LITMIR.BIZ

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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 cataracts. Gleaming on the basin behind her, I notice a beaker I could tip over to stop her smiling; but I don’t.

      “Thanks,” I say.

      “No, seriously. Hey, have you heard? Kiran was meant to come back today, but he hasn’t pitched.”

      I hadn’t heard. Two weeks after our Easter break, Kiran took a month off school after his dad, an ENT with a practice in East London, was reported missing in the dailies. This was the week after I’d asked him to lend me his MiniDisc recorder and he’d agreed, telling me he’d do it if I let him neck me at the fields outside Hudson Park.

      I’d agreed to let him think I would.

      It’s not that he’s the worst looking guy here. He’s tall, with thick curls and faint sideburns, but he also thinks leaving his school shirt untucked undermines the staff. I could do without that. Last year, he’d spent most of our prep squinting at me. That’s when I’d come up with the idea to record the machine with the MD.

      Hence us having to make out.

      I turn back to my desk. “Maybe I’m still the new girl.”

      Lerato laughs and I take a moment to look at her. Her face is long and faultless.

      For something else to do, I open and close the pencil case my dad gave me. At the front of the class, Mr Costello tells us to settle down. He’s chewing on his lip—a habit I hate, since it keeps the skin chapped.

      Not that he’s awful. Mr Costello’s middle-aged, soft around the middle, and more bearable than most of them, here. His shoulders are often hunched, shortening his neck, and he’s always blinking behind thick, tinted glasses. Today, he’s holding a stack of tests close to his chest; if our class average drops below 60, he likes to make us all do the test over. It’s only fair, he explains, and I guess I’ve never minded him for that.

      I like fairness.

      Most times, Part and I meet at the intersection of Queens and Joubert Roads, then head down to the park—just the two of us, if Litha’s at hockey. We’re all at different schools.

      This town, once a mission station, was named after a monarch whose general turned natives into settlers—offering the Mfengu British citizenship in exchange for each other’s blood. It spreads under us like a green tomb, its rolling hills dipping into spaces abandoned to waste. The grass is always warm, as if a giant had curled itself around the borders of Buffalo City and lain down to die, before evaporating into the atmosphere. Part and I often take shelter in the shade of a stone alcove under an elm.

      Part likes to argue with me over whose life we’d grade worse, hers or mine. It’s my job to tell Part to be fairer to her mom— to remind her that her mother has a vascular disease, and she should stop picking a fight with her every day of the week. Litha tells her that too.

      Not that he doesn’t have ideas of his own. For example, he says even adoption isn’t a merciful act; it’s a lucky draw. It gets to the point where you’re afraid of your parents and they don’t remember your name. He’s lost faith in parenting, he says; these days, he loses himself in internet fantasies where the way to kill a monster is to give it a tonic of health or a life potion. He tells me to imagine a re-routed reality where life is not only the mirror of death, but also its catalyst.

      I tell him I’m not sure. Most of the time we agree, though. It’s been that way for two years now. Litha and I are Xhosa, while Part’s grandparents are from Madeira. The three of us met one afternoon at the Master Math office on Alexandra Road, down the road from Grey Hospital and De Vos Malan High School. We were looking for tutor jobs—a week of free lessons was being provided by the state to primary students from Ginsberg and Dimbaza—and we’d settled into the waiting room, where the air conditioning spat flakes of rust over the linoleum and potted plants. It made me shiver when it almost got in my hair. I didn’t like that. I yawned. I was tired, having skipped my last three meals. Part leaned back on the bench and made it creak. Next, two red-haired women greeted us, offered us a jug of water, and told us none of us had the job. I wasn’t surprised; I’d suspected there’d be a school background check.

      Outside, Litha told me and Part he worked at the Mr Movie up the road. He invited us over and took us back to the storeroom, where

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