100 Days of April-May (3 page)

Four

Mom Issues

I am lying in the shade of the sour-sour tree in the back garden of Chez Matchbox when my cellphone rings. I check the caller ID and reject the call. Someone out there is hell-bent on driving me crazier than I already am. In the last five minutes I've had three calls from the same number. The caller is a person of no words. Just loud breathing.

Thirty seconds later my cellphone bleeps. I have a text message:
Answr ur fone. It's me. Melly.

It's been three weeks since term started and my best friend Melly jetted off to the hospital on the coast to have an operation to make her breathe like a normal person. I can't wait to talk to her. We've been out of contact since Melly's mom decided she should have peace and quiet away from ‘bad influences' (aka me) as she prepared for the big op, and then some more peace and quiet during her recovery. To secure this outcome Melly's mom kidnapped The Goddess.

Melly has a BlackBerry. It is the goddess of all cell-phones. In contrast I have a phone that looks like a brick that was born when the idea of building the ark was just a faint twinkle in Noah's eye.

The Brick rings and I answer. ‘Melly?'

There is the sound of panting in my ear. Then a small voice says, ‘April-May?'

Melly tells me that she's called three times before and I've put the phone down on her. ‘Yes, I did,' I tell her. ‘I thought you were a stalker.'

Melly says she's calling from her father's cellphone as The Goddess is still being held hostage. She says that she's been dying to tell me about her operation. I tell her that I'm dying to hear. So Melly tells me.

The surgeons have carved and patched her lung, amputated several adenoidal obstacles in her nasal passages, excavated a million clogged taste buds, and she is now a certified nose-breathing, smelling, tasting person.

She breathes into the phone. Can I tell the difference? Can I hear that she is breathing at me through her nose?

I tell her she sounds like a phone stalker.

Melly says, ‘Please, April-May.'

I can hear how important it is to her, so I tell her that she sounds like the most regular nose-breathing person I have ever heard. Then she breathes through her mouth at me and while it sounds exactly the same I tell her the difference is remarkable. And it's as clear as crystal that she has graduated to the race of nose-breathers with flying colours.

Melly fills me in on her life as a regular nose-breather. Three days after the operation she could smell. Did I know that some people's armpits smelled like garlic? And two days after that she could taste. For the first time in her fourteen years on Planet Earth she tasted broccoli. It is disgusting – why hadn't I told her?

Since the recent acquisition of functioning taste buds she's been eating polony sandwiches morning, noon and night. ‘Polony sandwiches are my favourite food. Just like you, April-May.'

Then Melly asks about my life. She says that she's dying to know.

I tell Melly that I am now a certified crazy person along with nine other nutcases at school. We have all been sentenced to therapy sessions with Dr Gainsborough twice a week. There are ten crazies. Two per grade. The minimum quota to justify the cost of having a shrinkage service at Trinity College.

Melly gasps. She says that I must be mad. There's nothing crazy about me. Why am I seeing the school shrink?

I tell Melly that I have issues. Mom issues.

‘But, April-May, all girls have mom issues. It's the natural order,' Melly rasps at me. And then a cross voice which I recognise as belonging to Melly's mom says, ‘What do you think you are doing on your father's phone? Give me that at once. You're supposed to be resting.'

I hear the sound of tussling and gasping as Melly and her mom deal with their issues. Melly's mom wins.

‘Is that you, April-May February?' The voice over the phone is cross. Melly's mom is not as fond of me as she could be. She says my family has vulgar transportation habits and I'm a bad influence on Melly.

‘It is I, your favourite calendar girl,' I tell Melly's mom.

Melly's mom snorts. ‘Melanie is not supposed to speak at all. Not for another two weeks. And she must not get excited. She is in a very delicate stage of recovery.' Then she puts the phone down without saying as much as have a lovely day, April-May February, and give my regards to your father.

I think Melly's mom has vulgar telephone habits. I had been on the point of telling Melly about my sessions with Dr Gainsborough in his private office (which doubles as the Nutbox twice a week). I would have told her that I get shrunk in the session before the new bursary kid – Ericca Ntona (Fatty) – and just after a sad Grade Ten girl who has issues about swallowing her tongue.

Melly doesn't know anything about Fatty and I would have told her everything. Right from Day One, when he got me detention. And I would have also told her about Nameless Dog, who has been expressing his trauma at being orphaned by chewing his way through the contents of our house 24/7, and who is lying next to me under the sour-sour tree, snacking on Sam Ho's favourite Lego man.

But if Melly's mom hadn't been the one to cut our conversation short, my mom would have. Because she has arrived and is peering down at me. Just as I'm about to continue reading my new library book.

