After that concert, I understood when Oma Mimi said no to me. I finally understood why she always said that people had to work hard for what they wanted. You can't just simply ask your grandma to buy you a chocolate without offering to wash her car or to rake the lawn. The pyramids didn't build themselves! As a child, she had to go through way more difficult times and had to be content with a bowl of warm wheat and a glass of water she had to pull out of the well herself. As the years went by, Oma Mimi constantly reminded me of how much my mom was spoiling me. When I got the flu shot, or a new pair of shorts or a t-shirt, she would always look irritated and say, "I didn't have what you had as a child, your mom is spoiling you way too much!” When I turned sixteen she started taking rent from my pocket money and I had to pay for her gas when she dropped me off at school. She said that when a child gets spoiled they turn into a bad thing, and a bad thing doesn't have work for his hands. I learned a lot from Oma Mimi through the years but the biggest lesson was that of gratitude and to always ask yourself the question, "Do I really need this, or am I just spoiling myself?"
number ones. Everyone was always amazed at Daryl when there were school fundraisers because his tickets were always sold out first. Kevin arrived shortly after Daryl and we were finally ready to go to the pool. We all got into Oma Mimi's car, and the four of us were off. "I must confess, that my loneliness is killing me now." I sang as we drove but was quickly scolded by Oma Mimi to be quiet and I was told to stop listening to such devilish music.
The Public P l
Oma Mimi firmly believed in raising me to be humble and appreciative of everything I have and/or received. She always reminded me of how hard she had it as a child and how her experiences, back then, made her a better person today. At eight years old I came to the conclusion that Oma Mimi was an Israelite and as a result of her affliction as a child, it was clear to me that she had to tread mud and grind wheat under the iron hand of Pharaoh. When I visited her, and when we went to Checkers, I would always ask her to buy me a chocolate but then instead of the chocolate she gave me a sermon on how my mom spoils me way too much. During these conversations between me and her, she had such a despondent expression on her face and her tone of voice sounded like she was in unendurable pain. She always concluded with; "Werner, aren't you embarrassed?" shaking her head in disbelief whilst placing a bottle of old Brown sherry into the trolley. The size of the bottle was always in direct correlation to her state of mind and I saw she loaded a five litre that day.
I immediately understood and would stop nagging her for sweets. I thought about her days in Egypt and how she had to build pyramids as a child and would then get whacked when she put a stone in the wrong place. Who was I to be sad about not receiving a chocolate when she had to go through all that? Anyways, there were very few things in and around Oma Mimi's house that got you excited about life. When I visited friends, small things like sitting outside on their grass got me excited. Oma Mimi pinched every penny, twice, and just like the days when she was in Egypt, water was a rare commodity so we just had paving and sand around our house. Small little things like sand and eating coco-pops for breakfast, at other people's homes, got me intensely excited. During my friends' birthday parties I tried never to eat too much cake because I had to remind myself that my mom spoiled me too much.
During the summer months, she always spoiled me with excursions to our town's public pool. Now, for a child who didn't have grass, cable TV, or fizzy drinks at his home, these excursions were super exciting. She would never tell me when we would go because she said I drove her insane so I always only found out on the day. One weekend she said that I could bring Kevin and Daryl with me to the pool. They were my best friends. Oma Mimi always said Kevin exhausted her but she felt sorry for Daryl because he was tremendously thin and his mom didn't dress him nicely.
Daryl
Daryl's mom dropped him off at Oma Mimi's house. He had longish hair with a big mouth and eyes. There were light, dark circles underneath his eyes and his teeth were just too far from each other. He was always in denim shorts and wore one of my old handout white T-shirts with Green sandals. His nickname was Eleven because his little legs hung from his shorts like two
Kevin
We finally arrived at the swimming pool. Oma Mimi was looking for an area of shade to park her car under and had to drive onto a sidewalk, something she had loads of experience in, to park her car underneath a tree. We all then walked to the gates and got ready to pay our entrance fees. Kevin and Daryl both had their own money and my grandma put a R5 coin in my hands and told me not to ask her for anything more that month. Nowhere in life do you learn more about a town, its culture, and its
people than at the public swimming pool. There is literally a little bit of everything. "God, save a nation" Oma Mimi whispered and so the four of us walked in search of shade underneath one of the many trees around the pool. I have never seen so much green grass and water all together in one place. "You don't speak to anyone and you only swim where I can see you" said Oma Mimi to my friends, and I and proceeded to roll her towel out and got her book and an old Brown sherry out.
