100 Days of April-May (11 page)

Twenty

The Visitors

We are receiving visitors today. Fluffy, Mrs Ho, Sam Ho and me.

Mrs Ho has laid out her special visitors' tea set and has bought six dozen koeksisters from a relative of Ishmael's (whose son's aunty works in the catering business).

I have interned a couple of two-litre Cokes in the fridge for my guests and have secured promises from Mrs Ho of the leftover koeksisters once her guests have guzzled to a state of elegant sufficiency.

The first visitor to arrive is Miss Frankel. She is the guest of Fluffy and Mrs Ho and so she gets offered a special cup of tea and a plate of fried syrupy dough – and not a glass of Coke.

After Miss Frankel is settled with snack on couch (brushed hairless and de-ponged by a wipe-down with industrial-strength fabric cleaner) she gives me a look which says that it's time for you to grovel – or pretend to grovel, which is the way I am viewing the exercise.

I have not yet made up my mind whether I am going to speak lies or truth to power, so I compromise and do both. ‘I'm sorry I tried to steal your dog, and I'm sorry I got him lost,' I tell Miss Frankel. I say the last part of the sentence very loudly and slowly and the first part fast and soft. Because I'm only sorry about the second part.

Miss Frankel sniffs at me and says, ‘Why did you do it? Why did you steal my dog? That dog was my life.'

I tell her that I did it because Alistair was being ill-treated by her unkind caretaker.

‘Who's Alistair?' she asks.

I tell her that Alistair was her life.

‘Oh, is that what he was called,' she says.

Fluffy and Mrs Ho are hovering in the doorway and I can detect from their body language (arms wrapped all the way around their bodies and legs criss-crossing at the ankle) that they do not believe my meeting to apologise to Miss Frankel is going very well.

‘I'm going to get your life back,' I say. ‘I've made sure that Alistair will be home soon.' I don't tell her about Rhonda Byrne and the secret ceremony I did in the park because she doesn't look the type to keep faith with mumbo-jumbo like this. But I do hold thumbs behind my back and send a virtual message to Rhonda to please hurry as we are running out of time. And then I rub the Zakumi charm on my bracelet. It's something Melly would do.

Miss Frankel sniffs again (like she doesn't believe me and not like she has the flu) and says, ‘How soon? When will I have my darling creature back?'

I feel a smelly, slobbery face chomping at my hand and I say, ‘Like, five seconds ago.'

Alistair leaps onto the couch and starts growling at Miss Frankel. The noises he is making are get-off-my-couch-you-miserable-old-witch-who-was-too-mean-to-invest-in-a-pool-net-so-that-my-family-drowned-and-I-got-cruelly-orphaned-and-then-abandoned-and-tortured. He then gobbles up her koeksisters.

Before I can shout ‘Alistair where have you come from, you awesome-ist dog', Fatty and Melly walk into the house – followed by Dr Gainsborough and Emily, trotting blindly at his ankles. It appears that Dr Gainsborough has brought Alistair home.

Fatty and Alistair get involved in some serious reunioning – licking and patting and rolling about – while Dr Gainsborough introduces himself and Emily to Fluffy, who he has never met, but not to Mrs Ho, who they (or at least Dr Gainsborough but not Emily) see every day at school and with whom they are both fully acquainted.

Dr Gainsborough says that he has quite the story to tell about how Alistair came into his possession. Everyone focuses their attention on him and waits patiently for him to tell the dramatic tale of how he found and saved Miss Frankel's beloved dog from the cruel and hungry streets of Jozi.

He says that Emily sensed Alistair hanging about outside his house yesterday. He pats Emily on the head. ‘An extraordinary thing, for a blind dog to be able to sense another dog a couple of metres from her specially marked territory.' And he gives Emily another congratulatory pat on the head for being so clever and alert.

They lured Alistair onto the property with the aid of a packet of Marie biscuits and gave him refuge and sustenance overnight. He says Alistair appears to have a mighty appetite and following a midnight footwear feeding frenzy he is now down to a pair of slip-slops.

They are now returning Alistair to his safe space (the first home he had after his traumatic loss as a puppy) – Dr Gainsborough continues – until he can be reunited with Miss Frankel.

The good doctor's eyes light up when he sees the owner in question, cowering on the couch, peering at Alistair from behind her fringe of hair. They have been neighbours for fifteen years, but have never met.

Miss Frankel declines Dr Gainsborough's outstretched hand, and continues cowering on the couch. Dr Gains-borough's eyes brighten further. His finely tuned extra-special sixth sense, which allows him to zone in on psychologically needy people, is working overtime. He sits down on the couch and tells her to speak to him. She can tell him everything. So she does.

Miss Frankel has spent the past fifty years of her life loving her animals. ‘They are my life. My only connection with this world, Mr Gainsborough,' she says.

Dr Gainsborough nods. How strange, he feels the same. ‘And you can call me Doctor, if you would prefer. Or Siggy …' – a nickname he would like to be called if he was ever close enough to another person to have a nickname.

