100 Days of April-May (7 page)

Twelve

Rhonda's Secret

Sundays are Building Days. That's when Fluffy and Ishmael and this guy who Ishmael knows (the whizz bricklayer and plumber) build the en suite bathroom for the soccer-mad billionaire from Europe who is going to be spending four weeks at Chez Matchbox during the Soccer World Cup.

Except that, for the guy who Ishmael knows, Sunday is also the day he plays cricket with his brother and fixes his mother-in-law's washing machine and has barbecues with his family before watching the rugby.

So, Fluffy and me never meet the expert bricklayer and plumber. And Ishmael and Fluffy have to get on with transforming the garage into a luxury suite on their own while Mrs Ho bites her lips into one shrivelled line and stays out of the way in case she says something she'll regret later.

This particular Sunday, the day after my birthday, is also the day that Alistair gets to go to Miss Frankel's abandoned house with the killer swimming pool to live with the caretaker until his new accommodation is secured. It was either Alistair or Mrs Ho. So Alistair got to go.

Alistair and me had spent the previous week trying to change his destiny by attuning our thoughts to the ‘staying vibrations' in the universe the way Rhonda Byrne in her best-selling book
The Secret
describes it.

Rhonda's big secret is that focused positive thinking can have life-changing results. But as hard as we tried we didn't manage to achieve harmony with this particular outcome and so Alistair is finally leaving.

I've packed a special bag for Alistair, containing his leash, Sarel's wig, a photo from a TV mag of Cesar, Daddy and Junior and a snack pack filled with tasty dog treats (Mrs Ho's loofah, Fluffy's hairbrush and a couple of shoes that lost their partners in a previous snack frenzy).

It's as though Alistair knew the end of the road was coming for him at Chez Matchbox. He spent the previous three days sampling every corner of the house and watching back-to-back reruns of
The Dog Whisperer
. He also had trouble sleeping and would crawl into my bed in the early hours of the morning and only drop off after I'd read him a couple of chapters of
The Secret
and told him positively, definitely and categorically that his destiny was to stay with me at Chez Matchbox.

I keep the faith until the hour of departure arrives and then I have to admit that I have failed Rhonda and Alistair by not being focused and positive enough. I tell Alistair so sorry and that I'll come visit whenever I can, and that I'll bring Fatty with me. At the sound of that name Alistair unlocks his jaw from the side of the front door and allows Fluffy and me to drag him into the stiff-mobile.

We leave Ishmael mixing concrete. One part cement, two parts sand and three parts gravel. ‘Don't make it too runny – it must be like cake mixture,' I shout. I checked this out for him on Google using Heaven – my old/new birthday computer.

There are four words to describe my attachment to Heaven and the magical Interweb world that it allows me to enter: I am completely addicted. I feel the same way a three-month-old baby must feel when she tastes sugar for the first time. I am off my head.

Miss Frankel's house is in a suburb with lots of trees and almost as many security guards. There are no signs of children playing in the street. In fact, the ratio of trees and security guards to children playing in the streets is 3:2:0.

I tell Alistair that he is going to lead a peaceful life – no irritating kids wanting to play with him all the time and dragging him off to the park for walks – with plenty of oxygen and security on tap. Alistair ignores me and tries to dig a tunnel under Fluffy's seat.

Fluffy parks the stiff-mobile outside the house and presses the intercom button which says
Caretaker
. We wait five minutes until the caretaker answers. He says he was outside taking care of the garden and that his name is Kindness.

Kindness takes a critical look at the spattered stiff-mobile and then takes an even more critical look at Alistair. Reaching down he picks him up (uncarefully and unkindly) by his front legs. Like he is some ballroom dancer. Except he's not. He's a dog. And so Alistair gives a yelp and tries to amputate Kindness's hand from his wrist.

Then Kindness gives Alistair a playful smack across the snout and Alistair yelps again, because it was quite a hard playful smack. I say, ‘Let me.' And I put the leash on Alistair and follow Kindness onto the premises and to his cottage, which has a courtyard where Alistair will be living until Miss Frankel sells the house and moves into her new abode. The courtyard is half the size of my bedroom at Chez Matchbox and is filled with nothing – nothing, that is, except lots of hard concrete. Over the courtyard wall is the garden with the killer swimming pool. I am glad that Alistair is not tall enough to look over the wall to see the expanse of chlorinated water that claimed his mom and nineteen brothers and sisters in the mass drowning four months ago.