The pool was gigantic, 50 meters in length, and consisted of ten lanes. There were also three diving boards, each at a different height. The deepest end of the pool was almost four meters deep and it had always been a challenge for us to see who could touch the bottom. Daryl was too skinny to sink so he always jumped in holding a brick. Kevin and I always panicked because when Daryl reached the two meter mark you couldn't see him anymore and then one of us had to dive in to go look for him. I once swam down to go searching for him but I couldn't see him immediately. There were three cracks in the bottom of the pool and I couldn't figure out which one Daryl was.
Sheryl-Anne
in one of the corners, I saw Mandy and Patty Palmer with their boyfriends. They had a little battery radio and smoked and laughed loudly. You didn't really want to look in their direction because their boyfriends were the type who'd come over to give you a knuckle sandwich, but you couldn't really help yourself. Patty saw me and we both sneakily waved at each other. We were friends last year but after she taught me the fine art of cigarette smoking, Oma Mimi forbid me to ever go to their house again.
to do Grade 4 for the third time she started to realize that academics might just not be for her and therefore decided to spend all of her time on beauty and a rigid skincare routine. Her big dream was to compete in the Miss. Klerksdorp beauty pageant with the goal of snatching up a rich husband. Behind her,
One of the games we enjoyed playing the most was to throw different items into the pool to then see if we can go find them. Oma Mimi always told me to check if I see money and that I have to bring it to her because I was her big, clever little boy. She once paid her water and electricity bill with the money I retrieved from the pool. On the opposite side of the pool, we saw Sheryl-Anne McGowan. She went to school with us and was unbelievably beautiful but even more so, stupid. Mrs. Braniger always told Sheryl-Anne that she was going to achieve nothing in life because she had no ambition or any sort of drive to do her school work. After she had
Mandy
Patty and Mandy were both in a bra and panty because their parents didn't feel the need to spend unnecessary money on bathing suits. The two of them were by far the strongest swimmers there that day. They learned how to swim in the Vaal river when their dad went fishing and Patty had quite a solid breaststroke on her. She once had to save her sister, Mandy, after an undercurrent took her down the river, past the Compaans' house. Their dad was busy casting a corn bomb when he saw his brood wash past him. Mandy was laying on the grass, in her boyfriend's arms, and took a sip of his beer. From behind, I heard a gut-wrenching yell. I was almost dead sure I heard my name too but I did not respond. When I turned back to look where the yell was coming from, I saw a terribly common woman with a missing tooth and a glass of old brown sherry in her hands. She was wearing a one-piece bathing suit with white polka dots. The strap of the bathing suit was hanging loosely from one of her shoulders. "Get away from there! Young man, you don't have ears do you?" she yelled and that's when I realized that it was Oma Mimi. She really looked a lot like the demographic at the swimming pool that day. This was the reason I didn't initially respond to her call as you weren't really sure whether you were going to receive the hairbrush treatment now or not.
Daryl, Kevin, and I then decided to go sit under the tree with Oma Mimi. We were excited to enjoy the delicious little treats we brought with us to the pool that day. Kevin emptied his backpack and he had a Twinkie, a packet of Simba chips, a can of cream soda, and two chocolates. I have never seen Daryl look at something the way he looked at Kevin's snacks. Daryl's mom didn't pack anything for him but Oma Mimi said there was nothing to worry about because she bought enough candy and drinks for the both of us. I dragged our Checkers bag closer and started going through it. I found that Oma Mimi got us a big value pack of peppermints and a 2-litre ginger beer. I took one peppermint and then I gave the bag to Daryl. I had R8.25, that I dove out from the pool earlier that day, and used that to go to the tuck-shop to buy myself some real sweets and a cold drink. Daryl put a handful of peppermints into his mouth. When he spoke to you your eyes started burning and you had to put a jacket on. The corners of his mouth were white and he took big gulps of ginger beer from the bottle. It wasn't long before he got up and announced that he will be jumping from the ten-meter dive board. "Fok, this child had too much ginger beer!" said Oma Mimi worried, and it took a lot of convincing and empty promises, from Kevin and I, to talk Daryl out of this idea. Last year when he tried to jump from the ten-meter diving board a wind got him at an angle and blew him over the fence, through a Danlou Motors advertisement. The authorities found him four kilometres further in the City Hall fence, just next to the dancing fountains.
Just then we heard a rumbling and cheering from everyone around the swimming pool. Everyone's heads were raised in the direction of the ten-meter diving board and with the sun's rays shining majestically behind her, we saw Patty Palmer. She was on the edge of the diving board with her hands raised above her head, palms against each other, and fingers pointed to the heavens. “Go Patty girl! Show these motherfuckers how it's done!" Mandy yelled to her sister raising her beer in a salute to her sister's bravery. Everyone yelled and encouraged Patty. Oma Mimi put her tooth in and came out from underneath her tree to see what all the fuss was about. "Fokkit, no man! Is the child being silly!? Her parents don't have medical aid, get her away from there!" Patty closed her eyes and took a deep breath. A dead silence fell over that pool and then she said, "This is my gift, my curse. Who am I? I'm Spiderman!" and then that child jumped.
