When Morning Comes

by Arushi Raina

“Why do you still have that?”

  Mankwe turned. “What?”

  “You know what I’m talking about.”

  “He wasn’t such a bad man, you know. People here respected him. When Thabo’s gogo died, he made sure he kept his shack. Re-built the wall for him.”

  “Yes, that’s what you always say.”

  She put a hand on my wrist. “Please, don’t start arguing now. Don’t fight me.” Then she said, “One day soon I will leave, get married. Then it’s just you and Mama.”

  “When are you planning to get married?” I said.

  “Eish, Zani, I was just saying.”

  “And which man will you choose—bow tie Sam, Professor, Thabo or one of his friends?”

  “Aye, Professor is not so bad.”

  “Professor?” I laughed. She started laughing too, almost like she didn’t mean to. And I held on to her, laughing until we cried.

  Six

  Jack

  “Madam, I am sorry, but can I go home early today?” Lillian stood with her hands folded against her apron.

  My mother looked up from her shopping list and lowered her reading glasses. “What for, Lillian? It’s just past noon.”

  On the kitchen counter, past the living room, the vegetables stood chopped and ready on the board. Six stalks of asparagus sat in a glass.

  “My daughter is sick, Madam.”

  “Your daughter is always sick, Lillian,” my mother said, and turned back to her grocery list.

  Lillian stood there, waiting. My mother didn’t notice for a while, thinking that the conversation was over. Then she turned around. “No, I’m really sorry, Lillian, it’s not possible. I need you for dinner tonight, and I know enough about those Putco buses you take to know that you won’t be back on time. No, I’m sorry.”

  “Please, Madam, I won’t take pay for today.”

  Mother folded her shopping list. “Now, Lillian, why would you say that? Just stay for dinner and leave afterward.” My mother walked into the kitchen and checked the chopped vegetables.

  “I’ll drive you,” I said. I didn’t believe I’d offered until the words were out.

  “No need, Jack.” My mother’s voice, incredulous, from the kitchen.

  “No trouble,” I continued. “I’ll take you now and get you back by dinner. Have errands to run downtown anyway.”

  I was out the side door so quickly that mother didn’t have a chance to argue.

  Lillian was standing next to my car. I opened the door for her and she sat, putting her bag on her lap.

  I took the highway, then Moroka Bypass, thinking of what I could say to start a conversation. Lillian had a wide face, wider than her daughter’s—something about the set of her eyes and mouth fixed a serious expression on her face.

  We said nothing. Again I took the left past the stadium, past some small broken brick houses, then over the township bridge.

  The next thing I knew, I was turning and parking in front of the shebeen. It was the only place I knew here.

  “Not here. Left,” Lillian said.

  Was she wondering—how does this white boy know the place where my daughter sings at night?

  Lillian’s shack was made of cement bricks, and where the bricks had run out, corrugated metal of three different shades formed the wall and roof. Her place was in a line of maybe fifty of them, crammed next to each other for as far as I could see. The roofs of the shacks were low and cluttered with odd things—a barrel, a tire, rocks. A rusted green deckchair.

  Through a hole in the metal I could see a small light.

  Lillian opened the passenger-side door and stepped out, clutching her handbag. “Thank you, sir. I can take the bus back in time for dinner.”

  She shut the car door and walked into the shack. As she ducked inside, I realized she had a slight limp.

  I got out of my car and walked up to the wall, crouching low until I came to the window, a hole cut clumsily in the metal with a piece of plastic taped over it.

  Lillian was leaning over the bed and offering her daughter something from a plastic box. A different daughter, I realized, with a gentler, pale face. Then the singer entered the room and started talking to her mother, fastening the buttons on her sleeves. She walked out with a box in her hands and came up to my car. She stopped and looked in.

  She turned, saw me, and walked up to me, grabbing my collar in exactly the same place as before. “What are you doing here?”

  “Dropping your mother off.”

