100 Days of April-May (4 page)

Six

Dumb Chop

There's a seriously wicked game going on among my feathery friends in heaven. And I'm not talking about the angels. It's the birds.

This is how the game works: every bird gets a certain number of points for hitting a particular target. And the first bird to get a thousand points wins. I know about this game because of the stiff-mobile. It is Exhibit A. Proof that the Aves species of Johannesburg are engaged in a fiercely competitive game of Target.

I'm betting that hitting the Swallows and Sons vehicle gets a bird five hundred points, which makes it an über-popular target. If you hit it twice in one day, you double up on points in record time and win. Which, in turn, means that every evening before supper Fluffy has to clean the stiff-mobile. ‘It's all about respect,' Fluffy says. His clients deserve to be carried to their final destination in a vehicle that has been scrubbed of starling guano.

After the car is spotless, Fluffy puts it away in the garage so that he can start out the fresh day in a fresh car with a fresh client.

This is the car that Fluffy, Mrs Ho and me are piled into. Except Fluffy hasn't got around to cleaning it yet – because of the Sam Ho crisis. We are heading off to the hospital with a fruit basket (a couple of naartjies and a banana), some board games and a change of clothes for Sam Ho.

On the way to the hospital Mrs Ho fills me in on the day's drama. It sounds like way more fun than cleaning green goop out of aquatic apparatus for Coach.

Fluffy had fetched Sam Ho from school and brought him home to a house covered in dust – from the building – and canine hair – from Nameless Dog. Predictably, Sam Ho's eyes swelled into blood-red orbs, his chest closed up (making him sound like a sixty-Texan-Plain-a-day Hospice inmate) and his skin broke out in a leprous rash.

‘Your father did what he thought best,' Mrs Ho says.

In the interest of restoring Sam Ho to health, and to avoid the wrath of Mrs Ho, Fluffy had turned to drugs. ‘It was just a couple of antihistamine. They're over-the-counter too. People eat them like Smarties in the autumn,' Fluffy says.

But instead of a couple of antihistamine, Sam Ho had chowed down on Fluffy's old bronchitis tablets.

‘He's allergic to penicillin,' I say, bringing the dramatic Sam Ho saga to its conclusion.

‘He's allergic to penicillin,' Mrs Ho says, like an echo. And then she turns to Fluffy and shakes her head. ‘I just can't imagine why Sam took the wrong tablets.'

I tell Fluffy and Mrs Ho that I'm so glad Sam Ho's going to be okay and Fluffy beams at me like he's a one-hundred-watt bulb and says, ‘That's my girl.'

Call me sentimental or schmaltzy, but I like Sam Ho fit and healthy. There's no joy in tormenting a dead kid.

Sam Ho is in a ward with five other kids who look in far worse shape than he does – he's bouncing about on his hospital bed as if it's a trampoline.

Mrs Ho and Fluffy fuss over Sam Ho like he's had a near-death experience while I set up a game of snakes and ladders. Sam Ho is a genius at the game and in our last tournament he beat me nineteen times in a row. I figure I should take advantage of his weakened condition to stage a comeback.

Sam Ho rolls the dice and I roll the dice, and I climb those ladders and fall down those snakes, but Sam Ho rolls and climbs and climbs. He climbs those ladders through whatever ceiling it is that prevents eight-year-old trolls from succeeding until the score is five–nil.

‘Well done, son,' Fluffy says and he puts a fatherly hand on one of Sam Ho's shoulders as Mrs Ho puts her motherly hand on the other.

The picture of Father, Son and Mrs Ho fills my heart with venom. ‘So, how come you made such a stupid mistake with the pills?' I ask Sam Ho. I say these words in the tone that the first snake of Creation used with Eve when he offered her the apple and promised to be her friend for the rest of eternity. But Sam Ho knows I'm calling him a dumb chop by my use of the ‘stupid' word. Which he is.

A strange expression crosses Sam Ho's face. It's the same look he gives the dice before he rolls. He knows he's risking a score that will take him shooting down a snake to the bottom row of numbers, but he doesn't have any option but to play. ‘I didn't make any mistake. I took the pills from the box on the shelf. From the box Fluffy told me to,' Sam Ho says.

There's a sharp gasp from the side of the bed. The kind of sound that some poor aunty makes when you turn off her life-support system. It's Mrs Ho. ‘July?' she says.

Fluffy shoots panicky looks between Mrs Ho and Sam Ho and me. He shakes his head. ‘I told you to take a couple of Allergex. The box is on the top shelf in the bathroom. Clearly marked. Next to my bronchitis muti – but I told you to make sure you took the Allergex.'

Sam Ho shakes his head back at Fluffy. And as much as Fluffy splutters and mutters and says, ‘That's not how it happened, Sam Ho, it isn't …' Sam Ho just shakes his head at him. ‘I took two pills from the only box on the shelf.' Then Sam Ho says he's feeling kind of wiped out and senses a relapse coming on. He needs to rest. He's been booked in overnight for just in case.

