The Boy Next Door

by Irene Sabatini

  Whenever Daddy talks about Magwegwe he always laughs. He finds Magwegwe very funny. He will say something like, “Those Magwegwe people, masters of improvisations….” And he never tells the same story twice about Magwegwe; there is always another story waiting in the wings about any subject that will make his eyes water and his body bend over with laughter. I can tell that he misses Magwegwe. Every now and then he goes down there to fix someone’s radio or TV.

  Mummy does not miss Magwegwe at all. She did not find it at all funny.

  Magwegwe was the place of her greatest humiliation, the place of my birth. Instead of being born on the right day like any normal baby, I chose to make my grand entrance three weeks early. And instead of giving warning signs so that she could go to the hospital in good time, no, I hijacked her when she was at Renkini, the bus depot, and made her give birth right there on the concrete floor with drivers, conductors, bus passengers, thieves, crooks, rapists… all watching what was going on between her legs and what kind of thing was coming out. Mummy would never forgive me for that. Or forgive Magwegwe. Or even forgive Daddy for making her live in Magwegwe.

  Up to a year before we moved in, Baysview was a Whites-Only suburb. Ian Smith changed the law: he wanted to show the world that his government was a reasonable one and not racist by any stroke of the imagination. He said that people in Europe and America were being misinformed by communists and their sympathizers. There was no apartheid in Rhodesia.

  “We are Pioneers,” declared Daddy. Because of this we had to be brave and to take everything in stride—for example, when someone left a dead snake in the letter box, Daddy carefully took it away with a stick and said that no one had ever been bitten by a dead snake and that this was the work of some mischievous boys. Later, in the dustbin I found the white piece of paper Daddy had taken out with the snake. It said, shit happens, to terrs.

  Mummy had her reservations about Baysview when she first saw it.

  First of all there was the cemetery that was four bus stops away from our new house. Even though she is a good Christian, she still believes in ancestral spirits and ghosts.

  Before independence the cemetery was full of dead soldiers from all the wars the whites had fought and there were also tiny graves where dead white babies lay. Once, I walked home from youth group at church, and instead of walking up along the road, I went down and walked among all the dead people and angels. After a while I got scared and I ran all the way out.

  After independence, black people joined the whites, and the whites started going all the way up to Burnside in the kopjes to try and find a place where they would be left to Rest in Peace.

  Daddy says, once you are dead, you are dead. That is it.

  The railway track that cuts across Baysview also troubled Mummy straightaway. Every day at about three o’clock, we can hear the train that comes from South Africa rumbling onwards to the station. She says that the train gives her headaches, and very often she retreats into the bedroom and lies down with the door shut.

  Daddy says that the train is bringing goods and thieves. Services.

  Mummy approves of the fact that Baysview is so close to town; she just has to catch one omnibus, which drops her after twenty minutes directly in front of the Large City Hall, instead of her getting all squashed up in two or three Emergency Taxis when Daddy is at work and can’t act as her chauffeur.

  Once a month we all tshena in our finest clothes, and Daddy drives us into town at night to do Window Shopping. Sometimes Rosanna and even Maphosa come, too. Daddy parks the car at the end of Selborne Avenue opposite Thomas Meikles department store, and we walk along the pavements and look at all the brightly lit shopwindows. Meikles, and then across the road Edgars, Truworths, Topics, and across another road Haddon and Sly and all the little shops in between. Maphosa entertains us with his comments about the white dolls in the windows and about the other families we pass who are also tshenied and doing Window Shopping. His best, most colorful comments are reserved for the couples we bump into who are busy fondling in corners.

  “This is not your bedroom,” Maphosa growls.

