Mary’s mom abandoned her at granny for the long weekend. However, the teen’s fairy tale Easter included skiing or skateboarding.  

Then, she recalled how granny spanked her with a belt for gossiping about Peppa Pig, and badmouthing Tom and Jerry. 

This time, Mary found herself chasing after naked-neck roosters, and digging her teeth into her bottom lip.  

Granny usually cook in the open-air fire on a three-legged pot. The town girl risked stepping on rattling snakes whenever she’s collecting firewood. 

Mary feared drowning every time she drew water from the muddied well. Last night, she stoned a black-tailed venomous scorpion. 

Now she scratched her hair, wondering what she’ll talk about when school reopens.  

Her eyes popped when granny asked her to bring flickering coals into the hut. Suddenly, she grabbed her lice-infested pillow and hid it beneath her red-t-shirt.  That was after granny dropped a bowl of cement hardened porridge.  

She spotted wingless insects crawling around the hut. Then, she emptied her stomach through the mouth. Granny pressed her eyes at her ballooned tummy, and swallowed her last blood pressure pill. 

“Are you pregnant?” she cried, cursing Mary’s generation. 

Mary nodded as her prank had worked, and by tomorrow, she’ll go to Swakopmund.  

“Who’s the father?” Nana asked, rubbing the girl’s airtight tummy. “Joseph?” Mary said. “The cattle herder?” Nana asked. Mary pressed her lips together and blocked a giggle.  

Nana wiped the sweat trickling down her armpits and toddled to the rusty steel cupboard. First, she scooped the sun-bleached milk bottle and unscrewed the half-chewed nipple. 

“This was your mom’s favourite,” she said. Then she dug out a hand-sewn cotton doll. 

Thereafter, she punched kisses on the Victorian-style dressed doll. “This was your mom’s Christmas gift in 1959,” she said, flashing her front missing teeth. 

Finally, she dug out a torn square diaper, pinned neatly with red-headed safety pins. “This was your mom’s washable diaper,” Nana said, sniffing the diaper. 

Then, the grey-haired woman pulled out a yellow plastic piss pot. “Your mom’s first word was potty,” granny said tearfully. 

Mary couldn’t hold the tickling anymore and pulled out the pillow.  

At last, her Easter holiday was fun. 

“Let’s name the unborn child Jesus,” Nana said after picking up she’d been pranked. This was the first time she chuckled in many years.