When Morning Comes

by Arushi Raina

  Then I saw the mlungu walk down from his house. I stood up. He was alone. This was good.

  Nkosi, like an idiot, stood up too, ready to fight.

  “Finish what you are doing, mfana.” I pushed him back down. “You don’t get up unless I say.”

  The mlungu struggled with the gate, opened it. He was taller than me. Now that he was close, I realized I had seen him before. At Pillay’s.

  He came right up to me and said, “What are you doing?” It’s funny, how the English mlungu tries to pretend he’s not scared. At least the Afrikaaner’s honest. If he was going to hit you, no polite conversation first.

  The mlungu moved toward the boy, but I went in front of him.

  “I’m here for a message.”

  “Message?”

  “Message for you.”

  “I see. What kind of message.”

  “You don’t say anything to the policemen when they ask you about the girl. Nothing. Or you are finished.” I pressed one finger into his neck. Then two, so that he could understand how it would feel if he told. And like the stupid mlungu he was, he tried to twist my arm away. Then he put his arm around my neck. Mistake. I threw him over my back and he hit the ground hard.

  Then I punched him. His skin was soft, too soft, like you would expect from a mlungu who spent all his time inside. I tried to punch him again, but he moved aside and got to his feet. Then he hit me, harder than I expected.

  He looked at me like he thought I was going to fall. I hit him. He tried to get up again, but I put a foot on his shoulder.

  “You go back to your house, and make sure you say nothing to the police. Otherwise I will make sure they find you tomorrow on the railway tracks.”

  The mlungu stared at my bow tie. Blood ran down his face. He smiled. “I know who you are. You’re Zanele’s thug.”

  I hit him hard this time, my knuckles crashing into his teeth. Then he caught my arm and held it, just waiting, staring at me with his pale, almost transparent mlungu eyes. Behind him, I saw someone run down from the house with a rifle. Probably his father.

  I leaned down and pulled the mlungu’s neck toward me. The father stopped. I kept my arm around the boy’s neck.

  “Thabo,” said Nkosi.

  “What?” I said.

  “I’m done.”

  “Good,” I said, seeing the long deep scratches in the paint. “Now run.”

  At least the boy could run when you told him to.

  It made me sad that I couldn’t kill the mlungu. I pushed him to the ground.

  Then I ran. And the father started shooting.

  Eleven

  Zanele

  I kept thinking about what Jack would do when the police questioned him. I told Thabo about it and his face told me it would be bad. And he didn’t know that it wasn’t my first time in the mlungu’s car.

  After we got away, Jack stopped the car. He tried to kiss me. I almost let him. He smelled of aftershave, peppermint. He wasn’t used to being angry with someone and at the same time wanting them.

  He was wishing I wasn’t black. I knew that.

  He was used to getting what he wanted, and this time he couldn’t.

  I didn’t know what I liked about him. He surprised me. Maybe it was that he could be so quiet, the way he smiled suddenly for no reason. The way he never talked about his life. And the laughing light in his eyes.

  Thabo came back with his mouth bloody and swollen. I wiped the blood off with a cold wet cloth.

  “The mlungu won’t say anything to the abo gata now,” he said.

  I knew why.

  “He needed a lesson.”

  “I shouldn’t have told you.”

  “Ja? Who else?”

  The oil lamp flickered in and out. In the dim light, it was hard to see how bad Thabo’s face was. I put a hand on his forehead. He held it there and smiled, a hole where one of his teeth had been knocked out.

  I wondered if Jack could still walk.

  I wiped off Thabo’s face again, listened to him talk. I knew that if Jack came to see me again, I wouldn’t turn him away. But he wouldn’t. Not after this.

  Meena

  One of the tsotsi’s teeth was gone. Two had gone already, replaced by shiny metal. I think the tsotsi liked showing them off—his smile made sure you saw them every time. “Where’s it gone? Someone stole it?” I said.

  “Thula wena,” he said. “When I say you be quiet, you be quiet.”

  Dr A. filled out the report. “Thabo, I am not going to clean you up every time you fight with the Ivies, The Hazel or whoever.”

  Thabo sneered. “Aye wena, Dr A., don’t confuse me with the Ivies. All they do is dress in pretty clothes. This girl here can fight better than them.”

  “Okay. Educate me. Which gang was it, then?” Dr A. asked.

  “This wasn’t one of the boys here. No, I had to go up to Houghton this time. But it’s okay, the mlungu is much worse than me.”

  “Was it Jack?” I said. “Jack Craven?”

  “I don’t know the name of every mlungu I moer.” He spat.

  “Bandage for tomorrow?” I said, holding it out.

  “Take it, Thabo,” said Dr A.

  Thabo took the sachet holding the bandage, dropped it in the bin, and walked out.

  Dr A. leaned down and took it from the bin. “There are some people—you keep fixing them until it’s too late.”

  I took off my gloves and threw them in the bin. I washed my face and hands.

  When I walked out of the clinic at six o’clock, a hand went over my mouth, and I was pressed against the wall.

