Coconut

by Kopano Matlwa

  Sometimes when we are not so busy I stand at the kitchen door and just observe the place and the people in it. I battle to take it all in. Sometimes while standing there at the kitchen door I am pulled out of my daydreaming by a customer who wants my advice on an order or wants me to help them choose a colour for a fabric, and then I am reminded how essential I am to the functioning of Silver Spoon. They all know me. They call me Fiks.

  “You try too hard.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You heard me. You try too hard, Fikile.”

  “Don’t call me that here, Ayanda.”

  “Oh right. Fiks is it? Well Fiks, you try too hard.”

  “Thanks for that. I really do appreciate your views on how I should live my life, thank you very much indeed. But if you wouldn’t mind I have a table waiting,”

  “They don’t care about you, Fikile.”

  “Who doesn’t care about me?”

  “Them, all those people out there.”

  “Really? Oh, well in that case, I am quitting right now! This instant! Immediately!”

  “I’m being serious, Fikile. I’ve seen you out there. The way you fall over backwards for them. The way you run around like a headless chicken getting them this and that, stirring their tea anticlockwise and not clockwise as if they could even tell the difference.”

  “There is a difference.”

  “The effort you put into remembering even their middle names, their ridiculous little preferences, their favourite seats and those childish stories they tell about their lives and their dramas and their hardships.

  It’s real cute but are you aware that most of them don’t remember you, even though they come here week after week? Do you know that if you were to walk past any one of them in the street on any other day of the week in some other place they wouldn’t even know who you were? These people are not your friends, Fikile.”

  “I am not trying to make friends, Ayanda. I am just doing my job.”

  “Lies! You lie and lie and lie to yourself, Fikile, every day. How do you lie to yourself like that? Fikile?”

  “Fuck, Ayanda, it’s Fiks. Not Fikile, but Fiks. F-I-K-S, Fiks. Got it?”

  I get to the restaurant five minutes early but when I arrive I have to check my watch again to make sure because Miss Becky’s daughter, Carolina, is running frantically around the shop and so are the kitchen staff, who are already in plastic aprons and hair nets, their arms and faces covered in flour. I don’t see Miss Becky or Ayanda anywhere.

  “Why are you so late?” Carolina yells at me as she runs out of the shop carrying a wad of money in her hand.

  I am not late, am I? It is Sunday, right? I look around for an answer. Yes it is Sunday, the Sunday papers are out on all the tables. The shop only opens at nine on a Sunday, and we arrive at eight. Right?

  “Why are you still standing there?” Carolina shrieks as she runs back into the shop carrying a packet filled with bricks of butter. She screams more questions at me but gives me no opportunity to answer them.

  I am not sure what it is I am supposed to do, so I follow her into the kitchen.

  She throws the packet of butter onto the table already covered in eggshells and empty flour packets. “How many have you baked, Vincent?” she asks, stabbing a number on her phone.

  “Only ten, ma’am,” Vincent replies, looking up from the bread pans he is filling with dough, but making sure he does not make direct eye contact.

  “Only ten!” she screeches. “Only ten?”

  “Yes ma’am, only ten fit, ma’am, no space, ma’am, for – ” Vincent is stammering. He is trying to explain that only ten loaves of bread fit into the oven at a time, but he is interrupted.

  “Do you think this is a joke?” she squeals, her voice taking on an unnatural pitch. “Do you people think we are just teasing?” She looks around at all of us, daring us to respond. “There is no bread, people! No bread, none, zilch, so we have to make our own. Because you people think it is OK to go on strikes whenever it tickles your fancy, there is no bread today in any store. So we have to bake our own bread. There will be no hanging around, people. You are on your feet baking bread until we have enough loaves to stack them up to the ceiling. This place is opening up in an hour and we cannot serve customers if we have no bread.

  “And you, sweetie,” this she directs at me, “I don’t want to see you standing around the shop looking around like an imbecile, as if you do not know you have work to do. Get on an apron and…” she waits for me to complete the sentence for her.

  “Bake bread,” I say, humiliated.

  “Yes,” she nods, “bake bread!”

  I am mortified. I cannot believe I am being yelled at in this way in front of the kitchen staff. The bloody kitchen staff! Miss Becky would never degrade me in this manner. Miss Becky would never make me put on a plastic apron and a ridiculous hair net. It is her dumb daughter who has absolutely no understanding of how vital I am to the functioning of Silver Spoon, who has no appreciation for the hierarchy of Silver Spoon, that can go and disrespect me in that way in front of the kitchen staff. But I pull myself together.

  “You heard her,” I say to the kitchen staff after Carolina has left the room. “Stop standing around, and bake bread!”

