100 Days of April-May (2 page)

Two

Shacking Up

My father, Fluffy, and his intimate other, Julia Ho, are hunched over the kitchen table when I arrive at Chez Matchbox, the place I also call Home.

Fluffy is in a state of huge excitement. He is jabbing away at a piece of paper, scribbling and crossing out and adding up sums like a psychotic accountant after a double-espresso binge. ‘I think I can just afford it,' he says as I walk in, mashing his huge tangle of hair into a billion knots.

‘What can we just afford?' I ask him. Meat three times a week would be a nice start. Or the Interweb. And a computer to go with it.

He tells me that we're going to be doing some building. We are going to convert the garage into a bedroom and en suite bathroom.

I throw my arms around Fluffy's neck. How did he know? Number One on my wish list is to have my own private bathroom and not have to share bath scum with Fluffy. It's a dead tie with a computer. And the Interweb.

Fluffy says that he's also excited. In five months' time thousands of footie fans are going to descend on the country, looking for a place to call home for the duration of the Soccer World Cup. And Chez Matchbox, with its new en suite, will become this place for some homeless member of the European Community.

‘Everyone's doing it,' Fluffy explains. South Africans everywhere are preparing to fleece the foreigners and make a killing on the back of the soccer madness. So why not him? If the euro holds up, the rent from the room will more than pay off the building costs and fund a holiday in Margate.

Mrs Ho is studying Fluffy's figures. ‘This will mean a second bond. Is that wise, July? In this economic climate?'

What Mrs Ho means is Fluffy's economic climate. The one that he has been stuck in since he got retrenched from his newspaper job more than a year ago and began working in the dead people industry – first driving a tow truck for Willie's Wreckers and now working in a funeral parlour.

I hear the words second bond and I see LOAN. ALBATROSS. DEBT. Something Fluffy excels at getting himself into. Already his pay cheque barely touches sides. We can hardly meet the monthly payments on the one bond. A second bond is Bad News, and I tell Fluffy precisely this using these two words.

Fluffy says that I must think positive. People should have the confidence to make their own luck. In return I tell Fluffy that I think affirming thoughts about our bond and my destiny all the time. Every month I send karmic blessings to the Governor of the Reserve Bank, trying to make her drop the interest rate. A percentage point drop means a tiny stash of cash for the Rainy-day Tin. A rise means two-minute noodles for the month.

Mrs Ho places a cautious hand on Fluffy's arm. ‘July, can we talk about this? I have a few thoughts.'

Fluffy glances up and catches the look on Mrs Ho's face. It's an expression that he has learned to read during the past year that they have been steady intimates. It means that she wants to talk to him in private.

Fluffy tells me to go and do my homework. I reply that I finished it all during my afternoon's detention and that he's not to worry, I'm happy to hang out with him and Mrs Ho and chat.

Mrs Ho's eyebrows leap into her hairline like angry question marks. ‘Detention?' she queries.

Fluffy punishes his hair. ‘Detention!' he exclaims.

I bite my tongue in two and say that I think I should go and clean the bathroom. And tidy my room. And tidy Fluffy's bedroom too.

Fluffy says, ‘Oh no you don't, young lady, sit down.' And they subject me to verbal waterboarding until I explain how Fatty's (I call him Ericca Ntona) antisocial habits caused me to express myself in a loud and emotionally incontinent manner. Yes, I called the new bursary kid a fat pig.

Fluffy and Mrs Ho give me looks full of reproach. Looks I can read because I have known Fluffy for nearly fifteen years, and Mrs Ho for more than one year, which is long enough for me to know her ‘I'm so, so disappointed in you, April-May' look.

I tell them that they've got me wrong. I'm a chubby chum. I love fleshy people. There's Ishmael – Fluffy's best friend next to Mrs Ho – who drives a tow truck for Willie's Wreckers. He's got more shares in the blubber department than an obese whale, and I like him just as well as thin people. And I am also inordinately fond of pigs, who are the cleanest animals on Planet Earth, even though they will eat just about anything and make bad smells. Like Ericca Ntona (Fatty).

I start backing out of the kitchen before I stuff both feet into my mouth, leaving the two of them shaking their heads.

In my bedroom I find Sam Ho lolling on my bed. He's fiddling with my cellphone and listening to my music on my iPod. An open bottle of nail varnish on my bedside table next to a half-painted wooden toy is proof that he's been in my cupboards. Again.

He doesn't see me enter the bedroom. Nor does he see me pull the duvet from under him, an action which dumps him on the floor. I grab my stuff and drag him by one ankle towards the door and chuck him out.

