Mermaid Fillet

MIA ARDERNE

Mermaid

Fillet

KWELA BOOKS

For LQ

Thank you

CHARACTER LIST:

Name: Unnamed

Type: Banggat

Age: 30

Sexuality: Fluid

Pronouns: They/Them

Vice: Jordans

Star sign: Sagittarius

From: Bellville South

Name: Whaleed (Perd) Moegsien

Type: Grootman

Age: 50

Sexuality: Asexual

Pronouns: He/him

Mental illness: Depression

Star sign: Taurus

From: Kuilsriver

Name: Isaac Arendse

Type: Malnaai

Age: 32

Sexuality: Bisexual

Pronouns: He/him

Vice: Alcoholism

Star sign: Leo

From: Ravensmead

Name: Alton (AK) Kleinhans

Type: Genuine ou

Age: 47

Sexuality: Heterosexual

Pronouns: He/him

Vice: Vaping

Star sign: Capricorn

From: Belhar

Name: Letitia

Surname: Arendse (born), Kleinhans (married)

Type: Tief

Age: 34

Sexuality: Heterosexual

Pronouns: She/her

Mental illness: PTSD

Star sign: Gemini

From: Ravensmead

Name: Michaela

Type: Sturvy

Age: 29

Sexuality: Demisexual, pansexual, polyamorous

Pronouns: She/her

Mental illness: Social anxiety

Star sign: Aquarius

From: Glenhaven, Woodstock

Name: Username @M16inyourbek

Star sign: Scorpio

Chapter 1

OBLIVION

_____

‘Wie maakie jol vol?’

– a DJ in the Northern Suburbs

Goddess: Don’t be taken for a poes. This is particularly hard to remember when it’s year end. You’re defeated. You’re tired. You’re weakened. Don’t get taken for a poes. Not by those who wanna employ you. Or even those who love you. They will all try it. It’s festive. Stay wys.

BANGGAT

13 December 1989

Karl Bremer Hospital

‘Well, ma’am,’ said the doctor, ‘I’ve never seen anything quite like this before. It might be the first documented case in medical science, but your baby has come out of the womb wearing Jordans. Now, even if they were pushed up there after conception, it still wouldn’t explain how they came to be in the amniotic sac when it broke. So, no, ma’am, I cannot offer you any explanation for the phenomenon at this point.’

And so, in 1989, a child was born in Nike Air Jordans.

9 December 2019, Monday

Bellville South

The banggat grew up and yakked like money wasn’t a factor. Much like adidas Superstars, money was common and unrelenting. It wasn’t so much the sound of money as the call of it. It rang and echoed like when Ma slammed her dominoes on the glass table. The klop. The less you have, the louder it rings. So endless in pitch, so spacious in reverb – you can live inside the sound. You can furnish it and move around in it. That’s where they lived.

They felt like kak, but they had to get dressed. When you’re in the Jumpmans, you’re already a god. They put on their Retro 1 High OGs and drove to work in traffic for an hour and a half. Like starting the day with an argument, every day. They felt like they were asleep at the wheel, with both hands bound to the steering. Employee-of-the-quarter awards, compliment sandwiches in performance reviews, inspirational posters in the office, adding value, and please don’t take someone else’s coffee cup.

Last night, they dreamed of eating mermaid fillet. Not sushi, not carpaccio, not caviar, but mermaid fillet. They wanted the best. Rarer than crayfish. More illegal than perlemoen.

They opened their bookmarked tabs, Shelflife, Jack Lemkus, Sneaker Cartel, Nike SA, and checked for exclusive drops while listening to ghostwritten rap, feeling like a sunglasses emoji. Their day job wasn’t stimulating, but when you’re not trying, the stakes are lower. You can relax. They skimmed the prices and skeemed ways to afford the new releases. They closed the tabs as the manager came around the corner. They pulled the tabs back up when the manager had walked past. A colleague side-eyed them:

‘Another pair? Bra, you bought Jordans last month.’

‘I have a job. Why else am I working?’

10 December 2019, Tuesday

Bellville South

They got the 6s. Black/Infrared. They built a floating glass shelf for their Jordans. Poesmooi.

