There was only one proviso with Inecto—never ever spill it. Like, ever. On your face, on your clothing and especially not on your boyfriend’s parents’ cream lounge carpet.
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"I can only tell you things that happened as I saw them, and what the rest was about only Africa knows." – Oom Schalk Lourens
The hum of 9pm kicks in—a boiling kettle, the clatter of dishes in the sink, muted voices on the TV, an occasional dog. I click play.
Mike’s Kitchen—a necessary rite of passage into the utopia of growing up, where you could stay up late, eat sweets all the time, watch too much TV, live at your friend’s house and never do any times tables.
It was a school day. We were at Stanger High, my dad (Mr Aitchison) was the principal and our English teacher was late for class.
Mark gets up from his desk and makes his way to the back of the classroom. He lifts the sash window, looks at suburban Stanger from the old-lounge-now-high-school, and shouts “Voetsek!”—and nothing, not even a pause. The dogs carry on barking. Mark walks back to his desk.
It’s 1993. I’m 10 years old. And Stephen Spielberg has gone and made a blockbuster about Tyrannosaurus Rex and some psycho Velociraptors. It’s a cautionary tale exposing the dangers of biological tinkering and… blah blah blah—did I mention Tyrannosaurus Rex, psycho Velociraptors?
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I use my dad’s step ladder to peer over into our neighbour’s garden. It is beige, like ours, and there are children, too. I tell them my name is Caitlyn because, at 5, I figure I can be whatever I want, which is to co-pilot a stealth helicopter that lives in a mountain and be in a fake-platonic relationship with an ex-army guy called Stringfellow.
It’s dry and dusty. Volumes of mining waste rising and falling across the otherwise flat horizon, like great burial mounds; a piloerection of rubble surging in reflex to the fall of industry on the East Rand.
They stood hand in hand and looked at the dump. The history teacher with the clear blue eyes, one that skewed under stress, and the art curator with the soft cheeks and big beard. A dump for sure but their dump nonetheless.
The stars of a summer sky, the long grass rustling in the breeze, my best friend sitting next to me…and PJ Powers.