Mrs Ho feels Sam Ho's head. ‘I don't like the look of him,' she tells Fluffy.

I tell Sam Ho that I don't like the look of him either. His face is the stiff mask of a liar and I don't like it one bit.

On the way out of the hospital Mrs Ho says she wants to stop by the hospital pharmacy to get some Allergex, ‘because it seems we have none in the house'. She says this in a tight-lipped sort of way which makes Fluffy look miserable and grab at his hair.

Fluffy and me hang around outside the pharmacy while Mrs Ho goes inside. Five minutes later she emerges with the drugs that will keep Sam Ho's eyeballs from exploding and discourage him from ripping layers of skin off his face. ‘You'll never guess who I met in the pharmacy,' Mrs Ho says.

I don't even have time to play the guessing game with Mrs Ho because Fatty and his pale-faced mom emerge from right behind her.

There are some people called Determinists who believe that there are no coincidences in the world. Everything that happens can be related to a prior incident or association, no matter how big or small. And maybe they are right because the chance meeting at the pharmacy of Fatty, his mom and Mrs Ho turns out to be all my fault.

‘He was involved in a bullying incident at school and had an asthma attack,' Mrs Ho whispers to Fluffy.

Fluffy looks sharply at Fatty. ‘Serves him right,' he hisses back at Mrs Ho. ‘A boy that big can really hurt the smaller kids.'

Mrs Ho pulls Fluffy into a corner and fills him in the way Grace – Fatty's mom – had filled her in: some malicious student at Trinity College had attempted to drown Fatty in swimming class. ‘The poor kid is a novice swimmer and had a terrible asthma attack after school.' That's why they're here – getting another asthma pump for Fatty.

‘The other boy must have been big,' Fluffy says and gives a long whistle through his teeth.

The other boy tells Fluffy and Mrs Ho it's time to make tracks. ‘I've got loads of homework to do.' (That I didn't get to do because of Detention.) I don't say the last part. It only causes tension in the home.

But before I can make my escape, Mrs Ho introduces Fluffy to Grace, and Fatty to Fluffy, and Grace to me. ‘You and Ericca obviously know each other?' Mrs Ho says.

Fatty and me grunt at each other and I fix my eyes on his and wait for him to blow me out of the water for attempting to submerge him permanently in the school swimming pool. I hold his gaze and dare him to rat me out. And as I stare into those big brown eyes that tell me he dislikes me as much as I dislike him, I see my face. Just for a second. And then Fatty blinks and I'm gone.

And then we are all on our way home. Fatty and pale-faced Grace in their shiny red Toyota Corolla and Fluffy, Mrs Ho and me in the stiff-mobile, which is displaying yet another special gift from the starlings and their pals the Indian Mynas on Mrs Ho's side of the windscreen.

Mrs Ho tells Fluffy all about ‘the Ericca Ntona matter' for thirteen of the fifteen blocks home. It turns out that Fatty was found abandoned as a baby in a locker room and after being in and out of foster homes for fourteen years has now been formally adopted by Grace. However, things are not going very well because Fatty is a difficult, distrustful child and has bonding issues, which is why he is seeing the school shrink.

Mrs Ho knows all this stuff because she's the one who interviewed Fatty when he applied for a bursary at Trinity College. ‘He's enormously bright,' Mrs Ho says.

‘Yes, enormous,' Fluffy replies.

Mrs Ho says that it breaks her heart to see the way Fatty and Grace interact. ‘Did you see the body language? That boy is as stiff as a gurney around that lovely woman. He's determined not to show her an inch of affection.'

‘Not an inch,' Fluffy murmurs.

We get home and Fluffy parks the stiff-mobile in the street – the garage is off limits because of the builders. We all take a good long look at the hole Trevor and Phineus have bashed in one side of the garage wall.

‘They don't seem to have made much headway. Just a lot of mess,' Mrs Ho says, which scores her one hundred per cent for observation. It's Ground Zero.

‘They say it will be all over in a couple of weeks, Julia,' Fluffy replies in a croaky voice, the one he uses when the words get stuck in his throat because he's not sure if they're going to leap out of his mouth and call him a liar.

Nameless Dog has left a welcome-to-Chez-Matchbox present for Mrs Ho in the entrance hall which she obligingly tramples all the way down the passage into the kitchen. He has also expressed his opinion on the woollen sweater Mrs Ho knitted Fluffy for his birthday last year (seventeen scraps strewn across the kitchen floor). And he has given a short review of Mrs Ho's new library book (it's in three parts and missing the cover).

‘This has not been a good start to our new life together, July,' Mrs Ho says before she collapses onto the couch, which has been reupholstered in hair by Nameless Dog.

