by Jenny Robson
And the robot was still red. So they were trapped. Nowhere to escape.
But Aggies saw.
He threw his placard down and rushed to me. He grabbed my arm with the bottle.
“No, Dirkie. No. You will get too much trouble. No, my friend! They are nothing!”
The lights changed and the SUV drove off with its engine roaring at me. And its exhaust pipe pumping carbon monoxide into my face. So I turned on Aggies. I couldn’t even see properly. It was like this red haze was covering everything around me. Like before, that time at the children’s home with Jamal.
“Leave me alone! Get out of my face!” I was screaming the K word at Aggies. I shoved him backwards with all my strength so he ended up spread out on the concrete island. His safari-guide hat went skidding under the wheels of a minibus taxi while the passengers yelled at me out their windows as they passed.
The Southern Comfort bottle clattered back into the gutter.
*
I had to walk all the way back to Groenewald Road. There was only fifty cents in my pocket and no taxi driver is interested in fifty cents.
Only when it was too late, I realised I was on the Grey Street cul-de-sac. Heading for the path across the old sports fields. That is how messed-up my mind was by then. I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t even see straight.
Grey Street is the shortest way home from the intersection, but always before I’d made extra sure not to go that way. I don’t want to let myself remember the last time I was on that road, the last time I passed the broken-down walls and the rusty iron gate. And the old family cemetery from the time when Villa Park was still one big farm that belonged to some people called the Van Tonders.
See, that’s the way I used to walk home from school every day back when I was a kid. From Villa Park Primary. Even though the guys at school told stories about that cemetery. Especially about the grave of Magdalene Esther van Tonder. They said she hanged herself at nineteen when her boyfriend married someone else. And now her ghost waits and watches for some other young guy to marry.
“So you better watch out, Dirk,” they told me. “She won’t care how young you are. Or how dorky!”
But I reckon they were actually quite impressed that I was so brave, walking that way.
And now there I was, right beside the cemetery again. By accident because I wasn’t thinking. Because I was all churned up and mad still from being spat at. And even worse, from what I did to Aggies.
*
That very, very last time I walked home from Villa Park Primary School, the rain was falling. Just a soft drizzle that made my school blazer warm and damp.
It was October, a Thursday afternoon, just days after we’d watched The Lord of the Rings with the Camerons. And I was feeling really happy. Like the world was a good place. Our coach had cancelled cricket because it was raining. I didn’t like cricket much, but all the grade six and seven boys had to play.
“Hey, that was a lucky escape,” I was telling myself over and over, walking past the iron gate with the creepers growing all the way up one side. The mud was thick on the sports field path. I kept slipping and sliding. But that was quite fun too.
I was thinking: Hey, as soon as I get home, I can watch cartoons! Ma and Dad were too busy fussing about New Zealand to tell me to do my homework. They were packing and re-packing in the maid’s quarters most of the time. Ma still kept changing her mind.
“No, Pieter. I’m thinking maybe we should leave the microwave behind. It’s old now and the glass plate is cracked. Maybe we can rather use that space for the iron and the snackwich – they’re newer. And maybe that vase your mother gave us. We can just buy a new microwave in NZ.”
“Are you sure, Leila? This is now the third time I’m moving the microwave. Damn, I’ll be glad when this is all over. I’ll be really, really happy when we’re on the other side, unpacking all this stuff once and for all.”
But it was all fun-arguing, like they were two little kids joking with each other. I never got worried that they would start screaming and get properly angry.
I even stopped quite a long time close to the grave of Magdalene Esther van Tonder with her angel half-toppling sideways. Right in the drizzle. Just to prove to myself how brave I was.
By the time I reached our front gate, my blazer was soaking wet and heavy. My shoes were thick with all the mud. But the rain had made our lawn look a lot better. Ma wasn’t watering it any more.
“Why waste water?” she said. “It’s not like we’re going to be around much longer to enjoy it. And we already have two good offers for the house.”
