100 Days of April-May (8 page)

Fourteen

Dissing Destiny

Everything you do and everything that happens to you has already been determined by forces over which you have no control.

Weirding you out? Well, try this: The script for your life has already been written. From the moment you are born it is simply up to you to mouth the words and perform the actions on life's stage.

If you are one of the people who think this way, it goes without saying that Emily, Dr Gainsborough's golden retriever, was destined to be blind. It was Emily's mother's destiny to sit on Emily's head when she was three hours old (and not on one of her other, more agile puppy siblings), thus sentencing her to a life of darkness.

People who believe in the fixed course of destiny would concur that it is my fate to eat Weet-Bix sans milk for breakfast this morning – as it was Sam Ho's destiny to hog (oops, sorry, Fatty) the milk by having a big mug of hot chocolate last night. And that it is Fluffy's destiny to get his ear chewed off by Mrs Ho for not stocking up on box milk for these droughts and thereby causing her to drink her morning tea black.

However, today it is my kismet to conclude that people who believe that everything has been mapped out and planned by the Big Architect In The Sky are plain wrong. They are Big Losers. And I will not be Facebook friends with these people – the ones who take a punch in the face from life with a ‘Thank you so very much. I deserve this. Hit me again, I'm not going to duck'.

This is a summary of the speech I give in the park on Sunday morning after Fluffy drops Alistair and me off for our picnic. I stand on the swing, holding onto the ropes and call my troops to engage in total revolution against Alistair's fate. ‘No, we cannot!' (allow this to happen) is my cry. ‘Can we?' And, ‘No, we cannot!' is the answer. Which is sort of a neat and tidy. I'm thinking of selling the speech to Mr Barack Obama, the President of the United States of America, when he runs for his second term.

Fatty and Sebastian punctuate my every utterance with cries of ‘Right on!', ‘Bring it on!' and ‘Get it on!', while Alistair gets on with getting the past few weeks of pain and suffering out of his system by ripping out every winter bulb in the freshly planted bed by the plane trees. Then he marks my new winter shoes, which are perched at the foot of the swings, before lying down a couple of feet away from Fatty and whimpering.

Fatty is in a fair state over Alistair. He keeps saying things like ‘I can't believe how thin he's got …' and ‘I can't believe how grumpy he's got …' and ‘Have you seen the pitiful state of his neck?' Stuff like that.

I can see he's really cut up about it all because he offers Alistair his wallet (emptied of cash) to chew on. When Alistair sniffs at the leather, and turns his head away and howls, Fatty says, ‘We really, really have to do something.'

Sebastian says that in his view we have three options to consider in dealing with the SAC (Sad Alistair Conundrum). The light filters through the leaves and dapples his face golden as he speaks; his lime-green eyes hold mine. My heart beats a little faster and my eyes start misting over. I lean forward, eager to hear his words of wisdom.

Sebastian says the first option is that we can leave Alistair in the care of Kindness The Caretaker and allow him to be tortured 24/7 in his Guantánamo Bay Courtyard with the tacit approval of the deaf, dumb and brain-dead who inhabit the leafy Jozi suburb in which said courtyard is to be found.

Fatty and me say this is a rubbish option. Sebastian replies that it's lucky for us then that he has two others. The second option is that we kidnap Kindness The Caretaker and keep him in our own courtyard of torture and force-feed him on Boss and Butch (instead of Husky, which is every canine's choice of tinned food). That will teach him.

Fatty and me say, ‘Interesting …'

And then there's the third option.

‘You could report the caretaker to the SPCA.'

This suggestion comes from behind me and is made by a very small voice. I look over my shoulder and nearly fall off the swing as I recognise the face that comes with the voice.

It's Melly. A little taller, a little skinnier, slightly more freckled of face and longer in hair, but one hundred per cent my old dear Melly – home a day early to surprise me. Surprise!

Sebastian grumbles that this wasn't his third option while Melly and me throw ourselves at each other for a good five minutes.

When we are done Melly says a cool hello to Sebastian and gives him a look which says, ‘You're trouble and I don't think being away at boarding school has changed you one bit.' And then I introduce Melly to Fatty.

