Mondays at Oma Mimi's
It was 1995, and it was a Monday, a hideous Ford Cortina, blue Monday. I was five and fat, but pretty, and my mom overslept. Her pager didn’t go off, again! At five years old Mondays already made me feel like Aunty Beth in an evangelical church, scared, uncomfortable and a little bit triggered. My mom was busy getting ready for work and I was watching Takalani Sesami (A knock-off version of Sesame Street) because we didn’t have money for cable TV, which meant I couldn’t watch any of the M-net shows my friends at kindergarten were watching. From the room, I heard my mom yell something and the volume and her tone sent shivers down my spine. “Ngiyeza, yeka ukumemeza!” I replied in Zulu because that was what Aunty Thandi taught the friends on TV today.
Our apartment smelled like Red Square (a perfume store) and I noticed that my mom was closer to God today because her hair bordered the gates of heaven. We got into the Fiat, it was a cold morning so the damn car wouldn’t start. “Pull out the choke mommy!” I yelled. Red Square hooked the car into first gear, let go of the clutch too quickly, and as we took off I hit my head so hard against the headrest, and broke my neck in three places. She didn’t completely stop at stop streets and I was praying; “Thank you Lord I know I’m small but please dear God do hear my call, for if I enter Your gates today please be kind and let me stay amen.”
We finally stopped in front of Oma Mimi’s front gate. She was very safety aware and had a huge fence all around her house. I vaguely remember how she once almost bought a crocodile to replace our dog but my mom talked her out of it. Red Square honked and down the street, I saw a common couple walking. The wife was pushing a secondhand pram and in it, I saw a four-year-old little girl with a snot streak across her cheek, sticky hands, and close-cropped, coarse, matted hair. They were expecting their sixth child and were on their way to the clinic where, after that, they would collect the husband’s unemployment fund. Across the street I saw Elona Williams talking to Aunty Nellie, asking her for the 100th time to please fix the hole in her fence because if her dog Bully gets into her yard one more time she’ll shoot the fucking animal.
A little further down the road, I saw Uncle Sam tuning his Ford Escort. He yelled at Aunty Gertrude to pump the gas because he needed to see if the pistons were going to give him shit again today. “It’s a very cute little street this isn’t it mommy?” I said to my mom sucking on the cheap lollipop she gave me before we left home. It’s been a hot minute but at long last 45 Loerie Street’s doors opened, and there she was, my Oma Mimi. She was a vision to every pedestrian or resident who laid eyes on her. On her head, her curlers were resting like rusks in an oven. The curlers pulled the skin around her face so tight it appeared as if she went parachuting. She was in a floral gown and wore cheap slippers in the pinkest pink you’ve ever seen. She struggled to open the gate for us and bend over low to help lift it from the ground, and that’s when I noticed that she also forgot to put her tooth in. After a very long struggle with a bunch of keys, correctional services finally managed to open the gate.
Red Square kissed me goodbye and I got out of the car, making my way to Oma Mimi who was waiting at the gate. I looked like Dita Von Teese because after that kiss the entire Revlon factory was smeared across my face. Oma Mimi took my hand and we waved at Red Square when she sped off, almost driving over two whores 100 meters down the street. Hand in hand Oma Mimi and I walked into the house.
“My sweet Lord Jesus, Stoffel shat on the carpet again” she said defeated when she saw mount Ararat on her new pink patterned carpet she got from Aunty Louise. I closed my eyes because her mentioning Jesus’s name made me think that we were about to pray. She went to get a bucket from the kitchen and filled it up with lukewarm water and cheap dishwashing liquid. “There, take this and scrub!” she said as I was forced completely against my will to clean up Stoffel’s mess. The smell alone could bring Marilyn Manson to repent.