  “How did you know about the mlungu,” the tsotsi asked.

  An old lady stared at us, then trotted out of sight.

  “Just tell me,” he said.

  I nodded.

  He took his hand off.

  “When we were at the PAC meeting a few days ago,” I said slowly. “We were caught by the police. And then this white guy came out of nowhere in his red car and lied to the police for us. Then we went into his car and drove away. Zanele didn’t trust him but she knew him.”

  Which was the truth, but not all of it. I looked at the tsotsi, to see his reaction. But his expression didn’t change.

  “Then the next day, at the shop—” I continued.

  “He came there when I was there,” the tsotsi interrupted. “He’s the one you told me to take the money from.”

  “I didn’t tell you.”

  “You did. And you told him where Zanele was. Fok. You make a mess of everything.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” I said. “Please, I need to go home.”

  “So go. Who’s stopping you?” he said, impatiently. The tsotsi rubbed his head, turned to walk in the direction of the bus rank.

  “Wait,” I said, and realized that I was running after him. Running after the tsotsi. I grabbed his arm. “There’s more to the white guy story.”

  “What else?” he said, and stopped.

  “Maybe we don’t know the whole story.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Be careful,” I said, and then dropped his arm. Then the tsotsi was gone.

  Jack

  Superintendent Joubert lowered himself onto our couch. The two policemen who came with him stood politely, one under each kudu head.

  “Come a little closer, boy,” Joubert said. “Let me have a look.”

  Obviously he was enjoying it.

  “Sorry about calling you last minute, Johan,” my mother said. “We didn’t know what else to do.”

  “This one meant business,” Joubert said. “Look, the way he hit you. One of those gangs. Probably was going for the house. Goodness knows what would have happened if he’d made it there. Did you hear about the family up in Sandton—”

  “He
was short, and he had a kid with him. And he didn’t have a gun,” I interrupted. Joubert enjoyed his morbid fancies, but I wasn’t in the mood for hearing about a family being slaughtered in their homes by rogue blacks. My mother came in with another ice pack and patted my face with it.

  “That’s the problem, my boy. You underestimated him,” Joubert said. “You must never underestimate that kind of black. You know what happened the other day? One of my traffic officers was assaulted by one of their women. They’re savages, all of them.”

  My mother pressed a hand to her chest, her default gesture for expressing shock.

  “Don’t worry, we have the number plate. It’s only a matter of time to track it down.” His eyes moved from my mother to me. Lingered.

  “Which kind of black is that?” I said.

  “Hah?” asked Joubert.

  “You said that I shouldn’t underestimate some kind of black. Which type are you talking about?”

  “Shhh,” Mother said.

  “We’ll need a full report on this,” Joubert said. “A full one. Hendrik, come here. Ask him all the questions.”

  “That’s the full report,” I said. “I saw some people near my car. It was a boy and some gangster. I’d never seen them before. They beat me up, scratched my car and then they left. That’s it.”

  Zanele

  “Thabo asked me where Mama’s Madam lived,” Mankwe said, leaning up from her bed. “Why did he want to know where they live?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, rinsing the dishes in the bucket.

  “You don’t know?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Tell me, Zanele. Did you always lie to me like this, or am I just noticing it now?”

  “I am not the only one who keeps secrets,” I said. “You didn’t tell me about Professor.”

  “You never asked. I was going to marry him, and you never noticed. Maybe it’s not your fault you’re selfish, Zanele,” Mankwe said in a quiet voice. “Baba was like that too.”

  “Don’t ever say that. Ever.”

  I dried the dishes and tied my hair up for school. I wanted to cry with her for the husband she had lost. I wanted to tell her that it was better she didn’t know what was going on with me. But I didn’t.

  Jack

  It took me a few days. Finally I took my wrecked car back into Soweto, back to Zanele’s shack with its yellowed tin walls. She was wearing a blue and black school uniform and had her hair tied back. I got out of the car. She stopped when she saw me. She was wearing black sandals with rounded tops, the kind small girls wear. And it was strange that she was here, right in front of me.

  “He really did beat you up,” she said.

  “Pity you weren’t there to watch. Or were you?”

  “He came to warn you. You shouldn’t have fought back.”

  “I haven’t come here for an argument. Or even a polite conversation. Don’t send him to my home again. Otherwise I will tell the police exactly where to find you.”

  “I didn’t send him there. It doesn’t matter if you don’t believe me. Just remember the story you’re going to tell the police, your mother.”

  She looked tired. She tugged her hair out of its elastic. “Go back in your car, and never come here again.”

  I said nothing.

  She put a hand on my shoulder. “What do you want?”

  There was the sound of hooting cars and yelling.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  She leaned in, her eyes resting on my face.

  Then she kissed me.

  Her hand dropped from my shoulder and she stepped back. “Now, go.”

  But I stayed, took her face in my hands.

  Afternoons, we would drive out to the veld, or sit in the car in some side street.

