Booty-Licious

By Himali McInnes

Shah wants me to kiss her. I can tell. It’s there in the way she tilts her face towards mine. The way she half-closes her eyes and pouts her lips. Like she’s some sort of Indian Beyoncé. The Desi Destiny’s Child of Sandringham. I’ll bet she thinks of herself as being booty-licious. But Shah’s too skinny to be Beyoncé. Also, I don’t want to kiss her.  

It’s Friday night. Mum’s at work. I tidied up before Shah got here, in a half-hearted sort of way. Like, I stuffed my sister’s mess inside the cupboard. I also turned the heating on. Every time Shah has come here - which has been five times in as many days  - she complains that our place is cold. She likes it tropical, I reckon. 

There’s a framed print of native New Zealand birds on the wall. I look at it now, to avoid the disappointed look in Shah’s eyes. The poster is from the Te Papa Museum in Wellington. Mum got it for Dad two years ago, and now he’s dead, but we’ve still got the poster. I love the birds on this poster, all of them. The greedy kererū, who looks like he’s dressed for a night at the opera. The red-splashed underwing of the kaka. The blunt blue head of the kōtare, the kingfisher, he who is the sacred something-or-other of the seas. 

I remember when Dad took me to Tiritiri Matangi island. I was eleven, so it must’ve been three years ago. Wow. Head blown. So many birds! We packed lunches and binoculars. I didn’t want to leave. The air was literally looped with birdsong. All those little creatures that flitted so close to me and Dad, so completely unafraid. Dad was going to take me back there one day, but then he got sick. 

I haven’t let anyone know how much I love birds. My friends would tease me. My sister Bex would milk it for all it’s worth. Mum would be pleased that I’m keeping up with something Dad loved so much. But mum’s hardly at home these days, so it’s not like I can tell her easily. 

Shah’s my first girlfriend. We’ve been together five days, and already I want out. Not that she’s awful or anything. But I’d rather be doing other things.

Shah walks here from her place in Mt Roskill, despite the April chill. She gets me to walk her home if its dark, but always says, ‘Ok, bye, Jonny,’ real quick when we’re two or three houses away from hers. Then she runs inside. I’m not sure if she’s told her parents about her white boyfriend yet.

Every time Shah looks at me with those big brown eyes, I think of the cows in Cornwall Park. Staring at me, waiting for me to do something. And Shah really has got no butt, no boobs. Not that I mind, per se. But someone should tell her to stop pretending to be Beyoncé. It’s just not plausible. 

‘Tell me what you’re thinking, Jonny,’ Shah says. Her face pulls away as she speaks, her lower lip wobbles a bit. I didn’t kiss her, and now she’s upset. I don’t want to talk about my thoughts, either. If I tell Shah that I’m only with her because most of the other boys at school have girlfriends, she might hit me. 

Bex skips into the room. Like she doesn’t know that Shah and I are sitting on the couch and need some privacy.

‘Oh, hi Shah!’ she says. Younger sisters can be real bitches sometimes. I only think this inside my head. If Bex got even a whiff of my bad language, she’d complain to mum, and then I’d get in trouble. Typical.

Our unit is not big. It’s a squat two-bedroomed brick and tile, kind of ugly, single-storied. It's on the bendy bit of Sandringham road, near all the takeaways. It smells of curry around here all the time. In the house, in the garden, out on the street. The constant smell of food means that I always feel kind of hungry and kind of full at the same time. Bex and Mum share a room, I have my own. Mum said I’m not allowed to have girls in my room. Cool by me, I’m not ready for that icky stuff anyways. 

But the deal was that Bex would give me and Shah some space. Stick to her own room. But - surprise! - here she is, pretending she’s hungry and needs a snack, when she already had a sandwich twenty minutes ago. You can’t make any reliable deals with twelve-year-olds. 

I know Bex is spying on us. I won’t be surprised if, tomorrow, Mum knows all about what me and Shah have been up to. What I’m wearing, what Shah’s wearing, how close together we were sitting, for how long. Etcetera.

‘Hiya, Bex! Howsit, ma grrl?’ Shah slips into this weird lingo whenever she sees Bex. It’s like the two of them are building a private language that excludes me. Shah’s the same age as me - fourteen - so it surprises me how well she gets on with Bex. Given that they’ve only started hanging out five days ago. I suspect Beyoncé is the glue that binds, in this instance. 

