Coconut (4 page)

Ayanda and Fikile dress in black jeans and a black T-shirt with a print of a large silver spoon running down their spines. If it were not for the white aprons they tie around their waists and the darting they have to do from table to table and for the fact that, besides us and the kitchen staff, they are the only black people in Silver Spoon, you could mistake them for customers. They blend in far better than Tshepo does in his yellow rooster suit which he wears to make deliveries for Instant Fried Chicken in Pine Slopes. Tshepo started working there when I was in grade eight and he was in grade eleven, first as a waiter then as a delivery boy.

When Tshepo told me he had inquired about a waitering job at Instant Fried Chicken, a greasy little fast-food joint in Pine Slopes, I laughed because I did not think he was serious. As much as Tshepo liked to push the whole “down with the people thing”, he is by nature the type whose mere existence depends on being intellectually stimulated, so I was pretty certain that even if he was to go as far as showing up for his first day at work, he wouldn’t last longer than a week.

Of course there’s no use in trying to reason with Tshepo when he’s made up his mind, so when the day came for Tshepo to go in to work I simply waved goodbye and went back to sleep. I don’t think I even asked how it went when he got back later that afternoon because I knew he would lie. “It was great,” he told Mama at supper that evening. Lies. How could it be great? How can cleaning after people ever be great? He exasperated me, Tshepo, so I ignored the whole thing, and if we spoke at all we spoke about other stuff and not his dumb job.

But a couple of months later while rummaging in his room for a sharpener, I came across what may have been an entry in his journal.

I realise when I get there that Mama, as I had quietly suspected, was wrong about the traffic. I arrive at 6.15, forty-five minutes early, to an abandoned parking lot. There are no cars going towards Pine Slopes on that road at that time of the morning. I initially park right outside Instant Fried Chicken. There is a ‘Staff Only’ sign back there, but I decide that parking there would appear somewhat forward. So I park in the open parking area, close to Ashanti’s, the boutique where Mama buys her hair.

Isabella, the lady I sent the email to, is not there as we arranged, but there is a closed Indian man involved with the till, who says, once hesitantly asked, that he is Sir Nathan, the manager, and that Isabella has told him nothing about anything. Nevertheless he writes “Tshepo Tlou” on a name tag which he sticks on my shirt and points me to the kitchen and recommends that I make myself ‘visibly useful’ until Isabella arrives.

It is eerie being here without the customers. I battle to find my bearings. The three-legged, glow-in-the-dark, lime-and-orange stools, packed face down along the length of the tables, look like simple-minded mutant recruits under the 6.17am Monday morning light. The door I think leads to the kitchen is locked, so I stand ready outside it. I hear them before I see them. The group of men and women, singing Mafikizolo’s
“We bhuti ndihamba nawe
”, carrying black-and-yellow chequered plastic bags which hold empty skaftiens that will later be filled with customer’s leftovers, are the Instant Fried Chicken staff. I am afraid of them. I know I am different. I reek of KTV, IEB, MTV and ICC, although I have tried to mask it behind All Stars sneakers and a free Youth League election T-shirt. I am certain they will catch me out as soon as I open my mouth. They do not, or rather, if they do, it is of no significance, for they treat me like any other. I too stand above the deep buckets of fierce oil: plucking, washing, stuffing, spicing, basting, turning one naked chicken after the other, but not managing to sing ‘
ndihamba nawe
’ simultaneously, like the rest of the staff promise.

The faceless Isabella does ultimately arrive. The room temperature plummets. I feel her before I see her. The chorus comes to an abrupt halt, just as we are getting to ‘
We bhuti!
’ Sepekere spots Isabella’s TT pulling into the ‘Staff Only’ space I am now grateful I did not park in. Sis Giant, attempting to jump off the counter and throw her coffee down the sink at the same time, causes everything around her to vibrate violently. Poor Pinki drops a tray of breasts into the searing oil. Sir Nathan yells from the floor that we are moving too slowly and Small mutters that I should pick up a knife, fast. She enters with a ‘tah-dah’, dressed from head to toe in pink. Her olive skin, unusual green eyes and dark brown locks suggest she is from across the equator, towards the left.

She is irritated. She screams in an unfamiliar accent, that Table No. 5 asked for Lemon and Herb but that we gave them Schwit Chilli. Schwit Chilli? She asks us, between profanities, why it is that we have difficulty distinguishing between the two, and whether it is because we only have a crèche-school level education. I am offended. I must correct her, point out that I, Tshepo Tlou, in fact graduated as Dux Scholar from my junior school, taking all the subject prizes including The Reader Award and the certificate for Most Promising Pupil from an Underprivileged Background. She will curl up in shame when she hears I have received academic honours three years in succession at my current high school, am Vice-Captain of the senior cricket team despite my age, co-chair of the debating society, deputy president of Student Link and have just recently been offered a scholarship to further my education at any tertiary institution in the country. I, however, dare not utter a word, it is still early, I must be patient, there will come a time when I will educate this woman.

Isabella puts me to work on the floor, not before reminding me that she is doing me a great service by hiring me because ‘already, I am overstaffed’. She does not normally do this, she adds, so I must not forget that I am very fortunate. She commends me for my politeness and says she hopes I will teach her air-headed staff a thing or two about manners. She sighs heavily. ‘We must try do a part to help with the unemployment in this country.’ She sighs again, says, ‘Even if you employing lazy, ungrateful people who don’t deserve nothing.’ The sigh that follows this last statement is drawn out and smells of garlic. There is silence and I am uncertain if it is my prompt to say something. Say what? Should I congratulate her? I try a ‘you are a good woman, ma’am.’ She shrugs. She smiles. This time I sigh, relieved that I am in the door. However, my hallelujahs are cut short by a sharp ‘Enough talking. This restaurant does not run itself.’ I am to wait on Section B with Nozipho, a charming jelly-tot of a waitress with cornrows.

