No Turning Back (3 page)

T
wo hours later, Sipho was both hot and hungry. He had been kept busy, although Jabu was much quicker at spotting likely customers. Sometimes he was given twenty cents, even a couple of fifties, but more often it was ten or five. One lady gave him two apples from her shopping. He stuffed one into each of his trouser pockets, with his woolen hat in one of them too, and looked around for Jabu. Perhaps they could break off and eat them. But at that moment a man with a tanned, leathery face and enormous square shoulders, wearing khaki shirt and trousers, indicated that he wanted Sipho to push his cart. It was filled to the brim and was heavy. The man strode ahead, leading the way to a truck at the top of the hill.

“Inside there!” He pointed to Sipho to unload.

Two sacks lay at the bottom of the cart—one of oranges and one of potatoes. Sipho struggled to lift them out, feeling the strain on his back
and the sweat under his arms. When he had finished, he straightened himself and looked toward the khaki figure towering near him. Turning his back to Sipho, the man strolled to the front of the truck, opened the door and climbed into the driver’s seat. Sipho followed him out into the road, waiting for his coin. The door slammed shut in his face. Perhaps the man would roll down the window to pass him something. Instead the engine started up and, without even glancing at him, the man swung the truck out into the road. Sipho sprang back just in time. An elderly black man, walking slowly up the hill, stopped to lean on his stick. He must have seen Sipho leaping out of the way of the truck.

“Are you all right, my son?” he asked.

“Yebo, baba.
Thank you.”

Shaking a little, Sipho returned to the pavement. Pressing his lips together, his fists clenched, he sprinted down the hill.

Sipho sat down outside Checkers, leaning against the plate glass window. He rested his head on his knees. Inside he was feeling small and angry. Like when his stepfather beat him and he was powerless against someone so big.

“Heyta,
new boy! Are you hungry?”

In an instant, Sipho’s eyes traveled from a battered pair of Doc Martens on the pavement
up to the face with a scarred cheek. The figure blotted out the sun, casting a shadow over him. His churned-up feelings kept him tongue-tied. When his lips parted, no sound came out.

“Let me see your money. I’ll go inside and buy you something. I like to help someone who’s new.”

Vusi’s voice was soft but insistent, and he was holding out his hand. Sipho glanced rapidly around to see if Jabu or Joseph was in sight. But there was no one else he recognized. Not even Lucas. He didn’t want to get on the wrong side of Vusi. Slowly he put his hand into his righthand pocket, pulled out the apple and then a fistful of coins. He tried not to take them all out, but he didn’t want Vusi to see him fiddling inside the pocket or he might suspect there was more. Carefully he counted the coins under Vusi’s watchful eye.

“One seventy, one eighty, one eighty-five, one ninety…” Only one fifty-cent piece was in his hand, which meant the other was still in his pocket.

“Hawu!
You work like a slave for so little!” exclaimed Vusi. “Is that all they gave you?”

If he said yes, what if Vusi then made him pull out his pocket and found out he was holding something back? It would be best just to show everything now. Putting his hand back in, he
brought out the remaining fifty-cent coin and three small single cents.

“Ja!
Now we can get something better,” said Vusi holding out his hand for the money. “Wait here till I come.”

Sipho was still waiting when Jabu arrived and slid down beside him. He must have sensed something.

“Is something wrong?” he asked. Sipho told him first about the man in khaki.

“When that kind of person sits with a baboon you don’t know which is the father and which is the son,” Jabu commented dryly.

But when Sipho told him about Vusi, he hesitated before speaking. “You must be very careful with that one. He has a knife. But it’s okay when Lucas is there.”

Sipho swallowed and felt his mouth go dry at the thought of the knife. Jabu pulled out a carton of milk from the pocket in his jacket. He drank out of it, then passed it to Sipho. Offering Jabu the apple that Vusi had ignored, Sipho pulled out the second apple for himself. He had lost the money from his morning’s work, but at least he was still all right.

Together they sat eating and watching the passersby. The boys who had been begging outside the bakery were no longer there, and a group
of
malunde
were now standing and chatting by the corner. Suddenly they broke apart, some climbing on the backs of others.