Fluffy says, ‘We really, really must be going, April.'

‘Not until I know where Alistair will be sleeping,' I say.

Kindness says that he'll sleep with him in his cottage. But that doesn't fool me. ‘Where is his water bowl?' I ask. ‘And his plate of Epol crackers?'

Kindness says that it's inside the cottage and that he needs to get on with taking care of Miss Frankel's house now, so goodbye.

I put Alistair's things in the corner of the courtyard and Fluffy and me leave. I don't look back because if I do I'm afraid I may do something uncharacteristic, like leaking bodily fluids from my facial orifices.

As we get into the stiff-mobile I hear a mournful howl coming from the back of Miss Frankel's house. And then it stops mid-howl, as though someone or something walloped it across the snout. Fluffy and me don't talk on the way home.

When we arrive back at Chez Matchbox I find Fatty mixing concrete while Ishmael spurs him on with encouraging words like, ‘put your back into it', ‘faster-faster' and ‘not so much water, it must be like cake mix'.

I tell Ishmael, ‘It's your turn now, you lazy bones!' and take Fatty on a guided tour of Chez Matchbox. I introduce him to Sam Ho, who nearly swallows his eyeballs and says something like, ‘I heard you were big, but you're bigger.' And Fatty says something like, ‘And I'm still growing, so watch this space.' And then he stretches up and blows air into his cheeks so that he looks even bigger and scarier than before.

I catch Sam Ho's eye before it pops out of his head and give him a look which says, ‘I know your terrible secret and you need to fess up.' But before Sam Ho looks away he gives me a look that says, ‘You can't make me, and if you rat me out you'll die from facial boils and dandruff.' It's a stand-off between Sam Ho and me.

The tour of Chez Matchbox is quick – the sour-sour tree out back where Alistair spent his awesome days and the couch in front of the television where Alistair spent his awesome nights. Fatty and me spend a few minutes in respectful silence in front of Alistair's couch and then Fatty says he bets Alistair is going to be happy in that big garden with Kindness The Caretaker, and I think of the small concrete courtyard and the caretaker's unkind face, but I don't say I bet he won't.

Fatty is visiting me at Chez Matchbox to admire Heaven. And to educate me on the finer points of social networking. He is going to help me set up a Facebook account, so that I can network with my wide circle of friends (Melly, Sebastian and him). And he is also going to walk me through Twitter and set up an email account, so I can write long letters to Melly which she will be able to access on The Goddess and not have to wait for snail mail or read my gimpy text messages.

Fifteen minutes later I am a member of a community of five hundred million Facebook friends. Fatty is my first Facebook friend and I have sent friend requests to Sebastian and Melly and Rhonda Byrne and Mark Zuckerberg, who is the brainbox behind the Facebook concept (and so is obviously a very sociable kind of a guy).

I also have a Gmail account – [email protected] – and a Twitter account – @hotcalendargirl. This concept is Fatty's big idea. He says I must claim my identity and make the brand work for me. Running away from one's name will only cause one to be miserable.

I say, ‘Sure thing, Ricky.' Which is what he has asked me to call him now that we have achieved friend status.

Fatty says a person can leverage the Interweb to do just about anything (except scrub your back or dice a tomato), but sometimes it doesn't have the answers to the questions you most want to know.

‘Just google it. Google has the answers to everything,' I tell Fatty.

But he says, ‘No, Calendar Girl, Google can't tell me what I most want to know.'

I look at Fatty and I see the small picture of my face in his left eye. And I know that he can see his face in mine. And I don't blink. And neither does he. And I tell him that he can tell me what he most wants to know. And he says that he knows he can.

He says what he most wants to know is when we're eating lunch because he's starving. And I tell him that he doesn't have to joke around any more. I'm his Facebook friend; he can trust me. I say, ‘Tell me, Ricky.' So he does.

‘I want to know who my parents are. My real parents. Or at least my mom. I want to find her and ask her why she dumped me. Why she didn't think I was worth hanging on to. I'm so sick of feeling worthless and angry.' His cracked voice cracks so hard I'm scared it's going to splinter into tiny pieces.

