The Boy Next Door (18 page)

“One for you, one for me.”

He hands both of them to me and he takes out his wallet, looks inside.

“Do you have any change, Lindiwe?”

Without thinking, I say, “Look in my purse.”

He takes the purse from my backpack that he has slung over his shoulder and it’s only when he opens the purse I remember.

“Ian, no…”

But he’s already found it.

The little picture. He takes it out from the purse, looks at it.

“What’s this?” he says, but he already knows the answer.

“Ian, I…”

“Don’t say anything, just don’t.”

I get out of the car. I walk all the way back to the observation tower. I climb up the stairs, and standing there, looking
out at a view of the world, I know that whatever had begun is finished. Done.

*    *    *

“What’s his name?”

“David.”

“David.”

And that’s all he says.

We drive all the way back to the cottage. Without a single word.

He sits at the table, the picture there.

“Why didn’t you…? Why, Lindiwe? Why?”

I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t know where the answer begins. The room in the lodge? The bus ride home? The missed
period? The months out of school?

“You could have written. On the phone, you could have… Why?”

Because Mummy loves him like her own. He is her own. He is hers. Only. Because she is his keeper. The Chosen One.

“David,” he says. Over and over again.

In the morning he says, “I’m going to see him. We’re going to Bulawayo.”

Just like that.

I know that there is nothing for me to say, nothing I can say. We will go to Bulawayo.

We will do as he says. We will see the boy, his son.

He drives as
if he is possessed. He
is
possessed, by the Holy Son. I want to prepare him. I want to warn him. I want to tell him the power Mummy holds. But he has
powers of his own. Nothing will stop him. I see this. And as he drives, I see him all those years ago.

“He’s not bad looking for a Rhodie,” Bridgette said that time at the Grasshut. “He doesn’t have that look of theirs.”

And I think of Mummy with the boy, hand in hand, waiting, for us, her lips pursed, her hand squeezing his; the boy looking
up at her, loving her.

I look at Ian, and anger’s silent litany starts: What right do you have to accuse me of anything? To judge me? You weren’t
there. I was the one who had to put up with everything. Who do you think you are? You don’t have any idea what it was like,
all those years by myself.

I came back from Gwanda to Mummy’s terror. She waited for me to enter the house, and then, within its walls, she dragged me
by the hair, slapped me over and over again. But that wasn’t enough. She spat at me. She went out and took a belt from Daddy’s
closet and beat me. I lay on the floor and let her. And when finally she was done, she told me to get up, get out of her sight,
that from now on she did not have a daughter.

I think of those nine months, the look on Mummy’s face as my stomach grew. She tried to convince Daddy to send me off somewhere.
I wasn’t allowed to go into town, anywhere out of the property, and even then, when she had her Manyano group over, I was
to stay in my room.

I think of those years when I had to go to Speciss College with all the other failures to do my O and A levels because none
of the schools would take on a girl who had been pregnant, the bad influence she might have on others, the contagion she might
spread. The girls I would bump into from school, who would look at me up and down, pass comments to each other, words like
cheap, slut, baby dumper
tossed from one lip-glossed mouth to another. How I had shut myself off; hours in my room studying, draining bottle after
bottle of Histalax to quell my attacks of anxiety, loneliness.

And always the boy kept from me, bound tight in Mummy’s godly arms.

She didn’t want me in the house before five o’clock. I left at seven thirty with daddy to go to college. When I came home,
I would get busy with the cooking, the cleaning, and ironing. Mummy and the boy would eat in the lounge, the door closed;
Daddy in the workshop over whatever it was he was fixing, and me in the kitchen, standing up. I missed Rosanna who had been
thrown out when the boy was only three months.

Mummy took him everywhere.

I look out of the window, watch the Bata factory in Gweru recede, and I know that in two hours we will be in Bulawayo. Last
week, after Pay Out, I went into town to try and find something for him. There are two pairs of Bubblegummers, one red, the
other yellow, in the drawer in my room on campus, lying neatly in their boxes waiting for his tender spongy feet. I agonized
over them in the Bata store on First Street. Which one? What size? What color? What type? I couldn’t decide if I should just
post them to Bulawayo, send them with someone, or wait until April, a whole three months away.

