by Jaco Jacobs
Vusi pressed pause again.
‘I’m going to make a movie,’ he said. ‘You can be in it if you want.’
Green Beans, Happy Numbers and a Bedroom Door
‘Thank you, Lord, for this food, and bless the hands that prepared it. Amen.’
It always felt strange to hear my mum pray. She said grace in her actress voice. With your eyes closed, you could almost imagine what she had looked like way back, in that black swimsuit in Spring in the Bushveld. I was so glad no one really remembered that TV series any more. The thought of other people seeing my mum in her cozzie made me uncomfortable.
The other strange thing about grace at meals was that Mum was blessing her own hands – after all, she had been the one who ‘prepared it’. Once I prayed, ‘Dear Lord, bless us all, and bless this meal, worms and all’, and my mum forbade me from ever saying grace again. Uncle Hendrik bluntly refused to. And Cindy was hardly ever home at mealtimes any more.
We started eating in silence. I suspected Mum wanted to punish me for what I had done to Vusi that morning because she dished up a mountain of green beans for me. She knew I hated green beans. And there were peas as well. I actually liked peas, but I always had to count them before I could eat them. On Mum’s plate there was only a small helping of everything – green beans, peas, chicken stew, potato salad. She saw that I was staring at the food on her plate and put down her knife and fork.
‘You spent a long time at the neighbours’ this afternoon,’ she said.
I nodded and shoved a fork heaped with green beans into my mouth. It tasted like something that had floated in dishwater after all the pots had been washed. Not that I had ever eaten anything that had floated in dishwater. That was just a guess.
‘I hope you apologized properly.’
I nodded again. I knew my mum was dying of curiosity to hear what had happened at Vusi’s place. But if she wasn’t going to ask, I wasn’t going to tell.
That served her right for the heap of green beans.
‘What disease is the boy suffering from?’ Mum changed her tactics.
I answered without looking at her because I was busy counting the peas with my fork. ‘Hodgkin’s disease. It’s a type of cancer.’
That shut her up for a while. There were thirty-one peas on my plate. Thirty-one is a prime number because it can only be divided by one and by thirty-one. It’s also a happy number. At the beginning of the year, when I told the new maths teacher, Mr Faure, that 368 was a happy number, he snorted and asked whether I was superstitious.
Happy numbers have nothing to do with superstition. Dad taught me to think of happy numbers when I was struggling to fall asleep. When you square the digits in a happy number and add them up, and then do the same with every new number you get, the final answer will always be one.
Thirty-one is easy to work out:
32 + 12 = 10
12 + 02 = 1
‘I’m going to visit Vusi again, tomorrow afternoon after school,’ I said after forcing myself to swallow the last few green beans.
My mum looked sceptical. ‘So, are you friends now?’
‘I don’t know.’
She seemed to think about this for a moment. ‘As long as you don’t make a nuisance of yourself,’ she warned. ‘If he’s that sick…’
‘His nurse said it was OK,’ I said while carrying the plates to the sink. ‘We’re going to make a movie.’
I went to bed early but found it hard to fall asleep – maybe because so many things had happened that day. It was the first time I had given someone a bloody nose. I had buried Kathleen. And the next day I was going to start making a movie with the neighbours’ son.
I noticed a car’s headlights through the curtains, and then heard Cindy sneaking into the house – even though Mum always told Bruce not to bring her home later than ten. The red digits on my alarm clock flashed 23:41.
Was 2,341 a happy number?
22 + 32 + 42 + 12 = 30
32 + 02 = 9
92 = 81
82 + 12 = 65
62 + 52 = 61
62 + 12 = 37
32 + 72 = 58
52 + 82 = 89
82 + 92 = 145
12 + 42 + 52 = 42
42 + 22 = 20
22 + 02 = 4
42 = 16
12 + 62 = 37
Thirty-seven again. The moment an answer is repeated, it means that you haven’t found a happy number.
The alarm clock changed to 23:42. I sighed and got up to get a glass of water.
