by Arushi Raina
“I’m sorry, my boy. Stitches,” he said.
The tsotsi turned to me. “Ja, now add that to your father’s bill for me next week. Medical costs.”
“How many times do I have to tell you, Papa doesn’t owe you anything? Leave us alone. Leave our store alone.”
The doctor watched us carefully, saying nothing. He turned to me, looking me over as he would a small child.
“What’s your name?”
“Meena.”
“Well, Meena, why don’t you get that cotton wool over there, and the Dettol. I’m going to need your help, since my nurse is out.”
I went over to the cupboard and found the bottle, as well as a plastic packet of wool.
“Not her,” the tsotsi said.
The doctor ignored him. He took a sterilized needle from his kit and threaded it.
Zanele pinned Thabo’s fingers on the table. The tsotsi was staring at her face.
I dabbed the wound. “It was a clean kitchen knife,” I said to the doctor.
The doctor nodded, tying a small knot in his thread.
“Dankie. Baie dankie for using a clean knife,” the tsotsi said.
The doctor’s stitches were fine and precise. We watched in silence as he closed the cut I’d made. A few clean lines on the tsotsi’s skin.
The tsotsi made a show of taking out his wallet, a fat leather thing with gold edges. “What do I owe you, doc?” he asked.
“Nothing this time,” the doctor said, eyeing the wallet.
The tsotsi tried to say something, but the next people in line pushed past him.
“Can I come here again? To help?” I asked the doctor as he tossed his gloves in the sink.
The doctor smiled, tired. “Of course. But no more stabbing people, okay?”
Outside the clinic, I saw Zanele leading the tsotsi away, their figures lost in the crowd. I took another Putco bus back to President Street. Everyone stared at me the whole ride. Then the few familiar steps back to the store.
Inside, my father was standing and looking at the blood. “What is this?” he asked.
Seven
Thabo
I found Professor’s body the next morning in my old school playground, next to the tire swing. His glasses were cracked and lay next to his face. Someone had stepped on them. Sangoma, the school cat, sat beside him.
I had heard them talking about Professor when I was walking up Mputhi Road this morning, looking for my money. There were some abantwana blocking my way and talking loudly. I picked one up. He knew who I was. “Where is the Professor?” I asked him.
“Please, Mr Thabo, I don’t know.”
“I heard you telling that girl a made-up story about him being killed.”
When I got to the school, my boys ran away. They were not used to looking at so much blood of people they knew. Even though they always told me they wanted to come with me on my real jobs. I brought some milk for Sangoma. He sat on my shoe and drank it. I looked at the body a while.
“He kept teaching maths in Afrikaans, even when we told him to stop,” the boy told me. “That is why he is dead. They used a screwdriver.”
The sound of car tires against the gravel in the road—the police. I bent down and checked Professor’s pockets. Empty except for a few coins, and a receipt from a jewellery store. He’d found time to spend the hundred rand I’d lent him before he died—but not on umqombothi. I picked up Sangoma and walked away.
Anyway, Professor was just a drunk with too much school inside of him. He spent his spare time chasing after Mankwe, as if someone like her would look at him. There were hundreds of men like him all around here. I wasn’t going to go around Soweto looking for a bloody screwdriver. It didn’t matter which boys had done it. The police couldn’t care less—a black boy killing a black man.
I was wrong about that, because then I heard a whistle, and I saw from the other side of the wire mesh that Sam Shenge, in a purple bow tie, was coming up. This would be a story for The World and something to report to the abo gata too. And Sam would tell the police the name of some poor oke, and the police would arrest him. Then Sam would get his full fee.
Sam pushed past the small gate and came up to where I was standing. I got a few punches to his face before he pushed me away. He wasn’t going to look pretty tomorrow.
“Thabo, I didn’t kill him. So why you hitting me?”
Behind him on the street, the abo gata were getting out of their car. I turned to leave.
“Why, Thabo?”
Zanele
“Why did you get into that mlungu’s car?” Mankwe sat on the chair, pulling up her stockings. Thabo had come by and told her she was still booked for tonight. Noon light shone through the window onto her bare legs and my arms. She had too much blush on her face. I didn’t say anything. I just kept rubbing green soap against the blue cotton of Mama’s uniform.
There was something strange about Mrs Craven’s son. He changed every time I saw him, so that it was hard to know what kind of mlungu he was. The first time outside the shebeen, when I’d found him in black face, his leather jacket smelled of whisky and his voice had been loud. He hadn’t been scared. Almost like he’d wanted to get caught. With me holding his shirt, he waited to see what I would do. And when he finally realized we were going to beat him, he ran away with his friends like it was a game.
Then the second time, at his parent’s dinner table, he had been quiet, looking at his parents and guests like they were strangers. Everything about him was ironed and neat. His hair was combed carefully back and gleamed in the living room light. When anyone said anything, he agreed. Then he had come and offered me money to say nothing about being at the shebeen.
And then this last time when I drove his car. He stared and stared at me and didn’t look away.
“Why?” Mankwe asked again.