I make a quick retreat to the bathroom and leave Fluffy to deal with Mrs Ho's emotional meltdown. Inside, I give the toilet a loud and vigorous flush and run some water to block out the heartfelt sounds from the hairy couch. Then I open the bathroom cupboard. There are two boxes on the top shelf. The first contains tablets clearly marked Allergex. The other has a faded label.

I flash back to the hospital and to Sam Ho's face. The face with the shut doors and drawn blinds. There are three possible explanations for Sam Ho's behaviour: either Fluffy tried to kill Sam Ho, or Sam Ho is a dumb chop – or Sam Ho was trying to kill himself.

Seven

The Game

I call Melly on her cellphone, but The Goddess is sulking. She clicks off without allowing me to leave Melly a message. I try Melly's dad's phone, which isn't sulking, and tells me to ‘go away, you ruddy nuisance' in Melly's dad's voice.

When cellular communication spits in your eye, it's time to go back to the Stone Age. I deploy my initiative and call the Groote Schuur Hospital switchboard. Then I demonstrate my get up and go and tell the matron on duty in Ward Seven that it is absolutely imperative that I speak with Melanie.

The matron demonstrates her go-away-and-get-lost zeal and says, ‘Why? This isn't a hotel, it's a hospital. Are you a blood relative?'

I tell Matron that I am closer than a blood relative to Melanie. I am Mara Louw from M-Net
Idols
and I am phoning Melanie to congratulate her on being one of the one thousand lucky contestants who will be auditioning live on television in three weeks' time. It is totally essential for the show's ratings and for Melanie's future as the country's favourite pop idol that I speak to her.

Thanks to Mrs Ho and her television set and her PVR, which have taken up residence at Chez Matchbox in front of the couch, I am now one hundred per cent au fait with reality shows.
Who Wants to be a Millionaire?,
Survivor
,
Big Brother
,
Idols
, you name it. I am a certified reality show addict.

Matron says sorry, Mara, but Melanie is going to have to take a rain check on fame and fortune. ‘She hasn't been doing too well, and as we speak she is in theatre undergoing a second operation.' Then Matron says in a gentler voice, ‘Are you a young lady called April-May February from Johannesburg?'

I say, ‘How did you guess?'

Matron says Melanie had told her all about me. ‘She hoped you would call and I'm sorry to have to give you this bad news, April-May. Call this evening and I'll be able to tell you how she is.'
Click
. (The click is Matron putting down the phone.)

I assume the lotus position and perform ten minutes of Buddhist breathing exercises to stop my heart from exploding. Five hundred and fifty-two. Breathe out. Five hundred and fifty-three. Breathe in. Then I concentrate on the actual breath without counting. And finally I focus only on the spot where the breath enters and leaves the nostrils, which is sort of the upper lip area.

By the end of ten minutes my heart rate is back to a normal person's heart rate and not someone who is terrified that she is going to lose her best friend on the operating table in Groote Schuur Hospital.

This is my second session of meditation for the day. The first session takes place at school in the privacy of the Lost Property Room following an incident that causes my heart rate to mimic that of an Olympic athlete on dodgy vitamins. It's the reason I was calling Melly in the first place.

If I had been able to speak to Melly I would have told her all about Fatty and the Triple-T game. The game that Britney and Stephney and Tiffney played with Fatty at first break which caused my heart to palpitate.

The two lessons before first break are Maths. Call me a calculator if you like, but for sure I devour numbers and logarithms and equations the way Fatty guzzles lamb-stew sandwiches.

And Fatty has emerged as a bit of a number-cruncher himself. I have a fifty per cent chance of walking home with the Maths prize this year – Fatty holds the other fifty per cent. It's why we are the bursary kids. We get to beat all the dumb kids who pay fees to come to this school.

My Maths teacher this year is Mr Benjamin Bendell and he is crazy about everything and anything mathematical. Ben-squared is particularly obsessed with fractals, which a French super-genius by the name of Benoit Mandelbrot developed to explain patterns in the seemingly random shapes around us.

A whole cauliflower can be seen in every cauliflower floret – this is one of Mr Mandelbrot's more incisive claims. It's not my favourite vegetable, but I get the logic.

And Ben-squared has taken Mr Mandelbrot's thesis further – in every naartjie pip there is a citrus orchard. In every lamb chop, a flock of sheep. In every Catholic priest, the Vatican. And so on. He has plotted the Mandelbrot set (a mathematical set of points in the complex plane, the boundary of which forms a fractal) in a PowerPoint presentation. For the next two hours he shows the class slide after slide of visually represented fractals. We see seahorses and naartjie peels and paisley-shaped bunches of broccoli.

It is complex maths and Fatty and me appear to be the only two students who have some grasp of what Ben-squared is on about. The rest of the class have a virtual mini-riot, Tweeting and Facebooking and MXiting on their cellphones.