I wasn’t the only one who was still awake at that time of the night. In the lounge the bluish light of the TV was glowing. Mum was lying stretched out on the couch. She was watching one of those long life-insurance commercials, the kind that flashed a phone number on the screen every couple of minutes. ‘Nobody likes talking about death,’ said the man on the TV. ‘But what will happen to your loved ones one day when you are no longer there? Will they be able to enjoy the same quality of life, or…’
I silently turned around and slunk back down the passage. I stopped at my parents’ bedroom. The door was closed. Since Dad’s death Mum hadn’t slept in their room. All his clothes were still in the wardrobe. Suddenly, I missed him so badly that my throat felt as if it was lined with sandpaper.
I drank my glass of water in the bathroom and got back into bed. When I finally fell asleep, I dreamed of zombie chickens.
Seven Plot Plodders and a Spluttering School Bus
Not all plots look shabby and run-down, or have wrecks of old cars scattered all over the place, half-dead trees and rickety chicken coops guarded by vicious mongrels.
Some plots boast smart houses with high fences around them and lawns that look like they’ve been clipped with a nail clipper. And rose bushes. But those weren’t really the kind of plots you found in Estoire.
The kids at school called us the plot plodders. And the fact that we were driven to school and back in a bus that was an old rust bucket didn’t exactly help. There were seven of us who took the bus every morning and every afternoon:
1. Me.
2. Patrick, who wore the thickest glasses I’d ever seen and always reeked of onions because his mum ran a pickle factory from their backyard shed.
3. Safraaz, whose dad owned the garage and cafe, and therefore thought he was better than the rest of us.
4. Waylon, who played prop for the school’s first rugby team, even though he was only in Grade Ten, and whose mum packed him an entire Shoprite bag full of snacks every day. Waylon used to boast that he ate four eggs for breakfast every morning. Actually, I shouldn’t complain, as his mum was one of my best clients – she bought three dozen eggs every week. But Waylon also liked bragging about the after-effect of all those eggs. We always travelled with the bus windows open, no matter how cold it was.
5. and 6. The blonde twins, Mandi and Jolandi, who were in Grade Nine and always shared an MP3 player, with the one earphone in Mandi’s ear and the other one in Jolandi’s. Sometimes I thought they shared a brain as well, but I never told anyone about that.
7. And Chris, the only one among us who was never called a plot plodder openly because she once gave the captain of the first rugby team a shiner after he dared to call her that. Yes, Chris was a girl. She was slightly built and she had large, dark eyes and long blonde hair that all the boys were desperate to touch (but you would’ve been really dumb to dare to try that). And everyone knew that her eldest brother was in jail.
The small bus coughed and spluttered in the cold.
‘Ferreira, get a move on!’ Mr Oldman called and hooted like crazy as Patrick came running towards the bus with his bag over his shoulder. ‘One day you’ll be late for your own funeral!’ He said that every morning.
‘Sorry, sir,’ mumbled Patrick. He mumbled that every morning too.
Patrick was lucky. He was the last one the bus picked up. It meant that he got the worst seat (up front, next to Mr Oldman), but by the time we stopped at their plot the bus had warm
ed up and didn’t stall so easily. That morning my hands were burning from the cold – we’d had to get out twice to push.
We shared the small bus with the retirement home. During the day it was used to take old people to the shops. That was why Silver Years Home was painted on the side of the bus. Once, Mandi and Jolandi had tried to bribe Waylon to paint over the words.
Mr Oldman’s nickname was Ollie the One-Armed Bandit but none of us dared call him that. When he lost his temper you had to watch out. He once dropped Waylon in the middle of nowhere and drove off because Waylon had dared joke about Mr Oldman’s arm. People said he had lost his arm in a car accident when he was still young. Apparently he had been a provincial tennis player before the accident. Watching him drive was quite something. When he changed gears he gripped the steering wheel with one bony knee.
