Coconut

by Kopano Matlwa

  “Say ‘uh-vin’ Fifi. You bake a cake in an ‘uh-vin’, not ‘oh-vin’, ‘uh-vin’.”

  “This is boring, Belinda, let’s see who can climb the highest up that tree.”

  “No, Fifi! You have to learn how to speak properly.”

  “I can speak properly.”

  “No you can’t, Fifi. Do you want to be laughed at again? Come now. Say ‘uh-vin.’”

  “Uuh-vin.”

  “Good. Now say ‘b-ird.’ Not ‘b-erd’, but ‘b-ird’.

  I am not used to hating. Hate sits heavy on my heart. It reeks. I can smell it rotting my insides and I taste it on my tongue.

  Daddy hands over his bankcard to Mama so that she can draw out her money for the week. When Daddy decided, two or three years ago, that nursing was too demanding for his apparently overworked wife, who he believed would be better off spending her time at No. 2064 Honeysuckle Street raising their potentially wayward children, they agreed that he would give her a weekly allowance to cover her daily expenses.

  February can be scorching hot in Little Valley and today it’s just that. Putting his arm around my shoulder, Daddy whispers, loud enough for Mama to hear, that I will be his eyes and make sure that our spendthrift mother does not draw out more cash than she is supposed to. Daddy winks. Mama smirks, and walks away. I do not wink back, but follow after Mama, mildly annoyed. The banking centre is on the other side of the parking lot. The heat is overwhelming and I am uncomfortable being alone with Mama.

  Do all South Africans think in English? Is that a stupid question? Do you think if we were to do a Cross Sectional Study of Thought Analysis in a Population of South African People we would find that there is a language difference between our generation and the last? How does it work? Is that a stupid question too? Thought seems almost involuntary. I’m sure even the dimmest of minds engage in some form of thought, some kind of internal communication.

  I don’t think people consciously decide to engage in thought in the first place. There is probably a standard level of thought and under certain stimuli, like during end-of-year examinations and HIV tests, it spikes and brings itself to your attention. So then, how is it determined that I will think in English and Mama will think in Sepedi? Perhaps thought is as uninspiringly simple as an intrapersonal extension of the interpersonal communication we engage in, in our day to days.

  “Oh!” Mama exclaims, as she raises her handbag to shield her face from the glaring sun that beats wickedly on our heads. “I am sure I am losing complexion as we speak.”

  I didn’t feel bad. Mama didn’t go to high school, so what was the point of telling her about the parents’ evenings? In theory, parents’ evenings are there to give parents an opportunity to assess their children’s scholastic progress, to ascertain if all milestones are being achieved and determine where their dear little Bo ranks amongst the rest of his peers. In practise it is an exhibition night, where teachers cover their tables in floral prints and set them up outside their classroom doors. It is here in the corridors of learning where the teachers proudly showcase their works of erupting volcanoes, provincial debating league trophies and interschool 100m sprint medals. It is a night out at the gallery, where children, in their longest school skirts and most diligent shirts, display to each other their accomplished parents, linked at the elbow, necks wrapped in matching scarves, but especially to the teachers they commonly avoid. Mama would not understand any of that. I care about her, that is why I didn’t want to put her through all of that. Besides, Mama’s English is ghastly.

  My Mama is beautiful. At forty-six she has skin as soft as the underside of a newborn’s foot. Drops of black ink dot the centres of her eyes and wild, knotted eyelashes frame them. My Mama is a metallic blue-black in colour. My Mama is a giant. My Mama was not supposed to be, not with that foreign skin anyway, but my Mama is. Daddy sought controversy, marrying a metallic blue-black nothing girl of a nothing woman and a man we know only as ‘Irrelevant’. Even amongst the poor there are those who are poor and even amongst the lower class there are those who are lower class. Perhaps it is consoling for us that there is always some who are worse off: they are a group who are dumped with the heap of scorn that has been offloaded onto our own heads.

  But still, it would be lazy to accord all the credit to Daddy. Mama has her own might. It’s a life of nothingness when you are a nothing girl with a metallic blue-black skin. But it is too easy to ration the rest of the credit to her. No, it belongs to the man who is Irrelevant. He was only spoken of once in my life. I remember the way the teacup fell from Koko’s hand, the way she let it fall, when he was mentioned. “Irrelevant” is all she had said in response to my question. She had then stood lifeless for a million years, allowing the spilt black tea to dry up around and crawl under her swollen feet.

  I figure Irrelevant had come from somewhere close to the equator. In my mind he is a warrior. He is a prophet. Or he is a teacher, moved by the story of a lost child in a forgetful world. On a journey in the South, he met a girl called Koko and they fell in love. But she refused to fight, to run, to believe or even to learn, and the rest became ‘irrelevant’.

  I walk slightly behind Mama so that I may examine her from a better angle. She spins all types of heads wherever she goes. Women look. Men stop and look. I bet they wonder how one with a metallic blue-black skin can walk so high. I want to hold her hand so that they may see that she is mine, confirm that her blood, Irrelevant’s blood, runs through my veins and that some day perhaps I will look somewhat similar. But Mama and I do not hold hands. It is not something we do.

