Back to Villa Park. Jenny Robson

carried the polony in the palm of my hand. I ate it slowly, only one small bite every twenty steps. That way it lasted all the way back to number 5 Groenewald Road.

      But even if the mince was cut from the topside, Dorcas’s frikkadels always tasted horrible. Even Dad thought so.

      We sat together at the kitchen table in the middle of this lake of green lino. It was the new lino Dad got for the floor while Ma was in the clinic: curling green ferns. He said green was a calming colour.

      Sometimes he spoke to me.

      “I’m worried, Dirkie. I can’t deny it. They’re talking about redundancies at work. I mean, I’ve been with the firm twenty years now. How can they think about chucking me out? Like I’m a dog! Is that fair? Hell no!”

      The frikkadels tasted more like bread than meat. They clogged up on the roof of my mouth like paste.

      “But don’t say anything to your ma, okay, Dirkie? We mustn’t upset her, not when she’s doing so well. I’ll have to start looking for another job. It won’t be a problem. I’m only forty-one. Definitely not over the hill yet. Right, son?”

      I went to the sink for a glass of water to try wash down Dorcas’s frikkadels. Dad didn’t finish the three on his plate, even though he put on so much chutney. Even though Nick the Greek had cut the mince from the topside.

      “Cut from the topside!” Dad said. “Hah! That’s a joke! It’s not just the mince that got cut from the topside, my boy. It’s us as well.”

      *

      So. Okay. I slipped my bloody tie into my pocket and got into the taxi for a ride to Villa Park Mall so I could sit with Aggies for a while.

      It was a good taxi ride, at least. Under Pressure: that was the taxi’s name. But I didn’t feel under pressure. In fact the ride helped me recover a bit from the stuff that happened at Kagiso Holdings.

      Sometimes being in a taxi is horrible. The other passengers stare at me like I don’t belong there. Like, what is this lekgoa, this white boy, doing in our transport? They hold themselves stiff so they don’t have to touch me. As if I have a disease or something.

      I get angry. This is public transport, right? And I am public just as much as they are. What do they expect? That I must walk everywhere just because I am a Zed? Hell no!

      But Under Pressure wasn’t like that. The driver even called me “brother”. That made me feel good. Calmer.

      The lady next to me gave me a tissue for my knuckles. I told her it was my birthday. She smiled and made her earrings swing and said, “Happy birthday, then. How old?”

      “Eighteen.”

      “Only eighteen? You look much older. Like maybe even twenty-two.”

      Bethany also thought I was older when I first met her.

      “Only seventeen?” she said back in March. We were in her bathroom and she was giving me a clean towel so I could get dry after my hot shower. “Okay, but listen. You tell the other guys that you are, like, twenty-one. I don’t want them thinking I am, like, some cradle snatcher!”

      But she still wanted me in her bedroom after the shower. She still expected me to act like a 21-year-old. And when I didn’t, she got quite mean and sarcastic. And asked me if I was gay.

      So. Okay. I got out of the taxi at the mall robots. The woman with the earrings called after me. Said I must have a special day.

      And there was my friend Aggies. Where he always sits, leaning his back against the third concrete pillar. Exactly opposite the shop that used to be Nick the Greek’s butchery. Exactly where he was the first time I met him back in January.

      Aggies smiled up at me so his four teeth showed: two at the bottom right, two at the top left. Those are the only teeth he has. They always make me think of Afrikaans quotation marks, you know for direct speech? We had a teacher in grade six who was always going on about that, like it was the most important fact of the year. It’s the only thing I still remember from grade six. And grade seven for that matter. I wasn’t very good at school. Not like James Big-Deal Cameron, who ended up getting prizes for everything at prize-giving.

      But even if Aggies has quotation marks in his mouth, he doesn’t speak very often. Mostly he listens. Well, except for the time when he told me about his three children and the terrible thing that happened to them. But that took him nearly a whole night. And Rosie had to keep explaining the stuff he left out.

      I slid down the pillar to sit next to him with the morning sun shining right in my eyes. There were just a few coins in his safari-guide hat.

      I said, “I didn’t get a job with Kagiso Holdings. How’s that? It’s my birthday and they still didn’t give me a place.”

      Aggies made soft sympathetic noises while I told the whole story.

      A passing Pick n Pay customer with her trolley overflowing dropped two five-rand coins into his hat. That’s when Aggies spoke.

      “God bless you, missus. God shine his face on you and be gracious unto you.”

      I said, “Maybe later I’ll go see Bethany.”

      “It is good,” he said. “A man must have a woman.” He always says that. Even though Rosie is drunk most of the time. Even though she calls him the C word and the P word. And the K word.

      “Yes, a man needs a woman. That is the way the world is,” he said, and he gave me the two five-rand coins for my taxi fare.