11 December 2019, Wednesday

Bellville South

They got a warning for wasting company resources because they kept closing the tab too late and the manager checked they were not working.

13 December 2019, Friday

Bellville South

The second warning came with Jordan 4s – mint green and cement black. The colourway made them emotional. Also, it was the banggat’s birthday. Self-care.

16 December 2019, Monday

Bellville South

They treated themselves to two additional is-fokol-is-festive pairs. White Retro 1s and Royalty 4s (exclusives – gold and black, so jas). Early end-of-year payment mos. And just like that, they were binne in the wrong half of December with January approaching. They walked outside to buy a half-loaf of bread and a loose Rothmans. But they did it in Jordans.

17 December 2019, Tuesday

Bellville South

Retro 11 Space Jams. They closed the tab just a second too late and the manager fired them. There had been downsizing; it was on the cards. Not their fault. Fuck it. Their clothes were a bietjie ripped, but not in the way that passed for fashionable. Their self-esteem was sukkeling. Their self-esteem was sitting under the tongue of the supreme Nike Air More Uptempo sneakers and they had no way of finding it now because they missed the drop.

Their card was declined; their Uber account was skielik suspended. They went home and stripped their flat of colour. They turned all their pictures backwards, rolled up the carpets. The colour was not letting them breathe. The colour was a lie. They wanted to see monochrome and Jordans. Only monochrome and Jordans. They had no appetite for anything. Can I just get some fucking mermaid fillet please?

20 December 2019, Friday

Bellville South

They sold everything but their laptop. In court, they stood in a pair of Retro 4 Royalty, and declared bankruptcy. And when they were asked why, they whispered, ‘Jumpman’.

Two hours later, three men sat across from them at a boardroom table with a bag of a hundred thousand rand ready. Arms folded, chains gleaming.

‘The Tamagotchi … bring me its corpse.’

They recognised the three brasse: Isaac, AK and Perd. The banggat already knew the one bra well, Isaac. Isaac was a malnaai. Kyk, Isaac’s a real malnaai – and the Glock was lying centimetres from his hand. Isaac didn’t speak, but his silencer did.

AK was an otherwise decent man. He didn’t evens look up.

Perd was the one who spoke. The grootman. The main ou. A moerse bra. You-see-the-shoulders-before-you-see-the-man kind of bra. He sat in the middle.

‘Gravedig it,’ Perd added.

They wanted to sigh so loudly. So that’s what this is about. But it wasn’t a good time to sigh out loud. So they held their tongue and nodded slowly.

‘Yes, sir,’ said the banggat, and took the bag.

The bag, heavy in their hand, felt like Friday. Mandela faces on Mandela faces. Gleaming.

GROOTMAN

13 December 2019, Friday

Kuilsriver

Perd woke up feeling calmer, surer and happier than he had in years. He considered analysing this feeling, but he was ninety per cent sure that doing so would derail it. The sunlight coming off the tar on the road shone and glimmered. The sheen of it was something Perd could barely explain to himself. He wanted to lick the light off the tar and ingest it, digest it. He wanted the light in his stomach. And that was the only reason he knew he still wanted to live.

There is nothing a depressive distrusts more than happiness. He knew its transience. He knew better than to believe in permanence. He knew it would expire. And he knew that it would be soon. And yet he hoped, with a full chest of futility, that it would last.

His feeling about people who were happy – it was bigger than envy. It was a lack of understanding how. Not even a sarcastic ‘how’, but a really ‘How?’. It was a desperate, desperate question. Perd knew that people responded to desperation with laughter, glibly and inarticulately. When what desperation needs is an articulate response. He wondered if anyone knew he was desperate. Maybe they perceived it as something else entirely.

He was a successful man. He hadn’t predicted that his success would be as empty as his failures. Perd’s joy now at the sunlight on the tar was so marked and so triumphant only because his sorrow was such a baseline. He became rapturous at the sheen.

Perd was so happy in that moment, he considered going off his medication. No, he thought, knowing the world would turn ugly again. Uglier. He knew the rapture would pass, and the sheen would go from transcendent to just bright. He looked dead ahead on the road, and drove straight on to Atlantis. He didn’t trust the feeling. He didn’t question it either. Festive season was a volatile time.

