if Holly and I can ever go back to being normal again. In our case, abnormal.
I found out something she’d kind of forgotten to tell me. For Holly, this isn’t lying. But it wasn’t the sorry-I-used-the-last-of-the-milk-in-my-coffee forgetfulness.
I’d been on at Holly about my father. Was he tall, like me? Did he also hate cauliflower? When can we meet? And then she lost it with me. I guess she was hung over.
“Enough already, Jenna. Give it up, won’t you? He doesn’t even know you exist, okay?”
Boom! Her words were a hand grenade in my face.
“You never told him about me?”
Holly turned away and filled a glass of water at the sink. She gulped it down, dribbling at her chin. “I’m sorry, baby, I really am. Please, just let it go.”
Let it go. Give it up. Like deleting spam clogging up my inbox.
I got up and locked myself in the bathroom. I stared in the mirror. My face was out of focus. I was only half a person, not even that. I didn’t exist. To some man out there, I wasn’t even born. I was nothing.
I’d forgiven Holly a truck-load of crap behaviour because I thought she got ditched – being a single mom is tough. But all along it was her decision. She’d kept my father from me.
I pull on the manky school dress and join Holly in the lounge. It’s so much more than just a lounge. Hell, yeah! It’s also a kitchen, dining room and TV room. It’s the kind of space that multitasks – an open-plan room the size of an iPad.
“Well, that’s Craig. History.” Holly switches off her phone and bites into a peanut butter and jam sandwich.
“You dumped Craig?” I wipe the peanut butter and crumbs off the counter and screw the tops back on the jars. “He was nicer than the last one.” On a scale of one to ten, Craig is a three. Her boyfriends don’t often make it past five.
Holly sets her sandwich down on the side table. She avoids plates, they lead to washing up. “The dude dumped me. But he had issues.”
Holly’s boyfriends all have issues. She’s got rubbish taste in men. Her type: always good-looking and never any good.
She stretches out her legs and puts her feet up on the arm of the couch. It’s a dead person’s couch. I take my spot on a dead person’s chair, chew on a carrot and stare at the pattern on a dead person’s carpet. All our furniture comes from the Hospice shop, a lot of our clothes too. The ones that really creep me out are those with a name written on the inside of the collar. Always grimy with some dead person’s neck grease.
Holly frowns at her toes and picks at a nail. “I might be late tonight. You’ll buy some groceries on your way home from school? I’m not sure I’ll get it together.”
Holly and I are a partnership and the household chores are split down the middle. She does the splitting and she’s not so hot with maths. Seriously, this partnership is no longer working for me. Aunty Agony needs to stop agonising and get back to me ASAP. When I find my father I never want to see Holly again.
I grab my satchel and my lunchbox. I’m going to be late for school. (Thanks, Holly, for coming home at three and waking me up. Lost your front door key. Again?) I scribble a note on my exam pad. Jenna woke up with a sore throat this morning and I thought she should sleep in. Please excuse her for being late. I pass the note to Holly but she waves it away. “You do it,” she says, licking jam off her fingers.
I sign the note and tuck it into my blazer pocket. “You not working today?”
She yawns. “Just a bit of admin and a pamphlet round. The market is totes rubbish these days.”
If you spoke to Holly on the phone you’d think you were speaking to a teenager. There’s only one word for it: pitiful.
Holly’s an estate agent – one of the million jobs she’s had over the past fifteen years. For now, she sells houses to families who are looking for “real homes”. Funny, that. Mostly she doesn’t sell. Just another thing she’s useless at.
Here’s her selling pitch – it’s genius: “If you move the couch away from the wall you’ll spot the damp. Believe me, under this new paint job the walls are dripping wet. The pipes are rotten.” She beats the honesty is the best policy to a pulp. By the time her sole mandate’s expired the seller’s already lined up another estate agent he can trust to lie.
“I can’t help it, baby. I don’t like to mislead people.” Like that crook who sold us our leaky shack eight years ago.
I leave Holly picking at her toenails and check my appearance in the bathroom mirror. I suck in my cheeks and stare at my reflection. I arrange my hair into a messy bun and use an earbud to smudge my eyeliner. I scan my teeth. All good. I practise smiling, not just with my mouth, but with my eyes. It’s Holly’s smile, flirty but fun. I try frowning instead.
In the lounge, Holly stretches up her arms to me. Her hugs are always fierce. “I love you more than all the stars in the sky.”
I pull away. Hating her.
“More than all the planets in the universe,” she says.
Outside, the rain has stopped and the sun screams down at me from a sky washed clean and blue. This is the way of Joburg summers. This city doesn’t do things half-heartedly. You want a thunderstorm, Joburg will give you one. You want sun? Don’t forget your sunscreen.
On my way to school I pass the For Sale signs outside the houses. Real Homes say the signs, with photos of Holly grinning at me. She’s wearing a dead person’s glasses, even though her eyesight is twenty-twenty. It was my idea: Like, get real, Holly. Who wants to buy a house from someone who looks like a cheerleader?
The security guard outside the red brick building opens the gates and lifts the boom.
No firearms or alcohol are permitted on the school premises. Spot tests for drugs will be conducted at the discretion of the school. Underneath this, a No Smoking sign.
Welcome to St Virgilius. Virgins, as me and my fellow inmates call it. Not that we’d confess to being saintly or virtuous even if you beat us over the head with a crucifix.
I hand in my note at the secretary’s office. She’s on the phone but raises an index finger. “Camp fees, Jenna. They were due last week.”
“I’m sure my mom already paid.” Ha! No chance of that. People who can’t sell houses don’t have a lot of cash. “I’ll get her to call you.” I duck out.
I fetch some books from my locker, head for the classroom, and run a hand down the side of my dress. I shortened the hem last week and it’s halfway up my thighs. I’ve got good legs. Holly’s legs. I open the classroom door and try to slip past the teacher in front of the whiteboard.
Andile Skhosana turns around as I reach my desk.
“Nice of you to join us.” The heat rises in my neck and into my cheeks. Someone sniggers.
“See me after class.” He turns back to the board.
See me after class. See me after class. The words beat a tom-tom in my chest.