‘But now, Doctor Siggy,' Miss Frankel continues, ‘I can't look at Alistair, or any other animal for that matter.' She is wracked with guilt. If only she hadn't been such a tight-fisted old witch and had spent some cash on a pool net, she would not have lost her beloved family. She is all alone now, crippled by remorse and stony broke. ‘My house is mortgaged to the hilt. The bank is banging at my door, and soon I will have no place to lay my head. And no one to love.'

The song sounds familiar – it's the one Fluffy's been singing all week.

Dr Gainsborough says that Miss Frankel should see this as the first of many healing conversations, and Fatty, Melly and me leave Dr Gainsborough and Miss Frankel connecting about their disconnected status on the couch. We go and liberate the Coke from the fridge and a few sticky koeksisters from the Tupperwares which Mrs Ho has hidden in the chipped-mug cupboard.

We sit outside under the sour-sour tree with Alistair, who has decapitated Sam Ho's vuvuzela and is fertilising the flower beds with bits of green plastic.

‘So, what is she like?' I say.

Fatty looks down at his small hands with the toothpaste-white fingernails and doesn't answer. He knows who I'm talking about – the mother he found at Soccer City three days ago – so I wait, allowing the silence to nudge him into a response.

‘She loves me more than anything else in the whole wide world.' Fatty gives me a nod when he says this. He knows I know what this kind of love means.

I get a hot feeling across my chest as Fatty's face glows. I want to hear more about his mother. ‘Go on. Go on.'

‘She's there for me, a million per cent. She says I'm the son she's always wanted from the very moment she ever thought about having a child.'

I feel happy for Fatty. I really do. But I want to howl, for reasons that I don't like to dwell on too much, which may or may not have something to do with my own mother. I eat a koeksister instead and let Alistair lick my fingers.

I ask Fatty how he found her among all those people at Soccer City.

‘She found me, April-May. She came to get me and picked me out from the crowd.'

I tell Fatty that's totally gangsta and that I can't wait to meet her.

Fatty passes Melly his koeksister because he says that he just doesn't feel so hungry any more, and as he does a look passes between them.

‘Tell her, why don't you?' Melly whispers to Fatty.

And Fatty says, ‘She'll figure it out, Mell-Bell. She needs to.'

Before I can tell them that it's not fair keeping secrets from your best friend, Melly asks me when Mom is arriving. She asks it very carefully, in case I explode. Because Mom will soon be arriving with Sarel. And with Siphiwe Tshabalala – the rainbow nation's number one citizen, and hero for life, who scored the very first goal of the Soccer World Cup.

And attached to this hysterically happy threesome will be the world's paparazzi, who have come to photograph Siphiwe Tshabalala with his miniature namesake, who was born in the fifty-fifth minute of the opening match at Soccer City – my new sibling.

Mom is hoping to persuade me to be part of the photo opportunity. But I don't think so.

‘This is them now,' I tell Melly as the tornado descends.

The next thirteen minutes at Chez Matchbox are recorded in a whirlwind of digital photographs which are transmitted from one end of Planet Media to the other and which appear on every front page of every newspaper and website in the universe.

There they are, for the whole world and their dog to see (sorry, Emily): Mom, Sarel, a blob in a receiving blanket (the famous sibling), Doctor Specialist Professor Moyo and Alistair (Alistair making his mark on the ball used to score the famous goal). I am not in this photograph. Neither is Siphiwe Tshabalala, because although he was supposed to be in attendance he is very hot property and is doing a photo shoot for an international sports magazine. But he sent the ball and presents for the baby with his agent.

When the world's paparazzi leave, having snaffled every last crumb of the koeksisters and flattened Mrs Ho's winter seedlings, Mom comes outside. She asks Fatty and Melly if they would be so kind as to go and help Mrs Ho wash the tea things and to help Sarel find the right end of the baby's nappy.

Then she sits down next to me under the sour-sour tree.

I get up.

Mom says, ‘May, sit down, I want to talk to you. And I want you to listen. Please.'

I start walking away, and then I look down and see my bracelet with the little Zakumi charm: What Would Melly Do?

I know what my Best Friend Forever Melly would do. She would let Mom talk. And she would listen.

So, instead, I yell at Mom. I yell out all the things that I've kept buried in a hard space at the bottom of my tummy. All the things I haven't been thinking about for the past six months since I read her old diary: ‘You never wanted me. You got pregnant before you and Fluffy got married and you didn't want to have me. You wrote it all in your diary. I read it all.'

There. I said it.

Then, as it all drains out of me, I sit down next to Mom. I let her talk and I listen.

Mom tells me that what I say is one hundred per cent true. But no matter how she felt when she was young and scared and first found out she was having a baby, from the moment I was born, from the moment she held me in her arms, she loved me more than anything else in the whole wide world. ‘May, your father and me loved each other. We started out a bit differently to lots of other parents, but we loved each other. And we loved you. Nothing can take that away.'

