The Boy Next Door Page 21

  “Do you want some tea, Daddy?” I might ask him, my eyes swirling with words, images.

  And there is Mummy muttering, “What is the point of all this work when your father undercharges all of the time?”

  I want to say that I love him, but ever since he has had the stroke, I haven’t been able to talk to him, to sit down with him and just say things. It’s as if I’m guilty of something, as if I haven’t been a good daughter, as if I don’t think he has a life anymore.

  I tell Rosanna I will be back for Christmas. I give her my phone number in case of any emergency and also that of Aunty Gertrude in Botswana. I ask about money, and she says that every month she takes Daddy to the pension’s office for his envelope and that they take his thumbprint.

  “Plus, we have the vegetables we are selling,” she says. “It is a good thing we have a borehole. Do not worry, Sisi.”

  I bend down and kiss Danielle and taste the salt of her tears. I give her the wool doll I bought at Jairos Jiri Crafts Centre.

  “I thank you, my sister,” she says softly.

  David stands stiffly at my side. He doesn’t say a word.

  14.

  The bus moves swiftly on the deserted road. I look outside and the landscape is bleak. Stunted maize in fields, the earth parched. Just before we reach Kadoma, a surreal sight, wheelchairs right in the middle of the road so that the bus swerves a bit and stops. I twist my neck back and see men and women in wheelchairs zigzagging along the road, the rims of their wheels catching the light. I wonder if it’s some kind of protest since the government has cut welfare payments to the disabled. Then I see their tin cups and plates. The driver gets out frothing and fuming, threatening to beat up one of the guys who is pushing a wheelchair. The sound of plates and tins banging on the metal of the wheelchairs fills up the air. I see thin lame legs coated with dust. The driver gets back in, flings some coins outside, and then we’re off again.

  I look up and read kadoma ranch hotel and something in me shifts. I take David’s hand and we go into the hotel, past the curio shop out to the poolside where we queue up to get our snack. Across the pool I look out and see a table, the table where the three of us must have sat at over a year ago now. Does David feel the ghost of his presence?

  My son eats his chips, his chicken sandwich, drinks his Coke. I watch him do these things. It gives me pleasure to see how quickly he eats, how much his body has begun to fill in.

  I can’t put anything in my mouth.

  We go into the curio shop. In a basket by the till, my eyes fall on the jumble of wooden animals Ian must have stopped at, and an ache spreads inside me as I see his large hand delving in there, choosing, wanting something special for his newly discovered son. I tell David he can choose something. He looks around. He stops for a while at the assortment of bottle-top toys. But no, there is nothing he wants, likes.

  Home.

  I stand inside the doorway and I am suddenly overwhelmed by fear. I’m alone. The thought resonates in the quiet room, and I almost jump when the phone rings.

  It’s Bridgette. How grateful I am to hear her voice.

  “So, how did it go?”

  “It was fine. We just got in. Everybody’s okay.”

  “And David, is he—?”

  “He’s here.”

  “So I’ll get a chance to play Aunty after all.”

  “Thanks, Bridgette.”

  “When do you have to go to the bush?”

  “In about three weeks. I’ll have to stay for about two, three days.”

  “I’m ready and willing.”

  * * *

  I stand over David’s bed watching him sleep. He is so still. So perfect. So unharmed. Despite me. I look for the giraffe. I cannot find him and somehow this makes me sad.

  What is the measure of a life?

  A small cardboard box with a wire elephant stuck on the lid, something he might have picked up in a curio shop.

  It’s what Ian has left behind in my underwear drawer.

  In the box, pictures.

  One by one I pick them up.

  There he is.

  The newborn swaddled in his mother’s arms.

  The young infant sitting on a plaid blanket, chewing on a rattle. Black hands holding him at the waist.

  The young Boy Scout scrambling up some rocks.

  The schoolboy standing in front of Haddon and Sly, chewing on a licorice stick.

