100 Days of April-May (6 page)

Ten

Group Shrinkage

I am making significant progress in my therapy sessions.

Dr Gainsborough and me have progressed from the running-away dream, to the falling-off-a-high-building dream and we are now obsessing over the failing-the-Maths-test dream.

It is Thursday morning, the second lesson after break (my second crazy class for the week), and Dr Gainsborough is lying on the floor in the Nutbox with his eyes closed. He raises his head from the carpet and I pause in my note-taking to make eye contact.

‘But what do you think it means, April-May?'

I maintain eye contact – which inspires trust – and tell Dr Gainsborough that his dream of failing a Maths test indicates that he is afraid of forming close bonds with other members of the Homo sapiens species.

‘Really? Do you think that could be it?'

I tell him that he either has intimacy issues or he's scared of being trapped in a fridge or losing his teeth. Freud and me are in three minds about Dr Gainsborough's mental malady. The failing-a-Maths-test dream is a challenging one for a bursary kid like me to interpret because failing tests is not something I'm very good at.

Dr Gainsborough slumps back onto the floor and sighs. He says that this might explain why the closest relationships he's had in fifty-seven years have been with animals. And he pats Emily, who is dreaming (blindly) next to him on the carpet.

I look at my watch and tell Dr Gainsborough that our session is nearly over, but that next week we will explore the nature of his relationships with Emily and Emily's predecessors – there may be a pattern that will deliver critical insights. ‘And healing,' I add, softly.

Dr Gainsborough's eyes glow behind his thick lenses. ‘The dog I had before Emily had three legs. Her name was Tripod.' He is flushed with tender memories and sinks back onto the floor. ‘The one before Tripod was deaf – from birth. And a cat I had around the same time couldn't purr.'

I tell Dr Gainsborough that we can explore this emerging pattern (that he only has relationships with damaged and sensorily challenged pets) next week. I say this in an even softer voice. A voice filled with empathy.

Dr Gainsborough gets up from the floor and says, ‘Actually, April-May, we have another session in five minutes. You have a double today.'

I tell Dr Gainsborough that then in that case he can lie down again and we can continue exploring his deepest terrors. But he gives me a sort of gentle-but-firm smile and says, ‘It's your turn, April-May. It's time you explored some healing.' Then he says that we're going to try something different. It's called group therapy.

I've done my research so Dr Gainsborough doesn't need to tell me that group therapy is exactly what the two words suggest – it's when two or more patients get psychoanalysed at the same time (in a group). It's not classic Freud – it was developed by some Americans in the early twentieth century (probably to save money).

I tell Dr Gainsborough that we already did group therapy with Mom when I first started his sessions. And neither of us was very chatty. In fact, I maintained operational silence throughout and Mom cried (throughout).

Dr Gainsborough replies that Mom wasn't a patient. He had invited her to my sessions to try and get a few things straightened out (something that didn't work – unfortunately). And that group therapy involves two or more actual patients (crazy people).

I settle down to enjoy the next hour with the girl from Grade Ten who is scared of swallowing her tongue – or maybe the Grade Eleven boy who can't stop himself from eating his hair. They both present an exciting opportunity for me to exercise my growing knowledge of psychoanalysis.

There is a knock at the office door, a pause and then Fatty walks (lumbers) in. I give Dr Gainsborough a slitty-eyed look. Then Fatty sees me and gives Dr Gainsborough a slitty-eyed look. But Dr Gainsborough does not meet our slitty eyes – he is too busy giving a grubby stain on the carpet a slitty-eyed look.

I stand up, give Fatty a nod and say, ‘Have you ever tried group therapy before?' I use my cordial voice, the one I have developed to deal with him and Mom and Sarel The Leech and Sam Ho the boy-troll – in line with my pact with the gods.

‘No,' Fatty says, in his version of the cordial voice, which he has cultivated since our last meeting in the park. ‘Why?'