And will Mummy let him wear them at all? Will she throw them away once I’m gone?

Ian turns the radio dial on, then off, then on again. I watch him chew the inside of his cheek, scratch behind his ear. These
things give me comfort. He is nervous.

The last time I was home, Christmas, he wriggled out of my arms and called me “aunty.” Mummy, always standing near, watching
with her hands crossed said, “What do you expect? You are always away.” And I saw her pleasure when he called her “ma.” It’s
just short for “grandma,” I told myself, but I knew it wasn’t so. And Daddy there, locked in his room, alone.

But I had managed to take him with me just once. I lied to him and said that we were going to meet Grandma in church (Mummy
had been called before sunrise to a Manyano member’s house to commiserate over her husband’s sudden death), and then I drove
into town to take him to see Father Christmas in his cave at Haddon and Sly with Jean who had come with me from Harare and
was staying at The Selborne. Jean brought a Lucky Dip full of plastic soldiers and toffee, which Father Christmas was supposed
to hand over to David. Father Christmas sat in his throne and beckoned to David. “Come, my boy, I see you’ve been a good boy.
Come and get your gift.” David’s eyes had opened wide and then he’d started shaking, tears rolling from his face. He called
out for Mummy, his chest heaving, and he’d banged his little fists against me.

He wouldn’t let me touch him during the rest of my stay.

WELCOME TO BULAWAYO.

*    *    *

I think of how she won’t let him go to school. Excuses after excuses:

“Those children are dirty and rough in Baines. It’s just blacks now. They hit him. He’s too sensitive to go there. Anyway,
I’m teaching him. He already knows his alphabet and his two times table.”

We pass all those familiar places. Alton Heights. South Grove. The graveyard. The garage that is now a deserted shell, the
bus stop, and then we turn and, we have arrived.

And there she is, Mummy, waiting for us. God has warned her, prepared her for our onslaught. There she stands by the gate,
her white Manyano cap starched to a peak pointing heavenward. There she stands in her red blouse, black skirt, and black lace-up
shoes, God tucked under her arm.

Ian looks at me. He sighs. He gets out of the car leaving his door open.

“Hello, Mrs. Bishop.”

Mummy holds on to the gate, looks past him, to me.

“You remember me, Mrs. Bishop. I’m Ian, Ian McKenzie, from next door.”

Of course she remembers him, knows him, has lived with parts of him for all these years.

“I have… we… Lindiwe is here with me. We’ve come to visit, to see my… my son. I’ve just found out, Mrs. Bishop. I…”

She has already turned away, is walking back into the house. I watch Ian watch her. I watch him lift the latch of the gate,
follow.

I get out of the car, call out to him, “Ian, Ian, wait, wait.”

He waits.

“Let me go first, okay. I’ll talk to her. Wait here for a moment.”

He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t move. So I rush past him, into the house.

It is quiet and dark in the passageway. And then I hear the murmur of voices.

Mummy’s: “the Lord is my shepherd I shall not want.”

His: “he leads me not into temptation.”

And I wait there in the dark until they are done.

“Amen. Amen.”

Mummy is getting off her knees, settling herself into the couch. He is standing, looking up at me.

“David,” I say.

He looks up at his grandmother who tells him nothing, something.

“Mummy, he’s come to see his son.”

“He cannot enter this house. I will call the police.”

“Mummy, he has to see his son. If you want, I can take him out. Come, David.”

Mummy jumps out from the couch, shrieking. “No! No!”

She snatches the boy.

“No!”

“Mrs. Bishop, he is my son. I have a right…”

I step out of the doorway and Ian stands there, looking, watching, waiting.

A tableau. A terrible tableau. I can’t bear it. I leave them. I go to Mummy and Daddy’s bedroom. I knock. I open the door
and find him there lying, curled up on the bed.

“Daddy.”

“Daddy.”

And his eyes flicker open, then close.

I sit on the bed, take out his thin, shrivelled hand. I sit there with him in the quiet.

