kagablog

When I was a kid I ate the same thing for dinner everyday. Fried sole, homemade chips and half an avocado. I ate it on a tray which was propped up on my knees as I watched She-ra, princess of power at 6:00 on Mnet. I ate with my hands, food falling onto my mud stained knees, hitting my dirty plakkies before I managed to grab it and eat it anyway.

Dirt never seemed to make me sick, but watching me eat almost killed my parents.

They were civilized city people, whereas clearly, in another life I’d been raised in a barn.

Eating all that oil and starch didn’t catch up to me until I was about nine.

My cheeks started looking like they were stuffed with cotton wool. I developed a boep-

which was embarrassing not in the least because my arms and legs remained skinny and my chest remained flat as a board. In a desperate attempt to help even it out, my parents sent me to one dance class after another, all with the same results; I’d get bored within ten minutes and either start making up my own dances or wandering off. I’d try to kill time in the bathroom, or ask the teacher if I could use her phone.

By the time I’d get back, class would be over. The teacher would be as relieved as I was.

She was heavier than I was, and seemed to have long ago lost her passion for the art.

Besides, hearing the words arabesque and demi plie with a heavy Afrikaans accent really makes them lose something. It’s kind of like hearing opera words like aria, and basso buffo said with a heavy Scottish accent. Even if you could understand what they were saying, why would you care? It was that unnatural.

I’ll never forget the time my mom came to watch a ballet recital. I really thought she was going to kill me. Not only had I not mastered any feminine arts, but I looked bored and was utterly graceless. I tripped and fell. I didn’t get one step right.

She nearly cried from shame. I was sure I was going to get bliksemed the second I walked in my front door.

After that we tried modern, tap and aerobics to equally little avail.

The older I got, the more my mom took to wanting to know my weight, weighing me and hiding the keys to the pantry so I couldn’t snack when she wasn’t looking.

I stubbornly refused to stop eating chocolate, reasoning that a world without Caramello Bears was not a world worth living in. I had to be careful though; she sometimes checked my homework, and a chocolate smudged page could mean only one thing.

I had to get really good at covering my tracks.

Aerobics offended me the most. To the tune of itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini, and other atrocities that barely qualify as music, two chubby little girls, my friend Amanda and I, bopped along with a group of fat and anorexic women. We wore t shirts and shorts, they were leotards and sweatbands across their foreheads. I protested until I literally turned blue in the face. Kicked and screamed until my arms were covered in scratched from the sisal carpets in my bedroom that could seriously have been used as instruments of torture, they were that rough.

I think it was my grandfather who suggested I simply play school sports.

May God rest his soul.

There were two more classes they forced me into, gymnastics and swimming before they gave up entirely.

After that, I played tennis and netball, at school. If they were noteworthy, it was only in that I didn’t completely suck. I was merely passable at them, which for me was achievement. I almost broke my tail bone doing long jump once.

I broke my leg in three places riding my bike.

Being active was not for me, that much was clear.

While my parents ran Comrades, I watched Egoli.

I had a few secrets back then.

When I was six I decided I wanted to be famous. I’d watch Zoobilly Zoo over and over, learning the lines of the pink kangaroo. I wanted to be cute and on tv, like her. I’d stare at myself for hours in the mirror, imagining it. When I was a little older, I wanted to be a KTV presenter, then a soap star. I wanted the constant spotlight.

I had a crush on a boy in my class called Joshua, who was so clever that he’d skipped a grade and went around making smart alecky comments. I named all my boy dolls after him, even though whenever I saw him I was too shy to actually talk to him.

Sometimes I wondered what it would be like to be what my parents wanted me to be-

thin, athletic, good at math, feminine, a candidate for all kinds of future success.

Sometimes I wondered what it would be like-to naturally be who they wanted me to be without ever even trying.

I wondered if I’d be happier.