Melly looks at Fatty and Fatty looks at Melly. I look at both of them looking at each other. I see a small, freckly girl breathing with determination and purpose through her nose and an over-large boy with a greasy stain down the front of his T-shirt.

My best friend and my second-best friend. I am holding thumbs that they will like each other just a tiny bit. But I needn't have worried. Within two minutes they are acting like they are best friends. Correction, second-best friends, because I'm Melly's best friend.

‘He's got such presence, such stature … such …' Melly says about Fatty. She whispers it behind her hand as she gives me an absent-minded push on the swing; her freckles standing out like ellipses all over her flushed face.

‘Is she real? She's so delicate. Will she break?' Fatty says to me a few minutes later. His voice has sunk to a broken croak and I can hardly hear him.

‘What? What did you say about Melly?' I yell at him.

His face takes on a moist glow and he says, ‘Shush! She'll hear you!' And then he goes and throws a couple of bulbs around for Alistair.

Melly then hisses a ‘What are you doing hanging around with him again, haven't you learned your lesson?' at me, nodding at Sebastian.

I tell Melly that people change. Look at me. Last year I was a troublemaker bent on hell and destruction and this year I am a role model for the virtues of restraint and good sense.

‘You didn't need to change. You were always who you are. And he is who he is – a slacker, and a no-good chancer,' Melly says. ‘He's going to drag you down again.'

I tell Melly that Fatty hangs out with Sebastian too. They're in a band together (so there). Melly says, ‘Oh …' And then she says that she hopes that he doesn't drag Fatty down as well.

It's time for the picnic and I spread the blanket and set out the food while Melly goes and throws sticks for Alistair and Fatty (who watches Melly throw sticks but doesn't run after them with Alistair) and Sebastian lounges on the grass watching me.

The stick-throwing is completely pointless. If you are a Big Loser with fatalist tendencies you know it is already written in the cosmos that Alistair will rip each stick to pieces, necessitating a new stick for each throw. And the ones that you throw too far will just be ignored.

These people who believe that everything that happens in your life has been determined before your parents were even a blink in their parents' eyes will say that we are all here, at this precise moment, because that is where we are supposed to be – even if it is doing something as useless as throwing sticks for Alistair.

I think differently. I don't think we are destined to be here, or there, or anywhere else. It can change. Because we can change it.

It is thus scripted that while having our picnic of lamb-stew-and-pickle sandwiches and drinking Oros, courtesy of Fatty's pale-faced mom, Sebastian, Melly, Fatty and me decide that we should act to change Alistair's circumstances and his home address.

It's a sensible plan. It's Melly's plan. She goes over it twenty times just so we are all ‘on the same page'. She keeps on and on until I'm about ready to rip the page out of her hand and shove it into my ears.

This is the plan: each one of us will (independently) telephone the SPCA and report the brutal conditions under which Alistair is being held. And when Alistair is rescued by the canine-loving agents of the SPCA, Fatty will make moves to adopt Alistair as his own beloved pet. Foolproof.

Fatty checks with me again that I'm fine with this and I tell him, of course, he must have Alistair. Because I can't. And it's not like I won't see Alistair all the time, seeing as he and I have best-friend (except for Melly) status. And Fatty looks at Melly, and then he looks at me, and he says that that's exactly how he sees it too, of course.

Melly appears very satisfied with the outcome of our/her plot. Sebastian, however, appears less satisfied. He keeps on trying to introduce his third option, but without Fatty's support he gives up and says, ‘All right then, let's call the SPCA.'

After the picnic, Fatty's mother comes to fetch him and Alistair, to take them to their respective homes. This is the first time that Fatty's mother has met Alistair and she says, ‘Goodness, this dog needs a bath.' She wrinkles her nose and I see Fatty bristling.

‘He just looks dirty. He doesn't smell,' he snaps.

Her pale skin flushes and she says, ‘I didn't mean …' And she puts out her hand to touch Fatty's arm. He flinches and she lets her hand fall to her side. There is an edgy silence and then she asks if anyone wants a lift home.

I say, ‘I'm good.' I'm walking home with Melly. She's got a big-big birthday present waiting for me that I know she's dying for me to open. And then I look over at my best friend to share the kind of smile that best friends give each other.

