The Night Rainbow A Novel - By Claire King Page 0,56
hair over it but the hair is gone and nothing swishes and I feel sorry that I cut my hair at all.
In the market today people are looking at us, more than usual. They stare at Maman’s belly as she pushes her way through without a smile. We pass by them, somewhere in the space in between the homey people and the holiday people, until Josette steps into Maman’s path by the spice stall. Josette is wearing the floweriest dress I have ever seen and she still smells of violets. There are bees buzzing round her trying her out for nectar. She swishes them away with her brown hand and plants herself properly in our way. She looks up at Maman – Maman is much taller than Josette.
Hello, Madame, she says.
Maman takes a step backwards, her hands letting go of ours and flying to her belly. As she steps away from Josette her back bumps into an old lady, who was following us close behind because Maman was walking slowly. Even now, when she doesn’t cook so much, she can’t walk fast past the spice stall. The smell as you pass by it is like winters in the kitchen, tajines and spice-bread and hot wine. The colours pile up in pyramid heaps out of brown paper bags with rolled-down tops: reds and browns and yellows and oranges but not like crayons, or flowers; like different colours of the earth. The man at the spice stall doesn’t shout out like the people with the peaches or the bangles and beads, or the cheese graters. The spices shout out without saying anything and people let themselves be pulled by the smell. Before all the dying, Maman’s feet would walk her over to these smells without her promission and she would be stuck there at the stall just like the flowery feathery pictures stuck on our fridge. You’d have to pull really hard to unstick her. After a lot of looking and smelling she would ask for spoons of the magic powders to be scooped into brown paper bags, and they would bring the smell of the stall back to our kitchen. Maman would mix them up, sizzle them in pans, jumping seeds and spitting oil. And later we would sit at the table and taste it together, all our family together.
Now, the old lady who got bumped wobbles a little bit and is caught by someone next to her. They both glare at us and push their way around in the traffic jam of bodies.
Hello, Madame, says Maman to Josette.
I live at the bottom of your lane, says Josette. My name is Josette.
I know, says Maman.
Josette looks up at Maman for what seems to be too much time without any words to be polite. Her eyes narrow to small slits in her creased-up face. Then she smiles, pushing back strands of grey that have escaped her hairpins, and showing her brown teeth. She looks down at me. Hello, Ragamuffin, she says.
Hello, Josette, I say.
Maman looks down at me with dark eyes, bad feelings, then back at Josette.
Good day, she says to Josette, in French. And then she says to me in English, Peony, move it. And then back to Josette, Excuse us, please. And I am jostled around Josette and I look at her and hope she can see that I’m sorry.
Josette calls after us, Pay attention. If you’re not careful you’ll lose everything.
How do you know that lady, Peony? says Maman, still walking.
Careful, hisses Margot, don’t tell her about the haircut.
I try and think, but the thoughts are crowding and all I can think of is the haircut, and the breakfast with smiley-face sausage. And also I am trying to look into the basket as we hurry, to make sure that things are not falling out. Everything is safely in the basket. I don’t understand what Josette meant.
Donkeys, says Margot.
Peony, says Maman, I asked you a question. Margot shrugs. No one ever listens to her. Except me, of course. It’s because you’re four, I say.
Pardon?
Donkeys, I say. The donkeys in the low meadow where we play belong to Josette.
Donkeys, says Maman.
Donkeys, I say.
Watch out you don’t get kicked.
They don’t kick. They just eat grass.
Right.
Ooh look, paella, says Margot, and she is right. In a van across the square, in a flat round pan, a rainbow pile of paella steams smells of the seaside over to our noses. Salty, fishy, yellow smells. My stomach gurgles. Margot laughs.