I want to believe Mom – that she never thought about dumping me in a locker room with a dumb name scrawled on a piece of paper tied around my ankle. I want to trust that she never even thought about having that thought. I tell her that I feel confused. I get up and go inside to find Fatty and Melly. Mom follows me, but I pretend she isn't there.

Melly says that Fatty's outside, waiting for his mom, and I say, ‘Good, I want to meet her.'

‘I want to meet her too,' Mom adds.

Fatty walks up the pavement towards us. I recognise the pale-faced woman next to him – the woman called Grace who adopted him a year ago. And I don't know what to think any more.

Fatty says he wants to introduce his mom to my mom. And he does. She says, ‘Grace.'

And Mom says, ‘Glorette.' And then they shake hands.

And while they are chatting about the sorts of stuff that moms chat about when they first meet one another I take Fatty aside. ‘I don't understand,' I hiss. ‘Where's your real mom, the one you went to Soccer City to find?'

Fatty shakes his head at me and says that all that
August Rush
stuff is just Hollywood rubbish. This is real life. He says that his real mom was probably a nice lady who had big dreams for him but who ran out of hope. Maybe one day he'll meet her, and maybe he won't, but in the meantime he's got a mom who loves him more than anything else in the whole wide world. ‘I'm lucky, just like you, April-May,' he says.

I tell Fatty that I really don't get it. ‘You wanted to meet your real mom so much. What changed?'

‘Everything,' Fatty says. ‘There was no one there for me at Soccer City, April-May, no one. As much as I looked, they weren't there.' Fatty grabs me by the shoulder and grips me hard with that small hand of his. His voice crackles. ‘And then she was there. She came to fetch us after the game, and I saw her there, waving and smiling at me in the crowd.'

‘Grace? She came to fetch you?' I say.

‘Yes, and when I saw her it all kind of fell into place. She had chosen me, April-May. Out of all of those kids in the orphanage. She chose me.'

‘Of course she did,' I say to Fatty.

His hand grips me harder. So hard I want to say, ‘Hey, you're hurting me.'

‘And your mom chose you, April-May,' he goes on. ‘She chose to have you. When she was young and scared and wanted to run away. Just like my mom, but different.'

I tell Fatty that this is true. We look across at our moms and they are laughing about something. They look at us.

I hear a baby crying. I tell Mom somebody needs us. And together we go inside.

There are seven other photographs that were taken the day Siphiwe Tshabalala never came to Chez Matchbox for his photo shoot with the miracle baby of Soccer City (my sibling). These photos didn't make it onto the front pages of the world's newspapers and Internet sites, but they made it onto my Facebook page in an album called:
The Day Siphiwe Tshabalala Almost Came To Visit
.

There's the photo of Fatty, his mom and Alistair The Awesome-ist in their red Toyota Corolla off home after that eventful visit. Miss Frankel agreed that Alistair would be happiest living with Fatty while she worked through her guilt issues with Dr Gainsborough. And that it would take at least twenty years.

The next photo is of annoying troll-boy Sam Ho in soccer legend Siphiwe Tshabalala's Number 8 soccer jer-sey, which he gifted to Sam Ho. Siphiwe (or his agent) has written for Sam Ho to read (or not to read):
For my buddy Sam Ho, who is da bomb – your pal, Siphiwe Tshabalala
. This memento may or may not ease the pain for Rat Turd during the mean days to come at Trinity College.

The third photo is of Chez Matchbox's deluxe suite. You can see the South African flag on all four walls and on the curtains and carpet and moisturiser dispenser. I have put it in my Facebook album to show all those seven thousand dribbling would-be tenants who applied the day after they saw Siphiwe Tshabalala's agent kicking the winning ball across the room what they are missing. You snooze you lose, pals. We got ourselves our Eurotrash soccer-nut tenant all the way from Cape Town.

The fourth photo is of my dad Fluffy and his special lady Julia Ho having a koeksister moment out back under the sour-sour tree when they thought no one was looking. Yes, it's gross, what else can I say?

The fifth photo is of Dr Gainsborough and Miss Frankel on the couch. Dr Gainsborough looks like he has found the patient from heaven. Miss Frankel looks like she's found someone to be patient with. They don't look like they will be moving from the couch, ever. I just hope that when they are over connecting they will remember to feed Emily.

The sixth photo is of Sebastian. He wasn't at Chez Matchbox the day Siphiwe Tshabalala almost came to visit, but I put a photo in anyway, because although everyone wants to keep us apart, I think he belongs in this album with me.

The seventh photo is the one I like most of all because it's of Mom, my baby sister and me. Yes, my baby sister.
The gods and Rhonda Byrne heard me. Mom says that she's hit the jackpot twice. She now has two daughters.

Sarel says his daughter is the most beautiful girl in the world – next to her mother and his other daughter (me). We have called her June Siphiwe Tshabalala. She'll have to learn to suck it up. I'll help her.

And then there's the eighth photo. It's not in the album on my Facebook page. In fact, it hasn't been taken. It's the one that lives on with the ending to the eighth story and into the beginning of the next. It's the photo of Melly, Fatty and me.