So Dr Gainsborough tells Fatty (and me for a second time) that we are about to embark on the non-Freudian form of healing called group therapy. And as he does so he rolls his eyes in apology at the little busts of Dr Sigmund Freud on his shelves. ‘I am of the view that you and Ericca have much in common,' Dr Gainsborough says. ‘I feel it in my gut.' And he pats his tummy.

I tell Dr Gainsborough that psychoanalysis is not a craft that one can practise based on what one has for breakfast. As someone who has single-handedly trained myself in the art of fact and logic I can tell him categorically that the only two things that Fatty and me have in common is that we are both bursary kids and we are both born of a woman.

Dr Gainsborough says that he had oats and a slice of pawpaw for breakfast and he is of the view that the two of us could help each other. ‘Freud willing.' He manoeuvres me out of the way and takes the chair that I usually occupy during our sessions. Then he points Fatty and me to the two less comfortable chairs. ‘And your last comment about you both being born of a woman shows much insight. You are an extremely perceptive young lady.'

Dr Gainsborough strokes his beard, arranges his features into a Freudian grimace and gives me a penetrating stare. Then he makes a note on his shrink pad. I have learned to read his scrawl from a two-metre distance and decipher the scribble as
Remember to pick up dog food on the way home
.

The rules about confidentiality for group therapy are even stricter than those for one-on-one confabs, so when I get home at the end of the day I can't write to tell Melly about my one-hour torture session with Fatty and Dr Gainsborough. Instead I tell Alistair, who has got until the end of next weekend at Chez Matchbox (before he gets boarded at Miss Frankel's house). Fluffy tells me that Miss Frankel tells him that there is no room at any of the thirteen kennels in Jozi, so Alistair has to board at the old house (with the caretaker). I tell Fluffy that I think Miss Frankel is trying to save on kennel fees – like she tried to save on a pool net (and look how badly that ended). But Fluffy says that Miss Frankel says that the caretaker will be glad of the company and will take care of Alistair along with the house.

In between him mauling Mrs Ho's toothbrush and digging a hole in the left side of the sofa, I tell Alistair that Dr Gainsborough started the session off with a little ditty which he wrote himself. It encompasses the principles and rationale of group therapy and he asked that Fatty and me hold hands with him while he recited it. It goes like this:

Dr Gainsborough gave Fatty and me a copy of his composition, which is why I am aware of the line breaks. He said it was for us to look at if we are ever in doubt about group therapy. Like now, for instance.

I take out Dr Gainsborough's verse and read it out to Alistair. He gives a sort of sniggery bark, which doesn't sound like the kind of response Dr Gainsborough was aiming for. ‘Listen up,' I say. ‘There's more.'

After the ditty-reading Dr Gainsborough asked Fatty and me to describe our mothers in one sentence. And this is when it started to get really interesting. I asked Dr Gainsborough if I could go first and Fatty said, ‘You go, girl.' In his cordial voice.

This is the one sentence I used to describe my mother while Dr Gainsborough added to the shopping list on his shrink pad: ‘My mother is five foot six, approximately sixty kilograms in weight and gaining and she has bushy hair and brown eyes and a darkish skin.'

Dr Gainsborough remarked (while making firm eye contact) that the twenty-six words I used to describe my mother could be used to describe about eighty per cent of the adult population on the African continent.

I replied that apart from the fact that I'd used twenty-five words, his observation was astute (and he mustn't forget to buy oven cleaner).

Then it was Fatty's turn.

When I mention Fatty's name Alistair spits out Mrs Ho's toothbrush and pricks up his ears.

Fatty's eyes flickered over Dr Gainsborough and me and then he said, ‘I have never met my mother, but this is how I imagine her. My mother is five foot six, approximately sixty kilograms in weight and gaining and she has bushy hair and brown eyes and a darkish skin.'

Alistair gives a tiny jerk. Yes, just like Dr Gainsborough Alistair notices that Fatty used precisely the same words that I'd used to describe Mom. Freaky.

