Being Celeste (9 page)

I was looking forward to all the leaps and
twirls I would do in the evening. Next week, I’ll be taking on tae bo. I
researched it on the internet. I think all the anger I have should be put to
good use, don’t you think? Aerobics is just too fruitcake for me. I need
something more vigorous if losing weight isn’t going to take two years to
accomplish.

“Good morning, dear Kate!” I said,
springing into the boutique escaping the cold from outside. The weather was a
strange thing. In the mornings and evenings, it would be so freezing, you’d
never want to leave the house, but during the day it was like summer all over
again. Dry and hot.

“Hey Celeste, you look rather chipper this
morning. Was it a great workout?” she replied, taking her attention from
whatever she was doing behind the counter.

“It was wonderful.” I didn’t complete that.
It was wonderful because I saw my weight.

“I have something for you.”

“Oooh, a gift?” I hurried over to her,
filled with curiosity.

Kate bent down and brought out a pile of
old magazines from under the counter. She sighed and said, “This is it!”

“Magazines.” What?

“Yes. These are my mother’s old health
magazines. I dug in the storage room for them all evening yesterday. You are
going to look for healthy diet plans in here, fit for
vegetarians
.”

She said diet. I’m not on a diet!

“Did you have any breakfast today?”

Ugh, can’t she at least let me sit and
dissolve all that has happened at gym first? What’s with all of this breakfast
fuss all of a sudden? “No, I haven’t.”

“That’s okay, because I brought you oatmeal,
from home. It’s still hot. I read that it’s packed with fibre.”

Kate handed me my breakfast.
Now
she’s a dietician. But really, what would I do without my best friend? Right
now I’d be eating a carrot stick, waiting anxiously for lunch, celery. I’ve
already given her two awards for best friend ever.

We looked all morning through the
magazines, well, in between helping out customers (it was a busy morning). We
narrowed the meal plans down to seven days. They all looked yummy. I just
couldn’t wait to have them and embrace having no meat in my life. It is going
to be hard, I must admit. In my country, meat is the most important part of the
diet. I don’t think that there are many people who claim to be vegetarians. I
was raised on meat and meat values. We could have it for breakfast, lunch and
supper, and it still wouldn’t be enough. And I’m not even referring to chicken;
I mean pure, unadulterated beef. We are beef people. Which is why my parents
don’t take me seriously, because they know what I’m attempting is impossible. I
question my intentions too, but then I don’t care, I’m just going to try.

*************

My sister keeps calling at home to notify
us of the time she’ll be here. I have to admit, I can’t wait to see her. It’s
been a while, you know. I just hope she doesn’t make any snotty comments about
my new lifestyle, or ask me about my love life. One time she said that she was
worried about me, and asked me if I wasn’t a lesbian. Now I have nothing
against being a lesbian, in fact I’ve thought about it, considered my options,
but I’m positive and sure that I’m not a lesbian. I’m just very unlucky right
now. My plan with Kate will bring me fortune in the love department.
Determination always brings out positivity. Anyway, she’ll be here in the evening.
Then we leave tomorrow for the
rural
village. Oh no, he wants me to do
crunches. I hate stomach exercises. They are so hard and chore-like. Why can’t
he make me do fun stomach exercises, if they exist. But I’m not going to
complain because I’m 85 kilograms. I only get to complain when I look like that
toned woman in the huge picture outside, posing on the spinning bicycle thing.
I am not at liberty to be difficult and unwilling to try anything to reduce my
waistline.

Kate was waiting for me outside the boutique
because I had the keys. I locked up yesterday because she had to rush home
early. It’s unfortunate really, because I’m really late and it’s really cold
today. I hope the news I have for her will warm us both. I still can’t believe
what I saw at the gym. Maybe I imagined it all.

“What took you so long?!” she yelled.

Not even a good morning, I love her
manners.

“I’ll tell you all about it in a minute,” I
replied.

“It’s quarter-past eight! It better be a
good excuse.”

Oh, I hope it is. Kate just hates being
late in anything she does, and I’ll never hear the end of this if she thinks my
excuse is not good enough. There she goes, rushing to the cash register. One of
these days I’m going to call her out for being obsessed with seeing money and
making sales.

“Kate, I still don’t believe this, I hope
you
do,” I said, throwing my coat on the counter next to her. She frowned and
placed it on the chair behind her.

“What is it, Celeste?”

She could sound a little excited for the
fact that I know something she doesn’t.

“So, I was doing crunches and they were
killing me and my trainer was yelling in my ear and all.” I was blurting out
the whole story as it happened, trying to not leave anything out. I saw her
rolling her eyes like she automatically knew what I was about to say. I ignored
her. “So, when I was done with the first set, I sat up to rest myself and I saw
at the gym reception, Taboka and Thabang, in the flesh. I think they were
signing up or something because they were filling forms. I couldn’t believe it.”

Kate’s eyes grew wide open. That will show
her, for doubting my juicy news.

“What?” she finally managed to say.

“Off the record, I hope this doesn’t count
for the money in the jar thing- it’s not my fault.”

“Celeste, how did you feel after seeing
Taboka?” asked Kate. She completely ignored my statement.

“Well, I panicked. So, I told my trainer
that I wasn’t feeling all that well. I explained to him that I had diarrhoea
and I really needed the toilet. So I ran to the toilets and hid in there for a
while.”

She started laughing. I don’t know what bit
of my news was funny. “How long is a while?”

“Like fifteen minutes. That’s when I
started peeking out to see if they had left. To my great luck that doesn’t
exist, there they were, working out, lifting weights,” I said. “Oh, those
muscles Kate. I almost fell over and died.”

“So how did you leave?”

