Dub Steps

by Miller

  ‘Later, Roy, let’s talk about it later. But no, I don’t know what the fuck happened.’ She sat down behind her mug, voice shaky. ‘I woke up and I was alone. That’s it.’ She blinked the beginnings of a tear out of her left eye. ‘But we’ve got plenty of time. Tell me something fascinating. Tell me about Jozi. I’ve never been. They say it’s got everything.’

  And so we sat at Babalwa’s pine kitchen table and talked about nothing. About Joburg and PE and work and advertising and call centres and lovers and salaries and mothers and jealous aunts – our stories overlapping hopelessly, both of us embellishing to ensure we travelled as far away as possible, for as long as possible.

  Babalwa Busuku was born and raised in PE, on the southern edge of the New Brighton township, into the same compressed poverty as everyone else. Her mother was a maid/manager at a B&B on the beachfront, her father a shop steward at the Volkswagen plant. Her grandmother worked as a maid for the headmistress of Erica Girls Primary School. ‘I got to go to Erica for primary, hence the accent, the coconut vibe and the call-centre gig,’ she offered sarcastically. ‘Of course, Gogo got too old to clean just before I hit high school and the head lady moved to Cape Town so back I went – ekasi.’

  The call centre was her third job after school, her university applications terminated by money. And the rest, as she told it, was typical. Too many responsibilities, not enough money. So many dreams, not enough hours in the day to add them up.

  She was sparing, letting each sentence out carefully, but the words flew free once released. I thought suddenly of Angie and her verbal violence, the way her words attacked a room, any room. I thought also of the agency people, the theatricality with which they delivered the simplest sentences.

  Humility, I thought. Maybe that was all it was. Nonetheless, it made her pretty. Her face shone from the inside, a glimmer rising from below the surface. The fuck against the grill rushed sneakily across the my brain, the urgency of her fingers on the elastic of my boxer shorts.

  She stopped.

  ‘You can’t keep looking at me like that, please. You’re scaring me.’

  ‘Jesus.’ I jumped a little in my chair. ‘Fuck. Sorry. I can imagine. You’ve got a strange-smelling gorilla in your kitchen giving you the eye. Sorry. Sorry sorry sorry. Listen, should we get out of here? What’s the friendly city of PE got to offer?’

  She deflated at my apology and I realised just how wound up she had been. ‘Um, shit, I don’t know. I mean … we can do anything we want. Anything. That’s what’s so horrible.’ Tears flowed down her face. She held her hands in her lap, her gnawed fingers flipping the splinter of wood over and over.

  ‘Excellent!’ I said, a few of my own tears also making a break. ‘Goddam. You just don’t know how great it is to see someone else’s pain.’ I grabbed her hand and pulled her from the table. ‘Let’s go to the beach.’

  We drove down to the beach in the van and I was suddenly very aware of the chaos that reigned inside my vehicle. The shotguns piled up in the back, the stench of sweat and lingering piss and petrol, the hosepipe curled like a snake, the scattered Simba packets and baked bean cans.

  ‘Seriously, Roy. When we get back I’m gonna run you a proper bath. For shiza. Then we need to clean this pit or trade it out for something else. It’s disgusting. You’ve let yourself go.’ Babalwa clipped her seat belt in and glared at me. ‘You stink. Sies.’

  She directed us down to Kings Beach in embarrassed silence. Ours was the only car in the parking lot. ‘Only car here,’ I offered pointlessly.

  ‘Race you!’ Babalwa leaped from the cesspit and ran down the footpath to the beach, disappearing over a small dune. I ran after her to see her pulling her clothes off at the shoreline and jumping into the waves in underwear she must have snuck on at some stage.

  The water was flat. Tiny waves rolled in and released themselves humbly onto the shoreline. The beach was about three-quarters of a kilometre wide, sandwiched between a small harbour wall, where the loading cranes hung limp in the evening breeze, and the entertainment zone, where the fast-food outlets sat waiting. After my swim I lay wet in the sand, watching Babalwa bodysurf. I thought of a hot bath while I pondered the girl in the waves, already an inscrutable force in my life.

