A snippet from our childhood...

(Granny with Andre and Guy)
The elephants

On Sundays, Granny came to visit. Sometimes Andre and I would go with Papa to fetch her. We'd scramble into the back of the Wolseley, legs sticking to the vinyl seats. Mind your fingers, Papa would always say, but one day the door would get mine anyway, squashing all the insides out in a gooey mess.

Papagallo's, we'd yell, halfway up Louis Botha Avenue, and Papa would stop and get us the best chocolate and lemon gelato in Jo'burg from a small Italian man in a dark, grimy shop, that you could hardly see from the street. Papa, please don't fight with Granny today, we'd beseech with cold mouths and sticky lips. Yeah, why do you fight with her all the time? Piped up Andre with the sticky-up hair, face turned up, sucking ice-cream noisily through the bottom of his cone. She annoys me, just like I'll annoy you when you're grown up and I'm old. And will we shout at you, the way you shout at Granny? Of course you will, he replied, with a sad voice. ... And anyway, he added, who's going to take Granny family-size jars of Vaseline when I die? I try to see his eyes in the mirror, but I can’t.


When we got to Granny's flat, Papa would park and, after gingerly separating flesh from vinyl, Andre and I would race each other into the dark echoing building, first one to hit the lift button won. The lift filled us with fear, but we never considered walking up the two flights to Granny. Clanging gates and grinding gears, doors of steel mesh that opened concertina-like, bars that could squeeze your fingers when they opened or closed. Looking up you could see the ropes loosen and tighten as the lift moved up or down. Papa, what happens if the ropes break? said Andre, but I didn’t want to think about that. You could see down into the shaft when the lift was up, and imagine yourself falling down, down, down into the darkness.

When the lift arrived, you had to pull open the outer door with all your might. Then you had to snap open the inner gate and slide that back. Hop in, and lock yourself into the little cell. When the inner gate slammed shut, the lift took off, rattling and whining. Mind your fingers, Papa would say, then take off up the stairs, two at a time, racing us easily to the second floor. When we got there, Papa was always waiting, his mouth laughing, I won.

You had to knock loudly on Granny's door, and call, Granny! Granny? Until she answered, who is it, even though we always fetched her at the same time every Sunday. Eventually the bolts and chains would slide back and her bulky shape would fill the doorway, smiling from well-oiled ear to well-oiled ear. Kindelach, kindelach, mein she'd say, first giving us kisses on both cheeks, smearing our faces with Vaseline from her lips, and then pinching our cheeks to make sure we were eating enough and getting fat.

Granny still had to potter about, changing from slippers into her outdoor shoes, (a slow and painful process on account of her ingrowing toenails – which she also smeared with Vaseline), checking the contents of a few plastic bags, and a last hand-wash for the journey was essential. Papa was getting annoyed, we could tell by the tone of his Yiddish. They were probably fighting over the contents of one of those plastic bags – sweets Granny wanted to give us. Once, on our drive back home, the fighting reached fever-pitch – and a big bag of Sparkling Fruits went flying out the car window. Andre and I knelt on the back seat to watch the packet explode onto the tar mac, like a tiny firework display, the sweets shone and then faded as we moved away.

Papa and Granny were fighting again, but for us, this gave us time to visit the elephants.


The elephants lived in Granny’s bedroom. On the left of the sparcely furnished room stood the baby elephant – a single bed with nothing more than a mattress underneath its brown bedspread. Noone slept on it. Noone ever had. Next to it, with a gap in between, was the other single bed. But this was the big elephant, with its mountain of eiderdowns and blankets and pillows underneath the brown bedspread. That’s where Granny slept. First we simply stared at it in horror, wondering where she slept: near the bottom underneath the mountain of bedding, or near the top? Or maybe in the middle - like a thick slice of the pink kosher polony we had for lunch on Sundays, sandwiched between slices of rye bread we bought from Kramer's Deli on the way home.

Then, squealing with excitement we'd climb on to the baby elephant and throw ourselves across the gap onto the big elephant. Disappearing into the soft, warm, brown mound, we'd laugh madly, wildly, and do it again, and again until Granny was ready, the fighting had died down,and we'd straighten our clothes, put our shoes back on, and it was time to go.