Coconut (2 page)

We commence to sing the Peace Song. The Presentation of the Gifts and the Holy Eucharist follow. I know the proceedings so well that I am certain I could take the service if I so desired. I ceased using the prayer book in grade six when I realised that I knew all the congregation’s responses by heart. When Tshepo used to come to church with us we would say the priest’s part too, to see who knew it best.

Dear Diary
27 September 1997

Tomorrow is the 28th of September, the day of Tim Browning’s sleep-over party. I’m sure they will all be dancing the night away, while I sit in the middle of nowhere doing a whole bunch of fat nothing. Mama says I can’t go. Typical.

Nothing in my life is of any importance to anyone in this house. I just don’t understand them. How can they do this to me? I asked Daddy if I could go the same day I got the invitation and he said yes. The whole day at school yesterday, everybody was talking about what they would be wearing to the party. For the first time in a long while I could actually take part in the conversations, because for the first time in a long while I was actually going to a real party and not the stupid grade-one-type jumping castle parties that my dumb friends throw. Well, that’s what I thought anyway.

Mama tells me in the car, on our way home yesterday, that a former Headmaster of Thuto Pele Primary School in Atteridgeville was shot last weekend by two men he gave a lift to. She says he is married and that their youngest child is twelve, just as old as I am. She says that we are leaving for the funeral tomorrow morning (the 28th of September!) and that I should tell Tshepo that both of us need to be in bed early because we need to be out of the house by 5am sharp.

That’s when I blew. How could they forget about the biggest event of the year? Or do they just not care? They are trying to destroy my life. I’m sure of it! Look, don’t get me wrong, I feel really sorry for the man and his family. I don’t want to even think about life without Daddy. But what difference will me being there make? The people don’t even know me. What will they care?

My mother tells me, “It is respect, Ofilwe. Maybe she not know you or even me very very good. But these things we must do. We must be there at the funeral. Hmm? All of us must be there. These things are of immense importance. Very very great importance. We appreciate each other. We support each other. Next thing it is misfortune on our family. Huh? Just think about that. Also us, we will need these people.”

Bla dee bla dee bla fishpaste! I shot back, “Not actually, Mama, I do not want a bunch of strangers at my funeral pretending to care when all they are there for is the food!”

No, I didn’t say that. I thought it, though, and probably should have said it. It’s high time Mama knows how I feel. Doesn’t she understand that this party is my big chance? Tim Browning doesn’t just invite anybody to his parties. He wants me there for a reason. He told me once that I was different. Tim said that I was not like the other black girls in our class. He said I was calmer, cuter and that I looked a little like Scary Spice.

At nuptial and burial ceremonies, at thanksgiving days
ge re phasa Badimo
, I stand in reverence, out of everybody’s way, silently taking it all in, feeling most inadequate amongst a group of people who all seem to know exactly what roles they play in the age-old Pedi rituals. As the only female grandchild, I fear that day when my turn comes to run these sacred occasions. Organise, arrange, coordinate, sort out, control, fix… Speak! What is it that one is supposed to say? Perhaps there was a class I missed, lessons in my youth that I was supposed to attend and for some unexplored reason did not. I do not know what the mourning woman should wear, which way her yellow mattress should face, how long she should dress in black for, pray for, kneel for, cry for. I do not know who to call or who to send. What now if I command the guests to sing before the rain has fallen or beckon the children to sit on the left at the back instead of in the front on the side? I do not know how the sensitive messages are relayed, whether it is too soon or getting too late. I do not know how I am supposed to know, and whether I will ever know.

“Mama, what did we believe in before the missionaries
came?”

“Badimo.”
“
Badimo?”
“Yes, Ofilwe,
Badimo.”

“
Badimo
and what else? What else did we believe
Mama?”

“Just
Badimo,
Ofilwe.”

“But surely we had our own traditional rites, a name
for our God, a form of worship? Whatever happened
to that?”

“I do not know, Ofilwe.”

“Tshepo says they, the missionaries, tricked us Mama.
Or doesn’t it matter?”

“No. It does not matter, Ofilwe.”
“Do you think bo Koko would know?”
“Maybe, Ofilwe.”

“Or was it before their time? When did the missionaries
come?”

“ I do not know, Ofilwe. Goodnight.”
“OK, Mama, goodnight.”

I attend this ancient church because I am comfortable here. I understand nothing of the history of the church. I do not know what the word ‘Anglican’ means nor can I explain to you how the church came to arise. It is simple. I come here because I feel I belong. That is all. The traditions of the church are my own. I do not have any others.

After the service we follow our shadows down the white stony path to where our car is parked. In the days when there were four shadows, I used to watch them as they awkwardly moved ahead of us, sometimes catching them looking back to see if we were still behind them. I wondered how they knew where we wanted to go. In the days when there were four of them, Tshepo’s long and gangly shadow would glide ahead of all of ours as Tshepo ran to secure the front seat. Every Sunday Mama would futilely try to beat Tshepo to it and then scold him for taking her seat when her high heels and years prevented her from getting there before him. Every Sunday Daddy would remind Tshepo that in car accidents the passenger in the front seat is always the worst hit. Every Sunday Tshepo would smugly buckle up and pretend that he could not hear either of them.

