There was always a full tin
It was Thursday, March 27, 2020, and Oma Mimi was sitting at her living room table, one hand in her hair while the other was busy writing things in a small notebook. Next to her on the table were fourteen packs of White Costas Candles, a pack of Faithful to Nature toilet paper, a pack of Lion matches, two walkie talkies, The Bible, Fifty Shades of Grey and a bottle of Jeyes Fluid. Her pencil’s tip broke, she blasphemed through her teeth, and then the front door bell went off. Stoffel went absolutely crazy and was barking my ears off my head. From my room, Britney Spears was screaming “That’s my prerogative” “Turn down that Satan shit” my grandma yelled, as she got up to open the door. I peeked through my room window and saw a member of the South African army standing in front of our door. “Morning Doreen” I heard my grandma say, as she opened the door.
Oma Mimi in Lockdown
April 4th 2020
My Satan shit (I had all the CD's)
Oma Mimi and Aunty Doreen both voted for the National Party back in the 90’s, and belonged to the same pyramid schemes. After numerous failed attempts at receiving any sort of money from these schemes, they decided that they’d rather spend their time selling Bundu Pots. Aunty Doreen was in her late husband’s army uniform and a neatly folded whip was hanging next to her leg. “Mimi, are you sure you don’t want to come with? There’s still room”, I heard Aunty Doreen say. “Doreen” Oma Mimi mournfully sighed, “What about Stoffel and my parrot? I will just hold you back, you saw what happened the last time I tried to go with you.” Now, a few months before this, when the conversations surrounding land expropriation came to light, Aunty Doreen and The Suidlanders tried to convince Oma Mimi to join them in escaping to Uncle Boet’s farm just outside of Kestell in the Drakensberg. They just made it through Orkney when Stoffel had his first epileptic seizure and pissed in 80% of Aunty Mignon’s caravan. “Grace and peace to you and your loved ones”, I heard Aunty Doreen say. Oma Mimi gave her one of the walkie-talkies and Aunty Doreen got on her horse.
Aunty Doreen during the Bush War
“Off we go Bacchus” I heard her say. She kicked that horse so hard it was on its hind legs. “Unity creates strength” she yelled. White bread fell from her backpack, and with a jump and a neigh, she was off. “God, Doreen, watch out for Tookie” Oma Mimi yelled through her fence when she saw Aunty Tookie coming up the street with her bag of groceries and a tin of diesel. The last we heard from Aunty Doreen was when she saved yet another unwilling pilgrim, halfway to Orania, and then the walkie-talkies lost signal. “What are you writing in your little book?” I asked my grandma when she came back inside. “Shut up, be quiet” she said very irritated, and walked back to the table, her mind clearly someplace else. She sharpened her pencil, and in the background Jim Reeves’ CD was playing. She sang along softly to “This world is not my home”. I went to the living room and picked up Stoffel’s turd from behind the couch, poured myself a big, ice-cold glass of Planet Cola (Real Coke wasn't afforadale, at 50 cents more expensive than Planet Cola) and watched the rebroadcast of Days of Our Lives.
She has all the CD's
I fell asleep on the couch and by 2 o’clock that afternoon I was woken up by a disgusting, highly irritable yell. “Werner! Come open the gate for me, I’m going to the supermarket” “Can I come with” I asked. “Fok” she said softly through her teeth, “Yes, come along if you must, but you better understand one thing”, she said as she pointed her finger at me, and I saw that she forgot to put her tooth in so I was naturally scared, and paid very close attention to what she was going to tell me. “I have a lot of things to do today. I have to take Miriam to the clinic, then I have to go to the post office to mail Uncle Ockert’s package, then we have to stop at Aunty Louise’s. I told her that I’m just going to honk and then you have to jump out and get the bottle of perfume I have to exchange for her, just make sure that it’s LaBianca and then you give her the bottle of Forever. After that we have to stop at Uncle Gerard’s farm to get the last few things before this damn lockdown hits”.