After I cleaned up I went to Oma Mimi’s room. I jumped onto the bed and watched her as she sat behind her vanity case, planning her look for the day. She took each curler out carefully and threw them into the bucket standing next to her. I was completely amazed and couldn’t keep my eyes off her. She had a little yellow comb that she used to tease her hair. She would grab a piece of hair and then tease it like a machine that came back from the industrial revolution. At times, if you looked carefully, you would see a small trail of smoke leaving her scalp. How that woman has a single piece of hair left on her head today is one of the wonders of this world. The aggression in her lightning-fast movements, and the furious expression on her face, while she murdered her hair, made me feel anxious and uncomfortable, and at times I wanted to call my mom.
She quickly put the little comb down and proceeded to light up a cigarette. I didn’t want to say anything because I was fucking scared, but she looked like a lady we saw at the piers one year prior. She sat back in her chair and pulled deep and long on what she called her bohemian breakfast, then she released the smoke through the gap in her teeth and suddenly the image of the machine from the industrial revolution became a reality. She put out her cigarette in an old Vaseline tin and gargled with a perfume from Avro Shlain which she spat out in the bin below her vanity case. She pressed her tongue up hard against the inside of her upper lip and for a few seconds she just sat there staring at herself. I prayed “Please dear God do hear my call” and was grateful to have lived through this experience.
She proceeded to take out a bottle of hairspray, on the can I could read something in the lines of Dippity-Do. She shut her eyes tightly, her tongue still pressed up against her upper lip, and began to spray all sense out of life. Through the mist, I saw Diane Fossey walking with three gorillas. She was spraying as if there was a goal she needed to reach, at one point I lost her in the mist and I got scared and yelled “Oma, the ozone layer!” “Fuck the ozone layer!” I heard her yell back through the mist. I started crying, Dana Winner was yelling Moonlight Shadow over the radio, Stoffel ran out and pissed in the living room and then the spraying stopped.
I opened my eyes and they instantly dried up. All the moisture was sprayed from that room. When the mist settled, I saw it. Her hair was big like my mom’s, it was just higher than the Rocky Mountains. Her tongue was still pressed up against her upper lip and she had another bohemian breakfast. The air around her took fire for a brief second when she lit up but with a quick wave of her hand and a panicked stricken yell, she rescued the moment. She sat back and admired herself as she flicked her cigarette’s ash into the Vaseline tin. She gave an awful cough and put out the cigarette halfway through, leaned into the mirror, ran the back of her hand against her cheek and underneath her chin, then gave a quick, small nod to herself. She no longer looked like the lady from the piers we saw one year prior but like Olivia Newton-John.
She then proceeded to take her tub of aqueous cream and started rubbing and smearing. Up until this day I haven’t met a person who can work a skin like Oma Mimi. Her tongue pressed up against her upper lip she rubbed herself into an entirely new age group. There was slapping, and pricking and pulling and a weeping and a gnashing of teeth. I rather kept quiet because at five years old I already attached value to my life. She had a secret though you see, this wasn’t your regular aqueous cream. After she and an agent had an ugly fall out over a R2 price increase on Avon’s youth-restoring day cream, she decided to take matters into her own hands. She and her cousin, Aunty Una, put their heads together and concocted a mixture that would bring all the dead pharaohs from The Bible back to life.
Their concoction contained products such as vitamin E oil, retinol, brake fluid, vanilla essence, prayer, and antifreeze. If this landed in the right hands Oma Mimi would’ve had a seat next to the big names in the skincare business. Can you imagine? Mimi Lauder or, Miem of Olay or something along those lines. After almost 30 years of continuous use, that woman’s wrinkles disappeared like cookies at an orphanage and she appeared to have been at least 20 years younger than her actual age. Uncle Eugene liked younger women and he was her boyfriend. She never admitted it though but we all knew they were dating because he would pick her up every Friday night to go dancing and then I would cry and she would say “Stop being such a faggot!” and then she’d left giggling with her in his arms. She never told him that she was actually fifty. Until his death, he thought she was 35 and it was all thanks to Miem of Olay!
