Jaz & Miguel

by Raven, R. D.

  Two months rolled by and soon it was the end of November, and almost the end of the program. Jaz's ticket was booked, and she'd be heading back to Seattle on December 11th, 2013. Elize, Thandie and Nita had twisted her arm to spend at least a few days in Cape Town before she left. It had not been that difficult to convince her—she was already starting to miss them.

  After her final exam, Jaz went to the street where Sandile had lain all those months before. She thought of what she'd learned in the time she'd been in South Africa. The most important lessons had been out of the classroom. She'd learned of Love, and Hate. Of Responsibility, and Carelessness. Fear and Courage.

  Life.

  Death.

  She'd learned that, as much as one tried to find meaning in meaningless things, sometimes things simply had no meaning. Sometimes they just made no sense. Sometimes, what was needed, was simply to move on. To be strong and face life anew, even when life pulled you down.

  Jaz didn't feel strong, even after all this time.

  She shook her head. Standing there, she understood how Miguel had felt all those months before—unable to feel. It was like a huge tidal wave of emotion that was sitting just inches back of her head, waiting to rush forward with such pressure and force that it would take anything and everything away with it.

  And what would be the point?

  Would it not be better to simply feel ... nothing ... instead of all that pain?

  This is what she felt now.

  Nothing.

  No love.

  No hate.

  Nothing at all.

  TWENTY-NINE

  In Cape Town, after the program had officially come to an end, the girls flirted with boys that looked oh-so-bad and oh-so-hot. Jaz met a guy whose abs were harder than a concrete wall and they made out on the beach for a bit.

  The girls drank Savanna Dry (a cider that Jaz more than loved by now) and copious cocktails and got tipsy and hung out at a beach party where they were handing out Hawaiian garlands (ironically) and where the guy she'd been with also asked for her number. Then, on the second night, she walked on the beach with him again and he whispered in her ear and nibbled at it (although it had gotten a bit irritating after a while) and then he kissed her some more and picked her up and put her on a boulder and ran his hand up her thigh and kissed her down her neck and to her collarbone.

  And she thought of Miguel.

  She let the guy touch her and she made all the sounds and felt all the physical things, but, in the end, had not really felt anything at all. In the end, she'd actually felt slightly ... dirty. The boy became angry and then hung around and started almost stalking her, but that all faded away when the girls pitched in and found him some other babe he could get his hands on and the other girl was willing to go a bit further so he soon forgot all about Jaz.

  Then, later that same night, they made jokes about the brute and all the other guys they'd met. It turns out that Nita actually did meet someone with half a brain and a stack of chivalry and they were going to keep in touch by email. He was also vacationing in Cape Town (although he was from Durban) but he often went to Jo'burg and, judging by the wistful gaze in Nita's eyes, Jaz could tell this had the makings of something serious. Elize accepted the flirts of one or two guys but didn't pursue any of them, and Thandie got about nineteen free cocktails all night—one kiss for one cocktail.

  They saw Devil's Peak and Table Mountain and tasted Stellenbosch Wine and felt the cold waters of the Atlantic and swam in the warm ones of the Indian. They went to Cape Point where the two oceans meet and visited Cape Agulhas where the local residents insisted that that's actually where they meet. Jaz felt the Cape Doctor (a south-easterly that endlessly ruined her attempts at any sort of hairdo), strolled along "The Riviera," ate

  Cape Snoek and even reveled in some appetizing derrières at a nudist beach called Sandy Bay (although none of them dared actually partake of the beach itself).

  And, just like that, as if the time had been no time at all, five days had come and gone, much like the last five months, and they were back in Johannesburg.

  And then they were at the airport, waiting for her flight back home.

  She was leaving, going, not to return for … Years? Decades? Ever?

  The girls wept and they promised each other they'd write her and stay in touch and never forget each other—but did those things ever occur? Every one of them cried a fountain and Jaz had gone through a box of tissues but, in the end, all she really wanted, all she really hoped for, was for Miguel to show up at the airport.

