I Heart Beat by Edyth; Bulbring Page A

granddaughter.
    â€œCouple?” said Chico the Clown to Mrs Wellbeloved.
    â€œYes, they’ve been together for thirty-five years. Goodness me, that’s almost as long as your grandfather and I were together,” said Mrs Wellbeloved, taking a cunningly hidden wad of tissues from her bra strap and dabbing her eyes.
    While washing up the lunch dishes Mrs Wellbeloved commented further: “If your grandfather had been around, he would never have allowed Alan and Greg into the house. He always saw things so black and white. There was right and wrong. And in his eyes, Greg and Alan’s special friendship would have been wrong,” Grummer said, putting away the dessert bowls.
    Exactly! Grandpa and me would have agreed on this. It’s wrong. It’s not the way it should be. Alan is Mr Perfect. And now I get it that he’s Greg’s Mr Perfect. It’s a crime.
    Grummer can see how cross I am. She gives me this long talking-to about how the Lord loves everybody and that prejudice is an ugly thing. Grummer’s getting me wrong. She forgets that Mom owns an advertising company. There are a zillion Gregs and Alans and Betties and Barbaras working for Mom. But I never wanted any of them to marry Grummer. What a waste of time and FOCUS!
    The television camera zooms in and freezes on the face of The Loser and then the credits appear.
    I text my two and only friends back home the details of my new loser status. They don’t respond. Hey, I can’t blame them. Who wants to hang with people like me and Toffie in the Loser Club?
    Toffie arrives just as I’m thinking about offering myself up to Rooi Duiwel as a living sacrifice. I don’t know how he knew I was here. I suppose losers can smell their own.
    â€œHey, Beat, want to swim?” he asks.
    I tell him I want to drown myself.
    He offers me a peanut butter sandwich.
    I eat four.
    He asks me what I’m thinking about.
    I tell him I’m thinking that I’m related to the Son of God. I think my dad ditched me just after I was born to protect me from the Catholic Church and their secret organisation. He left me and Mom so that the Holy Grail, me, the bloodline of the Holy Trinity, would survive undetected by Silas the albino monk.
    Toffie’s shocked. He says Silas works for his ma in the bar, but Silas is black. Not albino. And he’s no monk; he’s married. He lives in one of the shacks in the squatter settlement above Die Skema for people from the Transkei. They call the settlement Die Trein or The Train ’cos it snakes like a train up the hillside.
    I tell Toffie he’s an idiot. Then I tell him all about
The Da Vinci Code
.
    Toffie cans himself laughing. “But Beat, everybody knows that Jesus wasn’t a ladies’ man.”
    I’m furious with Toffie. I’ve had it up to here with happy bachelors and miserable moffies. I’ve had enough of Mr Perfect and his super housemate Greg. And I tell Toffie too.
    â€œAg, Beat,” Toffie says. “You mustn’t be so prejudiced. My uncle’s a moffie and he’s okay. Gay people are fine, really.” I want to hit him.
    It’s funny how people can look like something and be something else. I tell him I never knew Mr Potato, our plumber, his uncle, was gay. Toffie says he didn’t know either. But his father’s other brother, his Uncle Koos, definitely is. He lives in an artists’ colony in Greytown and works with pastels.
    I try it on and get it. Koos Appel. Appel Koos. Apricot! The apricot in the potato and pineapple family. I feel so much better. Everything fits as it should.
    I tell Toffie that I think his family’s mad. That they’re all crazy with their fruity, vegetable, silly names. And Toffie agrees and says that the thought of his crazy family makes him feel very happy.
    And I feel very unhappy. ’Cos I know that unless I pull a nice old man for Grummer, I’m going to be stuck with her and people