Kaleidoscope Song Read online

  • • •

  I hear nothing else until my sisters stir and even then I do not rise.

  I lie and lie and lie, hardly dare to breathe in case I breathe too hard, breathe her away. And finally I cannot take lying here alone. I reach for the radio. Max was there. He knows. He’ll share the burden of it, isn’t it?

  “Gooood MORNING, Khayelitsha. San’bonani. This is Maximillius on the Breakfast Crunch at UmziRadio, and it’s Saturday, land of impossible, improbable adventures.”

  The heat. The thrum. The freedom.

  “Orrrr, if Friday nights are more your style, maybe it’s the land of blankets and a bag of Lay’s. Make sure you hydrate.”

  Music, lapping at my skin like water. Yes.

  “Leeeet’s talk about last night, folks. Oh. My. Goodness, what a night! This community is wild. How was it for you? Did you see? Were you listening at home? Or was your Friday something different?”

  Tale.

  “C’mon, we wanna hear it. All of it, the gross and the beautiful.”

  My night was definitely beautiful.

  I lie here for a moment longer, limbs all iron weight and my eyes closed against the too-hot, too-late sunlight heralding another day.

  And I would give my world to lose myself into the thick swirls of voice and music and exhilaration, but as free as I was last night, this morning I am bound.

  “Neo Mahone! Get your ass out of that bed right now,” my mother yells right on cue, hustling toward the door.

  It’ll have to wait. I haul myself up, and by the time my mother bursts into the room three seconds later, I am clothed, at the dresser, staring at the mirror and pinning back my hair.

  “Did you hear me? We’re going to be late!”

  “One second, Mama. Promise.”

  She tssks, but she retreats, leaving me to contemplate my face alone.

  I stare harder.

  Is that me?

  It looks like me. But I feel changed. Too clumsy for the room. Too big. Too small. All wrong.

  “A Clement C. says midnight surf was swell and that the Monwabisi crowd is sweeeet. That . . . I dunno, man, that sounds dangerous. How d’you see the sharks by moonlight?”

  And the voice of UmziRadio sounds just exactly like he always does, and I don’t know whether I am comforted or I’m disturbed. Because it’s not. Everything is different now, and he was there. Can’t he feel it too?

  Last night something cold and bright and desperate burrowed right into my skin and wrapped around my heart. And it can’t just be me.

  “Ahhh, Thanduxolo says—and I’m just going to read this out—she says, ‘Maybe catching sharks is the whole point. I know I spent my night lookin’ for a man wit teeth . . .

  “Eeeeeeish, that’s hot. I think. That might be hot. And p’raps a little TMI this early, but hey, maybe you and Clement C. could go shark baiting together?

  “A’ight, San says she put on her heels and danced, danced, danced and it was fine. Sammi—not our Sammi, I don’t think—says Friday nights are family time. Chicken dinner and karaoke with the kids. That’s nice. And a whole bunch of you are in agreement that last night was rad. Sharpie says he wants to play if there’s a next time, and Umi says she’d like to buy that last singer a drink.”

  And I long to simply crawl back underneath the blankets, to float on Max’s voice until it takes me back into last night. But my mother believes in two things above all: hard work and good intention. Madame Serious is the cleanest salon in the area to prove it, and it does not get that way by magic.

  So I grab my Walkman and leave Maximillius and the perfect evening memories behind.

  All right. I suppose I should just make it clear before we carry on. It wasn’t only Tale. It wasn’t even only that night at the bar. There is more than a single refrain in any song. There are harmonies and instruments and repetition all seamlessly sewn together so the new is old and old is new.

  Music wasn’t new. It was the oldest, surest thread, faded so it almost looked like skin. It was a chorus, familiar and always, always there.

  Music was my life.

  Mama sang when I was young. Underneath her breath, all day. And I learned that song was safety. She still does, but my mother’s song is one of regiment and marching to salvation. It is quiet and obedient and always follows rules.

  My song is . . . well, you’ll see.

  Baba works for Mr. Sid. My hero. Mr. Sid is one of us, a Site C boy made good. He grew up wanting something big and when he couldn’t find it in the rust and dust and dealings of our streets he left . . . and learned the big-man skills and made the big-man friends, and then came home and gave us UmziRadio. Gave back.

