Hearing Helen. Carolyn Morton
of a grey, grainy image that looked like a tiny, pulsing worm.
“Who can tell me what this is?”
Joe and Kean were whispering together behind their hands, probably making X-rated suggestions. Mrs Smith silenced them with a look.
“This,” she said, tapping the image with the chalk, “is you. Four weeks after conception.”
“It doesn’t look like a baby,” Kean muttered, unimpressed. “More like a stick. What’s that weird grey thing that keeps moving?” He mimicked the movement with his hand, opening and closing his fist like he was reciting “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”.
“That is the heart.”
The rhythmic contractions were mesmerising. I stared more closely, fascinated in spite of myself. I wondered if I had been like that at four weeks.
Completely unconcerned about anything happening beyond myself, unfazed by comments or criticism that I didn’t look like anything much, my dot-like heart steadily beating away, regardless.
By the time I shook off my thoughts, Mrs Smith had moved on to pregnancy vitamins and pre-pregnancy care. “What vaccinations should a woman have before conceiving?” she was asking.
“Flu,” said Joe with great confidence, remembering the nurse who’d visited our school during the World Cup to inject us against swine flu.
“Think of an illness that could harm the baby,” Mrs Smith told him.
“Yellow fever,” grinned Kean, whose father had taken him on holiday to Kenya last year.
June stared in front of her for a moment, thinking before she spoke. She never seemed to do anything impulsively. “Measles?” she suggested.
I could see Kean looking at June the way my brother Hank gazed at Caryn from down the road when she cycled past on her way to school, his eyes glazed and his mouth slightly open like she was a fudge sundae.
I shot up my hand at once. “German measles,” I said confidently. A few years ago, all the girls had had the vaccination, just in case we were precocious, the nurse had said. “Otherwise when someone has a baby, it could be born deaf.”
Mrs Smith nodded.
“Or with really weak eyes,” added Kean.
Our teacher suddenly looked sad, and I wondered if that was what had happened to her. I imagined rewinding through Mrs Smith’s life until she was nothing more than a pink-orange jelly bean with unformed fingers and a cord attaching her to a life-giving placenta.
I imagined the German measles like the green-horned thorns on the field, slipping through the defences of the placenta, like spies crossing into enemy territory to destroy. Perhaps I would also keep quiet if I were her and Kean called me Goggles.
I had been so lost in thought, I didn’t realise we’d been instructed to team up with others for our term project, and so I ended up alone. Usually, Mrs Smith noticed and assigned me to a group. Today, she just wiped her eyes with chalk-tipped fingers, leaving a dusty smudge on her lenses, and gestured to Kean to hand out the project guidelines.
Her mouth was as taut as stretched elastic while she watched him, and I wished he would stop mocking her. Just then, the bell rang, but before I could make my escape, I heard someone call me from across the room. I turned and saw the last person I wanted to speak to.
What do you want? I thought.
*
Two
THE GENTLE VOICE repeated the question. “Are you walking home?”
I looked up in surprise at June.
“I always walk home.”
With Mom working at the hardware store till six and Dad finishing after 7de Laan, I didn’t have much choice, but I didn’t tell her that.
“I’ve been thinking about the baby project.”
I tucked my useless bag under one arm and the books I needed to take home under the other. “Yes?”
We started walking together out of the school building and across the car park, June taking out the sandwiches that she had not yet finished. The tantalising smell of salami reminded me that I hadn’t eaten. I tried holding my breath without her noticing so that I wouldn’t feel hungry.
“Perhaps we could work as a group? You seemed to know more than most of the class about it.”
I was going to say no; I saw enough of her in class, but then I noticed Kean, a few metres away, waving at her awkwardly as we went past. He usually walked home, but today his dad and his dad’s girlfriend had come to fetch him. You could always tell his dad’s girlfriends by the length of their skirts. Kean said that he secretly called them all Mini.
The latest Mini was standing next to the car in a pose that showed off her legs. She was leaning affectionately towards Kean but her eyes kept flitting back to his dad to see if he was impressed by her maternal attitude. Kean’s dad was lounging in the driver’s seat, basking in his designer stubble and trying to look twenty-five while messaging on his BlackBerry, so she switched off the charm and dumped Kean’s bag on the seat.
I turned back to June. “Who’s in your group so far?” I said cunningly. “Do we need to ask anyone else?”
“Joe was going to be, but he’s moved to another group. Shall I ask Kean?” June suggested so quickly that I knew she’d have asked him even without my trying to manipulate her. “I can give him a ring this evening.”
“If you like,” I said a bit too casually. Our eyes met, and we both looked away quickly.
“Your sandwiches look nice.” How lame. I’d said the first thing that came into my head to break the awkward silence.
“Would you like one?” she asked shyly.
“Sure,” I said offhandedly, trying not to snatch it in my eagerness.
As we neared my home, I saw Hank cycling out of the driveway. He’d obviously just gone home to change before heading off to work as a learner assistant at Maths Magicians, a small company helping high-school kids who struggle with their sums.
Even though he was in matric, he still had knees like a blue crane. Mom said he would fill out one day, but the only thing that seemed to get bigger was his hair. At the moment, it was sticking up in the wind, bright orangutan orange.
Suddenly self-conscious of how similar we looked, I put my hand up to my ginger ponytail, hoping I didn’t also have a wild halo of frizz around my head. I waved at him without success. He would have cycled right past if I hadn’t shouted, jumping up and down like an aerobics instructor. He braked, frowning.
“You’re so rude!” I yelled across the street.
Hank pushed his bike across, glancing at his watch. “I didn’t see you,” he said, still frowning.
He didn’t seem to “see” anyone these days, except Caryn when she cycled past our house, which was probably why he started using his bicycle. She also went to the Music Academy in Mill Park, like Hank, but her parents had the money to send her there, whereas my brother had won a piano scholarship.
His teacher, Madame Pandora, who worked with several select pianists at the Academy, also taught piano to a few of us at my school. She said that she contracted work at various schools around Port Elizabeth out of the goodness of her heart – to nurture talent and give opportunities to those who couldn’t afford the Academy – but I secretly thought being able to bustle continually from one school to the other, looking constantly busy, reinforced her conviction that she was terribly important.
Somehow, she decided that I was worthy enough of the lofty privilege of being her student – not that she ever seemed to think that my playing