by Arushi Raina
Meena held up the dress. “She needs to change,” she said. “Sir, can you please give us some privacy? Please, can you stand on the other side of that curtain?”
The policeman grunted, moved to the other side of the curtain.
As Meena held the dress out for me to slip into, I whispered in her ear, “They’re still coming, right?”
She shrugged.
“Tell Thabo to make a plan before my second song.” And the dress was on and the policeman came through the curtain and there was no more time to say anything. I pulled the wig onto my bare head, looked at myself in the mirror—and the policeman pulled us away. I thought, at least Mankwe was free.
Jack
They tied me backstage with a policeman on me.
They had told me I would be returned home on bail in the next few hours.
When Zanele would be dead.
It depended on the gangster and Meena now. There was nothing for me to do.
There were three other policemen inside the shebeen, all black. And the rest, I guessed, in unmarked cars on side streets, waiting for the special delivery.
She would try to escape. And I was glad.
It wasn’t like I was sacrificing myself. They wouldn’t kill me—I was white.
If she didn’t escape, she would die.
Through the curtain, I could see more and more people filing in. The gangster was allowed to walk around and act like he was still a big deal around this place.
I doubted he’d been able to put a decent plan in place so quickly. The blood was draining from my head. I felt dizzy, staring at the gangster’s hat, flashy, silver, an overt slant to the brim.
“Ah mlungu,” he said, coming backstage. “How are you today?”
I nodded.
The gangster smiled, looking down at my bloody arm. Then he took off his hat and put it on my head. The policeman’s eyes shifted to the hat, nudged the gun against the tsotsi’s back, pushing him away. But what harm could a silver hat do.
It was nine. Zanele and her sister still hadn’t come out. The saxophonist started fiddling with a few long notes. The piano player sat on the stool, a thin man with a single drum in front of him.
They eased into the set and people started ordering beer.
Then Zanele’s sister came on stage.
This was the first time I had seen her. I could tell why the police had made a mistake. They looked alike, but her sister’s eyes were bigger, her face more delicate.
“Sawubona abantwana,” she said, and there was something gentle, magical in her voice. “Today, the first song. West Wind. Mama Makeba.”
A cheer went up in the house. Zanele was probably somewhere close, waiting. With a gun at her back.
“West wind,” her sister breathed into the microphone, the other instruments silent. “Blow ye gentle,” then the piano came in, hesitant, like her voice. “For the souls of yesterday . . .” she trailed off, and the audience urged her on. This time her voice came in powerful. “My sons, proud and noble. Here within my heart they lay.”
Where was Zanele?
Mankwe sang on. And the audience was reminded of the children who’d died in the riots, as if they needed reminding. Their mood followed her voice rising to a festive anger.
Then a voice joined hers.
The men in the audience parted for Zanele as she joined Mankwe. She walked slowly, holding her arms and her head high. Her voice was loud, almost a shout. The sequins shimmered on her dress as she took her place next to her sister, and the audience whistled and shouted in Zulu.
It still was a miracle to me that she was alive. And now I imagined for a moment—because the blood was leaving my head—that I was sitting here, just having a drink and watching Zanele perform and, you know, we were seeing each other. Legally. With everyone knowing.
I smiled at how ridiculous that was. Then the policeman prodded my wounded arm.
Thabo
It was almost ten. My older boy, Nkosi, should have set off by now from the power station. In half an hour, he would come to pick up Zanele and the others in my car. One of the bush boys was in the shebeen, dressed as a girl. Two others lingered three streets away, waiting for the car.
Now, because of the abo gata, I needed a distraction that would take them off Zanele. Then I needed Zanele in the car before they could shoot her. I had two guns, with maybe two or three bullets each, two boys who would do what I told them. A car. No good that Sunny was tied up in a police car.
No wait, two cars. I still had the Impala I had stolen the day of the protest. It was beat up, but the accelerator worked fine.
A distraction—I needed a distraction.
And then I thought of the mlungu. Everything started to take shape in my mind.
Meena stepped outside. She was wearing the red dress that Zanele used to wear for her solo show. Another time I would have laughed.
“Take this.” I handed her my old gun. “Only two bullets. Use them well.”
“So what are you going to do?” Meena asked, putting it in her school bag.
“Aye, thula. Let me think.”
“Think then,” she said. “Just make sure there’s room for me.”
“What?”
“I’m coming in the car too.” She turned to go back inside.
“There is only space for five,” I said. “You crazy?”
“Figure it out, tsotsi,” she said.
“Ah, you are funny.”
“I’m serious.”
This whole time, she had been the most reliable, more than my boys, more than Sunny. Now, when the whole pack of abo gata was on us, she was demanding crazy things.
If my plan worked, I would rule these streets. The whole township would know.
But first, one small thing. I went inside the shebeen, cocked my head. Thulani walked up to me with an empty crate of beer.
“Go to Pillay’s All Purpose and give them this message. I don’t care if they’re closed,” I said. “You break their windows if you have to, and make them come here, round the back. The back, you understand.” I handed him Meena’s school blazer. “Give them this.”
