I nod. Philani has disappeared into the hut, and there is a lot of noise of “look who’s here” and “Philani’s back” coming from inside.
“He says you need a place to sleep for one night?”
“I thought that…” I do not finish.
“You can sleep at the back here, but tomorrow when I wake up, you’re gone. We don’t want any refugees here. Understand?”
I nod again. What can I say to this big, angry man? I want to speak to Philani, but he’s inside. The man takes us around to the back. He unlocks a small shed and turns on the light. The shed is packed with parts of cars, old batteries, and exhaust pipes. Tires are stacked in a pile in one corner.
“Don’t touch anything, or I’ll beat the crap out of you” is all the man says before he closes the door. I hear him lock the padlock. We are prisoners in his shed.
Innocent looks very upset, like he’s going to cry. His finger is pressed deeply into his right ear.
“I want to go back to the Flying Tomato Farm, Deo. Why are we here?” he says.
I cannot bear the accusation in his voice.
“Do you think I planned this?” I ask. “Do you think this is what I expected? Philani said that we would be given a place to sleep. I didn’t know it would be on the floor of a garage.”
I kick angrily at a tire that is lying around.
“But where are we going to sleep, Deo? At the Flying Tomato Farm…”
“We are not at the farm anymore, Innocent. We are here in Jozi.”
Innocent looks up at me for the first time. “But I don’t like this place, Deo. It’s not very friendly. The people speak a different language. They look at me funny.”
“Because you are funny!” I shout at him. “You walk around with your fingers in your ears, holding on to your stupid cereal box. Talking like a baby. Don’t you see? That’s why people look at you. You’re funny to look at, funny boy!”
The words come out harder than rocks, sharper than nails. Innocent dips his head as if he is being beaten. He doesn’t look at me but shakes his head and walks quickly to the far corner of the shed. He stumbles over some junk and falls to the ground. He drops his Bix-box and some of his treasure falls out.
I want to help him up, but I don’t.
With one finger still pressed into his ear, he picks up his stuff and carefully puts everything back into his tin box.
He’s sobbing. “It’s not Innocent’s fault. The doctor is the one you must speak to. It’s not my fault he went to sleep,” he says, gulping air between sobs.
He closes the lid of his Bix-box and walks to the pile of tires, where he sits down with his back to me. “The doctor made a mistake. It’s his fault. Not Innocent. Shouting at me is not right. Amai does not like that. Grandpa Longdrop will be angry with you when I tell him. I didn’t do anything to you.”
I hold back the scream of anger. I shouted at Innocent because of how people looked at me.
I was scared when we arrived in Jozi, scared in the taxi, scared when we ran through the township to Philani’s home, scared of the man in the doorway who slapped Philani. I am scared now, so I shouted at Innocent.
Suddenly, I’m so tired. I want to sleep. I pull tires from the pile and arrange them into some sort of bed. I stuff clothes into my soccer pouch to make a pillow. Innocent ignores me. I lie down on the tires, arrange my soccer-pillow behind my head, and stare up at the ceiling. “Zero-two-one-eight-five-six-one-two-four-two,” I say quietly. “No, that’s not right.” I say another string of numbers to myself. “No, that’s not right either. How can I be so stupid to forget such an important number?” I speak out loud another series of numbers and glance over at Innocent. I know he is listening. “It’s no good. I just don’t have the brains for this. How am I supposed to find Dad if I can’t even remember his number? I’m stupid. If only I had remembered to write it down. If only I had a brain clever enough to remember numbers. Now I’m never going to be able to phone him. If only I could remember the number,” I say, telling myself off.
“Zero-two-one-six-five-eight-three-two-one-four,” says Innocent quietly. “It’s not difficult, Deo. You just have to let the numbers talk to you. They organize themselves in your head. You shouldn’t try so hard.”
“Okay, come and lie here next to me and tell me how you do it,” I say.
He gets up and comes over next to me.
Innocent repeats the phone number of our father’s work. “Now you say it and try and listen to the numbers.”
I repeat the correct number slowly.
“You see, you’re not dumb, Deo.”
“Thank you, Innocent. And you’re not funny either.”
“I know that. But you are,” he says, and I hear a joke creeping into his voice. “We have a place that gives us food and a bed and money every month, but my little brother doesn’t want that place. That’s funny.”
“You’re right, Innocent,” I say, laughing. “I’m the one who’s funny. Not you.”
“Okay. You’re the funny boy, not me. No, not Innocent.”
Innocent is happy now, my angry words forgotten. And we go to sleep, with peace between us, until we are woken in the morning by the sound of the door being unlocked and a gruff, unfriendly voice telling us to get our things, leave, and never come back.
17
ALEXANDRA TOWNSHIP
The storm came seven days later.
We try to keep dry, but there’s nowhere to escape from raindrops the size of pebbles. In the end we join some people from Mozambique and Somaliland who have made a fire under a bridge. All around us the storm lights the sky, and we huddle next to the blazing fire. I have never seen such lightning or heard such thunder. The rain pours down as if a dam has opened in the sky. Innocent cowers in a corner under the bridge, both his fingers in his ears. He is too scared to worry about sitting around the fire. It’s best to let him wait out the storm in the only way he knows how.
