Ubawomkhulushuffles into the house now. It was his day to sit in the queue to get cortisone pills from the clinic. Ubawomkhulu’s lungs are filled with fibres of asbestos, from working on housing projects in the eighties. That was before they knew that asbestos dust makes your lungs stiff and useless.

“Ahh, my darling!” Ubawomkhulu gasps. “My little Khethiwe.”

“Hi, Khulu.” She lays her head against his chest.

I’ve never ever done anything that soft. Ubawomkhulualways laughs when I hug him, because I accidentally butt him like one of the goats.

Umakhulu makes fancy food for my celebrity sister – lamb chops and fresh baby spinach. Lots of it. She makes carrots sweetened with my honey.

“Mmm,” Khethiwe says as she eats them. “How the heck do you get this from stinging bees?”

I start to tell her how I wait until the worker bees have sealed the cells of the honey combs, then I light a little fire, smoke them out.

Khethiwe exclaims, “Ooh – wax! Can you separate it? Can you bottle some for me?”

She pulls a little container from her bag. “Guess how much this costs? Eighty-seven rand. I put a tiny bit on my hair and my lips.” She touches her cheekbones. “And a little here for natural shine. This stuff’s like gold in the city.”

I stare at her. That explains her shininess.

The fact that she uses beeswax is the first thing I could possibly like about her.

Khethiwe goes off with Ubawomkhulu to see his vegetables. The dry evening breeze blows her words across the stoep.

“You never see such red tomatoes in PE.”

She always seems to say the right things, but she is lying. A tomato is a tomato, isn’t it?

Before bed, Khethiwe washes, and then reapplies her nail polish. She rubs a tiny bit of beeswax on her face.

“Sho, this place is dry.”

“There’s a drought, actually. This means less animal feed, less goat’s cheese to sell, fewer flowers for my bees.”

What I mean is, a lot more important things than a bit of dry skin.

But Khethiwe says innocently, “Last year we had a drought at the hostel. We had to pour our bath water on the roses below the window.”

I stare at her like she is some kind of alien. Roses are for decoration, like nail polish and lip gloss and a purple suitcase.

Purple! I still can’t get over it.

Khethiwe had a special bursary for St Anne’s School, all the way to matric. She got to study economics and French, my mother said. She got to worry about silly things like roses.

In the night, Khethiwe tosses and turns and creaks in her little bed. She cries out in her sleep.

“Mama.”

Please. Is she missing her mommy? Try fifteen years of missing Mother’s soft arms and her sweet breath.

I fall into a deep sleep, probably poisoned by the smell of nail polish.

***

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