Chapter 23 | In pursuit of a Bra

I bought my first bra when I was twelve.

I was wearing a tight fitting black top with white edges on the sleeves and my blossoming buds couldn't have been more obvious. 

Mama was perhaps too shy to acknowledge the fact that I needed to purchase a support system or she preferred to feign indifference. Either way, my breasts were making headway and I wasn't going to let them drive by without appropriate structure.

Our next scheduled grocery shopping trip was an opportune moment and I managed to convince Papa that letting me walk the mall with Miya wasn't going to result in any act of misdemeanour's. The only shop I knew well enough to navigate myself (and eleven year old Miya) through without summoning the Guards of suspicious twelve year old in pursuit of a bra, was Woolworths.

I helter sheltered amidst the aisles as if though Papa had Al-Qaeda wrapped around his baby finger and I would be found faster than Bin Laden could say: “Twin towers? Where?”

Eventually I found it. I had no idea what a first bra purchase entailed, whether A; B; and C was indicative of the level of progress I had made, like getting graded, but by my boobs? And the numbers weren't of any help either? 32, 34, 36? Was this the mathematical equivalent of the 2 x’s timetable which had somehow fast tracked to its 30’s?

I took the thing and placed it over my top, it looked like the right fit. I chose a simple white cotton bra, unsure of the rules and bra-gulations. As I neared the counter to pay for my purchase, I was hesitant. What if the lady behind the counter took note of my nervousness and called the Al-Qaeda forces waiting in anticipation. If she noticed she never made mention of it and I passed her the R20-00 I had saved up over months with as much nonchalance as I could feign. I must have looked like an addict sliding wads of cash with fervent side way glances into the hand of his dealer.

Fifteen minutes later we walked out of the store, feeling like we had accomplished much.

A week later I told Mama. I had a very open relationship with Mama and hiding this from her was a secret even my new bra couldn't contain.

Me: ‘Mama, there’s uhm, there’s something I need to tell you.’

Mama (looking slightly apprehensive): ‘What is it?”

Me (confidence wavering): ‘I bought something.’

Mama: ‘What? A music CD?’

I wanted to laugh. Considering that we weren't allowed to listen to music I thought that was a fair guess on Mama’s part.

Me: ‘No. something else.’

Mama: ‘A bra.'

I blushed, ‘Yes.’

Mama: “Oh! I had kept some for you.”

She pulled out a bag from on top of her cupboard, opened it and handed me two bra’s. One was an almost silver grey and the other, skin tone. They both had lace on the uppermost part and a little button in their respective colours in the middle.

Mama had kept them for me all this while? I beamed with happiness. Fine, so she might have not mastered the art of speaking bra with her daughter but Mama was thoughtful. I’d take that any day.

Authors note: Experienced any hilarious puberty woes? Share your story with us (adding a humorous edge to it) and it could get published on Dodging Dad. 

Chapter 22 | The Haude_Cooler

Newtown Madressa, in close proximity to the Oriental plaza, was  my madressa (Miya’s and Eesa’s too) till Class 5. There was the café not far by, for which we would empty out some coins from our money box so that we could purchase a buddy bottle (Coke) and a few sweets for after, for a little less than R3.

Every day, after madressa, we would stand by the poles outside the musjid round the corner, till Papa came to fetch us. Sometimes it was at precisely 5:00pm, and at other times we would stand till darkness was nearing its fort. Unafraid, yet anxious.

Cell phones weren’t a norm then, Papa himself didn’t own one. And so, we waited, in expectancy of his arrival ‘any minute now.’

No one’s parents offered you a lift, or asked if someone was coming for you, or where was it you lived. If someone did, I don’t recall it.

The berry filled tree’s than traced along the pavements would sometimes be used as appetizers in our wait. For all I know they could have been poisonous but we didn’t know better, still, we survived.

We would sometimes run into the musjid to drink water. The cooler stood in one corner, leaning magnificently against porcelain tiles, dripping seductively, tapping against the silver stainless steel cup placed under. I can’t say this without it sounding like an exaggeration but I have never tasted water sweeter in taste and cooler in temperature than the water from that cooler. It was like the Haude_kauthar had nested there and gave birth to a family of perfectly tasting water molecules.

Once, whilst we were standing there a man in his mid 40’s placed a R1 coin as he was passing us. I assumed he had mistaken us for beggars and I ran after him to return his alms. He smiled and said that we should keep it. Long story short, I ended up swallowing that coin by mistaken.

When I think about it now, I’m disgusted by my indifference to concepts like hygiene. Drinking from the same cup as possibly a hundred others? Putting a coin in my mouth? What was I thinking?

