100 Days of April-May (10 page)

Eighteen

Peekaboo

It has been three days since Sebastian impaled himself on a forest of bamboo after toppling off the dividing wall between Dr Gainsborough and Miss Frankel's properties.

It has also been three days since Alistair The Awesome-ist spotted the open courtyard door – which Sebastian had managed to lever ajar before falling off the wall – and sped off under the gate and down the road to freedom.

And it has been the same three days since Fatty had a chronic asthma attack in the ninth hour of the Eastern Suburbs Catholic Schools Diski Dance Marathon and had to be ambulanced out of the hall – leaving Britney the winner and proud (read smug) owner of two tickets to the opening of the Soccer World Cup.

I have barely survived these three long, miserable days.

I am sitting in my bedroom waiting to be dragged into the kitchen, where the tribal council – Fluffy, Mrs Ho and Mom – are meeting to determine my fate. I stand accused of plotting the attempted theft (and aiding and abetting the subsequent loss) of the beloved canine pet of a valued client-in-waiting of Swallows and Sons (Miss Frankel).

‘We'll be about fifteen minutes and then we'll call you and let you know what we have decided,' Fluffy said. But it has been more than an hour and I'm not sure if this is a good or a bad thing.

There is a knock on the door and Sam Ho pokes his annoying face into my private space. I want to tell him to buzz off, but I am in urgent need of some intel. I need to know how the votes are being cast. The ratfink is dying to tell, but I won't ask. I just allow my silence to break him.

‘My mom says that she doesn't believe your friend Melly – that it was all her idea in the first place to steal the dog.' Sam Ho swaggers about the room, touching my stuff. He knows I'm not going to chuck him out until he has been bled dry of info. ‘And she doesn't believe Eric either – that it was actually his idea.'

A space deep in my tummy shudders and shoots a tingling ball to the back of my throat, making it hard for me to swallow. My best friend and my second-best friend are the silliest, loyalist best friends a person could ever have. They are also rubbish liars. Their attempts to secure me immunity have failed.

‘Your dad says that it was probably Sebastian's idea and that he dragged you into it and dragged you down.'

Poor Sebastian. The future butt of every butt joke on Planet World. He is still lying on his stomach in the Milpark Hospital, waiting for a team of nurses to finish extracting bits of bamboo from a place he won't be able to sit down on for the next hundred years.

‘I expect the woman to whom I am coincidentally related says that I should be grounded forever and have all means of communication confiscated for the rest of my adolescent lifespan?'

Sam Ho stops mincing about and shakes his head. ‘No, your mom says that you behaved the way you did because she raised you capable of choosing between right and wrong and incapable of inertia in the face of evil. She says that she's to blame.'

A hot feeling spreads across my chest and my face feels stiff.

‘Oh, and your mom also says that while your intentions were pure, your methods were totally dumb, and that she's not responsible for that part.'

There is a sharp rap on the door and Fluffy sticks his nose inside my room. ‘April, we've come to a decision.' The council has cast its vote.

Poor Fluffy is taking strain. Not only has he had Sebastian's parents screaming down the phone at him about bad influences (me), he has also had Miss Frankel threatening legal action against the two thieves and trespassers (Sebastian and me). And on top of this is the cruel knowledge that in three days' time South Africa and Mexico kick off a month of World Cup Soccer and the deluxe suite at Chez Matchbox is still under-occupied (not occupied at all). There has not been a single response to our advert on Gumtree.

Fluffy says that we are in exactly the same position as thousands of other hospitable South Africans who were hoping to throw their homes open to millions of tired and homeless soccer fans. Instead, they have found themselves mortgaged to the last notch on their belts and in danger of being thrown out of their own homes and onto the streets to starve.

And as if this isn't a tough enough cross for Fluffy to stagger about with on his shoulders, there is Mrs Ho, who is being one hundred per cent supportive and sweet and says that she and Fluffy will get through this together. Her sweetness and light is completely unbearable to Fluffy, who knows that he has let her down and wants to rip his toenails off with his teeth and thrash himself senseless.

Fluffy isn't the only one taking things rather badly. I spoke to Fatty briefly on The Brick yesterday. Correction, Fatty did most of the talking and I listened. He was a triple loser, he said. Not only had he lost the opportunity of going to the opening of the Soccer World Cup and finding his parents, he had also lost the awesome-ist dog in the whole world. ‘I'm gutted, I don't know how I'll ever get over this,' Fatty croaked, and I heard the sound of a crackling packet.

