The Boy Next Door Read online

  Standing here with my son, I am seized by shame at its shabbiness, how we could have allowed dear Rosanna to live in here.

  I don’t know how long Mummy’s been back. What arrangements she’s made with Rosanna. The other times Rosanna’s been expelled she’s always gone to Uncle Silius to seek refuge, but last time I talked to her, Uncle Silius and his family had been evicted from their flat in Pelindaba for nonpayment of rent.

  I walk around the workshop, and my eyes sweep past the gum tree away to the far corner, where an outbuilding that used to be partially hidden by rows of maize plants squats.

  “Maphosa lived down there,” I say to David, who is crouched on the ground jabbing a stick at an anthill. “He was our gardener. Let’s go and take a look.”

  We walk silently in the dirt. Not a single sound. It’s like walking in a devastated zone. The earth scorched and abandoned.

  We stand outside the zinc door, which is just open enough to give a sight of the bleak interior.

  I am suddenly gripped with dread, but before I can tell David we should leave, he has already pushed the door open wide.

  Something scurries on the floor, and I let out a yelp and jump backwards.

  “Chill, it’s just a lizard, Mum.”

  There is nothing in the room, not even a mattress.

  What did I expect to find? Evidence? Of what? The Great Lie?

  “He lived in here? It’s so small, Mum.”

  “Come on,” I say. “Let’s go.” I try to shut the door, but the warped zinc springs open. The latch has been long broken and rusted. “Let’s go and have a sandwich, and then we can go into town for a drive. No, actually, better idea. Let’s go for a pizza or a chicken at Nando’s, and then we can go and take a look at the museum. You haven’t seen the animal exhibit; it’s good.”

  David eyes me cynically. But he’s also amused as evidenced by his right eyebrow cocked higher and his lips swinging to one side, his dimple deeper.

  I’m frantic with the desire for distractions.

  We both stand staring at Daddy’s treasured Ford Cortina. There is rust and dirt, things Daddy would never have tolerated. I wait for David to make some comment, but when I look at him, I’m shocked by how gentle and sad his face seems to be. What does he remember?

  “Okay, then, let’s get going.”

  David opens the front passenger door.

  “Back,” I say.

  “Mum!”

  “Come on, you know the rule.”

  “Mum! I’m not a kid.”

  “Humor me.”

  My beautiful son glares at me and then flings the door shut; the car rattles in protest.

  “Dad’s right; sometimes you’re the gestapo.”

  “Seat belt.”

  Bulawayo, as ever, seems to be stuck deep in another century: the genteel, fading, faded grandeur of the colonial past. Sleepy Bulawayo with its wide, wide roads that Rhodes had constructed so that horse-drawn wagons could make a complete turn. Ancient models of cars chugging along, some of them seeming to come from the turn of the century, old, beaten down, driven with infinite care and pride by their equally antiquated owners. Harare has all the glitz. “Harare is fast,” Bulawayans fresh from their travels to the Sunshine City gossip. “Too, too fast,” they say, sinking into the welcome torpor of Bulawayo while still feasting on the hectic rush of life that is Harare. Too fast, as if that city, that foolish, reckless metropolis with its good-for-nothing Shonas, will one day simply run away with itself, with its good times, get rich vibrations while Bulawayo, good old Bullies, ever solid, reliable, dependable, boring, dull, will survive for all time. But it is also Bu-la-wayo. The place of killing, isn’t it? Bloodletting is in its history. The beautiful wide, wide streets are seeped in blood.

  “Mum!”

  “Yes, what?”

  “You’re going as fast as a snail on sleeping gas.”

  I readjust the rearview mirror until I can see him.

  “This is Bulawayo pace.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “That’s right.”

  I flash him a smile. He sighs, flings his long legs over the passenger seat.

  I press down a bit more on the accelerator.

  “Is that better, more Formula One style?”