She was finally done rubbing in the cream and now it was time for her to draw her eyebrows. Back in the 70’s she plucked all of them out to follow a fashion trend, and just like that fashion trend her eyebrows never came back. She could draw the most magnificent eyebrows, every day in a different style. My personal favorite was the hoop brow. That was when she drew two big crescent moons above her eyes. The space between her eyes and her eyebrows was then filled with either a blue or green eyeshadow. She once walked past a peacock with her eyes looking like that and the animal accepted the challenge and fanned out its feathers.
When she was done, she put the eyeshadow away and wanted to light up another cigarette but with her hand halfway to the box, she decided against it and started studying her face. She would tilt her head slightly to the left and then to the right, lifting the skin above her eyebrows with her index finger. She used her left hand to pull the skin under her chin a little bit tighter and softly whispered, “Shit.” Then she put her tooth in, looked at herself, and smiled. She turned around in her seat and a bit rudely asked me to leave the room as she wanted to change her clothes. I saw she was planning to wear the blouse and the shoes I usually put on when she wasn’t home and naturally I thought that she had good taste. I took Stoffel and with my cheap lollipop, we left the room.
I was waiting in the living room, my eyes locked on her room door. I heard cupboards being slammed shut, a glass fell, “fuck” she said, and then Laura Branigan started singing Gloria and I heard the volume being turned up. Very passionately, and in broken English, I heard her sing, “You don’t need to answer, leave them hanging on the line oh oh oh, calling Gloria!” As the song finished the door opened, and a ball of smoke blocked my vision. She must have had another Turkish delight, another name she attributed to her smoking habits. Her silhouette slowly became visible, I swallowed but stood transfixed in my position. When the smoke settled I finally saw her. She wasn’t human anymore but something sent from the gods. She looked absolutely incredible. The dark green collar neck blouse she was wearing looked even better on her than it did on me. Her shoulder pads towered out five centimeters on each side. With my blouse, she was wearing a black broomstick skirt hanging just below her knees and on her feet were black block heel shoes with extra padding.
Her hair still resembled something you could climb and the shoulder pads made her look like Pythagoras. “So what do you think sugar tits?” she said and gave a turn. I had no words, how have I never seen that skirt in her cupboard before! That’s when she started walking to leave her room, my eyes widened as she approached the door frame. Everything happened in slow motion, she forgot to duck down and the Rocky Mountains hit that door frame and pulled it out of the wall cement and all. In the background, I heard Celine Dion signing as if it was her last time on stage. Stoffel ran away and pissed under the table, “You little shit!” Oma Mimi yelled at him. I got uncomfortable and wanted to call my mom but then all of a sudden everything got quiet. The last brick fell from the door frame and that’s when I saw the Rocky Mountains, unscathed, on her head. She still looked like a movie, like something sent from the heavens above.
She grabbed her car keys and then gave me an expired peppermint she got from her clutch, kissed me on the head, and told me to be a good boy. I was going to stay with Oma Betty and help her bake cookies later in the afternoon. Oma Mimi left the house, I heard her car start and then heard a faint thud as she drove over the corner sidewalk again. She definitely made every head turn in Klerksdorp on that day. I went back to her room and jumped on her bed, “Thank you Lord I know I’m small but please dear God do hear my call, for if I enter Your gates today please be kind and let me stay Takalani Sesami and Sanlam” I prayed. Later that afternoon she returned and asked me to help her carry the groceries back to the house. I saw she bought another bottle of old brown sherry and a string of cheap lollipops for me, the flat red ones were my favorite. She baked us an egg for lunch together with slices of tomato and cucumber. I have never had anything other than this meal for lunch at her place. I think she lived through the great depression and wanted to keep me grounded and grateful so she made us this for lunch. After that, we played farmer-farmer with my little toy cars. At five o’clock I heard a hooter, it was my mommy, she came to fetch me.