the sitting room, the ole plunge the hand down the couch-back trick even though she’d exhausted this one a few weeks ago, since there’d been a party las’ week so there was a chance, a small one, which is what her groping fingers found down there in the second-hand twenty-year-old couch, a twenty-cent piece and a lousy five. But it was adding up. She went through every pocket of clothing she owned, which wasn’t many things, thirty-seven cents when there hadn’t been two-cent coins for a few years, so mus’ be she’d not worn that dress in a while, nor bought anything new since, either. She pulled out every kitchen drawer, looked in every cupboard before facing the inevitable of having to count the total she had. (Long’s it’s over ten — no, I need eleven and some change, I should know that by now. Please, God, let’t be that much.) Though she’d settle for less if she had to, even though she knew come the day’s end she’d be in this situation again except with all her finding places exhausted. And even she had learned to be more long term than that.
The coins and five-dollar note no sooner spread out on the kitchen table than she had to scoop them up at sound of one of them coming down the stairs. Turi. Morning, Turi. Morning, Mum. (God, why do my kids give me the blues, their faces like they wake every day to a fucken fun’ral?) Watched him go to the cupboard and just before he pulled the food one open told him, No good lookin’ in there. Only fresh air in there, boy. Look at his face how it fell even closer to the floor. Made her angry. Hey! The hell you lookin’ at me like that for? What you ’spec’ me to do — make fucken magic and nex’ thing you look there’s a fucken feast in there? Eh? Watching her son back (cower) away. But he knew bedda than to say something.
And now the other one walks in. Gloria was sharp with her from the off (cos she bothers me) Yes? Yes? You got something tosay ’bout no food in the house, too — madam? (Kid getting too big for her boots — well, her school shoes, which were coming apart at the seams: smilers) — only eleven and like she was getting ready to leave home.
Mum, I never said anything. No, no, Narissa hadn’t. But it was her look. No, but you are gonna say something aren’t you? Mum …? Go on then, open the bloody cubbid, check for yourself we’re out again. (Again. Story of our lives: always out of things.) Including love. Love’s the first thing out the door when the groceries run out. (And the smokes even worse.)
Narissa did check. And in that moment her mother got all sentimental for her daughter’s name, remembering how she and the baby-to-be’s father’d gone over the names they liked. Narissa won easily. But, come the day she was born, he was nowhere to be seen, the fucken father. Harry Hippie Martin he called himself, from his favourite song by Bobby Womack (kinda liked it myself, till what he did) had just up and gone, no kiss my arse nothing. Then along came — named what else — Bobby Taita, a woman’s introduction being jus’ that: You heard of a singer called Bobby Womack? Nah, he hadn’t. But he smiled back, But I heard a this Bobby, and I ain’t got such a bad voice myself. Wanna hear it? Yeah, well, she did hear it, and he could sing, and he sang his (easy) way into her bed and Turi was the result. ’Cept he never hung around much longer than pas’ Turi’s firs’ birthday; jus’ started a big row one night an’ up an’ left, the cunt. Now, eleven years later and a woman her share of lovers, a few who’d moved in for a few months, one for two-and- a-half years but he’d abused the kids, hit them, so she finally got the courage up to tellim to leave, which he did, but not before giving her a farewell hiding (men, they’re jus’ arseholes) ’cept a woman needed a man, and the ones she was attracted to turned out, every one, bad. Dunno why. They always seemed so, you know, ideal, Mr Dreamboats, when she first
The coins and five-dollar note no sooner spread out on the kitchen table than she had to scoop them up at sound of one of them coming down the stairs. Turi. Morning, Turi. Morning, Mum. (God, why do my kids give me the blues, their faces like they wake every day to a fucken fun’ral?) Watched him go to the cupboard and just before he pulled the food one open told him, No good lookin’ in there. Only fresh air in there, boy. Look at his face how it fell even closer to the floor. Made her angry. Hey! The hell you lookin’ at me like that for? What you ’spec’ me to do — make fucken magic and nex’ thing you look there’s a fucken feast in there? Eh? Watching her son back (cower) away. But he knew bedda than to say something.
And now the other one walks in. Gloria was sharp with her from the off (cos she bothers me) Yes? Yes? You got something tosay ’bout no food in the house, too — madam? (Kid getting too big for her boots — well, her school shoes, which were coming apart at the seams: smilers) — only eleven and like she was getting ready to leave home.
Mum, I never said anything. No, no, Narissa hadn’t. But it was her look. No, but you are gonna say something aren’t you? Mum …? Go on then, open the bloody cubbid, check for yourself we’re out again. (Again. Story of our lives: always out of things.) Including love. Love’s the first thing out the door when the groceries run out. (And the smokes even worse.)
Narissa did check. And in that moment her mother got all sentimental for her daughter’s name, remembering how she and the baby-to-be’s father’d gone over the names they liked. Narissa won easily. But, come the day she was born, he was nowhere to be seen, the fucken father. Harry Hippie Martin he called himself, from his favourite song by Bobby Womack (kinda liked it myself, till what he did) had just up and gone, no kiss my arse nothing. Then along came — named what else — Bobby Taita, a woman’s introduction being jus’ that: You heard of a singer called Bobby Womack? Nah, he hadn’t. But he smiled back, But I heard a this Bobby, and I ain’t got such a bad voice myself. Wanna hear it? Yeah, well, she did hear it, and he could sing, and he sang his (easy) way into her bed and Turi was the result. ’Cept he never hung around much longer than pas’ Turi’s firs’ birthday; jus’ started a big row one night an’ up an’ left, the cunt. Now, eleven years later and a woman her share of lovers, a few who’d moved in for a few months, one for two-and- a-half years but he’d abused the kids, hit them, so she finally got the courage up to tellim to leave, which he did, but not before giving her a farewell hiding (men, they’re jus’ arseholes) ’cept a woman needed a man, and the ones she was attracted to turned out, every one, bad. Dunno why. They always seemed so, you know, ideal, Mr Dreamboats, when she first
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