  And there he is, the teenage Ian standing with a woman who can only be his mother, Sarah Price. She is wearing one of those cotton Indian dresses and sandals, two loose braids falling over her shoulder, some flowers tucked in them. And I’m startled by her eyes: Ian’s eyes staring right through the picture to me, holding my gaze, challenging.

  And I can see why she would leave a place like Bulawayo, Baysview, why they might be too small for her, why she might run away with a salesman to Jo’burg.

  I pick up the last picture.

  That morning in Nyanga; I’m standing in my pyjamas.

  I look at it for a long time. I turn it round and there he’s written, “a chick I know,” and that makes me smile.

  I put the pictures back inside. I close the box. I trace my finger over the wire elephant and think of him, somewhere out there, courting danger.

  “Howzit,” he says.

  And I start to cry.

  “Lindiwe, Lindiwe, hey, what’s happening, why…?”

  “No, I’m… I’m okay. It’s just… I… I’m being silly… it’s hearing your voice… I… it’s just a shock, a… a good shock… I wasn’t expecting you to—”

  “Things have been hectic here.”

  “Ian, I’m… I’m looking at the pictures. Thanks for leaving them here.”

  “You’re always going on about pictures, so I thought I may as well. Not the kind you were expecting, huh? Anyways, I thought I’d give you a bit of history, where I’m coming from.”

  “Ian, I—”

  “Listen Lindiwe, I was a right asshole. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry too, Ian.”

  “I saw a guy getting hacked to death today. Yesterday it was some kid getting necklaced.”

  “Ian, I—”

  “The thing is, I actually enjoy doing this shit. It gives me a hang of a buzz, sick, huh?”

  “Why don’t you come home? For a couple of days. David misses you. I… I miss you.”

  “How’s he?”

  “He’s fine. He’s sleeping. We just got back. Like I said he—”

  “Lindiwe, I have to go now, cheers.”

  And before I can say anything, he is gone.

  15.

  The cheetah’s perched on a rock, looking down at us. I can’t help thinking that she could easily jump over the fence, one, two graceful leaps, and she would be over at us, having the time of her life. What stops her? The fence must be electrified, but still, it doesn’t seem too high; nothing that her formidable limbs couldn’t scale. Maybe she’s so well fed she couldn’t be bothered.

  We’re at the Lion and Cheetah Park just outside Harare. Bridgette and David are engaged in some conversation over at the other end, where Tommy the two-hundred-year-old gigantic tortoise is. I suppose she’s telling him some fantastic, made-up folk-tale. It was Bridgette’s idea that we have a day out. We came in her brand-new silver BMW.

  “So business is good,” I said. “Nice car.”

  “Yes, business is very good. African women and their hair is a fail-proof enterprise.

  I didn’t tell her about what Rachel, a fellow student, told me when she saw me with Bridgette in town some days ago.

  “Isn’t that girl Governor You-Know-Who’s girlfriend; the one he’s set up in one of those luxury flats in Fife Avenue? Everyone says that she’s put a big spell on him, and he doesn’t even mind that she’s Ndebele.”

  Bridgette’s flat is in Fife Avenue.

  On one of the side balconies, there is a sweeping view of central Harare. Inside, it’s all Shona sculptures, wide cream lea
ther sofas, and gleaming metallic surfaces. There is even a waterfall on one of the verandas. It doesn’t feel as though someone lives in there that much, and when I opened the monstrosity of a fridge during my first visit, there was only a huge strawberry-and-chocolate cake and a bottle of champagne.

  She showed me where David will sleep. The room is bigger than the two bedrooms in the cottage put together. It has a floor-to-ceiling window with a small balcony. She must have seen me looking at that, for she said, “I’ll secure it. Lins, there’s an enclosed playground downstairs and a swimming pool.” She didn’t mention the gym and the tennis courts and the sushi bar.

  For the first time I took in how sophisticated she was, with her long extensions parted in the middle and pinned loosely on her head with tortoiseshell clips, her high polished heels and tight jeans. She looked like a model. In fact, Precious, one of Bridgette’s friends who was the fashion editor at Mahogany, was always trying to convince her to do a spread for the magazine. She was beautiful in the way models are beautiful in magazines, glossy and flawless. They wouldn’t have to do any retouching. I noticed too that men positively drooled at her, but there was something about her that kept them back. She was too high-class, too fine, too expensive—no, it was more than that, she was too much herself, Bridgette, to put up with any riffraff. And maybe they knew she was combustible matter.