“I waited another fifteen minutes, trying
to figure out my escape. So I changed into my work clothes and when I walked
out, I was holding my hand towel, pretending to be wiping my face down from
sweat. I rushed out so quickly that I did not even look back.”

Kate was laughing hysterically, delight in
her eyes. I still don’t get why she’s laughing. “What a morning you had,” she
said, wiping back tears.

“You know what the worst thing is? Trevor
thinks I had a bad case of diarrhoea and so I had to leave. That’s so
embarrassing.”

“Oh, you can be so dense sometimes
Celeste,” said Kate. “The
worst
thing is that you’re going to see Taboka
indefinitely at the gym from now on. Isn’t this going to put a damper in your
plans to forget about him? What are you going to do now?”

She’s right. I have no idea what I’m going
to do. He’s so hot. There’s no how I’m going to try and ignore that fact. I’m
in stalking rehab and still very fragile. Seeing him everyday is going to bring
back the old me, and I’ll start planning our wedding again.

“You know what Celeste, I know what you’re
going to do.”

Yes! She has a plan. “What is it?”

“You are going to the gym just as planned
and you’re going to reach your goal. It doesn’t really matter if it has to be
the same gym as your former victim.”

What? That’s her genius plan. “Kate that
solves nothing!”

“Why should there
be
a problem? This
is a test to see if you’re over your old ways. So go in there, workout and who
gives a shit if Taboka is right next to you on the treadmill?”

This is easy for her to say. I want to
point out that if the roles were reversed and her dear Thato was in her face
everyday, she was going to freak out.

“I- I can’t, Kate, I can’t do this.”

“You’re being ridiculous. The sooner you
figure out the fact that Taboka is just a person and not some god that deserves
your attention, the sooner you get to move on and carry out your vision. But
anyway, you have until Monday to get your story straight. Go to the phekolo and
think about what’s really important: losing weight or swooning over a dude who
hardly knows of your existence.”

“Goodness me! When did you become all
passionate and powerful?”

“It’s not me, it’s you. This is all your
idea, remember?
You
came to my house and suggested we change. There’s no
turning back now!”

She was right. I had already paid for a
three month membership at the gym, and there was no turning back now. The only
thing I should be worried about is the fact that Kate doesn’t get to see the
two attractive soccer players, working in the gym. I omitted that part, the
part where I glanced at the pair when I was running out, lifting very heavy
weights in white tank tops.

The day of the
phekolo has arrived. I have to sacrifice a day out of my free personal training
gift at the gym, to go and surround myself with my lovely family. They still
haven’t clarified why it was arranged all of a sudden. I overheard my mother
and father talking about it last night. Apparently it’s to do with my uncle’s
bad luck and the family. I think they fear it will affect us all. Well, I say
they don’t need to look far with that hunch. I already have all the bad luck
there is, well, with my circumstances and all. But on a serious note, I doubt
being unlucky in love would require a cleansing ritual. What kind of ancestors
would I have to wish me such ill will like denying me a boyfriend? It has to be
more serious than that. Uncle Solomon lost almost half his livestock six months
ago to heavy rains and thunder. Yes, thunder! It just came out and struck the
whole kraal. The only survivors were the weaning calves and their mothers which
were in an enclosed shelter. Terrible stuff, I tell you. Then just a couple of
months after that, his daughter, Sebaga, eloped with a man the family hardly
knew, and no one has ever heard from her ever since. I say they were denying
her the chance to be with him so she ran away. Poor Uncle Sol, his heart is
drenched in heartache and confusion. I will only go because of the conclusion I
have conjured up in my head. If that’s not why we are having an impromptu
phekolo
then it must mean the family is really in trouble or something.

Bontle came home last night, looking all
accomplished and attractive. I think she’s working out too because she has a
body of a supermodel. My parents flooded all their attention towards her,
making her feel at home. What bothers me is that she revelled a little too much
in the star treatment attention, that she had the audacity to send me to get
her a cup of tea. That sent the folks in on it, demanding I make the whole
posse some tea. Ugh, rooibos! I’m not her maid and she’s not a celebrity. So I
rushed to my room and just sat there all evening, dwelling on the important
issues that surround my life. I think I heard my talkative mother, mention to
Bontle that I had joined the gym and that I was a vegetarian. My sister laughed
like a loon and a maniac. I think she blew the whole laughing thing out of
proportion, as it was a bit over the top. What was she thinking, what was going
through her head? Did she doubt that I would ever do it? Did she think that she
was going to be the only slim figured daughter in this family? Did she assume
that I would never succeed? What was the over the top laughter for? I don’t
think that,
Celeste has joined the gym
, is something to send anyone off
like that. Maybe a grin may qualify, but it’s not enough to crack up a person.

Anyway, then she came into my room late at
night to have a chat. Ignore the fact that I was twenty minutes into my sleep,
lights out and all. Maybe I wasn’t asleep, the lights were out and I was just
staring through the darkness of the night. But she came anyway, and commanded
my
attention. I guess mum and dad’s wasn’t enough. Besides, I was still pretty
miffed about her laughing spasm that she had earlier. She switched my lights on
and jumped on my bed, sort of rude really.

“Celeste, my little and favourite sister in
the whole world!” she said, recovering from her triumphant jump on my bed.

I was so annoyed. “Can’t you sense that I’m
trying to sleep here?” I replied, snuggling deeper into my blankets. She pulled
them away, exposing my pyjama covered body to the spiky chills that possessed
the air. At that moment I was capable of anything, even slapping her... I’m her
only sister, so I can’t be her favourite sister.

“Please get up, I haven’t seen you in
ages!” she said, inviting herself into my blankets. I could feel the cold
intensify as she pressed her body against mine, trying to give me a hug and
cuddle with me. “I brought you something.”