Jeff Spahr-Summers,
US
10
End of Innocence
In our last year
of primary school, my best friend Jerald and I were elected
Prefects. Jerald was Head Prefect and I was Assistant Head
Prefect. Prefects were basically assistants to the teachers.
Each Prefect was assigned a class, which they were responsible
for in the teacher’s absence. Jerald’s class was a class of
our fellow primary seniors while my class was kindergarten
students. We were expected to control and discipline our
students between classes, anytime the teacher needed to be
away, or during any general student gatherings in the great
hall. We were in positions of authority and it suited us well.
When not at school, Jerald and I spent numerous hours together
on our plot or at his house in Pretoria North. I liked to go
to his house because I had a crush on the girl who lived next
door to him, he liked to come to my house because we had
access to a pool. He would never go up on the ridge with me,
but there were plenty of other things for us to do. Mostly, we
swam in my landlord’s swimming pool, which was really just a
big in-ground water reserve tank. Painted blue like many
pools, it was round and about 12 feet deep all around. Ever
the gymnast, the pool wasn’t enough on its own for me. I also
placed a miniature trampoline at one edge in front of a raised
platform that we could launch ourselves from. We would jump
onto the trampoline, spin in the air or do flips and land in
the pool. It was always a challenge to see how high we could
jump from the trampoline, and what grand entertainment.
Jerald and I also went to the same high school when the time
came, Hillview High School. We hadn’t been in high school very
long, when he began complaining about these excruciating
headaches. The headaches wouldn’t go away and I finally
convinced him that he needed to see a doctor. The headaches
were attributed to a brain tumor, within days he went into
surgery and had it removed. I was terrified of this
development and spent every day after school in the hospital
with him. He recovered quickly, but because we both inherently
knew that he would never be the same again, we toned down
activities considerably. There were some kids at school who
felt justified in teasing him about his shaved head once he
was back, and I found myself defending him pretty
aggressively, they didn’t last long. So we pretended things
were back to normal, and for a couple of weeks they were. One
day as we were lining up outside a classroom, a teacher
smacked him on his head with a cane because we were talking.
He was back in the hospital the next day, never to leave,
never to speak again. I knew he was dying. Again, day after
day after school I was at the hospital with him. For a short
time I knew he could at least hear us (his mother and me), but
he wasted away rapidly, within two weeks he was totally
paralyzed. One day his mother said I could not come to visit
anymore, I was devastated. He died 2 days later. Jerald’s
mother called my mother and she then broke the news to me. I
cried for days.
All of our classmates went to Jerald’s funeral. I cried
endlessly and also made the significant mistake of looking at
him in his coffin, every since, when I think of him I see him
in his coffin. To this day I will not attend an open casket
funeral. When we arrived back at school from the funeral, our
math teacher (in an uncommon act of kindness for which I was
very grateful) immediately warned the entire class (all boys)
that he would personally whip anyone who dared to tease anyone
(meaning me) because they cried at their best friend's
funeral. No one said a word. Nothing was ever the same again.
I found it very difficult to be in the company of people who
knew him. His brother Michael (who had often been with us) and
I couldn’t see each other without a huge black cloud hanging
over us. The last time I saw him was on a bus in Pretoria
North a few months later, I was extremely drunk and it was
just incredibly awkward. When I think of Michael, I see him
watching me through the back window of the bus as it pulled
away after I stumbled off.