  ‘Look,’ she said, eventually flopping down on the sand next to me. ‘It’s too much. I’m gonna help you run a bath and then you and I are going to retire to our corners. May I suggest, before your bath, you find a mattress or something to sleep on. I need space. I haven’t spoken to a human being for over a month.’

  She was gone when I woke on the minuscule lounge couch the next morning. There was a note on the kitchen table.

  Roy

  Gone for a walk. See you later.

  Tea and long-life in the cupboard.

  The rest is up to you.

  Me

  I made myself a cup on the tiny back stoep and eventually found the bread bin tucked away in the far corner of the kitchen, under a shelf with four mugs dangling off it. I carved two slices off the crumpled home-made loaf, which was surprisingly fresh, given its almost total lack of form. I opened the unplugged fridge in instinctive hope, looking for butter or some such. Inside there was simply a collection of durables. A blizzard of jams from Jenny’s Farm Stall, Bovril, Marmite and then spreads and spices. Oregano. Mixed herbs. Woolworths spicy dessert crumble. An open carton of long-life milk. I considered the Bovril, decided against it, and went out onto the front porch to eat my dry bread and drink my tea.

  The morning cast a benevolent light. I could see why Babalwa the child had fallen so heavily for this particular cottage. The sheer drop down into the city on the left created a panoramic view of the bay, a view of the world really. The blue world. The sea air was fresh and clean, light ripples of wind creating a salty texture on the tongue. Directly across from the porch was the Donkin Reserve, a chunk of lawn, maybe a hundred square metres, with a large triangular monument and what looked like a small white lighthouse perched off to the right.

  I sat on a small, rickety fold-out chair on the porch – a chair I was pretty sure wasn’t there the day before. Had she put it out for me?

  The bread was good, peppered with herbs and fresh spices. I sipped the tea and wished that long-life milk tasted less like a school camping trip.

  The reserve lawn was scrappy, scattered palm trees holding their form against thick, rising clusters of harsh Eastern Cape grass. Soon, I thought, the grass would win.

  Babalwa’s head appeared to the left, rising quickly up the slope.

  ‘You found the bread. Good.’

  ‘Ja, morning, thanks.’ I raised my tea mug in mock salute.

  She was wearing white shorts, a white Castle Lager T-shirt and slip-slops. She leaned carefully against the white picket fence.

  ‘Look, sorry, I’ve been thinking and there are a few things I need to clear up.’ Her eyes were fiery.

  ‘Sure. Shoot.’

  ‘First, what happened yesterday.’

  ‘What, on the van?’

  ‘Yes, that.’ Her eyebrows arched. ‘What you—’

  ‘Ay, no, you mean what we—’

  ‘Oh fuck, it doesn’t matter. It’s fine. The situation and everything. All I’m saying is, it won’t happen again. Please. Just stay away from me physically. Try not to touch me. I mean, not touching, eish, not that kind of touching. You know what I mean. Yes?’

  ‘Well, fuck. I mean, Jesus. It takes two to—’

  ‘Oh please. It takes one. It takes you.’

  ‘OK. OK.’ I fell into the furthest corner of my chair and raised defensive palms. ‘I stay away. Totally away.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Babalwa folded her arms, looking ludicrously serious in her cricket clothes. ‘The other thing is, I would appreciate it if you moved in next door. Made a place of your own and all that. I would … I would just feel easier. You know?’

  ‘Sure. I know.’ Tears welled. I stood to return my mug to the kitchen. ‘Don’t worry,’ I called back over
my shoulder. ‘I know how freaky this is. I know exactly how freaky.’ I placed my mug overly carefully into the sink and turned on the red tap. The pipes groaned, then screamed. I turned it off, then hung my head over the sink.

  Babalwa’s feet flopped down the ancient wooden floors to the kitchen doorway.

  ‘Look, it doesn’t mean—’ she offered eventually.

  ‘Leave it,’ I said to the sink. ‘Trust me, I know what you mean. I’m as scared as you are.’

  ‘I just need—’

  ‘Trust me, Babalwa, I understand. I really do understand.’

  ‘I’ll help you move?’

  ‘Sure. Let’s do that.’

  CHAPTER 14

  I hopped around on my other leg

  I kicked down the door to the adjacent semi, carving up the skin on my right ankle as it caught on the edge of the broken Yale lock. ‘Fuck! Fuck fuck fucking mother of God! You got first aid?’ I bellowed at Babalwa, who was standing in the street behind me, arms folded, amused.