*    *    *

Mummy is in the kitchen sitting at the table, staring at the wall. The back door is open and I can see out to Rosanna’s place.
I close my eyes and think of the day when Mummy chased her away, throwing all her things out the gate, and how people on the
street came to watch, some of them laughing, clapping their hands. And Daddy was trying to calm Mummy down, trying to pull
her by the hand, but she shook herself away, screaming and shouting that enough was enough. She had been disgraced enough.
“Look at what has happened to your own child,” she shouted, beating her chest, pulling her hair as if she was possessed. And
then she lifted her dress and showed him her scars, how much she had suffered. “For what? For what?” she kept demanding until
he gave up and shut himself in the workshop, leaving Rosanna and my sister, half, to fend for themselves.

Rosanna waited outside by the gate with her belongings until Daddy came out and took them to Uncle Silius, who was now living
with his family in Pelindaba township. I know that this is what happened because the next time Uncle Silius came to visit,
Daddy gave him some money and a packet of baby blankets.

Later Mummy picked up my baby, and I found them together on her bed, fast asleep, her arm so tight around him I feared that
she would break his fragile bones.

I open my mouth to ask her about Rosanna, about whether she has been in touch with her, but as if she knows my intentions,
she gets up and walks out of the back door, shutting it behind her.

I find the boy lying on his bed. I look around the room and see evidence of Mummy’s residence there: her perfumes, her nightgown,
her handbag, her slippers. I sit on the bed next to him, feel his body grow rigid, see the panic darting in his eyes. I look
down at his bare feet. The shoes will fit.

“David,” I say. “David.”

He lifts his eyes to me, the panic flickering, on, off. I raise my hand. He flinches. I get up from the bed. I stand there
looking down, the words in my throat, twisting and turning.

“I love you, David.”

That’s all I say.

I think of that long bus ride home when he was already in me, the cells fusing, growing, becoming him. I stand there thinking
of the night before, in that room, in that lodge, in Gwanda, where Ian and I…

“I want Ma,” he says.

He springs up from the bed, scoots past me, shouting, “Ma, Ma, Ma…”

I crawl under the fence. I go to the boy’s kaya. I stand outside and look out at the main house. The kitchen door is open.

I see the woman in flames, rushing about, now here, now there in the house, and then out, whirling and twirling in the garden,
screaming, and he standing there in the doorway, watching.

“Lindiwe. What are you doing…?”

His touch surprises me.

I look again and the door is closed.

He closes his arms around me, draws me against him, and I hear his words pressed on my head.

“It’s a lot. A lot to take in, Lindiwe.”

And I hold myself still in his arms.

“I’m sorry, Ian.”

David sits there
at the back, his voice hollowed out, the screaming quieted; he sits there shaking, shivering, whimpering.

Ian drives, jaw clenched, looking straight ahead.

This feels like a kidnapping, an abduction; something wrong, fatal.

I look at the side mirror and see Mummy still running after the car. Perhaps she will run all the way to the police station
opposite the graveyard; perhaps she’ll tell them of the crime that’s been committed; she’ll tell them of the boy who was stolen
from his bed, and I look at David, shaking, shivering, whimpering in his striped pyjamas, and I am guilty.

“Keep the doors locked,” he says. “I won’t be long.”

And he gets out of the car and walks on the dirt path, jumps up the steps, waits at the door, and disappears inside. The echo
of these things envelops me: when I was a girl and I waited in a car for him in this place; here I am again, a woman now,
a woman with child. And the child sits at the back, brokenhearted.

“David, David, please…”

We wait in the car, the two of us.

I twist the knob of the radio, then twist it off again.

I look out and I’m taken by the emptiness of it; not a single person outside. A month ago there was an article in the paper
about malnutrition among inmates in state mental facilities, how there were suspicions that food was getting diverted elsewhere.

“Ma, Ma, Ma…”

There is nothing I can offer, give him. There is only me and Ian now, his tormentors.

How small he is. I could, if he would allow me, scoop him in my arms, hold him against me, the miracle of him, like that first
time.