Coconut (9 page)

I do not enjoy the bickering, but it is the only way to get Mama and Daddy to speak. The drive home seems longer than normal today and the wail of Daddy’s music is anguish, this is my only deliverance. It may not sound like they are speaking to each other, but they are. I am like a telephone operator. I connect them, except instead of using a dialling tone I instigate an argument to do so. The ‘Belinda and I are no longer friends’ line always works well, because they both feel extremely muscular about it, and because it is not directly related to either of their own lives. It keeps things from being personal and hurtful. These conversations they think they are having with me are really arguments that they are having between themselves. Aside from them, Mama and Daddy do not speak very much at all. It is good to speak right?

So I reckon I am doing them a favour by inciting quarrels. I suppose I benefit, too. Sitting here silently at the back, listening to them ask me questions they answer for me, I use their debates to collect words for my Sepedi vocabulary list. Although their arguments follow the same pattern each time they have them, sometimes they use a word they did not use the last time, a word I mouth repeatedly so as to master the pronunciation. I fix the words in my brain so that they can be added to my vocabulary list when I get home. I figure, if all else fails, if I achieve nothing else, at least someday I will be able to argue in Sepedi.

Residents of Little Valley Country Estate use a hand sensor to enter through the booms at the main gatehouse. Guests use a separate entrance. Guests are only allowed in after their visit has been telephonically verified by the guards, with those whom they are there to see. Daddy greets the security guard who is writing down the number plates of the vehicles lined up at the Visitors to the Estate Admissions Gate with his left hand while his right hand commands the striped red-and-white poles to rise.

When Daddy’s company
,
IT Instantly, won the Post Office tender in which Daddy had invested numerous golf balls, a thousand glasses of JC, endless swipes on the Diner’s Club card and a professionally gift-wrapped ten diamonds and steel limited-edition Mitchell bracelet in, Koko advised that a thanksgiving ceremony would be fitting. That was the same year Mama cashed in her nursing retirement package and suggested we celebrate Christmas Day in Disneyland, Florida.

The day of the thanksgiving ceremony is the last memory I have of Daddy’s family, the Tlous, and Mama’s family, the Ledwabas, all being in the same space at the same time. Grandmother Tlou, her partner Pat and Aunty Sophia arrived first in Grandmother Tlou’s 380SE gold Mercedes-Benz. Koko had spent the night at our house helping Mama and Tshepo prepare the traditional beer that Koko reminded Daddy needed to be offered, together with the blood of an animal and motsoko, to our ancestors as a token of our appreciation for the good fortune that had fallen on our family. The rest of the Ledwabas arrived in dribs and drabs, some of them having to change taxis thrice to get to the cumbersomely located Little Valley Country Estate.

Despite Koko’s counsel that it was wiser to organise the cow a day before the ceremony at the very latest, Daddy was still out, apparently having difficulty finding a suitable cow, when the last of the Ledwabas arrived. Mama’s older brother, Malome Arthur, and his son Benjamin, sensing the tension in the house, laid out a towel on the lawn and explored the copious amount of alcohol Daddy had bought the day before. Ous Desire, Malome Arthur’s girlfriend, and cousin Dukie quickly busied themselves with pots and spices in the kitchen, escaping the interrogation that Malome Arthur’s daughters from a previous marriage, Kagiso and Portia, were being subjected to by Grandmother Tlou and Aunty Sophia over Romany Creams and Rooibos tea.

It was already 4pm when Daddy arrived with Bra Alex and Uncle Max, Daddy’s business partners, and a young white man, probably no older than twenty, whom I had never seen before. At the end of the driveway stood a bakkie that held a subdued chicken in an unnecessary cage. Daddy carried in his hand a large blue refuse bag that dripped blood into the house and onto Mama’s peach Persian carpet, making her scream. Daddy’s eyes were wide and red, suggesting that he had been drinking, and Uncle Max had unbuttoned his shirt, allowing his large belly to protrude out unapologetically.

Daddy, detecting the growing unease in the room, explained that he was unable to locate a live cow that was purchasable, and had instead opted to buy a chicken from the young white man who had been so kind as to offer to drop it off at the house. Daddy went on to say that he did, however, remember that Koko had stressed the importance of a cow, so Bra Alex had suggested that they buy a slaughtered one at the butcher and had requested that its blood be collected in a Tupperware dish so that it could be used for the ceremony.

Koko and Mama were silently washing the dishes when the Little Valley Country Estate security guards drove up our driveway in their Jeep vans. Daddy, Bra Alex and Uncle Max had left shortly after Malome Arthur slit the disturbingly willing chicken’s neck open, allowed its blood to seep into the soil and mumbled a brief prayer that nobody heard. Tshepo was thus the one who received the letter of warning from the two security guards that explained that the couple in No. 2042 behind us had alerted them that we were sacrificing animals after they spotted a chicken hung up on our washing line. The letter warned that we were liable to be heavily fined because we had breached rules no. 12.3 and 15.1 in the Little Valley Country Estate Code of Conduct Handbook.

12.3 Residents of Little Valley Country Estate may not keep any wild animals, livestock, poultry, reptiles or aviaries or any other animals of the sort on the Estate grounds.