  I am so embarrassed. I do not know if I will ever live this down. What if Karen and Lisa tell the other girls? Then nobody will ever sleep over at my house again. Can you believe Mama? She was so excited she ran up the stairs and phoned Koko to tell her that white people were coming over to spend the night at our house. The way she carried on. It was as if my friends were coming over to see her. She never left us alone, not once. Not even to breathe. She kept knocking on my door poking her nosy face in, asking us (in her broken English) if we needed anything. I wanted to die. I wanted her to die. The next morning Mama ran baths for the girls. Did she not know that white people only bathe at night? I am so embarrassed. Mama is dumb. I told her that after they had left.

  Mama stands in the Persons Bank queue while I absent-mindedly flip through the magazines on the shelf outside the second-hand books and antique store. It occurs to me that perhaps it would have been appropriate to have offered to stand in the queue for Mama, something Tshepo would have done instinctively. The queue is long. The sun is hot. Why did she not ask me to?

  It is because I am smart and speak perfect English. That is why people treat me differently. I knew from a very young age that Sepedi would not take me far. Not a chance! I observed my surroundings and noted that all those who were lawyers, doctors and accountants, all the movie stars that wore beautiful dresses, all the singers that drove fancy cars and all my friends who owned the latest clothing, did not speak the language that bounced berserkly from Koko to Tshepo to Malome Arthur to Mama and back to Koko again. I did not care if I could not catch it.

  I spoke the TV language; the one Daddy spoke at work, the one Mama never could get right, the one that spoke of sweet success.

  How can I possibly listen to those who try to convince me otherwise? What has Sepedi ever done for them? Look at those sorrowful cousins of mine who think a brick is a toy. Look at me. Even the old people know I am special. At family reunions they do not allow me to dish up for myself. “Hayi!” they shout. “Sit down, Ofilwe.” They scold my cousins for being so thoughtless. “Get up and dish out for Ofilwe, Lebogang!” They smile at me and say. “You, our child, must save all your strength for your books.” Do you see, I always tell my cousins, that they must not despair, as soon as my schooling is over, I will come back and teach them English and then they will be special too?

  Katlego Matuna-George, dressed in a Vanguard Creation, sells the cover of t
his month’s Fresh Magazine. Katlego, the former principal dancer of the renowned Von Holt School of Modern Dancing, has just recently taken on the role of Lethabo Dlamini, Marx Dlamini’s estranged twin sister, who was tragically stolen at birth, in Yesterday’s Tomorrow, South Africa’s oldest black soapie. When asked to describe how she spends her minimal free time off the set, Katlego shares that she tries to have as many equestrian weekends with her husband Tom at their farm in the north as possible. It helps to ground her and allows her the latitude to reflect on her life.

  Mama and I return to the car in a silence similar to the one that accompanied us to the Banking Centre. It has not always been like this. In my memory Mama and I used to speak a lot. I would tell her everything, except the things she did not need to know. Mama knew that I desired to be an astronaut one day, and have a house in the southern hemisphere and another in the northern hemisphere so that I could avoid the winter. Mama knew that my favourite colour was green but that I hated peas. Mama knew that I wanted to have four children whom I would name Cloud, Claude, Claudia and Claudette but did not want the trouble of a man in my houses.

  One day, while we were smashing pink tennis balls against the tall green court wall, Mrs Kumalo, our Physical Education teacher, blew her red whistle once. We quickly got into line, boys on the right and girls on the left, from shortest to tallest. Three unidentical white men in serious suits came down the court steps with Mrs Kumalo. Mrs Kumalo explained that these men were from the school governing board and that they were there today to write down how many different types of boys and girls we had in our grade one B class.

  The fattest one said that he would read a short list of languages and that if we knew that was the language we spoke the most at our homes, then we should raise our hands up as high as we could so that the tallest one could count them. Mrs Kumalo added that the languages would be read out in alphabetical order and that she would ask Mrs Hill to explain to us what alphabetical order was when we got back to our classroom.

  I was listening carefully, so was the very first one to raise up my hand, nearly as high as the tallest one’s shoulder, when the fattest one read ‘English’. “Put down your hand, Ofilwe,” said Mrs Kumalo. Mrs Kumalo was always ugly to me, even when I never even did nothing. But I knew that I had better not back-chat, so I put down my hand and wondered when the bell would ring so that we could go back to our classroom where Mrs Hill would hopefully pick me to tickle her back.

  When the three white unidentical men in serious suits had been through all the languages, the one that had not said a word yet muttered to Mrs Kumalo that I had not raised my hand when they were reading through the Bantu languages.

  “What language do you speak at home, Ofilwe?” asked Mrs Kumalo, sounding a little bit mean again. “English, Mrs Kumalo,” I responded, confused because I had raised my hand when the fattest one had read out ‘English,’ but Mrs Kumalo had told me to put my hand down.

