Hum If You Don't Know the Words - Softcover

CHAPTER ONE

ROBIN CONRAD

13 June 1976

Boksburg, Johannesburg, South Africa

I joined up the last two lines of the hopscotch grid and wrote a big ‘10’ in the top square. It gave me a thrill writing the age I’d be on my next birthday because everyone knew that once you hit double digits, you weren’t a child anymore. The green chalk, borrowed from the scoreboard of my father’s dartboard without his knowledge, was so stubby that my fingers scraped against the concrete of the driveway as I put the final touches to my creation.

“There, it’s done.” I stood back and studied my handiwork. As usual, I was disappointed that something I’d made hadn’t turned out quite as good as I’d imagined.

“It’s perfect,” Cat declared, reading my mind as she always did, and trying to reassure me before I washed the grid off in a fit of self doubt.  I smiled even though her opinion shouldn’t have counted for much; my identical twin sister was easily impressed by everything I did. “You go first,” Cat said.

“Okay.”

I pulled the bronze half-cent coin from my pocket, and rubbed it for luck before launching it into the air from my thumbnail. It arced and spun, glinting in the sunlight, and when it finally landed in the first square, I launched myself forward, eager to finish the grid in record time.

I finished three circuits before the coin skittered out of the square marked ‘4’. It should have ended my turn, but I shot a quick look at Cat who was distracted by a hadeda bird making a racket on the neighbour’s roof. Before she could notice my mistake, I nudged the coin back in place with the tip of my canvas shoe and carried on jumping.

“You’re doing so well,” Cat called a few seconds later once she’d turned back and noticed my progress.

Spurred on by her clapping and encouragement, I hopped even faster, not noticing until it was too late that a lace on one of my takkies had come loose. It tripped me up just as I cleared the last square and brought me crashing down knee-first, my skin scraped raw on the rough concrete. I cried out, first in alarm and then in pain, and it was this noise that brought my mother’s flip-flops clacking into my line of vision. Her shadow fell over me.

“Oh for goodness sake, not again.” My mother reached down and yanked me up. “You’re so clumsy. I don’t know where you get it from.” She tsked as I raised my bleeding knee so she could see.

Cat was crouched next to me, wincing at the sight of the gravel imbedded in the wound. Tears started to prickle, but I knew I had to stop their relentless progression quickly or suffer my mother’s displeasure.

“I’m fine. It’s fine.” I forced a watery smile and gingerly stood up.

“Oh, Robin,” my mother sighed. “You’re not going to cry, are you? You know how ugly you are when you cry.” She crossed her eyes and screwed up her face comically to illustrate her point and I forced the giggle she was looking for.

“I’m not going to cry,” I said.  Crying in the driveway in plain sight of the neighbours would be an unforgiveable offense; my mother was very concerned with what other people thought and expected me to be as well.

“Good girl.” She smiled and kissed me on the top of my head as a reward for my bravery.

There was no time to savour the praise. The trill of the ringing phone cut through the morning and just like that, one of the last tender moments my mother and I would ever share was over. She blinked and the warmth in her eyes turned to exasperation.

“Get Mabel to help clean you up, okay?”

She’d just disappeared through the back door into the kitchen when I became aware of whimpering and looked down to see that Cat was crying. Looking at my sister was always like looking into a mirror, but in that instant, it felt as though the glass between my reflection and me had been removed so that I wasn’t looking at an image of myself; I was looking at myself.

The misery etched onto Cat’s scrunched-up features was my misery. Her blue eyes welled with my tears and her pouty bottom lip trembled. Anyone who’d ever doubted the veracity of twin empathy only had to see my sister suffering on my behalf to become a true believer.

 “Stop crying,” I hissed. “Do you want Mom calling you a cry baby?”

“But it looks like it hurts.”

If only it were that straightforward in the eyes of our mother. “Go to our room so she won’t see you,” I said, “and only come out when you feel better.” I tucked a strand of brown hair behind her ear.

 She sniffed and nodded, and then scurried inside with her head bent. I followed a minute later and found our maid, Mabel, in the kitchen washing up the breakfast dishes. She was wearing her faded mint-green uniform (a coverall dress that was too tight on her plump frame, the buttons gaping apart where they fastened in the front) with a white apron and doek.