15.1 Residents of Little Valley Country Estate must avoid installing visible laundry lines, Wendy houses, tool sheds, pet accommodation and the like in areas that are visible from public view and must ensure that the above are screened from neighbouring properties.

Kicking aside the traditional beer that lay forgotten in a bucket on the floor collecting flying peanuts and bits of carpet, Grandmother Tlou and Pat excused themselves, saying that they had other engagements to get to. Aunty Sophia, as usual, followed them out. Once they had left, Mama dropped the household cleaner and goldilocks she had been futilely using to try to remove the blotches of a now-brown colour from her carpet and turned to Koko:

“You happy now, ma? Now that you was embarrassing me in front of the eyes of my in-laws and my neighbours. Now that you cover my carpet with blood, fill my kitchen with dirty flies and chased my husband away from her home. You had to make your presence be felt, nê ma? Everybody must know Koko is here. You could not just let a good thing be. No ma, you must insist that this witchcraft be performed. You must be reminding all of us of our backward ways. Did Arthur’s drunked prayer of thanks please the gods, ma? Is the gods now happy? Or now must we perform another ceremony to find that out?”

Little Valley Country Estate sells itself as ‘your rustic escape from the rat race.’ Daddy says that there were many such developments coming up in the city when he bought our house because South Africans were attracted to the idea of a residential area right in the melting pot of the country but even more so to ones that also assured the 24-hour a day maximum security mandatory for survival in Johannesburg. Daddy, however, said that he fell for Little Valley because they had created the most captivating horse-riding trails within their estate, and although he did not ride, he said that they were reason enough to learn to.

Driving into the estate (strictly adhering to the 40 kph rule), we pass homes where little children forget to close their front doors when they run in, where teenage girls smoke cigarettes out of their bedroom windows so their parents may not know and leave them wide enough open for eyes taking walks in the streets to stroll in. I look into these Seventh Heaven-like homes, I smell their food and catch a glimpse of the portraits on their walls as we drive by. Now back home, outside our orange brick villa, I peer into our own windows and wonder what others see.

“Tuscan is the architectural style,” the sales agent had said to Daddy. “A gem!” she had shrieked, “a house incomparable to any other.” However, inside my home it is not the smell of sautéed prawns and ricotta stuffed pasta with mushroom sauce that wafts into the garden, but rather the sharp smell of
mala le mogodu
.

I do not know where I may have lived before, or who I may have been. I do know that this world is strange, though, and I somewhat of an anachronism. Locked in. Uncertain whether I have come to love this cage too. Afraid of the freedom that those before the time before-before knew. There is jeopardy in the sky.

Mama shouts Tshepo’s name as she enters the house and heads up the salmon-coloured hefty stone spiral staircase to the bedrooms on the third floor. “Tshepo, come down and help your sister carry in groceries.” The midday sunlight beaming through the punch skylights high above the staircase and the shy wisp of Mama’s white dress as she hurries up the stairs remind me of a make-believe fairytale. In the tale a beautiful but damned princess runs up a twisted tower in a forgotten castle escaping the crafty dragon that has kept her hostage in a moonless dungeon below. She runs up to a radiant prince above who will slay the dragon and free her from a life of darkness.

I am already holding three large packets in each hand, but grasp onto the seventh with my left ring finger and pinkie. They are heavy, but the garage opens into the kids’ pantry, which leads to the kitchen. I do not have far to go. If I speed-walk I should be able to get them all there without dropping and breaking anything.

“It’s fine, Mama, I can manage on my own,” I say more to myself than to anyone else whilst dropping the packets onto the oyster-and-pearl marble kitchen surface. I flinch at the force with which the two meet, realising too late that there are glass containers in some of the packets.

“Tshepo! Tshepo wee!” Of course Tshepo can hear Mama. Although the walls of our house are thickly plastered to give it a colossal appearance, and the ceilings beamed and soaring to make it look grand, the living space is intimate and the family bedrooms all open up onto the circular stone staircase, so that every sound formed on the third floor is equally shared in 360° before dissolving into the nothingness and fleeing through the skylights. “Tshepo! Tshepo sweetie, we is home.” Tshepo is choosing not to hear her. Mama is choosing not to know.

In this house it is the parents who slam doors. It is the cherry-wood cupboard doors in Mama’s all-mirrors dressing room that now swing open and slam shut. Mama is in a rush, she will rapidly remove her dress and cream pumps and change into the skirt and wrap top that will match the cork heels she has been searching for a reason to wear. “Tshepo! Tshepo my darly. Tshepo!” I can still hear Mama from two floors down. She seems to delight in calling his name, despite the fact that she knows he will not answer. Persisting consoles her. “I never did stop trying,” she will say to her friends when he is gone for good. “Never did I ever give up on him,” she will continue, between sobs, as they rub her back in manicured sympathy.

I consider packing away the groceries but decide against it. What will I do with the mango atchar that steadily seeps through its cracks and collects at the bottom of the packet, turning the white plastic and the already soggy egg carton a grimy orange? Should I throw the whole plastic packet away? Is that not a waste of food? I do not even know where they keep the kitchen dustbin. Mama is always rearranging her kitchen. And where would I pack away the rest of the food? I am not sure what goes into the Kids’ Pantry, Entertainment Pantry and Foods Pantry because it is all food to me. I will wait for Old Virginia to do it. Old Virginia should be around here somewhere.