The bell rings and I make my way to the quad to eat my lunch. My lunch box reveals a lettuce-and-tuna sandwich on wholewheat bread. There is also a banana and some freshly squeezed granadilla juice.

The pattern that is developing from the daily content of my lunch box is clear. Mrs Ho is waging war on Fluffy and my tardy dietary habits, which have flourished like a fungus in the absence of a sensible hand on the refrigerator.

In the three weeks that she has been living at Chez Matchbox, polony and two-minute noodles have been banished from the shopping list. A balanced diet and regular exercise are the keys to a healthy mind and body, Mrs Ho says.

My tongue is busy doing press-ups in my mouth, digging granadilla pips out of my underdeveloped wisdom teeth, when I hear the chant. It's coming from the soccer field, where the up-to-no-good kids take their nonsense (far away from the eyes and ears of the stop-this-nonsense-immediately teachers).

The chant gets louder. And out of the random noise, a pattern takes shape. ‘Tell the truth. Tell the truth. Tell the truth.'

By the time I get to the top field a lynching party has gathered. Twenty kids have formed a circle on the field. There are the usual suspects: Britney, Stephney, Tiffney and the rest of the mean-girl gang. There are also a couple of arbitrary guys who like to hang with mean girls. And at the centre of the circle is Fatty.

There are a few things that I have learned in my almost fifteen years on Planet Earth. The first is that people don't get what they deserve: bad guys get away with murder and live. Good people get cancer and die. The second is that if you put bubblegum in your hair you're going to have to cut it out with a pair of scissors (along with half your hair). And the third is that there are moments in your life that you will wish you could do over. Things you know you could have done better, or said better, or where you could have been better. This is one of those times.

I stand at the edge of the circle and I watch Britney and Stephney and Tiffney scream at Fatty. ‘Tell the truth: What size pants do you wear?', ‘Tell the truth: How much do you weigh?', ‘Tell the truth: How many sandwiches do you eat every day?' The questions come at him like bullets.

They shout and laugh and scream at Fatty, who sits in the middle of the circle with his hands over his ears. He doesn't look at them. He doesn't answer them. And he doesn't give them all a knuckle sandwich to make them shut up.

I know I have to do something, so I stick my elbows out and I walk into the crowd the way Fluffy says I should walk if I'm ever in a situation where my personal space is threatened. ‘Those elbows will make people move,' Fluffy says.

Fluffy's always got his finger on the ebb and flow of the pulse of life. It's in his job description.

The crowd of mean girls moves as I walk with my elbows. They move towards me and into my personal space. Their faces are so close to me that I can count the number of blackheads on Tiffney's nose and the tiny dark hairs on the top of Britney's lip.

They push me into the circle, so that I am standing next to Fatty's crouched form. And then they play the ‘tell the truth' game with me.

They shout things at me phrased as questions that are meant to make me feel like a flat-chested, polony-sandwich-guzzling bursary kid who gets a ride to school in the dead people's car. I'm all of these things. And I've heard it all a million times. The mean-girl gang has never scored high on originality: ‘What car does your dad drive?', ‘What bra size do you wear?', ‘Who pays your school fees?'.

If we were on
The Weakest Link
I would have walked off with the jackpot, but it's not that sort of a game and I can feel the circle of kids closing in on me. I need to get away. To get some air. To breathe. White dots are dancing at the back of my eyes, forming a pattern in which I slowly recognise two words: Walk Away.

I do the elbow walk through the crowd again. As I walk away I hear them start on Fatty for a second time: ‘Tell the truth. Tell the truth. Tell the truth.'

I walk away from the mean-girl circle and find some silence in the Lost Property Room with the manky socks and the spare shoes and the lunch boxes of forgotten cheese sandwiches.

I breathe and breathe until I can't hear the chants in my head any more. Then I get my satchel and cut school. I run from that red-brick building with its blind clock tower that tells me that people like Fatty and me will never belong. I go home and sit on the couch with Nameless Dog. We watch reruns of
Big Brother
and
Idols
and
Survivor
and
The Weakest Link
. And none of it seems very real.

Before I go to bed I phone Groote Schuur Hospital and speak to a cross nurse in Ward Seven. She says that information about Melanie can only be divulged to family members and she knows for a fact that I am not Mara Louw, nor am I Melanie's mother, because Melanie's mother is sitting outside the intensive care ward.
Click
.

There is another thing that I have learned in my short time in this world. This other thing is that if my friend Melly had been on the soccer field she wouldn't have stood by and watched Fatty being bullied. No. She would have shouted out for it to stop with all the breath in her chopped-up little lungs. But she couldn't, because she's lying in intensive care. And I didn't. I walked away and left him. I know that by taking that walk of shame I am guilty of being the weakest link.

And I'm not sure who I hate more for making me a coward. The mean-girl gang, Fatty or me.