still thinking about it, okay?” I stare at the sliver of meat pinned under the tip of her knife. “Just give me a minute!”
Ramsey curls her upper lip.
“Ha-ha – very funny,” she smirks. “Witty.”
I shrug. Ramsey shrugs back. I push my plate away from me, and when I look again, my steak is dangling in mid-air, speared through on the tip of her knife. Her smile is tight with triumph, but her laugh sounds bitter, like a cough. She pokes her elbow in my side.
“You’d better be careful,” she says seriously. “If you’re going to be this fussy about your food, you’re going to end up starving here.”
I look straight ahead.
“You think this is bad?” she asks. “Just wait and see what the cook does with it for the rest of the week!”
My eyes widen.
“Ja. You’ll see, tomorrow the left-over steaks will become hamburgers, and on Sunday we’ll get a steak casserole.” She punctuates her litany, emphasising the days with doleful nods of her head. “On Monday, what’s left of the casserole will be turned into steak stew, and on Tuesday it’s steak mince on rice. Wednesday, we’ll be eating teeny steak rissoles for dinner.” She shakes her head vehemently. “The menu never varies.” She grimaces. “Oh, and on Thursday,” she continues, “it’s meatball day – and if I were you, I would not ever eat those meatballs.”
“Why not?” I whisper in dismay.
Ramsey looks down at the table. She studies the position of the plate in front of her and moves it slightly to one side.
“Wait,” she says ominously. “You’ll see next week. Just wait till Thursday comes …”
A week later, our room is so hot and stuffy, we can barely breathe. Ramsey and I lean across the desk, and hoping to catch a breeze, we heave the window open as far as it’ll go. The room smells of sweat and Ramsey’s Johnson’s Baby Powder.
Behind the closed window in the kitchen below, we can see the fat cook – a filthy apron tied around her waist – bend over a stainless-steel table in front of her. Her heavy thighs pressed up against it, her fat belly spreads across its steel surface. We watch her wipe the sweat from her face with the back of her hand. She takes a deep breath and crosses her arms over her huge breasts. Ramsey and I stare, horrified, as she slowly draws her palms through her sweating armpits. She steps back from the table and shakes her hands out in front of her, leans forward again and pulls a bowl heaped high with raw minced meat towards her.
She scoops up a handful of meat and slaps it from one hand to the other. Once, twice, three times she pats and squeezes the patty until her fingers ooze. The bulging front of her apron is spattered wet with the bloody liquid. Her face is expressionless as she squashes and rolls the meat into balls before slapping them down on a tray. She shakes her head against the heat in the kitchen. Sweat rolls from the edge of her doek onto her hands. The cook raises her arms. Slabs of fat swing and sway above the hairy nests of her armpits.
Mesmerised, we kneel on our beds, our elbows on the small table between us. The small wind outside finally gathers its breath and moves through our open window, blowing the greasy curtains until they billow against our faces, and obscure our view.
“You see?” Ramsey says, “Remember what I told you about not eating the meatballs on Thursday nights?”
Mrs P takes a dive
Up on the podium, a glass falls from the prefects’ table. As it smashes against the dining-room floor, Mrs P’s chair topples over. The buzz of conversation ceases abruptly.
“Ramsey?”
I push my chair back to see Mrs P sprawled slack-jawed on her side at the edge of the stage.
Her skirt is bunched up beneath her, and one of her shoes is lying on the floor below.
“What’s the matter with her? Why doesn’t anyone help her?”
No one appears to take the slightest notice of the dishevelled body lying at the edge of the platform. No one seems to care. The girls shrug in their seats, roll their eyes and resume their conversations, laughing and chatting, telling one another jokes, gossiping and confiding – shrugging and gesticulating as if nothing untoward has just occurred. The prefects continue eating, talking to one another with their mouths full of food, their elbows spread out on the table. Ma’d have a fit if she saw their table manners, I think.
“Why doesn’t anyone help her?” I repeat.
“Sit down,” Fanny hisses at my side.
Ramsey yanks at my sleeve. “Sit, or you’ll get a detention!”
A prefect points her knife at me. “Sit down!” she shouts.
Mrs P groans. She snorts and turns over onto her back. Her chest rattles. Saliva bubbles and foams on her lips, and a long thread of drool runs down into her neck. She turns back on her side, grunts like an old sow, and starts to snore.
“Isn’t anyone going to do anything?” I ask again.
Fanny shrugs. “Don’t worry about her,” she mumbles. “It’s Friday night – the old bat’s always drunk on Friday nights.”
“You mean she’s drunk? Is that what’s wrong with her?”
Ramsey leans sideways. “You’ll get used to it,” she says with an odd smile. “I can’t believe you haven’t noticed – Mrs P’s always half-sloshed!”
“Yeah, I just told her,” Fanny chimes in, “but especially on Fridays. She hates weekends – she always says, she wishes we could all get weekend passes so she can be left in peace and quiet, but everyone knows, she just wants us out of the way, so she can get drunk.” She shakes her head.
I wait for her to continue, but Fanny goes back to chewing her steak. She dabs her lips and carefully wipes the corners of her mouth after each forkful.
Strands of grey hair have tucked themselves into the corners of Mrs P’s slack mouth, and a growing puddle of drool starts to spread towards the edge of the platform. The deep lines on her face hang in loose, pouched folds. Her spectacles lie smeared, lens-down, still attached to their chain on the floor above her head. I feel sick.
Behind the platform, the kitchen doors swing open. Two maids tiptoe into the dining room. Mrs P suddenly rolls onto her stomach and heaves herself up onto her knees. Long strands of saliva swing from her chin onto the floor in front of her. She lurches back on her heels and swats her hands around her head.
“Voetsek!” she shouts. “Leave me alone!” She falls forward again, and her yellowed nails bounce and click on the floor. “Ag, can’t someone jus’ give me a little regmakertjie, please, man,” she begs. “Jus’ a little dop!”
No one listens, and no one laughs. The boarders turn their faces away and continue eating and chewing, swallowing, and making small talk. Below the hum of conversation, I sense a layer of cruelty and unkindness that binds these girls together, and I worry that if I stay here too long, I might become like one of them.
No one takes any notice, or looks up when the two maids haul Mrs P to her feet, and no girl remarks as she shuffles out of the dining room supported by compassion on one side, and kindness on the other – a debt of honour paid and repaid each week – and no one but me seems to notice, when she steps across the threshold of the open door into the vacuum beyond, how the air closes seamlessly behind her, erasing her presence in this room as if she’d never existed in the here and now.
Tastes like toffee
I’m hungry.
Ramsey surveys me with a critical eye.
“Listen,” she says casually. “If you don’t start eating more, you’re going to fade away to nothing.”
“So?” I feel too dispirited to argue.