Piggyback fight! There was no sign, however, of Vusi or Lucas. Nor could Sipho see Joseph.

“Where’s Joseph?” he asked.

Jabu shrugged. “He’s like a new baby. Anyplace he lies down, he sleeps.”

Or he might have gone off to Rosebank, which, Jabu explained, was a good place to “ask money” because there were very rich people there.

The passersby were now walking around the piggyback fighters. Some looked cross, while others hardly seemed to notice them. Jabu jumped up.

“Hey, Sipho, get on my back!”

Sipho clambered up and in seconds was being propelled across the pavement into the middle of the gang of laughing, shouting and tumbling
malunde.
But the game stopped as suddenly as it had begun. A woman came out of Checkers warning that she would call the police if they continued to disturb the customers. Someone must have complained. Sipho slipped off Jabu’s back, and together all of them hurried away. No one stopped to argue.

Police meant trouble. Not only could Sipho be sent back home, but he might get a terrible
thrashing. Once, his stepfather had taken him to the police station and asked the policeman on duty to “teach him a lesson.” It had started with a letter from school complaining that he wasn’t doing his homework. The policeman hadn’t asked Sipho for his side of the story. Like his stepfather, he didn’t want to hear that the homework was difficult and how the teacher shouted that he was stupid if he said he didn’t understand. How
could
he do his homework? When Ma had tried to stop his stepfather from taking him to the police, he had pushed her aside.

Just thinking about the police made the thumping start up inside him again, but it began to relax as he listened to the other
malunde.
Now that Checkers was well behind them, they were laughing. One of them pretended to be the manager, pointing and shaking a finger at them. They started joking about who had been the first to run away.

“Ja!
Thabo ran like it was a spook chasing him!” jeered a boy wearing oversized trousers rolled up at the bottom of each leg.

“You lie! I’ll spook you, Matthew!” retorted another.

The two boys started chasing each other, dashing in between the pavement stalls and parked cars until a man selling leather bags called out that he would catch them and deal
with them if they didn’t clear off. Were they really not scared of the police, Sipho wondered? Or were they just pretending, like he did sometimes too?

When the laughter died down, one of the boys turned to Sipho and asked who he was. This time Sipho didn’t wait for each question but told them his name, where he had come from and how he had left home because of his stepfather. What he said was simply accepted, and the conversation drifted to which games shop they should visit. Passing a garbage can, the two boys who had been chasing each other stopped to look inside it. After a small, friendly scuffle, one came back with an empty plastic bottle.

Following the others through a doorway, Sipho entered a shop packed with people, brightly colored video screens and what sounded like a hundred different noises. Cars were screeching at high speed, bombs were dropping from planes, little figures were bouncing up and down steps, fists were smashing into faces, and the pictures were flickering and changing. Men, boys and a few girls were crowding around the machines. Jabu signaled to Sipho to come back outside. The two boys who had scuffled over the garbage can followed.

“Let’s go the Amusement Center. It’s not so busy there. Those guys are fixed to the
machines,” said Jabu, putting on the expression of someone hypnotized.

They all laughed. Sipho liked the way Jabu moved the eyebrows above his large eyes. His face seemed to tell a story by itself. Jabu introduced Sipho to the other two, Thabo and Matthew, and together they set off.

It wasn’t far to the Amusement Center, which turned out to be the games shop where Sipho had stopped earlier that morning. The man with the black mustache was still there, standing at the entrance to the next shop, keeping an eye on his goods on the tables outside. Sipho was very surprised when the man recognized him.

“Back again!” he said, smiling.

“Yes, sir,” said Sipho, not knowing how to respond. Quickly he followed the others into the shop.

“Does
umlungu
know you?” asked Jabu.

“No,” replied Sipho, frowning. “He saw me this morning. It was the first time.”

The friendliness was a little strange.

Inside, Sipho forgot everything except the excitement of trying to ride a high-speed motorbike without crashing and to fly a plane without being hit by an unknown enemy. Before he knew it, his money had run out. He had used the one rand taken from Ma’s purse. It was lucky that Vusi hadn’t made him empty both pockets. But
now he had nothing. With the others still absorbed in their screens, Sipho joined the onlookers. Wincing as the motorbike rider diced with death, he pushed aside any pangs of hunger.