  But somehow, working for this great, great man did nothing for my parents’ understanding. Little Neo asked her father every day as he got dressed for work and downed his tea: “Take me, take me!”

  He never did.

  I used to ask Baba to get me an interview, for school. I tried to get them to listen to the shows I loved, the voices that knew my life and sang it back to me. But my parents would just shake their heads and point to the laundry and potatoes and my schoolbooks.

  “Focus,” they would say. “You build your own life, not your Mr. Sid’s.” But music was my life. My one true weakness and my strength.

  Mama and Baba hated it. Grades, they understood: education, opportunity, and hard, hard work. But music? Shame, not even when the music empire gives Baba his six-till-six. The feeling of a beat that dances just beneath your skin? What’s the use in that?

  It is a fantasy. And one which does not—without luck and prayer and luck again—put food upon the table.

  Beauty? Sure, there’s money there.

  Accounting.

  Tourist trade.

  But music?

  I wonder, if you asked them now, if they would say they saw it. Saw me before I did. Maybe they saw music as a symptom of the wider problem, or the cause. I wonder. . . .

  They hated it. And so I tried to fight it. Honestly. I am a coward by true nature, and songs are easier to sing when it is more than one voice and a microphone.

  I tried to get on with my schoolwork, to lose myself in other people’s dreams. But everywhere I went music trailed behind, just waiting for me to look over my shoulder.

  Oh, it was always there. That night, Tale simply . . . brought it forward. Made it shine.

  Mama’s salon is small, jammed between Colonel Mandela’s and the ShopShop Laundry & Cell Phone Repair in the middle of a leaning, narrow alley, but it is well kept and well known, and when she’s open there’s a steady stream of customers who’d only ever trust my mother with their hair.

  My mother has a talent, as much for people as for hair. She prides in it. Primps their egos with an at-ease concentration.

  My eldest sister loved that business, always fawning over Mama, watching how she worked. Sometimes, now, she was allowed to spritz the hair or balance up the books. And no one doubted that one day she would inherit the shack. Weekends were her jam.

  The rest of us—Cherry and Jeso and me—were not interested in coifs and colors and fishtail braids. If there were a song for this it would be a work song. “Shosholoza.” Slowed to heavy, painful beats.

  I longed for Tale to walk by and sing, push the tempo, race me to the finish line so I could leave. But she is only in my head and as Mama stands outside the door, fishing deep into her bra for the padlock key, I groan involuntarily.

  “What, child?” She pulls open the door, painted on the inside with a smiling, hairless head, and the slogan WE CAN MAKE YOU ANYTHING YOU WANT TO BE. It creaks.

  I breathe deep, suck in the damp and dusty air. It’s always cooler—stiller—in here; the tangle of lean-tos crowds out so much of the sun, but that will not stop us baking later, and the air in Mama’s shop is always sticky with hair spray and oil and dryer heat. I’ll take what I can get.

  I’d hoped it would come off as a determined breath, readying for work, but Mama frowns and you ca
n see the complaint sitting just behind her teeth.

  “Nothing, Mama. Sorry.”

  “Hm.” She nods, not entirely satisfied.

  Behind me, there’s a scuffle. We have not even started work and Jeso and Cherry are already at each other’s throats:

  “I want the broom!” my brother wails.

  “You’re too little. It’s a big job.”

  “No it’s not! I’m going to sweep and then I’m going to spit-polish the mirrors till they shine.”

  “Euurrrgh.”

  “What?”

  “Spit-polish? Who wants to look at a spitty mirror? Siff, Jeso!” She pushes him away, hard into the salon wall. It shakes, and for a second we all hold our breath in case it falls and leaves us in the open, even though it hasn’t fallen yet, in years of service.

  It doesn’t. Obviously.

  Jeso barrels back and grabs my sister by the arms, leans in toward her, and won’t let go as he lets a thick string of spit dangle from his bottom lip.

  “Excuse me!” My mother’s voice cuts through the street. “This is not a fight cage! Inside, now. I won’t have this nonsense.”

