The Enumerations Page 7

  Noah stops, but only for a second.

  ‘Juliet Ryan,’ she says. ‘We’re at the same school? I’m in Grade 11.’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  ‘You don’t know who I am?’

  Not only does he not recognise her, he can’t afford the time for introductions.

  Keep moving, Noah. You don’t have time for this.

  ‘You’re not just being polite?’ she asks.

  He shakes his head, his feet itching to move.

  She laughs. ‘You must be the only person who doesn’t know about the Notorious Juliet Ryan. That’s amazing.’

  Not that amazing, Noah wants to say. He doesn’t really notice many people at school. Making it through each day there without losing track is enough of a mission.

  He looks at his watch and starts to walk. He’d count his steps if he could, but the girl’s still there, still talking.

  ‘My father works for the same firm as yours,’ she says, ‘gsg. Goodson, Stander & Groome. Right?’

  Noah nods and quickens his pace, but that doesn’t stop her. She just skips to keep up.

  ‘My father’s Bart Ryan. Middle management, that’s him. My mom’s Monica. Bart and Monica, good ole Mom and Dad, and their shitty marriage and their mess of a daughter. No doubt Ellen’s going to want to know all about them. Ellen Turner. Are you seeing her too?’

  Another nod.

  ‘I can’t believe we’ve landed up here together.’

  She’s talking and talking, this girl called Juliet. There’s no stopping her. Her words are gushing out, like someone turned on a tap and forgot about it.

  26.

  17 February 2013 / 18:07

  At home, Noah thinks, as he walks into the dining room, everything would be as it should. His mom, dad and sister would all have eaten. A single place would remain, set specially for him. There would be plenty of space to sit. He could spend a minute or so arranging the table so that his knife, his fork, his glass, the water jug, the serving spoons, the dishes with his food in them were all perfectly aligned. He could stand back from the table and see that all was as it should be before pulling out his chair, sliding into it, and starting to eat.

  Here, at Greenhills, it is all wrong. All completely and utterly wrong. His mother hasn’t cooked this meal. He does not know what is on the menu.

  He stands in the doorway and does a quick check. How many steps from here to the long table where people are eating? Ms Turner mentioned ‘group’ quite a few times. Is this Noah’s group and will he be able to sit in the same place every time? He needs to get his notebook out now and write these questions down. He’ll need to update his timetable, remind himself to get to meals a few minutes early, before everyone else arrives.

  There’s no time today, though. The same girl, Juliet, is nudging him in the back. ‘Grab a tray, Noah.’

  So that’s the next thing. A stack of trays at one end of a large table. A range of food to choose from. Ham, chicken, salad, coleslaw, cheese, watermelon, yoghurt.

  Noah places a plate on his tray and slides 2 circles of ham off a platter, uses the salad servers to take 2 leaves of lettuce, 5 baby tomatoes. Next he helps himself to some coleslaw and a wedge of cheese. Finally, a ¼ slice of watermelon.

  Now for the hard part. Juliet’s ahead of him. She’s making her way to the table, putting down her tray, squeezing herself between 2 boys. There’s 1 space left now. Noah has to perch on the end of the bench next to a large boy who takes up more space than any of the others. He’s taller than Noah, sandy haired and freckled, with sloped shoulders and a non-existent neck. He’s talking to the girl sitting next to him, long dark hair framing a pale face. Her name is Sadie, Noah learns, and his is Morné.

  A boy called Wandile looks up and nods when Noah arrives. Another, a jittery boy grabs Noah’s hand and pumps it up and down. ‘Simon,’ he says, ‘please call me Si.’ Next to please-call-me-Si is a girl in a long-sleeved sweatshirt called Vuyokazi. She’s picking at her food – they all are.

  These are people Noah is going to spend hours with – he’ll see them in group, whatever that is, at mealtimes, and during those yawningly blank spaces on his timetable labelled ‘unstructured time’.

  He’ll need to examine them more closely, to see if they have preferred seats and if he’ll be able to move away from Morné, who takes up too much room. But Noah can’t consider details like these now. He’s busy aligning his knife and fork on his tray, repositioning a tomato that has rolled too close to the coleslaw, moving the 1/4 circle of watermelon so that it sits in the centre of his side plate.