The bus pulled away with a growl. Everyone was quiet that morning. A Sotho newsreader’s voice was droning on through the crackling loudspeakers. The bus radio was ancient and you could no longer change the stations but Mr Oldman still switched it on every morning. Patrick was the only one who understood some Sotho because, when he was small, his family had a Sotho housekeeper who taught him some of her language. Sometimes he would tell us if there was important news. The broken radio was one of the reasons why the twins were always listening to their MP3 player.
I stared out of the window at the bare trees and dry brown grass. On the side of the road the frost was still shiny white. Patrick had a cold and was sniffing every now and then.
What if a real zombie plague broke out and the seven of us – eight, including Mr Oldman – were the only survivors? I tried to imagine what it would look like if the groups of people waiting by the roadside for buses and taxis were all bloodthirsty zombies.
Usually Mr Oldman would lose his temper in traffic and then he’d swear under his breath and use his only hand to give people the finger. So I figured he would run over and kill some of the zombies if he was angry enough.
I wasn’t so sure how well the rest of us would cope.
Waylon was big and strong enough. If he got hold of the tyre lever or something he could smash a few zombie heads in.
Patrick would be useless against a mob of zombies. But maybe he could keep the zombies at bay with that onion stench. No, wait – it’s actually vampires who are supposed to be the ones who hate garlic.
Safraaz would probably just stay in the bus and expect the rest of us to jump out and do the dirty work, killing all the zombies.
The twins wouldn’t be of much use either; they would just yell and flap their hands in the air, the way a lot of girls do in horror movies.
Chris…
‘What’re you looking at?’ she asked.
My face felt hot. ‘Nothing,’ I muttered and quickly looked away.
To hide my embarrassment I started counting the cars driving by. When I reached thirty-seven, I threw her a furtive glance. She was sitting with a slight smile on her face, staring out of the window.
Vusi’s Movie
‘The End of the World.’ Vusi nodded.
‘What kind of name is that for a movie?’
‘It says exactly what it’s about,’ said Vusi. He picked up a sheet of paper from his desk. ‘Take a look…’
‘What’s that?’
He sighed and rolled his eyes. ‘Can’t you see? It’s our poster, man! And that isn’t all…’ He took a bottle from the drawer in his desk.
‘Erm…’ I said and looked at the red stuff in the bottle. I stopped myself from asking what it was.
‘Fake blood,’ announced Vusi proudly. ‘The kind they use in movies. I got the recipe on the internet. You use red food colouring, flour, gelatine–’
‘Vusi, would you like some fruit juice?’ Miranda poked her head around the door. ‘Hi, Clucky,’ she added. Her hair was tied up in a ponytail. I still didn’t know how she’d found out my name. Maybe Vusi had told her.
‘That would be nice, thanks,’ said Vusi.
I just nodded. My throat suddenly felt dry.
‘How are you feeling?’ Miranda asked Vusi, sounding concerned.
‘I’m OK,’ he said impatiently. ‘I’m trying to explain to Clucky how to make fake blood.’
‘Don’t you have to go to school at all?’ I asked after Miranda had left.
‘They’ve been homeschooling me,’ Vusi explained. ‘Since the beginning of this year.’
‘Wow, you’re lucky.’
Vusi looked at me without saying a word and shook his head.
I felt like an idiot. ‘Sorry… I… I mean, I wouldn’t mind being homeschooled.’
He laughed. ‘My mum is worse than any teacher I’ve ever had. Come on then, do you want to see what I’m going to do with the blood or not?’
I nodded.
‘Hold out your hand. Wait, first take off your jacket.’
I quickly took off my jacket and held out my hand. He opened the bottle of fake blood, picked up a brush from his desk and started to paint the blood on my hand. It was cold and felt like jelly. When he was done, he took a step back to look at his handiwork. I wiggled my fingers. The fake blood felt sticky.
Miranda almost dropped the fruit juice when she returned. ‘Good grief! That looks terrible! Clucky, we have to get you to casualty immediately – you’ve already lost too much blood.’
‘It’s fake blood!’ I quickly pacified her.
She burst out laughing. ‘I know, but it looks very real. And very creepy! As if your hand’s been in a mincer.’