In the group therapy session Dr Gainsborough had rubbed his goatee like some dead Austrian psychoanalyst. ‘Interesting,' he said. ‘Fascinating.' And then, after what seemed like a three-hour pause, he turned to Fatty and said, ‘It appears to me that you believe your birth mother has the same physical characteristics as April-May's mother. I wonder what it all means?'

Fatty surveyed Dr Gainsborough's expectant stare. Then his face lit up and he said slowly, in his gentle, cracked voice, ‘Do you think, Dr Gainsborough, Sir, that April-May and me could have the same birth mother?'

Fatty's face was a montage of sweet innocence, wonder and earnest joy. But underneath that mask I detected pure wickedness.

The expression on Dr Gainsborough's face, however, was pure bliss. ‘This is remarkable. A real breakthrough.' He beamed at us, his face radiating joy.

I looked at Fatty, and Fatty looked at me. And then Fatty looked at Dr Gainsborough's beatific face and turned away, shrugged, rolled his eyes and gave me a broad grin. And then he winked like a devil. And as I tell him this Alistair rolls over onto his back, wags his tail and winks at me too.

It is in that winking moment in Dr Gainsborough's office that I recognise a kindred spirit. And Fatty and me become friends.

Eleven

The Birthday

The night before my birthday I dream.

I dream I am looking for something in Mom's drawers. I know I shouldn't be snooping in her private things but I'm trying to find something and I don't know what it is. My hand feels a book. It is a diary. I pick it up and start reading. But the words burn my hands and I drop the book and run.

I am running now and getting sucked up by concrete. I am failing my Maths test and I am falling, falling, falling. Then I wake up before I hit the ground and my ears echo with noise that sounds like ‘Happy birthday! Happy birthday! Happy birthday!'

Mrs Ho, Fluffy and Sam Ho stand at my door and sing ‘Happy birthday to you!' far too loudly for so early in the morning. Except I see that it's nearly midday and Fluffy says that it's about time I woke up because it's my special day and it would be a shame to waste it by sleeping it away.

And then they all make themselves comfortable on my bed, completely savaging my personal space bubble, and make me open my presents.

I get a thesaurus from Fluffy. ‘Your very own,' he says. ‘Now you won't have to borrow mine all the time.'

I tell Fluffy that I love my thesaurus. I adore it. I worship it.

He holds me tight for too long and says that he loves me more than anything else in the whole wide world and where was he looking when I got to be so big?

From Sam Ho I get a very complicated lock which requires a special code to get it to open. It's for my cupboards. ‘If you use this I won't be able to get into your stuff and make you mad,' he says. The secretive look that I have seen on his face over the last few weeks is absent today. He has the look of the old Sam Ho, who I like sometimes when he is not being annoying.

I allow him to give me a quick hug and tell him that I love the lock. He says the code is easy to crack. He'll show me how.

Sam Ho also gives me a home-made birthday card, which he says that he's copied from an old Hallmark card. ‘You can read it later,' he adds, the slyness returning to his face.

Mrs Ho hands me a paisley bag which she tells me contains ‘girls' stuff' – two words that cause Sam Ho and Fluffy to pull their mouths down and make funny faces at each other. I take a peek into the bag and see it's a fancy-schmancy razor and some special leg cream.

I tell Mrs Ho that I love it. (‘I love it! I love it! I love it!') Now I won't have to deforest my legs with duct tape, which, take it from me, is as painful as having your lips chewed off your face by a flesh-eating virus. I give Mrs Ho a medium-length-but-sincere hug and let her hug me back.

There are also sixteen happy birthday text messages from Melly, consisting of fifteen kisses (one for every year) and a longer message saying that I am going to have to wait for my big-big present until she gets home.

Fluffy says we are going to spend the day celebrating my birthday. He says this very day fifteen years ago was the happiest day of his life. And then he starts reminiscing: ‘You were born on a Tuesday, April. No wonder you are so full of grace.' Then he shakes his head. No, actually he is sure it was a Thursday – which means I have far to go …

I tell Fluffy that I was also born two months prematurely (on a Saturday), so I must have been a mighty small baby. ‘How small was I? How much did I weigh when I was born?'