  They look at each other and then at me and shake their heads. “Shame,” one of them mutters, as they get back to work.

  Stupid people, I think, putting on an apron, why are they feeling sorry for me?

  “I apologise. I never did introduce myself properly. My name is Fiks Twala. I have a second name, Fikile, which I never use because many find it too difficult to pronounce and, I must admit, I really do like Fiks better. I grew up in white environments for the most part of my life, from primary school right through to high school.

  “Many people think I am foreign, from the UK or somewhere there. I think it is because my accent is so perfect and my manner so refined. Yes, I have always been different. I never could relate to other black South Africans. We’ve just never clicked. So I give them their space and they generally give me mine. It’s never been an issue for me, though. I guess you do not miss something you have never known, so I do OK.

  I lived in England for a while, Mummy and Daddy still lecture there. I couldn’t stand the weather, absolutely dreadful, so I moved back here first chance I got. It’s harder here, though, you have to do everything for yourself. You can’t trust anybody, not with all the crime and corruption. But ja, it’s home, what can I say?”

  It wasn’t all lies. I have never been able to relate to other blacks, that is the honest to God truth. Gogo with her endless praying, Uncle and his laziness, the dirty kids at school, I understood none of that. And the part about my name, well, I mean, everybody that matters to me calls me Fiks so it might as well be my first name. And what’s the difference anyway? It’s my name. Shouldn’t I decide what I want to be called? I never had a father and Mama was a drunkard and a coward who ran out on life, leaving me alone, drenched in her wretched blood. So really, if anybody is allowed to create make-believe parents, it’s me. Who does it hurt anyway? The pretend stories of my life serve the purpose they are required to fulfil, ‘Fake it ’til you make it’. I feel no shame at my slight stretch of the truth.

  “Well, look at you, Fiks, all geared up in apron and hair net, just like a good old housemaid,” Miss Becky says laughing as she strolls into the kitchen, lollipop in hand and sunglasses in hair, oblivious to the hysteria in the room. She stops dead in her tracks when she becomes aware of the chaos around her. The kitchen is in shambles, there are eggshells on the floor, loaf tins scattered around, some greased and forgotten about, and a carton of milk, knocked onto its side, steadily dripping off the chopping counter.

  Under Carolina’s watch, nobody could get any one thing done without being screamed at for not already being onto the next thing, so as a result the kitchen went into panic mode. Miss Becky is furious. “Really now, people, can’t I leave this place for one minute without i
t falling completely apart?”

  Nobody says a word, not even Carolina. “Vincent? Yvonne? Happiness? What is going on back here? Tell me. Why must I always be here to baby you? Happiness, do this. Yvonne, do that. How many months have you been working here, Vincent? And still you cannot do a thing on your own.” She does not shout, just speaks sternly and firmly in that calm Miss Becky manner that has a way of making one feel ashamed of oneself.

  “And you, Fiks, dahling, exactly what are you doing in the kitchen? Customers will be arriving anytime soon and you are having a ball of a time back here.” She doesn’t wait for me to respond. “Please, clean yourself up and get out on the floor. You look disgusting. And the rest of you need to fix this place up. Yvonne, get things ready, orders will be coming in soon.”

  ‘A ball of a time’? Do I look as if I am having ‘a ball of a time’? I am covered in flour; I have flour in my ears and flour in my eyes. Nobody in the kitchen was prepared to show me how to bake bread so I felt like an accomplished twit fumbling around with ingredients, trying to copy the others while Carolina kept coming in here sticking her big head in my face and screaming that I should bake bread or go home. How is any of that ‘a ball of a time’?

  “She really has been absolutely useless today,” Carolina says to her mother, as she sits on the wash table, swinging her legs and sucking on a lollipop she fished out of her mother’s bag as if she had absolutely nothing to do with the frenzy in the kitchen. “So did you manage to organise bread, Mom?”

  Miss Becky stands with her hands on her hips, apparently still horrified at the state of the kitchen. “Well, yes, of course, Lina. Do you really think I would let some silly strike devastate the reputation of Silver Spoon? Never.” And now, as if suddenly remembering a rage she’d felt earlier but had forgotten about, she turns on us. “And you listen well, people, what you do is really unacceptable. This business of striking must stop.”

  “I told them, Mom,” Carolina butts in, but Miss Becky, now in full memory of what it was that upset her that morning, continues without any acknowledgement of Carolina’s tittle-tattle. “Silver Spoon Coffee Shop has never disappointed its customers in all its years of existence and it is not about to, over some absurd bread strike. And you go tell that to your people when you get back home tonight. Striking is no way to solve any problems. It is selfish and completely inconsiderate and inconveniences millions of good people who depend on a daily supply of bread for their staple diets.”