  And if he is really mad he growls in deep, deep Ndebele. Once, one man who was wearing a white cowboy hat like J. R. Ewing’s in Dallas threatened to put Maphosa in hospital in double-quick time. Daddy had to apologize profusely to the man and also give him one dollar to fully restore his manhood, which Maphosa had attacked in some choice Ndebele proverb. Maphosa was very angry with Daddy; he said that he would have knocked down the man with no problems. Daddy told Maphosa to keep his opinions to himself in future, but this has not stopped Maphosa. There is always something for him to comment on. He does not like city women who encase their bottoms in tight fitting trousers or paint their lips with bright red lipstick. These are the two things that make him most angry when we Window Shop, and it is best to cross the road if you spot them before he does.

  The other good thing about Baysview is that it is close to the Drive Inn. Daddy likes going to the Drive Inn because it is a chance to take the Cortina for a drive and check the work he has done on it during the morning on Saturday. Sometimes we will not reach the Drive Inn because he hears a strange noise and turns “the Old Lady” back. We unpack the baskets of food and blankets and watch ZBC instead.

  When we are at the Drive Inn, my heart beats very fast no matter what movie is showing. I sit outside on the gravel, leaning against the front of the car, covered with a blanket and eating the sandwiches Mummy has brought. Most of the time I’m not watching the movie on the giant screen but the groups of young white people who are calling out to each other, kissing, laughing, talking in their style.

  “Hey Mike…!”

  “Howzit!”

  “What’s happening down your neck of the woods?”

  “Did you check…?”

  They are my movie. Daddy also likes the Drive Inn because it is near the airport and it has the best view for seeing British Airways going back to England.

  Now, Baysview is full of blacks.

  The McKenzies were the last remaining whites on our street.

  6.

  Mr. McKenzie Senior died in his sleep. Rosanna said that he was having such a good time in his dreams that he forgot to wake up. Maphosa gave her a bad look and said that the only thing that was called for was for Mphiri to be finally allowed to go home and rest. That old Bhunu had died in his own home not bothered by anyone; Mphiri should do so, too.

  Daddy said that it was all that running and trying to be a young man that was probably the root cause of it all. Mr. McKenzie Senior’s body had got worn out and given up the struggle. An old man could not compete with young men; he only ended up making a fool of himself. What’s more, there was the hair dye, earrings, and leather jacket Mphiri had mentioned to Rosanna that Mr. McKenzie Senior had started wearing just before his death. The man had obviously felt pressurized.

  Mummy suspected Foul Play. She had never heard of someone dying like that. What had he eaten the night before, for instance? And look how happy Mrs. McKenzie seemed. She was not even dressed in mourning.

  Daddy said that Mrs. McKenzie was not even white. She was a Cape colored, and everybody said that Mr. McKenzie Senior had picked her straight off the streets. Mummy pointed out that she must be reverting back to her old ways; day in, day out, the gate was clanging open and shut, all types of men coming in and out.

  As far as we could make out, there had been no wake or gathering of sympathizers at the McKenzies. Even though Daddy and Mummy had had only a very limited contact with Mr. McKenzie Senior, they went to the funeral out of respect. When I got home from school, they were still talking about the disgraceful way Mrs. McKenzie had behaved.

  “She was smelling of beer,” Mummy said. “She couldn’t even stand properly.”

  Daddy said that there had been very few people there and the boy had come over and thanked him for coming. He had introduced his mother, who had also come from South Africa, to them.

  “A very nice
woman,” Mummy said. “Very good. She even shook my hand. Sarah. Sarah Price, yes, that’s it.”

  Mrs. McKenzie had then come pouncing on them, talking nonsense, accusing the boy of trying to throw her out of the house and already plotting to get his hands on her rightful inheritance, saying that he and his mother were spreading lies all over Bulawayo about her.

  “She even tried to attack him with her claws,” said Mummy. “She had to be dragged away.”

  Daddy went back to work, and Mummy went to rest because she had a headache.

  I started my homework. I did not want to write about “My Holidays,” the essay assignment my teacher had given us that morning on the very first day of term in my new school. I did the long division, which was easy.