Fluffy says that as far as he can recall I was a healthy sized 3,6 kilograms, and then he starts grabbing at his hair.

Mrs Ho says that she's going to make tea, ‘Anyone for a cup?' And then she tells Sam Ho to come along and help her with the labour-intensive task of putting teabags into the pot. She sort of runs for the kitchen, dragging Sam Ho behind her.

With Mrs Ho gone Fluffy says that he really, really can't recall how much I weighed at birth and I must ask Mom – who is banging on the front door, singing, ‘Happy birthday to you, dear May-hay.' Sarel is standing behind her with his arms full of presents and his head covered in unevenly spaced plugs of hair. Grey, stringy, frizzy hair. The gods have heard me.

Sarel looks around nervously. ‘Where's Killer?'

I tell Sarel that Killer is right behind him, about to rip the Achilles tendons from the backs of his ankles, and Sarel does an unendearing hop, skip and a jump into the house and onto the couch, where Alistair is watching reruns of
The Dog Whisperer
.

Alistair keeps his eyes glued to the television screen as guru Cesar barks (not whispers) at Daddy and Junior to repeat the exercise on how to demonstrate respect for the physical space of the alpha male. Then Alistair gives an impersonation of a life-threatening growl which Sarel interprets as ‘get off my couch before I take a chunk of flesh out of your left ear'.

Mom and Sarel retreat into my bedroom and onto my bed – moving privacy issues to the top of my agenda in therapy – and make me open their presents.

There are Converse takkies and Adidas slip-slops and Diesel jeans and a docking station for my iPod – all of which Sarel says he paid for out of petty cash. He likes to make it known (loudly) that he's not a credit card man like Fluffy, who only has cash for the first five minutes on pay day before it gets swallowed up by debt.

After I open each present Mom says in a sort of begging voice, ‘You do like it? It's the right size? It's your favourite colour? All the girls have them? Say you like it?' Things like that, which make me want to make her cry, so after every present I yawn and say, ‘I suppose it's okay …' and ‘It's fine if you like that sort of thing …'

There is one last present. ‘Open it, May. Open it,' Mom says.

Her voice has a satisfactory quaver to it, so I say, ‘Maybe later, opening so many presents is making me bored.'

Then Fluffy glances at Mom's crumpled face and says in a quiet voice, ‘Open it, April.'

And I say, ‘What the heck, let me get done with all these lame presents.'

The long and the short of it is that it is a computer. Not just any old computer. A ProBook 6540b. It does pretty much everything except fry eggs and massage your feet. I am grinning on the inside like a crazy fool. But on the outside I give an extra-long yawn.

Mom says that it's already fitted with a card that will give me Internet access, which she will pay for every month. ‘We can be Facebook buddies,' she says. ‘And we can twitter each other all the time.'

‘Tweet,' I say, correcting her.

‘Tweet,' she says, ‘Tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet.' She chants this merrily and gives a pleased if shaky smile, as though we have shared a moment.

Sarel says the computer isn't brand new. It's his old one (three months old) that the firm auctioned off when the senior partners converted to iPads the month before. ‘The firm is doing extremely well. Yes, it is,' he says loudly, in case anyone is listening. Then he adds that the computer has all the apps and is set up for Skype video conferencing, so that I can share the best day of their lives with them. Then Sarel looks at Mom and says, ‘Sorry, second-best day.'

I say, ‘Best day? Second-best day?'

And Sarel says that the best day of his life was when he married Mom – exactly seven months and three hours ago. And that the second-best day of his life will be in two months, give or take a few hours – the birth of his son – my new baby brother. ‘With this computer you can experience the birth of your brother in real time.' He sees the blank expression on my face. ‘Precisely as it happens,' he says helpfully.

‘My what?' I say. My voice sounds very loud and sort of high.

