Coconut (16 page)

She looks at me and then at her boy who lies with his head on my shoulder, his drool and sweat steadily dampening my Silver Spoon T-shirt. She smiles a dopey smile that tells me that her mind is still asleep even though her eyes are awake. “Yes, he is very tired.” She says, slurring the words. “We are very tired, we travel a long way.”

I nod, but I am not put off. “Yes, that is very nice, but can you get him off me now, please?”

The woman does not seem to register what I am saying to her. She smiles again, closes her eyes and puts her head back against the window.

Is she deaf? Does she not understand English? “Lady, please! This is my seat and that is yours! I paid for this seat and I would like to enjoy it, please.” I push the kid towards her so she can see what I mean.

“Oh. OK. I am very sorry,” she says, seeming to finally rouse herself. She shakes the boy gently and whispers, “Konani, wake up, boy. Wake up, Konani.” But her whisper is barely a sound and her shaking only a pleasant rubbing that sends him deeper into sleep. I doubt she has any real intention of waking him up. She smiles that same toothless smile. “We is very tired and the child, he is very tired.”

I feel saliva run down my arm, I am not impressed. “I do not care if he is a child or a dog, just get him off me!” At this point I am screaming. I am aware I am making a scene. I want the dripping child as far away from me as possible.

Everybody in the taxi looks back to see what the commotion is about. Another substantially-sized lady seated in front of me, who apparently heard the entire conversation, looks back at us and thinks it wise to add her unasked-for two cents. “
Haibo! Mare,
he’s just a child.
Kganthe,
what kind of woman are you?” she says.

I cut a look at her, my eyes now frosted over: “The kind that doesn’t want another woman’s filthy child dirtying her work clothes with sweat and spit. But exactly how do you feature in this, mama?”

“
Mo lebale, mme. O ke satane
,” the nosy fatty whispers, turning back around.

Yes, call me Satan, but next time mind your own bloody business, I think to myself. The woman next to me, clearly not very familiar with English but now finally understanding exactly what the problem is, struggles to lift her son back into her lap and, when this is unsuccessful, slaps the boy awake and yells at him for disturbing the poor lady. That’s me. “I am very sorry, Sisi, we are very tired, we travel long way. Sorry,” she says, placing the startled boy onto her lap. I nod and pull a tissue out of my handbag to dry my top.

“Thank you,” I say, wiping my soggy sleeve. “That is all I asked for.”

The taxi drops me off at the Schubert intersection, only a ten-minute walk away from Little Square Shopping

Centre. I have the option of asking the driver to do what they call ‘a delivery’ and drop me off inside Little Square but that will double my taxi fare, and although walking in the sun does nothing for my complexion, I need the money for my cosmetics and clothes. I see how the boys selling newspapers and cold drinks at the intersection look at me as I cross the street. “
Yo, o monthle ne
,” they say, “Hello,
nice
, need some help with those bags?” or “Let me walk you to work,
ngwana,
” or “Here, come have a drink, gorgeous, you look hot and tired.” They whistle and holler and make fools of themselves trying to get my attention.

But I never look back. I adjust my posture (shoulders back and back upright), raise my chin and walk straight ahead without even the flutter of an eyelid. I walk right past them and their hot, flat cold drinks which I would never buy; right past their dusty newspapers all warm and grimy from dirty hands handling them all day, and past the revolting smell of the chicken feet which the peculiar, wrinkled old lady with charcoal-black skin and an odd orange umbrella sells at the corner.

I am not one of you
, I want to tell them. Some day you will see me drive past here in a sleek air-conditioned car, and I will roll up my windows if you try to come near me, because
I am not one of you
. You are poor and black and I am rich and brown.

Working as a waitress is not very glamorous but I have to start somewhere. At least I am not packing plastics at Checkers or cleaning toilets. And Silver Spoon, I’ll have you know, is no run-of-the-mill establishment. At Silver Spoon Coffee Shop I get to mix with the who’s who of this country. Everybody from big-shot businessmen to surgeons and celebrated television producers. They all start their days at the Silver Spoon. Everybody knows us for our exotic coffee beans imported from Peru, El Salvador and New Guinea, for our peach and ginger iced teas made by Miss Becky herself, and our freshly baked cinnamon breads. Business deals are struck at Silver Spoon, deals that determine the strength of the rand and the price of gold. Alliances are formed at Silver Spoon and contracts signed for billions of dollars. In some of our quieter sections, actors and actresses practise their lines that are filmed and spoken on TV and heard by millions of South Africans every night on the evening soapies. Emails are sent from Silver Spoon Coffee Shop to Europe and back to Silver Spoon again.

Sometimes when we are not so busy I stand at the kitchen door and just observe the place and the people in it. I battle to take it all in. Sometimes while standing there at the kitchen door I am pulled out of my daydreaming by a customer who wants my advice on an order or wants me to help them choose a colour for a fabric, and then I am reminded how essential I am to the functioning of Silver Spoon. They all know me. They call me Fiks.