It was only as they left the games shop and set off once again down the street that he really came back down to earth. Instead of the man with the mustache, a woman in a black beret and a green smock stood outside the shop next door. Ma wore a smock just like that…and before he could blot it out, a picture of her came into his mind. She had probably been crying all day. Perhaps she had been searching for him. He could imagine her trying to walk quickly, holding her stomach. Feeling a sudden wetness in his eyes, he quickly blinked. No, he wasn’t going to let himself think about Ma. She had married someone who hated him, Sipho, her own son. He had run away because of “him,” but it was her fault too. He had to think about himself now, not her. And he didn’t even know yet where he was going to sleep.

T
he rest of the afternoon was spent crisscrossing Hillbrow with Jabu, Matthew, and Thabo, going nowhere in particular. The others let Sipho wander along the pavement market stalls without rushing him. He was curious about everything. Leather bags, purses, cassette tapes, shampoo, combs, cigarettes, matches, colored groundnuts, wooden carvings, necklaces and bracelets made of beads…all of these things were spread out neatly on tables or blankets. Worried about being chased away, Sipho was careful not to go too close. Instead he watched customers pick up items and examine them before buying or bargaining with the trader. Sometimes the four of them shared a joke at what they saw.

They had stopped to follow some bargaining between a trader and customer when Sipho’s eyes were drawn to a nearby table full of carvings. He had to stop himself from putting out his hand. Among the masks and heads carved in
wood and stone stood a line of small wooden animals. Because they were small, he needed to peer closely at them. An almost black rhino with two horns, one big and one small, seemed to be running. One back leg was raised off the table. As Sipho crouched down to see it better, the creature seemed to stare at him from the black dot in the middle of its tiny white eye. He thought it appeared a little worried. Behind it was a fat elephant with its trunk in the air that made him want to laugh.

The color of the wood had given it brown stripes! If only he could pick them up and feel them. Like he did with the clay animals he used to make from red earth on the farm. Would the rhino stare at him from his other eye too? And would that eye be scared or fierce?

“You want to buy one? I’ll give you a good deal. Only ten rand.”

The trader’s voice startled him, and he looked up into the face of a man whose skin appeared as deeply polished as the wood of the rhino.

“I like the rhino,
baba,
but I don’t have money.”

“Maybe you will earn it and come back one day, young man.”

“Yebo, baba.
I will try.”

Casting a last glance at the animals, Sipho forced himself to leave and go back to the others.

Farther down the road at a shoe repair shop, Matthew handed Thabo the empty plastic bottle from his pocket, counted out five rand and went inside. When he came back he was carrying a small can. Moving into a narrow alley nearby, Matthew carefully poured the white liquid from the can into the bottle. Sipho knew it was glue. A boy at school had been expelled for selling it.

When Matthew and Thabo said they wanted to sit down for a while, Sipho asked Jabu if he could “park cars” with him. The pangs of hunger were now gripping him more tightly. They were lucky and after about half an hour had earned enough money to buy chips from a fast-food shop. Still eating, they joined a crowd surrounding two men playing
umrabaraba
with counters on the pavement. Matthew and Thabo were there too. Matthew was giggling, but Thabo was silent. It was a noisy game, full of drama. One player was accused of cheating because an onlooker had given him advice. Soon all the adults seemed to have taken sides. Worried that a fight might break out, the four boys slipped away from the center. A minute later, however, the argument was over and the boys wandered off.

Later in the afternoon they made their way down a hill to a busy junction, along which people traveled home from the city. At first
Sipho stayed on the side, watching the other three as they walked in between the rows of cars at the traffic lights, asking for money. The lines were long, and they had to dart out of the way just before the lights turned green.

Plucking up courage, he went farther down the road, and when the cars began to slow down he slipped in between them. A lot of the drivers kept looking ahead as if he wasn’t even there. Their windows were tightly shut, but every now and again someone would roll down the window and drop a coin into his hands. In some cars there were children who stared at him from the backseats. However, when two children in school uniform—a girl and a boy—stuck out their tongues, Sipho made a face back. At first they looked surprised and he saw them say something to their mother. As she turned to glare at Sipho, the car behind her hooted. Her face twitched suddenly. The lights had turned green, and Sipho had to dash to the side!