So I read. Because I do not wish to speak to her. And she shouldn't be here. It's not her weekend to have me.

‘What are you reading, May?' Mom asks.

Mom calls me May, Fluffy calls me April. When they split up two years ago they split the assets and my name. Some people take divorce a bit literally.

I roll my eyes and lift up the book. She can read the title for herself, can't she?

‘
The Interpretation of Dreams
by Sigmund Feud.' She reads it slowly.

‘Freud, not Feud,' I snap. Talk about a Freudian slip.

‘Is it interesting?'

‘No, Mum, I'm reading it because it's boring.'

‘May, would you put that book down. I want to talk to you.' Mom speaks to me in a timid sort of a voice. It makes me want to make her cry.

I give a large Melly-like sigh, as though I'm giving my under-used nasal cavities some physiotherapy. ‘What?' I glance up. My eyes cross over as I try and look at Mom without seeing her. I can't look at her face in case she catches my eye. I can't look at her body because … I just can't. My eyes start to feel funny, so I focus on her mouth. Her mouth makes words that say, ‘Sarel and I were just in the neighbourhood …'

My mom works for a public relations company, which means that she lies for a living. And she just can't seem to leave her work at the office on the weekends. Sarel and Mom are never just in the neighbourhood, unless they're intent on bugging me.

Sarel is my mother's new husband. He is a blood-sucking lawyer from Pretoria and he is ninety-two per cent bald. To compensate for his premature hair loss, Sarel wears a wig.

‘… so we thought we would just pop by to see whether you've changed your mind?'

I don't say anything. For a spin doctor who spends her working days twisting and tweaking the facts for fat-cat corporates, she should be more precise. Changed my mind about what? I give her my cross-eyed blank look.

Mom sighs. ‘If you have decided to come and see the scan of your new sibling with Sarel and me?'

‘No,' I say. And I start texting randomly on The Brick.

Mom sighs again. ‘No, you haven't decided, or no, you don't want to?'

Nameless Dog lifts his head from Sam Ho's mangled piece of Lego and growls. And then his fur rises like a fan of quills on his back.

Before I can say hey, Nameless Dog, this guy's a big-shot leech from Pretoria, he'll sue the hide off you if you so much as touch a hair on his head, Nameless Dog leaps into the air. He flies in the direction of Sarel, who has just appeared at the back door of the house.

The next fifteen seconds are a blur. When Sarel emerges from the vortex of activity he is wigless and there is no sign of Nameless Dog. ‘What was that?' Sarel asks, rubbing his hand tenderly across the top of his head. His head which looks like a pincushion.

‘Sarel, what is that?' Mom asks, looking at Sarel's head, and at his face which has collapsed into a mottled red blob.

It transpires that Pincushion-head has been having secret hair transplants in preparation for the best day of their lives – for when Baby is born. Sarel wants to be the kind of dad his child can be proud of. A dad with a full head of hairy pincushion hair.

Mom and Sarel forget about me and have an emotional moment. And then they remember me and ask if I've decided if I'm coming with them to the hospital to see a 3D movie of the person who will mark the best day of their lives.

I say, ‘Yes, and it's no.' They can keep their baby scan and their hair implants and I'll keep home with Sigmund Freud and Nameless Dog, who is busy burying Sarel's wig in a sunny spot by the washing line.

‘What's his name?' asks Sarel.

Nameless Dog looks at me expectantly, ears pricked. I could tell Sarel that he doesn't have a name because Miss Frankel is going to christen him when she claims him and takes him to his new home without a killer swimming pool. But I decide otherwise. I have a genetic disposition towards untruths. ‘His name is Killer.'

Nameless Dog howls in appreciation of my choice and then snarls at Sarel and Mom – to prove his credentials.

Sarel puts an arm around Mom's waist. I look away. From that waist.

Mom shudders. ‘I wouldn't want a dog like that. It's vicious. You should get rid of it, May.'

I glare at Mom.

‘What's wrong, May? What did I say?' Mom says, catching my icy stare. She shakes her head at me, like my behaviour is some sort of divine mystery. ‘I just don't know what has gotten into you these past couple of months. You're impossible and that's the truth.'

Bingo. Mom is looking at me like she's going to cry.

I pick up
The Interpretation of Dreams
by Dr Sigmund Freud and start reading.

Mom and Sarel leave, Mom gulping her way out of the yard like a sad fish chucked out of its bowl of water. Sarel like he really hopes the scan shows a son and not a daughter.

I don't tell Mom that I've got her number. I know the truth. I know that she has lied to me from the day I was born.

