Being Shelley. Qarnita Loxton
much for Family Sunday.
I guessed he had been chatting to his brothers in Joburg about their business or their mother, or about the latest family event they had all been together at. I don’t think there are any Jewish holidays this time of year; there’s a big one over Easter, I know. Not that they needed an event to see one another. They live in walking distance of one another in Hazeldene and there are always the Friday night suppers. Jerry didn’t say it, but I knew he got bleak about that. He didn’t use to; he used to be proud of his independent life in Cape Town. Now he feels left out of his family but, que sera sera, he chose me and he has to live with it. Like I do. I’m in Cape Town and I’m not part of his Jewish clan and I’m perfectly fine with that.
This morning he was okay again, even offered to drop the kids at school. I jumped at the offer, giving him a big smile. It’s how we make up without words or sex – we offer to do things with the kids that the other doesn’t want to do. Jerry would always offer first. The kids would only get to school at ten and be a full hour late, but no matter.
The lift didn’t help me get dressed faster. It was an hour before I had to be at the shop and I couldn’t decide what to wear. It’s not often a problem for me. I love my clothes and they all somehow go together in my eyes, if not in everyone else’s. I like my look – the brighter the better, with sparkles on top. More is more; less is lame. Pinks, purples, blues, yellows, reds, prints. I do them all, sometimes together – anything, as long as it’s not boring. Or Scandi. I hate Scandi. I felt quite pleased when I saw clashy-matchy and OTT become fashion trends. Finally, people are getting it.
Life is too short to be beige.
And with me, what you see is what you get. Or what I want to get. I want to live in full colour. It’s the reason for my red hair – I simply couldn’t see myself as mousy brown, even if that’s how I was born. Call me a slutty fake ginger like they did at school; didn’t bother me then, doesn’t bother me now. The haters did make it easier to ditch school, which is one of my few regrets. I don’t advertise it, but I would’ve liked to get a matric or something more. Not that matric would’ve counted for much in Jerry’s family where everyone is a something – his mother was a shrink, for chrissakes. ABS know that I didn’t go to college or university, but I feel too stupid to admit to them that I don’t have matric.
I tell myself it doesn’t matter since I’m anyways not shy to make myself into what I want. Hair, boobs, teeth, Botox, fillers, flattish stomach, flappy eyelashes. All engineered. I won’t make it into a magazine, but I’m pretty happy, especially with the fix-ups after the twins. Hell’s bells, those two scarred me body and soul.
Di asked if I do all the body stuff because I’m insecure, but it’s the opposite – I love my body. I love being able to do with it what I want. I’m not into the idea of my body being a temple; for me it’s more like a building site. I don’t have hang-ups about things being all natural. I make modern science work for me; I mean, we have IVF twins, thank you very much. My body? I renovate as I like, no problem at all. Since that first red dye job, my hair has been everything from bright scarlet to strawberry blonde, mostly curly but more recently straight. The strawberry blonde was my most ‘normal’ colour but never ever have I been back to boring. I hate the idea of being boring, but today all my clothes seemed beyond boring. Or, at the least, nothing seemed right. It all felt too ‘oudoos’, as Kari would say.
And no ways did I ever want to feel like an old anything, and absolutely not an ou doos.
I went back to read the WhatsApps between Wayde and me, looking at the flames on the phone more times than I should have. It pleased me, more than it should have, to see flame emojis from a twenty-two-year-old. I stood in my pink push-up bra and green flamingo panties, the multi-coloured pile of clothes that hadn’t made the grade lying at my feet and growing. Finally, I spied a yellow-and-black floral print on the hanging side of my wardrobe and pulled it out. I’d worn the long wrap dress before, with its short sleeves and contrasting black-and-yellow frill all around the edge of the skirt. I’d forgotten about it. It has a deep V-neck and it moves around my legs when I walk, the front falling open, the longer back of the skirt sweeping the floor. There’s a bit of drama in it that I love. I wrapped the dress around my body, fastening the two big press studs on the inside of each side of the waistband so that the dress stayed closed. I had a look in the full-length mirrors that ran along the side of my dressing room.
Yes, that would work.
Conventional enough for the shop, but daring enough for me not to feel like a boring old doos. The red on my cleavage wasn’t so angry any more, neither was the red on my legs, but you could only see them when I walked and the wrap side of the dress flapped open. Pink crystal-embossed Jeffrey Campbell mules from That Shoe Lady would prevent the whole look from being too normal. Pink Indian bangles on my arms. Pink lipstick. Square diamond studs in my ears. My hair wasn’t exactly as I loved it, and it’s been too long since my last colour (classic red for winter had faded; I kicked the colour ‘brown’ from my mind) and too long since my last Brazilian straightener (the roots were wavy). Also clearly too long since a cut. My fringe was grown out past my eyes and the lengths rested on the top of my boobs. Lily said it was too long for mid-forties but rules schmules. I scrunched my hair around my face, fluffing it so that it wasn’t straight or wavy; I could maybe pass it off as beachy.
Like Wayde’s hair.
Wayde again.
I adjusted the top of my dress in the mirror. Ready or not, I had to go.
11
Except I was late. Obviously. It’s my special skill to be late even when I plan to be on time. I tried, but my make-up was taking longer than it used to, longer than it was meant to, I’m sure. Bloody eye concealer needs its own special mention. A youthful glow can be hard to achieve when you are no longer so youthful or so glowy, no matter how expensive the stuff is that I buy from Lily. I joke with her that she is a fancy snake oil peddler, but I’m so glad for her advice. Nothing like having a GP turned ‘aesthetic practitioner’ on speed dial. She will tell me the truth about what works (and when I need an antibiotic), and I know she isn’t just looking to build comms off me. Or I don’t think so, since she is a real rich girl and doesn’t need to make a living off my commissions. When my make-up was finally done, Theresa arrived home with the twins, which meant I had to stay and hear how their day was. All three hours of their day since Jerry had dropped them at school. By the time I rushed up the escalator at the mall, it was two o’clock.
There Di was, standing in the doorway of the shop, waiting for me. Looking at her face, she might as well have had her hands on both hips and tapping one foot.
‘You’re late. Beauty has already left for the day,’ she said, deadpan. We’d agreed that I would be there by one-thirty to do a handover before she had to leave at two when Wayde got there.
‘And hello to you, too,’ I said, giving her my biggest smile together with a bag filled with three packets of crisps, bottled water and three mini Oreo packs. Bananas for in case she moaned about it not being healthy. ‘I brought some stuff for you and the girls at pick-up.’ Di always complained that the first thing her girls asked her in the car was whether she had any snacks for them.
‘Stop trying to butter me up,’ she said, but she still took the bag, peered inside.
‘Me? I’d never do such a thing,’ I said, leaving her in the doorway and walking towards the back of the shop. I pushed open the white-painted wooden swing door to the left of the coffee counter that closed our tiny behind-the-scenes kitchen and storage area from view of the shop. Inside sat boxes of unopened stock that needed to get onto the shelves. Three floor-length mirrors stacked against one another that also needed to find their way onto the shop floor stood against the wall. I grabbed Di’s little bag hanging on the coat hook, slung my own shopper bag onto the boxes. There was hardly room to move; I’d have to tackle the boxes as soon as Wayde arrived.
‘Right, so in five seconds, has anything important happened that I must know about right now?’ I asked Di, who was actually tapping her foot outside the storeroom. ‘Otherwise