At the gate, I decided I must rather go round the back way to the kitchen door. Then I wouldn’t get mud on the passage carpet. So I walked along the path along the garage wall, with Dad’s fishing rod hanging beside the window. He’d been trying to decide if he should take it with. And Ma kept teasing him that he would never be a fisherman, no matter where we lived.
“In your dreams, Pieter! In your dreams,” she kept laughing.
I walked past the arum lilies under the roof drip. Thinking that maybe Ma would say it was nice of me to be so thoughtful and not stomp mud into the carpet.
I opened the kitchen door and yelled, “Hey, Ma? Dad? We got off early. I’m going to watch cartoons. Okay?” I was already trying to pull off my blazer and the damp smell was rising up into my face like fog.
That was the last time I ever walked home from Villa Park Primary.
The last time I ever opened that kitchen door.
It isn’t something I like to think about. I try to switch my mind off, the instant the pictures start coming. Like a TV.
*
So, anyway. Finally, late this afternoon, I got back to the front gate of 5 Groenewald Road.
The short thunderstorm had brightened up Mrs Mogwera’s flowers nicely. Especially the double-headed vygies. They looked shocking pink now in the rockery we built together. Much brighter than the sun that was starting to set there at the end of the road.
I could still feel the trail of the Double A’s gob on my cheek. Even though I’d wiped and wiped it with my shirt sleeve and with the tie from my pocket until my skin felt raw. And I was still shaking a bit from being by the cemetery and the toppling angel again. From saying out loud, “Hey, Esther, what kind of stupid idiot were you? To do that over some stupid guy? Are you mad?”
I’d screamed at her grave, swearing and calling her all sorts of names. Like I was the one who was mad. Don’t ask me why. She killed herself long before I was even born. Hell, even the guy who dumped her is probably dead from old age. Thank goodness there was no one around to hear me! They would have carted me off to a clinic, for sure!
So, anyway. There from the front gate I saw a car busy parking up the street. Right outside number 12. A yellow Citi Golf.
And out climbed Jimmy Cameron. Jimmy Big-Deal Cameron! It was my first time seeing him since I came back to Villa Park. I’ve seen his parents a few times, but never him. Actually it was my first time seeing him since that Sunday when we were at his place watching The Lord of the Rings. Back when I was twelve years and one month.
9
Jimmy Big-Deal Cameron
In the end the Camerons never went to New Zealand. I don’t know why. Maybe because Mrs Cameron refused to leave her sisters with her baby on the way. Or maybe because of what happened with my parents. Or maybe because Mr Cameron decided he mustn’t take Jimmy away from his birthright in Africa.
I never found out because I never saw Jimmy again. Instead I had to go to the children’s home and then down to Port Alfred and the rotting pineapples.
Whenever I work in Mrs Mogwera’s garden, I make sure the Camerons don’t see. They often drive down Groenewald Road in their white Audi, at all times of the day. I suppose Mr Cameron is retired. I always duck down, pretending I’m pulling out a weed or something.
Mrs Mogwera giggles. “What are you doing down there, Dirkie? Do you know those people? Are you hiding from
them?”
But Jimmy’s never with them. I thought maybe he’d gone to New Zealand on his own. Now, after six years, there he was, climbing out of his very own car. Just outside number 12 where his mother still keeps the garden neat and full of flowers. Even the verge next to the pavement. He was wearing overalls, like he’d just come from work. Proper overalls with a proper logo across the back. Something Motors. So he must be a motor mechanic, something like that. A proper job with a proper salary so he can afford a car and somewhere to live on his own.
I realised he’s shorter than me. That made me feel better for a moment. Back when I was eleven, twelve and he was thirteen, fourteen, he was always taller. He used to tilt his head back and look down at me like I was an ant.
But then he opened the passenger side door and I stopped feeling good. He had a girlfriend, a proper girlfriend with long blonde hair that was shining in the reddish sunset light. She was small and soft-looking. Not like Bethany at all. She put her hand lightly on Jimmy’s chest as she spoke to him. She is just the kind of girlfriend I would want.