Mum still hasn’t come home. It’s now 7 pm. She’s always at work, doing whatever she does at the Institute of Environmental Science and Research. She says she has to do it, to earn enough money to look after us, now that Dad isn’t around anymore. It kind of sucks. I understand about the money and all, but I’d rather have less money and more Mum. Technically she’s not supposed to leave me and Bex home by ourselves, because I’m not actually fourteen yet. But my birthday is only three months away. So whatevs. 

There’s a knock on the door. I pop out of the sofa at warp speed. Hooray for distractions. I leave Bex and Shah to catch up on their Sasha Fierce/ Crazy in Love/ Single Ladies chit-chat. 

I open the door. It’s Mr Mugisha from next door. He lives in unit three with Mrs Mugisha. They moved in six months ago. Some lady drove them here in a Red Cross van. Then she helped them get their furniture in. There wasn’t much. Mr Mugisha always smiles and waves whenever he sees me. 

Mr and Mrs Mugisha are real quiet neighbours. Which is more than they might say about us. Me and Bex, we have stinking loud arguments sometimes. Mainly because Bex is so terribly stubborn about everything. There are no kids at the Mugisha’s place, but a few weeks ago an elderly grey terrier appeared. I see Mr Mugisha take the dog out for walks, early in the morning or late in the evening, once it’s cool. Even the dog is pretty quiet. No yapping or anything. 

Mr Mugisha doesn’t speak much English, but he seems nice. His curly hair is turning grey at the sides. He has thick bottle-stop glasses that make his eyes look huge. His nose crinkles when he smiles. I like that. His skin reminds me of the velvet coat mum wears for special occasions. The one dad got her for her fortieth birthday.

Now Mr Mugisha holds out something towards me. It’s a tinfoil dish covered with a tea towel. His hands clasp the dish like it’s a precious thing. The backs of his hands are dark brown, cracked and wrinkled like elephant hide. 

‘You take. Igisafuria.’

He must have seen the blank look on my face, because he closes his eyes, thinks hard in concentration, then blurts out, ‘Chicken! Pot. You eat, yes?’ He mimes eating and rubs his belly. 

I take the dish from him. It smells spicy, savoury. My mouth waters in anticipation. This already smells a lot better than the macaroni cheese mum left out on the kitchen counter. Mum’s good at lots of things, but cooking isn’t one of them. 

Mr Mugisha is looking over my shoulder at the framed bird print on the wall. His big eyes get bigger, softer, and he looks delighted. It’s probably the same look I get on my face when I see birds, so I don’t mind him staring. 

I saw a kererū once. I mean, I saw a few of them that time Dad and I went to Tiritiri Matangi, but they’re not easy to catch sight of, not in the middle of Auckland. So when I saw a kererū in Sandringham, I was pretty excited. It was sitting in a puriri tree, stuffing its fat little face full of sticky berries. I stood and watched it for a long time, until some lady came out of her house to glare at me. 

I nod and smile at Mr Mugisha and close the door, because we’ve run out of things to say to each other.

Shah and Bex have drawn the curtains by the time I go back inside. The living room is transformed by muted lighting and loud music into some sort of karaoke bar. 

OMG, that screechy noise I can hear is the two of them singing. Something about bootylicious bodies not being ready for something. They look pointedly at me as they sing. Their cheeks press side by side. Their lips pout and stretch and yowl. They bump and grind their hips. Shah looks identical to Bex, except she’s a bit taller and a bit browner. But same skinny legs and all. I hurry past the two girls into the relative safety of the kitchen. 

The Pot Chicken is delicious. It’s like chicken pie, without the pastry. There’s bits of onion and capsicum in it, bits of tender chicken, some chunky starchy bits which are not potato but might be green banana, and a yummy spicy sauce. Come to think of it, I remember seeing Mrs Mugisha buying green bananas from the Indian dairy owner on the corner. At the time, I wondered why people would buy unripe fruit. Now I know. Does Shah eat green bananas? Maybe I’ll ask her sometime. Sweat beads on my nose as I shovel the food into my face. The more my tongue stings with chilli, the faster I eat. I remember, almost when it is too late, to leave some for Bex. 