My mother was on the phone in the dining room using the carefree, happy voice she only ever used with one person: her sister, Edith. I left her to it, knowing that if I asked to speak to my aunt, I’d be told either to stop interrupting grown-ups’ conversations, or to stop being so in love with the sound of my own voice.

“Mabel, look.” I said as I lifted up my knee, relieved that it wasn’t one of her few Sundays off.

She cringed when she saw the blood, and her hands flew up to her mouth, sending suds flying.  “Yoh! Yoh! Yoh! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” she exclaimed as though she’d personally caused my suffering.

To me, this litany was better than all the plasters in the world and an immediate balm to my pain. 

“Sit. I must see.” She knelt down and inspected the scrape, wincing as she did so. “I will fetch the first aid things.” She pronounced it ‘festaid’ in her strong accent and I savoured the word as I savoured all Mabel-English. I loved how she made regular English words sound like a totally different language, and I wondered if her children (whom I’d never met and who lived in Qua-Qua all year round) spoke the same way.

She fetched the kit out from the scullery cupboard and knelt down again to tend to the graze, the cotton ball looking especially white against her brown skin. She soaked it with orange disinfectant and then held it to the wound, murmuring words of comfort each time I tried to pull away from the sting of it. 

“I am sorry! Yoh, I’m sorry, see? I am almost finished. Almost, almost. You are a brave girl.” You arra brev gell.

I basked in her focused attention and watched as she blew on my knee, amazed at how the tickle of her breath magically eased the pain. Once Mabel was satisfied that the broken skin was clean enough, she stuck a huge plaster over it and pinched my cheek.

“Mwah, mwah, mwah.” She placed lip-smacking kisses all over my face, and I held my breath waiting to see if this would be the day I finally got a kiss on the mouth. Her lips came as close as my chin before returning to my forehead. “All better now!”

“Thank you!” I gave her a quick hug before heading out again, and I’d just stepped out the back door when my father called me.

 “Freckles!” He was sitting in a deck chair next to the portable braai he’d set up in the bright patch of sunlight in the middle of the brown lawn. “Get your old man a beer.”

I ducked inside again and opened the fridge, pulling out a bottle of Castle Lager. My inexpert handling of the bottle opener resulted in a spray of foam across the linoleum floor but I didn’t stop to wipe it up. Mabel clucked as I made a run for it, but I knew she’d clean it without complaint.

“Here you go,” I said handing the still-foaming bottle to my father who immediately used it to douse the flames that had leapt up beyond the barrier of the grill.

“Just in time,” he said, nodding for me to sit in the chair next to him.

My father’s blue eyes twinkled out at me from a handsome face that was mostly hidden behind a thicket of hair. Wavy blonde curls flopped over his eyebrows in the front, and grew long at the back so that they dipped over his shirt collar. He’d also cultivated long mutton chop sideburns that just fell short of meeting up with his bushy moustache. Kissing him was always a ticklish undertaking, and I loved the bristly texture of his face against my skin.

I sat down and he handed me the braai tongs as if he was passing me a sacred object. He nodded in a solemn way and I nodded back to show I acknowledged the transference of power.  I was now in charge of the meat.

My father smiled as I leaned into the smoke rising from the grill, and then he glanced at the plaster on my knee. “You been through the wars again, Freckles?”

I nodded and he laughed. My father often joked about having a son in a daughter’s body. He especially loved to tell the story of how I’d come home from my first and only ballet lesson when I was five years old with ripped tights and my leg covered in blood. When he’d asked me how in the world I’d managed to get so roughed up in a dancing class, I confessed that I’d injured myself falling out of the tree I’d climbed in order to hide away from the teacher. He’d roared with laughter, and my mother had lectured me about wasting their money.

Teaching me how to braai was something my father should’ve taught a son. If he felt cheated that he never got one, he never said so, and he encouraged my tomboyish behaviour at every opportunity.

Cat, on the other hand, was a sensitive child and in many ways, my complete opposite. She was also squeamish about raw meat. There was no way my father would ever have taught her the subtleties of cooking meat to perfection, or how to hold your fist when throwing a knockout punch, or how to bring someone down with a rugby tackle.

“Okay, now turn the wors. Make sure you get the tongs under all the coils and flip them together or it’s going to be a big mess. Good. Now, nudge the chops to the side or they’re going to be overdone. You want to crisp the fat but not burn it.”