They didn’t look down the road. They didn’t see me. They walked up the path of number 12 with their arms round each other. Mrs Cameron met them at the door in her cooking apron. I could almost smell the warm supper smells that must be coming through the open door. Roast chicken maybe? Lamb casserole?
Lucky Jimmy Big-Deal Cameron!
I’m telling you, I felt just sick standing there at the gate of number 5. How come he got to have everything when I had nothing? Why did life turn out this way? I mean, we grew up on the same street of the same suburb. We went to the same school with the same teachers. We both played on the swings at Northfields Play Park in the summer holidays and shared scary stories about the toilet block there. So how come the world was fine and right for him while everything was wrong for me? How come his life was perfect and mine was a pile of rotting garbage?
“It’s not fair,” I said. Aloud. To the gate as I closed it. To the garage wall as I walked along it. To the arum lilies as I crossed the Mogweras’ yard.
Here in my tiny maid’s room with Aggies’ mink blanket over my narrow single bed, I thought: I’ll just go to bed. Even if the sun isn’t down yet. Let the day just end now. It’s enough!
A word was banging in my head. Like a tennis ball bouncing on a concrete driveway, on and on, using up whatever tiny space there was besides the cotton wool inside my brain. Loser! Loser! Loser! Loser!
My whole chest was getting filled up with this huge feeling of hopelessness. It was like gas from a car exhaust: heavy and choking and poisonous. It seemed to spread around me till it filled up the whole room, clouding up the dressing table and rising right to the ceiling.
I went to wash my face in the cold water, in the stained chipped basin. But I couldn’t fool myself. It wasn’t just water running down my cheeks. It was also tears.
Eighteen and supposed to be a man. But instead I was crying like a child. And how pathetic was that?
*
“Dirk? Dirkie? Is that you?”
It was Mrs Mogwera standing at the door with Sonya’s birthday card.
I looked up from the basin of cold water with tears running down my face and the cheap soap burning my one eye. My towel was still damp and smelly from the early morning.
She’s always reminded me of someone, Mrs Mogwera. I often thought that when she spoke to me. Someone from long ago. But until today I never managed to work out who. Not my ma, nor any of my primary school teachers, that’s for sure.
Mrs Mogwera said, “And how was it at Kagiso Holdings? Did you get a Youth Training place? I hoped and hoped for you all morning. Whatever I did, I was thinking about you.”
“No. They chucked me out. They wouldn’t even let me finish the test.”
“They chucked you out? But they can’t do that, Dirk. That’s not right.”
So I had to explain about Janie September and about copying her answers. Mrs Mogwera kept frowning like she didn’t understand.
“You cheated? Why did you do that? You are not the kind of person who cheats. I can’t believe that, Dirkie.”
So then I had to explain about Dorcas and the frikkadels and the huge brown bag. And about protein for growing brains. I wanted Mrs Mogwera to understand. So badly.
But still she frowned there at the door, like it didn’t make sense. Folding her arms.
“See, Mrs Mogwera. I was just taking back what Dorcas stole from me in the first place. You know, like the people taking back their land that got stolen by apartheid? I mean, all I was trying to get was a little fairness. A little justice. That’s all I ask for. Just a bit of fairness in this world.”
She looked at me for a while in that gentle way she has. But then she started giggling.
“Oh, Dirkie! You are so funny! This is the funniest thing I’ve ever heard!”
And that was when it hit me, so suddenly, just out of the blue. I realised who she reminded me of. Constable Elizabeth Eksteen, that’s who!
*
Yes! Constable Elizabeth Eksteen! And that didn’t make sense.
I mean, I never saw Constable Eksteen laugh, not once the whole time I was with her. Plus Constable Eksteen was white. Plus Constable Eksteen was a very big woman with her chest filling out the material of her white blouse. When she put her arm around me, I could feel the rolls of flesh pushing softly against me. Meanwhile Mrs Mogwera is small. Small and light like the birds in her garden.
But I suppose it was because they both spoke to me and looked at me with only kindness. Like they could see good things in me. Like they understood, and they weren’t judging me or blaming me. And maybe also because with both of them, their skin seemed like it would feel soft as a mink blanket if you touched it.