  There were flecks of yellow in her brown eyes. And her anger was as real as the first time I’d met her.

  “You come to the shebeen, you insult me in your house and now you’re looking in my window?”

  “Mind letting go?”

  “What?”

  “My collar.” I smiled.

  She tightened her grip. “Leave my family alone. I don’t care that you are playing some sick game. I have friends. They can make your life difficult.”

  “Do you mean the guy in the shebeen with the bad taste in hats?”

  She smelled of soap and ironing, better than the perfume that time in the shebeen. Slowly she let go. I rubbed the spot where the starched ends of the shirt had cut into my neck.

  “Yes, the tsotsi. Stay away.” Her voice was different now, sort of bored. “Agh, now you’ve made me late.”

  She turned away, still holding the brown parcel, and walked between a gap in the shacks. I got into my car, started it, and followed her.

  “Let me drive you to where you’re going,” I shouted through the window.

  No response, not even a look.

  “I’m sorry for the face paint, for—”

  “Trying to pay me off? And you’re not sorry. That’s a lie.”

  “It’s just a lift.”

  “Thank you, no. I do not want to be kidnapped by a mlungu.” She stopped. “Unless—”

  “Unless what?” I braked.

  “You let me drive.”

  “Fine. You drive.” What was I saying?

  “I can?”

  “Yes.”

  Without thinking too much about it, I slid over to the passenger seat. She got in the car, putting the parcel between us. She shut the door behind her and turned on the ignition. I watched her put the clutch in and put the car into gear. The car jerked forward, stopped suddenly.

  “You don’t know how to drive,” I said.

  “I’m learning,” she said. “I learn fast.”

  “I think I should take over.”

  “No, that was the deal, I get to drive.”

  I took hold of the wheel. “Ease up on the clutch, slowly, and hit the accelerator, not too fast. This is a bad idea.”

  “Relax, mlungu. I’ve done this before. And I told you, I learn fast.”

  Somehow we got downtown in one piece. She hadn’t said anything else to me during the entire ride, so all I did was stare at her face. A wide forehead, sloping down to the nose, the mouth set in a firm line.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  She pulled up to a curb, and we jerked to a stop by a shabby convenience store.

  She turned the ignition off. The car whined down into complete silence. She pulled the hand brake and opened the car door. “See, mlungu?”

  “It’s Jack.”

  “I know,” she said in a cold voice. “Jack Craven.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Zanele,” I said. “Or at least that’s what the men in the alley called you.”

  “When you came with your mlungu friends.”

  “Look, I know it was stupid.”

  “Is that what you thought when you did it? You can come to our shebeen, put black paint on your face and play a game?”

  I didn’t
answer. I was getting to know that there was no point in apologizing again—not to someone like her.

  Then she said, “Don’t ever do that again, you and your friends.”

  “Okay,” I said. It sounded like she wasn’t going to tell my parents about the shebeen.

  “If we’d caught you, we probably would have killed you.” Her voice lacked expression. She stepped out on the road.

  “You know the real reason why you don’t like me?” I said. “I laughed at your singing.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said. “Everyone from here to Orlando knows how bad my singing is.” For a moment, it looked like she was laughing at me. But it was hard to tell.

  She slammed the car door and walked off.

  She’d left the parcel behind and I opened it. A mathematics book from last year’s syllabus. And then, inside, a bunch of leaflets from banned organizations, the ANC, the PAC. Something about the Young African Religious Movement, meeting on 28th May. The car door clicked open again and the book was snatched away.

  “That’s mine,” she said, with something like fear in her eyes.

  I took the driver’s seat, slipping the leaflet I’d taken into my pocket. I watched as her red-shirted figure disappeared down the street. Then I drove home.

  I thought about the bad singing in the shebeen. Her hands on the steering wheel. A silent mother with a limp. A calculus book filled with illegal politics that would send her to jail.