There are two things worth mentioning about Sam Ho. The first is that he belongs to Mrs Ho. The second thing is that while I think he's okay for an eight-year-old troll, mostly he's an annoying brat who should stay out my room.

Sam Ho hobbles down the passage towards the kitchen, squealing like a stuck pig – a stuck goat. I make a mental memo to ban the pig word from my daily discourse. It's a three-lettered stink bomb.

Sam Ho is hobbling because he hurt his back in a car accident some time ago. It caused the loss of a family member – his father – and damaged his spine. He was on crutches for most of last year and is still learning to adjust to putting one foot in front of the other instead of swinging and swaying on crutches.

He is also hobbling because it is guaranteed to score sympathy points with Fluffy and get me in trouble for beating up on him.

I follow Sam Ho towards the kitchen – intent on damage limitation – and catch the tail-end of the conversation. ‘Moving in with April and me would make us a real family.' Then there's a pause and I conclude from the slobbery silence that Fluffy and Mrs Ho are having a romantic moment across the tomato sauce.

Which Sam Ho and I put a very sharp stop to with our appearance.

Mrs Ho tells Sam Ho to hush, please, love, stop squealing because we are having an adult confab about some life-changing issues.

‘If Julia moves in with us,' Fluffy explains, ‘then she could rent out her house.'

The cash would help Fluffy pay off the building loan, and the two of them would recoup the damage and split the huge profits on his rent-the-en-suite-to-affluent-soccer-tourist scheme.

Fluffy is flushed. He looks like he's won the Lotto.

‘But where would she sleep?' I make squiggly eyebrows in Mrs Ho's direction. Somebody's got to ask the question. And I'm still smarting over them chewing my ear off about Fatty. I'm not going to make things too easy for them.

Chez Matchbox boasts two bedrooms. One is Fluffy's and the other is mine. Fluffy flushes some more. Then he blushes over his flushes while Mrs Ho starts shredding her cuticles.

‘Of course Julia will share my bedroom with me,' Fluffy finally says.

I'm a grown up sort of a girl with a mind as broad as Fatty's butt. I know all about the facts of life and the physical goings on between two people who have declared themselves in love and are committed to an intimate partnership. ‘Of course she will,' I say to Fluffy. ‘But where will Sam Ho stay if you rent out his house?'

Twenty minutes later I am storming down the road in the direction of Melly's house with a satchel containing most of my worldly possessions. Sam Ho to share a bedroom with me? Is that where the thinking is going? Is that what Fluffy means by of course Sam Ho will live with us? I'd prefer to share a bedroom with a pig. Or Fatty.

I'm halfway to Melly's house when I remember that she's not there. She's in Cape Town, having her lung butchered to help her breathe like a normal person. I backtrack to the park across the road from my school. It's a favourite hang-out of mine.

A couple of kids are on the see-saw, so I head for the trampoline. I jump high. So high that I can see over the palisade fence, across the road and into the school soccer field.

Some kids are kicking a couple of soccer balls around. The goalie is totally rubbish. He's sitting on the grass in front of the goalposts with his head in his hands. And as the balls hit him, he hunches over as if he is trying to protect himself rather than save the ball. Lazy old thing.

Then I see that the kids are using the lazy goalie as a target. And the harder the balls hit the bowed figure, the louder they laugh.

Call me a nosy parker, or meddlesome or even a snoop, but there is one thing I can't abide, and that's bullies.

‘Hey! Stop that!' I shout, and then I quit jumping and get my satchel. My cellphone has thirty text messages but I don't bother to read them because I know it's just Fluffy saying
Please, come home, April. Please, come home so we can talk.

I run out of the park and head towards the school sports fields. I peer through the fence and watch as the mean kids continue slamming those balls at the crouching figure on the grass.

Then, before I can shout stop right away else I'll come over and kick those soccer balls into the backs of your throats, the stooped figure gets up. The kids jeer and whistle and a couple of the scaredy-cats start running away. This makes me smile wide. Run, you cowardly custards. Run, you yellow-bellied bullies, run. I laugh as they run.

Then I recognise the goalie. It's Fatty. He lumbers towards the side of the field, his head down, wheezing. And then he looks up and sees me. Standing there laughing. And I can see from the dark expression that crosses his face that he thinks I'm part of this mean game. And that I've been watching and laughing all this time while the other kids jeered and beat up on him.

Three

The Big Lie

Fluffy and me are not communicating this morning.

‘Please, hurry up, April, I've got to get to work early today. I'm expecting a huge delivery.' He checks his cellphone again and shakes his head in disbelief. ‘Twenty.'