  They’re all looking at him as he does this, but Noah can’t afford to worry about that. If he doesn’t set up his place properly, he’ll begin to tap. If he begins to tap, he’ll need to count, and there’s so much to count in this room. He needs to pour himself some water and place his glass directly to the right of his knife. Then he’ll take 1 slice of bread from the basket in the middle of the table, butter it and cut it into 5 equal strips.

  Tomorrow he’ll study the others. For now, he’ll be doing well if he makes it to the end of suppertime, the 18:00–19:00 slot on his timetable.

  There’s not much talk going on, which suits Noah just fine. The heat has slowed everyone down. The ice cubes in the water jug have melted, leaving the water cooled, but not cold. Butter slides from the knife and falls in a soft splat next to the bread on Noah’s plate. Now, all he wants is the watermelon, garnet with a green tortoiseshell rind. He picks it up and sinks his teeth into the centre. But even the watermelon has succumbed to the temperature and juicy mush fills his mouth.

  Juliet looks around the table and grins. ‘So, who has what?’ she asks. ‘I’m guessing a couple of eating disorders, a dash of depression and/or anxiety, definitely an obsessive compulsive or two, perhaps—’

  Shut her out. Don’t waste time on her.

  27.

  There are days when Gabriel cannot remember how long they have been at the old man’s house. How many cold nights he has spent huddled on his bed waiting to hear the scuffle-scuffle-tap of the old man’s progress down the passage and the click that says his door has closed for the night and it’s unlikely they will see him or hear him again until the following morning.

  Then the grey light of morning comes and Gabriel’s hopping up and down to keep warm and Mum’s in the kitchen making breakfast, and Gabriel sees her face and how empty it is. She picks Harry up and hushes her quiet, she brushes back Gabriel’s hair and says, Have a lovely day at school, but she doesn’t ever call him Gaby Baby and she hardly says anything to Harry but Hush hush hush, as if all she wants is a silent child, a no-noise baby who won’t disturb the house.

  Can’t you keep that child quiet? Gabriel hears the old man say, and his voice is like heavy stones crushing Mum flat and Mum doesn’t have a voice big and strong enough to answer him back.

  Sometimes Gabriel goes to his little sister and picks her up and rocks her gently until her face breaks into smiles and she laughs and reaches up to pull his hair. Then the old man says, That’s just the job for a sissy-boy, looking after babies.

  Gabriel doesn’t say a word, or even lift his head to look at him, he just lets Harry grab his finger and take it to her mouth and gnaw and gnaw and he feels her hard gums, the small nubs of her teeth pressing down on his finger as she drools and grins.

  28.

  17 February 2013 / 19:12

  It’s after supper and the light in Noah’s new room feels different. Less sunny glare, more warm glow. It touches on the fabric of his easy chair and lets it shine deep blue. It glances off his sisal rug, slate grey, the one he was encouraged to bring to make his room feel more like home. The only problem is, the rug doesn’t belong here. Nor do his wall charts, not even the clothes in his cupboard. They should all be at home. That’s where they belong, and so does he. Nothing is going to make him feel ‘settled’.

  Here, all he can see are lawns, stretching on and on beyond his window, dotted with white be
nches. He knows what those are for, he’s seen mothers and fathers sitting on them with their sons and daughters.

  How much talking goes on, though? Is that where he’ll have to sit? With his parents and Maddie? Will Ms Turner observe him from her rooms, watching to see if he is talking? Or ‘interacting’, as she calls it. That’s one of the reasons he’s here. To learn how to interact with people, to fit them into his life. Not an easy task, not when Noah already has so much to squeeze into the blocks of his day. How much time does she want him to spend doing this interacting? How many people is he supposed to talk to on a daily basis, and for how long? And who will these people be?

  Noah is compiling a list for Ms Turner, for when he sees her at 09:00 on Monday. That’s tomorrow, and Noah has hardly had a chance to work anything out. He needs to think about getting to breakfast on time. He needs to allow time to get from one place to another, count his steps as he does, note them down. He’s expected to make his way around Greenhills without any guidance about how to adjust to this new world.