‘Oi! How’s the girlfriend thing working out for ya?’ Billy slaps me on the back. Billy doesn’t have a girlfriend. He seems pretty happy with this state of affairs. I feel vaguely jealous. We’re sticking our mountain bikes on top of Billy’s mum’s car, clicking and latching them into place on the roof rack. Billy is my best mate at school. He’s got red hair and freckles. He’s also got a sweet left foot so he’s always in hot demand when we play footie. Billy’s mum is so sick. She does loads of stuff for him and his two sisters. It’s seven in the morning, on a Saturday, and here she is taking Billy and me to the mountain bike park. She’s like, an angel. 

‘Oh, how lovely that you’ve got a girlfriend, Jonathan! What’s her name? Do I know her?’ Billy’s mum asks me. Billy’s mum has lips the colour of crushed strawberries and she looks way too young to be anyone’s mum. Also, she’s really fit. She can run as fast as us boys, like she did that time we trained together for a triathlon. 

‘Umm, her name’s Shah,’ I mumble from the back seat. My cheeks flame despite my best efforts. ‘She’s in the same year as me and Billy at school.’

‘Shah the Sure thing! Bahaha!’ Billy doubles over at his own joke. I don’t laugh along with him. I think instead of the disappointed look on Shah’s face every time I don’t do what she wants me to do. Day Six of Jonny’s Relationship Blues and counting. 

‘Enjoy yourselves, boys,’ Billy’s mum trills at us as she drops us off. ‘I’ll be back in three hours, okay?’

Okay gorgeous, I think to myself, but only in my head. 

The tracks are greasy today, drenched with overnight rain. ‘All good,’ I yell at Billy as I take off down a slope. The ride is exhilarating. We whizz along, up and down paths gnarled with tree roots. Water pools here and there on bits of rock. Our bikes splash through puddles so fresh they smell like oxygen. Wet ferns slap me in the face as I go past. The air is full of damp earth and green stuff. Gravel slips beneath our tyres with a satisfying crunch. Billy aces all the jumps; his bike is new, a birthday present. I ace the wall ride and the teeter-totter. ‘Dude, that route you took was dope!’ Billy yells at me. We’re covered in mud afterwards. Mud in big brown stripes down our fronts and our backs where the tyres splashed us. Mud spots on our faces. Mud in our hair. I feel great. 

Billy’s mum doesn’t bat an eyelid when she picks us up. ‘Don’t worry about the car. The seats are tough, they’ll clean up fine. I’ll get Billy on to it!’

When Billy’s mum drops me home, I strip off my clothes on the doorstep. Bex is out at Glee club practice. Mum’s not at home either; she was asleep when I left, but now she’s gone to work. There’s a note on the kitchen counter with instructions for dinner. 

I step into the shower and turn it on full blast. The water runs brown. A swirl of silt collects on the acrylic base. All of a sudden I’m sobbing. I fall on my knees and I open my mouth and scream. I beat the white walls of the shower box so hard I can see them bending. 

I stay there until the water around me clears of mud, until my skin starts to feel tight and squeaky and too clean. I dry myself with one of mum’s nicest towels. I don’t want to be in the house by myself. Bex, for all her annoying qualities, is useful in the way she fills up the place with noise. When it’s too quiet I start to think about Dad. How he died in the bedroom. How I heard Mum crying in the bathroom when she thought no-one was listening. 

I can’t call Billy for a chat. He’ll be having lunch with his gorgeous mum. So before I know what I’m doing, I’m outside and I’m knocking on the door to Unit 3.  

‘Good morning, son,’ Mrs Mugisha opens the door and smiles at me. Her voice is thick and warm like melting honey. She sounds both French and African when she speaks. She has the coolest accent I’ve ever heard. Despite myself, I suddenly think about how nice Shah’s voice is, too. At least, it is when she’s not trying to sing.

I stand there for a bit, feeling stupid. ‘Um, hi, Mrs Mugisha. I’m Jonny, from next door. I just came over to say hi, and…stuff.’

‘Lovely to meet you, Jonny. Would you care to come in?’ 

Mrs Mugisha opens the door wider, waves me in with a royal fanning of her hand. She reminds me of that African queen we studied at school. Nefertiti something or other. She has the same strong cheekbones, the same heavy-lidded eyes. Wow, her skin is smooth. I can’t tell how old she is, but if she’s Mr Mugisha’s wife she must be the same age as him. Actually, she could pass as Beyoncé’s mum, come to think of it. Yeah, that’s who she looks like.