I eat my toast, slowly. Small bites and long chews. Then I pack my lunch box with the speed of a sloth on Valium. But before I can brush and floss each one of my thirty-two teeth seven times, Fluffy pushes me out of the front door and into our family transport.

Fluffy gets to take home one of the company cars every day. An employee perk. And if I had to choose between the tow truck from Willie's Wreckers that Fluffy got to drive last year, and the hearse from Swallows and Sons, I would choose the stiff-mobile every time – it's a lot more roomy. Plus the air con is top notch to ensure maximum client comfort.

I check the back of the stiff-mobile for stowaways (Fluffy sometimes brings his work home) and then get in the front.

On the way to school Fluffy tries to engage me by talking about the stock delivery of twenty items he's been warned to expect at Swallows and Sons this morning. It's a conundrum. There've been no freak accidents this week, he says. No train smashes or extended family massacres.

Not yet, I want to tell him, Sam Ho hasn't moved into my bedroom yet.

‘And there were certainly no pile-ups on the freeway yesterday,' Fluffy goes on. Ishmael, his pal from Willie's Wreckers, would have told him if there had been any serious bloodletting on the roads.

I refuse to take the bait. I will not be drawn by Fluffy on the riddle of the twenty pieces of merchandise that will be waiting for him in his in-tray when he gets to work. I turn up the volume on my iPod and stare out of the window.

‘He's going to sleep in the lounge,' Fluffy finally says, but I don't hear him until he yanks the headphones from my ears and says it again. Slow and loud into my right auditory cavity. ‘Sam. Ho. Is. Not. Going. To. Share. Your. Bedroom.'

I tell Fluffy that he hasn't thought of multiple deaths from claustrophobia and suffocation. It happens when too many people are shoved into a confined space and don't get enough oxygen.

Fluffy says that I must pull myself together. ‘This is our chance to be a real family,' he says. And after the soccer I'll get the bedroom with en suite bathroom. And Mrs Ho is bringing her television set along with her PVR. And her washing machine.

I tell Fluffy in that case I suspect a flood. Casualties as a result of too much water in the summer is always a safe bet in Jozi.

Fluffy beams at me and says that this would probably explain the consignment of twenty. And would I tell Sam Ho that he will be picking him up after school as Mrs Ho is stuck in meetings all afternoon?

‘For sure I will,' I say.

I make it to class as the first lesson bell stops ringing. The seat at the back of the class is empty. And so is the seat in the front of the class. No Dr Gainsborough, no visually impaired Emily and no Fatty.

The class descends into anarchy for ten minutes until the deputy principal and my future housemate Mrs Ho arrives and says we must calm down immediately. ‘Dr Gainsborough is having a meeting with one of the parents,' she says. ‘And I'll be supervising the class until he returns.' Then she points a finger at me and says Dr Gainsborough would like to see me in his private office. Her face tells me not to ask why. But just go. Now.

The door to Dr Gainsborough's office is shut. Emily is lying across the entrance and when I try and knock she gives my hand a vicious tongue-lashing. I let her drool on my hand a bit and tell her she's a nice dog and that I taste better than I look, so she's not missing out on too much.

The door opens and Dr Gainsborough says, ‘Out the way, girl.'

Emily and me get the idea that he wants both of us to move, so we make way for Dr Gainsborough and Fatty and a woman as pale and thin as Fatty is large and dark.

‘Five minutes to see your mom to her car and then back to class, Ericca,' Dr Gainsborough says.

Your mom. That's what he said. I heard it right. I know sixty-five per cent of the world's teen population is going deaf from excessive iPod usage but I'm not one of them. I only got my iPod last year, and as much as I try and overuse it to make up for thirteen years of auditory drought, I still can't seem to get deaf. Dr Gainsborough definitely said ‘your mom'. I ponder the words in Fatty's essay which I spied yesterday:
I have no mother …
And then I ponder the big riddle of genetics as Fatty and the thin paleface walk away. That is until Dr Gainsborough tells me crisply to please come in and sit down.

I get a tight feeling across my tummy. I may be a lot of things but there is one thing I am not: I am not a rat. I don't tattle on my peers. I'm not a telltale tit. Dr Gainsborough just has to ask me one question about the bullying on the soccer field yesterday and I will claim to have been as visually impaired as his dog.

I sit down and Emily parks herself at my feet as Dr Gainsborough pulls out the essay I wrote in class. He pushes his glasses to the top of his nose with his thumb and peers at me.

Dr Gainsborough says he found my perspective on My Family and Me ‘interesting'. I tell Dr Gainsborough in that case he will probably be interested in the latest installment and I proceed to update him. I tell him my father's love interest and her eight-year-old troll-child are moving in with their television and PVR.