  ‘Settling in’, says Ms Turner. But how is he supposed to settle in to a place he doesn’t understand when he hardly has time to breathe, let alone plan? ‘Mr Bill will tell you everything you need to know, Noah,’ she told him.

  But Mr Bill isn’t here now, is he, Ms Turner?

  Noah makes a decision. He walks to the cupboard and takes out his washbag and his towel (both from the 2nd shelf down, for now). He removes a pair of loose cotton pyjama pants (navy) and a pale blue t-shirt from the shelf above. He takes his blue towelling dressing gown off the back of his door. It said in the Greenhills brochure that he should bring one and his mom bought it for him specially. He keeps one hand free to open the door (down-up-down-up-down) and then it’s 2 steps across the passage and 3 along and he’s standing in front of the door that says ‘Boys’ Bathroom’ with a picture of a tub with bubbles in blue. When Noah opens the door, there’s a row of shower cubicles with blue plastic curtains. There’s a row of toilet cubicles and some sinks below a large mirror. Gleaming white tiles and fluorescent strip lighting. No bathtubs.

  He hangs his dressing gown, pyjama pants, t-shirt and towel on a hook outside the shower. The right order for when he gets out. Then he unzips his washbag, takes out shampoo and liquid soap, and puts them on the small shelf inside the shower. He pulls the handle of the water mixer forward, strips quickly, hangs his clothes on the next hook along, then steps in. Tomorrow he will take off his clothes in his room, loop the towel around his waist and wear his dressing gown. That’s probably why they put it on the list.

  The water temperature’s almost right. He adjusts it towards ‘Hot’ and takes note of the position of the handle.

  Noah starts the timer on his waterproof watch.

  1.Wet and

  lather hair: 1 minute.

  2.Soap body: 1 minute.

  3.Rinse off: 1 minute.

  And then – his routine is so messed already – he uses 1 minute extra to stand under the jet of water, feel it needle his shoulders, draining the tension that has been building all day.

  4.Towel dry and dress: 3 minutes.

  5.Brush teeth: 3 minutes

  upper teeth: 1½ minutes

  lower teeth: 1½ minutes

  Once he’s finished, he’ll go back to his room and recalculate bathroom time. Only, on his chart, he will call it ‘Shower Time’.

  1 day down at Greenhills. Tomorrow it will all begin properly with Week 1, Day 1. And then there will be 11 weeks and 6 days to go.

  II

  29.

  Week 1: Day 1 / 06:24

  Noah pulls himself out of his dream. He was running free, no need to count his steps, or his breath, or stop and count again when he made a mistake. He often dreams of running, or balancing, suspended high above a city street, moving nimbly on a wire that dips and sways with the weight of his body but never lets him fall. Below him there are shadows threshing, a wild yowling, but he floats above it, step after perfect step. Nothing fogs his brain or slows his speech or dulls his responses.

  His fingers move to his pulse, beats waiting to be counted for 1 minute exactly. As that minute ticks away, his breathing relaxes and his heart slows and the running no longer pushes his body on.

  Step by slowly measured step he starts his day, 1st allowing his eyes to open, then checking each corner of his new room. 1 2 3 4 and – a quick glance to the centre – 5. He sits up slowly, letting the sound of running fall away. He swings his legs to the side of his bed; 1 leg, 2.

  Next he forces his body to stand and begin its slow walk around the room. Step by step, he examines his space. If he can count in batches of 5, so much the better. The main thing, the most important thing, is that he counts every object, every article, and that everything is where it should be.

  But it’s all newly positioned here. If he makes a mistake he will have to begin again, move more deliberately. This is his punishment for carelessness. Starting over, more slowly, more carefully, against the relentless tick of the clock. The slower he goes, the louder it grows, chastising, hectoring, but if he hurries, he will make a mistake. And then he will have to start again.

  A vicious circle. But that’s life, Noah. That’s life.