My face starts swimming around in Fatty's left eye and I feel my eyes starting to act up too, so I blink. And so does he. And then I say, ‘I'm also starving. Let's eat.'

We are working our way through several loaves of bread and a month's supply of school-lunch tuna when Fluffy screams into the kitchen, grabbing at his hair. It's an emergency. He needs Heaven. He has forgotten the quantities for concrete. Their concrete is too runny. It's not like cake mixture. The bricks are slipping and sliding and not becoming a wall.

I could tell Fluffy the answer – one part cement, two parts sand and three parts gravel and go easy on the water – but I don't. Because I think, like Rhonda Byrne, that some secrets need to be shared – and I don't want to die of boils and dandruff. So instead I tell Fluffy that I'll get Heaven. And that I'll google concrete-mixing. And because I'm elbow-deep in tuna-mayo sandwiches and Fluffy and Ishmael are dripping in concrete mix Sam Ho can read out the recipe. And then I yell for Sam Ho and tell him that Fluffy needs him this instant. And I give him Heaven and then I watch.

Sam Ho sits on the stairs outside the kitchen and Ishmael and Fluffy look to him and Aunty Google for wisdom. Sam Ho stares at the screen and Ishmael says, ‘We haven't got all day, china, we've got a wall to build.'

And then Mrs Ho comes into the kitchen and stands behind Sam Ho. But she doesn't say anything because she doesn't want to get involved. And she doesn't want to discourage the workforce. So she stays quiet. And bites her cadaverous lips.

Finally Sam Ho says, ‘Three hundred and fifty grams of sand and two hundred and twenty millilitres of gravel and two hundred grams of cement.'

Fluffy says, ‘Stop horsing around, Sam Ho, and give us the real deal. This wall won't build itself.' But Sam Ho just repeats what he said.

And then Mrs Ho unzips her tight lips and says, ‘Sam Ho, this isn't funny. They are trying to build a wall.'

Sam Ho's face collapses in the middle and he says,‘I'm not messing around, this is what the recipe for concrete says.'

Mrs Ho peers down at Heaven. ‘Why on earth are you reading out the recipe for carrot cake?' she asks.

Sam Ho looks at me. His face is pale and there are bruises under his eyes. I look at him back and I say in my gentle voice – the one I use when he's taken the skin off his knees or dropped his Coco Pops in his lap – ‘It's okay, Sam Ho, you can let go now.'

And I take Heaven from him and I say to Mrs Ho, ‘Sam Ho has something he needs to tell you.'

Thirteen

The Lawyer

Trinity College has given us a long weekend. Yeeha!

There are three good things about these five days of leisure. The first good thing is that my best friend Melly is coming home. Finally.

After two major operations at Groote Schuur Hospital and a month of post-operative care at her Uncle James' guest house in Franschhoek, she has been certified well and truly better.

The second good thing is that Fatty (Ricky), Sebastian (Bas) and me (April-May) have been given permission by Miss Frankel (Geraldine) to take Alistair (The Awesome-ist) out for the day (Sunday).

Fluffy is going to take me in the stiff-mobile to collect Alistair from Miss Frankel's house (which is still for sale) and will drop us off at the park, where we will be met by Fatty and Sebastian, bearing bones for Alistair and a picnic for me.

The third good thing about the long weekend is that Fluffy and Ishmael are putting the final finishing touches to Chez Matchbox's luxury bedroom with en suite bath-room. It's either this or Mrs Ho is going to commit abusive acts which infringe upon their rights to life and dignity. She says this through her teeth because her lips have gotten so thin they have disappeared.

Fluffy says, ‘It's a piece of cake. No worries, Julia, things will be shipshape by the end of the long weekend.' They only have the plumbing and electricity to do. And then they must tidy up a couple of minor things, like the dozen or so too many air vents in the one wall where the bricks don't fit properly and the crop of unseemly cracks in the other wall (runny concrete effect). And then there's the small matter of a few coats of paint. That should do it.

Mrs Ho says that she doesn't want to know any more about it, she has her hands full with Sam Ho, who will be spending most of the five-day holiday doing a battery of tests to try and discover why on earth he is unable to read. This was Sam Ho's big secret. He can't read for toffee and had been busking it all along – until I bust him in my underhand and treacherous way. Sam Ho says that he'll never speak to me again for blowing his secret (a bit of a bonus, especially in the mornings, when I am not at my most conversational), but really I think he is relieved that he doesn't have to live a double life any more.