‘What's the third loss?' I asked him, thinking of his poor pal Sebastian lying on his tummy with his lost dignity in hospital.

I heard Fatty catch his breath, like he was holding down a sob (or a mouthful of biscuits). ‘Melly's dad won't let her speak to me. I haven't been able to talk to Melly for two days.' His voice faded away and I heard loud chewing. Then Fatty said that he really had to go as he could smell that the lamb-stew was just about ready.

I follow Fluffy into the kitchen and prepare to hear my sentence. It is delivered by Judge Julia Ho, who is not displaying sweetness and understanding towards me. I take my punishment standing up, my eyes fixed on a spot in the middle of Mrs Ho's forehead.

Judge Ho tells me I am to be sentenced to being deprived of Heaven and television for one month – I grab a kitchen chair for support – and, in addition, I must personally apologise to Miss Frankel for seeking to steal her dog (and in the process losing said dog to the streets of Jozi).

‘No,' I say before I can swallow my tongue.

‘No?' Judge Ho's forehead contracts into a web of lines.

There is a rushing sound in my ears as the blood drains from my face. No Heaven and television for one month? No lovely Mara Louw from M-Net
Idols
or Dr Rey from
Dr. 90210
and his body-conscious babes with boobs like soccer balls? ‘I won't apologise,' I say. ‘Not today, not tomorrow and not next week. I'm not sorry.'

‘That's my girl,' Mom says and touches me on the shoulder.

I sit down as Fluffy starts shredding his hair. ‘Well, then I suppose I will have to apologise on your behalf.'

‘No, you will not,' says Judge Ho, her forehead contracting even further (into something that would even be a challenge for Dr Rey and his posse of Botox experts).

‘No, I will not,' says Fluffy, backtracking. These days he is ready to agree with anything Mrs Ho says to atone for ruining her life and driving our family into despair and bankruptcy and shooting the country's Gini coefficient into the stratosphere. ‘So, who will apologise then?'

Mrs Ho says, ‘The person sitting at the kitchen table.' Meaning me.

I shake my head. No. I will not.

Mrs Ho, Fluffy and Mom leave me in the kitchen and take the discussion outside the front door for five minutes. On their return they announce payback for my lack of remorse. To consider the consequences of not apologising I am being sent to live with Mom and Sarel in Pretoria for a couple of days. As soon as I decide to say sorry I may return.

My fire has been snuffed out. The tribe has spoken. It's time for me to go.

I spend the next two days with Mom and Sarel in Pretoria until the Peekaboo Party drives me home. The Peekaboo Party is a gathering of one hundred and twenty of Mom's closest girl-friends (and Sarel, who is not a girl), who have come together to drink tea, open presents and view on television the 3D movements of my soon-to-be-born baby brother.

There is a television set in every room of the house and as a nurse scans Mom's tummy with a machine, each heartbeat and movement is beamed to the many screens to ‘oohs' and ‘aahs' from every room.

Mom says Sarel has taped the scan and is going to try and screen it at the soccer fan parks before the opening of the big game on Friday, just so the whole world can meet his soon-to-be-born son and heir. She says this with a sigh and a tired smile, which I do not see.

At the Peekaboo Party I have to field the question ‘Aren't you excited about having a baby brother?' one hundred and twenty times until I am feeling so animated at the thought that I tell Mom that I am taking a taxi straight back to Jozi to apologise to Miss Frankel for trying to steal her dog.

She says, ‘Really, May?' And then she says, ‘May, you could have come to me with your problem about the dog. Why didn't you just tell me? You can speak to me about anything. Anything at all, you know that?'

I tell Mom I'll be off then and that she mustn't eat too much Peekaboo Cake because her ankles look like they're about to explode.

Before going home I go and hang out in the park, where I practise saying, ‘I apologise for trying to steal your dog and then losing it.' Because I really am sorry that Alistair The Awesome-ist is lost and roaming the streets of Jozi cold and scared and all alone. But no matter how hard I test-drive the sentence, the first part just won't come out right. The words get tangled in my vocal cords like some loser wannabe on M-Net
Idols
.

So, instead, I collect some of the things in the park that remind me of Alistair. There is a bit of chewed tyre-seat from the swing, several squished winter bulbs that escaped his voracious appetite and a Kentucky Fried Chicken box.

I set them out on the grass in a circle and I seat myself in the middle, composed in an attitude of focused hope à la Rhonda Byrne. I think positive thoughts about Alistair. I think of him chomping away at Sam Ho's school bag. I think of Alistair and me watching
The Dog Whisperer
together and afterwards saying, ‘There's a good boy …' and ‘Walkies!' to Fluffy. And I think of Alistair gambolling down the pavement towards the park and finding his way home to me.

