No Turning Back (5 page)

R
osebank and the suburbs leading to it were another world. Jabu and Sipho walked past houses so large and grand that it was hard to believe that only one family lived in them all by themselves. Surrounded by high walls, most of them could only be glimpsed where there were metal or wrought-iron gates. Twenty or thirty shacks from the township would have fitted into some of the front gardens alone.

“See that wedding cake!” Jabu pointed to a house with pillars in front of a great door and triangle shapes above all the windows. The windows themselves were covered by curling burglar bars. Water was sprinkling gently in circles on a green lawn almost as smooth as a carpet.

“Look how much water these people give to their grass!” exclaimed Sipho.

One of the jobs he used to do for Ma was to line up with the crowds at the tap and carry a large plastic container of water back to the shack. Would Ma now be doing that herself?

“My aunty worked in a big house like this in Durban,” said Jabu.

“Were you in Durban?” Sipho was impressed.

Gogo had told him about the city by the sea, which she had visited as a girl.

Jabu explained that he had lived with his mother in the hills behind Durban and sometimes they had visited his mother’s sister in the city. But then the killings had started. And the burning. One night they had fled into the bushes and watched flames eat up the houses of their neighbors on the other side of the valley. Those people liked Mandela, said his mother. They wanted him to be the president and carried his picture at their meetings. That was why some men set their houses on fire. He had heard terrible cries, and he didn’t know if they came from people or animals. The smell carried by the wind had made him sick. What had happened to the children from those houses who went to his school? In the morning the green hill opposite was scarred with black patches and burned-out buildings. His mother had decided to send him to her brother in Jo’burg for safety. But his uncle’s wife didn’t want him and so he had run away to get away from her beatings.

The two boys kept on walking all the while Jabu spoke. Sipho listened closely. He admired Jabu for being able to talk so calmly about these
things. If only he could tell Jabu his story too…why he had run away. But it still upset him too much. Seeing the water sprinkling the grass and the brief thought of Ma, with her big stomach, carrying a heavy container of water all the way from the tap had already disturbed him. He didn’t want to cry, like he had done the other night.

By the time they reached Rosebank they were hot and thirsty Compared with Hillbrow, the roads seemed wider and less crowded and the buildings, although big, not as high. A couple of women sat on a pavement selling bead necklaces and bracelets. Their goods were spread out on blankets in front of them, and one of them was arguing with a customer.

“No, madam, I can’t sell it more cheap! To make that necklace, I must work many hours.”

The seller shook her head. She was frowning underneath the black scarf tied around her head.

“I’ll give you ten rand for it. I’ve seen the same necklace for ten rand in Durban.”

The lady who was trying to bring down the price dangled the necklace of light and dark blue beads in her hand. The necklace and bracelet she was wearing herself glinted in the sun. Were they gold, thought Sipho? The same thought must have struck Jabu.

“That lady is rich but she doesn’t like to
spend her money!” he whispered.

“Ja,
I think she hides it under her mattress,” giggled Sipho.

The seller kept shaking her head, saying something under her breath. It was in Zulu but not clear enough for Sipho and Jabu to hear.

“Well, how about twelve rand, then?” said the lady.

“All right, the madam can have it for twelve rand.”

The lady’s red lips stretched into a smile as she lifted a ten-rand note and a couple of coins from her handbag.

“Thank you,” she said.

But the seller wasn’t smiling as she took the note and folded it carefully into a small, worn purse.

Sipho followed as Jabu turned into a paved street where there were no cars but people were walking by, while others were browsing in shop windows or sitting at an open-air cafe. Behind the tables with umbrellas, tall jets of water were splashing from a fountain, which made Sipho’s mouth feel even drier. Two guards in maroon uniforms, carrying mobile telephones, stood in the sun chatting to each other. They seemed too busy in conversation to notice the boys passing them.

Inside, the shopping center glittered with
lights even though it was the middle of the day. With great glass windows in the shops, as well as panels of polished brass and steel, the place seemed full of mirrors and reflections. Sipho remembered his surprise at some of the prices in the Hillbrow shops. But here the prices were even higher. Over R2,000 for a man’s jacket and nearly R200 just for a tie! In one window, a carpet with pretty patterns had a label saying R8,695! Traveling up a moving staircase, Sipho looked down at people walking below and wondered how some people could get so much money. It was noticeable that, unlike in Hillbrow, most of the shoppers here were white. But when a smartly dressed black couple passed them, he watched curiously as they entered a shop selling men’s clothes.

Following the sound of music, they found a white woman playing the piano at a cafe. Tables and chairs were spread “outdoors,” although they were covered by the enormous roof of the shopping center. For a few moments they stood watching the pianist’s fingers scuttling over the keys and listening to the tinkling melody. Sipho pursed his lips at the smell of coffee and freshly baked buns.

“We
bafana!
You boys! Clear off!”

A waiter was coming toward them, making sweeping movements with his arm.

