Not a Fairytale Read Free Page B

her car, near the cement driveway. She says they’re the print of sandshoes. Everyone knows skollies wear sandshoes so no one can hear them prowling around at night.
    My father is tired of the skollie, and Ma’s swearing Big Bad Words every Saturday morning, so he’s gone to the architect to start plans to build another garage. But Ma wants blood. I’m scared, but I’m glad it’s the skollie’s blood she wants and not mine. Poor Skollie.
    That Friday afternoon, the fourth Friday afternoon since the start of the break-ins, Ma sends me to the cornershop to buy two bottles of cooldrink, but it’s closed because of a death in the family. We drive to Grand Bazaars in Parow, the closest supermarket. She parks in the parking lot behind Voortrekker Road and gives me strict instructions. I must buy one litre of Coke and one litre of Fanta and nothing else. Not even my favourite caramel dessert with its bright-white creamy topping. She gives me a two-rand note, and off I go.
    Ma stays behind in her yellow car, in her yellow safari suit, wearing big black sunglasses that leave only the tip of her pointy nose exposed. Ma wears a black hairpiece so she can have double-storey hair like the women in the movies and so that no one can notice her bald spot. She looks pretty. Usually she doesn’t wear her scarf when we go to Grand Bazaars, so the white people won’t know she’s Muslim. But today she is wearing a big flowery scarf and only her fringe is exposed. I know she’s in disguise, and her plans for Skollie have something to do with the cooldrinks. Poor Skollie.
    We go home and Ma opens the Fanta and Coke and starts muttering. I realise she’s making a potion for Skollie. Salena will love this! I am torn between wanting to watch Ma and the need to phone Salena, but I decide to watch. That way I’ll have more to tell Salena.
    First, Ma throws some of the green pellets she uses to kill snails into the grinder. She turns the pellets into a fine dusty powder that makes me sneeze three times in a row, and then adds equal amounts of the dust to both bottles. Then she adds Brooklax, the stuff she takes when she can’t pooh. This she also grinds to a powder before she adds it to the bottles. She tells me to check the bottles to see if they have changed colour. (She needs spectacles, but she won’t wear them. Salena says it’s because she doesn’t want to look old.) They haven’t. She adds a bit of sugar to both bottles, which makes their gas bubbles rise, and then she closes the bottles tightly and puts them back in the Grand Bazaars packet.
    After supper, Ma goes out in the dark and places the Grand Bazaars packet on the back seat of the car, so it looks as if someone has left them there by mistake. I ask her what will happen if the skollie gives the drinks to his children. She says that’s his problem, not hers.
    The next morning I’m up early and I rush outside to the car. I’m disappointed to see none of the windows are broken, but I investigate and find that the back door has not been closed properly. I open it, and the shopping packet is gone!
    I run in to tell Ma. I am so excited, I can hardly eat. I imagine Skollie is in hospital, even dead! Ma says I’m not allowed to write about this in my News Diary at school on Monday. Now the wait begins.
    The following Friday no one breaks into the car. Or the next. My mother, the skollie killer. And she didn’t even know him. What could she do to me? I decide to stop drinking Coke at home.

Adopted
    I T ’ S T HURSDAY NIGHT , HOLY NIGHT , SAYS M A , and tells me to recite from the Quran. I say no. The words are meaningless old Arabic that I’ve memorised like a nursery rhyme. And at the age of eleven, I’m too old for nursery rhymes. I’m already an aunt to three children!
    Ma says I am too big for my boots because of all the books I read. When I still refuse to say the words, Papa gets angry and smacks me. The yellow ring that he has recently taken to wearing on the