I step inside, carried along by the smell of fried stuff. My stomach rumbles. I feel ravenous. I haven’t eaten since this morning. 

Our fridge had a loaf of bread in it and some peanut butter and jam when I last checked. I know there’s a few frozen meals in the freezer that Mum made a few weeks ago. But I didn’t feel like eating any of that after my ride. I wanted something spicy and salty and yummy. I would’ve gone and got some Indian from Paradise takeaways except I’m out of cash. I even briefly considered traipsing along to Shah’s place for some pity food, but maybe her parents aren’t too fond of white fellas. 

My gut feels so empty it’s like the feeling you get when you go OTB. Over the bars. The sudden drop as you take a slope too fast. The way time stills to a crawl, so stretched out you feel your hands being torn off the handlebars and your body somersaulting forwards. The way your stomach falls like a stone, seeking gravity. I remember the Pot Chicken thingy I ate last night and I want to ask if there’s any leftovers. 

Mr Mugisha is snoring on the settee in the living room. His glasses have fallen to the tip of his nose. His mouth is open in same O shape that Bex and Shah make when they are singing. The old grey terrier is asleep on his lap. It’s snoring too, in symphony with Mr Mugisha’s snores. 

Mr Mugisha pops his eyes open when he hears me. They are blood-shot, with dark circles under them, as if he did not sleep well last night. He jumps up with a frightened look on his face. The grey terrier falls off his lap onto the settee. The dog opens one eye to look at me, then goes back to sleep with a slip of pink tongue showing. 

‘It’s okay, Paul, it’s just the young man from next door. His name is Jonny. Sit, sit, child. Would you like something to eat?’
I nod, trying not to appear too eager, trying to be polite like Mum always reminds me to be. ‘Oh, yes please, Mrs Mugisha.’ I sink into the armchair by the window. This way I can keep an eye out if Bex comes home. I have the house key.

‘Please, call me Séraphine. That is the custom here, yes? The familiar first name. We are trying to learn Kiwi customs. You may call him Paul,’ Mrs Mugisha says, inclining her graceful head towards Mr Mugisha. 

Mr Mugisha still looks bewildered, as if he does not know where he is. His eyes are smudged with sleep. He sighs, and sits down beside the dog. He points at me and nods. ‘Jonny? You nice boy.’

Séraphine comes back with a tray of food. It’s lunchtime; I’m probably about to eat what she’s cooked for their own lunch. I feel guilty, but only for a minute; a wave of hunger wallops out of my gut and into my head and I can’t think of anything else. Séraphine puts the tray down on the coffee table. Fried green bananas. Skewers of meat threaded with capsicum, crispy and salty. A dump of white porridge-like stuff. A green mashed-up stew that I don’t like the look of, but which turns out to be pretty yum too. ‘Isombe,’ Paul says. ‘You eat, ça te rendra fort! Make you strong.’

I eat so fast I almost forget to breath. After I finish, I wipe my lips with a napkin and look around the room. The room has got that nice minimalist vibe that I like. There’s no way this room could be turned into a karaoke bar, which I feel pretty happy about. There’s only a few bits of furniture in here, the same things I saw being carted in from the Red Cross van months ago. The brown settee. A mismatched leather armchair, faded on one side from the sun. The old wooden chest doubling as a coffee table, a well-thumbed field guide to New Zealand birds sitting on top. A print of two huia birds on the wall, some cheap thing from an op shop probably, but still beautiful: the male huia with his straight short beak, the female with her gorgeous curved one, both of them with fleshy orange wattles and white-tipped tails. There are some photos on a stack of old suitcases in a corner, beside the window. Black and white photos of a boy and girl, about my age. Paul sees me looking at the photos and he looks away. I feel a stab of alarm as I see tears trickle down his cheeks. I feel stink. Did I eat too much of their lunch?

Séraphine comes and stands beside Paul. She puts her hands on his shoulders, kneads his muscles, makes soothing noises. ‘It’s ok, Jonny. Today is April the 7th, you see. A sad day for us Rwandans. It marks the start of the killings.’