Jack
Now it was only Zanele at the microphone. She held her hand up to get everyone quiet. “Siyabonga, bafowethu. Siyabonga. This song,” she said, “is a new one for me. I have never sung this song.”
A chuckle went through the room.
“Aye,” she said. “I know, I will not sing it like Mankwe, but thula wena.”
The saxophonist started playing first, a sort of dreamy, almost sad, melody. Once it had faded out, Zanele started to sing. Her eyes went to the front rows, the back rows, and then backstage—to me. I recognized the song. “Summertime.” A time when the cotton grew high, the fish were jumping in their lakes. A rich boy, with a rich father and a good-looking mother. He didn’t need to worry because he had these things.
“Hush, little baby,” Zanele sang to me, her voice soft. “Don’t you cry.” And she was smiling. Smiling at a time like this.
It was Zanele’s goodbye. I wouldn’t have expected it from her. She could have gone off with just a glance.
I remember the last time I came here, thinking that the place was tacky, the singer, bad.
Meena ran onstage and pulled Zanele around in a kind of square dance. The pianist obliged, speeding up the tempo.
Yelling from the back of the shebeen. And then there were four, maybe five people running at me, shouting “mlungu.” More people. I toppled, still tied. The silver hat came off my head. I tried and tried to pull my hands out of the cuffs. The policeman gripped me by the neck and waved his gun.
But he lost me to the mob. I was dragged along the floor as more and more people came at me.
The policeman shouted into his walkie-talkie. Then shots. My head grazed stones as I was dragged out of th
e shebeen. More screams. I felt blood spreading over my face, my eyes.
Then I was picked up and thrown onto the back seat of a car. The silver hat was back on my head.
The gangster’s face appeared through the window, a smile stretched his face. “You are the distraction, my friend.”
He came around the back seat and propped me up. He put a mound of smelly clothes next to me. On top of the mound, he put a woman’s black wig.
Then he got in the front of the car and started the engine.
“Where are you taking me?”
“To the police.”
“And this wig’s meant to be Zanele?”
“Be quiet, mlungu. I didn’t see you come up with a plan.”
And then behind us, in the dark, headlights. The police.
They were gaining on us.
The gangster swerved onto a narrow street. We lost a car, but the other one was still behind us.
Then they started shooting. Thabo leaned down in his seat and I dropped to my side, away from the mound of clothes. A shot came through the glass. The wig flew off—hit the front windscreen.
The gangster kept driving. He turned right, tires screeching. But a police car waited at the other end, lights flashing.
Policemen on all sides of the car. The gangster raised his hands.
“Good try,” I said.
He didn’t reply.
Twenty-Two
Meena
As soon as the crowd started after Jack, Thabo’s older boy cut the lights. More screaming. I pulled Zanele off-stage—out through the side entrance where the car was waiting.
And behind us, the police. “Everyone stop. Hands up,” the blond one said. The same one I’d seen before in the shop. Zanele put her hands up slowly, the boy in the driver’s seat got out and put his hands up too. So did the two boys and the woman. Behind the policeman were stacks and stacks of Jack’s father’s beer.
I pulled the trigger. I missed the policeman. The bullet hit the beer. Then again. A crate toppled, shards of glass everywhere.
I threw myself at the open door of the car—Zanele was already inside. Thabo’s boy hit the accelerator with the doors still open, the woman dragged herself inside. The other two hung on to the doors of the car. More shots. One was pulled off. The other let go. They fell onto the road.
The black Mercedes, the blond man’s car, was behind us. There was no sign of the boys now, only the dim outline of the Mercedes in the dark.
Thabo
They put us in the back seat, me next to the mlungu. Then they tied our hands together. The mlungu’s blood was on my suit, my face. He was dirty and smelly. He was smiling, and kept muttering stupid things to me, like how I was a “good one.”
“Thula wena,” I said to him.
The mlungu closed his eyes and leaned on my shoulder. I pushed him off. His head came down again.
After all their conversation about going here, going there in Afrikaans, the abo gata started the car. We were heading for the highway, not the station.
I didn’t see the Coca-Cola truck until it hit the black Mercedes. The Mercedes flew off the highway, down, down, until it crashed on the road below. The truck just stayed there in the middle of the highway, blocking two lanes.
From the sky, God had dropped a crazy Coca-Cola truck driver. Now maybe I would go to church.
One of the policemen got out of our car to check what had happened. There was only one abo gata left in the car.
I looked over at the mlungu. He was awake, staring at the truck.
The mlungu jerked when he heard the shot, and then his mouth opened—opened when he looked at where the abo gata had been. Because he had been shot in the head and his head had hit the window. I stared at the shattered glass. Then I saw in a small boy’s hand, a gun. My gun. In a car I recognized. Thulani.
The boy was smiling like he had won a Mr Soweto beauty contest. “Hurry, hurry, Thabo—”
Up ahead, in the noise and smoke, the abo gata hadn’t noticed. Yet.
Thulani got out of the Impala, ran out, reached through the shattered window and opened the door.
