A thing had begun to grow like a tree in Leke Denton's throat. It was the same thing that grew when he was picked for the school play and it was there when he was later cut from the cast. It was there when girls glanced away as he walked down the corridors. An invisible rash.
As the day approached, Leke dreaded turning nine. Jane had mentioned to him that they would have a party to celebrate – this was something that had never happened before.
‘Why?’ he was helping her in the kitchen.
‘It's a special one,’ she said, dusting flour off his nose. ‘Last of the “one digits”. Next is ten – two numbers instead of one.’
Leke was certain that having his own party was a bad idea, but this certainty only existed during the day. At school, he moved from class to class, a watery feeling; his hearing dulled as if his head were submerged in liquid. He could barely hear what people said, barely talk back, how would he host a party?
In his dreams, at night, though, there was no question that he could be the life of a party. He stood surrounded by a crowd of boys; they were laughing and patting him on the back. They played on the school cricket grounds and Leke hit a century, running the pitch he'd tripped on during the day to a chorus of sniggers.
“Cardboard boy” the other kids called him because of the strange crackers Jane packed in his lunchbox. Or “kid-for-hire” because one of the older boys had seen Jane and Marcus at the parent's evening and worked out that Leke was adopted.
Along with the threat of a party the other thing that changed with the coming of his birthday was the way Marcus treated him.
Leke walked towards the familiar red car but was surprised to find a balding head and heavy brown leather jacket in place of Jane's blonde hair peeping from underneath a scarf.
‘Hey there,’ Marcus leaned across to unlock the passenger door.
Leke settled himself.
‘Good day? How was cricket practice?’
Someone had tripped him, he'd got grass in his mouth. ‘Fine.’
Marcus pulled off the verge.
‘Going past the rope shop, alright? I'm taking you out sailing this weekend. Early gift,’ he looked over at Leke.
At the red traffic light he reached his arm across and ruffled Leke's afro.
‘Okay Where'll we go?’
‘We'll leave from the Waterfront, just go round the bay. I want to show you the view of Cape Town from sea – it's great, you'll love it.’
‘Okay.’
Jane spat into the sink. ‘Does he even want to sail?’ she shouted to Marcus who was in the adjoining bedroom.
She rinsed her toothbrush and placed it in the porcelain holder, studying herself briefly. Leke nine and she'd be forty-nine. She sighed.
‘He seems okay about it,’ Marcus answered. ‘Come on Jane, it's time he came out more. Always shuffling around and playing by himself,’ Marcus removed his robe and climbed into the large bed covered in white linen.
He reached for the pile of books and papers balanced on his bedside table and switched on the wall-light positioned above his head.
‘And the whole cricket thing?’ Jane asked, walking into the room, her hands smoothing over her short hair that had thankfully started growing back.
Can stop with the scarves now, she thought, sitting on the edge of the bed and pulling on a pair of grey woollen socks. She touched her hair again: Yes, just long enough to stop the scarves.
Her regular ritual of putting on face cream had ended months before, but tonight, maybe it was the growing hair, she enjoyed the cool paste against her skin and the glow it left on her cheek bones. She smoothed balm over her lips and turned from the dresser to join her husband in bed.
‘Marcus?’ she studied him, noticing a slight paunch where he leaned over what he read. Greying temples. Sunburnt bald pate.
‘Hmmm?’ Marcus looked up.
‘The cricket team? He said he didn't want to play anymore. The school was happy for him to play chess.’
‘Well, I spoke to the coach. It's good for him, Jane. He'll get used to it. Don't worry so much,’ he leaned across and kissed her on the cheek. ‘He'll be okay.’
They held a gaze for a few seconds. Marcus stroked her back and Jane remembered strong arms; that was the first thing she'd noticed about him twenty years ago when they'd met. And beautiful hands.
While courting he'd sent her photographs of fossils.
And she'd written him poetry. A progression of woos until she'd finally written:
Let's grow old together.
The way green leaves turn brown together and fall from trees, let's grow old together.
The way blossoms curl up and their colours softly stir:
let's grow old and die together.
What happened? Jane asked herself.
Marcus had gone back to his scripts but noticed her frozen in thought, ‘You okay?’
‘It's nothing.’
Marcus smoothed a defiant tuft of her hair and smiled. He put away his papers and switched off the light, coaxing her head onto his chest.
Jane fell asleep to the rhythm of his low-hum snoring.
‘You listening?’ Marcus shouted at Leke over the dining table on which were arranged a display of sailing knots.
Leke nodded.
‘Okay good. Let's get right in. Which knot do you want to learn first?’
Leke scanned the table. Marcus had taken care to cover it with plastic before laying out the knotted ropes. He'd tied two of the knots, using white rope, around grey metal bars that had clanked when he'd laid them down. For the other knots he used red and green rope woven together. Leke pointed to these.
‘Very good. Sheet bend and reef knot. Let's start with reef knot,’ he collected Leke in his arms and settled on the chair, ‘Aah! You’re getting big, my boy.’
Leke's heart pounded. Sitting on Marcus, Leke's limbs, long for his age, straddled the man's lap and his tennis shoes scraped the floor. With his arms around Leke, Marcus picked up one of the red and green knots and said, ‘This one, reef knot or square knot, is easy. You do it every day with your laces.’ Marcus pumped his thigh to emphasise his point and Leke's shoes made scuffing noises on the beige tiles. ‘You watching?’ he said as he untied and began retying the reef knot.
