Chapter 8

My dad was always over-protective. Maybe when I say that, I just mean protective, because even though we hated it at the time, we’re just like him now. I remember a boyfriend coming round to pick me up for a movie. We were in Standard Nine or matric. He could drive, so it must have been matric. I don’t know.

When he arrived at the house Dad wouldn’t let him stand outside, he invited him in. The boy stood hands by his side in the dining room while Dad asked him questions. Not direct questions, oblique ones. When you meet a girlfriend’s parents you’ve probably memorised the right answers to all the usual questions. Not so with these ones.

Which traffic department did you get your driver’s licence at? was one of them. One of the traffic departments was renowned for being easier to pass at. The one in Hill Side.

Mid-answer, Dad stood up from his chair and walked slowly round the table to the sideboard, knelt down and opened the door to the liquor cupboard. He stuck his hand inside and searched about and brought out a crumpled box of cigarettes. Camels, so old that the carton was beginning to turn yellow and the varnish on the box was cracking. He offered the boy one of the stale cigarettes to see if he would take it. The trap was too obvious.

This was all while I was standing there embarrassed as hell. I was so angry with Dad for doing it. But I couldn’t do anything except glare at him.

Then he asked the boy for his wallet and began emptying it on the dining table. ATM card, library card, coins, phone card and receipts – which Dad read through individually.

And whose films do you like better, Mel Gibson’s or the guy from Dances with Wolves? That was another question. The boy had answered Dances with Wolves and it seemed to be the right answer. But who knew? Then when Dad decided to let us go, he walked us to the door, and just as the boy was breathing freely with relief, Dad grabbed his skinny teenage arm, like a silverback gorilla grabbing a towel rail, and looked him in the eyes and said, Ten o’clock.

We left the movie early to make sure we got back to the house on time. The boy sped along Strydom Road like he was being chased by a swarm of demons and accelerated through two orange robots. We were standing in the street outside our house nine minutes before ten. I remember the pale purple glow of the street lights reflecting off his skin. It made him look ghostly – sick. He hurried me up the steps to the front door and turned around and when I looked again he was gone. Through my bedroom window I heard him retch into the across-the-road neighbours’ azaleas before he got back in his car. He stalled twice and then drove away.

At school the next day he told me, accusingly, that there was a silver Corolla parked outside his parents house the whole time we were at the movies. And that his folks had called the police. I lied and told him that my dad drove a blue Mercedes.

It was our silver Corolla. And it was Dad for sure, probably with his old pair of Zenith binoculars, checking that the boy who’d just taken me to the movies was from a decent home.

Dad’s plan, whatever it was, worked. I didn’t date him again – I just couldn’t get his gaunt, terrorised face out of my mind. And the echoing sound of him throwing up all that Coke and popcorn.