Robert was still at work. She had resigned herself to the long hours, days, weeks he worked as a restaurant chef. The baby had been crying for well over ten minutes now, she guessed, the intolerable screeching growing louder and louder with each passing minute. Della had gone into the baby’s room when she heard the first agitating “waaaaah!” The
Mia opened her eyes. Her lids, with the long black lashes that her Auntie Patsy said made her look like a “living doll”, were heavy with sleep. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her wrists in a circular motion and yawned until she heard that little click in her jaw that had existed since that time he had
by Desiree-Anne Martin
In 1980’s Apartheid Cape Town, five-year-old Desiree-Anne is grappling with how she is going to turn her tar baby doll’s skin into lily white. She doesn’t know how to force her father to stop drinking or gambling or make her mother love her or get the boys and men to stop touching her in secret.