Free Coconut by Kopano Matlwa Page A

enough open for eyes taking walks in the streets to stroll in. I look into these Seventh Heaven-like homes, I smell their food and catch a glimpse of the portraits on their walls as we drive by. Now back home, outside our orange brick villa, I peer into our own windows and wonder what others see.
     
    “Tuscan is the architectural style,” the sales agent had said to Daddy. “A gem!” she had shrieked, “a house incomparable to any other.” However, inside my home it is not the smell of sautéed prawns and ricotta stuffed pasta with mushroom sauce that wafts into the garden, but rather the sharp smell of mala le mogodu .
     
    I do not know where I may have lived before, or who I may have been. I do know that this world is strange, though, and I somewhat of an anachronism. Locked in. Uncertain whether I have come to love this cage too. Afraid of the freedom that those before the time before-before knew. There is jeopardy in the sky.

    Mama shouts Tshepo’s name as she enters the house and heads up the salmon-coloured hefty stone spiral staircase to the bedrooms on the third floor. “Tshepo, come down and help your sister carry in groceries.” The midday sunlight beaming through the punch skylights high above the staircase and the shy wisp of Mama’s white dress as she hurries up the stairs remind me of a make-believe fairytale. In the tale a beautiful but damned princess runs up a twisted tower in a forgotten castle escaping the crafty dragon that has kept her hostage in a moonless dungeon below. She runs up to a radiant prince above who will slay the dragon and free her from a life of darkness.
     
    I am already holding three large packets in each hand, but grasp onto the seventh with my left ring finger and pinkie. They are heavy, but the garage opens into the kids’ pantry, which leads to the kitchen. I do not have far to go. If I speed-walk I should be able to get them all there without dropping and breaking anything.
     
    “It’s fine, Mama, I can manage on my own,” I say more to myself than to anyone else whilst dropping the packets onto the oyster-and-pearl marble kitchen surface. I flinch at the force with which the two meet, realising too late that there are glass containers in some of the packets.
     
    “Tshepo! Tshepo wee!” Of course Tshepo can hear Mama. Although the walls of our house are thickly plastered to give it a colossal appearance, and the ceilings beamed and soaring to make it look grand, the living space is intimate and the family bedrooms all open up onto the circular stone staircase, so that every sound formed on the third floor is equally shared in 360° before dissolving into the nothingness and fleeing through the skylights. “Tshepo! Tshepo sweetie, we is home.” Tshepo is choosing not to hear her. Mama is choosing not to know.
     
    In this house it is the parents who slam doors. It is the cherry-wood cupboard doors in Mama’s all-mirrors dressing room that now swing open and slam shut. Mama is in a rush, she will rapidly remove her dress and cream pumps and change into the skirt and wrap top that will match the cork heels she has been searching for a reason to wear. “Tshepo! Tshepo my darly. Tshepo!” I can still hear Mama from two floors down. She seems to delight in calling his name, despite the fact that she knows he will not answer. Persisting consoles her. “I never did stop trying,” she will say to her friends when he is gone for good. “Never did I ever give up on him,” she will continue, between sobs, as they rub her back in manicured sympathy.
     
    I consider packing away the groceries but decide against it. What will I do with the mango atchar that steadily seeps through its cracks and collects at the bottom of the packet, turning the white plastic and the already soggy egg carton a grimy orange? Should I throw the whole plastic packet away? Is that not a waste of food? I do not even know where they keep the kitchen dustbin. Mama is always rearranging her