  Of course I agree with her completely, but I know better than to interject now, so I let her continue.

  “And this, dahlings, I say with the outmost sincerity: If any one of you here gets it into their heads to go marching up and down the streets thinking you can scare me with a strike, then you better be warned that I will have you replaced within hours, minutes.” She clicks her gel-tipped, French painted nails. “Just like that.”

  The kitchen is silent. Nobody hazards a word.

  “Well, get back to work, then.” Miss Becky picks up her bag and turns to Carolina. “Come Lina, sit with me outside while I have my cigarette.”

  “Yes, Mom,” Carolina says following her out, but not without having the final word: “I swear, Mom, I really do not know how you manage to work with these people.”

  “Ma’am, the sandwich comes with cheese, that’s why we call it a – ”

  “Well, I don’t want it. Take it back.”

  “Ma’am, if you give me your menu and allow me to read it for you, then you will see that – ”

  “Don’t ‘Ma’am’ me, I can read, thank you very much. If it wasn’t for us you wouldn’t be able to read so don’t you patronise me. Just take it back and bring me a cheese sandwich without dairy products, please!”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You people need to learn how to follow instructions.”

  “’You people?’”

  “Yes. You people need to learn how to follow instructions.”

  “Fuck you, Ma’am! Fuck you!”

  I remember what a scene Ayanda made that day. Out of his frikkin’ mind, swearing at a customer. I don’t know why Ayanda works here. He comes from a wealthy family and does not need to be here. That’s why he carries on like the people here owe him something. He was bloody lucky Miss Becky was not in the shop that day or else it would have been the end of his life at Silver Spoon, that’s for sure. The boy totally lost it. He threw the women’s cheese sandwich on the floor and then the plate and then his apron and then went marching into the kitchen.

  “They feel no guilt, nothing! Did anybody hear that? ‘If it wasn’t for us you wouldn’t be able to read.’ Fuck her and her literacy: we’d be fucking better off without it, that’s for damn sure. Fucking create our own means if they’d given us half the chance.”

  I had to do the damage control. I had to go out there and apologise for him. I had to make up some story about how he’d just had a loss in his life and was a little unstable. I had to calm the lady down because she was in tears. Poor woman had just found out she was lactose intolerant and was finding it difficult to deal with the news. She didn’t need any of Ayanda’s nonsense. The woman was actually very nice. If Ayanda hadn’t been so obnoxious, maybe he would have found that out. The lady and I had a fat chat after I cleaned up the mess on the floor and brought her a glass of water. And so what if she was a little demanding at first, I would be too if I’d just found out I was lactose intolerant. It’s pretty serious, life-changing news, you know. You have to always think about what you eat, try to figure out if there’s milk in the food or not, otherwise it could kill you! Poor lady, I don’t think she had anybody to speak to. And while she was pouring her heart out to me, Ayanda, of course, was tearing everything to shreds in the kitchen. He’d gone barking mad, talking all sort of revolution shit, scaring the poor kitchen staff.

  “They feel nothing. They see nothing, absolutely nothing wrong with the great paradox in this country. Ten per cent of them still living on ninety per cent of the land, ninety per cent of us living on ten per cent of the land.” Of course these statistics Ayanda was spitting out were completely outdated. That was then, this is now.

  “Any fool with two neurons to rub together can see that there is a gross contradiction in this country.” What was Ayanda talking about? He lived in some loft his parents had bought for him in Morningside.

  “They do not see it because they do not care to see it. What good will it do them to think for us, to have a little consideration, just a little consideration for the fucking indigenous people of this fucking land you fuckers!”

  Ayanda had completely lost his mind and was jeopardising the integrity of this establishment.

  “They see no wrong in building their schools on our beloved soil, over our ancient trees, in the realms of our sacred animals so that they can teach their children how to use us like parasites.”

  He wasn’t even making any sense.

  “How many of them do you hear saying that they want to leave the country? Huh? How many of them have you heard? Thousands, thousands of them want to leave. ‘Oh the crime! Oh the poverty! No place to bring up a family.’ So why don’t they leave? Why the hell did they come here in the first place? We were doing just fine without them. If they want to leave, I say the sooner the better.”

  I knew he didn’t mean that. He didn’t mean any of it. Ayanda had tons of white friends, good friends, friends he cared about. Ayanda had gone to a white school, lived in white neighbourhoods all his life. He had the life that everybody dreamed of. The ass was just talking out of his arse. And we all knew it. I did, the kitchen staff did, and he did. So after that, he got back to work.