I fix my mind on Alistair. He is on a cold, dark road and I focus on his furry face. Then I broadcast my positive thoughts into the atmosphere and transmit like a GPS. Turn left. Then right. After five hundred metres turn into the park. ‘Come home to me, Alistair The Awesome-ist, come home,' I say.

‘Does it work?' a voice as gravelly as a bunch of unwashed spinach asks.

I open my eyes and see a man in a baggy tracksuit staring down at me.

‘Who wants to know?' I ask.

The man stretches out his hand and says his name is something a bit foreign and unpronounceable and that he is the soccer coach for a foreign and unpronounceable country. He supposes I have seen him in the newspapers because he is a huge sports celebrity. ‘I am just taking some quiet time in the park, away from the paparazzi,' he adds. ‘I wander around parks seeking solitude when I am trying to resolve insurmountable problems.'

I don't take his hand because I have been brought up not to shake hands with men in parks, and I tell him that I also like to be alone in parks and now that he is here I am no longer alone.

‘Does your magic work – this magic you are performing in your circle? I am in much need of some magic.'

I tell him that of course my magic works in my most upbeat, optimistic and positive voice (just in case Rhonda Byrne is listening). And then I ask him what his insurmountable problem for which he needs magic is?

He says that his problem is that in thirty days he must return home to his unpronounceable country with the Soccer World Cup trophy in his hand luggage. But his team are useless, lazy, unfit, lame-brained and suffering from low morale for some reason, and he needs to inspire them with the confidence to win. ‘What is your secret?' he asks me.

So I tell him the secret according to Rhonda Byrne.

‘This is indeed magic,' he says when I am done.

I tell the soccer legend that it really is and that I must be going home now. He replies that he's going to spend a few hours in my magic circle, thinking positive thoughts about his useless soccer team, but as a gesture of his appreciation he would like to give a lovely lady a present – the lovely lady being me – and he puts his hand in his pocket.

I tell him that I've been brought up not to accept presents from men in parks with their hands in their pockets. And then I see what he is holding in his hand and I say that I do, though, sometimes accept gifts from soccer legends.

I leave him sitting in my circle, thinking his winning thoughts for his good-for-nothing team, and I positively leap and bounce all the way home, clutching a slice of magic.

I can feel it. It is here. In my hands.

Nineteen

Making the Circle Bigger

Melly, Fatty, Sam Ho and me are squashed like small, salty fish in the back of the stiff-mobile while Fluffy and Mrs Ho wallow in whale-like comfort in the spacious front seats.

It's cold outside, but it is an oven inside. The car's heating is on full blast and Fluffy can't seem to turn it off. It's hot enough to bake pizza.

It is one o'clock on the afternoon of 11 June 2010 and we are on the way to the opening match of the Soccer World Cup, courtesy of the soccer legend with the unpronounceable name who handed me six tickets in the park yesterday.

They are not just any old six tickets. They are front-row tickets. We'll be so close to the field that we'll be able to stick out our legs and trip up the Mexican players as they run past our Bafana Bafana – or so Fluffy claims. That's if we manage to get to Soccer City before the game is over.

The stiff-mobile is stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic, which stretches for about twenty kilometres along one side of the road to Soweto. Every ten minutes or so a convoy of black German cars escorted by black-helmeted cops break the speed limit and whisk their VIPs past us down the other side of the road – a lane we could also have been whizzing along if the City Transport savants had not decided to keep it free for the bigwigs.

Sam Ho has done his bit to sandpaper everyone's nerves by blowing his vuvuzela non-stop since we left Chez Matchbox at ten o'clock, but Fatty hasn't said a word. He is as stiff as a corpse with angst.

Melly sits tucked up under his armpit, her tiny hand swallowed up in his tiny hand. ‘It's going to be okay, you'll see,' she whispers. ‘You'll find them there. Just keep the faith.'

I keep the faith by holding fast to a silver Zakumi doll charm that Melly gave me earlier this morning: ‘It's your birthday present. It goes with the bracelet I gave you at the beginning of the year when I left for Cape Town.'

Inscribed on the back of the charm is BFF (Best Friends Forever). And propped up on my bed back home is a life-size Zakumi doll. ‘I told you I had a big-big present for you,' she said, adding that she had been waiting for the charm to be inscribed at the jeweller's before giving it to me. She hoped that I'd never thought she'd forgotten. I told her, ‘Of course not, best friends never forget.'

