Doughnut

 

Doughnut

 

"Good morning, Po. Nice to see you again. What you want?"

Saturday morning. Last day of the weekend. Table for one.

"Er...a chicken muck-sandwich and coffee."

"What coffee, po?"

Ah, choices.

As school teachers go, Jennifer Hanley was a bit of a magpie.

And then, she wondered what it meant to be a magpie. That happens, you know? You idly associate yourself with some spurious British bird and are left with spurious connotations.

No magpies here, of course, she reminded herself, remembering how they used the timescoop to drop her here in the desert.

It was January and, wouldn’t you know it, the Winter sun was winking at her in conspiracy.

Words.

Key words.

She’s inner-monologuing, working them around her silent tongue  and switching tenses: spurious, conspiracy, winking, connotations.

What does it all mean?

Well, the timescoop was an affectation for a start, she admitted: no such thing, is there? Just a random fancy remembered from television, decades ago, where five of the same character had been dumped in the death zone to battle it out for 90 minutes. and there wasn’t much deathly about that zone, either.

If timescoops were a thing why then she had been cast back ten years and had aged accordingly.

"Your coffee, po." The small Filipina had delivered a suspiciously full tray.

No, no chance of seeing a magpie here, she reflected. Once, she had liked them. Years ago, back home, there'd been poems. But no gold and she'd got to seven rather too soon.

Here? Just those ubiquitous African myna birds and their high pitched squonking. They were clever, and travelled in pairs like policemen. If you approached, they could hop away incredibly quickly whilst regarding you with either hope or suspicion.

Then, under every car or behind every dustbin, stray cats. some grubby, others remarkably clean depending on wherever they laid their hats. Often they’d start off fine, but as they aged pick up bits of injury here or there – the odd missing eye, a limp, a flaccid tail, that once had been proud and pricking.

Occasionally, you’d see a stiff one stretched out that had attempted one leap too many.

It was no use getting attached, Jennifer realized. Time and again you befriended and fed one of them but always they would disappear, never staying around past two to three weeks. Experience had taught her that.

And experience was something that Jennifer had bags of.

At school they called her an old fart and chucked things. And that was just the other teachers. If she took the metro, fellow travellers would offer their seats.

She hated that.

Ah, let’s do away with Jennifer, she’d been Jenny before that in a two for joy sort of way. But as one had flown, she’d more time to think and, of course, had found herself bereft of magpies and swamped in mynas.

She wondered if these sort were proficient in imitation. There’d been some caged ones, back home, full of mimicry. Clever bastards.

Careful, Jenny, your teeth are showing.

She rubbed idly at where the strap was biting her shoulders. More weight these days, of course, and that belly was testing the T Shirt she’d tossed on after her shower. Her bilbil. The school librarian had pointed this out while she was hunting for a book.

Bilbil.

I suppose this is why Jenny was eyeing that doughnut in front of her. It had come free with the coffee. Promotion. Buy one get one. One chicken muck-sandwich came with another, a pair of coffees and the solitary doughnut. She hadn’t wanted it, asked for it, craved it.

Yet there it was.

Wandering back to her accommodation for a moment – comes free with the job you know – so picture an apartment for one with two bedrooms, two bathrooms and one quite generous study. It’s in amongst many such apartments in this particular tower block, set aside for teachers in the city.

The younger ones had to share. Company rules.

We’re only travelling by mind you understand, or timescoop if you will, because Jenny often uses that mode of transport. And she’s feeling irritated.

Maybe that’s too strong a word, actually. Irritation, I mean. It’s difficult to read that face, creased as it is like newsprint. Still, she’s wandering around there right now.

Outside, by the skips, somebody has puked up.

A young one. Irish probably. They scooped up many of those and bought them across. 

The sick was there this morning but an hour later just a thick, black, damp patch remained; doing its best to perpetually stain the brickery. Who had cleaned it? Probably one of the employees whose task was to do such a thing after the night’s doings had tucked themselves in bed with whoever they’d managed to bag.

Now, as the sun rose, manfully drying up the stained paving, the nocturnal were waking, staring in bewilderment, at their bedfellows. “Who are you? Who are you?” they might hoot, like owls, blinking through the misty morning dust that had gathered in the corners of their eyes – except that would betray them. Keeping schtum was the best policy.

The young are schtum.

How came they by those stains? Ah, no matter. Before long, they’re reaching for their phones. Ordering coffee cures and trying not to breathe in the other’s breath and wondering how long it would be before they could leave, deny it all and start texting accusations.