I stand close to the fire, stomping my feet and stretching my hands out in front of me, listening to the men. They talk about a letter that has been sent to some of their friends.
“We should go to the police!” one of them says angrily.
“Don’t be stupid. They won’t help us.”
“But they cannot tell us to close our shops. Who is the writer of this letter?”
“It gives no name of a person and is signed the Alexandra Retailers’ Association.”
“Close our shops, but this is not right!”
“This is bad, very bad. Listen to what it says: ‘The business, political, and community leadership of Alexandra is currently engaged in finding a solution for the influx of your shops into our communities.’”
The man stops only because everyone is speaking at once. I’ve never heard the word influx. Sounds like a disease.
“Let him finish,” one of them says, pointing to the man holding the letter.
He continues to read. “‘All matters regarding your existence in our communities are being discussed. We’ve had engagement with all relevant stakeholders, and our cries are still heard only by the deaf, and therefore we have taken it upon ourselves to resolve this matter.’”
“And we know what that means!”
But I do not know what any of this means. The men continue to talk, and I tune them out. Instead, I lose myself in the colors of the warm flames and forget that I am wet and hungry. The last seven days on the streets of Alexandra have been hard. We sleep where we can, eat what we find, drink water from the community tap. And every night that we sleep out in the open, I think how stupid I was to leave the Flying Tomato Farm.
Sunday has come and gone, and we are still not millionaires. I tried to find Philani to ask him what has happened to our lotto tickets, but the man at his house said that Philani was not living there anymore and that we should go back to where we came from.
We are not wanted in Alexandra. Wherever we turn, people scowl at us, saying things like, “There is no place for you here. Go back home.�
��
I’m getting used to being chased away in Jozi. If it’s not the people in Alexandra, then it’s the security guards, and if it’s not the security guards, then it’s the police. You don’t want to be caught by the police. I’ve seen them tumble people into the back of their vans and drive away. I make sure that we always run a mile when we see the men in blue uniforms.
All week now we have walked through the township looking for a place to sleep, and all the time we are running out of money. Things are very expensive here. The money I brought with us from the Flying Tomato Farm is gone.
The people in Alexandra are poor. Their homes are not homes but shacks put together with sheets of plastic, signboards, pieces of wood, and wire netting. There is no place to go to the toilet. There is nowhere for Innocent to wash his hands, and this is making him crazy.
Finally, the storm has passed. It has stopped raining. The men have drifted away. I have no idea how long I have been sitting next to a dying fire. I look up and see that Innocent has disappeared.
The fear of losing him here, in angry Jozi, is the worst fear I’ve felt so far. But there is nowhere he could have gone.
“Innocent!”
A few of the men who are walking away shrug when I shout at them, asking if they’ve seen my brother. On the highway the cars speed past, the spray from their tires floating on the air.
Now I am alone under the bridge and furious.
I run up the side of the bridge and look up and down the road crossing the highway.
No sign of Innocent.
How many times have I told him never to go anywhere without me? If he wanders off by himself, I will never find him!
I dodge through the traffic and run across the bridge and then run down to look around at the base on the other side of the highway.
Nothing.
Now I am really scared. What do I do?
“Where are you, Innocent?” I say aloud, just to hear a voice. I charge back up the side of the bridge, cross the highway, and run back to where I left him curled up against one of the cement pillars.
“Are you looking for your brother?” asks a voice.
I can’t see anyone.
“Up here!”
I look up. A face looks downward at me through a hole in the bridge. The man is wearing a black stocking covering his hair and a leopard-print shirt.
“You looking for your brother?” he asks again from his upside-down position.
I stare up at the man in the hole in the roof of the bridge. “Yes. His name’s Innocent.”
“I know his name. You must be Deo, right?”
“Yes. Where’s Innocent?”
“Here, give me your hand.”
He offers me his hand. I pull myself up and climb through the hole. Once inside, I scramble to my feet into a world that is dark and quiet. I see sheets glowing with golden light and the shadows of people’s heads. I hear the laughter of little children.
“Come this way. You’ll get used to the dark,” says the man, holding my hand lightly and leading me deeper inside the bridge.
There, behind one of the sheets, I recognize the silhouette of my brother. Innocent is sitting on a bed, playing cards with two children. On a small table is a paraffin lamp burning brightly. A sheet has been fixed to the top of the cement ceiling, creating a screen. I see more silhouettes on the other side of another sheet.
“Welcome, Deo. We’ve heard a lot about you,” says the man with the black stocking on his head. “My name is Gawalia. I like your brother—he is good with my children.”
A man and a woman look around the sheet that separates them from Innocent and the children. The man lifts his hand in silent greeting. Farther down, another woman appears out of the gloom. She stands with her hands on her hips and shakes her head from side to side at the sight of me. She is a beautiful woman: long, braided hair; silver earrings dangling from her ears; lips red with lipstick; and toothpaste-white teeth.
“Gawalia, why must you pick up every stray dog in Jozi that comes under our bridge?” she asks with laughter in her voice.
“I picked you up, Angel,” says Gawalia, waving her away. “You were a stray kitten, and look what a cat you turned out to be!”