  She realized, now, that maybe she'd been rash. She realized that she should have forgiven him. He'd been in pain. And people in pain do stupid things.

  Just as she had been in pain. And hadn't ignoring Miguel been, in the end, also a stupid thing to do?

  The four of them huddled together as they heard the final call for Jaz's flight. Jaz's face was wet with tears and she squeezed Thandie's neck so hard that she thought it would almost break; she opened her eyes and looked, looked, looked, ..., looked.

  Looked.

  But Miguel wasn't there.

  She thought of all the movies she'd seen where the handsome guy appears at the airport and how Miguel had been that handsome guy (heck, even if he'd been a dog, she'd still love him) and that all she'd ever been brought up to believe was that, at the last moment, right before the end, the man would always appear.

  But still, he hadn't.

  And what about that scene with Jude Law and Cameron Diaz in The Holiday? When his daughter says "the three Musketeers" and then Hans Zimmer's heart-wrenching music comes in and Jude holds Diaz's hand as they lie in his daughters' tent and you just feel like crying your heart out because that was what Diaz's character's family used to call each other—and you knew it was a sign!

  And what about Leap Year, when Amy Adams ended up in Cardiff, Wales instead of Dublin—that was a sign as well, wasn't it? She met Matthew Goode—a hot bartender in the middle of nowhere—and they hated each other at first and then everything went wrong but somehow they ended up in this tiny little house where he cooked for her and then they were somehow forced to kiss and then they knew they loved each other because you could always tell from the kiss if you loved someone.

  And Notting Hill, when Julia Roberts walks into that bookshop and then they fall in love but eventually Hugh Grant's character all but destroys his chances with her but then makes a fool of himself at a press conference all to declare his love for her—and they ended up together.

  Isn't that how these things were supposed to go?

  Although the airport was full of people, someone selling buttery popcorn and Aero Mint Chocolates on the corner, a bustling news-stand on her right—the busiest place on earth from what she could see—it was nonetheless also the loneliest.

  She saw the twinkle of understanding in the girls' eyes—and they knew who she was waiting for. "He'll come to his senses," said Elize. "He'll email you in Seattle. And then maybe you'll come back!"

  Email. Right. She'd never gotten that from him, had she?

  It had been for the best. In truth, Jaz didn't want to come back. And she didn't even really know why. She'd miss her friends, but there had been so much sorrow here—and she felt she needed to get away from that sorrow, those memories, thoughts of Sandile, Miguel, Durban.

  Mozambique.

  That just made her cry. So with another "Ahhhhhh" amongst the four of them and yet another group hug, and yet another final, final call for her flight, Jaz turned and ran, her friends waiting behind, shouting from a distance—which was ever getting bigger—that they loved her and that they would never forget her.

  And then ... Jaz was alone.

  And had it not been of her own choice?

  And why exactly was she running? Or, was it running away?

  Jaz rushed through the security check, the staff allowing her to go first because she was so late, and she hustled with all she could for the boarding gate. A woman stood at it,
closing the retractable belt, and all the while, as Jaz ran and looked at it—the final step she would need to take to leave this place—that same thought tugged away at her mind: Why was she running?

  Because, whether she had walked or run or jogged or simply floated away from Miguel or Johannesburg or even South Africa, in her mind she'd been running away from something ever since that day when Sandile had been shot.

  And it wasn't Miguel she was running from.

  Nor was it love.

  She stopped, catching her breath as she leaned on her knees.

  The Emirates flight attendant called out frustratedly to her, "Miss, you need to hurry! The boarding gate should have closed by now!"

  Out of breath, a twitch came to the corner of Jaz's lips—the twitch … of an epiphany.

  She realized that, of all the things she'd learned in the University of Life down in Sunny SA, there was still one lesson she hadn't quite aced, one exam she'd hopelessly failed at—an F-minus, in fact.

  The lesson of just fucking growing up!

  Because, ultimately, wasn't that what this was all about?