*
Constable Elizabeth Eksteen found me there in the kitchen doorway, still with my damp school blazer half on. I was standing frozen, like I was paralysed. Even my eyes couldn’t move: they just stared and stared without blinking, down at the kitchen floor.
It looked to me like a giant lake of blood covered all the lino so I couldn’t see a single green fern. The lake stretched all the way from my muddy shoes to the fridge, to the stove, to the passage carpet. North, south, east, west. Red and shiny wet under the fluorescent lights.
I know it’s not possible. There couldn’t have been that much blood. But that’s the picture I still get in my head. I switch it off quickly.
Ma and Dad were sitting there at the table. With their heads resting on the bloody table top like they were very, very tired. Like any minute, Ma would look up and sigh and say, “Dirkie, my skat, you must make some toast for yourself. Will you? There’s some apricot jam in the tin. Or do you want Bovril? I think maybe there’s a bit of Bovril still in the jar if you scrape. I just don’t feel up to cooking tonight. I just can’t cope with that.”
And any minute Dad would ask how cricket went and did I hit any sixes? Did I make any good catches? And he would say, like he always did, “I was quite a good cricketer when I was at school. Yes. I nearly got chosen to play under 16 for the province.”
But instead, huge globules of blood dripped off the edge of the table top, crashing down like glaciers into the ocean. Making giant tsunamis that raced all the way to the fridge. And the sink cupboards. And my school shoes.
Well, that’s how it looked to me. At the time.
“Dirk? Dirk Strydom? Is that your name, dear?”
It was Constable Elizabeth Eksteen, standing there at the kitchen door next to me. Her voice was very soft. And I could feel the softness of her body as she put her arm around me.
“Come, let me take you outside. And let’s get this wet blazer off you. Before you get sick. Okay?”
She helped me down the kitchen steps, past the arum lilies. She was tugging my blazer sleeves off my arms, wrapping a grey blanket around me. It smelled strange, but I was suddenly very cold.
Down the path beside the garage, the grey afternoon was flashing w
ith blue police lights.
I suppose it was the neighbours who called the police. They must have heard the shots and phoned. Now the neighbours were all out on their front lawns or in the street, mostly a blur of heads and faces flashing blue, then grey. Blue, then grey. The same people who watched when my ma was taken away in the ambulance that time. They even seemed to be standing in exactly the same places.
Not the Camerons, though. I don’t remember seeing the Camerons. Nor Jimmy. But he was at high school by then and they came out much later than us.
I was screaming, I remember, while Constable Eksteen guided me down the driveway. Over and over. Like I had gone crazy. “It’s not fair. It’s not fair.”
Then I fell down on the concrete. My legs just collapsed from under me. A policeman carried me into the back of a police car. Constable Eksteen held me against her white blouse, stroking my temple with her hand. I remember her mink-soft fingers.
“No, my dear. It’s not fair. You are right,” she said.
*
Mrs Mogwera was still giggling, shaking her head at me.
“Oh, but you are funny, Dirkie! So funny with your mince-and-brains story!”
And it was strange. Mostly I hate it when people laugh at me. Like Dorcas. Like Fatter Koos, like the other applicants at Kagiso Holdings while I was getting shoved out. Like those Double As in their fancy SUV. Mostly it makes me so angry I want to smash their faces in.
But not Mrs Mogwera’s laughing. It was too soft and kind. Like she wasn’t blaming or judging. Like she was hoping I would see it was funny too. Like she was waiting till I got the joke.
And I did! Yes, I did! I started laughing right along with her. Because it was quite silly, wasn’t it: all this business about Dorcas and her bag and that being a good excuse for cheating in a test? Ja, I could see it now.
It was such a strange feeling, to be laughing at myself. A good feeling, actually. I thought: Maybe this is what it means to be grown up? When you can laugh at yourself and it doesn’t make you feel bad? I finished drying my face. And it was only water there on my cheeks now. Not tears.