“Sorry,
baba,
sorry. We only ate the food with our eyes and the music with our ears!” Jabu called behind him as they quickly moved off, not waiting for the reply.

The waiter might inform a guard, who would chase them away from the center. It was a strange place, Jabu explained to Sipho as he led him outside to the supermarket exit. Rosebank people had a lot more guards to chase you away, but they usually gave much bigger tips when they paid you!

What Jabu said was true. Within half an hour of helping shoppers, Sipho had already earned twice as much as he would have earned in Hillbrow. Here people often gave him fifty cents and sometimes even a whole rand at a time. Seeing him sweating, one shopper also gave him a can of Coke. Pushing
amatrolley
was easier here too because there was no hill to struggle up.

After a couple of hours, they decided to change their work and help motorists park. While some people shooed them away, most let them get on with their work and paid them. By the middle of the afternoon, Jabu said they should return to Hillbrow. It had been a good day and they had been lucky. They could even afford to treat themselves to a burger and chips and travel back by bus. Sipho had never had so much
money of his own before. He could come back here another day to earn the money to buy the little rhino! With twenty-five rand in his pocket, he had to stop himself from taking it out to count and letting other people know he was rich! He had already heard plenty of tales about
malunde
being robbed, and he didn’t want it to happen to him.

Back in Hillbrow, Jabu led the way to the secondhand store. Behind the furniture were clothes and in the corner was a rail of army jackets, like Joseph’s. They cost twenty-four rand, and as soon as he had seen them, Sipho knew he wanted to try one on. Still he hesitated. Most people he knew distrusted the uniform and the soldiers who wore it. People kept saying that things were meant to be changing, but where was this thing called change?

“Come on, man, try it!” said Jabu, taking a jacket off the rail.

Sipho slipped his arms through the sleeves and did up the buttons. Then he looked at himself in the mirror of a nearby wardrobe. He was aware of the shop assistant’s eyes on him. He straightened his back.

“You can be a soldier for Mandela when he is president!” said Jabu, grinning.

Sipho placed his money on the counter and
kept the jacket on even though the afternoon was still warm from the sun. It was only as they were walking down the street that it occurred to him that while the army jacket might keep Joseph warm, it still hadn’t stopped him wanting
iglue.

S
omething was wrong, and Sipho and Jabu knew it as soon as they entered the street leading to the
pozzie.
No orange sparks flickered in the dark above the fence. Instead of the muffled sounds of ordinary talk carried in the air, they were struck by the loud noise of an argument. One voice was that of Lucas, but the others were unfamiliar to Sipho, except that one of them carried an unpleasant ring. It was a deep, rough voice and almost every second word seemed to be “blerry.”

Climbing through the fence, his eyes needed time to sort out the figures in the dark. Suddenly Sipho realized whose voice it was. The bushyhaired, red-faced man who had shouted at him on his first day in Hillbrow!

“Hayi!
These people, they always make trouble for us!” Jabu said softly. He was sure they had stolen their blankets and then sold them. By now they would have already spent the money, most likely on drink. “They think
they can do anything with
malunde,”
he added.

The argument raged. It seemed that Lucas and the others had found the three hoboes settled on their side of the plot. They had taken the
malunde’s
cardboard to use themselves and were refusing to move. Lucas kept his voice steady as he repeated how they had agreed that the tree in the middle of the plot would mark their areas. Then Vusi cut in.

“First you steal our blankets, now you want to steal our place!” he said.

“You blerry brat! I’ll fix you good and proper!”

The speaker tried to lunge forward but was held back by his friends. Lucas’s hand shot out to restrain Vusi too. Even in the darkness, Sipho could see that none of the hoboes were very steady on their feet. He was a little surprised to realize that one of them was a woman. It was she who ended the argument, persuading the other two that they would have a better time “downtown.” As the three of them finally shuffled out of the
pozzie,
the bushy red-face growled a warning that they had all “blerry better watch out.”

Later, sitting around a small fire, the gang talked about different kinds of threats. Sometimes people carried them out but sometimes they didn’t. They just wanted to frighten you.

“Cha!
No one tries nonsense like that with me twice. I want to give that
Matomatoes
a lesson,” declared Vusi.

Sipho had to smile at the name “Matomatoes.” He wondered if Vusi really would have used his knife if Lucas hadn’t stopped him.

“Sometimes it’s better to let things cool,” said Lucas firmly.

Everyone knew that Matomatoes always swore at
malunde,
and Lucas thought he wouldn’t actually do anything. But Sipho still remembered his bloodshot eyes from that first day, and they disturbed him.