  "Miss! Please, we need to leave!"

  Jaz inched forward, almost as if commanded like some Pavlovian dog to enter that airplane and go to Seattle to Mommy and Daddy.

  Where she'd be safe.

  And where she wouldn't have to run ... from loss? Or was it fear of loss?

  "Miss?"

  And there, she realized it—what she had been running from.

  "I'm sorry," said Jaz. "I'm sorry, but I'm not leaving."

  She turned.

  And as she walked back, she found herself picking up pace. Her walk became a speed-walk which became a rapid jog which became a full-on rushing drag-race sprint for dear sweet life itself, because now she wasn't running from, but running to something!

  And she slammed past the throng of people surrounding the security checks as if she'd just arrived from Seattle and appeared—brave and ready to face life and all it had to throw at her—in Johannesburg.

  But the concourse was empty.

  The girls had left.

  And Miguel was still not there.

  THIRTY

  There were few things more peaceful than sitting on a Xai-Xai beach, beer in hand, and watching the sun sink behind the ocean. Miguel thought back to the time he'd been on this very spot almost three months earlier, drinking wine and kissing Jaz until only darkness had wrapped them, the bronzed glow of the sun having long since been swallowed by the horizon. September 13th, 2013. He remembered the date. Just as he remembered that they'd met at Wits campus (that hilarious hand outstretched in his direction) on July 5th, 2013. He also remembered Thursday, September 19th, 2013, the day Sandile had died. And Miguel remembered the day he almost cost Jaz, Thandie, and his father their lives by acting like a complete ass and attempting to fight stupidity with hate.

  Stupidity and hate are bad opponents. He knew this now.

  And then, as if God himself (the real God, not that idiot on Claim Street) had taken a hand, or as if an angel had meddled in things far greater than Miguel could ever have controlled, Jaz's life was spared, as was his dad's, and Jaz's best friend's, Thandie.

  Miguel knew, with every bone in his body, that he owed someone a favor for that one. And whereas he still was neither religious nor irreligious, he couldn't help but feel that some greater power had gotten involved that day; and even if it hadn't, he knew inside him that, for him to ever gain even an iota of self respect back for himself—for what he'd almost done to all of them—he needed to pay it back.

  "Patrão!"

  Why does he always insist on calling me that?! "Joãozinho, I told you, I am not 'patrão.' I am not anybody's 'boss.' I am Miguel," he said to João (otherwise known as Joãzinho—Little João—to all the other kids in the Sandile Mabuyo Instituto de Educação, because he had such a small body for a twelve-year-old).

  The Sandile Mabuyo Instituto de Educação wasn't much of an institute in terms of a building—an old, dilapidated wreck with cracks in every wall and a roof that leaked in about seven places—but it was every bit an institute in its function. They had over twenty students now—a miracle, considering it had only been running about a month. But getting students was not a problem—sadly so. The only qualification necessary being that the student must have lost his family in some way or another, the problem was not in finding students, but in securing funding. Miguel had his father to thank for that—at least for now. And he also had him to thank for the weeks he'd taken out from work to help Miguel get the building into some sort of inhabitable condition (seeing as Miguel would be sleeping under that roof with the holes—literally); not to mention that he'd lied for Miguel, telling everyone he was working in the Mozambican branch and saying nothing about the institute (there was no Mozambican branch—only a bunch of ships and docks and contract workers that sometimes needed to be checked on and which Miguel did happily to keep the worry off his father's mind).

  Who needed to know? It was nobody's business. The institute was between Miguel and whomever he owed for sparing Jaz, her best friend, and his father's life that night.

  João stood looking at him now (actually, stood looking at Miguel's beer).

  "What, I don't deserve a break?" said Miguel guiltily.

  "I did good today, didn't I?"

  Miguel grabbed him and put him on his lap, rubbing his head and feeling the rib of the thick scar where he'd been hit with a machete only two years before—and survived. Hair would never grow on that scar for him. "You did great, Joãozinho. Now you only have to do it backwards."

