Chapter 19 | Cargo pants and Bikini bottoms

In the year 1999, I was 11.

It was a Sunday and we were in the car on our way home from a picnic at Wammer pan in Rosettenville. I had on a cargo pants and a lilac and white Identity checked shirt (passed on to me by my maternal Aunt).
I was sitting in the front seat with Mama because Rasheed and Zahir had been with us that day and there was not enough space for all of us in the back.

Papa: 'Why are you dressed like that?'

Me: 'Like how?'

Papa: 'So indecently.'

I remained silent.

Papa: 'When you married you can walk around in a Bikini if you want but in my house you dress decently. You heard?'

When Papa asked 'you heard' or 'you understand'  he was never really testing our hearing ability or our command of the english language. He was establishing his authority by insinuating that should we fail to 'understand' he will resort to others forms of punishment to ensure that we eventually do.

I was 11. The concept of marriage was a far off possibility. Yet, I was embarrassed by this remark nonetheless. So much so, that I swore Papa (in my head, I was embarrassed not stupid!).

I hated that Papa had no tact or that he didn't know how to address situations in appropriate timing.

In September that year we had house sat for mutual friends of Mama and Papa who were on holiday for a week. Papa agreed to let us stay there and would come every evening after work to have supper with us and then returned home thereafter.

On one of the evenings Papa had brought for us a chocolate each. Not something he did often. Mama said that we would hug Papa as a gesture of gratitude. So I stepped forward, obligingly, only to be pushed away by Papa.

I still remember the hurt. I cried myself to sleep that night, from a broken heart. I never understood why, I had done nothing out of turn and I racked my brain trying to think of possible reasons for Papa having turned me way. I couldn't conjure an excuse and a single iota of hate starting spurting along the edges of my heart.

I was a child but I had witnessed Papa's aggressive behavior often enough to know that he wasn't to be messed with.

I could never accept Mama's tolerance and her ability to withstand him. I'd seen enough shattered glass to know that, she herself, wasn't free from his 'do you understand me', even as an adult, as his wife, she was one of us.