“You try too hard.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me. You try too hard, Fikile.”

“Don’t call me that here, Ayanda.”

“Oh right. Fiks is it? Well Fiks, you try too hard.”

“Thanks for that. I really do appreciate your views on how I should live my life, thank you very much indeed. But if you wouldn’t mind I have a table waiting,”

“They don’t care about you, Fikile.”

“Who doesn’t care about me?”

“Them, all those people out there.”

“Really? Oh, well in that case, I am quitting right now! This instant! Immediately!”

“I’m being serious, Fikile. I’ve seen you out there. The way you fall over backwards for them. The way you run around like a headless chicken getting them this and that, stirring their tea anticlockwise and not clockwise as if they could even tell the difference.”

“There
is
a difference.”

“The effort you put into remembering even their middle names, their ridiculous little preferences, their favourite seats and those childish stories they tell about their lives and their dramas and their hardships.

It’s real cute but are you aware that most of them don’t remember you, even though they come here week after week? Do you know that if you were to walk past any one of them in the street on any other day of the week in some other place they wouldn’t even know who you were? These people are not your friends, Fikile.”

“I am not trying to make friends, Ayanda. I am just doing my job.”

“Lies! You lie and lie and lie to yourself, Fikile, every day. How do you lie to yourself like that? Fikile?”

“Fuck, Ayanda, it’s Fiks. Not Fikile, but Fiks. F-I-K-S, Fiks. Got it?”

I get to the restaurant five minutes early but when I arrive I have to check my watch again to make sure because Miss Becky’s daughter, Carolina, is running frantically around the shop and so are the kitchen staff, who are already in plastic aprons and hair nets, their arms and faces covered in flour. I don’t see Miss Becky or Ayanda anywhere.

“Why are you so late?” Carolina yells at me as she runs out of the shop carrying a wad of money in her hand.

I am not late, am I? It is Sunday, right? I look around for an answer. Yes it is Sunday, the Sunday papers are out on all the tables. The shop only opens at nine on a Sunday, and we arrive at eight. Right?

“Why are you still standing there?” Carolina shrieks as she runs back into the shop carrying a packet filled with bricks of butter. She screams more questions at me but gives me no opportunity to answer them.

I am not sure what it is I am supposed to do, so I follow her into the kitchen.

She throws the packet of butter onto the table already covered in eggshells and empty flour packets. “How many have you baked, Vincent?” she asks, stabbing a number on her phone.

“Only ten, ma’am,” Vincent replies, looking up from the bread pans he is filling with dough, but making sure he does not make direct eye contact.

“Only ten!” she screeches. “Only ten?”

“Yes ma’am, only ten fit, ma’am, no space, ma’am, for – ” Vincent is stammering. He is trying to explain that only ten loaves of bread fit into the oven at a time, but he is interrupted.

“Do you think this is a joke?” she squeals, her voice taking on an unnatural pitch. “Do you people think we are just teasing?” She looks around at all of us, daring us to respond. “There is no bread, people! No bread, none, zilch, so we have to make our own. Because you people think it is OK to go on strikes whenever it tickles your fancy, there is no bread today in any store. So we have to bake our own bread. There will be no hanging around, people. You are on your feet baking bread until we have enough loaves to stack them up to the ceiling. This place is opening up in an hour and we cannot serve customers if we have no bread.

“And you, sweetie,” this she directs at me, “I don’t want to see you standing around the shop looking around like an imbecile, as if you do not know you have work to do. Get on an apron and…” she waits for me to complete the sentence for her.

“Bake bread,” I say, humiliated.

“Yes,” she nods, “bake bread!”

I am mortified. I cannot believe I am being yelled at in this way in front of the kitchen staff. The bloody kitchen staff! Miss Becky would never degrade me in this manner. Miss Becky would never make me put on a plastic apron and a ridiculous hair net. It is her dumb daughter who has absolutely no understanding of how vital I am to the functioning of Silver Spoon, who has no appreciation for the hierarchy of Silver Spoon, that can go and disrespect me in that way in front of the kitchen staff. But I pull myself together.

“You heard her,” I say to the kitchen staff after Carolina has left the room. “Stop standing around, and bake bread!”

They look at each other and then at me and shake their heads. “Shame,” one of them mutters, as they get back to work.

Stupid people, I think, putting on an apron, why are they feeling sorry for me?

“I apologise. I never did introduce myself properly. My name is Fiks Twala. I have a second name, Fikile, which I never use because many find it too difficult to pronounce and, I must admit, I really do like Fiks better. I grew up in white environments for the most part of my life, from primary school right through to high school.

“Many people think I am foreign, from the UK or somewhere there. I think it is because my accent is so perfect and my manner so refined. Yes, I have always been different. I never could relate to other black South Africans. We’ve just never clicked. So I give them their space and they generally give me mine. It’s never been an issue for me, though. I guess you do not miss something you have never known, so I do OK.