  Once, I went to her home. He mother was working late. From my car, I watched her sister leave for the shebeen.

  At her door, she stared at me like I was a stranger. Like she’d forgotten that, just a few days before, we’d kissed in my car, and in the tall grass. She stepped aside to let me in. I stood, stooped under the low ceiling. It smelled of cooked oats and mud. On one side of the room, a large metal bathtub was stacked on bricks.

  She waited by the door.

  “Why don’t you want me to come in?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t need to.”

  She walked through a thin plastic curtain separating the room and came out with a sequined dress coiled up in a ball. The shebeen dress. “I don’t think we should be meeting in each other’s houses.”

  “You came to mine,” I said, regretting it as soon as I said it. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “I don’t know, Jack. Maybe you did.” Her voice was flat, unfamiliar.

  She put on lipstick, facing a shard of mirror stuck to the wall.

  As I left she said, “Don’t come here again.”

  Zanele

  I liked it that Jack didn’t tell stories about his childhood, his parents, what he ate for breakfast. He didn’t talk about the weather, or rugby, and he didn’t seem to read the newspapers.

  “So then what do you talk about?” I asked him once.

  “Mostly different combinations of nothing,” he said, putting an arm over his face.

  “That’s not true.”

  “Trust me, it is,” he said, half smiling.

  “There has to be something you want to talk about. What are you going to study at university?”

  “Maths,” he said, and rolled over, closing his eyes.

  “Why?”

  He groaned, lifted his head off my lap. “I have to answer this, hmm?”

  I sat up, brushing the grass off my skirt. He traced my cheek with his fingers and kissed my neck, the line of my jaw, then my lips.

  Another time he told me about imaginary numbers. They weren’t real but if you tinkered with them, you could get real answers.

  “They’re used to calculate electrical currents,” Jack said. “You have a real answer that can be used to measure the right amount of electricity needed to power the city.”

  I almost told him about the power station then.

  “You’re not interested in this,” he said. “So why are you letting me talk about it?”

  “You don’t know that. So when do you start at Wits? Next year?”

  He hesitated. “Soon.”

  “Why are you here with me?” I said. “You have your life, I have mine. It’s better that way.”

  “I told you before,” he said patiently. “I like you. It’s not really more complicated than that.”

  “You like me because you’re not allowed to.”

  “Then that’s true for you too.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Of course, of course you don’t give me an answer,” he said, turning away from me. Not angry. Jack never got angry.

  I knew that if I asked him to stay longer, miss the dinner with his friends, he would. So I did, and said I didn’t feel like talking. He just sat next to me, his hand carelessly over my knees. I don’t know how long we just sat there.

  He surprised me. How he didn’t try to understand everything I did, or tell me what to do.

  Jack

  “One condition,” she said, interrupting me. I was joking about the pamphlets she’d thrown around at those schools.

  “Ja, what?”

  “Don’t ask about that.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means, don’t ask me where I go, what I do. Don’t expect an answer.”

  I thought about Oxford. But since she had her secrets, there was no need to mention it. “That’s not hard,” I said. “You seem to think that I’m going to be chasing you around everywhere, wanting to know everything you do.”

  “But y
ou chase me all around Soweto.”

  “I’m not doing any chasing at the moment,” I said.

  We were on a hill that looked over the train tracks, and it was six o’clock. Her skin was soft, warm, as if she were running a fever. Her eyes followed the crowd pouring out of the trains onto the platform.

  “Why do you think they do it?” she asked me.

  “What?”

  I tried to see what she saw in the swarm of black people—maids, hotel bell boys who are not boys but men, carrying their uniforms in carefully sealed plastic bags.

  “I’m not going to answer that question.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s one of your trick questions. You want to trap me into some stupid answer, and then keep reminding me of what a terrible mlungu I am.”

  “You can’t even say the word correctly. It’s mlungu.”

  “Okay.”

  “Anyway, don’t try and get away from the question like you always do. Just be serious for a moment. Look at them. Why do they do that day after day?”

  She propped herself on her elbows and looked at me, pieces of yellow grass in her hair. And I was jealous, painfully jealous of the gangster, all the other shebeen boys—how they were part of her life, how they could see her here, like this, whenever they wanted. But I turned to look at the train instead, at the people. I thought of Lillian, when she came in the morning to clear away breakfast. Light scars on the side of her face.

  “They do it to survive. Okay, go ahead, tell me I’m wrong.”

  But she didn’t say anything.

  “Ah, so that means I’m right.”

  “Something might happen soon to change all this,” she said.

  “How specific of you.”

  She had made a fist, the thumb coming up and over the other fingers. “Amandla.”

  “I’ve told you, speaking to me in Zulu or Xhosa repeatedly is not going to make me understand it better.”

  “It means power.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “You should.” Her eyes returned to the figures on the platform.

  Zanele

  He’d said to me once: “I’m not like this with other people, you know. I tell you what I’m thinking, mostly.”

  “Thank you for that gift. If only I could sell it, or trade it for something useful, like coal or meat.”