and staring. The lions crouch, snarling on flat-topped cones. Loose hairs from their manes drift like dust motes in the light. They reach out their heavy paws to swat and swipe at the brave lion tamer, but each time, he dances away. Their menace rumbles across the tent, and in the dark behind the bright ring, they sound like Pa when he’s cross with me. When the lions run back through the steel hoops to their cages, the lion tamer’s smile under his bushy black moustache is white with relief. I jump off my hard seat, clap my hands and laugh, and when I turn around to look at Ma and Pa, they’re laughing too.
Sitting in the back seat of the car on the way home, I lean against the door and stare into the dark beyond the glow of the streetlights.
“Is everything in the circus real, Ma?”
In the front, next to Pa, she half-turns back towards me.
“What d’you think, love?”
Her teeth shine in a smile. Pa grunts. My sister nods, half-asleep in her corner.
I’m only five, or eight, or ten years old. I shake my head. The back of Pa’s neck is stiff.
2.
Promises
Of all Ma’s promises to me, the most important one she made was when I was nearly five years old, sad and heartsick after Sandy, my old dog and best friend, had died.
On the day she made that promise, we walked hand-in-hand to where two men were standing on the platform at the railway station. They looked exactly the same.
“That’s because they’re identical twins,” Ma whispered. She said hello to them, but the men only grunted. I held Ma’s hand tighter.
“What’s the matter with them, Ma?”
“There’s something wrong with their brains, love. They don’t work very well. It makes them think very slowly.”
The sun clicked on the hot, corrugated-iron roof above our heads. In the shade behind the men, a trolley was piled high with suitcases and crates, milk cans and trunks. I could hear a puppy whimper. A small boy and girl, dressed in school uniforms, sobbed as they clung to their mother’s skirt. I watched her kneel amongst the piles of bags and trunks at their feet to comfort them; watched how she held them in the close circle of her arms. I looked at Ma, saw her brows crease as she stared at the sad tableau.. The corners of her mouth drooped, and her eyes looked flat, and far away. I could smell the hot smell of coal dust, and grease.
Suddenly, she reached out and hugged me, and then – just as suddenly – she pulled away, put one hand on my shoulder, and with the other, tilted my chin so that I looked up at her.
“I would never do that to you, love,” she said. “I’ll never send you away to a boarding school.” Her voice was fierce and low. “Never,” she promised.
I believed her.
3.
Goodbye, farewell
The regulator clock ticks on the wall. The hour strikes. Dust settles. A feather falls from a dove lamenting in a poplar tree outside; my-mother’s-dead-my-father’s-dead-all-are-dead-all-are-dead.
In the garden, rose heads hang in the heavy summer heat. My cupboard shelves are bare. The pretty ice skaters on the wallpaper next to my bed have faded almost to shadows. The leather suitcase on the parquet floor is full. Heavy. Sandy, my best, most faithful friend – the puppy Ma took me to collect from the station all those years ago – lies on the floor in front of the window, his long ears puddled around his head. He looks up at me, stretches and yawns, gets to his feet. His nails click on the wooden floor as he walks toward the bed. He stops in front of me, rests his head on my knees. I reach down and pull him up onto my lap.
“I’ll come back soon, Sandy-boy,” I whisper into the warm, musty flap of his ear. “Soon, I promise.” His tail beats his song of love against my arm.
Suddenly, his ears prick up. He barks, jumps down off my lap and runs out of my room towards the kitchen. I get up to follow him. He slip-slides on the polished floor, barrels into the kitchen and pushes past Isak into the yard. Isak wipes his muddy hands against his khaki shirt, shuffles his bare feet in the doorway. He helps Ma in the garden, and when I was born, he filled it with flowers to welcome me home. He’s my friend.
“Isak, will you look after Sandy for me when I’m not here?” My eyes are blurred with tears.
He looks at me, his face anxious and sad.
“Eh, M’Pho.”
Marta and Isak gave me my Sotho name when I was born. It means ‘Gift from God.’
He leans forward. “M’Pho, you must be careful there by the sea – you must stay well, so far away. You know I will be here when you come back. Sandy will be safe.” His words tumble out, urgent and fast. When he turns away, I see Marta hold her hand out to him.
4.
Trains
The Wolseley – Pa’s pride and joy – skids to a halt in a cloud of gravel dust in front of the station. The heavy car rocks on its chassis. Pa grunts, and the engine roars as he reverses fast into old Mr Le Roux-next-door’s parking space. Reserved for Taxis Only, the sign says. No one says a word. Pa opens his door and strides across the blaze of gravel. A few minutes later, he marches back with our town’s handicapped, identical twin porters, Hitler and Hess, shuffling and stumbling behind him. Ma reaches for my arm.
“Hurry,” she says. “I think we got here just in time – listen!”
On the platform, far away on the warming morning air, we can hear a train’s long hoot. I look at Ma, wonder whether she remembers the day we saw the children crying in the circle of their mother’s arms. I turn away – I want no part of this, but here it comes, roaring around the wide bend of the tracks, the sun flashing on windows blind with dust. Behind us, the stationmaster’s whistle shrills in the rushing wind. The train’s rhythm slows, the engine puffs and grinds, reluctant, it seems to me, and hesitant, as if unwilling to bear me away. The brakes screech on the iron wheels. Steam rises above the grimy platform. Clouds of soot fall like dusky rain. Ma flinches.
Figures wave from the train’s open windows. Up and down the cramped corridors of the still-hissing train, we watch passengers hump their heavy loads towards the narrow doors and slippery steel steps hanging like miniature ladders against the sides of the carriages.
Ma pulls me along behind her. A man wearing a conductor’s uniform and cap is deep in conversation with the stationmaster.
“Excuse me,” she says.
The stationmaster touches the peak of his cap.
The conductor frowns. “Just give us your name, lady, then we can check for your carriage.”
I watch his frown deepen as his eyes move slowly down the typed lists on the clipboard in his hand. He nods, looks up at Ma, points at the next carriage.
“It’s here, right by us – a sleeper, first-class.” He nods. “Very comfortable. You’re booked all the way through to Cape Town, right?” He looks at me. “And what’s the matter with you, girlie? Don’t you like to go with the train?”
I look away.
Pa’s long legs stride across the platform towards us. Behind him, Hitler and Hess drag their feet in their heavy boots while they lean on the trolley’s push bar. The air smells stale, like old ice.
“We’ll take the overnight bags into the compartment with us,” Ma tells them. “You can take the big suitcases down to the luggage compartment, alright?”
Pa feels in the pocket of his white safari-suit shorts. He looks down at the coins in the palm of his big hand, and careful not to make contact, drops two 20-cent pieces into each man’s cupped hands. They nod wordlessly, lean forward, and rocking ponderously from side to side, push the heavy