I fish around in my head for information about Rwanda. An image of a gorilla pops up. Then some white lady called Dian who tried to stop the gorillas being killed but got murdered herself. Lots of misty forests. Dad showed me pictures once in his National Geographic mag. Nothing else about the country comes to mind. If Shah was here, she’d know all sorts of stuff about Rwanda, cos she’s good at that stuff. ‘I’m sorry, Séraphine, I didn’t know,’ I mumble.

‘Of course you didn’t know. You’re only a child - how old are you again?’

‘Fourteen.’

‘Fourteen. A young man, blessed to be growing up in such a safe country. You see my skin, Jonny?’ She holds her arm against the April light from the window. It is the colour of bush honey, lighter than her husband’s skin. ‘I am a Tutsi, of royal lineage, descended from the last King of Rwanda.’

I knew it! Séraphine is royalty, real royalty, not Beyoncé royalty. Woot. Not bad powers of deduction for a fourteen-year-old, I reckon. 

‘I had a good job in Kigali, working as an accounts administrator,’ she continues. ‘Paul was working in the same office. He’s a Hutu. But these differences are superficial. We fell in love. Both our families agreed to the match.’ She kisses Paul on the top of his head and sits down next to him on the settee. ‘After all, who can stand in the path of true love? Our darling twins came along quick quick. My boy was just like you, Jonathan. A kind boy. My girl was strong. She wanted to be a lawyer and help poor people. But everything changed the day the President’s plane was shot down. Everything. Neighbours turned on neighbours. Friends turned on friends.’ 

Her voice loses its regal composure and rises a little. Now it is Paul’s turn to hold his wife’s hand. He pulls out a handkerchief which Séraphine uses to wipe her nose. Paul says something in his own language, which Séraphine translates. ‘Yes, we hid ourselves under a pile of corpses until the mobs with their machetes passed by. Our Hutu friend drove us to the airport. Over dead bodies. Perhaps over the bodies of our loved ones. The chanting from those days haunts my ears, even now. Inyenzi, inyenzi, the mobs sang. Cockroach, cockroach. Come out and be killed, you Tutsi cockroaches.’

I am transfixed. It’s like the scenes she is describing are playing out on the walls of their unit in technicolour glory. I don’t remember lessons at school ever being this interesting or this horrifying. I can’t bring myself to ask what happened to the twins. The two beautiful children in the photos. OMG, the boy does look like me. 

Séraphine stops then and draws a deep breath, seems to remember where she is. ‘My goodness, forgive me, child. I should not have burdened you with our terrible memories. I am sorry.’

‘Aw, gosh, it’s ok, Mrs Mugisha, I mean Séraphine.’ I want to go over and give them a hug, but I feel awkward. I wouldn’t have minded even Bex being here right now, because she’d have filled the silence. Then I see the tears in their eyes. I get my butt out of the chair and I go and give them a hug.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Bex crossing the road towards our house. She’s arm in arm with Shah. They are sharing a pair of headphones, one earpiece each. They pump their fists in the air, they do what looks like a booty roll, they thrust their flat chests in and out as they walk. Clearly they are Beyoncé-ing across the road, which makes me mad for three reasons. Number one, those are my headphones. Number two, how many times do I have to tell Bex to watch out for traffic? Number three, it’s weird that Shah didn’t text to tell me she was coming over. I’ll have to go and let them in. Then I’ll have to entertain Shah. Bugger. I’d much rather hear more about Rwanda. 

‘My Dad,’ my mouth suddenly blurts out, without me giving it permission to speak. ‘He really loved birds….You like birds too, eh, Mr Mugisha? Maybe I could show you some good spots to birdwatch sometime -’

Then everything happens at once. There is a loud noise, a thwack and a crunch, so loud it sounds like it’s in the room. Séraphine shrieks and jumps off the settee, runs out the door. I turn to stare out the window. 

There’s a Land Rover Defender stopped in the middle of the road, and two men are spilling out of it. Weird, I think, why would you park in the middle of the road? Séraphine is now also running to the middle of the road. I see Shah then, standing on the road, her hands over her mouth. My head goes blank, I know what’s happened but I don’t know what’s happened. Mr Mugisha is pulling me outside now, and someone’s calling an ambulance, which turns up, and then Mr and Mrs Mugisha drag me to their car - I feel like lead, my mouth has stopped working - and Séraphine is asking me to ring Mum. Shah is somehow in the car too and she is holding my hand and crying, and for once I don’t mind.