MALNAAI

13 December 2019, Friday

Goodwood

‘Assit kom by poesvriet, sê ek jou nou, sit dai ding voo my. Ek vriet. It’s in my nature. I’m a widow-maker. Call your wife now. Tell her you not coming home. ’Cause I’m a widow-maker. When it comes to naai, I will speak about naai, holnaai, pielsuig, poesvriet, I will speak about naai if I wanna speak about naai. I’m not the underdog. I’m the other dog. Motherfucker,’ said Isaac.

December in Goodwood will leave you feeling some type of way. You can’t escape the dronkvedriet in December in Goodwood. Much like the uncle you don’t want to kiss hello, it will find you.

It was karaoke night in his usual spot in Voortrekker Road and Isaac was feeling some type of way. People were jazzing in a place where the couches had scar tissue and their insides bulged out their seams. There was no entry fee.

There was a dad singing Babyface about the son he was losing custody over. Not a flick of ash escaped his ashtray. December had him feeling some type of way.

There was a woman who could no longer stand the way her husband ate or the spitty taste he left on her lips. She was drinking because she couldn’t throw another glass at him and have it splinter her laminate flooring. Goodwood in December had her feeling a type of way.

There was a quiet grey oupa singing ‘The Prayer’ in his New Balance shoes, deep in the vedriet. He would sing into the morning as he reminisced on how he lit a petrol-filled Klipdrift bottle in ’84, and threw it through the window of a collaborator’s house. Sucking on a Rothmans, he could still see the fire. He remembered he was a hero and he remembered why. December in Goodwood had him feeling a type of way.

There was a boy in six-inch Chinatown heels singing Gloria Gaynor, looking all kinds of fierce, but feeling some type of way.

There was a sixty-year-old taanie still in love with the same man for more than two decades, singing Chaka Khan to her husband, who didn’t look up at her. He was either too skaam or too disinterested, Isaac wasn’t sure. Her stomach was out, her hips were moving, and there was a peeled naartjie in her one hand. She moved in grey leggings under a Mr Price maxi dress with flip-flops. She had a voice that rivalled Chaka Khan’s and she got the whole pub standing, feeling some kind of way.

Isaac ordered more liquor than he could afford that night. So did everyone else. It’s fokol; it’s festive. Isaac’s drinking was remedial, not recreational. He was a Friday-worshipper in the festive season. He was a Friday-worshipper outside of the festive season.

‘Waa’s jou nanas?’ shouted the DJ.

‘Hie’s jou nanas!’ a woman shouted back, running her hands over her tits down her hips, parting her thighs as she gyrated down, mouth wide, eyes almost closed. She was indifferent to the man who asked the question. She was un-searching because she already knew the answer – that without a doubt, the nanas lay by her. A curl of two fingers – ‘Hie’s jou nanas.’ In-case-you-forgot. It was a statement of fact. Hie bly hulle. And she turned with her dop in her hand and walked away, ashes with everyone and everything but her dop.

Isaac went to go fetch the nanas. He joined her at the bar, lifted her onto the counter. She stroked his beard. Not a minute later, Isaac found himself being flung over the pool table by the woman’s stukkie. He was escorted out of the bar. ‘Isaac, jou malnaai!’ someone shouted. He dragged the smoke so deep into his black lungs, he could feel it burning in his bruised rib.

‘Jou ma se olifant-poes-lippe,’ he shouted back as his hand moved towards his Glock.

But he thought better of it. His berk was waiting for him in bed. He considered going to the yaat to carry on drinking. He couldn’t accept that the jol was done, but his berk was waiting for him in bed. So he ended up limping to his car and driving home drunk. There was a familiar dull pain in his abdomen. He clutched his stomach as he fumbled with the house keys. He fell asleep next to his man, listening to the revving of a VVL on the cusp of a dice. When the car finally released to go, he sank deep into the unconscious and enjoyed the most glorious tiep. December in Goodwood had him feeling some type of way.

GENUINE OU

26 December 2019, Thursday

Belhar

AK got out of bed delicately so as not to wake his wife. He put on the kettle and took out two mugs. He slipped a rooibos teabag into her mug, added two spoons of sugar, no milk, poured in the hot water and squeezed the teabag until all its aromas