Mrs Ho is still trying to get to the bottom of Sam Ho's inability to decipher the written word. Does Sam Ho have a problem with his eyes? Or his ears? Or did he suffer an undetected brain trauma when he was involved in the tragic accident that removed Mr Ho from Planet Earth nearly two years ago? Or is Sam Ho just a dumb chop (my suggestion and not one of Mrs Ho's favourites).

Mrs Ho is in a big funk because she thinks that she's the dumb chop for being the deputy principal at Trinity College and never noticing that her own son can barely read his name, let alone tell the difference between a recipe for carrot cake and one for concrete. I've never been a slave to winning popularity contests so until she has it figured out I'm going big with the ‘dumb chop' diagnosis.

Apart from all the good stuff that is happening this weekend, there is the one bad thing – I have to spend the first two days of the holiday with Mom and Sarel at their home in Pretoria.

Fluffy says that it's only fair. During the past two months I have barely spent a weekend with Mom owing to a rash of debilitating illnesses which I have mysteriously attracted since the onset of my addiction to
House
.

For all those without DStv,
House
is a medical series about a super-smart doctor with an attractive limp called Gregory House. He walks a bit like Sebastian, except Sebastian doesn't have an über-cool cane (or a dangerous addiction to Vicodin).

With the assistance of Dr House I have had the symptoms for intracranial berry aneurysm (severe head-aches), Fabry disease (ringing in the ears and vertigo) and, Dr House's favourite, lupus – fatigue, aches and an unexplained fever (brought on by hot facecloths).

Mom keeps telling Fluffy, ‘May's bluffing …', and Fluffy keeps asking, ‘April, are you bluffing?', and I keep saying it just the way Dr House says it, ‘Everybody lies.' And Fluffy keeps winking and telling Mom that I'm really, really not feeling well, so maybe next weekend.

In any case, in the three weeks since my birthday Fluffy has had to tile the shower, screed the floor and plaster the walls, and none of this could have been done without Heaven, Aunty Google, YouTube and me.

I don't know what we did before I got Heaven. You want to know how to debone a chicken? Aunty Google tells me – and the masterclass chef on YouTube shows me how. You want to know how to give yourself a tattoo, perform a tracheotomy with a Bic pen, give a French manicure, keep a bee farm, assassinate a minor world leader, crochet a hot-water bottle cover? The answer to any of these and how to do a million other things come courtesy of YouTube and Aunty Google in Heaven.

Fluffy drops me off at Mom and Sarel's house in the posh suburb of Waterkloof in the stiff-mobile. ‘Just give your mom a break, April,' he says. ‘She loves you more than anything else in the whole wide world.'

I tell him to make sure that he shakes the paint tin properly before opening it, otherwise the colour on the walls of the en suite will be uneven.

Mom greets me with a troublesome hug and says she hopes I like the way she has redecorated my bedroom – soon to be my new baby brother's bedroom.

I tell her I have no time for interior décor. I have a school project to do and I need peace and quiet. And I need to do my project in Sarel's office.

‘Think again, May,' Mom says. ‘Not a chance. That's Sarel's business office.' It's out of bounds, even to her.

I say I need to work in a space that has been inhabited by a great man who has given birth to deep thoughts that have led to brilliant acts. I need to work in Sarel's office. ‘I want to be inspired and infused with the man's wisdom and intellect. I need to share his space.'

Mom says, ‘Goodness me then, of course, you must do your project in Sarel's office.' And then she smiles like she's just guzzled down a six pack of Vicodin.

I chuck my stuff down and set up camp on Sarel's desk, throwing myself body and soul into
The Lawyer
– my own reality show. I correspond with the number one chief at the Lost Souls Orphanage in Soweto, the big cheese at the Johannesburg Department of Welfare, the head honcho at the Department of Home Affairs (Braamfontein) and several other bigwigs at various other institutions.

I want answers. I am a hotshot lawyer from an ace legal firm in Pretoria and I have his stationery and signature and fax machine to prove it. I demand answers in the jargon of a legal eagle, jargon that is neatly set out in hundreds of legal documents that reside in Heaven (documents that Sarel The Sucker forget to erase from his computer before bequeathing it to me for my birthday).

