Coconut (17 page)

I lived in England for a while, Mummy and Daddy still lecture there. I couldn’t stand the weather, absolutely dreadful, so I moved back here first chance I got. It’s harder here, though, you have to do everything for yourself. You can’t trust anybody, not with all the crime and corruption. But ja, it’s home, what can I say?”

It wasn’t all lies. I have never been able to relate to other blacks, that is the honest to God truth. Gogo with her endless praying, Uncle and his laziness, the dirty kids at school, I understood none of that. And the part about my name, well, I mean, everybody that matters to me calls me Fiks so it might as well be my first name. And what’s the difference anyway? It’s my name. Shouldn’t I decide what I want to be called? I never had a father and Mama was a drunkard and a coward who ran out on life, leaving me alone, drenched in her wretched blood. So really, if anybody is allowed to create make-believe parents, it’s me. Who does it hurt anyway? The pretend stories of my life serve the purpose they are required to fulfil, ‘Fake it ’til you make it’. I feel no shame at my slight stretch of the truth.

“Well, look at you, Fiks, all geared up in apron and hair net, just like a good old housemaid,” Miss Becky says laughing as she strolls into the kitchen, lollipop in hand and sunglasses in hair, oblivious to the hysteria in the room. She stops dead in her tracks when she becomes aware of the chaos around her. The kitchen is in shambles, there are eggshells on the floor, loaf tins scattered around, some greased and forgotten about, and a carton of milk, knocked onto its side, steadily dripping off the chopping counter.

Under Carolina’s watch, nobody could get any one thing done without being screamed at for not already being onto the next thing, so as a result the kitchen went into panic mode. Miss Becky is furious. “Really now, people, can’t I leave this place for one minute without it falling completely apart?”

Nobody says a word, not even Carolina. “Vincent? Yvonne? Happiness? What is going on back here? Tell me. Why must I always be here to baby you? Happiness, do this. Yvonne, do that. How many months have you been working here, Vincent? And still you cannot do a thing on your own.” She does not shout, just speaks sternly and firmly in that calm Miss Becky manner that has a way of making one feel ashamed of oneself.

“And you, Fiks, dahling, exactly what are you doing in the kitchen? Customers will be arriving anytime soon and you are having a ball of a time back here.” She doesn’t wait for me to respond. “Please, clean yourself up and get out on the floor. You look disgusting. And the rest of you need to fix this place up. Yvonne, get things ready, orders will be coming in soon.”

‘A ball of a time’? Do I look as if I am having ‘a ball of a time’? I am covered in flour; I have flour in my ears and flour in my eyes. Nobody in the kitchen was prepared to show me how to bake bread so I felt like an accomplished twit fumbling around with ingredients, trying to copy the others while Carolina kept coming in here sticking her big head in my face and screaming that I should bake bread or go home. How is any of that ‘a ball of a time’?

“She really has been absolutely useless today,” Carolina says to her mother, as she sits on the wash table, swinging her legs and sucking on a lollipop she fished out of her mother’s bag as if she had absolutely nothing to do with the frenzy in the kitchen. “So did you manage to organise bread, Mom?”

Miss Becky stands with her hands on her hips, apparently still horrified at the state of the kitchen. “Well, yes, of course, Lina. Do you really think I would let some silly strike devastate the reputation of Silver Spoon? Never.” And now, as if suddenly remembering a rage she’d felt earlier but had forgotten about, she turns on us. “And you listen well, people, what you do is really unacceptable. This business of striking must stop.”

“I told them, Mom,” Carolina butts in, but Miss Becky, now in full memory of what it was that upset her that morning, continues without any acknowledgement of Carolina’s tittle-tattle. “Silver Spoon Coffee Shop has never disappointed its customers in all its years of existence and it is not about to, over some absurd bread strike. And you go tell that to your people when you get back home tonight. Striking is no way to solve any problems. It is selfish and completely inconsiderate and inconveniences millions of good people who depend on a daily supply of bread for their staple diets.”

Of course I agree with her completely, but I know better than to interject now, so I let her continue.

“And this, dahlings, I say with the outmost sincerity: If any one of you here gets it into their heads to go marching up and down the streets thinking you can scare me with a strike, then you better be warned that I will have you replaced within hours, minutes.” She clicks her gel-tipped, French painted nails. “Just like that.”

The kitchen is silent. Nobody hazards a word.

“Well, get back to work, then.” Miss Becky picks up her bag and turns to Carolina. “Come Lina, sit with me outside while I have my cigarette.”

“Yes, Mom,” Carolina says following her out, but not without having the final word: “I swear, Mom, I really do not know how you manage to work with these people.”

“Ma’am, the sandwich comes with cheese, that’s why we call it a – ”

“Well, I don’t want it. Take it back.”

“Ma’am, if you give me your menu and allow me to read it for you, then you will see that – ”

“Don’t ‘Ma’am’ me, I can read, thank you very much. If it wasn’t for us you wouldn’t be able to read so don’t you patronise me. Just take it back and bring me a cheese sandwich without dairy products, please!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You people need to learn how to follow instructions.”

“’You people?’”

“Yes. You people need to learn how to follow instructions.”