  I watch him for a moment. The earphones are back on. His forehead is pressed against the window. What on earth does he make of it? The utter wretched barrenness of it. The dry patches of wasteland. The shacks all over that field, where sometimes I would watch boys kicking their plastic footballs. The land has been reclaimed, and everywhere there are cardboard houses. And next door to all this, the crumbling houses of the once Whites Only suburbs. What had the whites said as the hordes of blacks moved in and claimed possession of the well-tended gardens (if they hadn’t been spitefully uprooted by the fleeing white owners): oh yes, “wait till the munts move in; wait and see what a dump they’ll turn these places into, just wait.”

  And how angry it makes me to see how right they’ve turned out to be. Everything is falling apart.

  What did Daddy himself say?

  “The problem is, we blacks, we move into these big houses with big yards, and we don’t have the money to upkeep them. We want to be seen to be living like bosses. And then all the relatives descend. It becomes a mess, the whole thing. People living one on top of the other; it is a recipe for disaster. I’m telling you, very soon we will have cholera outbreaks like in Zambia.”

  There’s no longer the thik, thik of sprinklers as they water lawns or flower beds—instead, patches of anorexic maize straggling over broken fences.

  And now, to top it off, the smell of sewage entering through my open window.

  “What a pong.”

  “It’s the river,” I say closing the window.

  Daddy was always complaining to the city council about all the illegal dumping that was going on upriver at Trenton. If you caught the bus at certain times, you would have to share it with a goat or a pig from one of the squatter camps there that was beginning its long, miserable journey to the lands.

  Main Street.

  “Look, David, there’s where Grandpa used to work.”

  The Main Street Post Office building, I’m relieved to see, is still there, sturdy and reliable with its thick red stone and straight lines despite all the internal havoc and machinations of its occupants: the never ending strikes, the go-slows, pay and labor disputes, firings, rehirings, court cases, pending court cases, tribunals, and the decline of all the services rendered by the Post and Telecommunications Corporation.

  “I remember it,” he says, craning his head out of the window. “Grandpa used to take me to his work. The machines were gigantic, and there were pictures of naked ladies on the walls.”

  That must have been the main telephone exchange down at the basement of the building. How many times had Mummy allowed Daddy to take him there? He had taken me, too, sometimes straight from school when he got called out on a fault, and I had seen those pictures, Miss January, Miss June… which some of the younger guys had tacked onto the walls. The older pin ups were from Scope magazine, the newer ones, with black girls with clothes on, from Drum. There is a pang of sorrow when I think of David with my father. I can see them walking down those stone steps in the gloom, Daddy steadying David on the uneven stairs, David reaching for his Granddad’s hand.

  “So, pizza or chicken?”

  “Pizza.”

  “Right then, pizza it is.”

  Pizza Palace is still in existence. Shabbier than I last remembered it. The blackened-out glass front, which has always made the place look like an illegal nightclub, seedy and downmarket, is covered in dust, and I spy several flies in the casement. I’m already having misgivings but I’m also very hungry.

  It’s gloomy inside. I can’t remember if, once upon a time, this was an atmospheric gloominess; at the moment it feels more like an economic strategy; hard times have befallen the once grand Pizza Palace.

  Laughter rings out fro
m the table to the left of the door. Some teenagers. Their pose and laughter sweeps me back into Grasshut (Grasshut!) with Bridgette.

  David glances at the table and feigns lack of interest at the two girls there, who are staring at him virtually openmouthed. I think schoolgirl Bridgette would have called it, drooling.

  We get a table right in front of the door so that at least we have some light. David looks at me with what I take to be a new interest. So this is what Mum thinks is a nice restaurant. Interesting. His head is bobbing and only now I notice the music. Rap. The waitress comes. She looks very bored and tired and also irritated with us for giving her work to do.

  “Yes?” she says, scratching her weave with her finger.

  “Two pizzas,” I say. “Can we see the menus?”

  She digs her finger out of her weave, points to the table next to us, and waits for us to grab the grimy menus and look through them.