I squeeze between the tables, not noticing the full-faced purple-nosed housewife who sits hunched up like a beach ball at the table on my right. She looks up. Our eyes meet or at least I think they do. ‘Good morning ma’am,’ I genially greet, picking up the salt cellar I am sure she does not know has dropped off her table. Does she not hear me? Perhaps she has a great deal on her mind. That look, or rather lack thereof, sticks with me throughout the day, maybe because it is foreign or maybe because it is one I get over and over again as I move from one table of milky faces to another. Do these people not see me, hear me, when I speak to them? Why do they look through me as if I do not exist, click their fingers at me as if it is the only language I understand?

I am enraged. I want to call them all to order. Tell them that they have no right treating people the way they do. I want them to hear my voice. I want them to listen to the manner in which I speak. I want to slap their stuffed faces with my private school articulation and hurl their empty skulls into a dizzy spin with the diction I use. I will quote our democratic Constitution. I will remind them that it is now, and not then. I will demand respect.

I purposefully stride into the kitchen certain that the staff will agree with me on my decision to raise this matter with Isabella urgently. Surely we cannot be expected to graciously serve such offensive people? The staff, however, do not share my passion; instead they ridicule it.

‘It is true!’ they chuckle, without even looking up from the plucking, washing, stuffing, spicing, basting, and turning of Lemon and Herbs and Schwit Chillis. ‘These Model C children know nothing of the real world. They are shocked by the ways of
Umlungu
. It is good you have come to work, boy. There is much you must learn.’

Now that lunch hour is over, the singing begins again, except this time the kitchen’s song is a wordless hum. Isabella is still in the building. I am ashamed. I sit outside under the insensitive three o’clock sun, with a menu hanging from my hand, pretending to memorise the items. Small, who brags that he is the only waiter to have ever scored 100% in the Instant Fried Chicken menu test, sleeps a bottomless sleep on the step below me after having been annoyed by the ease at which I learnt the names of the dishes. I do not know why I am there. I do not need the money nor will the experience be of use to me in any of my desired career paths. I deplore the customers. I despise Isabella. I detest what the kitchen represents. I do not know what I am trying to prove, why I must prove it and to whom.

We are regulars here at Silver Spoon, but are not chummy with Miss Becky, the owner, like the other regulars are. I am familiar with most of the beaming faces in here today, but do not jump up excitedly when I see any of them enter nor do I blow darling kisses across tables as they often do when they see each other.

Fikile, we all agree, fits in fine. It is our fault that after numerous breakfasts, one Sunday morning after another, we have not tried to assimilate ourselves into the Silver Spoon Coffee Shop family tree.

I hate it, Lord. I hate it with every atom of my heart. I am angry, Lord. I am searing within. I am furious. I do not understand. Why, Lord? Look at us, Lord, sitting in this corner. A corner. A hole. Daddy believes he enjoys this food. Poor Mama, she still struggles with this fork and knife thing. Poor us. Poor, poor, poor pathetic us. It is pitiful. What are we doing here? Why did we come? We do not belong.

Lord, I am cross with You. I, they, thousands of us, devote our lives to You. Some, Father, labouring endlessly so that You may be pleased. But still, Lord, still we are shackled. Some shackled around the ankles and wrists, others around their hearts, but most, Lord, are shackled around their minds.

They laugh nastily, Lord. You cannot hear it, but you see it in their eyes. You feel the coldness of it in the air that you breathe. We are afraid, Lord, that if we think non-analytical, imprecise, unsystematic, disorderly thoughts, they will shackle us further, until our hearts are unable to beat under the heavy chains. So we dare not use our minds.

We dare not eat with our naked fingertips, walk in generous groups, speak merrily in booming voices and laugh our
mqombothi
laughs. They will scold us if we dare, not with their lips, Lord, because the laws prevent them from doing so, but with their eyes. They will shout, “Stop acting black!” “Stop acting black!” is what they will shout. And we will pause, perplexed, unsure of what that means, for are we not black, Father? No, not in the malls, Lord. We may not be black in restaurants, in suburbs and in schools. Oh, how it nauseates them if we even fantasise about being black, truly black. The old rules remain and the old sentiments are unchanged. We know, Lord, because those disapproving eyes scold us still; that crisp air of hatred and disgust crawls into our wide-open nostrils still.

Fikile tells us that our bill is ready, and that she will return in a ‘sec’ to collect our payment. Daddy is in the men’s room so Mama smiles a nod at Fikile. Daddy will pay when he returns. The swinging door knocks against the back of my chair as Fikile re-enters the kitchen. She did that on purpose, I would say to Tshepo if he was here, but I slide my chair closer to the table and say nothing because Tshepo is not here. What’s her problem? Nobody asked for the bill anyway, Tshepo might say in response.

When Old Virginia tired of trying to chase Tshepo away and gave in to the little boy who would follow her around the house with his toy broom, mop and dustpan set, she would empty her bucket, set down her multipurpose rag and lead Tshepo outside to the grass where she would seat him on her lap and tell him stories. When Tshepo grew too smart for Old Virginia and found it inappropriate to follow her around, he led me into the garden to tell me stories of the stories Old Virginia once told.

Let us remember that time of old.

…Nkano

We will all appreciate that things were a lot quieter then.

…Nkano

We will recall that we could hear then.