Mrs Ho checks her watch again and sighs. ‘Is there absolutely nothing we can do, July, to make a bit of progress?' Mrs Ho is no rule-breaker, but being stuck in traffic for the past three hours has made her a bit edgy.

Fluffy says there is definitely something he can do and he moseys out of the traffic into the empty VIP lane. He drives like a demon for several hundred metres, ignoring the crazed hooting of the cars in the slow lane until an army of traffic cops wave him down.

Fluffy leans out of the window. ‘I'm sorry, officers, but I have to get to the funeral parlour asap. I have a client in the back who is in danger of creating a severe health hazard if he stays unrefrigerated for much longer – my air con's busted and it's like a furnace in here.'

One cop peers into the car and above our heads to the draped heap in the very back part of the stiff-mobile. He wrinkles his nose and then waves us on down the fast lane.

‘My goodness, even I believed you,' Mrs Ho says. She smiles sweetly and tells Fluffy that he is a very creative person and who would have thought that he could say such things with such an innocent face.

Fluffy says, ‘Thank you for the compliment.' And then he adds that he just has to make a quick detour to the Swallows and Sons branch in Soweto – to make an urgent client delivery – and then we can be on the road again.

Twenty minutes later a lighter stiff-mobile arrives at the calabash-shaped stadium along with ninety-five thousand other people who all have to be X-rayed and searched in case we are carrying weapons of mass destruction tucked away in our bags.

Fighter jets scream overhead, the opening ceremony goes by without us and we arrive in our front-row seats just in time to stand up again and sing the national anthem. About sixty thousand people sing with one voice. No – fifty-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine because Fluffy is not singing, he is crying his eyes out. He always bawls like a baby during the anthem. He says that he can't help it. Being a citizen of the world's most beautiful rainbow nation makes him so happy.

For the next half an hour we wave our flags until our arms fall off, we strip our vocal cords screaming, ‘Go, Bafana Bafana, go!' and blow our lips swollen on vuvuzelas.

And while we blow and scream and wave, Fatty silently searches the stands, scrutinising each and every face. I ask him what he is looking for in those faces and he says that he can't put a name to what it is, but as soon as he sees it he will know. And as soon as they see his face, they will know. Just like in
August Rush.

At half-time Fluffy sends Fatty, Melly and me off to buy hot dogs and drinks and Fatty and Melly stand in the hot dog queue while I go in search of sodas. It is as I pass the entrance to a VIP suite that I see them.

I'm just about to hiss ‘What are you doing here?' when Mom looks up.

Her face is as pale as a white person's face and her eyes are dark. ‘May, what are you doing here?' she gasps. She is walking hunched over, leaning against Sarel, whose face is as pink as a pink person's face gets when he is very stressed out.

I tell Mom that we got tickets to the soccer and that Fluffy has sent Fatty, Melly and me to get hot dogs and drinks, but before I can say much more Sarel grabs me by the arm and says, ‘Forget the hot dogs, go get your father, it's an emergency.'

‘What sort of an emergency?' I ask and Mom says, ‘Here's another one coming!' And she doubles over. The emergency is contractions four minutes apart. ‘But you're only due next month,' I say. ‘And why do you want Fluffy?'

Sarel goes even pinker and says, ‘Your mother and me are VIPs and we came with VIP transport. I need to borrow your father's car to take your mother to the hospital.'

‘Please, May, fetch your father,' Mom pleads. I see the panic on her face and I don't argue. I run.

I'm there and back with Fluffy and Mrs Ho and Sam Ho quicker than Sarel can say ‘They're three minutes apart now!' Mrs Ho looks at Mom and says, ‘Oh dear.' And Mom looks down at her dress and says, ‘My waters!' Her dress is soaked and she's standing in a small puddle.

Sarel looks like he's going to expire from pinkness and Fluffy tells Mrs Ho that he needs to take Mom to the hospital and that she must stay with the young people and make sure Bafana Bafana score that goal. He doesn't know how long he's going to be, but perhaps she can ask Melly or Fatty's parents to get them home after the match. Mrs Ho says, ‘Go on, stop dithering!'

Sarel and Fluffy prop up Mom between them and they start hobbling towards the exit. Mom looks behind. She doesn't say anything to me. She doesn't need to. I see something in her face and I go after them, my heart thudding in my shoes.

The journey to the stiff-mobile is undertaken in fits and starts. Sarel has the fits as Mom starts having contractions with increasing frequency. At two minutes apart we finally find our way into the parking lot.