  “No, Ofilwe, what language do you speak to your mother and father?” insisted Mrs Kumalo.

  “English, Mrs Kumalo,” I tried again.

  Mrs Kumalo sent me to go stand with my nose against the tall green court wall. As I walked away from the three white unidentical men in serious suits, Mrs Kumalo and the rest of my grade one B class, my nose getting itchy, thinking that now Mrs Hill would never choose me to tickle her back, I heard the one who had not said a word until he did, say, “Just tick her under ‘Zulu’, it’s all the same.”

  Where does an unused language go? Is it packed away in an old crumbly cereal box along with a misplaced tomato, your old locker code, first telephone number and the location of your budgie’s grave, and then shoved into the dusty garage space of your brain? Or is it blown up or deleted or is it shredded up into a gazillion fragments or degenerated or decomposed into a nasty smell and excreted out of your body? Could it all possibly be flushed away? My own tongue escaped from me completely? That cannot be. Mama and Daddy speak it all the time, although not to me nor to each other. But surely my eardrums filter in some of that?

  Parmesan cheese, pineapple and a modest amount of peppadew in a light salad cream sauce lathered on two grilled chicken fillets. The night was flawless, and I had remembered not to eat the garnish. A cup of café mocha, by then baby-bath warm, had to be gulped down. It was evident that the Rent-a-Taxi driver was slightly vexed. Had we kept him waiting that long? Climbing into the green kombi, I glibly threw an apology into the air. I did not care if he had heard me or not. I was celebrating sixteen years of life. I had paid for everything and I was paying him. It was my day.

  Perfection: the ribbon of yellow street-lights illuminating the charcoal Jozi sky, the deserted road ahead, my sweetheart’s hand in mine, Zandi, Mpho, Siphokazi, Tammy, Xolani, Maggi and Zee singing along to an old Tevin Campbell song on the radio, everybody laughing, laughing for me, boyfriend and best friends there because of me. Me, happy to be me.

  Siphokazi changed the topic of conversation. IsiZulu, isiXhosa, sePedi, seTswana. Tongues flared, now dancing to a different kind of music. She spoke of what she called home-home, not the urban house she lives in now, but the home-home they left behind in the rural Eastern Cape. He laughed at the memory of the stubborn red mud that he remembered too, and how he thought he was the only one who battled to get it off his shoes after half a day’s walk. They all reminisced over mornings spent splashing in blue plastic buckets, squirming away from grannies who scrubbed them a little too hard. Maggi recollected a tiny room with a mud floor squashed full of cousins sleeping side by side, all dreaming of the same sunrise. Everyone recognised the importance of the passing of these words, as each girl and boy shared their clan names and the histories behind them.

  ‘Tlou’ is ours, Tshepo later said, and ‘Sereto’ the poetry behind it. I had repeated the words over and over again, desperate not to forget. How foolish I must have looked, sitting there silently with not a thing to share. How angry I was at Siphokazi for shattering my night and at Tshepo for always having an answer for everything and at myself.

  I decided not so long ago to take it a word at a time. The plan was that in every spoken sentence I would try to use a single word of Sepedi. Just like an athlete, I would gradually increase the workload until eventually I would be strong and fluent.

  “Ke mang yo, Tshepo?”

  “This is my sister, Ofilwe.”

  “She looks like a ‘I want my Mommy!’”

  “Leave Vuyo and I alone, Ofilwe, and go play inside with the other girls.”

  “Since I’ve been here I’ve only heard this little girl speak English. Do you only speak English, sweetie?”

  “Vuyo, please man, leave her alone, she’s young.

  Ofilwe, I said go and play inside with the other girls.”

  ‘How hard could it be?’ I had asked myself. ‘Of course I can speak the language,’ I had told myself a numerous times, ‘I just don’t because I have no reason to.’

  “Daddy, Tshepo’s calling me names!”

  “Just ignore him.”

  “He called me an Aunty Jemima, Daddy.”

  “What is an Aunty Jemima?”

  “Tshepo says an Aunty Jemima is a sell-out. Daddy, Tshepo says I am a sell-out. He says I embarrass him and that I mustn’t ever come near him when his friends are around.”

  “Just ignore him, Ofilwe.”

  The plan was to try out my new vocabulary on Daddy first. I knew his mind was always elsewhere, so was certain that if I sounded relatively normal, he would respond with the usual ‘OK, Ofilwe’ and ‘Don’t worry Ofilwe’. It was only when I’d finished scheming, plotting graphs and typing out my method, that I realised how many gaping holes I had in my head. There I was battling to put sentences together, speaking in the slightest of whimpers, hoping that Daddy would pretend, out of pity, that he understood so that I would not be forced to repeat the mumbo jumbo I had spewed out. Each word ended in a shudder, a cringe.

  Sometimes I just wish I could hold my breath just for a lit
tle while, and then a little while longer, until I do not have to hold it anymore. I do not like looking at later, because I do not understand what I see. If I just held my breath, for a small long while, then I wouldn’t have to be there, and that would be OK.