  His eyes sweep the room one last time. Everything is in its right place (for now), which is just as well because today is Monday, his first proper day at Greenhills and Noah has to speak to Ms Turner. He thinks of the sheet he filled out last night. ‘5 Things About Me’. It sits on his desk and he picks it up, folds it into 4 and slips it inside his notebook. He doesn’t like the way the twice doubled-over sheet distorts the spine. He will have to devise a new system for storing the lists. This is something he can talk to Ms Turner about.

  He still hasn’t worked out the distance between her room and his—

  Hurry along, Noah. You can’t be late.

  30.

  ‘It really is the best place for him. It’s what Noah needs.’

  Maddie’s mom sounds like she’s trying to convince herself, like she wants someone to pat her on the back and say, There, there, Kate, you did the right thing. Maybe she’s waiting for Maddie’s dad to get up from his chair, walk over, put his arms around her and say, Don’t worry, darling. He’s going to be much happier there.

  But he doesn’t.

  He’s sitting at the table, his egg in front of him in its porcelain eggcup. The spoon’s on the saucer next to it and there’s toast in the basket and fruit juice in his glass. Her mom asks if he wants a cup of coffee, but he’s staring out the window. He doesn’t bring his gaze back to the table to where what’s left of his family is sitting. Her mom pours herself a cup of coffee and sips it in silence. She traces a pattern on the wooden grain of the table.

  Down the passage, the door to Noah’s room is wide open, the bare patches where all his wall charts used to be on full display. No need to knock five times to gain admission, or check the clock to see that it’s the right time of day to speak to him. No need to perch on the very end of his bed so as not to wrinkle his duvet.

  Just because Maddie hopes that Greenhills might be what Noah needs, doesn’t mean that she’s not going to miss their daily ritual. It’s not as if they said much when they were together. Her brother would be at his laptop. He’d swing around in his chair and smile and she’d smile back. No need to talk. Noah never had much news, and nothing in her day touched him. Or interested him, really.

  Even so, it was a good place to be, sitting in silence with her brother. Calm silence, not the sort that sits between her parents now, cold and angry and solid.

  Maddie pushes back her chair. She bends down and hitches her school bag over her shoulder. ‘Ready, Dad?’

  ‘What’s that? Oh, yes.’

  ‘Dom, you haven’t eaten your toast, or your egg,’ her mom says.

  Maddie feels a quick stab of sympathy. Her mother poured so much time into Noah. How is she going to readjust, change her patterns, now that he’s not here, stressing about getting every
thing done properly and on time? Waiting to be called to eat – but only after the rest of them have left the room.

  Maddie hated not having her brother there at mealtimes, but her dad was more relaxed, not having to watch Noah counting peas, or positioning his glass so that it was exactly in line with the top of his knife.

  There’s the sound of a car starting and Maddie runs to the door. ‘Bye, Mom.’ She stops and looks back, but her mother doesn’t even look up.

  31.

  Kate listens as the car moves down the driveway. She should get up, clear away the breakfast dishes, pour the juice Dominic hasn’t drunk down the sink, mash up his egg and toast for Spit and Spot. She hopes he’ll find time to eat, sometime during the morning—

  Dominic could have eaten his fucking egg. Kate picks it up and cradles it, stone cold in her hand. He could have eaten his egg and his toast and drunk his freshly squeezed orange juice and his freshly ground coffee with its hot milk warmed in the microwave seconds before he arrived at the table. And then – Kate’s hand tightens around the egg – he could have asked Maddie how she was, he could have asked Kate if she’d managed to sleep. He could have broken the silence surrounding Noah and where he was.

  Kate’s dressed for her day: blue jeans and a short-sleeved white blouse, low-heeled pumps, makeup expertly applied. She should climb behind the wheel of her car and go to her local Woolies. But she’s tired. She didn’t sleep well and her makeup doesn’t hide the shadows under her eyes. She doesn’t feel like being a housewife today. She doesn’t want to think about planning a week’s worth of meals or choosing a dress for the next office party or making a dental appointment for Maddie. What she really wants to do is talk about leaving Noah at Greenhills and how he looked in his new room.

  Kate wants to walk outside and stand on her front lawn and bawl at the sun. She wants the world to hear her scream.