After the 9.30am Family Service, all members of our church are invited to juice and biscuits in the hall-cum-school-cum-gymnasium across from the chapel. Even though it is seldom both juice and biscuits that the tea ladies provide, I often wish that we could stay. Watching our shadows lead us away from the soaring walls of the church and to our car as they have done every Sunday since I can remember, I realise that with age I have come to accept my family of four just the way it is. Mama is amiable but has no time to get too involved in the happenings of St. Francis Anglican Church. And Daddy – well, Daddy plays golf.

I didn’t tell Tshepo because I knew that he would believe me. I needed somebody to convince me that

I was lying. You see, the problem with Tshepo is that he thinks too much. Tshepo and Daddy had not been getting along very well and I didn’t want to exacerbate the tension between them.

I swear. It happened innocently. I do not pry. I would have been better off not knowing (whatever it is I think I now know). I needed to urgently call Maritza so that we could plan whether it would be wiser to dress in pants or skirts for school the next day, but Mama had been hogging the phone. I was getting anxious because it was getting late and Maritza’s parents did not take kindly to calls coming in after eight.

I discreetly picked up the study-room phone and used my pyjama top to cover the voice-piece. I wanted to know why Mama was still on the line. She was crying. Mama never cries. Koko was on the other end, which is not anything out of the ordinary because Mama and her mother speak daily. However, this conversation was different. Koko was speaking softly and so sternly with Mama. Koko said that Mama needed to stop acting like a spoilt child. Koko said that John – Daddy – was a man and that men do these things with other women, but that it does not mean he does not care for Mama. Koko said that Mama lives a life that many women from where she comes from can only dream of and that she cannot jeopardise that by ‘this crazy talk of divorce’.

“Divorce? You must never. Do not be selfish, Gemina. You must think, my child. Think. Use your head. Huh, Gemina? Have you forgotten your responsibilities,

Gemina? You have two young children… you must for them care. Two. Where do you think you will go if you leave John? Back home? Where, Gemina? Where do you have to go? What will become of all of you? Huh? Nothing. Without him, my girl, you is nothing.”

Nothing. Such a strong word. Nothing. I wondered about many things after Koko put down the phone and Mama walked up the stairs to slam her bedroom door. Was Koko right? Would I have turned out to be nothing if Mama had not married Daddy? Would I not be the same Ofilwe I am now if Mama had never made it out of the dreaded location? What if Mama had chosen love, where would I be now? What would I be now? Nothing?

Instead of waking up to my cubed fruit, muesli and mixed nuts on a bed of low-fat granadilla yoghurt, would I begin my day by polishing the red stoep that juts out at the front of Koko’s two-roomed house? When bored, would I pass the time by naming stones and creating homes for them in the wet dirt that surrounds Koko’s self-made outside toilet instead of playing Solitaire on Mama’s laptop, as I do now? Would I steal handfuls of sugar from the former mielie-meal bucket under the sink and run out to lie on the grass to let the sweet crystals melt on my tongue instead of forgetting to give Daddy back his change, forget it was not mine for the keeping and forget I was not supposed to use it to buy honey and almond nougat bars from the health shop outside the estate gates. Instead of a decaf Café Latte at Bedazzle on

Thursday nights would I freeze my Cool-Aid and save it for a really hot day? Would it matter to me who my clothes were named after?

Would I go into respiratory distress at the thought of wearing garments with no names at all? Would it be the complex security guard’s wandering eye or gunshots drawing ever closer in the night that made me uneasy? Would it be brightly lit tarred roads or whistling dusty streets that I travelled along?

As we climb into the car, there is a loud crashing sound that comes from the hall-cum-school-cum-gymnasium across from the chapel. A sound like cutlery, crockery, jars of jam and empty ice-cream tubs sliding off high shelves and crashing, smashing, shattering and thumping onto the floor… and some people’s heads. It gives all of us a fright and Daddy drops the car keys under the seat. A roar of laughter from the hall-cum-school-cum-gymnasium follows the loud crashing sound. It is obviously nothing serious.

“Where were you born, Fifi?”
“In Johannesburg, Mrs Williamson.”
“Don’t lie, Ofilwe, you were born in a stinky shack!”
“No I wasn’t, Zama! Shut up.”
“Stop being nasty, Zama. Fifi was not born in any sort
of shack, were you, Fifi?”
“No, Mrs Williamson.”

Our ageing car jitters slightly, sending tingles up my spine, as we drive on the gravel, out of the chalky churchyard, into the black road. Today I sit in the back seat alone. Mama sits in the front, alongside Daddy. Tshepo is at home, most likely lying in the hammock he claimed as his own when we discovered it at the bottom of the garden in our playing days. At one stage in my life my body was just short enough to fit along the length of the backseat. However, I never had it to myself then, so could never enjoy the luxury of using its cream hide as a bed when my eyes tired of watching trees flash past the window. Besides being far too tall and far too old for that now, I am no longer exhilarated by the idea of spreading my body across the back of Daddy’s car.

Stuart Simons is an obnoxious pig. What does he know about my family? I was so excited for Daddy. He had yearned for this specific car for almost a year, and could now finally afford it. Before the car came, Daddy used to page longingly through the automobile magazines and point out that in that specific car he would have ‘all the right machinery to roll with the big dogs’. Daddy would pick me up and put me on his shoulders and whisper that in that specific car he would cut all the right deals for sure, and with all the money he would make he would buy his precious Ofilwe all the chocolate-covered gobstoppers her heart desired. We had all gone to help him choose a colour, and had agreed that a silver-grey suited that specific car best.