Fortunately, I’d never seen anyone whose hand had been in a mincer. But Miranda was a nurse, so maybe she had.
‘She’s nice,’ I said when I was sure that Miranda was out of earshot.
Vusi nodded. ‘And very expensive.’
‘What?’
‘D’you know how much a home nurse costs? My parents could never afford it. My grandpa’s paying her.’
‘You have a rich grandfather?’
‘Yep. My mum’s dad. But it’s been years since I last saw him. He and my mum no longer speak to each other. When he heard that I was sick, he offered to pay for a nurse. At first my mum didn’t want to accept the offer, but my dad convinced her.’
I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that, so I kept quiet.
‘So, are you ready?’ asked Vusi.
I frowned. ‘For what?’
‘For the first scene of the movie.’ Vusi looked around his room as if he was seeing it for the very first time. He seemed to be concentrating hard. Then he picked up the video camera from his bedside table.
‘Can I go and wash my hand?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘No, your hand’s going to be one of the main characters in this scene.’
It seemed that Vusi had planned everything right down to the last detail – the way you first work out a difficult maths problem in your head before you start writing down the solution. First he drew the curtains so that it was dark in the room. Then he positioned himself in front of the poster of A Nightmare on Elm Street 4.
He switched on the camera, raised it to his face and said in a shaky voice, ‘One day, your life is normal and boring. And the next – ZAP! – a zombie plague breaks out. Zombies everywhere in the streets. Your teachers at school. Your best friends. Your neighbours. Your mum and dad. Everyone… zombies!’
I held my breath when he stopped. He seemed to have taken a moment to think about what to say next. He was staring at the camera.
I heard something tiptoe behind me on the wooden floor. I swung around and exhaled softly. It was only Cheetah.
It looked like the dog was exactly the inspiration Vusi had been waiting for.
‘The only thing you have left in this world is your dog.’
He turned around and pointed the camera at Cheetah. The dog barked excitedly and tried to lick the camera.
‘Your faithful old dog,’ said Vusi in his camera voice. ‘Your faithful dog, Killer, who will defend you to the bitter end. Man�
�s best friend.’
Cheetah made a strange yelping sound. Maybe he was wondering why his name had changed to Killer. Or maybe he was wondering whether he really would defend his master ‘to the bitter end’ after everyone on earth had changed into zombies.
‘Hey, Killer, watch out!’ Vusi screamed unexpectedly.
Cheetah and I both jumped with fright. Cheetah barked viciously.
‘The window!’ Vusi shouted and jumped aside.
Puzzled, I looked at the window.
‘OK, now it’s your turn,’ Vusi said in his normal voice. He had switched the camera off.
‘Huh?’ I asked.
‘Your hand, dude,’ Vusi said impatiently. ‘Now your zombie hand has to appear through the window. Go and stand outside the window and wait until I shout “Action!” OK?’
Loitering Around, Getting up to No Good, Lotto Numbers and a Leather Jacket
‘They broke into Moosa’s cafe again over the weekend,’ Mum announced on Tuesday evening as we were sitting in front of the TV. Her voice sounded shaky. ‘It was the second time this month.’
‘Yes, I know,’ I said and took a bite of my sausage roll without taking my eyes off the TV screen.
There was canned laughter about a joke I’d missed. As always, only a faint chuckle came from deep inside Uncle Hendrik’s chest. It always sounded like his laughter was wrapped in cotton wool.
‘I read about it in the police newsletter,’ said Mum. The police delivered a monthly report to all the plots to inform everyone of criminal activity in the area. I think my mum was the only person who read that report from top to bottom. After that she would spend an entire week worrying about all the crime.
‘Safraaz told me,’ I said.
‘Oh, yes,’ Mum said. ‘I forgot Moosa’s son also goes to school on the bus.’ She sighed. ‘They suspect a gang of young people is behind the burglaries. Goodness me, the youth of today… They struggle to find work, they loiter around and get up to no good. There’s a complete lack of discipline in our homes and schools. What on earth is happening to this world of ours?’