Tandia by Bryce Courtenay

clutched tightly to her chest and started to rock. She was too tired to try to think about what might happen next. Weariness overcame her and despite her fear of being accosted on the lonely platform, she fell asleep.
    Tandia wakened slowly. Her body ached terribly but her head, which also hurt, rested against a warm, wonderful softness. She felt herself cradled, as though she was being held in a comforting embrace. The experience was so unfamiliar that, at first, she believed herself to be dreaming. To add to the dreaming quality, a sweet-smelling perfume reached her nostrils. Slowly, tentatively, she opened her eyes.
    'Shhh, skatterbol,' she heard a woman's voice say softly. Tandia looked down. She still clutched Apple Sammy to her chest. She tried to sit up but the arm around her held her firmly. Frightened, she looked up into the caramel-coloured face of a very big and smiling woman with the longest false eyelashes she had ever seen.
    The woman wore an outrageously large purple hat decorated with pink ostrich feathers. Her pink satin dress stretched tightly over her enormous bosom, at the same time allowing a large amount of warm caramel flesh to spill out of its deeply plunging neckline so that her breasts looked as though they were trying to escape. The effect the woman created was of richness; and the strong, sweet-smelling perfume which Tandia now realised belonged to her, added to the opulent effect.
    'Don't be frightened, baby, I ain't going to hurt you none.'
    The words were clipped and staccato and sounded American. 'Name's Mama Tequila, pleased ter…meet'cha.' She offered her right hand for Tandia to shake.
    'Hi,' Tandia whispered, barely touching the hand with its long, shiny red nails. 'What's your name, honey?'
    'Tandia,' she cleared her throat, 'Tandia Patel.'
    'Tandia, that's a real swell name. You got no place to go? That's it, huh? You little orphan Annie sittin' on your fanny?' Mama Tequila had the raspy voice of a heavy smoker and now she laughed uproariously at her own joke, interjecting her laughter with a fit of coughing. She stopped laughing abruptly and reached into her handbag, a large purple leather affair that matched her hat. From it she withdrew a silver cigarette case. 'Smoke, honey?'
    Tandia, who was completely overwhelmed by the presence of this large woman, shook her head.
    Mama Tequila helped herself to a cigarette, closed the case and tapped the tobacco end on its silver lid. She returned the case to her bag and then dug around in it to produce a regulation American army Zippo lighter. She flicked it alight and held it to the end of the cigarette, squinting through the smoke as she drew in and then exhaled. Then. she slipped the cover back over the Zippo and returned it to her handbag. She spoke with the cigarette between her lips. 'It ain't pretty like everything else, but it sure lights every time. I kind of like pretty things, but a pretty lighter that don't work is like a pretty woman that don't work.' She withdrew the cork tip from her lips. 'Ain't no good to nobody, leastways herself!' She chuckled, 'I bet you like pretty things too, hey honey?'
    Tandia didn't answer. She wanted to pinch herself to make sure she wasn't dreaming; nothing like this monstrous pink creature had ever happened to her before.
    'Sure you do, you a very pretty girl, pretty girls got to have pretty things, or they die!' She shook her head slowly as though talking to herself. 'There is plenty of time to be ugly.' She turned and looked directly at Tandia. 'You got to use pretty, while you got pretty, honey, that the rule of womankind!'
    Mama Tequila started to chuckle again, her breasts heaving. 'You see this big, hip-pie-pot-to-mass, honey? Well, once upon a time, I was just as pretty and dainty as you, baby.' She seemed to find this particularly funny, her laughter disappearing finally into a wheeze until she grew quite red in the face and started to cough. She threw the cigarette to the ground and bending