  “One Margherita with lots of olives,” says David.

  “O-leaves,” says the waitress, yawning. “We don’t have o-leaves.”

  David bops his head as if he is agreeing with her.

  “I’ll have a Margherita, too. And can we have some bottled water?”

  She looks at me as though I’m crazy. A black woman asking for bottled water, in Bulawayo, well…

  “Thank you,” I say.

  She shuffles off.

  David’s taking a look around, his eyes flitting over the two girls, who appear not to have changed posture at all.

  The door opens and a well-dressed young couple walks in. They swivel their eyes over the joint. The woman whispers something to the man, and they both turn back, straight right out of the hole. This is not a place to be seen (caught dead in). Not even in Bulawayo.

  After what seems like forever, the pizzas finally arrive. David looks down and then up at me with his “Is this a pizza? Are you joking?” expression.

  He’s right to ask.

  The bread, dough, whatever, is awash in a Day-Glo yellow substance that I presume to be cheese. Islands of uncooked tomatoes are stranded in it. Rings of onions charred around the border.

  “Pizza, Bulawayo style. We can go to Nando’s.”

  David sighs and gingerly picks up one end and bites into it, the cheese slopping down his chin onto the plate, taking a forlorn tomato with it.

  “The taste’s not too bad,” he claims.

  I could hug him for such fortitude.

  I bite, too. And swallow. Just the one slice.

  We take a walk to the city center. It seems amazing to me that I can be walking on the pavements of Bulawayo with my teenage son. But here I am. And here he is.

  A board on the pavement is advertising Vuka! Company and the arrow points to stairs going up. I am attracted by the photographs of traditional Ndebele beaded jewelry and animal figurines, and David by the pictures of wire cars and motorbikes. Sometimes he surprises me with what isn’t too young for him; what’s so gauche, it’s hip; what’s so old-fashioned, it’s retro, happening.

  “Cool.”

  My hand is deep in the basket of beaded animals when I hear behind me, “Lindiwe, c’est toi?”

  I release the animals, and there, here, is Jean. For a moment I can’t remember his name, that’s how stunned I am. And next to him is a young woman cradling a baby.

  “It is you, Lindiwe. What a surprise.”

  I finally find the power of speech.

  “Jean. Wow.”

  “Yes, ‘wow’ as you say. How are you?”

  I have the impression of standing there with my mouth gaping; I wish there was a reflecting surface to check.

  “Lindiwe,” he says again.

  The woman next to him shifts the weight in her arms.

  “Lindiwe, my wife, Clara. We have met in Côte d’Ivoire.”

  “And you have a baby,” I blab. “Wow,” I add for extra measure. (Two wows so far, wow.)

  Thankfully, David barges in. Bless him.

  “Mum, that motorbike’s supercool.”

  “Is that little David?”

  “Yes, that’s him.”

  “David. How much you have grown. You cannot remember me, of course. Hello to you.”

  “Hi,” says grown-up David.

  We stand there in a jittery silence, as if any moment someone might drop something and start screaming.

  “Is she a girl?” I ask the woman.

  Clara smiles down lovingly at the child.

  “Yes, she is a girl, Floriana.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Mum…”

  “Okay, David, I’m coming.”

  “Kids,” I say to no one, anyone.

  “It was good to see you, Lindiwe. We are en route to Johannesburg. We leave tomorrow.”

  Too much information.

  “Well, have a great time. Take care.” Are these my words? Really?

  “You, as well.”

  “Bye.”

  I turn away from them and concentrate hard on the mechanics of David’s cool bike.

  “See how it moves, Mum, and look at the light, cool, and the pedals; it’s got a motor, look at—”

  “Okay, okay, I’m convinced. Let’s take the thing home,” I say as I listen to the sound of Jean’s steps on the stairs, taking his family away.

  “We’ll go to the museum tomorrow,” I say while putting the key in the ignition.