  You do not want to see my mother vexed. When she sucks the air in through her teeth, like tchhhhhh, and when her ample bosom heaves, you move.

  We scuttle inside, sudden-silent, and take up our positions to scrub and sweep and air the place.

  Shosholoza,

  Kulezo ntaba . . .

  Hear that song? Sometimes we sing it for grit and courage, but Saturdays it’s nothing more than punctuation to a never-ending sentence.

  Stimela siphume South Africa . . .

  And I just want to be free.

  Today is worse than usual. Slower, twisted like a well-worn cassette tape so that it plays at half the speed and sounds like something from a horror film.

  We reach up high and get down on our knees, sweep out the floor, the step, the corridor outside: No dust nor earth shall dwell in Mama’s place. And slowly around us the town wakes up, and still we work.

  “You should take pride,” Mama would say. “People see your work ethic right there. They see you are reliable. They’ll remember, when you come to need them. Let them see.” But today I don’t want them to see: It feels as though I am on show.

  With every passing nod, each, “How is it with you?” I wonder whether they can see inside my head, see exactly how it is. How there is music, and a girl, and—

  “Good morning.”

  I look up to see Grandma Inkuleko laden up with three whole feet of cloths upon her head, leaning heavily against the door. I grin. I cannot help it. The old woman has been in my life forever—probably the whole of Khayelitsha’s—but for all her wrinkles and her slowing bones, she’s fierce mischief incarnate.

  “Madam.” Mama nods, full of respect. “You’re well.”

  “Yes, child, yes. Although I could use your magic on this bonnet. P’raps today at noon. Over a good sweet tea.”

  Linda moves toward the desk and Mama’s big appointments book, but my mother stops her with a look. You accommodate Grandma Inkuleko without fail. She earned it the way people earn their teeth: with time.

  “Always for you.”

  “You’re a good girl.”

  I smile, slight and inward, at the image of my mother as a girl. She’s never been one.

  “And you, Neo.” The old woman grins and her entire face grins with it, creasing to the edges. “What’s that look you wear today?”

  I blush.

  “You got yourself a hobby?”

  Mama tsks. “My daughter won’t be getting any hobbies until she is thirty, thank you very much. She’s not throwing all of this away.”

  “Ahhh. That way, is it? Fine, fine. You be careful not to look too interested now, then.” She winks at me, and then with a promise to return after her business, she’s gone, wide hips swaying wilder than the lightest easy-woman.

  Somehow, after Grandma Inkuleko, last night sits more comfortably inside my skin. I imagine her there, set against the back wall of the bar, watching over her community, smiling so her whole face wrinkled. I imagine that she’d save a wink or two for Tale’s drummer. And it’s like she was there all along. Grandma Inkuleko and the spirit of this place go hand in hand.

  Somehow, that thought gives my brain permission, and after Grandma, Tale creeps into my work-song rhythm, shakes it up, infects it with a giddiness at odds with Mama’s work ethic.

  Twice, she tchhhhs at me for drifting, and the third, she whaps me round the head with a damp, cobwebby dishcloth.

  “Neo Elisabeth Mary Mahone, get your head out of the rafters.”

  And I try. I do. But dreadlocks rattling against the mic. And rhythm. And that smile . . .

  There’s everybody rising, rising, rising with the song, and spilling out into the street so light that they could fly.

  There’s music, in its proper form, and not even a morning working for my Mama can take that away.

  • • •

  The hours pass and our neighbor vendors arrive one by one to open up, stack fruits and vegetables and cakes, and pull rails of cloth or bootleg jeans into the street until you’d have to dance the upright limbo to get by out there. Crowds begin to jostle, full of weekend freedom. The bright-happy-desperate noise of business fills the air, all compliments and haggling. And still we work, Mama tchhhing every other minute, until finally, when our knees hurt from the kneeling and our fingers are nothing but bone, a lazy-gaited customer wanders up and knocks upon the door.

  It’s late. Surely we are done?

  Jeso stops his polishing and pulls a face at himself in the mirror. “It looks good, Mama.” He beams. “Very shiny.”