Except that she seems not to have heard me and is smiling and nodding at Fatty. Yes, she'll go with him to return Alistair to Kindness The Caretaker. It's good that she sees the concrete courtyard and the killer swimming pool for herself, so she can report accurately and honestly to the officials at the SPCA. Then Melly leaps into the back of Fatty's mom's car with just a quick wave and a smile at her best friend (oh, that's me).

Fatty settles Alistair into the front seat and gets into the back seat with Melly. She fits perfectly under his armpit. She turns to look at him and he looks at her. Their profiles are like pieces of the same puzzle that are made to fit. His nose above hers and her chin below his.

Once they have driven off Sebastian and me hang out together. We spend a half-hour deploying the bulbs that Alistair hasn't pulped to play ducks and drakes. There isn't a lake to skim the bulbs on so we fling them like frisbees across the road. As close to the ground as possible. And when they manage to dodge oncoming car wheels Sebastian shouts, ‘Awesome!'

And when they don't – and bounce up and hit oncoming car windscreens – I say, ‘Maybe we should play something else?'

Sebastian says that he doesn't want to talk behind his best pal Ricky's back, but he thinks the SPCA Scheme for the SAC (Sad Alistair Conundrum) is totally lame.

I say that it's Melly's plan and I would never say a word against my best friend, but I think it's complete rubbish too.

Sebastian flops down next to me and starts plucking long blades of grass and threading them through my toes. My toes feel ticklish. My head feels ticklish. Sebastian makes me feel ticklish all over.

He stops for a minute with his toe tickling and says, ‘Hey, Bella.'

I say, ‘Hey, Bas.'

He says, ‘Do you want to hear my third option. I think you'll like it.'

I say, ‘Tell me, Bas.'

Fifteen

The Vapours

The day before yesterday, at the crack of dawn, twenty men dressed in identical work gear moved onto our school sports fields and ripped up the turf. And as one set of trucks removed the old turf from the school premises, another set of trucks delivered enough pipe to lay a world-class irrigation system.

The next day (yesterday), at the crack of dawn, the same twenty men spent the day digging trenches, laying the pipes for the irrigation system and filling everything back in again.

On the third day (today), yet again the same twenty men rose at first light from their beds to come to our school with trucks filled with new turf, which they laid before walking up and down on it so it settled in nicely.

Tomorrow, one person will probably flick a switch to get the new fields watered with the new irrigation system while the twenty men in the identical work gear rip up some other school's sport fields or have a lie-in.

The three-day turf-relaying exercise has caused major excitement at Trinity College – and it isn't the way the twenty men toss the squares down the line and then plonk them into the ground, beating each one with a spade until moving onto the next. No, the hysteria is being caused by What Is Coming After.

The What is Italy's finest. Fabio Cannavaro, Daniele de Rossi, Gianluigi Buffon and the rest. They are Italy's team for the Soccer World Cup and they – the 2006 World Champions and the winners of three other world cups – have chosen Trinity College from several thousand schools in South Africa as their training venue ahead of their fifth World Cup victory.

It is not only the students at Trinity College who are in a state this week. There are several other people in my intimate circle who are also feeling far from mellow.

The first person is Fluffy. The reason for his frenzy is the perverse plumbing in the deluxe suite at Chez Matchbox. The second person is Mrs Ho, whose passive-aggressive, thin-lipped state is directly related to the waterfall that pours from the kitchen ceiling every time Fluffy turns on the shower in the new bathroom that is soon to be occupied by our cash-rich soccer tourist.

‘I did everything exactly the way that man did it on YouTube,' Fluffy says, ripping out his hair. ‘What could have gone wrong, April-May?'

What could have gone wrong with the plumbing is exactly the same thing that has gone wrong with the bricklaying, the concrete-mixing, the painting and the roofing (and this is only Page One of a long list). The thing that has gone wrong is that both Fluffy and Ishmael have over-extended their skill sets. ‘I think your very special talents lie in other areas,' I tell Fluffy. ‘You're more of a people person than a bricks-and-mortar sort of a person.'