  When I parked in front of my house and looked over the seat and dashboard, there was nothing to show she’d been here. But there was the leaflet, folded in the front pocket of my jeans.

  Meena

  During the afternoon lull, I saw the black girl get out of an old red Mustang that was parked at the corner of President Street. She was wearing a red shirt and carrying what looked like a brown postal package.

  There was a guy in the passenger seat. He switched over to the driver’s seat. He was white.

  She walked quickly toward the shop.

  I ran over and barred the door to the shop. If the plainclothes policeman in the car wanted to arrest me, he’d have to break the door first.

  Now the black girl was on the other side of the door, pulling the book out of the postage parcel. When I didn’t move to open the door, she started knocking on the glass. The car that had dropped her off reversed and was gone.

  Slowly, I unbarred the door. “Took you long to open that door,” the girl said. “This is yours.” She held out the book.

  I took it from her hands.

  “You gave it to me.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

  “Where did you get all those pamphlets?”

  “What were you doing with that policeman?”

  “What police? . . . Oh.” She smiled. I saw even white teeth. “That mlungu wouldn’t know how to arrest someone if you gave him handcuffs and a gun. So,” she said, pushing past me and walking into the store, “what were you doing with those pamphlets?”

  “I like collecting them,” I said.

  “Collecting?” She laughed. “So you’re not an ANC member, then?”

  “No.”

  “Not an informer?”

  “No. What kind of question is that?”

  “Calm down. I didn’t think so. You don’t look like one. So then, what are you?”

  “We have a new load of Ouma rusks in the store. You can have some, if you like,” I suggested.

  The girl raised an eyebrow. “Rusks?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s your name?” she asked as she followed me to the counter.

  “Meena.”

  “Okay, Meena. Don’t keep those. You could get five years in jail for nothing.” Her voice took on a tone I recognized, one I’d use on Jyoti or some small frightened animal.

  I didn’t reply, and put out the box of rusks. On the front, there was a hearty-looking white lady, holding out a batch from the oven. Her expression was bunched up, her face a bit like an Afrikaans pudding.

  “What’s your name?”

  She opened the box, looked at me. “Zanele,” she said.

  Then I heard the bell that sounded every time someone entered.

  The tsotsi had returned. Of course he would choose this time to come.

  Very slowly, watching him the whole time, I moved toward the cash register. I opened the drawer—it made a grating, metal sound—and took out the kitchen knife I’d put under the ten-rand notes. I held it out so he could see it.

  But the tsotsi wasn’t looking at me at all. “Zanele,” he said.

  I’d forgotten how he looked, the broadness of his face and his jaw. It was hard to know how old he was. Today he wore black trousers, a red shirt, and suspenders with gleaming silver clips. The left side of his face was tender and swollen. His eyes moved slowly from Zanele to me, then to the knife. He smiled the way he had smiled before, when he had laughed at me.

  “What are you doing?” Zanele asked, but I ignored her, concentrated on the tsotsi. His eyes flicked from Zanele to me. He took a step closer to me, the sole of his shoe squeaked against the floor. Another step, and his hand was over my grip on the knife.

  Zanele came between us. “Give me the knife,” she said, and held out her hand.

  I tried to hand it over, but the tsotsi’s hand was still tight around mine. So I jerked the knife in toward the tsotsi, putting my weight behind it. He was not expecting it. Zanele wasn’t expecting it.

  “Fok,” he said. Blood spattered the floor. “Fok, fok,” he said.

  I staggered back, still holding the knife, watching the way the drops made a crescent of small bumps on the linoleum.

  “Drop the knife,” Zanele said in an even voice.

  I put it on the floor. Some of the blood had got onto my hand.

  Zanele reached for the tsotsi’s injured wrist, but he twisted away, closing his other hand over the cut. “Give a girl a knife, she starts stabbing everything.” He took a yellow handkerchief from his pocket, then watched as more drops of blood fell onto the floor. He put the handkerchief back into his pocket.