  Is she really the governor’s mistress? He’s notorious for his brutality; there are rumors of suspected rivals being thrown out of windows. Surely it isn’t just the material rewards that attract her if all that’s true; maybe she’s doing it just for the hell of it, Bridgette style. If David is going to stay with her for a couple of days, I have to make sure that her personal life won’t put him in some kind of danger. What if the governor comes in one night drunk, wanting to be serviced? Maybe he shouldn’t stay with her, but where else will he go? I could take him with me. That will mean more days missed from school, and what is he going to be doing deep in the rural areas while I interview cooperative workers? He’ll be stared at, maybe even laughed at, this boy with his complexion, his blue eyes, his red hair. No, no, it’s best he stays. It will only be for two days.

  “Lins! There you are. We’ve been looking for you. Look, look, up there, those monkeys, they’re stealing bananas right from people’s hands.”

  Bridgette’s pointing excitedly behind me, and I catch the last monkey leaping up the roof of the canteen, joining his mates, munching away, looking for all the world as though they’re the ones watching the animals in the zoo.

  David is watching wide-eyed, his hand in Bridgette’s.

  “Aunty Bridgette, a monkey stole Mummy’s scones.”

  Bridgette lets out a squeal. “Scones, David, that’s funny. But why not? They’re our cousins, after all. Did he also get hold of some Five Rose tea?”

  David looks away from Bridgette to me and says, “But… but monkeys aren’t humans. They don’t talk, only in cartoons.”

  Months ago Ian and I took David and two of his classmates to watch The Lion King. In the car Ian entertained us with his rendition of the theme song and lots of “Hakuna Matatas” were flying about. I got into a ridiculous argument with him while the boys were playing table football in the ice cream parlor.

  “Typical,” I said.

  “What?” said Ian who was itching to join the boys. At school he was the table football champion, and he received “mahobo hidings” for sneaking out and playing and honing his skills at the back of Baysview bottle store with garden boys and tsotsis. From the way he talked about it, it sounded as though he were a legend in his own lifetime.

  “Of course, it had to be the baboon with the African accent.”

  “What?”

  He was half-sitting, standing.

  “Sit down, Ian. The baboon with the thick African accent. Rural, primitive, undeveloped, lower down the evolutionary pole, bush.”

  “Lindiwe, you’re not serious.” He was standing now, his hands deep in his pockets, looking down at me.

  “Ian, sit.” It felt like I was ordering a dog about.

  “So now a cartoon is racialistic,” he said, pushing his bottom on the very narrow chair.

  “It’s not just cartoons, Ian. Fairy tales, folktales, movies; how come anything to do with evil is always black? How come the lion king, boy, whatever, had the with-it American accent while—”

  “Lindiwe, it’s an American movie, and the lion king was the main character. Simba, Mufasa, check, African names, and I really dug that hornbill, what’s his name, Zaza… I don’t even believe I am having this conversation about a cartoon.”

  “Exactly the point I’m trying to make, Ian. African names, fine, for African animals, and so why not African accents? It’s happening in Africa, but no, they can’t have the lion king, the top dog, be African. And don’t say, ‘it’s just a cartoon’; it’s about messages, a philosophy, it’s the image—”

  “Lindiwe, how about we joll it the other way? The baboon, and I’m not even sure it’s a baboon, minds. Anyways, the baboon is the wise elder, Mother, okay, Father Africa, cradle of civilization, positive. And man, he was a fricking majestic baboon.”

  “Ian, please, you Rhodies have been calling blacks, that’s us majestic Africans; you’ve been calling us monkeys, baboons, and don’t start changing history and saying that it was all a misunderstanding and it was said in praise and adulation as in ‘as wise and clever and enterprising as monkeys,’ huh?”