Five

The Big Day

Today is B-Day. The day of the Builders, the Big Move, Bathing and Bedlam. In that order. I swallow a fist of Fluffy's vitamin B-complex tablets to give me some zip.

Today the builders, Trevor and Phineus, start tearing the garage apart to make it into a groovy pad for some first-world soccer nut, who will pay through the nose in euro-gold for living in Chez Matchbox's luxury suite. And then vacate said groovy pad after the final whistle has been blown, leaving it all to me.

Trevor and Phineus are builders we can trust not to rip us off with shoddy work and long lunch breaks. They are trustworthy because they are related to Ishmael, Fluffy's best friend, through a brother on his late father's side of the family. They are close relatives. ‘Very close,' Ishmael has assured Fluffy.

It is close on eight o'clock and we've been waiting and waiting and the builders still aren't close to pitching up. They are an hour late already and are making me late for school and Fluffy late for work.

Fluffy says, ‘No worries.' He'll whisk me off to school in the stiff-mobile and then whisk home again to meet the builders. Swallows and Sons don't sweat an hour here or there – most of the clients aren't in a big rush to go anywhere.

Today is also the big move. It is the day that Mrs Ho and Sam Ho vacate their modest home in the suburbs and move into Chez Matchbox to cement our two half-families into one united family unit.

Fluffy has liberated some shelf space in his cupboards and set his softest pillow on the right-hand side of the bed next to the window for his new roomie, Julia Ho. Meanwhile I have spent the past month fostering in Nameless Dog an overwhelming love for the couch where Sam Ho will be attempting to lay his head every night. One of them is going to have to make a bed on the floor.

Fluffy whisks me off to school humming like a piece of rancid cheese and tapping madly to the violin concerto that plays non-stop in the stiff-mobile. The music is intended to keep the clients at peace on the journey to their final destination. It makes me want to impale my eardrums on the sharp ends of the windscreen wipers.

Fluffy says, ‘Isn't this great?' Tonight he gets to come home not just to me, but to Sam Ho and to Julia – just like a regular family. ‘Life doesn't get any better than this,' Fluffy says.

‘And Nameless Dog,' I add.

Fluffy nods. ‘Yes, and the dog.' The dog that Fluffy had told Julia would be happily ensconced with Miss Frankel in her new home with the tennis court by the time the big move happened. Because Sam Ho has allergies to all canine hair – and to Nameless Dog's hair in particular.

‘No stress, it's just for five months.' We'll survive until the soccer madness comes to an end and Julia and Sam Ho go back to their cottage in the 'burbs, I console Fluffy. ‘Then it will be just the two of us again. Back to normal.'

‘Five months?' Fluffy stops tapping. ‘Well, April, if things work out we could be looking at a more permanent arrangement.' He stares straight ahead, determined not to catch my eye. ‘I don't want to rush things,' Fluffy says and screeches to a halt outside the school gates.

I am struck dumb. I slam out of the stiff-mobile and rush off to class. I've missed the first lesson, but I'm just in time for Physical Education.

Physical Education is two capitalised words for the equivalent of having hot needles thrust into my eyeballs. It is the third B of my B-Day – bathing. Which is one word. Hell.

Don't get me wrong, I like swimming. I love flopping about in Melly's swimming pool. I adore lapping in the bath at Chez Matchbox, or seeing how long I can hold my breath underwater in Melly's jacuzzi. Aquatic sports are my forte. For sure I'm a big fan of swimming. But not at Trinity College.

I grab my swimming kit from my locker and make it to the changing rooms, where Tiffney and Britney and all the girls in the mean-girl gang are busy telling Coach that they can't swim today: ‘It's that time of the month.'

Coach is a middle-aged man with three daughters of his own. He likes chatting to Britney and Tiffney and Courtney and Stephney (and all the other girls with names stolen from American television soaps) about their time of the month as much as he likes talking to his own daughters about it. Which is not much at all.

He mutters something about them all bleeding to death with all these times of the months happening week in, week out, and then he asks if anyone will actually be swimming today.

There are some hard-core Charlene Wittstock clones, and the boys, standing at the diving-board end of the pool flexing their pecs. Then there's Fatty. And me.

Coach says get into pairs. ‘Take it in turns and practise the life-saving drill.' He'll be away for five minutes, getting the schedule for the gala (having a quick smoke).

Everyone pairs off. Everyone except Fatty. And me.

I've been labelled a million and one things by the mean-girl gang at Trinity College. I am: ‘Flat-chest', ‘Skinny-butt', ‘Bursary Kid', ‘Polony-muncher', ‘Brainbox', ‘Smelly Melly's Pelly', ‘The Freak Who Arrives At School In The Dead People's Car'. But over the past four weeks I have grown a new label: Fatty's Swimming Buddy.