Leke nodded. He wished Jane would come and break this up but they'd left her in the garden. Marcus had insisted Leke stop digging and come and learn “a real skill”. Jane had frowned but in that way that didn't mean anything. Leke had seen her frown other times in ways that did mean something. Like when he tried to explain the itch in his throat to her.
It was happening now all over again. Leke rubbed his throat but he couldn't get at the tightness.
‘You okay, Lek?’
‘It's scratching.’
‘Where?’ Marcus challenged, but he called Jane who rescued Leke from the knot lesson.
Jane could always get at the itch by placing her hands on his throat. Her presence alone made the irritation disappear.
Leke stuffed the A5-sized Spiderman invitations Jane insisted he distribute into his locker and left them there.
‘Should I call the mothers?’ Jane wondered out loud at dinner when no responses had come and the birthday was three days away.
Leke sat at one end of the short wooden table, Marcus on the other and Jane in the middle, along the length of the table.
Leke played with the lettuce Jane had harvested from her vegetable patch, stabbing it with his fork.
Marcus, studying the boy, said, ‘I think it's fine, Jane.’
‘What do you mean it's fine?’
‘Maybe let us celebrate. You know? Don't really feel like a hoard of marauding kids stampeding through the house. Lightness is away – we'd have to do the clean-up ourselves.’
Jane stared long at Marcus and then at Leke.
After another few minutes Marcus leaned over and squeezed Jane's shoulder, ‘Let's do that then. Just us,’ he winked at Leke who looked back down at his plate, stabbing the lettuce leaf one final time before shoving it into his mouth.
Leke's ninth birthday passed at dinner with his adopted parents.
There was no sailing; after Marcus's rescue of Leke from the humiliation of a party none of his classmates wanted to be at, he retreated back into what Leke recognised: distant; breaking promises and blowing hot and cold.
As a birthday gift Leke received his wish. They bought him an atlas and a globe to place in his bedroom. Even though Marcus never took Leke sailing in life, in his dreams they travelled the seas.
During the September holidays Leke spent his days either in the garden with Jane or on the cool wooden floor of his room, lying flat on his stomach, his arm propping up his head as he scoured the large atlas.
The days mushed like pages of a forgotten book glued together by rain.
Back at school Leke struggled through, listening harder and raising his voice to be heard.
At the end of each day, to stumble into his dreams – into a terrain he was adept at navigating – was a relief. The confusions of the day slipped off his skin like sweat.
His dreams were often more real than “real life”. Leke cherished the characters he'd encountered – some recognisable from the daytime, some not – as well as the surge of joy and life that powered his sleep. The wind blew different, softer.
A year later, when Leke turned ten, he owned a library of atlases and a collection of globes that ranged from a keyring to a basketball-sized sphere. Jane had fallen ill again and her garden threatened to overrun itself in her absence. She'd asked Leke to care for it while she got her strength back and offered to pay him a stipend.
‘Then you'll take it seriously,’ she'd said.
Leke earned enough money gardening to tag along when Marcus did the grocery shopping, and visit the secondhand bookshop opposite the Spar to buy more atlases.
‘Don't you have enough of those, Leke?’
‘No.’
They drove back home in silence. With Jane ill, either in bed or in the hospital, the house had begun to change.
‘Set the table. I'll go collect Mom,’ Marcus said dropping Leke off.
They never answered his questions when he asked, and Leke was not allowed to come along to the hospital on either drop-offs or collections.
‘What's wrong with her?’ he tried again.
‘Don't be difficult, Leke. She's not feeling well, that's all. Come on, we'll be back soon. Use this key. Remember to lock the door behind you.’
Leke thought he'd watch the car pull off but Marcus kept the engine idling as he waited to see Leke safely in the house. His head hung down, Leke entered the house and locked the door behind him. He began to lay the table.
Jane had been away for a week this time and when they'd spoken on the phone two nights before she'd sounded sad. Something made Leke think of Christmas and birthdays, happier times. There was a special cream-coloured table cloth Jane liked to use: ‘hand-crocheted’ she always said with pride. She'd bought it at a farm stall on one of their forages through the countryside looking for flower-shows. And there were her favourite place mats – white ducks waddling in front of a red background. Remembering where she kept them, Leke entered their bedroom and, watching his footing climbed up the cupboard till he could reach the top section.
His left foot was on a lower shelf and his right was bent and higher. He balanced himself by holding onto a strip of wood along the top of the open cupboard and with his right hand he reached over his head at the top-top section. He heard the tap of his hand as he searched for the soft fabric. Got it, he pulled and let the table cloth fall to the floor. Next – the box with the mats. He reached a bit deeper, straining and almost losing his balance. His shoulder was sore. He reached again and felt something round. Not it. Tired, he stepped his way back to the ground and collected the table cloth. At least that would make her smile, he thought, but then something on the floor caught his eye. It was an old photograph, sepia-coloured and stained at the back so Leke couldn't read what was written there. He wiped the dust off. A name, maybe. “E” something. He turned it around and saw the face of a woman he didn't know. He kept the photo, thinking that he would ask Jane when they were next gardening just the two of them. He heard the slam of a car door and ran out to spread the table cloth.