Her waist was bent with her knees tight against her chest as she moved into her first somersault. You could hear a pin drop amongst the crowd. When she came out of the somersault she pulled her body straight. Her left hand was behind her back and her right hand was against her forehead and then she started to twist like something you've never seen before. The aggression in her twist, coupled with the wind, ripped her completely out of her bra, and then all you could see were tits and hair. From that moment on, everything started to go downhill for Patty. She couldn't get herself out of that twist properly. Her timing was off with a fraction of a second and then she hit the water like wet shit. The sound of the impact alone left everyone's ears around the pool ringing. That pool parted like the Red Sea and I just had to stop Oma Mimi from walking through it. "Shit Patty, to the side! To the side!" yelled Mandy at her sister.
Patty left the pool that afternoon in three state ambulances. Oma Mimi was tremendously emotional about the entire situation like she usually was when she had too much sherry, and she made us promise that we should never, under any circumstances, ever jump from the ten-meter diving board. She said that young people never think about what they're doing to their bodies. Just imagine the level of back pain in this world if all of us had to fall from the sky like that. Oma Mimi then told us to gather our stuff and to start packing up, it was time to go home. She said we needed to be out of the gates before the miners got off from work because apparently, this place changes completely when they start to arrive. As we drove off I saw Patty's bra dangling from the swimming pool's fence.
We were ravenous after spending the entire day in the sun and water. Oma Mimi baked us each an egg with a slice of bread, a piece of tomato, and three slices of cucumber. She didn't really like it when my friends were eating over at our place because it was an extra expense she did not budget on. Especially on that day when she already had to spend unnecessary money on peppermints, ginger beer, and entrance at the pool. She told the three of us that we would have to wash her car the next day to say thank you for the gas she used to take us to the pool. Kevin's mom came to pick him up and he left our house with high spirits and a semi-full belly. Daryl's mom called and asked if he could pretty-please sleepover at our place because she forgot to wash his fitted-sheet and he could not, under any circumstances, sleep without a fitted-sheet. She explained to Oma Mimi that she always tucks Daryl in tightly underneath the fitted-sheet just in case he rolls off the bed. The fitted-sheet would then catch him and prevent him from not falling to his death. These measurements had to be taken due to the fact that Daryl was so skinny, and a fall at the wrong angle could mean immediate death. His mom also asked Oma Mimi to please put two blankets over him before she goes to bed. The doctor apparently told his mom that it was a miracle that Daryl survived the last winter and even though it was summer now, one could never be too careful.
Just to be safe Oma Mimi gave Daryl a warm water bottle and she made sure that she tucked the fitted-sheet deep underneath the mattress. She set three alarms that night to check if he was still breathing. When she came into the room that next morning she got a huge fright when she didn't see Daryl in bed but then gave a sigh of relief when she saw him dangling off to the side of the bed, safely within the fitted-sheet. The two of us started getting ready for school and Oma Mimi waved at us as we left the house walking that morning. Kevin waited for us at the school gates, and the three of us walked to Mrs. Braniger's class. Sheryl-Anne McGowan was at Mrs. Braniger's desk and the two of them were busy having a heated conversation about Sheryl-Anne's future. The intercom went off. And the principal made an announcement, informing us that Patty Palmer was in a critical but stable condition and that we could go and visit her in Klerksdorp hospital. She was apparently in wards six, seven, and eight.
After the announcement, Mrs. Braniger told us that we should start preparing for the school concert at the end of the year. The concert was about the Israelites and Egypt. She showed us the movie "The Prince of Egypt" so that we could get a better idea of what she had in mind. She told us that the story was based on truth, and I told Kevin that I know for a fact that she’s not lying about this because the story is about Oma Mimi's childhood. When the movie was over, Kevin told me that he now understood Oma Mimi better and he asked me whether she built her house herself. This was something I never thought about previously and it got me thinking. Later that afternoon we were divided into different roles. I refused to settle for any other role other than Pharaoh's wife. Mrs. Braniger saw that she wasn't going to win this war and had no choice but to accept. I was in the most beautiful, pure white piece of cloth you've ever laid eyes on and I had one of my mom's chokers around my arm. My mom also made my eyes extra dark using her Revlon eyeliner. The scene started with me, surrounded by my servants, bathing in the Nile. I saw something in the rushes and bent down to pick up baby Moses and a crocodile lunged from that water and almost took me down. It was Mandy Palmer, she was the crocodile. Kevin was Moses and Daryl was one of the locusts' of the ten plagues. They hung him from the roof and pulled him over cornfields. He grabbed one of the corns and almost took the entire concert's decorations down with him.