  ‘Actually I do, Chuck. Stay there. I don’t want you bleeding in my house.’

  She came back carrying a full see-through medical box with a red cross on the top. She dropped it next to me and retreated.

  ‘The cross glows in the dark. Found it in a 7-Eleven just after—’ She broke off mid-sentence.

  I opened the box and used some of the contents to bandage the wound, which wasn’t as impressive as I had first thought. A scratch with some blood really. ‘Where do the larnies live?’ I asked. ‘Clearly nowhere around here. I need supplies.’

  ‘Walmer. Big walls. Swimming pools. Golf.’

  ‘Perfect. How do I get there?’

  ‘Seriously? You’re not even going to clean that out with salt water or anything? You’re just gonna wrap a bandage on like that? Damn, who raised you, boy?’ Babalwa knelt down next to me, unwrapped the bandage and said, ‘Wait – I’ll be back.’

  She returned with a bowl of salt water and proceeded to clean and bandage my foot as I hopped around on my other leg, painfully aware of the sparse nature of my boxer shorts.

  ‘Roy, you stink. I mean, you really, really smell. You should have bathed last night. When last did you actually wash? Like, with soap?’

  ‘A while back, but chill. Chill.’ I felt defensive. ‘Soon as I’m done here and I’ve got some supplies I’ll clean up – proper.’

  ‘Bullshit. I’m getting you a bar of soap right now and when you find one of those larny swimming pools, you use it, right?’ She was laughing as she looked up at me. ‘And see if you can find some actual underpants. I’ve seen too much of you already.’ She patted my freshly dressed ankle wound and packed up the first aid kit. ‘I’ll draw you a map to Walmer. It’s easy. You won’t get lost.’

  Babalwa’s map included these directions:

  Up parliament

  into cape road

  left into roseberry

  which becomes Target Kloof … follow the loop

  right into main

  township on your left

  larnies on your right

  ‘Target Kloof?’ I asked as I stepped up into the van.

  ‘It’ll make sense,’ Babalwa replied. ‘Big S bend. People always wrapping their cars around the poles.’

  ‘Sounds exciting. See you now now.’

  I drove away, up Parliament Street. At the top of the road I looked in the rear-view mirror to see Babalwa waving goodbye.

  I waved back.

  Target Kloof was as she had described it, a sweeping downward S bend ending in a little bridge over a valley, the road dividing two lush halves of suburban jungle. I drove at a crawl. A troop of monkeys watched me from the tops of the trees, a large male scratching his balls as the van passed. I waved at them.

  Once through Target Kloof I took the right where Babalwa suggested, although at this stage I was already where I needed to be: fences, signature gates, walls, swimming pools, satellite dishes. I cruised, looking for easy targets.

  Eventually I settled on River Road, a strip of double- and triple-storey houses facing onto a golf course, a few of them gabled, a few done out in mock-modest homey style and a few completely walled off. I smashed the van through a relatively humble black-and-white gated entrance, and then straight through the wall of a family entertainment area. A flat-screen TV – a relic or family keepsake of some sort – fell forward from its cabinet and shattered on the van’s bonnet.

  I kicked through the thin, locked inter-leading door with my good ankle and headed into the main house. This, the bills on the entrance hall table said, was the residence of the Cotton family. Mr Ken Cotton. His wife, Barbara.

  Hallway family photos. Their two girls, bright teenagers, arms around parents, themselves content in plastic pool furniture. The girls playing tennis in all-white, alluring outfits. The wider Cotton family on Christmas Day, lined up in two rows, arms linking, each combination telling its own story.

  I pissed over the photo collection and the bills, soaking the Cottons as thoroughly as possible. Then I walked, dick out, as far as I could into the lounge proper, hosing the off-white lounge suite and the expensive wooden coffee table. It was a relief to be able to slip back into my habit. I zipped and thought of Babalwa’s request that I secure clothing, and then of her wrinkled nose at my stench. Too lazy to go back to the van, I searched the Cotton house looking for soap, finding a spicy underwear collection in one of the girl’s bedrooms instead. Pink G-strings. A studded bra with fake gems on the rim. Suspenders. I stopped awhile on her bed, running my hands through the teenage fabric, my erection throbbing half-heartedly at the loss.

