Coconut

by Kopano Matlwa

  “Yes, Uncle.”

  “We drove in Mr Dix’s car and I sat in the front seat.”

  “Yes, Uncle.”

  “I always sit in the front seat on the way to the meetings and in the back seat when I am sent home.”

  “Yes, Uncle.”

  “He said, Mr Dix, he said that he was very proud of me and that I should be proud of myself, too. He said he wished more of the employees could be like me and show such loyalty to the company.”

  “Yes, Uncle.”

  “I laughed to myself, Fikile, sitting there in the front seat of Mr Dix’s Jaguar. It was really me! And Mr Dix, the CEO of Lentso Communications, was telling me that he was very proud of me and that he wished more employees could be more like me. Ha! Imagine that!”

  “Yes, Uncle.”

  “But then when we arrived at Borman-Nkosinathi and were getting out of the car, he took me aside and said that it would probably be better if I did not speak at the meeting that day. I was dismayed at that because, well, I don’t know if you know, but I do like to speak very much. But nevertheless, what can one say? The boss had spoken.”

  “Yes, Uncle.”

  “He said they would once again introduce me as Silas Nyoni, their Black Economic Empowerment partner, and newly appointed Operations Manager of Lentso Communications. Today’s plan was that Laurie, Mr Dix’s personal assistant, would rush in during the meeting with Borman-Nkosinathi and say that I was urgently needed at the offices. Then I would be hurried out and taken back to my security box. I imagine they were afraid I would say something senseless that would give them away, so Mr Dix signalled to Laurie earlier than planned and I was rushed out soon after the introductions.”

  “Yes, Uncle.”

  “I would not have said something senseless, Fikile. I do not know why they think these things about me. I would never do anything to jeopardise Lentso Communications! That company is my bread and butter.”

  “Yes, Uncle.”

  “I managed to steal a brief look at the agenda for the meeting, Fikile, and there were some pretty compelling topics on there. I deem if they had given me half the chance, let me stay just a little while, I might have been able to add something useful, something salutary, to their discussion.”

  “Yes, Uncle.”

  “Of course they only think of me as a security guard.

  But there’s things about me those white men do not know, Fikile. And I just think sometimes that maybe if I spoke up, said something profound or gave an insightful suggestion, then maybe they’d see that there’s more to the security officer than black skin and Shakespeare. Maybe they’d see that I belong in that brown suit with yellow stripes.”

  “Yes, Uncle.”

  “In my mind’s eye, I am Silas Nyoni.”

  “Yes, Uncle.”

  “But they see nothing.” He’d say this with such despair that I might have felt sorry for him if I didn’t know better.

  “Yes, Uncle.”

  “Laurie made me take off the suit in the back seat, Fikile. How does a grown man such as myself undress like a child in the back seat of a car?”

  “Yes, Uncle.”

  “And then they give me another radio and a pat on the back as if I were some circus animal, rewarded for performing a clever trick. If it wasn’t for me, Fikile – me, Silas Nyoni – they would never be making the deals I am making for them. Those white men don’t realise that I am compromising my moral beliefs to make them billions. One day they’ll lose me and they’ll be sorry.”

  I did not respond this time. I was afraid if I opened my mouth I would retch. If he resented the job so much why didn’t he simply stop doing it? ‘Oh, I’m a godly man, Fikile.’ Sniff-sniff. ‘Just trying to live an honest life, Fikile.’ Sniff-sniff. ‘I am a man more sinned against than sinning.’ Sniff-sniff. Bullshit. Absolute bullshit! Uncle knew very well that from that first day when Mr Dix asked him to read him passages from his books and asked him to recite the poetry, Uncle lauded over everyone; he was being interviewed, assessed and evaluated for the position of black fake senior partner/CEO/co-founder/ financial director or whatever position it was that spoke of transformation at Lentso Communications.

  Uncle reads the papers. In fact, Uncle reads more papers than most! This whole thing of using nameless black faces as pawns for striking black economic empowerment deals was nothing new and he knew it. He delighted in it. The man celebrated it! Sweet, gentle Uncle with the ‘world’s biggest heart’ was no security guard: he’d weep right through any break-in. No, Uncle loved the soft life, yearned for the soft life, lived for the soft life, just like everyone else. He revelled in those moments when he’d be wearing striped suits and sit in the front seat while Laurie sat in the back. Uncle was just another hungry black man, hungry for a piece of the pie just like the rest of us.