  I’m exhausted. I want to talk to Ian. I need to hear his voice.

  The engine tries to start, chortles off. I try again. And again. I hit the steering wheel with the edges of my palms. I spy David through the window with a “could you get a grip” expression on him. One last try and this time we’re off. I turn around to say something reassuring to David, but he’s leaning back, eyes closed, completely chilled.

  * * *

  I phone home. Four times altogether, the last try at eleven thirty. No one answers.

  I draw back the curtains of my old room, and I’m shocked by the bare visage of the house next door. The trees that used to dot the length of the fence between the two houses have been chopped down for firewood, and now sitting up, I can spy parts of the McKenzies’ veranda. There it stands.

  I took the keys with me. I found them in one of the kitchen drawers.

  They should tear it down. Build something new and sparkling on top of it. Something modern with lots of windows like the new buildings sprouting up all over Harare. Yes, that would be something, quite an attraction, deep in the boondocks here. Or Ian should give it away. Donate it to somebody. The Social Welfare Department. Have it used for good deeds. Atonement. An orphanage. A homeless shelter. A refuge for abused women, single mothers, street kids.

  I sink back into bed.

  I’m ready to leave today. But the ticket’s only for tomorrow afternoon. A whole free day ahead. It was crazy for me to come running back here. What was I hoping to achieve? A confrontation with Maphosa?

  I get up. I tiptoe past David’s room into the bathroom, and then I go to the kitchen. I run the cold water gently, fill the kettle, put it on, and wait by the sink, my hands cradling my elbows.

  In the quiet, I know clearly, sharply, exactly what I want. I want Ian to be here, to be tapping at this window above this sink. To see him mouth, “no ways are you getting rid of me so easily.” I want him to take us home.

  I finger the locket on my neck, rub it with my thumb.

  I push the curtain to one side expectantly, as though miracles can happen at whim, at one’s bidding, but there is no tapping at the window. All is still. All is quiet. There is the tree under which Daddy and the chief constable sat discussing the fire and I—

  “Mum!”

  Just as with Rosanna, so many years ago, the cup slips from my hands.

  “Sorry, I frightened you; you’re up early.”

  “You, too, mister. Did you sleep well?”

  I get the broom from the corner and sweep the pieces there.

  “Okay, the bed’s small. Midget size.”


  “You were a midget once, my dear.”

  “So you think Dad’s awake?”

  “Umm, what time is it? Eight, eight thirty, maybe.”

  Not if he’s been up all night, elsewhere.

  “We’ll try a bit later. We might wake up Granny and Grandpa if we use the phone now.”

  He sits down, jabs his ever-lengthening limbs under the table.

  “Shit,” he says, vigorously rubbing his knee.

  “You have to stop growing.”

  “So I can fit on the fucking midget bed?”

  Time for that serious talk.

  “David, I don’t think it’s necessary to use that word as a form of expressing yourself. You have a very well-developed vocabulary; you don’t need it.”

  He gives me his “what the?” look and then he twigs on. “Dad says it all the time.”

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  “Yes, he does.”

  “It’s fricking, that’s what he says, fricking.”

  And I know exactly what David is going to say to this.

  “That’s just like fucking.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Yes, it is. Ask Dad.”

  “In any case, Dad happens to be an adult.”

  David smiles at that and gives me the “oh, really?” mug-shot.

  I resort to blackmail. “If I don’t hear that word from you all week, I’ll give you eighty dollars.”

  “Ninety.”

  “Eighty-five.”

  “Done.”

  That settled, he stretches out his arms and indulges himself in an elaborate, victorious yawn.

  “I wish he was here.”

  “Me, too.”

  He gets up, tries to open the kitchen door. I fetch the keys from the nook where the telephone is. He steps outside.

  “You’re going to catch a cold. There’s dew.”

  His chest, exposed by the V of his striped pyjama shirt (he only wears the thing when I pack it), seems so ridiculously vulnerable.