  The wall above the bed was covered in photos stuck onto the wall with Prestik, the montage carefully constructed to portray the life of a young PE debutante and her beau, who looked, in almost every respect, like a fool. He posed in each shot – sometimes pulling muscles overtly, or simply beaming far too intensely into the camera. Throwing a rugby ball to his mates. Running. Jumping. Pointing. He was on the ugly side and wouldn’t have aged well at all; but in the pictures the ugliness was light, a hint beneath the dominant, metallic veneer of youth.

  I spat at him first, then at her, both lugs finding their mark on the wall and slowly dribbling down over their young faces.

  In her cupboard I found a bar of Reece-Marie herbal soap (coarse rosemary, sage, lemon grass, teatree oil, aqueous cream and glycerine). The packaging promised it would lather exceptionally well.

  I turned into Ken and Barbara’s bedroom, a typically dull set-up attempting to mimic magazine style. Creams and off-whites, wooden-framed pictures of Cotton life through the ages. Young Ken making his way in the world with a fishing rod and a smile – about twenty years old. Young Barbara gazing with measured effort to the horizon from what looked very much like the same beach Babalwa and I had visited. Ken and Barbara must have been, I guessed, around my age: the grain on the photos matched the scant remains of my own past.

  I found a fluffy off-white bathroom towel in the en-suite bathroom and, even better, a key to the door leading out to the pool.

  The back garden was ominous. Vast lawns tracked away from the pool, down a series of mini rolling hills, but they were out of control, the grass wild and angry. Shrubs and bushes created a barrier between the kitchen and the pool which, back in the day, would surely have been cut back weekly. But as I stood there the Cotton family entertainment zone hummed with decay, reinforced by the green skin on the pool and a layer of aqua-bugs and insects dancing on the corpses of drowned colleagues.

  I sucked in a deep breath, dropped my towel and my threaded pants, and jumped.

  Ken Cotton, it turned out, was pretty much my size. I pulled everything he owned out of the cupboard and onto the bed and selected a hardy range.

  8 pairs of boxers

  hiking boots

  slip-slops

  7 x coloured Ts

  2 x blue jeans

  1 x black jeans

  3 x khaki shorts

  1 x internatio
nal carry-on bag

  4 x socks

  2 x secret socks

  1 x pair white Reeboks

  I stuffed the lot into the carry-on bag, save for a pair of khaki shorts, a brownish-red T-shirt, long white socks and the hiking boots, which I wore as a joke I hoped would impress Babalwa. As I stood in front of the mirror, now more Ken Cotton than myself, I wondered what she might find funny about it, other than my shockingly grey hair, which looked, well, funny. My long, freshly clean, grey flyaway hair, the big grey beard, the hiking gear … I was a caricature of myself and Ken.

  I loaded up a second bag on exit. A printed photo album from the saucy teenager’s room; the bra, G-string and suspenders from the same; her mobile and Kindle; a bunch of toothbrushes and toothpaste from the bathroom. I dumped the bags in the hallway and went back to clean out the kitchen.

  Next I reversed the van from the rubble of the family room and rolled it around to the edge of the front garden, where the garage adjoined the kitchen. I put my seat belt on and smashed the van through the reinforced garage door. Reversed, and smashed again. Reversed, and smashed again. Reversed, and again. The van was shrill now, the engine and chassis moaning together. I parked in the driveway, walked back and checked out the Cotton garage, which contained, predictably, a BMW and a ladies’ 4x4, a RAV4. My heart leapt. The RAV’s metallic-blue shimmer was evocative. Neater than the cash-in-transit van, far less aggressive, it probably handled better on the road too. My heart still lifting, I stomped through the rubble in my new hiking boots to look for keys, which were hanging dutifully on a hook on the side of the kitchen cupboard, but which, of course, also had the biometric logo on the ring.

  I went back to the saucy teenager’s room, pulled her queen mattress off its base, dragged it out to the driveway and pushed it into my beaten van.

  ‘Honey, I’m home!’ I shouted as I hopped out in front of my new apartment: 1B Donkin Terrace.

  There was no reply.