Coconut (13 page)

But it seldom worked. When Uncle had that sorry, pathetic look on his face, there was very little that one could do to make him feel any better. Uncle would look down at me as I knelt at his feet smiling and laughing and screaming Hallelujahs whilst I undid his shoelaces and then he would sigh a very deep and desolate sigh and shuffle towards our bedroom.

But of course I would not give up. I would not allow his regretful state to discourage me. I would stretch my little arms up and onto his back and then march him around the room, away from the bedroom door, singing, “Oh, when the saints! Oh, when the saints! Oh when the saints coming marching in… I want to be in that mamba, oh when the saints come marching in!” I would push at his back, marching and stomping my little feet with all the stompingness that they had in them, throwing my tiny voice up into the heavens.

But when Uncle had that sorry, pathetic look on his face, there was very little that one could do to make him feel any better. I would hear Uncle begin to sniffle. Even through the hymns that bellowed from my little chest, I would hear Uncle sniffle. Even when I sang louder than I had ever sung before, I would still hear that sniffle, and then I would know I was defeated. Even though I marched a mean march with ardour and devotion and pushed at his giant back with every muscle I owned, Uncle would not budge. The intervals between the sniffling would grow shorter, and soon his whole body would begin to shudder. Uncle would turn around and look at me, as if not quite sure what I was. Then, recollecting, he would sigh that weighty sigh and slowly the water level in his eyes would rise until it spilled over, making him hurriedly shuffle his sorry self into our bedroom and under the covers.

All the performing – the marching and singing and laughing and clapping – generally wore me out, but on those days that it happened, I would try my utmost to stay up as late as I possibly could. It was a silly hope of mine that Uncle would be blowing trumpets through his nose by the time I climbed into our bed. Because although on the days it happened Uncle spent most of the time lying in our bed, he very rarely fell asleep. Of course I would try my absolute best to stay up, sometimes as late as ten o’clock, but it was always only a matter of time until my spelling words were sliding up the page.

Our bedroom would be quiet when I crept in but as soon as I huddled into the corner of the bed I would hear his pathetic sniffling followed by the sorry sigh. It was only a single bed, so when Uncle would turn his massive form to face me, I’d be stripped of the thin covers that were my only protection. Uncle would always begin with, “Oh, Fikile, why must life be so hard?” which would be followed by a “What did we do, Fikile, to deserve such pain?”

I never did answer him and I don’t think he ever expected me to. Uncle would then take my little hand and gently slip it into the loose tracksuit pants he wore at night. Uncle was always gentle. In fact, people often would say, “Oh Uncle, he’s such a gentle man. Not a single violent bone in him.” But the snake inside Uncle’s pants was always awake. It was always hot and rubbery and would sometimes stick to the palm of my hand as Uncle moved my hand up and down it. It was always at this point that Uncle would begin to sob, first slightly, as if only for himself, and then louder and louder, moving my hand faster and faster and harder, until he cried out in agony for all the world to hear. Then he would fall asleep, blowing trumpets through his nose.

I hated that Uncle was such a sorry and pathetic and weak man and hated even more that I was the only one who was able to comfort him. But I had to admit to myself that my own lack of discipline could have been at fault. In the few years I lived with Uncle, I never found another way to comfort him. I thus spent my afternoons once school was out reading the easy words in Uncle’s set of encyclopaedias, hoping to impress him one day with all my knowledge when I had learnt to read the bigger words too. I was hoping that in that way I might keep him happy. But it never worked.

Back then, when I was very young, I actually sort of liked Uncle, especially when he was in a happy mood. Uncle had always been kind to me. He never hit me like my mother used to, and he often brought home sweets whenever they were selling them on the train. After my mother slit her wrists and let her blood spill all over me, right until I was soaked through to my skin as I slept against the hollow of her stomach, Uncle was the only one who was willing to take me in. Gogo, my granny, had too many of her own white children to take care of and my father had run off long before I had even implanted into my mother’s womb.

So to me, back then anyway, Uncle was a pretty good guy. Ja, he had his bad qualities like most people, but he was Uncle, the only real family I had.

But then again, I was only a child and didn’t know any better. It was only in grade seven, after those Childline Ousies had come to our school and talked to us about rape, that things changed between Uncle and me. Uncle had never touched me in a bad way and all I had ever done was rub his snake when he was sad to stop him from crying. But the Childline Ousies had said all this stuff about private parts and how they were private and that it is not your fault and that you should call someone. I had gotten so confused and muddled in my head that I had to be sent to sick bay because I had started throwing up right there on the assembly floor.

That evening Uncle came home with that sorry, pathetic look on his face again, shuffling his feet and sighing. I was still feeling quite queasy, so this time did not try to sing and jump and laugh and stomp as I often did, but instead I sat on the kitchen floor doing division and drinking lots of fluids as Madam Teacher had advised. I did stay up late that night, though. But when I crept into our bedroom I was suddenly overtaken by the notion to sleep on the floor and not get into the bed where Uncle was waiting for me to comfort him.

I slept on the hard cement floor that night without the protection of any covers and slept like that the night after and the night after that. Uncle didn’t blow trumpets out of his nose once that night, but never said a word about the new sleeping arrangement. He stopped bringing me home sweets when they sold them on the train, though, but I realised I never really did like those sweets all that much.