“Get the key.”
“What key?”
“Ai wena, the one for these handcuffs. His pocket.”
The boy pulled us out, tied together, onto the road, the mlungu leaning on me. We rolled into the Impala. Shouts in Afrikaans, but Thulani didn’t need to be told, he was in the driver’s seat, turning, and we were driving through the broken divider to the other side, leaving the Coca-Cola truck, all those dead abo gata behind. I trained my boys well.
“Take the next exit,” the mlungu said, leaning back, like we were his drivers picking him up from the Carlton Hotel. He looked sick. “Take us to say bye.”
“Be quiet, mlungu,” I said. “Try staying alive.”
Jack
There was a moment when I thought the car wouldn’t fall. But then a piece of the metal barrier broke off and everything stopped bending. The Mercedes flipped and spun before it fell. And then a fire, taking over the sky.
The front of the Coca-Cola truck was smashed in. The advertising on its side was untouched—a girl with a Coca-Cola bottle and the words: Coke adds life.
The boy drove us off the highway and then turned us back toward the border. He took us through lonely rural back roads, empty roads, through flat yellowed land and stunted trees. It seemed like a long time before he stopped.
• • •
When I woke up, there were two cars facing each other and figures against the lightening sky, arguing. Meena’s father with his arms around her. Meena was screaming.
And there was Zanele, standing a little to the side. Alive.
The tsotsi got out of the car like he had expected all this to happen, his face bloody. They all ran to him with questions. Zanele ran to him and he lifted her up shouting, happy. Her head was flung back and he was looking up at her.
Last goodbyes. The boy driving our car scrambled into Zanele’s car.
And then, finally Zanele saw me and came to my car. She put her fingers over the cuts on my face. “They will pay for this.”
“Is that all you have to say?”
“For now, yes.” Still her touch on my face, and it was unbearably painful, all of it.
“Help me out,” I said.
“We don’t have much time.”
“I just want to stand up.”
I held on to her and we walked over to the others. Meena, still screaming, was being pulled by her father.
I sat down in Zanele’s car. Then she got in.
“You’re not thinking straight,” she said. She was scared, her eyes gave her away. Scared that I didn’t really mean it.
That was enough for me.
Then we were driving away, waving—me with my good arm and she with both of hers—at the lonely figure of the gangster against the battered car. And then, we were speeding in the pitch black—and my eyes closed. I leaned into Zanele against the itchy texture of her sequined dress.
In front of my eyes, my mother went by, Ricky, Joubert, Coetzee. My house, and then the intricate, rolling spires of Oxford.
Twenty-Three
Meena
I learned later that it happened like this. Jonas went home after I told him that Coetzee had been hunting his daughters. What I know from the newspaper reports is that Jonas took his baas’s gun from its locked drawer and hijacked a Coca-Cola truck. The Rand Daily Mail said that specialists had found a tumour growing in his brain.
I’d like to think that Jonas got to see his daughters singing in the shebeen. Maybe he thought about how Mankwe must have got her voice from him, and Zanele maybe his smile. Maybe, at the last moment, he regretted leaving them.
What we do know is that he followed Coetzee and the rest of us out of Soweto. Jonas knew his roads, knew his highway
s in and out of Johannesburg. He had taken trains in and out, buses, driven a black Mercedes, all his life. And finally—dead in a Coca-Cola truck.
Zanele wouldn’t know what her father did for her.
One day I will tell her.
Thabo
No one goes to Pillay’s All Purpose to ask for money now, not even the other gangs. They know Pillay knows me, and everyone in Soweto knows that I made twenty abo gata disappear last month. A few tsotsi? Easy. Now all the boys who are afraid of going to jail beg me to get them across the border. Desperate people find money somehow.
Yes, the police are after me, but they are after a lot of people these days. More and more of us leave for the borders, and protests across the country.
Maybe I will start my own gang. Sizwe knows I am thinking about doing this, but he says nothing. I am powerful now. They all know he tried to get me killed, and I came back from the dead.
I think of Zanele often, especially at night when the shebeen is closed and it is just Mankwe and me.
We talk about her, but it’s never enough.
It is hard for Mankwe, because she has to earn for both of them. I help out a bit. Mama Lillian stays in the house now and speaks even less than before.
I think of the last time I saw Zanele, how I had lifted her up, and how happy she was to see me. She had said, “I need to check on him.” And she went right past me to the Impala with the sick mlungu in the back.
I think of the way Zanele held her bleeding mlungu the last time I saw them.
I said, “Take your broken bird. He probably won’t make it.”
I get less and less angry about it as days go by. That’s what I tell myself.
I come to the shop often because Meena is the only one who knows what happened. But she won’t talk to me. Not last month, not last week, not tomorrow.
One time she did leave something for me. On the counter, she left the Sunday Times newspaper open at the page about Zanele’s father being the man who drove the Coca-Cola truck.
So I keep coming. Her father says Meena is going to medical school next year. Somehow her exam marks were good enough, he says, and shakes his head. Now she just has to make sure her December exams go okay.