The sun was going down, leaving deep red and purple stripes in the sky above the buildings on top of the hill. All the buildings had turned a shadowy gray. A light wind was beginning to blow, and Sipho felt the chill go right through him. Once again, he wished he had remembered
to bring a second sweater with him before leaving home. Taking out the wooly cap he had stuffed into his pocket earlier in the day, he pulled it down over his head and ears. Jogging up and down also helped, especially when the lights were green and he had to stand aside as the cars swept by.

He was beginning to wonder when the others would want to move on, when he heard a highpitched whistle from behind him. He swung around to see Jabu, Thabo, and Matthew already on the road back up to Hillbrow Jabu was signaling to him. When Sipho joined them, they were exchanging news on their earnings. No one had earned more than a couple of rand. Thabo had been given a package of potato chips, and he shared them as they walked. Sipho told them about how he had made a face back at the rude schoolchildren.

“The schoolkids in the bus sometimes throw rubbish down on us!” Matthew told Sipho.

“Just let them show off their turkey tails on the street. Then you’ll hear them shriek when we pull out their feathers!” boasted Thabo.

They walked quickly uphill. Jabu said that people in the bakery would be clearing up and they could buy any leftover bread cheaply. They arrived just in time. The front of the shop was closed, but the back door was still open, and they
went inside. The manager seemed annoyed when he saw them.

“Do you think I want to stay here all night?” he complained.

But he took the money they offered and came back with two packages of rolls and a small loaf of bread.

“This is all that’s left. You’ll have to share. Now move on!”

Outside the bakery, Sipho listened as the others discussed whether to go directly back to the
pozzie
—their sleeping place. If Lucas was there, he might have made a fire, and at least they would be warmer there. Sipho was glad when they agreed to go. Already he was very tired. He hoped that when it was time to sleep he would be too tired to feel the cold.

Starting to walk downhill again, Jabu explained to Sipho that their gang had recently stopped sleeping in Hillbrow.

“The police chase us too much here,” he told Sipho.

“And if the shopkeeper finds you in the morning by his door, sometimes he’ll beat you…
shuup, shuup, shuup!”
added Matthew, whipping his arm up and down.

Two weeks ago, however, Lucas had found a small unused plot of ground near the railway line at Doornfontein where they could sleep. The
only problem was that hoboes sometimes came to the plot to drink. The drinking often led to fighting, and the boys were worried the police would then come and take them all away. But at least Lucas had claimed one side of the plot for the
malunde,
and the hoboes stayed on the other side. Sipho thought of the man who had sworn at him that morning and hoped he wouldn’t be there.

The streets were now brightly lit up. Even high above, the darkness of the night was broken by lights in the buildings towering upward. If he had been going back home through the shacks in the township at this time, everything would have been completely dark. When there was no moon, you had to fumble your way as best you could between the shacks. Here there were even shops still open, with lots of people walking around. Music drifted out from some of the cafes and bars. In the roads cars were pulling up or moving out, just as busy as during the day. However, the farther they walked down the hill, the quieter and darker it became.

At the bottom, they turned left. They were beginning to leave the very tall buildings behind. The wind rustled the leaves in the trees above them, and shadows seemed to dance around them as they moved from one pool of lamplight to the next. Jabu told Sipho that behind them
was a park which was very dangerous, even in daytime.
Tsotsis
hung around there, and sometimes they would take one of the
malunde
if they wanted him for a robbery or some other bad thing.

“Okay, we also steal sometimes if we’re hungry or need something,” said Jabu, “but those
tsotsis,
they actually
like
killing!”

“Ja,
and they like telling everyone how they cut up this one and stabbed that one,” added Matthew.

As they turned into a narrower road without any traffic, Sipho could hear the sound of their footsteps. The others were now talking about a man called Peter who liked to finger his knife while forcing
malunde
to buy glue from him. A couple of times Sipho turned around to make sure no one was following them.