  I picked up my English essay book, opened the page, and wrote the title “My Holidays.” I thought and thought. I had to fill two pages with “My Holidays.” I knew what some of the girls were going to write about. They had already started talking when Miss Turner wrote the title on the blackboard: Natal and Durban, Cape Town, Okavango Swamps, and even London. My holidays: 16 Jacaranda Avenue, Baysview, Bulawayo. But I wrote something else. I went away.

  When I finished, I went outside and started reading on the veranda. Sue Barton, Student Nurse, had just met the intern, Dr. Bill Barry, when the commotion started. The shouting was coming from the McKenzies. It was happening right by the gate. Mrs. McKenzie was holding on the latch, rattling it up and down.

  The boy was leaning against the Datsun Sunny with his hands crossed on his chest. He let Mrs. McKenzie shout and shout, and then he got into the Datsun Sunny and drove away. Mrs. McKenzie kept shouting after the car. Rosanna, who was coming back from the tuck shop at the corner, said that she had seen a white woman in the passenger seat.

  Mummy who’d been woken up by all the noise said, “Look at how she’s continuing. That woman is only asking for trouble.”

  We could still hear Mrs. McKenzie from the veranda, and when I stood on the clay pot that had the elephant’s ear plant growing in it, I could see her. She was already in her dressing gown. Her hair was all tangled up. But we didn’t tell the police any of this because Daddy said it was best to mind one’s own business; once you became a part of a police case, it was very hard to extricate yourself out of it.

  I thought that if only all this had happened during the holidays, I might have made use of it in my essay.

  7.

  For the first day of school, Aunty Reggie had straightened my hair in her kitchen. She left the straightening cream on for too long because she was busy talking to Mummy about something that was happening at church with one of the girls who was rumored to be pregnant and so should not be graduated.

  “It’s burning!” I shouted, jumping from the chair and dashing to the sink.

  The back of my head was covered in blisters, and when Daddy saw them, he asked Mummy, did she and her friend intend to kill his child or what? “They must see that she is a colored,” replied Mummy.

  At my old school the real colored girls had called me names because I was not light-skinned and I had a wide nose. My new school was a former whites only, Group A school. I had passed the entrance exam.

  Daddy twisted his mouth; he didn’t like it when Mummy talked about coloreds and blacks. Although everyone classified him as a colored (he was light-skinned, had good hair and a straight nose), he didn’t see himself as one. He didn’t talk like a Barham Green or Thorngrove colored and his Ndebele was perfect. He was proud of his mother who had brought him up in Nyamandhlovu. His father was a white farmer in the area who had agreed to have his name on the birth certificate and who had paid for his education.

  Mummy made me practice all the way in the bus, “good morning,” “good afternoon,” using my best European accent.

  We reported at the headmistress’s office. The headmistress, Mrs. Jameson, smiled very sweetly when I said, “Good morning, headmistress,” and even commented on my pronunciation. She called in the deputy headmistress and asked me to read some words from a piece of a paper that she pushed towards me: “The Annual General Meeting of the PTA.” The words were getting entangled in my mouth with my spit. The deputy headmistress stood by the doorway smiling with her hands crossed.

  “Hmmmm, that’s quite a lardy-dardy accent you have there,” the deputy headmistress said, “just like Her Majesty, the queen, no less. We’ll have to be on our toes with the likes of you in our midst now.”

  The headmistress made a noise like a pig grunting.

  “Okay, come along then,” she said, getting up from behind her desk. She turned to Mummy and said, “You may now leave Mrs. Bishop. Linda is quite fine now.”

  Mummy opened her mouth to say something, but then she said something else. “Good-bye, Lindiwe. Good-bye, Mrs. Jameson.”

  Mummy had pressed her tongue down hard on my name, and I knew that she was trying to give the headmistress a message. I watched her turn round and walk out of the door. Seeing her leave made me feel tearful.

  “Come along, Linda. You must not keep Miss Turner waiting any longer. She is your class teacher.”

  I followed Mrs. Jameson along the corridor and down the stairs until we reached class 1B. She tapped on the door and without waiting pushed it open. She stepped inside. “Sorry to disturb you Miss Turner, but we have a late comer. I’ve been assured that this is a one-off. She will apologize. Come along, Linda. This is your new teacher, Miss Turner. Do you have something to say to her?”

