the shocked Di. Well, I bounced as much as someone can bounce who hates mornings, but I needed to distract Di any way I could. I knew she was going to moan about my barista hiring.
‘What?’ She crumpled her face. She really should go and see Lily. ‘What barista? And why are you so happy? Why are you even here? It’s early and not your morning.’ She stared into me with the laser stare of a mother with teenage daughters. ‘I thought Theresa was only coming in the afternoons now?’
‘Still no Theresa in the mornings, but the world is full of unicorns and rainbows when Stacey doesn’t fight me about her clothes before school. I have no choice but to be happy, even though I should be murderous since they both think it’s perfectly normal to wake up at five every day.’
‘Uh-hmph,’ was the only sound from Di as I let her process the barista news while she checked the coffee machine. I know that other mothers, even my friends, judge me for having had full-time au pairs from the start, even before I had the shop as a reason they could accept. I used to feel the weight of guilt about it. But hell, the judgment was worth it. Having help doesn’t make me less of a mother in my books. Plus, having twins is like having two shops next to each other in the Table Bay Mall, except they are open twenty-four seven. I couldn’t cope with the reality of having babies. Hell, let alone cope, I barely functioned. I put on a show when I left home because it felt wrong to say I was struggling when I’d done so much to have them. ABS never knew there were days I could hardly get myself out of bed, never mind care for two little helpless lumps of human. I thought a twin pregnancy was hard, all that worry to keep them in until they were big enough, but it was harder once they were out. When I am alone with them, even now that they are good at keeping each other company, it feels like I’m always turning from the one to the other, never giving either exactly what he or she wants. It’s not just about the time; it’s life with children. I love them, but I lost control of my body and my mind the minute Jerry and I decided to have kids. From not wanting children, to having the epiphany of wanting them and then finding out how hard it was to get them. All that fertility bullshit to make them happen, and all the drama to keep them in my body for long enough. I was a human incubator. Seriously. All that, and they still came a little early. I was petrified.
I couldn’t talk to Jerry about it – we’d struggled together to have these children and I thought he would be the first one to say I was ungrateful for the luck. I was Shelley, wasn’t I? He liked me tough, laughing, jolly; saying inappropriate things that made him laugh. I wasn’t the kind of person others would guess to feel overwhelmed by two tiny babies who came home after a week in NICU. But I was. And I dealt with it by getting a night nurse from seven in the evening to seven in the morning for the first two years. Theresa arrived at nine in the morning and, no lies, those two in-between hours were hell. Last September, I eased the twins into a playgroup in Blouberg. I drop them around eight-thirty, eight forty-five (or nine-thirty if Stacey has a tantrum about her clothes). Theresa fetches them at one and she works until seven-thirty so she can help with the chaos that is bedtime. I’m dreading the day she leaves me, even if her stomach is so flat and she is so young and beautiful that at first it used to form a lump of jealousy in my own stomach.
Di doesn’t get it. She thinks I don’t want to look after my own kids. It started to get easier when they turned three. I felt like I was coming back to myself; the wreckage of my post-pregnancy body was fixed, and I started thinking maybe there was more that I could do than simply survive the days. I got the idea for the shop. But still, what I want is for everything to be as perfect as possible for Stacey and Harley, and having Theresa help me is the only way I can halfway try to do that. I don’t get it right. Valentine’s MomFail, my most recent note-to-self of my inadequacy, a case in point.
‘What’s that about a barista?’ Di said finally. She talked while packing the cups on top of the coffee machine, turning the handles all to face to her right, the frown still on her forehead. ‘I’m sure I packed all the coffee things yesterday before I left? It looks different now – the machine is not properly clean and there’s no milk. Did you try to make coffee?’
‘Tadaaaa, I said that I hired a barista. His name is Wayde. He was here yesterday and he is coming in at twelve today. You’ll have to show him exactly how you want him to leave all the coffee things,’ I said. I felt smug. Not only had I solved our barista problem but I remembered Wayde’s face when I’d asked him if he wanted a job at Coffee & Cream. It was the last round of coffees and he’d just finished pouring milk into a cappuccino for James from the surf shop when I made the offer. He’d looked at me as if I had the powers of Wonder Woman. God knows, I want someone to think I have the powers of Wonder Woman. He’d given me a giant smile, cocked his head to the side, and said, ‘If you gave me a job here, that would be solid.’ I didn’t know exactly what he meant by ‘solid’ (my only reference was to the quality of poo in the baby years), but I took it to mean it was cool, so I told him it was a deal and that I would sort out a contract. I shouldn’t have done it without talking to Di.
She knew I wasn’t Wonder Woman.
Di cocked her head this time, standing in nearly the same spot as Wayde yesterday, but without the giant grin.
‘What were you thinking? How can you just hire someone? You didn’t talk to me … We haven’t even properly agreed to hire another barista.’ Di’s face was bright red, her hands furiously repacking the coffee cups she’d just packed while she talked. ‘What about references? I haven’t even met the guy. What if he is an asshole to Beauty? We need someone who gets on with her, since she is the only person I can rely on to work in this shop.’ I ignored the barb; I knew she included me in the unreliable ones. ‘I don’t want her to get pissed off by an idiot,’ Di finished. The ever-present, ever-competent Beauty heard her name but pretended not to and carried on dusting the shelves near the shop entrance. In this moment, Di and I were exactly like Jerry and I – that couple having a fight in full view of everyone, but everyone pretends that nothing is happening.
‘I’m sorry, okay.’ It seems that every day I need to apologise to Di for something. ‘I got excited. I met him in the surf shop the other day and we got to talking, and turns out he has a barista qualification and most of a hotel school diploma.’ I stretched the truth; he lasted three months at school. ‘And he’s worked plenty places as a barista.’ I didn’t know exactly, but I’m sure he’d said somewhere in town. I pushed on: ‘When I was here with no coffee yesterday, he came by and jumped right into making coffees as a favour. The customers loved him and the coffees. He made a lot. Like, a lot.’ I pointed out the tip jar on the counter. It was empty now, but Wayde must’ve taken home three-hundred bucks yesterday. ‘A bunch of women stayed until closing time and some of his surf friends dropped in for coffee.’ Fine, it was just surf-shop James and his cappuccino was free, but I’m sure more surfer friends will come. ‘We sold all our candles, two trays and three sets of champagne glasses,’ I pointed at the gaps where Beauty was dusting, ‘and he got on fine with Beauty.’ He’d called her ‘Beautylicious’. She’d laughed him off, flapped her hands at him – ‘Hey, wena, don’t talk to me like that,’ in a way that made it clear she wasn’t joking despite her laughter.
Di was quiet; she seemed to be thinking about what I’d said, noticing the gaps on the shelves. We haven’t exactly been doing a roaring trade.
‘You can see what he is like this afternoon. I haven’t signed anything, so I can back out if you hate him. But just think what it would be like if we had an extra person who was also reliable like Beauty,’ I knew Beauty was listening, ‘and could do the coffee? Maybe we could even have an afternoon off at the same time? He and Beauty would be that good together.’ I waited. I knew I had to get the perfect mix of pushy and quiet with Di. ‘We could try to get ABS together – it’s been forever.’ Another bout of Di silence, another wipe down of the marble counter top. I lit the lemongrass-scented ‘candle of the day’ while I waited.
‘Fine. I’ll