I gather myself up from the floor. My back no longer protests like it used to when I first traded in my space next to Uncle on the bed for the hard cement on the floor. It’s actually not all that bad. I use old sweaters as pillows and in the winter sleep in three or four layers of clothing. I have been sleeping on this floor for five years now. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen… yes, five years since that night I decided it was not my responsibility to lull Uncle to sleep by rubbing his dick. And now it is only my neck that continues to groan and moan, the rest of my body has gotten quite used to the floor. Of course, things will not be this way forever. Someday I will own a king-sized bed with a solid-wood headboard dressed in decorative ironwork and red leather with a large foot-end kist filled with little gold cushions and decadent fabrics. And even though I do not really believe in sleep, I will still cover it with lots of soft and cosy blankets and white and fluffy pillows because it will be mine and I will have the money to do so. It really is only a matter of time until I’m out of this hole, gone and gone for good, never to return again.

I drag my box from under the bed and take out my work clothes. Our uniform is plain and indistinct and so I have painted my fingernails a cherry red to set me apart as I seat customers, collect plates, pour glasses of sparkling water and delicately run my fingers along the tops of chairs. Every morning I make sure that I top up any nail-polish chips or cracks that may have developed overnight because I have come to know the great importance of presentation.

Everything that matters to me is in this box. I have a shelf in Uncle’s cupboard that keeps some old stuff I hardly ever use any more like my school uniform and some ragged shoes that I have not worn in years, but in the box lie my life’s treasures. My magazines, all of them, from the first
Glossy
I read when I was thirteen, to this month’s issue of
Girlfriend
, are in the box. Beside them is my contact lens case, holding within the most expensive things I own, worth many months spent scrubbing grease and sweeping storerooms after hours. The dainty little emerald-green coloured lenses that float gracefully in the sapphire blue contact-lens solution are a reminder of how far I have come, from the naive orphan child living in a one-bedroom house with her incompetent Uncle in another family’s backyard in yet another decrepit township to the charming young waitress with pretty green eyes and soft, blowin-the-wind, caramel-blond hair (pinned in perfectly to make it look real), working at the classiest coffee shop this side of the equator. My Lemon Light skin-lightener cream, my sunscreen, my eyeliner, mascara, eye-shadow, blush, eyelash-straightener and the pieces of caramel-blond hair extension which were bought for me as a child to braid my hair with but never used because Uncle misplaced the money he was supposed to pay the braiding lady with, are all little testimonies to the progress I have made despite the odds. They are hard evidence of how much closer I am to Project Infinity.

I take out the green gems, my eyelash-straightener, my foundation, my Berry Liscious lipstick and my clothes from the box and take them into the kitchen where I will bathe and dress. We do not have a bath or an inside toilet like the Tshabalalas do or like some of the more advanced homes in Mphe Batho Township, so I have to collect water from the taps outside, boil it and clean myself in a bucket in the kitchen. Perhaps if Uncle spent less time crying and more time finding ways to capitalise on his new position as fake black economic empowerment partner, then maybe we could afford to instal a toilet or even a bath in our home. But perhaps it is for the better that the conditions in this dump never improve. They can serve as a constant reminder to me of what I do not want to be: black, dirty and poor. This bucket can be a daily motivator for me to keep me working towards where I will someday be: white, rich and happy. You see, that’s the difference between Uncle and me and in fact between me and most of the hopeless, shortsighted people in Mphe Batho. I know what I want in life and am prepared to do anything in my power to get it.

Am I going crazy? Am I already crazy? No. Maybe. Maybe crazy is what you need to be to get somewhere in life. Like those inventors or whatever who created aeroplanes and things; didn’t everyone think they were crazy when they said they wanted to fly? And now look, everyone’s flying. If crazy is what I need to be to get out of here and into Project Infinity, then crazy is what I am going to be.

I proudly set my Silver Spoon uniform – the black tight-fitting jeans and the black T-shirt with a silver spoon running down its back – out on the red-and-white-checkered plastic kitchen table that Gogo bought for Uncle when he first moved into this place many years ago, before I was even born. The T-shirts were given to us by the coffee shop, but the jeans we had to purchase ourselves. At the time, it being my first job, and having recently dropped out of high school on a whim with no money and no means of making any, I did not know how I was going to get my hands on a pair of black jeans and nearly lost the job for showing up at work twice ‘incorrectly attired’. But I soon pulled myself together and made a plan. There was no way a single pair of silly jeans was going to stand in the way of me and Project Infinity. Sometimes in life you have to push the boundaries, be creative, stretch your resources and take the road less travelled to get what you want.

“Fiks, dear, we love you, you know that.”

“Yes, Miss Becky.” Had she said she loved me? Miss Becky loved me? They loved me?

“Dahling, you are gorgeous. So well spoken, so bright, just to die for.”

“Yes, Miss Becky.” It had only been two weeks at this new job and they loved me. I could not believe it.

I mean, I knew I was brilliant at anything I set my mind on doing, but it’s so different when you hear it in somebody else’s words.

“But you see, dahling, I am going to be very blunt with you now. Silver Spoon is an upmarket establishment. Top notch. Right up there on the food chain. We have a reputation, sweetheart, a loyal clientele. Dahling, do you see the people who walk through our doors? Do you actually see the people we serve? Well, do you?”

“Yes, Miss Becky.” Her tone had changed and I was getting a little frightened.

“The people who come here, sweetheart, are respectable people. Dignified and accomplished people. Do you understand that, dahling?”