Though when I consider it, I realize the childlike innocence that was my childhood. In a couple of years, I had grown and I latch onto these little memories, though seemingly insignificant, because they segregate the adult from the child. 

Chapter 21 | The quests for breast

I still remember the first girl Altaaf pointed out to me in Pre-school. It was a walking distance away from home and I would often make an effort to either walk him there or back.

We would discuss school, his teachers and his friends. One day he mentioned a girl in particular, Shaista. I was curious to catch a glimpse of her, the girl who had captured the interest of my little brother.

I asked him to point her out and like a mother-in-law in search of the perfect daughter for her son, I approved.

She had on capri jeans, a white shirt and her black hair tied in two ponies. She smiled and waved at us as we walked away and I was mentally purchasing her Tupperware and AMC pots.

In Grade 7, I had moved schools yet again. This time round, the adjustment was an easier process.

Though, I can't say the same for my budding breasts.

Mama was the 'modest' type and the only discussion we had on periods was a brief moment after I accidentally blurted out that she wasn't fasting, in a room filled with women, at a taleem.

The 'talk' barely covered any aspect of interest and all I heard were the words 'period' 'when you big enough' and 'it's not something to speak about in the open.' All this meant for me was that I had to do my own research if I wanted to understand the transition from 'girl' to 'women' in more detail than Mama would provide.

I saw the evident bra straps beneath the sheer white shirts of my fellow class-mates, while I still contended with wearing a vest. Whilst others girls had breasts that resembled mountains that hadn't even started out as mole hills, I worried that my bosom buddies weren't being sufficiently fertilized and hence, the mole hills that barely touched the surface.

I read Judy Blume's 'Dear God, it's me Margaret' and to some extent, it made me accept that I was not alone in my quests for breasts.

I grappled with the concept of 'coming of age' and though I was forthright in thought, it wasn't easy to ask whether it was normal for my breasts to be competing in size. I can only imagine the giggling fit had I asked whether breast strokes were even permitted for Muslims.

I made new friends but I struggled indefinitely, to find 'the one'. We'd have sleep overs, sit with each other the entire break, we even read each other's journals but it wasn't enough for me to trust them.

So I made the school library my best friend. In just one year at my new school, I had made it as scholar patrol, I was a media monitor, I scored 100% in a computer skills test (I never knew I had the skills for), I was given an opportunity (which I had rejected) to be a part of 'soul buddyz' (a TV program back in 2000), I had bartered half of my possession in a bathroom stall (this was after a rather in-depth lesson in EMS on the concept of bartering in a century so far back even my great grandparents have no recollection), and I was awarded platinum in an English Olympiad I can't even recall writing.

It was an opportunistic year, unlike any other I had ever experienced. I read every book the school library had to offer, 

Chapter 20 | The one with the first crush and the colored friend

My cousin Rasheed was my very first crush. It sounds absurd when I write about it now but back then, I was smitten. I don't know what it was about him, if anything I think it had more to do with the fact that, aside from Zaheer, he was the only other male I actually knew.

Papa's warnings had indented in us a fear than didn't leave us even when we were at school.

In Grade five there was a boy, Abdur Razaq, who sat next to me in class. He was from Cape Town and he lived in Jo'burg with his guardians, his grandparents.

I didn't know the reason for this, because I had never bothered to ask.

He was very business minded and had started selling sweets and stickers out of what once was, an ice-cream container. I grew fond of his company and even though we didn't spend our breaks together, we would converse during class.

Ary (as I would call him) never took money from me and so I was the girl who didn't have to 'put out' in order to get some. It meant nothing to me, I was too naïve.

Our form class however, took to teasing us, remarking every time they'd see our heads huddled together, not understanding the significance of our friendship and mistaking it for something more.

Then the year came to an end and I never saw Ary on the school grounds or anywhere else thereafter. I assumed he moved back to Cape Town and I moved on with life.

I had one close friend in Grade 6, Suraya. Despite Mama's apprehension with coloured people, I thought Suraya's demeanor to be rather lady-like.

So she had two front teeth missing and hair that strung more strings than a guitar player but her personality struck me like a chord.

She lived in a dingy flat in Langlaagte, painted so purple, even Justin Bieber would have been taken aback. Her father overlapped the couch in the lounge that doubled as a hallway - I wasn't sure whether he was sitting on the couch or the couch on him.

We played outside for a bit. Then she told me about the grafitti wall that was used by the youngsters living in the area for 'snogging' purposes. I had no idea what that meant and so I bobbed my head like a Hawaiian doll in a hula skirt.

She must have picked up on my naiveness and went on to explain what 'snogging' entailed. I was perplexed.

People kissed?

On the mouth?

Willingly?

 With their tongue's?

Before marriage?

My mind was reeling in dimensions further than America's range.