never be a Fred Junior or Fred II or anything like that. The name Fred started with me and so shall it end. If I have to hear another person telling me all the words Fred rhymes with, I may just whack them. They’ll be the unlucky one among a thousand wisecracking jerks who have felt the need to tell me that Fred rhymes with bed, head and dead.
Hi, I’m Fred.
Oh, poor old Fred, he went to bed and woke up dead with a worm in his head.
It’s beside the point that if he woke up he wasn’t dead anyway.
My second name is Chiti. I won’t even talk about what that rhymes with. But it does mean that I was named after the greatest chief that ever lived in Zambia – Chief Chitimukulu, Chiti the Great. I think that was to make up for my first name. I am one hundred per cent certain there were no great chiefs called Fred. Even the two words together sound stupid. Chief Fred. I can’t imagine people bowing down before a name like that, unless they were trying to hide the fact that they were laughing.
What I do when I’m surrounded by impending doom clouds is try to imagine what the worst thing is that can happen. Today my imaginings were pretty standard:
I could be swallowed whole by a python after it had slowly and methodically crushed me.
I could be savaged by a pack of hyenas that had run out of things to scavenge.
Worse still, the ancient bone-crushing hyena, with a head bigger than a lion, could come back from extinction with a special mission to hunt me down.
Or I could accidentally sit on a scorpion and die an agonizing, paralysing death. One of those deaths where your tongue sticks out and your face goes purple.
Maybe the worst possibility is what could happen at school. Sister Leonisa is one of our teachers – for the second year in a row – and with her anything can happen.
I reckoned that apart from the scorpion and maybe the python I could avoid all of them by just staying home. The scorpion would be easily avoided by keeping my shoes on all day and never sitting down. The python – well, the python I’d just have to hope would be small enough for me to be able to grab the back of its neck with one hand and the end of its tail with the other. It’s been done before. Not by me, but by someone, I’m sure.
Sister Leonisa I would avoid by not going to school.
Now all I had to do was to persuade Mum and Dad that I had to stay home at all costs. Neither of them believed in my gift, so I would have to lie to them.
My two best friends, Bul-Boo and Madillo, live next door to me. They’re identical twins, but they’re not identical in their ways, only what they look like. The three of us have come up with four categories of lies. I think everyone should know them:
Necessary Lies.
Half Lies.
Kind Lies.
Wrong Lies.
The first three categories are allowed. It’s only the last one that you should avoid.
So, out of necessity (i.e. to avoid a tragic, painful death) I would have to pretend to be sick.
I’m pretty good at being sick on demand. When I try really hard I’m even able to make myself look pale and ghostly. So when Mum said to me, “Yes, sweetie, go back up to bed, you’re looking quite washed out,” I knew I’d succeeded, and I stumbled – in a diseased, pasty kind of way – back to bed.
To wait.
And imagine.
BULL - BOO
Professor Ratsberg and Dr Wrath
The reason why today was not a good day for stories about death, or for anything much else for that matter, was the conversation I accidentally overheard last night.
I wasn’t really eavesdropping. I was sitting on the stairs writing in my little black notebook, the book I don’t share with Madillo and Fred, before going to bed. It was very hot in the bedroom and Madillo was humming an irritating tune, so I had decided to wait on the stairs till Mum came to say goodnight. It was then that I heard them.
“It’s happening again,” she said.
“What is, Lula?” Dad asked.
“Last week it was Thandiwe’s death notice in the paper.
Hi, I’m Fred.
Oh, poor old Fred, he went to bed and woke up dead with a worm in his head.
It’s beside the point that if he woke up he wasn’t dead anyway.
My second name is Chiti. I won’t even talk about what that rhymes with. But it does mean that I was named after the greatest chief that ever lived in Zambia – Chief Chitimukulu, Chiti the Great. I think that was to make up for my first name. I am one hundred per cent certain there were no great chiefs called Fred. Even the two words together sound stupid. Chief Fred. I can’t imagine people bowing down before a name like that, unless they were trying to hide the fact that they were laughing.
What I do when I’m surrounded by impending doom clouds is try to imagine what the worst thing is that can happen. Today my imaginings were pretty standard:
I could be swallowed whole by a python after it had slowly and methodically crushed me.
I could be savaged by a pack of hyenas that had run out of things to scavenge.
Worse still, the ancient bone-crushing hyena, with a head bigger than a lion, could come back from extinction with a special mission to hunt me down.
Or I could accidentally sit on a scorpion and die an agonizing, paralysing death. One of those deaths where your tongue sticks out and your face goes purple.
Maybe the worst possibility is what could happen at school. Sister Leonisa is one of our teachers – for the second year in a row – and with her anything can happen.
I reckoned that apart from the scorpion and maybe the python I could avoid all of them by just staying home. The scorpion would be easily avoided by keeping my shoes on all day and never sitting down. The python – well, the python I’d just have to hope would be small enough for me to be able to grab the back of its neck with one hand and the end of its tail with the other. It’s been done before. Not by me, but by someone, I’m sure.
Sister Leonisa I would avoid by not going to school.
Now all I had to do was to persuade Mum and Dad that I had to stay home at all costs. Neither of them believed in my gift, so I would have to lie to them.
My two best friends, Bul-Boo and Madillo, live next door to me. They’re identical twins, but they’re not identical in their ways, only what they look like. The three of us have come up with four categories of lies. I think everyone should know them:
Necessary Lies.
Half Lies.
Kind Lies.
Wrong Lies.
The first three categories are allowed. It’s only the last one that you should avoid.
So, out of necessity (i.e. to avoid a tragic, painful death) I would have to pretend to be sick.
I’m pretty good at being sick on demand. When I try really hard I’m even able to make myself look pale and ghostly. So when Mum said to me, “Yes, sweetie, go back up to bed, you’re looking quite washed out,” I knew I’d succeeded, and I stumbled – in a diseased, pasty kind of way – back to bed.
To wait.
And imagine.
BULL - BOO
Professor Ratsberg and Dr Wrath
The reason why today was not a good day for stories about death, or for anything much else for that matter, was the conversation I accidentally overheard last night.
I wasn’t really eavesdropping. I was sitting on the stairs writing in my little black notebook, the book I don’t share with Madillo and Fred, before going to bed. It was very hot in the bedroom and Madillo was humming an irritating tune, so I had decided to wait on the stairs till Mum came to say goodnight. It was then that I heard them.
“It’s happening again,” she said.
“What is, Lula?” Dad asked.
“Last week it was Thandiwe’s death notice in the paper.
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