Fluffy has made the round trip from hysteria to acceptance and says his talent for dealing with dead people might have a very short lifespan unless he can hire a plumber to come and fix the shower problem asap – Mrs Ho has asked him three times to purchase a knife sharpener. ‘She's now at the end of her tether,' Fluffy whimpers.

The other person in my immediate circle who is in a state of mad agitation is Sam Ho, who, after five days of tests, has been diagnosed with twenty-twenty vision and perfect auditory capacity. His brain has also been declared one hundred per cent fit and well and untraumatised by any car accident or incident of domestic assault (the day I broke my toothbrush over his head).

Sam Ho has, however, been told that he has dyslexia. What this means, in layman's terms, is that while he is a very clever boy, with an IQ ten points above Shakira (the singer of the Soccer World Cup official tune has an IQ of 140), he has a learning disability.

Or in the lame-brain language of the mean kids who throng the corridors of Trinity College, Sam Ho is Stupid, Simple and Feeble. Alternatively, to use another six-letter word popular with the fee-paying pedants, Sam Ho is a Retard.

Sam Ho is also still not speaking to me, even when I call him Sam Ho and not Rat Turd, which is the bespoke nickname now bestowed on him by the brain-dead at school. They, who collectively share the intellectually deficient IQ of Britney Spears (104), seem to have trouble remembering Sam Ho's new nickname because they pin it up on the school notice-board next to his photo, post this new information on various popular Facebook sites and, just in case they still can't remember Sam Ho's new nickname, they have given him his own Twitter hashtag (#Ratturdboyattrinitycollege).

Being a bursary girl who knows that dyslexia has absolutely nothing to do with being dumb – in fact the geniuses in the world are members of the Dyslexia Club (ask Albert Einstein and Walt Disney) – I still call him Sam Ho and find it perfectly easy to remember. Sam Ho. Five letters. Like Smart.

The third person in my circle who is in a furious tizz is Fatty. The reason for his agitation: Alistair.

We rendezvous in the park on Saturday afternoon to take stock of our progress. After thirteen phone calls to the SPCA – three each by Melly, Fatty, Sebastian and me (and a last desperate call from Melly) – Alistair remains an abused and miserable dog in the care of Kindness The Caretaker.

Melly says the people at the SPCA are probably really, really busy trying to prevent cruelty to lots of animals. And Alistair is just one small dog among thousands of cruelly treated animals.

Fatty says that Alistair may be a dog in a million tortured dogs, but he is
his
cruelly treated dog, and that makes him one of a kind. ‘I just don't know what to do. I just don't know what to do,' he adds, kicking the heck out of the tyre that once served as a seat for the swings.

I tell him to spare the life of the noble tyre and his second-best shoes and isn't it a good thing I'm his homegirl because I know exactly what to do.

‘So do I,' Sebastian says. And he gives me a wink that makes my chest close up.

‘You do?' asks Melly, looking suspiciously at Sebastian and me.

‘We do,' I tell Melly. And for the next half an hour Sebastian and me tell Fatty and Melly exactly what we are going to do to save Alistair.

But because Melly is looking at me with that suspicious face and breathing hard through her nose like an amateur nose-breather I don't make it easy for her. I tell her she has to guess first. And I give her clues – crossword style.

The answer to the Sad Alistair Conundrum (SAC) is the same word for the most populous city in China (eight across).

Melly looks at me blankly. I'm no mind-reader but I'm betting fifty yuan that she's wondering how many letters there are in Beijing. (There are seven.)

I give her another clue. Five down from Clue One: This action is a simile for the answer to question one and will require strong nerves. Five letters.

Melly thinks for four minutes. I tell her if she wants to be a millionaire she can go fifty-fifty or phone a friend. So she has a whispered consultation with Fatty and he nods.

‘I've got it, April-May,' she says in an accusing voice. ‘You want us to
steal
Alistair The Awesome-ist. You want us to
shanghai
him.'

I grin at Melly. My best friend isn't too stupid. ‘Correct. We are going to kidnap, shanghai, abduct and steal Alistair and resettle him in a loving home.'

‘But that's criminal,' Melly says, doing that annoying thing with her nose again.

I tell Melly that technically it is not a criminal act. Sebastian and I have debated this moral point and we feel comfortable that it is not theft, per se.

