The Choice Between Us. Edyth Bulbring

not quite true, but what the Methodists don’t know can’t hurt them.

      We wait until she is out of sight. All clear. Benny and I wander into the street and cross the road to the house next door to where Sophie stays. I sprint through the gate up to the front door, keeping close to the edge of the path next to the bushes. I grab the brass knocker and slam it down five times and run back down to where Benny’s hiding behind a lemon tree. He’s laughing like a drain.

      We crouch down, staring at the front door. I hold my breath. “Shoosh, stop it, man.” I smother his mouth with my hand. I feel the scar above his lip. I don’t mind touching it.

      The front door opens and Mr Dickson peers around. He takes a few steps down the path and then turns back and slams the door. We wait. And wait. Come on, Mr Dickson, come on! Some days he doesn’t behave the way we want him to. It’s getting boring.

      “Your turn.” I nudge Benny.

      My knees pop as we stand up and walk away from the house. The sun has dipped, the sky is purple. Benny is a dark shape before me on the path.

      “Blerrie terrorists. I’m going to blow your heads off,” says a voice.

      “Chips! He’s coming. Run, for your life, Benny. Run!”

      We run. I’m laughing so much I can’t breathe. Benny is snorting. I look back. Mr Dickson’s got his shotgun and he’s wobbling down the path. The gun goes off behind us and we dodge through the gate.

      “I’ll get you. Blerrie baboons.”

      We duck next door through the service entrance and race towards the back, to the washing line and rubbish bins. The door to the outside room is open. I dive inside.

      “Hide us, hide us. Mr Dickson’s got a gun and he wants to kill us.” Mr Dickson only fires blanks. But I’m holding thumbs that one day he’ll use live ammo.

      Sophie is sitting on the narrow iron bed and Gemima is on the floor, her legs stretched out on a piece of cardboard, fingers busy with her embroidery. I crawl under the bed while Benny squeezes behind the door. We wait. Sometimes Mr Dickson comes looking for us. Maybe today is one of those lucky days.

      Sophie’s bed is raised off the floor. Three bricks under each leg. My mother says the natives like to sleep high off the ground so the tokoloshe can’t get them. They’re scared of the tokoloshe because they are superstitious and ignorant. I think Sophie’s right to be safe rather than sorry. Everyone knows tokoloshes eat your brains when you’re sleeping.

      I peek through Sophie’s dangling legs. Her heels are cracked, her soles yellow with knobbly corns. I spot dust bunnies, and a stray hairclip in a corner of the room.

      A square of yellowed newspaper covers a pane in the window. It’s high up on the opposite wall, allowing only a teeny bit of light into the room. Sophie doesn’t have a cupboard. Her blue shweshwe dress and her pink uniform are hanging from nails on the wall.

      The room is a lot smaller than Gemima’s, and I can’t see any photographs. Gemima has a framed snap of my father and her when they were children on the farm in Natal. It sits on the crate by her bed, next to a jam jar with everlasting flowers. My father has the exact same photo in his study. But Sophie doesn’t have a desk or a crate, and she decorates her walls with pictures of smiling ladies from Drum magazine, which Gemima also reads.

      We wait for ages. I peep at Gemima. She stares at me, her nostrils quivering. Her dark eyes tell me she’s going to get me as soon as we’re back home.

      I hold her stare, my lips moving silently: Stare, stare, like a bear. Sitting on a monkey’s chair. When you lose your underwear. That will teach you not to stare. I pretend to lick my lips but Gemima and I both know I’m sticking my tongue out at her.

      I hear the sound of breathing behind me. Skrikked, I look back. Not a tokoloshe. It’s an African. She’s curled up, pressed against the wall, trying to make herself small. The doek is skew on her head and her uniform is grubby. Her eyes are big and white in a black face, shiny with sweat. She touches her finger to her lips and we stare at each other until she closes her eyes. Her lashes flutter

      “You can come out now, Margaret,” Gemima says.

      I look back at the nanny and touch my finger to my lips before scrambling out from under the bed.

      On our way home, Gemima grips Benny and me by the hands as we wait to cross the road. I try to wriggle away. I’m not a baby. I know how to cross the road. But she clutches my hand tighter. We look left, then right. As we look left again, a police van squeals around the corner and comes to a stop as its front wheel hits the side of the pavement.

      Two policemen jump out, and one of them sprints towards a group of Africans walking towards the bus stop. He waves a short black stick at them and yells. They run, screaming fit to raise the dead.

      The police are always chasing the Africans when they leave work to travel home to the location, or go off for their half-day on Thursdays. The nannies run and try to hide in the back rooms, but the police often catch them. If they find the African under Sophie’s bed there’ll be hell to pay.

      The other policeman comes up to us, and he looks like he means business. Next to me, Benny makes a sudden move, his mouth hanging open wider than usual, as if he’s going to cry.

      “It’s all right,” I say to him. “Really, it’s fine. We can’t be in trouble.” I smile but my voice cracks. Surely Mr Dickson wouldn’t have set the police on us. That’s never been part of the game.

      Gemima lets go our hands and stares down at the ground as the policeman reaches us.

      He stops in front of her. “Dompas.” He holds out a hand. The fingernails are black with dirt.

      She reaches into her apron pocket and offers him a small dark-coloured book. He flips through the pages, drops it on the ground, turns to leave. As he walks off, Benny throws up at my feet. A yellowy-orange, sticky loquat mess.

      I shift away, my takkies are splattered. “Sis, man, Benny.”

      “Sorry.” Benny kneels on the ground, looking up at me, his chest still heaving. I glare at him and the mess at my feet. Gemima’s going to be mad that we stuffed ourselves before supper. I hand him my handkerchief to clean up.

      We watch as the policeman shoves three Africans into the back of the van. He yells as he pushes. “I don’t care if you left your donderse pass books at home. You kaffirs must learn to wear them around your neck.” He slams the door shut and bangs on the metal grille.

      Benny goes home and Gemima drags me into the kitchen. The pressure cooker is shooting steam all over the room. She reaches into a drawer and pulls out the wooden spoon. It has a name: Gemmy. This makes it sound friendly. But it’s not.

      She always catches me if I try to run away, so I just show her the palms of my hands and sigh. Benny’s nanny isn’t allowed to smack him. But my father says Gemima’s mummy also had a wooden spoon on the farm and it never did him any harm.

      I stare at Gemima with my hating eyes as she slams the spoon down. I don’t pull my hands away. She hits harder than usual, her face tight.

      “That’s for not listening to me. That’s for playing your stupid game and teasing that poor old man. That’s for the loquats. And that’s to remind you to be good tomorrow.”

      To get her back I’m going to wish the tokoloshe on her. It will eat her brains tonight when she’s asleep. I cross fingers on both my hands and make the wish as she tells me to sit down.

      Gemima butters a slice of white bread, sprinkles sugar on top, and puts it on a plate in front of me. I keep my hands in my lap away from the bread until her back is turned.

      I hear my father at the front door. He is putting his doctor bag next to the telephone table, his hat and jacket on the hook in the hallway next to my school blazer. He comes through to the kitchen, strokes the top of my head, and greets Gemima.

      “Everything all right,