  I stood looking down at my shoes.

  “Linda?”

  I looked up at Miss Turner, and she raised an eyebrow.

  “I am sorry, Miss Turner, for my late arrival.”

  The class burst out laughing.

  “Shush, girls. You’ll sit over there.” Miss Turner pointed. “Tracey will help you settle. Hush now, girls.”

  All the girls were saying, “I am sorry, Miss Turner, for my late arrival.” Some of them were pinching their noses.

  “Enough girls,” said Miss Turner, clapping her hands. “We have a lot of work to do. Continue reading, Dawn.”

  “She smells.”

  “Shhhh, Tracey, she’ll hear”

  “So what, she does smell.”

  “It’s what she puts in her hair.”

  “She doesn’t bath.”

  “Tracey!”

  “Actually they don’t bath.”

  “You’re being racialistic.”

  “I’m just being honest.”

  I pretended that I hadn’t heard. Anyway I didn’t care. I made myself think of something else. Mrs. McKenzie and the funeral of Mr. McKenzie Senior, which was taking place later in the morning, came into my head.

  In the three years we had known her, she had worn very short skirts and white stiletto heels. She would sit on her veranda smoking, painting her nails. Or she sunbathed. Sometimes she took the stereo outside and put the music so high that the chickens squawked and squawked. When drunk, she had stumbled towards the fence and mumbled things like, “I know you’re spying on me, you blacks.”

  “I don’t want to sit next to her. My mother said I should tell Miss Turner. It’s not fair. She’s probably got lice or something, all that stinky oil in her hair.”

  That was Geraldine with her melodious voice. In singing class she had all the solo parts. She had the Voice of an Angel. You would never think that anything ugly and discordant would come out of that mouth, but in the week that I had been her classmate, I had learnt my lesson.

  My ears were burning. I sat very still. If I turned round, then she would know that I had heard her.

  “Siss man.”

  I could see her shifting and squirming in her seat, thinking of all the lice crawling about in my hair. Maybe I should shake my head to give her a real fright.

  “Girls…”

  Miss Turner handed back the essays. I got a B plus.

  She asked Debbie, Teresa, and me to read our essays out loud to the class. Debbie’s was full of dolphins and bea
ch games. Teresa’s was chockablock with wildlife.

  I opened my mouth. “My Holidays.”

  “My Holidays” burst out the whole class.

  “Shush, girls, carry on Linda.”

  “My Holidays. Some days I stayed at my house, but on other days I went on adventures with Nancy Drew. Sometimes I visited at Nurse Sue Barton’s hospital to see what was going on there….”

  “But that’s cheating,” said Tracey as soon as I had finished. “She didn’t really go anywhere.”

  “Not cheating,” said Miss Turner. “She was creative in her interpretation of the assignment.”

  “It’s still cheating,” said Tracey.

  “Tracey, do not use that word in here. I have already said it is not cheating. She went on holiday in her imagination.”

  “She’s weird.”

  “Tracey Edmonds!”

  In February a new girl arrived. I watched her standing next to Miss Turner. Her skirt rose above the knee (which was against the school rules and would earn her detention), and her white shirt fit tightly around her breasts. Her hair was permed and reached her shoulders; she was wearing it in a ponytail. Her eyebrows were plucked and her lips shone with lip gloss. She was standing like a model, and when I looked down, I saw that she was wearing proper shoes with real heels and not the rubber tractor ones from Bata’s school range. She corrected Miss Turner about how to pronounce her name.

  “No, not like that,” she said. “Bree Jet.”

  And Miss Turner, who had thrown a rubber duster at Geraldine the previous week for talking, actually said, “Sorry, my dear, Bree Jet.”

  She was born in Britain, which she says makes her more British than Geraldine and the others. She speaks real European English, which is sometimes hard to understand. All the white girls want to be her friend, but she doesn’t have any time for them.