The Rules

Dianne Case

Description

Teenage Adam obeys the rules and dreams big, of real soccer boots and of playing for South Africa one day. Jasmine, his twin sister, is street-smart and lives by her own rules. She dreams too, of a life outside of poverty. Meanwhile she saves all her coins in a glass jar on the top of Auntie Fouzie�s cupboard. But things are changing. The country is facing a general election, Daddy didn�t come home again last night, and Uncle Grootman is sitting in a wheelchair. Then Germany beats Brazil seven goals to one�

Sujets

• Young Adult

Informations

• Publié par: Cover2Cover Books
• Date de parution: 25 juillet 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 20
• EAN13: 9781928346289
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

1
“I want blood,” Grootman Saal says, licking his lips. “I want them alive, see? I want to see fresh blood when I kill them. Do you hear me?”
He squints down at his nose, as if expecting to find something there, then he drags the last life out of his home-rolled cigarette. His expensive leather jacket strains at the seams, squeaks as he squirms about in it.
“There’s money to be made, you understand?” he coughs, indicating with his finger tips. “But I don’t pay for dead ones; I want blood, fresh red blood.”
A bout of coughing bounces his ample tummy, as if it’s detachable. His top denture with the four solid gold incisors, unsettled in the moment, nearly drops from his mouth.
Saal’s all about the gold – thick gold chains like ropes around his thick neck, fancy gold rings on his clumsy fingers, a big gold wristwatch, the kind that important people wear. He wears gold drop earrings with little rubies sparkling around the edges of them. “Eighteen carat,” Auntie Fouzie tells us from time to time, with so much pride.
Jasmine’s eyes are big. “There’s money to be made, Adam,” she whispers in my ear, copying Uncle Saal’s words. “Money!” she repeats, her eyes aglow. She copies his gesture by rubbing her eager fingertips together.
How much money, I wonder, and try to do a quick calculation in my head, but numbers and I are not friends, so I abandon the sums. Money. I have to think now, try to place a value on the money. But how much money? Maybe I can buy a new top. And string.
Jasmine stares at me; narrows her eyes.
“We’ll do it,” I say.
“Alive, hey!” Grootman Saal stresses.
“I’ll get a jar,” Jasmine says and runs off into the house. Auntie Fouzie takes a peg out of her mouth and shouts to Jasmine not to mess where she has just finished cleaning.
Apollo lies at Saal’s feet in the pale sun.
“Look in his ears, and between his toes,” Saal instructs us. “They like to hide there.”
The big ones are easier to see and they don’t move. In his ears, they look like the swollen raisins that rise to the top of the ginger beer that Oumis’ Brown down the road makes to sell over the weekends when it’s really hot – fifteen rand for a plastic two-litre bottle. A rand off if you bring your own bottle.
“Daylight robbery,” Auntie Fouzie often says in disgust. “And then people still support her.”
“Money is money, Fouz’,” Saal argues with her. “And there’s no better money than honest money.”
“Honest, Grootman? Honest?” Auntie Fouzie protests.
We know how this conversation goes, Jasmine and I. Auntie Fouzie will spit and continue hanging her washing on the lines, snapping the wet things as she goes along, the wooden pegs held between her teeth. “I know what’s honest,” she’ll say when her mouth’s free. “Look at my hands. These hands know what it is to do an honest day’s work, to get up before the sun every morning, to run your legs off for a bus, so you can clock in before seven, just for that hour extra for the overtime pay. And when you get back home it’s dark already. You have no energy to even eat and you get hardlywig because there is no time to go to the toilet. The bosses are never satisfied …”
Saal will laugh and say to us “Auntie Fouzie’s on a roll; Auntie Fouzie’s the only one who knows hard work.” To which Auntie Fouzie will respond with a “tch!” and walk back into the house.
Now, she straightens up and arches her back before stooping to pick up the empty plastic basin and shuffling back into the house, mumbling to herself.
“So much for honesty!” Saal laughs. “Look at honesty now. You take life too seriously, Fouziah!”
Auntie Fouzie clicks her teeth but ignores him, though he’s choking, coughing and spluttering from so much laughter. He cannot stop tittering; catches his falling denture in his hand before it reaches the ground and shatters. He quickly shoves it back into his mouth before he too, walks back into the house, calling to Auntie Fouzie for a nice, strong cup of coffee.
2
