Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms Read Online Free PDF

pants . . . and it was beautiful, and there were duiker by the stream, and it was so still. . . . I think it was the beauty, ja , that cured me.” And above all, it was forbidden to wear clothes that had not been ironed—even vests; even socks . Ironing was the only way to kill the putsi fly that laid eggs on damp clothes and burrowed into your arms and legs without you feeling it.
    Will had no real wish to have flies laying eggs under her skin, so the next afternoon she dragged the heavy ironing board outside, bumped it against her shins, cursing, and up the steps, and out on to the veranda, where she stood in the open air, ironing her father’s socks.
    She had already done all her own scraps of clothing—jeans bleached grayish-blue by the sun, T-shirts worn into flopping flapping softness, brightly patterned shorts that she’d made herself with clumsy stitches, and a khaki skirt she had made from the top of her father’s trousers. There were dresses, too, that Captain Browne brought back as gifts from town. Most felt pointless in a house with no mirrors, andthey were too tight, with bows that tangled at the back, but she could cut off the ribbons and use them to tie back her hair, and with one particularly fussy one she had sewn up the arms and neck and used it as a sack for stealing bananas.
    Will should have worn a hat—children in Harare, she was told, wore wide-brimmed cloth or American-style caps—but the horseboys did not, and so Will did not. Nor did she wear socks herself; she didn’t wear shoes. But her father did, and she wouldn’t have worms burrowing into her father’s feet. She loved him too extremely. Though she couldn’t have explained why, around him it was never difficult to keep her temper; around him there was never any need to tense up and contract into herself.
    She could hear him now, coming in through the back door. The door was in two parts, like a stable door, and the bottom half squeaked, but Will stubbornly refused to let anyone oil it, so that she would always be ready, like this, waiting on tiptoe to welcome her father. All the men who worked for Captain Browne—and in truth the captain himself—were a little afraid of Will, so the door remained unoiled.
    She knew exactly what her father would do; this was the only bit of a day that never varied. Hot and tired (the tired that comes from a long day at a job at which he was magnificent , she thought, and felt a butterfly-flicker of happy pride), he would stride to the fridge, take out a glass bottle of beer, pry it open with his nails, and put his head under the single tap in the big tin sink.
    â€œHello? You in, Cartwheel?” he called.
    He wasn’t like other fathers, Will knew. He was taller and braver. She gave her owl hoot, as loud as a shout, so he would know she was by the avocado tree on the veranda. (A hoopoe call meant she was in her bedroom, and a parrot screech meant the rock pool.)
    Her father always did everything hugely. With a lion’s roar, he burst through the insect curtain and snatched Will up round the waist, and they spun and whirled, giddily out of balance, and water droplets flew from William’s face and the iron wobbled dangerously and the dogs barked, leaping and excited, and scratched at Will’s spinning ankles, and William bellowed his great happy laugh—a laugh that only came out around Will, which she knew, and loved him even better for it—and hundreds of birds took off, chattering, from the avocado tree. Will glowed.
    â€œGood day, hey, Dad?” she said when, set the right way up, she had picked up her iron from the floor.
    â€œGood day. Long day . . . but good day.” He spoke in the way of the African evening, slowly, with long spaces. “Lazarussaid one of the goats had twins. One is too small . . . a runt. I said if he gave it to Tedias, Tedi would give it to you and you’d look