Dr Gainsborough interrupts me between the couch in the lounge and the washing machine and says that what interests him most about the essay on My Family and Me is the two sentences about my mother.

I try to recall what I wrote yesterday, distracted as I was by Fatty scoffing his way through the contents of his lunch box.
What the heck did I write?
I am beset by lamb-stew-and-onion-induced dementia and draw a blank.

No worries. Dr Gainsborough gives a knowing smile and reads the interesting two sentences to me: ‘I have a birth mother called Glorette. She tells a lot of lies and is having a baby with her new husband, Sarel The Bloodsucker, in six months' time.'

I tell Dr Gainsborough I have to, have to go to the bathroom to attend to a delicate feminine hygiene matter. I get up from my seat. Emily gets up too and licks me softly on the hand. ‘I want to see you twice a week, April-May. I think you need to talk to someone about your mother issues,' Dr Gainsborough says as I make it to the door. He looks at me with kindly eyes as I close the door and run.

I get home after school to find Fluffy pacing in the kitchen. His face is as bleached as Fatty's melanin-deficient mother. He is too pale for a coloured sort of a person. He says: ‘Where is he?'

‘Where is who?' I ask.

Fluffy says this is no time for jokes, April. ‘Sam Ho wasn't waiting for me after school. He's missing. Do you know where he is?'

He looks over my shoulder with a hopeful face as though Sam Ho might be right behind me and then breaks into a sweaty smile. ‘Oh, there he is,' he says. Then his face changes and he starts yelling. ‘Where the heck were you?' he shouts at Sam Ho. And, ‘I waited for an hour.' And, ‘I was going out of my mind with worry.' And stuff like that.

Sam Ho just stands there while Fluffy makes noise. And then there is a sharp bark and a hairy missile launches itself at Sam Ho.

I once again ponder the big riddle of genetics as I examine the creature. He is, Fluffy tells us, the progeny of a Great Dane, the Apollo of breeds, and a dachshund, also known as the sausage dog. He's like a hairy log on stilts.

Nameless Dog, Fluffy tells us, is the survivor of a tragic family drowning. He raises an eyebrow at me. Death by excess water – my prediction was spot on this morning.

It is a sad story and Sam Ho and me are as silent as two graveyards as Fluffy tells it to us while we try and stop Nameless Dog from chewing bits off our fingers.

Fluffy relates how Nameless Dog arrived at Swallows and Sons that morning in the company of twenty other creatures almost identical to him (Nameless Dog, not Fluffy). Except, all twenty were no longer breathing.

Apparently Nameless Dog and his nineteen brother and sister puppies decided to take a bath in their owner's swimming pool yesterday afternoon. Except they couldn't swim. When their owner – Miss Geraldine Frankel – returned from her game of bridge, she found nineteen sopping-wet bodies laid out neatly – and stiffly – by the side of the pool. And a sopping-wet Nameless Dog, nestled between the paws of an exhausted and soon-to-be-deceased Hotdog (Nameless Dog's mother). ‘It was clear that Hotdog had spent every ounce of energy trying to save her pups,' Fluffy says. ‘Then she perished, leaving behind one little orphan.'

Fluffy also says that Miss Frankel is a loyal patron of Swallows and Sons and is insisting that Hotdog and Co get buried in the Frankel family plot.

‘But what about the orphan?' I ask him. The orphan who is chewing a hole through my iPod.

The little survivor, Fluffy says, will be with us for a while. Miss Frankel is in the process of selling her house with the killer swimming pool and in the meantime is staying in a hotel which forbids all animals except fish (which can swim). As soon as she has bought a new house, with a tennis court and no swimming pool, she will reclaim the orphan puppy and give him a name.

Sam Ho starts sniffing. And his eyes are red. There are four words for what is ailing him: Allergic to Nameless Dog. Fluffy looks at him with concern and then remembers. ‘Where the heck were you after school? I waited and waited …' Then Fluffy squints at me: ‘You did tell him like I asked?'

I assure Fluffy that I wrote Sam Ho a note telling him to meet Fluffy at the gate after school and put it in his locker. Just like he'd told me.

Then Fluffy looks at Sam Ho, who says, ‘No.' This is not true. There was no note. Not in his locker. ‘April-May is lying.'

I tell Sam Ho that he's a lying brat. And Sam Ho says that I'm a lying brat. And we ‘lying brat' away at each other until Fluffy says just hold on a moment, the note was obviously overlooked. There's just been a mix-up. ‘Now hold your tongues.'

Sam Ho glares at me and I glower back at him. His face is red and the tips of his ears and his dumpling nose are throbbing like beacons. Both of us know that there was no mix-up. And that one of us is a lying brat.