We got into the car, and after the third attempt it finally started. She struggled to put the car in reverse and grinded the gears, accidentally pressed the honk, then it backfired. “Fok” she said, and off we went. As we took the first corner, she geared back into second, and hit the pavement at an uncomfortable speed. I hit my head lightly against the window. I stayed quiet because I knew if I said something now, that would have been my last moment on Earth. By 7 o’clock that night, we were back home. When we opened the boot, the chicken we got from Uncle Gerard’s farm escaped, a bag of flour opened and two eggs were broken because we hit that same fucking pavement on our way back. We started emptying the boot and packed everything out on the kitchen table. My grandma took a quick sip of something just as I entered the kitchen with a 25kg bag of corn on my head, tripping over a piece of novilon tile. Oma Mimi was busy scrubbing the skin from her hands with mineralised methylated spirits, as she didn’t see the need to spend unnecessary money on rubbing alcohol. She gargled cough syrup and poured some into a spoon. The spoon broke three of my teeth when she made me take some, too. “Here, eat this aspirin, prevention is better than cure, and then go wash your hands and set the table when you
It never worked. You were
too scared to cough, so you
had to swallow some.
come back” she said, with half a glass of Old Brown sherry in her hands. The radio was playing in the kitchen and the house was filled with the scents of sorghum, sweet potatoes, misery and green beans. She added another cup of Dettol to the rice, stirred, and hit the spoon on the side of the pot to the rhythm of the South African Anthem.
Spookaloosy
we both passed a sigh of relief when we noticed that it was her cat, Spookaloosy. He hadn’t been home in two weeks, and apparently caught a dachshund which he came to show off.
I filled up her glass and started dishing up. “After dinner we’re going to build a puzzle” she said. She bought the two of us a 5000 piece puzzle to keep us busy for the next three weeks. The box displayed a scene of an abandoned house next to a river with a big willow tree, two crossbreed dogs, and a kudu jumping fence during sunset. By 9 o’clock all the dishes were washed and neatly packed away. There was a small streak of blood running down my ear as my grandma is half deaf (or pretends to be) and has her radio on, to the highest setting. On top of that, she doesn’t realize how loud she speaks when the volume’s that high. I assumed the three sherry's she’d had by that time didn’t really help the situation either. I knew that I shouldn’t turn down the volume, mention it, or touch her sherry, because I saw that she removed her tooth and she had her curlers in, and when she looked like that, I usually felt uncomfortable, anxious and tensed-up.
“Come my child” she yelled “let’s build puzzle”. She removed the doily from the living room table and stored the porcelain poodle in the cupboard next to us. Next to her lay her revolver, on the corner of the table underneath a dishcloth, just in case someone broke in. We unpacked the puzzle pieces and started working on the frame. We heard a noise coming from the back-door. “Who’s there?” Oma Mimi yelled in a tone that would make any living person feel unwanted, whilst loading the gun. The sound popped up again. She put in her tooth and walked to the door with the gun in hand. “Take out your tooth!” I yelled from the table. I secretly messaged my mom to come get me, because if curfew hits I’d be stuck with this woman. On her way to the door she tripped over the bag of corn. Four curlers were hanging loose, and she spilled a little bit of sherry. Stoffel yelped and shat on the doormat. When she opened the door
My mom wasn't responding to my messages because she lived in the Freestate, and there’s more dust and racism in that place than cell phone service. “You shit” Oma Mimi yelled at Spookaloosy when he ran in. I walked to the doormat with a roll of Faithful to Nature and picked up Stoffel’s discharge and then we continued building puzzle. By 11 o’clock we were done with 1/3 of the puzzle, the kudu just started to take shape when Oma Mimi said that it was time for bed. She forgot to turn on the boiler so neither of us could take a bath. She boiled the kettle, mixed a concoction of Jeyes Fluid and Tea Tree Oil into a bowl, took a warm face cloth, and wiped me clean.
Before we got into bed, she tied a green bow onto the burglar bars in front of her room window. Earlier that week she went down our street and handed out bows to the entire community. There were green ones, red ones, and blue ones. A green bow meant everything was fine. A blue one meant you ran out of food or toilet paper, and a red one meant there was shit - someone needs to call the police. I messaged my mom again, but I think her phone was turned off. In the meantime we received news that Aunty Doreen crossed the Fishriver, and had set up camp somewhere in the Namibian dessert, she’s doing well.
Tomorrow we'll build puzzel again.