  “History, Lindiwe, history. The Past. Feenished. But one thing I agree is that they should have left the entire singing to Africans, Ladysmith Black Mambazo. It sounded like them, they were sweet over all that wilderness, really gave you the heart of Africa. Man, that chorus at the beginning gave me chills down my spine, and then we have that chick and then Elton John. Please man, not in Africa; at least get Johnny Clegg, the White Zulu, to belt out that shit, African style. Come on, Lindiwe, please chill. Too much education, that’s your problem. It’s just a cartoon, entertainment, no great shakes. Hakuna matata.”

  “For you.”

  “Not that again; it’s like a stuck record with you.”

  He made to get up and then changed his mind.

  “Okay, how about Scar, the baddie? Definite hoity-toity British accent there, and the hyenas, I checked a British one… On the other hand, I think you might have a point there… hyenas, British… yes man… come on, Lindiwe, crack a smile… please.”

  “Lins!”

  I look up at Bridgette.

  “Where were you at girl?”

  On the drive back we stop at Nando’s and have quarter chickens. Then we move to the ice cream parlor next door and Bridgette treats us. I see Heather in the queue wearing her dark glasses.

  And here is Duncan.

  Great.

  “Howzit,” he says.

  “Hi,” I say.

  “So heard anything from Ian?”

  “Yes, he phoned. He’s fine. Very busy.”

  He grunts.

  “Well, don’t you get up to any hanky-panky,” he says and gives me a grotesque wink and a wag of the finger.

  I watch him muscle his way through the queue, snatch the slip of paper from Heather, shove it into the hand of the ice cream parlor attendant.

  I watch Heather edge herself out from the crowd. She stands by the stools looking at herself on the mirrored walls. Then she turns around, sees me, or maybe she doesn’t. She walks straight out of the room and waits outside.

  And here is her husband, victorious, two cones in hand.

  “Heather, where the fuck…?”

  And he, too, is out the door.

  I wonder if Heather ever wishes that one day the parachute doesn’t open, that one day his great, bully body falls in one heavy mass, obliterates itself on impact.

  “You like Aunty Bridgette, don’t you, David?

  He nods.

  “Well, how would you like to stay with her while I do some work out of Harare?”

  His breat
hing changes, his body tenses up.

  “It will only be for two days.”

  He stands there, already defeated.

  “Yes,” he says at last.

  I pick up the other thing Ian’s left behind for me, the tattered schoolboy’s exercise book that could have notes on a subject such as history, geography, or English or its pages could be filled with bored scribbles and doodles, sketches and comic strips, anything to pass the time while a teacher drones on and on.

  But there is no innocence on these pages. I know this.

  I open it and begin to touch the fragments of his life; so many years past when he was a boy alone with a stepmother while his father went off for months at a time to fight in the war.

  I close the book and sit on my bed, the book on my lap, the pictures moving furiously in my head.

  16.

  In the bus going to Rusape, my head throbs with the single thought, I should have taken David with me.

  I see him standing there in his pyjamas, the giraffe in his hand again. He looked like he wanted to cry. And I put on a show. All hustle and bustle and distraction (just like Ian). And then I dropped him at Bridgette’s and ran away. I didn’t even kiss him good-bye. I could hop out of the bus, hitchhike back. I could… but I don’t. I carry on sitting there, here, letting the bus take me further and further away. It’s only for two days. He’ll be all right. I’ll ring as soon as I can get hold of a phone.

  “Bonjour, mademoiselle,” Herbert says, taking my bag.

  It’s good to see him.

  The cooperatives I’m going to be interviewing are dotted around the Makoni area, and Herbert, who has been working with them for the rural market project, introduced me to them. “Your questions might motivate them,” he said. “Improve their output and enthusiasm for us.”

  “Do you know,” he said, the last time I saw him at the Alliance Française with Jean Pierre, “the whole infrastructure at the Nyamidzi market was stolen over one night, door frames, window frames, roofs, bricks. I’m sure it’s Mrs. Masasa who has been very successful in her campaign to hinder us.”