Fatty and me haven't been big on dialogue since I called him a physically challenged porcine animal on the first day of school. And since he saw me watching him getting bullied on the soccer field and laughing. We only converse with each other on a strictly need-to-talk basis. And when we do address each other, we both pretend to be deaf and invisible.

I tell Fatty that he can go first. Fatty gives me his I-don't-see-or-hear-you look, so I say, ‘Okay, I'll go first then.'

I run and leap into the swimming pool and swim out into the middle. Then I wait for Fatty to jump in and displace thirty per cent of the over-chlorinated swimming pool water, accompanied by loud cheers and clapping from the bleeding monkeys watching at the side of the pool.

Fatty strikes out doggy-paddle-style in my direction. He's not a big fan of aquatic sports – he can't swim much.

I assume the in-distress drowning position, which involves a lot of arm-waving and head underwater-bobbing until I feel Fatty grab me by the hair and haul me to the side of the pool.

I'm going to skip the description of the next part of the life-saving exercise. It can be viewed on YouTube. It goes under the label:
Fat boy and skinny girl drown each other in hysterically funny life-saving exercise.
It has been viewed more than thirteen thousand times and has been liked more times on Facebook than
Ugly girl with pimples asks jock on a date.

For this slice of fame I have Britney and her BlackBerry to thank. And Fatty for being such a lousy swimmer and seven times my size, so that it is impossible for me to save him from drowning without us both swallowing the remainder of the over-chlorinated water in the swimming pool.

I'm not insecure. I don't need votes of public approval from my peers. YouTube is for losers with too much bandwidth on their hands and nowhere for their fingers to go.

And what I definitely don't need is two hours of detention from Coach for messing around and showing off in the swimming pool and imperilling the school's swimming safety record. Thanks, Swimming Buddy.

B-Day only gets worse. In the second lesson after break I am assigned crazy-girl status and excused from Religious Instruction to have my bedlam appointment – my therapy session with Dr Gainsborough to deal with my mom issues.

I am prepared for my shrink today. I have lined up three dreams that I can report to Dr Gainsborough and I have a good joke about a Freudian slip. I like to make these sessions meaningful for Dr Gainsborough, who is a slavish Freudian (right down to his goatee and funny round spectacles). Lined up on the shelves in his office between two identical busts of Dr Sigmund Freud are
The Interpretation of Dreams
,
Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious
and thirteen other books by the great psychoanalyst himself.

And lined up in front of Dr Gainsborough's desk is Emily, who blindly wags her tail as I enter, and Mom, who does not wag her tail because she does not have one and is not blind either.

I see Mom and I mean to say, ‘Hi, Mom, what a lovely surprise,' or something to that effect. But what I really say is, ‘What are you doing here, you liar?' Which is a Freudian slip. Except it's not a joke – and it's not funny.

I'm going to skip the next hour in the office with Mom and Dr Gainsborough. It's not on YouTube because the sessions with Dr Gainsborough are bound by patient-shrink confidentiality and I am not obliged to share my sessions with Britney and her BlackBerry. But if it was on YouTube it would be labelled:
Crazy girl spends hour staring at floor while blind dog licks her hand and shrink shares meaningful looks with mom.
It's a long title and it wouldn't get lots of likes on Facebook.

When I get home after my two-hour detention with Coach (cleaning last season's gob out of the school's goggles and snorkels) the house is very quiet. Quiet like the inside of the big freezer at Swallows and Sons, where Fluffy sometimes stores our perishables when the electricity at Chez Matchbox is cut off. There is no sign of Sam Ho. And there is no sign of Nameless Dog – just a pile of shredded Grade Twelve Biology essays piled up on the dog-hair-covered couch.

Fluffy and Mrs Ho are staring at each other across the kitchen table. They are not playing the blink first game.

‘This has been one of the worst days of my life, July,' Mrs Ho says, breaking the silence.

Fluffy is clawing at his hair. ‘I'm so sorry. Today of all days. I wanted everything to be perfect. Forgive me, Julia. I'm so, so sorry.'

Mrs Ho reaches over and grabs Fluffy's hand, trying to stop him beating up on that hair of his. Then they see me and look up; their eyes glassy.

‘What's happened?' I ask. The sense of tragedy is marked on their faces. ‘The electricity been cut off again?'

They shake their heads. It's worse than that.

Fluffy's hand hits that scrubby patch of hair again. ‘It's Sam Ho. He's in hospital. I nearly killed Sam Ho.'