I followed his instructions carefully and managed to cook the meat to his satisfaction. Once we were done, I carried the meat in a pan to the table Mabel had set for us on the flagstone patio. The garlic bread, potato salad and mielies were all already there, protected under a fly net that I sometimes used as a veil when I played at being a spy disguised as a bride.

“Tell your mother we’re ready,” my father said as he sat down. He didn’t trust the giant hadedas with their long beaks not to swoop down and steal the meat; they often swiped dog food left outside in bowls, and had been known to go for bigger prey like fish in ornamental ponds.

“She’s on the phone.”

“Well, tell her to get off. I’m hungry.”

“We’re ready to eat,” I yelled around the doorway before stepping back outside again.

I’d just sat down next to my father when Cat trailed outside to join us. She’d washed all evidence of tears from her face, and smiled as our mother sat down next to her.

“Who was that on the phone?” My father asked, reaching for the butter and Bovril spread to slather over his mielie.

“Edith.”

My father rolled his eyes. “What does she want?”

“Nothing. She’s got some vicious stomach bug that’s going around and she’s been grounded until it clears.”

“I suppose that’s a huge crisis in her life? Not being able to serve shitty airplane food on overpriced flights to hoity toity passengers. God, your sister can make a mountain out of a molehill.”

“It’s not a crisis, Keith. Who said it was a crisis? She just wanted to talk.”

“Wanted to suck you into the drama of her life, more like it.”

My mother raised her voice. “What drama?”

Cat’s eyes were wide as they darted between our parents. She pulled her gaze away from them and stared at me. Her meaning was clear. Do something!

“Everything’s a drama with her,” my father said, matching my mother’s increased volume. “It’s never just a small hiccup; it’s always the end of the world.”

“It’s not the end of the world! Who said it’s the end of the world?” My mother thwacked the serving spoon back into the salad bowl. She glowered at him and the vein in her forehead began to bulge, never a good sign. “God! Why must you always give her a hard time? She just wanted to -”

The doorbell rang.

Cat’s expression of relief said it all. Saved by the bell!

 “Oh, for God’s sake!” My father threw down his cutlery so that it clattered across the table. “Look at the time. Who has no bloody manners rocking up at lunchtime on a Sunday?” My mother stood to go but my father held her back. “Let Mabel get it.”

“I told her to take the afternoon off and said she could come in tonight to do the dishes.”

As my mother disappeared into the house, my father called after her. “If it’s the Jehovah’s Witnesses, tell them to piss off or I’ll shoot them. Tell them I have a big gun and I’m not afraid to use it.”

“I wonder who it is.” Cat asked and I shrugged. I was more interested in the gun.

When my mother returned a few minutes later, she was flushed and carrying two books which she thumped down on the table in front of Cat.

“What’s that?” My father asked. “Who was at the door?”

“Gertruida Bekker.”

“Hennie’s wife?”

“Yes.”

“What did she want?”

“To complain about Robin who’s apparently corrupting her daughter.”

“What?” My father looked at me. “What did you do, Freckles?”

“I don’t know.”

My mother nodded at the books. “You gave those to Elsabe?”

“I didn’t give them to her. I borrowed them to her.”

“Lent them,” my mother corrected.

“Yes, lent them.”

My father reached across the table to pick up the books. “‘The Magic Faraway Tree’ and ‘The Famous Five’,” he read. “Books by Enid Blyton?”

“Yes, apparently Gertruida took exception to the character’s names and told me, in no uncertain terms, that Robin is a bad influence and she doesn’t want her playing with Elsabe anymore.”

“What names? What is the bloody woman talking about?”

My mother paused before answering. “Dick and Fanny.”

“Are you being serious?”

My mother nodded. “Yes, she said they’re disgusting names that shouldn’t be allowed in a Christian household.”

My father guffawed and that set my mother off. They were both in fits of giggles and it was my turn to look to Cat in mystification. I didn’t know what was so funny.

I hadn’t meant to upset Elsabe or Mrs Bekker; all I’d tried to do was start my own secret society like the children in the books. I wanted to solve mysteries and have hidden clubhouses; I wanted to think up exotic passwords about cream buns and jam tarts that no one else would ever guess. Unfortunately though, all the other girls in our whites-only suburb of Witpark in Boksburg were Afrikaners, and from what I could tell, were only interested in playing house. All that cooking, knitting, sewing, baking, looking after screaming babies and yelling at dr...