Tata looked at it too, and laughed. “No, you’re right. It isn’t just Lawrence. Everyone’s books are cooked.”
We laughed together until he broke into a cough. Changing the subject, I told him how the previous afternoon I’d asked a teacher if it was true that in the year 1500, there were only half a billion Homo sapiens on the planet. “I told him I knew it was over six billion now, but I wanted to know if it was possible to feed that rise in population without fossil fuels.”
“Using what, instead?”
“Using biofuel. Like with the Renewable Energy people.”
“Then you were looking at my papers?”
I nodded. “They were there.”
“Did you get an answer from your teacher?”
“I don’t know. He said he likes to keep an open mind.”
“Meaning?”
“That some people believe the Earth is 2000 years old.”
Tata laughed again. I watched him get up, knowing I couldn’t tell him about the machine, because I didn’t know how to. He put the newspaper on the table, fastened his robe, yawned, and left the kitchen.
I carried his cup to the basin and emptied it, watching the cold rooibos sluice into the drain. I ran the water for the dishes. It was warm outside. The air was placid, pierced through with the sounds of birdsong and children. In a short while, parents would expect their cars to be washed by their teenage sons. Their lawns trimmed. I ran the water over my palms. Then I began on the plates, the cold water paling the tips of my fingers until each looked like a small cylinder of powder. After drying my hands, I fell asleep for half an hour in front of a muted rerun of Noot vir Noot. When I woke, I took the house keys from the rack.
In the garage, although the air was humid, dust powdered all the surfaces except for the treadmill in the corner, where I’d balanced my bike. The treadmill didn’t work, but the belt moved when I rode over it, and that’s what I’d been doing for the past month, ever since Tata drove me to Farrer’s Sports to get me a mountain bike for scoring the top grade in my class. Tata couldn’t cycle himself. I’d convinced him that I’d learn to do it on the go, but I hadn’t.
The lights in the garage had malfunctioned; I had to remove a large cardboard box from the window to let in some light. I balanced my bike on the treadmill and began to pedal—it was flat and long enough to hold both tires. Every time I tipped sideways, instead of spilling off, I’d clutch one of the handles on the treadmill. It was a 16-gear bike, and I wasn’t tall enough to plant my feet on the ground when I lost my balance. This way, I could practice until I got tired.
That night, the machine returned.
Like the night before, as soon as I closed my eyes, the parts came out of the opposite ends of the wall, coming together to form a hole in the middle of the ceiling. The room filled up with a mechanical hum. Then I looked around and found I couldn’t see.
The following morning, I woke up on my stomach with my vision blurred.
I unlocked our garage, dragged the bike off the treadmill and rode around the block as the morning air cooled my sweat. I could tell it had taught me how to ride, and that this was the beginning of things between us. As I rode further up Wodehouse, I couldn’t keep myself from blinking, the world filled with a vividness that felt capable of blinding me.
RTR: 002 / Date of Recollection: 05.29.2002 / 17 min
Today is Mom’s birthday, although I forgot to watch the morning news like we used to do.
That was our ritual for the 29th. Dad couldn’t understand it, he said, but it’s what Mama and I chose to do. After we were done, he’d call us over for slices of sponge cake, her favorite, which he ordered at the Shoprite the night before.
For a while, after she was gone, he still went out and bought one on her birthday; but over time, without discussing it, we both stopped touching it.
I get to school late this morning, around 8:30, a minute before Mrs Robinson locks the front gate. She tells me latecomers are liable for four-week suspension. It’s drizzling. I cup a palm over my forehead, another over my braids as she shuffles me to the chapel. I follow her instructions in irritation, but silence. This is what passes for a truce, since the two of us will never get along. Mrs Robinson’s hair is an auburn loofah, flaking off into freckles all over her cheeks. I used to have her in 9th grade for choir; she’d teach our class without projecting the sheet lyrics on the wall. This was to punish us, I used to think, for getting the words to her hymns wrong. Not thinking, once, I made the mistake of telling her she was bleeding through the back of her skirt. It was true, but the class ended and she didn’t return to us for choir that week.
I unshoulder my bag and join my grade at the back. I feel relieved chapel’s close to ending; a moment later, the seniors get up and we all leave the church again, taking the gravel path to our first period in the admin block on Huberta Square, a brick courtyard named after a famous dead hippo from our district. I excuse myself and walk to the bathroom.
There’s a text message from Litha: I have more hockey practice.
I tell him we’ll live. I pack the cellphone back in my bag, take out two capsules of Celexa and Paxil, swallow them over the sink, and go to class.
I walk past the results of our math test from last week, the printouts pinned up in the corridor outside Mr Costello’s physics classroom. Settling down at my desk toward the back, I close my eyes and listen as the pills clatter inside my backpack, the plastic tapping against a pencil case that used to belong to Dad.
Then I breathe out, and open my eyes.
Make another go of it, I think to myself.
I don’t often talk about class or how good I am at school, because I don’t think there’s much to talk about. I know that most people here aren’t, and that’s fine, too.
Three years ago, sequestered at a different school—an old diocesan prison on the outskirts of East London—on a scholarship, I was awarded the Dux Litterarum. The headmistress, Mrs Primrose, cried as she patted me on the shoulder, and then apologized for her sloppiness. It was untoward of her, she explained. I took her apology, although I didn’t care enough to respond. I waited for the moment to pass, pretending I didn’t know about Marissa, her daughter, who was upset at losing the cup. The check went to my aunt.
A year later, I fell sick. I’d wake up in a fever, shaking at the thought of having to walk through the school grounds again. My mouth grew parched and I suffered from migraines on the benches at break. I couldn’t sleep, either. I was convinced it had to do with me being there. That’s what I told the counselors. Then I got passed on to new and different counselors. I did that until the school ran out of them and Dad unenrolled me.
Now I’m here.
•••
I drop my backpack, pull out the pencil case, and stretch.
“Let me guess. Not much sleep.”
Lerato’s sitting next to me, and as usual her legs are shaved and shining—slathered with enough moisturizer to give a person