Sarel and Mom share a look and then he says. ‘Ag, man, I'm sorry, Glorette, I know we agreed not to say …' And then his face breaks out into thirty-two different forms of stupid smile and he says, ‘It's a boy. Can you believe it, May? It's a boy.'

I say I believe I need to get some air. And I grab the leash and Alistair, who is attached to the leash, and I run for the park.

While Alistair marks the swings and chews a hole in the tyre-seat I spy a couple of people under the plane trees. I'm not in the mood for company so I wander off in the opposite direction until Alistair pulls the leash out of my hands and sprints back the way we came.

‘Hey, Alistair, you awesome-ist dog,' Fatty says as Alistair dives into his lunch box. ‘Come here, boy.' Fatty puts his guitar aside, picks Alistair up and lets him give his face a wash. Then he allows him to have his way with his sandwiches.

I don't give Fatty's face a wash, but I say, ‘Hey,' in a voice which has sort of grown into a natural friendly one of its own accord.

The past couple of group therapy sessions have encouraged within me a deep respect and admiration for Fatty. Between us, and our series of miraculous and earth-shattering breakthroughs around our mom issues, we are driving Dr Gainsborough completely cuckoo. And it is this shared mission which has laid the building blocks for my friendship with Fatty.

‘Hey, Ricky, my buddy, don't stop singing,' a voice which make my toes curl up with joy says.

Sebastian calls Fatty ‘Ricky', a short version of Ericca – which is a whole lot cooler than calling him Fatty (which is a long, cruel version of Fat).

Sebastian raises his head from his guitar and his eyes gleam when he sees me.

‘Hey, Bella.'

I say, ‘Hey, Bas,' a little listlessly, and he says, ‘In a funk?'

I say, ‘You can say that again.'

And he says, ‘In a funk?'

And I say, ‘It's my birthday.' And both Sebastian and Fatty nod, as though they get precisely what I am talking about.

Fatty says he doesn't even know when his birthday is, except it's sometime in December. ‘I was abandoned in the locker room of a soccer club when I was a baby. The only thing my parents gave me was my name, which they wrote on a piece of paper and tied to my foot.'

And what a name it is
, I think, but I don't say it, for obvious reasons which have something to do with the name I was given by my own forward-thinking parents.

Sebastian says, ‘That's nothing, try this.' It turns out that on his birthday his parents give him a credit card and drop him off at the mall. He has to buy his own presents.

Fatty and me laugh and say things like ‘that's really tough' and stuff like that, so Sebastian adds that sometimes his parents get the day of his birthday wrong and he has to do it a day early. And we laugh even louder.

Then they both look to me for my sob story, but I just shrug. I don't tell them that I found my mom's old diaries. And read them. I don't tell them what I discovered about my birthday because when I even think it, let alone try and say it, it feels like someone's playing pinball in my head. Instead I say I have to go home and eat some birthday cake. And I do.

And then I have my birthday bath. A bath all of my own, with litres and litres of boiling-hot water which I don't have to share with the other residents of Chez Matchbox in the interests of beating the electricity bill.

Then, before I go to bed on my birthday night, I open Sam Ho's birthday card. There is a drawing of Fluffy and Sam Ho and Mrs Ho and me. Inside Sam Ho has written in his perfect handwriting:
Mazel tov on the day of your bar mitzvah, with lots of love from your aunty and uncle Sam Ho
. There are three possible explanations for this birthday message. The first is that Sam Ho is crazy. The second is that he has a kinky sense of humour. And then there is a third explanation.

I think about Sam Ho lying to Fluffy about not getting my note in the first week back at school. I think about him nearly killing himself by taking the wrong tablets for his allergies. I think about it some more and then I get up from my bed and go through to the lounge.

Alistair The Protector is fast asleep on the couch and doesn't stir. And on the floor next to him is Sam Ho. ‘I know your terrible secret, Sam Ho,' I whisper. But he is sleeping, so he doesn't hear me.