Now that my eyes have adjusted to the strange light I can see more clearly. The empty concrete space inside the bridge has been transformed into people’s homes. Against one wall is a kitchen table covered with sauces and spices. There are three deck chairs, and behind each curtained partition I can make out beds. In the background, there is the constant sound of cars driving through rainwater. It’s a soft, shushing sound, strangely comforting.
“Tsepo and Rasta are very good at cards, Deo. They always win,” says Innocent, grinning at me as if he had never left my side.
“Hello, Innocent’s brother,” says one of the children.
“Come on, Tsepo, deal!” says Rasta.
I am quickly forgotten as they collect their cards, sort them out, and look at the hands they have been dealt.
“It was quite a storm out there. Are you hungry, Deo?” asks Gawalia.
I have no words. All I want to do is to cry at his softly spoken question. The last person who asked me if I was hungry was Amai. I nod gratefully as he gestures for me to sit at the kitchen table.
“Here, try some of what was left over from last night.” He scrapes out some rice, with flecks of meat and vegetables, into a metal plate. “Innocent tells me that you have come from Masvingo Province.”
I look up in amazement, my mouth full of the delicious food.
“I’m from Gweru. It’s not far from Bikita.” Does this man know about Commander Jesus too?
I nod toward Tsepo and Rasta playing with Innocent.
“Their mother is dead” is all Gawalia says at my unasked question. “They like Innocent. They found him crying outside and so invited him to come up. They haven’t done that to anyone since their mother died.”
The man and woman step out from behind their sheet and join us at the table.
“Ah, our two lovebirds. This is Catarina Manungo, and this is Rais Sewika. She is from Mozambique, and he is from the Democratic Republic of Congo. They want to get married,” says Gawalia, stoking up a paraffin burner to boil water. “And this is Deo. He is from my homeland.”
Rais greets me while Catarina moves over to the bed where Innocent and the children play.
“Is he what you are looking for, Gawalia?” asks Catarina.
“He could be,” answers Gawalia, waving his hand in the air as if he doesn’t want to discuss the subject.
“I would ask him,” says Rais. “We can’t do it anymore, Gawalia. We’ve got our own things to do.”
Gawalia sighs. “Rais is in a band. He plays at night and works during the day. Catarina is a waitress and brings home lots of leftovers,” explains Gawalia, pointing at my now empty plate. “You didn’t think I made that food, did you? And I work for the Somalis in their spaza in Alexandra and, well, I don’t always have someone to look after Tsepo and Rasta. I can’t take them with me, and I don’t like to leave them here alone.”
I see the opportunity and grab it. “We need a place to sleep. We’ll get our own food, but we need a place to stay.”
Catarina laughs. “We’ve got a bright boy here,” she says. “You don’t even have to ask him and he’s bargaining already.”
“So the strays are making demands now,” says the woman called Angel. She walks up to the table and starts making herself tea. “We don’t want to attract too much attention, Gawalia. The more people in the bridge, the more other people will notice. You know that?”
“We will be careful,” I say, but she is not talking to me.
She smiles at me sweetly. “Careful of what, sugar cheeks? You don’t even know what’s going on here. When did you arrive? A week ago, two weeks? You don’t know how dangerous this place is becoming.”
The couple and Gawalia exchange glances. The children on the bed let out happy squeals as they beat In
nocent again. Angel spoons sugar into her mug and stirs it. This time she’s the one who raises her eyebrow at Gawalia. I sense the opportunity slipping away. Nothing has been decided yet, but if I don’t speak up now, it will be too late. I know how adults can sometimes speak to one another without talking.
“I’ll be careful about coming in and out of the bridge,” I say, looking squarely at Angel. “I will not bring trouble. Innocent is no problem to handle. I see what you have here, and you don’t need to worry.”
Angel holds my gaze for a moment and then shrugs, sipping her tea.
“It’s your decision, Gawalia,” she says. “You found this place. I’m just warning you. The more people we let in, the more trouble may come with them. I thought we all agreed that we were enough.”
“What about your clients?” asks Catarina. “They come and go all the time.”
“My clients are temporary. None of them stays here, you know that. Nobody sleeps with Angel.”
“Well, the boys need someone to look after them, and Catarina and I can’t be here all the time,” says Rais.
“Rais, I’m not fighting with anyone, I’m just saying…” Angel doesn’t finish her sentence.
We are all watching Innocent playing with the children. Tsepo is sitting in his lap and showing him how to shuffle the cards. Rasta hangs around Innocent’s neck, laughing into his ear. Gawalia considers the scene on the bed for a moment longer, and then, making up his mind, he turns to me.
“Let’s try it for a couple of weeks. You and Innocent look after Tsepo and Rasta during the day, and in exchange I’ll give you a place to sleep. That’s all we have here.”
The four adults wait for my answer. Glancing over at my brother, there’s not much to think about.
“I will help you, Gawalia. Innocent and I would love to look after your children while you are at work.”
“Good,” says Gawalia, and I realize then that he and the others are more relieved than I am. “From now on you can call this bridge your home.”
18
Now Is the Time for Running Page 10