  Zanele took his wrist. “Your fault, you tried to take the knife from her.” She turned to me. “Why did you do that? What has Thabo done to you?” Like the tsotsi, she didn’t seem to be bothered by the cut.

  “Thabo?” I said.

  Zanele took the handkerchief from the tsotsi’s pocket and pressed it onto the wound. They muttered something to each other in Zulu.

  “Let me see the cut,” I said. I took out our first aid kit from under the register.

  “You crazy?” said the tsotsi.

  “Give me your hand,” I said.

  “You heard me. No,” the tsotsi said.

  “We can stand here all day and watch, while you bleed all over the store,” Zanele said.

  “The store? You’re worried about the store now?” The tsotsi’s voice rose again.

  “Let me bandage it,” I said.

  The tsotsi turned away from Zanele and looked at me. “Crazy,” he said.

  Zanele took the alcohol and the roll of bandages I was holding out. She was careless, but the job was good enough to keep the blood in, and the tsotsi didn’t complain when she poured half the bottle of alcohol over his cut.

  “You probably need three or four stitches,” I said.

  Zanele nodded, took his shoulder, and hurried him out of the store. They crossed President Street, heading for the closest bus rank. I know that there was no reason for me to see them again, so I locked the store and followed, standing behind them in the line to an old, battered Putco bus with the number 910 stamped across its dusty front. I found some coins to pay the chubby-fingered driver. His eyes on me were sharp, cold.

  “Were you trying to steal from her?” Zanele asked the tsotsi.

  “Yes,
he was. Like he did last week,” I said.

  “You don’t tell me what’s stealing,” he said, his voice flat.

  Zanele made an impatient noise. “I don’t want to hear about you going into that shop again, asking for money.”

  “Now you’re friends with all the Indians you can find?”

  A few women across the very narrow aisle moved their legs in so they wouldn’t brush against the tsotsi. The rest of the people in the bus ignored us.

  “Never again,” Zanele said. “I mean it.”

  “We’ll see about that,” the tsotsi said.

  Zanele grabbed his hat.

  “Okay, okay,” the tsotsi said, and took the hat from Zanele’s fingers.

  “That doesn’t sound convincing to me,” I said.

  “Why is she here, anyway?”

  “You’re looking for money, aren’t you?” Zanele said. “You’re short for Sizwe, and he’s going to set Lerato on you, isn’t he?”

  “No,” the tsotsi replied sharply.

  “I’ll tell Mankwe you don’t have to pay us for singing this week,” Zanele said.

  The tsotsi gave a soft, bitter laugh. “Zee, that’s only five rand. I’m short by a hundred.”

  When I stepped out of the bus onto the dirt road, I looked for familiar signs or landmarks, but there were none.

  “This way,” Zanele said. We followed her, took enough turnings that I was lost. Then I saw it. A tiny clinic with a battered sign. There was a line of people waiting for their turn in the winter sun.

  “She stabbed me.” The tsotsi stepped into the room. He cocked his head at me to indicate who he meant.

  “I did, but that’s because he was stealing from us,” I said.

  “Not steal. Give me money you owe us, how many times do I have to say it?”

  “We owe you nothing.”

  “You shouldn’t have tried to take their money, Thabo,” Zanele said. “And you, you don’t know how to use a knife.”

  “It was meant as a deterrent.”

  The tsotsi scoffed. “Any fool can see you can’t use the knife. Any fool.”

  “I got you, didn’t I?”

  “Let me see the cut,” the doctor said, and stepped forward. He was a tall Indian man who stooped just slightly at the shoulders, but that was probably because of the low roof of the clinic. His coat was spotless white, and he, like everything else in the room, smelled strongly of disinfectant. A window in the corner let in a soft cool breeze. The doctor took a pair of scissors and undid the bandage slowly. He leaned forward and looked at the cut for a few seconds.