“Fuck you, Ma’am! Fuck you!”

I remember what a scene Ayanda made that day. Out of his frikkin’ mind, swearing at a customer. I don’t know why Ayanda works here. He comes from a wealthy family and does not need to be here. That’s why he carries on like the people here owe him something. He was bloody lucky Miss Becky was not in the shop that day or else it would have been the end of his life at Silver Spoon, that’s for sure. The boy totally lost it. He threw the women’s cheese sandwich on the floor and then the plate and then his apron and then went marching into the kitchen.

“They feel no guilt, nothing! Did anybody hear that? ‘If it wasn’t for us you wouldn’t be able to read.’ Fuck her and her literacy: we’d be fucking better off without it, that’s for damn sure. Fucking create our own means if they’d given us half the chance.”

I had to do the damage control. I had to go out there and apologise for him. I had to make up some story about how he’d just had a loss in his life and was a little unstable. I had to calm the lady down because she was in tears. Poor woman had just found out she was lactose intolerant and was finding it difficult to deal with the news. She didn’t need any of Ayanda’s nonsense. The woman was actually very nice. If Ayanda hadn’t been so obnoxious, maybe he would have found that out. The lady and I had a fat chat after I cleaned up the mess on the floor and brought her a glass of water. And so what if she was a little demanding at first, I would be too if I’d just found out I was lactose intolerant. It’s pretty serious, life-changing news, you know. You have to always think about what you eat, try to figure out if there’s milk in the food or not, otherwise it could kill you! Poor lady, I don’t think she had anybody to speak to. And while she was pouring her heart out to me, Ayanda, of course, was tearing everything to shreds in the kitchen. He’d gone barking mad, talking all sort of revolution shit, scaring the poor kitchen staff.

“They feel nothing. They see nothing, absolutely nothing wrong with the great paradox in this country. Ten per cent of them still living on ninety per cent of the land, ninety per cent of us living on ten per cent of the land.” Of course these statistics Ayanda was spitting out were completely outdated. That was then, this is now.

“Any fool with two neurons to rub together can see that there is a gross contradiction in this country.” What was Ayanda talking about? He lived in some loft his parents had bought for him in Morningside.

“They do not see it because they do not care to see it. What good will it do them to think for us, to have a little consideration, just a little consideration for the fucking indigenous people of this fucking land you fuckers!”

Ayanda had completely lost his mind and was jeopardising the integrity of this establishment.

“They see no wrong in building their schools on our beloved soil, over our ancient trees, in the realms of our sacred animals so that they can teach their children how to use us like parasites.”

He wasn’t even making any sense.

“How many of them do you hear saying that they want to leave the country? Huh? How many of them have you heard? Thousands, thousands of them want to leave. ‘Oh the crime! Oh the poverty! No place to bring up a family.’ So why don’t they leave? Why the hell did they come here in the first place? We were doing just fine without them. If they want to leave, I say the sooner the better.”

I knew he didn’t mean that. He didn’t mean any of it. Ayanda had tons of white friends, good friends, friends he cared about. Ayanda had gone to a white school, lived in white neighbourhoods all his life. He had the life that everybody dreamed of. The ass was just talking out of his arse. And we all knew it. I did, the kitchen staff did, and he did. So after that, he got back to work.

So the day has not started off as well as I would have liked, but so what? ‘Failure isn’t falling down, it is staying down’, right? Isn’t that how the saying goes? Well, I am no failure. I am all cleaned up now. I’ve touched up my make-up, fixed my hair and cleared my throat and am ready for my first table of the day.

“Good day, my name is Fiks. Is this your first time here? Well, welcome to Silver Spoon Coffee Shop.

I will be your waitress for today. I will be taking your orders and serving you your food. Here are our menus, there really is just so much to choose from so please do not hesitate to call me if you would like me to tell you a bit about the various dishes and some of the house favourites.”

It’s the thing you take for granted that turns out to be the most important thing in your life. I really believe that. Life is just shady like that. Like, I’m just thinking, now. Your accent, for example. It’s not something most people give much thought to, let alone wish to change. But for me, my whole life has become about how I speak, about what sounds the words make as they fall on the listener’s ear.

People don’t realise how much their accent says about who they are, where they were born and most importantly what kind of people they associate with. Seriously, when we have those brief exchanges of words at the petrol station or in the bread queue, it is what you sound like that helps people to place you and determines how they’ll treat you. Trust me, the accent matters. Don’t let some fool convince you otherwise.

It is always exciting when we have virgins in the shop. We call them virgins, those people who come to Silver Spoon for the very first time. It is especially thrilling for me because each virgin represents a new opportunity, a shot at being discovered. I am always at my best when virgins come in. I want to give them the finest service and most sensational eating experience they have ever had in their lives. You never know who they may be, so that is why you never take chances. Some have been film producers shooting scenes in South Africa and we’ve even had a famous Australian actress on holiday here with her parents. But of course you only find out this stuff as they are about to leave, when they sign their bills or hand us their credit cards. By then it is too late, the impression has been made and, if it’s bad, you have lost out on a potentially grand opportunity. So I never take chances. Always the best service, me at my best, always as if I am serving the Queen of England.