Joseph occasionally sniffed from his plastic bottle, and Sipho was glad that nothing was said about what had happened in the morning. As they lay down to sleep, Joseph even joked that Sipho had got a jacket like his own. But although the jacket helped, it still could not keep out the cold night wind that whipped around the
pozzie.
Nor could it keep out all those thoughts that came late at night to keep him awake…of Gogo telling him stories before he slept, of his puppy wagging its tail and asking to play, of Ma visiting them on the farm, in the time before “him”…

Sipho must have fallen asleep. Because the next thing he knew was that he was waking up in the
terror that usually came from a nightmare. The kind of nightmare in which his stepfather turned into a monster with ten heads and ten pairs of arms and legs. In this terror now, however, there were screams and shouts and the sharp pain of a boot being kicked into his ribs. Thick hands were grabbing him. He tried to struggle, but he was caught in a vise, squeezing his wrists and twisting his arms behind his back. In the beam of a light flashing wildly, he saw the writhing bodies of the other boys and the grinning faces of their captors. They were being hauled across the
pozzie
out into the road and then thrown into the back of a
gumba-gumba,
a dreaded police van. Lucas, the last to be slung in, fell like a sack of potatoes, and the van doors were banged shut.

For a minute no one said anything. Sipho was shaking. Jabu was holding his side and whimpering. Everyone was in shock. Then the silence broke in the dark.

“What do they want with us?”

“Who are these people?”

“Police! Only police drive
gumba-gumbas.”

“But they don’t have uniforms.”

“They take off their uniform when they want to do something bad so you can’t say for sure it’s them.”

“They stole my knife! If I had my knife I would kill them!”

Sipho clutched himself more tightly, his eyes adjusting slowly to the darkness. Lucas was painfully lifting himself up. He spoke quietly.

“We don’t know how many of these are police. They can get into trouble for this kind of thing now.”

Perhaps only one or two were actual policemen, continued Lucas. The others could be their friends…the kind of white people who didn’t want any change in the country…who wanted to keep black people down forever and who didn’t want them to vote in the elections for the new government.

Suddenly from outside the van there was a burst of laughter. A few seconds later the van doors were wrenched open. Sipho made out a hand being thrust in, then the sound of squirting. Even before the hand was pulled back and the door slammed shut, something was in their eyes, their nostrils, their mouths. There was no air left to breathe, only something horribly foul stifling them. It smelled like the spray for killing insects. Coughing and trying to cover his mouth at the same time, Sipho felt he was going to be sick.

Now the
gumba-gumba
was moving, its engine revving and rumbling. Where were they being taken? It felt like they were traveling fast, only occasionally slowing down. Together they
clustered at the far end of the van, holding on to each other, holding their stomachs tightly or trying to bury their faces and stinging eyes in their arms.

Suddenly the van gave an enormous shudder, and Sipho found himself flung forward as it came to a bumping halt. He was the first to be grabbed as the door swung open.

“Okay,
vuilgoed!
Rubbish like you can get a nice wash here!”

Ahead of him, glinting through the darkness, Sipho saw water. He screamed as he was picked up. He tried to struggle once again, but it was no use. The hands and arms were too powerful for him as they threw him out into the lake.

Hitting, then breaking through the ice-cold water, his body shot out arms and legs in all directions. He couldn’t swim. The more he fought with the water to get back up, the more he felt it pulling him down. He was spluttering. The water was in his nose, in his mouth…He couldn’t breathe. He was sinking, his body pierced by a thousand freezing shocks.

Then a hand grasped his arm and he felt himself being slowly tugged until his foot touched something. Something solid that wasn’t sinking beneath him. He brought his other foot down. He was standing! Stretching, he got his head enough above the water to gasp and gulp at the
air. The hand led him on a few more paces and then let go. A figure dived away from him. He was too confused to know who it was. Cries mingled with wild splashing sounds. On the bank ahead, he could just make out two large figures throwing a struggling shape out into the lake. Lucas? Laughter floated over to him. The
gumba-gumba
was revving up again. Within seconds the men had all climbed inside and disappeared into the night.

Underneath his feet, Sipho felt things that were sharp. Painfully edging step by step, he forced himself forward through the water. His clothes, dripping and sticking to his body, felt unusually heavy. Shivering uncontrollably, he waded at last to the water’s edge, pulled himself onto the bank and flung himself down on his back. Directly above, as if staring down at him from the ink-black sky, was the moon, pale and white. Like a face. Was it laughing too?

One by one the other
malunde
joined him, shaking, swearing, sobbing. Jabu was the last. His head bobbing in and out of the water, going down here and coming up there, he guided those who were struggling toward the bank. Such a strong swimmer…where did he learn it? thought Sipho. And weren’t his feet stinging too? Sipho pulled off his soaking canvas shoes. The thin soles were torn, and his feet were cut and
bleeding. It was the same with the others. People had thrown bottles into the lake, which were lying at the bottom, broken and sharp. Joseph and Matthew, however, emerged in an even worse state. Finding bottles of
iglue
in their pockets, their attackers had emptied them over their hair.

With water dripping from his clothes and trembling like the others, Lucas insisted they leave immediately before any police arrived, but this time in uniform.

“They can charge us with trespass!”

They could even be the same men who had thrown them into the lake, but who would ever believe
malunde?