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t know? That’s new.”
“Anyway, it happened,” I said. “We need to be careful with Mama working for that family.”
“You need to tell her.”
“I won’t do it again.”
I’m Jack, he’d said, as if his name would change everything. His friends and his mother. His giving money to keep people quiet.
“You’re always finding new ways of getting arrested.”
“That’s not—”
“I know you better than anyone else. And yes, Zanele, that is what you do. You do not think about other people. You never have.”
I took my hands out of the laundry bucket, carried it outside and threw the water out. Through the door, I could see Mankwe stepping into her heels. She picked up her mirror, smoothing the lipstick around the edges of her lips.
Then she put the mirror down and walked out to me and held my shoulders, her fingers pressing into my skin. “You haven’t gone to school today,” she said. “And you didn’t go yesterday.”
“Yes. I haven’t.”
“Zanele, all we want is for you to go to school and come back. That’s all we ask.”
“You sound like Mama. She told you that too. Now you go and put makeup on your face and sing at the shebeen like it’s all you want from life. You keep doing the same thing over and over, thinking it will get you something better.”
Mankwe’s expression didn’t change. She had to do the show in ten minutes. She wasn’t going to mention Professor. “Yes, all of us except you, Zanele, are blind.”
Then she left.
I finished hanging up the washing. I went back behind the curtain, to the part of the room that Mankwe and I shared. Her boxes of things had been tipped over and shaken out onto the floor. There was a pink gift bag with tissue paper coming out of it next to her mirror. I pulled out the tissue paper—a gold ring in box, and a letter written to Mankwe, written in sloped, looped writing that belonged to someone who fou
nd time to practise their handwriting—Professor.
I closed the letter and put it back so I wouldn’t have to read it. Suddenly, I felt sick.
If things had been different, I would have teased her. “Why Professor? You can have anyone in Soweto. Why him?”
Now he was dead—a screwdriver in his chest. Killed by his students. Some of us.
As I waited for Vusi and the rest, I looked at the collection of cigarette butts on the ground outside school. There were layers of them—testament to so many meetings, so many plans made and rejected. It was May, and there was one more death to add to the list.
“Zanele,” Vusi said. “Long time.”
“Maybe not long enough,” I said, as Themba ducked out of the bushes and dropped his cigarette. He was the tallest of the boys, a soccer player, not a debater. I stubbed out his cigarette with my shoe.
Themba smiled.
Masi pushed him out of the way and brushed the leaves off his bell-bottoms. “How’s it?”
I looked up at him, trying to read his face, then Vusi’s, then Themba’s. I had not seen them for a few days. “I’m fine.”
“You’ve heard,” Masi said.
“Yes.”
“This can’t happen again,” Masi said. “It can’t. We need to make that clear tonight.”
“How are you going to do that?” I asked. “How, exactly?” My voice was cold.
I took the path into the school, leading the way through a window into Mr Mamphile’s classroom.
We pulled the chairs to the front and used lanterns to light up the desk. Just a few years ago, this classroom had belonged to one of Masi’s heroes, Tiro, a history teacher and activist. He would walk around the classroom, shake his hands and shout about the Afrikaner, the Bantu system. They were such normal obvious things, but Tiro made us realize how the Boer did everything to make us hate ourselves, distrust each other.
Tiro went across the border to Botswana to get away from the abo gata. But we learned they sent him a parcel bomb. They say he died instantly. Masi talked about it sometimes.
We waited in silence for the others to come, from schools across Soweto.
“We need to take their filthy buildings, their police stations, their informants and burn them all.” As Dlamini leaned closer, the lamp tipped forward. Masi grabbed it and moved it away.
We sat at a small wooden desk, our elbows touching, our faces a few inches apart from one other. The window looked out on the playground and the road, where cars bumped over the potholes at intervals. Vusi took notes.
“Hasn’t today’s killing been enough?” I said.
The others at the table stared at me. Vusi cleared his throat.
“Since when have you been the baas at this meeting?” one of the guys from Naledi said. I think his name was Winston. “I haven’t even seen you here before.”
“Professor was one of us, went to this school,” I said.
“Zanele is right,” Masi interrupted. “We cannot let this kind of thing happen again. We must work together. We have an objective: to establish cells in all the schools so that we can pass along messages within hours. A network that is undetectable by the police.”
“That’s magic, my friend,” said Winston.
“We have Naledi. Even Orlando West. What about the others?”
“Phefeni,” said Thandi. There was a scar on her face, from forehead to cheek.
“And I’m from Jabavu,” said Dlamini.
“Who told you about our meeting?” asked Vusi.
“Zanele,” said the boy.
“We are missing leaders from two schools, Zanele?”
“I told them about this meeting.”
“Okay. Make sure they are here next time.”
“We at Phefeni have news,” Thandi interrupted. “We are planning our own strike.”
“When, sisi?” Vusi asked.
“You will see,” Thandi said.
“But don’t you think, sisi, it would be better if we all worked together to make one strike?” Vusi asked, his voice gentle, persuasive. I knew that voice.