  João's eyes turned and stared at Miguel widely with shock. "Backwards?!"

  Miguel laughed. "No, not even I can say the alphabet backwards. I was only kidding."

  It was clear that João had come to Miguel only to get a little more praise for his achievement that day. And, why shouldn't he? It was a big deal for him to recite the alphabet out of memory. Miguel was proud of him. João smiled at Miguel and then, as if he hadn't even been there, ran off again.

  Secretly, João was a hero to Miguel—such a capacity to survive, and the ability to smile, still, despite the odorous brunt of hatred which had hit the boy's life so fiercely all those years before, and taken everything from him. Literally, everything. (Miguel—he realized now—at least still had his father). João gave Miguel strength. All of the kids did. He knew that he needed them more than they needed him. Anybody can teach kids how to read. But who can touch a life so powerfully that, without even trying, they give you the will to live another day, another week, an entire lifetime?

  Miguel had needed that strength. He'd needed it badly.

  He still needed it.

  It was ironic, thought Miguel, being here. Had it not been Sandile's idea after all? It was as if, even from beyond the grave, the guy was still doing what he had always done: guiding Miguel's life so that it had, every day, just a little more meaning than the day before. Imagine how much it would change if the majority of these children just learned to read.

  Those had been Sandile's words, at that breakfast, spoken blithely as a random thought.

  After that night in Hillbrow, and the days of beating himself up and reveling in self-loathing (a useless emotion, he had come to realize), the idea had suddenly come to him, like a flash of bright light in the murky waters of personal hatred. So he moved to Mozambique. His father set up a fund from his business to feed the institute (which taught only reading—English and Portuguese) and now it was his father who came over to Mozambique—every weekend, in fact—with food and goods. Miguel looked forward to seeing him every Saturday. The man looked much better—as if doing something for others had caused him to somehow forget the demons of his own mind. His skin had picked up in color, business was improving, and if Miguel had not known any better, he would even say his father was secretly seeing someone on the sly.

  His dad never mentioned it, although he did blush when Miguel brought it up once. But Miguel re
spected his silence.

  Watching his father, Miguel surmised that there is only ever one. Whether it is "the one," or simply "the first one," there would always be that person who, for whatever inexplicable reason, would forever be considered your "other half" or, plainly, "the one"—even if he or she is no longer with you.

  Jaz was both his one and his first one: the first one he ever loved.

  She always would be.

  What was she doing today? December 11th, 2013. Had she flown back home already? Would she be flying home tomorrow, next week, at the end of the year? Was she at the airport right now?

  He finished his beer and got up to go to the institute. He loved the sound of the ocean as he went to sleep. Maybe that was a bit of Jaz that he kept with him—remembering all that time they'd spent together by the beach.

  But this was home now. A new life. A new start. He saw no reason to return to South Africa. He kept a bed up in the garret and had taken to reading paperbacks—even some Portuguese ones. He never did get another Kindle—too many memories.

  If Miguel had gone through with what he'd wanted to do to Tsepho that night (it pained him to think of how close he'd come), he would've never been able to look his brother in the eyes again with any sense of pride—in this life or the next.

  It's funny, he thought, how things worked out that day in Hillbrow.

  The hand of God.

  Miguel was paying it forward.

  He owed someone.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Jaz booked a room at the Southern Sun about five minutes from the airport. It wasn't the cheapest hotel but, after all that had happened, she felt like she deserved a personal break. Besides, she'd never expected her money to stretch as far as it had in South Africa. The last she'd checked, the exchange rate was one dollar to ten Rands. Not only did she have enough saved up for the hotel, but she could even pay for a room and food at something moderately priced for at least another month. If she got a job waitressing, maybe she'd be able to pay for longer than that. She thought of that cute Italian coffee shop in Parktown North, not too far from the campus. She'd been there once or twice with Miguel and had seen people sipping wine all day while working on their laptops or browsing the web—a quaint little place.