LITMIR.BIZ

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on her face in the photo. It was a time before the disappointments, when she still knew how to smile.

      She raises herself from the bed and presents her face for a kiss. “Don’t smother me, Margaret.” Her skin is sticky and I can taste the Pond’s night cream on my lips.

      “I think I may get up today.” There’s a frog in her throat. My mother often thinks about getting out of bed to sew. But then she pulls the covers up under her chin and sleeps away the day until supper time.

      My mother has nerves. She didn’t always have them. They came a few years after Lucy was born, when my mother suffered her disappointments and had to spend lots of time recovering. There were four disappointments until I came along. I don’t think I made up for them because my mother still spends a lot of time trying to recover.

      Gemima laces her walking shoes and takes me to school. I plonk my hat on my head. St Virgilius says it’s a mortal sin to be seen in public without a hat. In winter, it’s the black felt hat, in summer, the white straw boater. Both are crosses I must bear.

      Gemima huffs and puffs like the big bad wolf on the way to school. Every few steps she stops and coughs because she says her cold has gone to her chest.

      I take a squizz at her head and wonder how much of her brain the tokoloshe has managed to eat these past few nights. The skin on her neck above the collar of her uniform glistens with Vicks VapoRub. Gemima says the Vicks, along with the Stearns Pine-tar and Honey cough mixture should do the trick. But I don’t think so. After tonight, there’ll be nothing left of her brain.

      Gemima won’t let me run ahead, and she coughs and snorts when she hands me my suitcase at the school gate where Benny is waiting for me.

      “Slow coach, slow coach, slow coach,” he yells.

      I grab his wrist and twist, giving him a Chinese bangle to make him stop.

      Benny and I are at the same school because the boys’ school down the road burnt down last year and they’ve got nowhere else close by until it’s rebuilt. My school is bearing this annoying cross by seating the boys on the left-hand side of the classrooms and trying to ignore them.

      The girls sit on the right-hand side, away from the windows, so we boil in summer. It isn’t any better in winter because St Virgilius doesn’t believe in heaters or spoiling children.

      My desk mate is Louise Daincroft. I sit at the front of the class because the teachers say they like to keep an eye on me. Louise sits in the front because she wants to be teacher’s pet. She also can’t see the blackboard and has to wear glasses that are held on with an elastic so her hair bushes up at the back. Mostly she leaves her glasses at home because she doesn’t like me calling her Goggles.

      Whenever a teacher needs someone to go outside and beat the blackboard duster with a ruler, Louise flings her hand in the air and shouts, “Me! Me! Me!” She’s a champion schloep. I just wait for a teacher to choose me, but they never do because I’m not one of their favourites. Sister Mary Liguori says I am far too bold, always wanting to be the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral.

      My Afrikaans teacher’s name is Miss van Tonder and she wears skirts and twinsets in summer and slack suits in winter. The jacket covers her bottom because the school doesn’t want us to see the shape of a teacher’s bottom, or even know she has one.

      The rest of the teachers are nuns. They cover up so well you can’t even see the colour of their hair. Their faces are squashed like pink marshmallows by a white doek thing they call a coif, and a black veil covers their heads. We call them penguins.

      Us girls also have a dress code. Some mornings, Sister Athanasius makes us kneel down to check the length of our dresses. The hem must be exactly four fingers above the knee. Otherwise God will strike us down.

      We have to wear huge bloomers that match our uniforms. They make our bottoms feel big. The elastic pinches the tops of our thighs and leaves a pink zigzag on our skin.

      When we have inspections, the penguins make us do somersaults in the gym. If we’re wearing the wrong broeks we get a hundred lines. Last year Benny dared me to go without any, so they sent me home. I had to write “I must not behave like a heathen” two hundred times and my parents were called in by Mother Superior and told about my wicked tendencies. And my first Holy Communion was postponed. My mother still gets cross when my father jokes about it.

      We are also strictly forbidden to chew bubblegum because it’s common, and if we get caught the penguins stick it in our hair.

      At break time I meet Benny in the quad. “What you got?” I say as I unwrap my sandwich. I fold up the wax paper. Gemima says waste not, want not, but I give it a rip because using the wax paper a second time is horrible.

      “Hell’s vomit. And you?” Benny says.

      “I’ll swap you my Peck’s for your Hellmann’s.”

      Benny groans. “Jislaaik, that Gemima’s got it in for me. She knows I hate fish paste worse than sandwich spread.” He offers me half. I take it and hand over my whole sandwich. I snatch his other half. Fair’s fair.

      Sister Francesca often does surprise lunch inspections. If we don’t have sandwiches, she sends us across to the convent kitchen where the cook gives us brown-bread doorstops with no butter, only marmalade, as bitter as her mouth.

      The meanest penguin is Sister Columbanus. She teaches us English and hates boys, Benny in particular, who struggles to read and can’t spell for toffee. I suppose his Mavis didn’t allow him to crawl either.

      I’m the best speller in my class. I learnt to read long before I started school by copying out the names on labels. Gemima taught me how. Dr Mackenzie’s Veinoids. Anadin. De Witt’s. And my mother’s favourite: Dr Williams’ pink pills for the treatment of tiredness, irritability, depression and nerviness.

      Sister Columbanus hits Benny with her ruler when he gets his spelling words wrong. She uses the metal edge of the ruler. The backs of Benny’s legs are sometimes covered in cuts, and his mother has to put Mercurochrome on them.

      Benny makes the last part of her name sound like a rude word. Columb-Anus. The one time I called her that, Gemima washed my mouth out with Sunlight soap.

      After school, I wait for Gemima. Mostly I walk home with Benny, but today she’s taking me to Fairplays Haberdashery in Louis Botha Avenue to buy some gingham and thread for my sewing project. I’m going to make her an apron and embroider Gemima on the front.

      I sit on the pavement outside the school gate. The blue sky is ironed flat with no clouds and the sun makes me hot. I pull off my tie and shift about, but my bottom feels cold. Sitting on concrete I run the risk of getting piles, also known as haemorrhoids. Gemima’s going to be in for the high jump when I tell on her.

      I’ve almost given up when a Morris Minor pulls up. The back of the red devil’s window is covered in peeling stickers: Charge or Release. Remember Sharpeville. Coke is Life. It’s a real student car, one helluva mess, my father says. Lucy leans out the window. “Get in.”

      I climb into the back of the car. “Where’s Mima?”

      “Your mother’s at home,” Roger the Dodger says. The car jerks as he drives off.

      “No, not her. Ge-Mi-Ma.” I roll my eyes but Roger doesn’t see. In any case, he’s taking skelm peeps at Lucy’s legs.

      Lucy turns around, a worry line on her forehead. “Mima couldn’t fetch you today. She’s at home in bed. It’s that cough of hers. It’s got really bad.”

      “Why don’t you take her to hospital? To Baragwanath?”

      My sister’s top lip curls. “Don’t be dumb, Mags. Daddy will see to her when he gets home. She’ll never get proper treatment at an African hospital.”

      Cold cement seems to fill my chest. It’s all my fault. Between the tokoloshe and me, we’ve killed Mima.

      Roger sticks a thumb out the window

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