“When is your strike coming, bhuti? You have been telling us for weeks, and nothing has happened.” Thandi leaned forward. The black-red of her scar glistened in the candlelight.
“Soon,” said Masi.
“We are not waiting for your orders,” Thandi said.
Vusi looked as if he was about to say something, but Masi put a hand on his arm. “It is good. More strikes are better.”
“So next on the agenda. The school boycott,” Vusi said.
We all heard it—a car slowing down, then stopping by the pothole, stopping at the school gate. Vusi’s eyes moved to the window. A policeman got out, and then a blond man in a black suit. Wordlessly, Vusi crumpled his agenda and threw it to the other side of the classroom. Dlamini ran into the corridor. I didn’t think he would get away before the police came.
“Masi can’t be here,” Themba said. “He can’t.”
“It’s too late,” Masi said, calm.
And it was, because the classroom door opened and the blond man came in. He looked familiar, I didn’t know why.
“Good evening,” he said, and walked slowly into the classroom. He came in alone.
There were twenty of us, but it would have been stupid for us to run out now. He walked to our table and stooped over. Where the lantern light caught his clothes, I saw they were dusty. He smelled of cigarettes.
He held out his hand to Masi, as if he knew who he was.
“Coetzee,” he said. “Nice to finally meet you.” The man’s fingers were long, and he had rings on his middle and ring finger.
“Masi,” Masi said, without taking his hand.
“I’m sorry to interrupt this . . .”
“Debate meeting.”
“Debate meeting,” Coetzee repeated, and smiled, the skin near his eyes and mouth cracking, as he looked around the silent classroom, its empty chairs, and the twenty of us clustered together. “Yes, very sorry, what is the debate?”
“We’re debating,” Masi said, “the tax system in the Bantustans.”
“The tax systems? Interesting choice,” he said, still smiling, walking around our table in a slow circle. His accent was mildly Afrikaans, and he spoke slowly, as if he liked to hear himself speak.
A policeman came in, holding Dlamini, whose shirt was torn, his arms twisted behind him.
“Ah, Coobus,” Coetzee said to the policeman. “Why don’t you let that gentleman have a seat?”
The policeman jerked the boy’s arms apart and bent his body into a seat. The boy moved to get up—the policeman hit him on the side of the face, leaving behind a red line where the metal of his wedding ring had met skin. There was a gun in the policeman’s belt. The boy looked away from us, but stopped moving.
“And I think, let’s get rid of this table too,” Coetzee said.
The policeman took the gun out of his holster and jerked it at Dlamini, who got up and moved the table away from us. I started helping him, and then Masi did the same. The policeman kept the gun on the boy until we were all in our seats, in a line, facing them.
“This is unpleasant. I know,” Coetzee said. “But the reason I am here, as you may know, is that I’m looking for a young woman.” None of us said anything. “Let me explain—”
“Excuse me, sir, but are you part of the police?” Masi asked. “Because I don’t see a police badge.”
The man laughed. “Let me explain,” he said. “As I’m sure you all know, there were some trials a few weeks ago. Some people on this debate team, I believe, were arrested for terrorism. Now, they were very good at making sure they didn’t implicate each other. Even after questioning. But, you see, I visited the guide at the power station the other day. Nice man. He remembers a boy, your friend Billy, and two girls. He’s
sure of it. And I wonder if you people know of this other girl that the guide was referring to?”
He looked up and down, lingering on each of our faces. And then he stopped and stooped over Thandi, and looked at her wide scar. She did not blink. Her chest rose and fell slowly, like she was sleeping.
Then he came to Tina, who was from Naledi. He looked at her small pretty face. Then finally, he came to me. I saw that his skin on his face was spotted pink, brown and white. Maybe someone had poured something hot on him and left it there, for a long time.
“What is your name?”
“Zanele,” I said. I forced my palms to be still in my lap. I hadn’t given my name to the guide at the power station. This man could not know for sure that I had been at the power station, unless Billy or Phelele had told. But Billy had come back changed. He didn’t even want to speak to me now.
“You’re a singer at one of the local shebeens, I’m told. Very good.”
I said nothing.
“You don’t know who it was at the power station, Zanele?”
“No, I don’t.”
Coetzee finally straightened, smiled. “Then we both don’t know. Isn’t that strange? But I’m sure the guide will be able to tell us. Don’t you think so, Zanele, that he will be able to tell with a picture?”
“You’ve said so,” I said, keeping my voice even as the shock of him saying my name went through me.
“But you don’t think so. He doesn’t seem reliable to you?”
“It would be a pity if he identified the wrong person.”
“I agree. But if you find out who she was, you will let me know, won’t you?” Coetzee said. “Oh, I completely understand. You won’t want to tattle on your friends.” He took a cigarette from his pocket. “Come Coobus, I think we can go, as long as these young people know who we are looking for. But I also hope they tell this friend of theirs that if she is caught with some of her other friends trying to cross the border, the police have no responsibility to ensure their safety.”