‘Where did I park?'

Fluffy looks around for the familiar guano-spattered car and Sarel says, ‘Come on, man, we need to get out of here.' Mom's face is glistening with sweat and she's breathing like she's blowing out a million birthday candles one after the other.

Fluffy spots the spattered roof of the stiff-mobile and then he says, ‘Oh blow, this is going to be a tight squeeze.' Mom snaps that this is no time for inappropriate jokes, but Fluffy replies that he's not joking. ‘Some joker's parked me in.'

It is at this point that Mom groans and says that she really can't bear standing up any more. She crouches down, rests her elbows on her knees and says, ‘Please, May, if you could just rub my back. Please.'

Steam starts pouring out of the top of Sarel's frizzy head. ‘We're out of time,' he wails. ‘We're out of time.' What he means is that they'll never make it to the hospital in Pretoria with the home-birth-from-home facilities and the midwife assisted by a world-class gynecologist. We need a doctor now. And he opens his mouth very wide and shouts: ‘I need a doctor. Is there a doctor anywhere?'

But the only reply to his plea is the bellyaching noise made by eighty thousand vuvuzelas. That is until a quiet voice says: ‘Somebody is needing me?'

Sarel turns around in shock. ‘You are a doctor?'

The parking attendant says that this is exactly what his mother called him when he was born thirty-five years ago, and she calls him the same to this very day. He is Doctor Specialist Professor Moyo from Zimbabwe. Then he looks down and sees Mom squatting in the parking lot, panting like an oxygen-deprived guppy. ‘I see why you require my services,' Doctor Specialist Professor Moyo says.

Sarel loses his head at this point. It shoots off his neck like a cork out of a bottle of champagne. He starts grabbing at the tufts of hair on his head and then covers his eyes with both hands and jumps up and down.

When he recovers his head Sarel kneels down next to Mom. ‘Babe, we aren't going to make it to hospital,' he says. ‘We need to operationalise Plan B.'

‘What's Plan B?' Fluffy asks.

And Mom says, ‘Sarel, Plan B? We never talked about a Plan B?'

‘It's where we have the home birth-from-home with-out the midwife and the world-class gynae and all the equipment I wanted to plug you into,' Sarel says miserably.

I stop rubbing Mom's back as I hear footsteps skidding across the parking lot. The face of an annoying troll-child appears. Sam Ho is flushed and panting. ‘I've got a doctor and a nurse for you,' he says. ‘They're part of the Soccer World Cup Medical Services Support Team. The best in the world.'

A man and a woman dressed in brilliant-white outfits appear behind Sam Ho. The woman is Dr Stella and the man is Nurse Bradley.

I tell Sam Ho that he's a star for finding help by reading
Soccer World Cup Medical Services Support Team
on the medical suite door. And Sam Ho says that there was a big red cross on the door, so he didn't have to read anything, but here they are anyway.

Sarel looks at Sam Ho as if he could kiss him. Instead he grabs Mom and kisses her. She pushes him away. ‘Oh don't, please, don't touch me.' And then she gives a really loud moan.

Fluffy makes a scared face. ‘Oh, I know those signs, she didn't want me in the same country as her when her time came.'

Dr Stella and Nurse Bradley say they don't like the look of Mom one little bit. She hasn't torn a hamstring or ripped a tendon in her ankle. Neither is she in a life-threatening coma (something that certain players are prone to when they want to get off the field and away from their supporters pronto after failing to score the winning goal).

‘She's going to have a baby,' Sarel says.

Dr Stella says that she can see that and she wishes she could help but she never really went very deeply into delivering babies when she was studying sports medicine. ‘Me neither,' Nurse Bradley says. He's handy at cold packs and bedpans and can go to a splint at a push. ‘Sadly, this situation is way outside my speciality,' he says (mournfully).

Doctor Specialist Professor Moyo steps forward and says that as a trained gynaecologist from the University of Cape Town this is indeed his speciality. He has a bona fide degree proving his qualifications that he purchased from a Nigerian colleague working the parking lot across the road. And if his two medical colleagues would just hand him a pair of sterile gloves and secure him some boiled water he'll get on with things then.

Mom allows me to lead her to the back of the stiff-mobile. And then she asks me to hold her hands and, ‘Please, May, don't let go.'

I don't let go. Not once. Even when the stadium erupts with screams of joy in the fifty-fifth minute as Siphiwe Tshabalala scores the first goal in the Soccer World Cup for South Africa, I don't let go.