Chapter 2: The Vampire Pirate's Daughter by Lynette Ferreira
“She left about an hour ago, to go shopping. I do not know what she wants to do with more clothes.”
“You mean shoes.” I sit down on the single chair.
He is watching a National Geography show about sharks and I join him, but I only stare blankly at the screen. I have swum with sharks before, so the show is uninteresting. I know everything there is to know about sharks already.
I hear Amanda arrive, even before she stops in front of the house and I unfold myself from the chair, stretching my legs.
The many packages in her arms hide her when she walks into the kitchen. She near drops them onto the counter and then I start rummaging through the bags looking for a mini-size chocolate mousse container.
While I am looking through the bags, Amanda says, “Susanna! Stop that. Pack away the things instead of just pushing them aside.”
Usually, I am just Susie, so now I grunt and start packing it away. She is obviously in a foul mood. Shopping has never had a calming effect on her. She is from an era where food magically appeared on her plate, presented by servants.
I find the mousse, but leave it to one side, while I continue to pack away the groceries, which is mainly meat.
Amanda stands just outside the back door and she lights a cigarette. She hates the newest craze where people have decided smoking is bad for you and she could no longer smoke where she wanted. When she goes off on one of her rants, she always insists, mockingly, smoking only harms her. Her second-hand smoke is no worse than pollution – surely. She does not smoke inside the house because admittedly she also thinks it smells awful and it is a bad habit. A bad habit she does not even get any enjoyment from at all.
She finishes her cigarette and then she comes in. Her addiction fed, she is calmer, and she smiles. “Thank you, Susie. You must come see what I bought.”
I pick up the chocolate mousse from the counter and I follow her out of the kitchen and up the stairs to her room.
She up-ends the bags one after the other onto the bed in her room and then she ruffles through the pile. She finds what she is looking for and holding it up in front of her from shoulder to shoulder, I see the green top. It is nice, but not something I would wear. Amanda likes bling and shine, whereas I like to wear whatever the latest fashion is. I do not prefer designer to department store for everyday clothes, but it is always nice when the clothes have a fitted feeling.
I say, “It’s nice. The colour suits you. What else did you get?”
I look through the pile of clothes on her bed with one hand and then I sit back against the headboard, with my legs pulled up in front of me. She shows me what she bought, and I eat my mousse. Although I cannot taste the decadent chocolate, I love the texture on my tongue. I love the way my tongue folds into the curve of the spoon when it licks the dessert off it.
Later when she has squashed her clothes, labels and all into her overfull closet, she changes the subject from clothes to me. “Are you enjoying school here?”
“I suppose so. You know kids are also home-schooled here and nobody will come knocking on our door when I do not go to school?”
“Yes, but it gives you routine.”
I hate it when she assumes the mother figure; she is only twenty-six and we are not even family. “Yeah, I know, and a sense of routine gives me a purpose.”
She smiles. “There you go. We all have our purpose. Shayne works at the University as a History Professor and you go to school.”
I interrupt her, “And you keep us all together—the hardest job of all. I know, don’t remind me again.”
They have promised me this will be our last move for a while and I only must go to school for the next year and then university – again. This time around, though, I can start working. People stay younger looking for longer these days, so it will be safe for me to join the workforce. I am looking forward to not moving too soon again. It is getting more and more difficult moving around with customs, passports and transfer cards. Also, the invention of networks and the internet has restricted our movements slightly. I have had so many forged birth certificates I cannot remember the real year I was born.
Maybe I will be able to make some friends, where before I had to avoid them or when I did make friends, I had to leave them behind like junk collected along the way.
I have lived with Shayne and Amanda since the day I turned sixteen, two hundred years ago.
TWO HUNDRED YEARS ago, a week before I turned sixteen, I became seriously ill. I remember waking up as if it was yesterday. Most of my memories over the years have faded. There are just too many things to remember, but some moments have burnt into my memory forever.
The morning of my birthday, I woke up and my stomach had a queasy feeling, spasms in my abdominal area made me cringe and fold up into myself. I could not get out of bed and all my muscles were cramping, so I stayed in bed and by the time evening arrived, I had a fever.
Carla, the girl who was my mother’s servant and her close companion before my mother died, sat next to my bed by now, and every so often, she rinsed the cotton cloth, wrung it and then neatly folded, placed it back on my forehead. She spoke softly to me in French, and those days I spoke French fluently.
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