans and left to drown in the icy ocean. During World War II, Papa and his mother, my daadi Bilqis, were travelling from India to Port Elizabeth when the enemy struck. They spent three days at sea, in lifeboats floating on the freezing water, before being rescued along with a few other survivors. I’ve been with Papa at weddings when he’s met up with other survivors, and the women always cry and dab their eyes with the corners of their saris as they talk about not being eaten by sharks.

I wish Papa had been munched up by a shark. At least then I wouldn’t have to listen to him breathing during supper, and if he were dead he wouldn’t be able to shout at me all the time.

When we arrive in Rylands there are cars parked on both sides of the narrow road, and Papa squeezes his gold Mercedes between a bakkie and truck with extra care. He doesn’t want this car, the love of his life, to be hurt. I push my book under the front passenger seat and make sure my door isn’t locked in case I want to read in the car after lunch.

There are so many people in the house, it feels like a wedding. All the girls are wearing pretty, colourful dresses, and I love the women’s gold and black beaded necklaces. I’m glad I nagged Ma into letting me wear her old dangly earrings and bracelet.

I greet everyone in the lounge and an old woman tells me to go to the back yard where the other children are going to watch the qurbani. I have no idea what she’s talking about but I smile politely and do as she has ordered. The back yard is huge, filled with loquat trees and grapevines and six woolly sheep making baaing sounds. I have never seen sheep in real life. No one else seems surprised by them, and some children are even petting them. They smell funny. I’m not going to touch them.

Near the sheep there’s a hole in the ground that someone has dug. Like a grave. Not that I’ve seen a grave, except in films, because girls aren’t allowed to go to graveyards, or so Papa says. Then there’s a man in white robes with a large knife in his hand. I think of the three blind mice. This must be a carving knife. And then there are more men and they are reciting from the Quran and I move forward and the man with the knife has his arm wound tightly around the sheep’s head and, as I watch, something warm splashes on my satin dress. The smell slaps my face along with the baas of the other sheep. I run. Through the house, down the road, till I find the car and crawl into the back seat. In my mind I can still see the sheep moving even after its throat is slit, and I feel blood entering the top of my nose and the drops fall slow and heavy onto my lap, hiding the sheep’s blood.

That night we drive home, and in the boot there is a bloody newspaper parcel filled with our portion of the sheep’s body. The next day my mother will cook it into a curry and my food battle with her will begin. Until I learn to cook, I refuse to eat anything but Rice Krispies and cheese sandwiches. My mother tells everyone that I’m just going through a phase. She says it’s because I’m spending too much time with Hindus like Rukshana – even though Ruks is Muslim like us (and some Hindus do eat meat, just not cows!). But Ma doesn’t trust her because she’s dark-skinned.

After that day I notice things I hadn’t seen before. Cows in trucks turning into a long driveway in Maitland, near Polla-the-Prune’s ugly house. When I ask my mother, she says they’re going to the abattoir. I look up “abattoir” in the dictionary – it’s a slaughterhouse where animals go to be killed.

I phone to ask Salena how the animals are killed in the abattoir, and she tells me. A sheep (or a goat) is trained to lead the others to their deaths. Usually this is a young ram, and when he has lived in the abattoir long enough and is used to the smell of blood, he leads the other sheep up the ramp into the slaughterhouse. The sheep follow, he escapes through a side gate, and they die. Later, when he gets older, they get a new Judas goat and the old one follows him to his death.

Salena says our mother and other women like her are Judas goats. They let girls follow them into the marriage-abattoir. I don’t understand what she means, but she is sad when she says it. I wish I could make her happy.