  “Are you in business, Madame Serious?” the gentleman asks, and Mama glances around the room. She nods, and he steps inside, sits in the swivel chair, and sighs contentedly.

  Mama reaches into her purse and pulls out eight ten-rand coins, two for each of us. She might act all cross, but deep inside she’s warm and generous. “Go on, get. All of you. I have no place for all your dross today.”

  I pocket mine. Usually, I save every coin for music—old cassette tapes and downloads alike—but today I imagine sidling up to Tale’s table with two green glass bottles, one for me, and one for her.

  “Can we borrow these nails, Mama?” Linda grabs two sets of stick-ons from the counter, one faux-leather, the other sharp and neon pink.

  “By ‘borrow,’ you mean . . .”

  “Sorry, Mama. Can we test them? Good service for the customer. We’ll make sure they stick on right. Test their durability.”

  Mama’s eyes roll. “I’ll remember that for tonight’s chores.” But she does not say no, and Linda and Cherry skip off arm in arm to beautify themselves.

  Jeso spills outside and pushes through the alley out into the wider road and sunshine, a whirlwind of joy. “WHEEEEEEEEE!” he yells, spinning around and around with his arms outstretched. “THE DIRVISH SHOOTS! AND LOOK, IT SAILS ABOVE HIS OPPONENTS AND HE DOES IT! HE SCORES! LADUMAAAAA!”

  I follow, slowly, pull the headphones from my pocket and slip a bud into one ear. Free from servitude, the day stretches out before me, and I want to savor it.

  Sunshine, music, radio.

  It’s bliss.

  But I’ve barely heard two bars before my brother stops up ahead. His arms fall, and he barrels back toward me.

  “Neo, Neo, Neo!”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Want to go get Cokes?”

  “No thanks.”

  Sunshine, music, radio.

  Jeso’s eyes go wide, his bottom lip all fat and sad, and he leaps onto my feet, although he’s been too big to really fit on them for years.

  “What’re you doing, fool?”

  “Pleeeease?” He rests his head against my stomach and looks up at me.

  And I try to walk away, but not even Janet and the promise of a shady tree and memories can win over that face.

  As long as he’s quick.

>   “Oh, all right. I’ll come with you, at least.”

  He beams.

  “But you have to walk yourself. Lump.”

  He leaps to my side—honestly, I’ve never known another kid with so much bounciness as Jeso—still beaming. “Okay! Let’s go!” And he grabs my hand and half swings arms, half drags me along until we get to the MotoloCafe.

  MotoloCafe is my mother’s favorite place to rest her feet between her clients. Small—three tables in, two out—and decked in wine-pink everything: the pink-checked curtains, plastic tablecloths and painted counter, and dust-grayed pink silk roses on the tables. But it’s clean and cool and Old Man George will leave you be.

  “Coke, please!” Jeso chirrups.

  George leans over and grins at Jeso. “Would Sir like anything else with that?”

  Jeso looks questioningly at me and I shake my head.

  “A straw and a table for two, please.”

  “Certainly.” And he places a dewy-cold can and a straw upon the counter.

  “Thank you!”

  We sit at the white plastic table by the window and Jeso leans conspiratorially across the pink-white tablecloth.

  “Soooooo?”

  “What?”

  “Sooooooooooo.” His eyes dance.

  I wrinkle my nose at him. “You’re weird.” And he shrugs.

  We sit in silence—except for the thud, thud, thud of my brother’s takkies against the chair leg.

  Thudthudthudthud.

  He raises an eyebrow at me, grinning over his straw.

  Thudthudthudthud sluuuuuuurp thudthudthud.

  “Bru! What?”

  “What you thinking about?”

  I shrug. “Nothing much.”

  “Is it that Max guy?”

  “What?”

  “You’re different.”

  I am different. Sho’.

  Suddenly I am not comfortable; too big for these plastic chairs, too open for this tiny space.

  Does Old Man Sam’s ear cock to hear us?

  “Wys, you.”

  “Is it him?”

  “No. Is what Max? Which Max?”

  “The boy . . . You and Janet always whisper about him. Did you—”

  My laugh is almost real. “Eh, Max, Max? That’s . . . Janet likes him. From the radio.”