  But what infuriated me and drove me absolutely out of my mind with indignation was that Uncle wanted to eat his pie and then have us feel sorry for him because it was making him fat. Uncle is a liar and a fake. He dotes on his new position as fake black bigshot of

  Lentso Communications. He knows very well it’s all he’s good for. Hell, he should be grateful for such an opportunity! Not everybody gets a second shot at the good life. He is pathetic as a security guard and probably would have been fired by now if they hadn’t found out that he spoke English so well. He should be bloody grateful, the bloody twit.

  I am relieved that the time for sleep is over and I am already thinking about all the great happenings that today may have in store. Waking up is always a thrilling time for me because it presents a new and fresh chance at life filled with endless possibilities. Sleep is an unnecessary luxury and I generally do what I can to avoid it. In sleep you lose all control and are vulnerable to the many monsters of the night. In sleep you waste precious hours that may have been used to plan great things and make purposeful strides towards your dreams, like my Project Infinity. Only infants and senile people really need sleep. The rest are simple, weak and lazy.

  I am glad it is time again to leave this hole. I have been possessed by a spirit of vigour in the night and today will go out filled with courage and determination, my mind attentive for any opportunity that may come my way. Perhaps today will be the day, that day, the one I will call ‘the day my life turned around’, the one I will look back at when I am rich and famous living in Project Infinity and laugh and shake my head and take a sip of a frozen martini and think to myself, ‘Did you ever imagine it would be like this?’ I have not a cent in the bank nor very much of an education, but a heart so heavy with ambition that it may just fall to the depths of my stomach if Project Infinity is not realised.

  Yes, I have been weak and lazy of late, feeling tired and crying into my pillow. But all that has come to an end now and I am officially back in the game. I have realised that there is no gain in feeling sorry for oneself, it really is a shameful thing to do, common to the likes of Uncle, who sit and nap their lives away and then cry into the night expecting the rest of us to comfort them as if they did not bring their wretched states upon themselves.

  I knew in advance when it was going to happen. I could tell because Uncle would always have that sorry look on his face when he came back home from work. I’d be sitting on the kitchen floor still in my school uniform writing out my mathematics or practising my English readings when I would hear him dragging his feet through the dirt past the Tshabalala’s house to our one-bedroom hovel at the end of the Tshabalala’s garden.

  Ous Joy, Mr. Tshabalala’s eldest daughter, would squeal her usual “Very good evening to you, Uncle, and you are how today?” from their kitchen window, hoping that the man she’d flirted with for years would say more than his usual “Very well, my sweet Joy, very well. Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow.” But on those evenings when it happened, Uncle would not respond to his sweet Joy, whom he also secretly admired. He never had the guts to do anything about it in fear of Mr. Tshabalala’s quick temper. On those nights
when it happened he’d simply nod a sad hello to her and pass.

  Of course there was always the chance that I had not heard his “Very well, my sweet Joy, very well. Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow,” so I would close my books, clear the floor and stand facing the front door so I could see what kind of expression he had on his face when he walked in. And if it was that sorry look… that sorry, pathetic ‘Oh, woe is me’ look, then I would know that tonight would be one of those nights when it would happen.

  I would try to cheer him up. I would try to cheer him up with all my might. I would run and take his bags and hurriedly return with his worn slippers in my hand. I later realised that the look of those tattered slippers at his feet intensified his doleful mood so I took to returning with his weekend push-ins instead. I would shout with glee, “Uncle, we sang your flavourite song at assembly today.” And then I would sing, “Jesus loves me, yes I know, floor the bible tells me so!” And while I sang with all the enthusiasm my little body could muster, I would open up my school books and show him each “Well done, Fikile” and “Excellent, Fikile!” that I had forged on every other page. And when it seemed as if I might be losing him, I would begin to recite the Our Father: “Our Farther who heart in heaven, hello be thire name,” because it always pleased Uncle to hear me say it and roll the r’s the way he liked them.

  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, t
hings 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.