Jasmine’s eager to earn the money. She’s good with numbers and she’ll do anything for money. She says she’s going to be on Survivor when she is grown up “… for the million dollars!” She closes her eyes and counts imaginary things. Her head bobs up and down as she quickly does mental calculations, sometimes using her fingers too, “… to carry big numbers over,” she explains. “Take any number – to times by ten you just add a nought. Ten cents a tick, live; ten for a rand. A hundred for ten rand. Ten times ten. Alive. Easy, … times ten, … that’s a hundred rand altogether.”
A hundred rand. That’s quite a lot of money, a nice blue note. That’s if he’ll pay us.
While Saal is around, Apollo allows us to touch him, to part his fur and pull off the ticks. Of course he doesn’t like it. He gets restless and moans, but when Saal tells him to lie still, he obeys.
Apollo looks like a cross between a bear and a lion. His hair is long and thick like a bear’s, and he has a thick mane like a lion’s. Which is why he will be such a good fighter, according to Saal, who often pulls at his mane – just to tease him, he says – to make him bad-tempered. “Look, he can grip the neck of his opponents, but they can’t get his because of this thick mane! He’s actually a lion, aren’t you Apollo?”
His coat is black-brown, reddish at the edges when he lies in the sun. On some days he’s almost the colour of milk chocolate.
“… and it’s a jungle out there,” Saal laughs, flashing his gold teeth with a hand ready to catch his upper denture in case it should fall out of his mouth again.
The best of all is that Apollo has a blue tongue. Not a hint of pink. Without a lie, it’s as blue as the sky.
He’s arrogant and doesn’t obey anyone but Saal; won’t move out of the way even for Auntie Fouzie if Saal isn’t around to tell him to move.
Saal bought him off a homeless man when he was just a puppy – paid the homeless man only six rand. The poor homeless man was disappointed – wanted twenty – but, as Saal put it, “Don’t be stupid brudder, take da money. In any case, who do you think will buy a dog with a blue tongue?”
Take it or leave it, six rand was all he had in his pocket. The homeless man looked uncertain, shook his head, looked into the distance, but then decided to take the six rand.
“There’s a smart man,” Saal said, giving him the coins. A five rand coin and a one rand coin. “… halwe brood, niks om op te sit nie, nie eers ’n bietjie botter nie …,” the homeless man complained, his eyes sad and his brow twisted in disappointment.
“Not even half a loaf of bread,” Saal scoffed, “but he doesn’t really want bread now, does he? He wants something else. Something stronger than bread. Something for his thirst,” he laughed, “… and he looks like one thirsty man! Loop skarrel, Boetie, jy’s dors,” he said as we walked away with a bewildered, but relieved Apollo beneath Saal’s arm.
Apollo’s coat was alive with ticks and fleas. He was riddled, this thick black ball of fur. When he yawned, tilting his head to one side, his blue tongue lolled lazily over his sharp teeth. He was cuddly, but bad-tempered, with very sharp teeth that he didn’t hesitate to use when we irritated him. He hated being cuddled. We all have little scars on our hands to prove this.
Saal’s friends came from all over Manenberg to see the dog with the blue tongue. Some thought he was a kind of alien animal, fallen off a strange forgotten mountain, or simply out of the sky. Maybe a UFO had dropped him. Maybe that’s what dogs looked like on Mars, which would explain the changing colours of his fur. Others doubted that he was a dog at all, with his bushy tail proudly curling over his back. Someone claimed to have seen such a dog in a movie. One man, known for his far-fetched stories, said he saw such a creature when he travelled the seas on a busy ship, many, many years ago, when he was a younger man. He said it had magical powers. He said that it talked, if his memory served him well.
“They don’t die,” he said seriously.
“Magic?” Auntie Fouzie laughed and hit the man against his head with her wet cleaning cloth. “To me he looks like a teddy bear.”
And she was right, but Apollo was by no means a cuddly toy.
“I think they have dogs like that in China,” Seraj said seriously when he saw the strange puppy.
“Everything comes from China,” Saal laughed. “What doesn’t come from China these days, Seraj? Even Chinese people come from China.”
“Forty-seven …” Jasmine says, handing Saal another fat, grey tick.
That’s forty-seven rand – no – is it? No, add a nought, Jasmine had said, to times by ten. Four rand seventy cents.
Saal cracks the tick underneath his thick thumb nail. Dark red blood squirts out, smudges the step and catches Jasmine in her face. She brushes it away with the back of her hand. Her hands are more bloodied than Saal’s. Apollo’