Jenny watches as motorcycles arrive in endless convoy. Park. Sign in at reception. Clutch the one plastic beaker of coffee with straws or nippletops for suckling. Head for the elevators. Disappear. Reappear empty handed. Depart.

Here’s an old fellow. He’s struggling through heavy C Ring traffic with two beakers and an ice cream melting over his wrist in the sun. Stumbles past the puke stain, up the steps, racing to his destination before all of the dessert has covered his cuffs in a slimy trail.

But now the morning muezzin was being piped over the intercom and, following him, Jenny once more found herself staring at that doughnut.

It wasn’t bad as doughnuts go, she supposed.

It came in a paper packet, designed to discreetly absorb grease and keep the sugar in place. Against her best intentions, she now removed it and placed it back on the cheap, red plastic tray beside the disposable tissues and gaily coloured cardboard wrappings. She quietly sipped her coffee and observed it.

You don’t often analyse doughnuts, do you?

However this one announced itself as a ‘cookie comfort’ and its torus was covered thickly in crumbled Oreo. Beneath this was a sugar glaze that trapped the dough within. 

Jenny removed the cake and broke it into two halves. Upon doing so, she discovered it had been pumped full of viscous synthetic cream.

She didn’t eat it yet.

Just looked at it. On the tray. In the middle of her table.

Around her, Jenny realized the noise had increased. Why? Ah, yes. Four youngish looking men, a couple with beards, all of them fit looking and muscular, were talking excitedly in a language she did not know. They were oppressively close and giving her the once over.

Instinctively, she covered her chest with the jacket she was wearing.

Using her peripheral vision, she took a sideways look, wondering what was happening, just on the edge of being intimidated by their proximity.

Then, with a whoop, they began vaulting over the adjacent table.

Not just vaulting, you understand. One had switched on a speaker which began rattling out loud, autotuned nursery music a bit like Pinky and Perky, if you can remember that. No? Well, Alvin and the Chipmunks, then.

They had formed a queue and were waiting in turn, jiggling legs and bottoms in time to the rhythm. In front of them? A cell phone, filming. They would vault the table, pull a pose in front of the camera, duck, then scuttle to the back of the queue, and repeat.

Jenny hadn’t much time to wonder why these men were doing this before an African security guard arrived and sent them packing.

He also looked at her suspiciously. Had she somehow been a part of this performance? Then, satisfied, he stalked back to wherever security men go.

Shrugging, Jenny went back to her broken in half doughnut.

She had always liked them. Had nothing against them. Found them perfectly acceptable fare.

When she’d been young, they had always been a plain, sweet yellow ring. Sometimes a bit stale and crumbly, but always quite simple.

Later the ring disappeared, and they’d become plumper and filled with fruit jam. Strawberry if you were blessed, blackcurrant if you were extra-fortunate.

As time went by, they’d become glazed, covered in a thick icing, over-sugared – and now, this. Was there any dough even left? This, she realized, was the problem, the meaning. Her key words were somewhere in there, but where, I could not say.

Jenny shivered. In fact, she now wished she had not broken the doughnut in half. She might have given it to one of those cleaners, tidying up after the diners and the table vaulting gang. But it was too late, now.

She got up from the table, leaving her doughnut behind. Remembering a time she’d been visiting the Ivory Coast. The sun was setting and, as she’d looked up at the trees she’d been sitting under, the leaves had literally started to stretch and move, widening out, like broken umbrellas unfurling.

She had been horrified to discover they were bats. Bats all along.

It took several gin and tonics to settle the nerves, believe me.

And hurrying back to her hotel at night, her eyes had been drawn by an iridescent phosphorescent glow in the ground – some sort of unearthly glow, undulating in the leaves. Drawn towards it, Jenny was transfixed by what she discovered. Thousands upon thousands of copulating cockroaches, writhing in an ecstatic dance – but this time, no phone, no camera.

It’s Sunday.

The doors of the apartment block is disgorging occupants by the baker’s dozen whilst stray cats slink away and your myna birds watch in interest, executing gymnastic vaults if any people get too near.

Jennifer is such a one, boarding one of the waiting buses that are there, waiting to take your teachers to schools across the city.

She sits in her normal seat, alone and behind the driver, reaching in her bag; the only one to pull out a book.

But, as the bus pulls away, she cannot see the words. Or, if she can, they mean nothing. They defy her and fly away, like magpies. She can read nothing.

It is too dark, too dark to see - even with the flashlights from the mobile phones that surround her like swamp.