Vicky’s dad has been looking for Grade 1 place, and the hunt left rivers of sweat stains on his branded shirts. By now, he would been AWOL from his zula job. The single dad’s Facebook status showed he’d spent many klippers on taxis, only to find the girl’s name pasted with chewing gum on waiting lists. Lately, he shook Vicky’s moneybox and tsinas blue tigers by cutting a hole at the bottom. 

The next day, Vicky’s dad kicked the wire-chained door of his shack and put on a raincoat with fifty bucks knotted as a bowtie. Most headmistresses nodded at his tie, but the headmasters labelled him a lokasie tsotsi. A substitute teacher who powdered her face with white chalk scolded him for wearing sunglasses on a drizzling day. As he jaywalked past a yawning door, he overheard a teacher shouting, “Who’s absent? Then he peeped through the door, while the yellow slippers teacher, cursively wrote ‘Absent’ on a folded paper.  Immediately, Vicky’s dad ran to the tailors, bullied the tailor with truthful lies to stitch the name ‘Absent’ on the school shirt, and her blue jersey. Then he ran to the street market, and a welder welded an ‘Absent’ sign on her stainless lunchbox. Soon, he bypassed a scanner with a box of crayons and marked it Absent with a black marker.

Suddenly, he hijacked a VIP’s car and changed the plate with a personalised number plate, ‘Absent NA’.  He pocketed a toaster that could print “Absent” on the crispy slices. The girl’s Oros Crush bottle and stickers were marked Absent. The next morning, he sneaked into the classroom and planted Vicky in the chair marked ‘Absent’. 

First, she gave her classmates lollipops wrapped in tigers. When the teacher showed up, Absent gave her a red folded block. The girl’s actions stirred the cornflakes’ lips teacher to give Absent a reader. Afterwards, Absent recited Charlie and Chocolate Factory to the class. The flaky lips teacher wrote 19th January 2030 on the board and handpicked the new girl as her class captain.  

Strangely, her plate-sized earrings pinched her shoulders as she inducted the new girl. Although, Absent had missed classes for two months, she wrote an acronym poem using her name. During the assembly, she sang the Lord’s Prayer, and the headmistress tossed her heavenward like a doll. 

The head teacher scanned the new girl’s name in the summary registers and chewed her bottom lip. First, she blinked and gave Absent’s teacher a friendly warning. Somehow, she squeezed Absent on the class list. Finally, Absent went on to win the Spelling Bee and a beauty pageant.

Footnote:

Tiger – ten dollars

Klippers- a hundred dollars

Bloc- a thousand dollars

Tsina- steal

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