‘What per se is it, then?' Melly asks.

I tell her that the way Sebastian and me see it is that Alistair technically belongs to Miss Frankel – and not Kindness The Caretaker – so removing Alistair from his care is not an act of theft. In fact, we are simply borrowing him for an indefinite period.

Melly says that I'm on shaky ground, but Fatty silences her with a bony finger. ‘Whose ground do I need to shake to get my dog home?' he says.

So I tell him. I outline steps one, two and three that he needs to take this afternoon, ahead of step four (which will see Alistair safe and sound with Fatty in a loving home).

Melly groans and says that it's criminal, but Fatty says that it is what it is and he'll be off then, to take the three steps, and he'll pop by Chez Matchbox in person later to report on progress – and he'll check out the deluxe soccer suite while he's around to see if he can help Fluffy solve the plumbing problem. ‘It'll either be late afternoon, or tomorrow, depending on how things work out,' he says.

Melly says that if I don't mind too much she's not coming back to Chez Matchbox with me to play FarmVille on Heaven because she wants to go with Fatty to make sure he doesn't do anything too stupid.

I say that I don't give a soccer jock's smelly socks if she wants to hang out with the criminal element and involve herself in illegal activities. Then I watch her face go pink and sad and wish I could chop my tongue into tiny pieces.

Instead I go back to the park and hang out with Sebastian for a couple of hours. He throws his takkies up into the plane tree to see if they will get stuck and, when they do, he throws my new winter shoes into the plane tree to try and dislodge them. And they get stuck too.

I limp home barefoot to wait for Fatty and his three-step progress report and find Fluffy in a state of heightened hysteria.

‘The plumber couldn't come?' I ask him.

Fluffy shakes his head. He opens his mouth but he can't get the words out. Then he says something that sounds like, ‘The king is coming to live with us during the Soccer World Cup.'

I ask Fluffy to run this by me again and he says, ‘The king. The king of the beautiful game is coming to see us tomorrow about renting the new room.'

‘The king? Which king is coming to stay with us?' I ask.

Fluffy becomes even more distraught and garbles on about the player of the century, Manchester United's Number 7, the world's number one striker …

I finally get it. Fluffy is saying that some soccer celebrity is going to rent the bedroom and en suite bathroom for the duration of the Soccer World Cup. ‘That's weird,' I say. ‘I haven't even put the advert on Gumtree yet. I was waiting for you to finish it before I took photographs and posted it via Heaven.'

Fluffy beams at me and says that it really is amazing indeed, and what is the most amazing is that the king seemed to have my cellphone number. ‘The king sent us a message on your cellphone. Sam Ho read it to me just ten minutes ago.'

Before I can say ‘What the blazes is Sam Ho doing messing with The Brick!' and ‘Why can't a girl leave her cellphone at home charging without annoying eight-year-old boys invading her privacy?' I say instead, ‘Sam Ho is reading?'

Fluffy nods. ‘Just simple things. Slowly. He's trying. It isn't a complicated message.' And then he yells for Sam Ho to bring April's cellphone and read the message from the king.

Sam Ho brings The Brick and clicks on the message.

‘Read it, Sam Ho. You can do it,' Fluffy says.

And Sam Ho reads: ‘Will come round and check out the posh room and shower tomorrow. Eric Cantona.'

‘King Eric. Eric Daniel Pierre Cantona. The finest soccer player the world has ever seen is going to be our very own soccer tourist, staying in the deluxe suite. Can you believe it?' Fluffy says. His eyes are glowing like hot chillis.

I grab The Brick out of Sam Ho's hand and look at the message:
Will come round and check out the posh room and shower tomorrow. Ericcantona.

I read it and I realise what it means. I read it again and then I turn to Fluffy and say, ‘I don't believe it.'

And then I turn to Sam Ho and I hug him. I can't help myself. ‘Do you know what you have done, Sam Ho?' I ask him. ‘You are the cleverest boy in the whole wide world.'

Sam Ho looks at me with hopeful eyes. ‘You think I'm smart, April-May? Really? I'm not a Rat Turd?'

I say that I think that he's not too stupid for a dumb chop who hasn't learned not to mess with my stuff. Not too stupid at all.