I instruct the institutions that unless they play ball, and provide me with the full disclosure necessary to unlock the mystery of Project Fatty, I am going to make them wish that they were eating a plate of goat's tonsils or having their body parts dissected by a swarm of sand fleas (depending if they want to play
Fear Factor
or
Survivor
instead of playing
The Lawyer
with me).

The answers I want pertain to the circumstances of Fatty's birth. He wants to know who his parents are. And between Sarel's legal firm and me we are going to help him find them. Or, at least, find his mom. I instruct all the big cheeses to email their responses to my private secretary: April-May February at [email protected].

I spend the rest of my stay with Mom and Sarel ensconced in Sarel's office playing FarmVille and making friends with fabulous and interesting people all over the world. My three thousand and six Facebook friends include a set of identical Eskimo twins from Greenland, an exotic dancer at a three-star hotel in Cairo and a member of the Danish royal family.

And when I'm not Interwebbing I'm ignoring dis-cussions between Mom and Sarel about the second happiest day of their lives, which is just around the corner.

Mom is now certifiably with child. There is no mistaking the soccer ball below her waist for a bit of pigging out (oops, sorry, Fatty) over Christmas, or one too many chocolate marshmallow eggs on Easter Sunday. The only thing that needs to be discussed is the How of the Having.

Mom wants a home birth. Sarel wants Mom hooked up to every available piece of birthing equipment ever invented. As a compromise they are going for a home-birth-from-home delivery, which is a fantastic piece of marketing pap which only an expert spin doctor like Mom could fall for. She gets to have her baby with the aid of a midwife and a world-class gynae in a first-world hospital room which has been decorated like the entrance hall of a medium-sized house (where apparently most home-birthers have their babies).

Between the birthing option discussions, the packing and repacking of the home-birth-from-home suitcase, the shuffling about of the furniture in Baby's room and the birthing exercises that I am required to time using an Olympic stopwatch, the two days with Mom and Sarel are the stuff of nightmares. I am packed and ready to flee when Fluffy picks me up on Sunday morning.

At the exact moment the doorbell rings Mom and Sarel are in the midst of yet another name debate. The favourites are Sarette and Glorel, which are the expectant couple's combo compromises. And then there is Elvis-Jacobus, after Sarel's father, which is limping behind in blue suede shoes – but is still a close third. Even I feel a pinch of pity for the poor kid. Whichever way it goes he's screwed.

Fluffy parks the stiff-mobile outside Miss Frankel's soon-to-be-hopefully-sold house in the leafy street and I buzz kindly for the caretaker. Kindness appears ten minutes later, pulling Alistair behind him.

I call, ‘Alistair!', but he doesn't respond. Instead he keeps his tail fixed firmly between his legs just in case it springs loose and gives me a heck-it's-nice-to-see-you-April-May wag. I say ‘Alistair!' again and he growls.

Fluffy gets busy with the old bath towel on the back seat – to minimise the hair in the stiff-mobile – while I tell Kindness that we will have Alistair back by five o'clock.

Kindness hands me the leash and I coax Alistair onto the seat. He climbs in growling like I'm sticking needles into the backs of his knees, or his eardrums, or something.

We drive off and Fluffy says, ‘Crap!' and ‘Ruddy!' and ‘Stuffing heck!' and ‘Bloody!', which are the words Fluffy deploys when he is emotionally challenged about an issue. But he tends to use one of these child-unfriendly words at a time – not a whole string of them.

‘What are you going on about?' I ask as Fluffy stops the car a few metres down the road from Miss Frankel's house and reaches over to the back seat, where Alistair is crouching.

Fluffy says, ‘Just hang on a second with that growling, boy …' and parts the fur around Alistair's neck to reveal scabs. Alistair bares his teeth, but Fluffy is undeterred. He nudges Alistair onto his back and the tummy is displayed, scratched red and raw.

I think of Dr House and Chase and Foreman and Thirteen in that room of theirs, writing symptoms on the whiteboard.
A canine patient with an altered disposition, displaying antisocial tendencies, with neck scabs and tummy scratched raw.
I don't need Dr House or a calculator to add it all up and come up with the answer.

Alistair The Awesome-ist has been tortured.