28 Boys

by Ashleigh Giannoccaro

  “Môre.” Morning. He greets, with a hand on my shoulder from behind the lonely couch.

  “Hello.”

  Eiran sits beside me now and we both look out across the street, that now has a read line down the middle. A line I feel I can no longer cross.

  “I brought you a suit to wear, so that you look ordentelik (respectable).” He points to the bag over the arm of the couch.

  “Ek gaan nie.” I’m not going. He wasted his time.

  “Jy gaan, you’re going, if I have to duck tape your mouth shut and shove you in the boot (trunk) of my car, you are going. Dis jou familie daai. Jy gaan.” That is your family, you are going. He grates out at me in anger. “You will regret it forever if you don’t go Francis.”

  I have so many regrets, and this tragedy is already one of them. What is another what if?

  I don’t want to face them all, looking at me – blaming me. I know it’s my fault and that’s enough for now. I won’t be welcome there anyway. I am more guilty today then I was the day I went to prison. I didn’t feel bad for what I did on that day, not like I feel now.

  This murder wasn’t even by my hand and yet my guilt eats me alive.

  “Ek kan nie, Eiran. Dis my skuld hulle is dood, hoe kan ek my gesig daar gaan wys? God sal my dood slaan met weerlig of ’n hartaanval.” I can’t, Eiran. This is my fault. How can I show my face? God will strike me with lightning or a heart attack.”

  “My Ma het gesê, God vergeewe alles. My mom said God forgives everything. Engela forgave you, I’m pretty sure God has too.”

  I’m not sure I even believe in God anymore. I did for a little while there, when I almost had a perfect life. But now it’s gone again, and I question what sort of god kills a baby boy?

  My throat gets tight just thinking about it. The image of his sleeping body, surrounded by the red of his blood, will never leave me. Of all the dead bodies I’ve seen, that one will be the one that never lets me find peace again.

  “At least you can ask God for forgiveness if you go.”

  Fuck him. Why does he make so much sense?

  I don’t want to go, I don’t deserve to be forgiven for this.

  Eiran shoves the suit bag into my lap. “Go get dressed, brush your teeth and wash your face. I’m not asking you to attend this funeral, Francis. I am telling you, you will go.”

  The robot that obeyed orders, and followed instructions inside a state facility for twelve years, gets up off the couch and does as he is told.

  When I come back from the bathroom I look like someone I don’t know. The smart suit, made from expensive material, fits me like it was tailor made just for me. It smells clean, like the good Stasoft (softener) and Skip (laundry detergent) – not cheap Sunlight washing powder or green bar soap I got used to in prison.

  I feel like I have a new cover on an old book. This just covers the ugliness beneath, and soon it will show through again.

  “Like a new man,” Eiran says as I step into the small lounge and look straight past him out the window, to see if she is there.

  The light has been switched off. She is up. Awake right there, just out of my reach, but I can feel her even from here.

  Her sadness hangs in the air like a dense mist on a winter morning, making everything wet and heavy. It’s crushing me and I am not even close to her, yet it pulls me, and I want to go to her and absorb it all from her.

  “Ek kom nou, sluit die deur. Ek sal jou by die kar kry.” I’m coming now, lock the door. I will see you at the car.

  I am out the front door before all the words are out of my mouth, and as I step over that line in between us I know without a doubt which side of this street is home.

  My hand is shaking when I knock on the front door. I have a key, I could just go in, but I want her to let me in – only if she wants me here. My knuckles thud against the wooden door that has about six layers of peeling paint on it, with an empty sound that echoes through the house behind it.

  Looking down at my feet, the dead goggas insects from last night are littered around where my polished black shoes reflect my face back at me. No one has swept the stoep (veranda) in a week.

  Auntie and Dan aren’t here to sing and dance, and keep it clean.

  Suddenly I am angry at those bugs for dying here and making it dirty.

  Time passes slowly as I take notice of all the little things, like how the dust is stuck in the doormat, and that there was once blue paint on the front door, under the red and green.

  I need to either knock again, or turn and walk away. A quick glance over my shoulder and I see Eiran resting against his car, with his hands in his pockets, waiting for me. The door unlocking makes me look up from the floor between my feet and straight into her eyes, the security gate still locked between us.

  She gasps a quiet breath as if she’s surprised to see me. I expected anger and the door to be slammed closed in my face, but she is turning the key in the gate.

  Stepping back so she can swing it open, I am in no way prepared for her to launch herself at me. I put my arms up, expecting to have defend myself against her angry punches, instead she wraps herself around me in an embrace that suffocates the air from my lungs.

  In her arms I feel us healing from everything that came before this moment. I feel a love stronger than any obstacle, and in those two small arms wrapped around me I feel the power of forgiveness.

  Pulling her into me, I hold onto hope that this can still be home, not the house, but this place in her embrace.

  “I missed you so much.”

  She sniffs the words out between her tears and looks up at me, those small hands resting on my chest. Underneath the vest and smart shirt, right where her hand lies, is the symbol of a murderer etched into my flesh. Yet here, this woman says she missed me.

  “You shouldn’t miss me Engela, I am bad news. It follows me everywhere I go.” I want to stay. I need her to make me go away, tell me to leave so that she can be happy, and safe. “I’m sorry I came back. I’m sorry I love you so much that I couldn’t just walk away. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry for everything. Ek is jammer, so fokken jammer.” I’m sorry, so fucking sorry.

  Engela shakes in my arms. Her whole body shudders with sobs as she cries into my smart jacket. Even through the layers of clothing I feel her fingernails clawing into my chest as she bubbles over with grief.

  “I have nothing left to lose, Francis. I will be damned if I let you run away from this. I did this, not you. They warned me, and I chose you instead of listening to them, so don’t even think about running. Don’t you dare fucking leave me alone, when you are the only thing I have left.” Her little fist beats against me to make her point felt. “I would rather have you, no matter how bad you are, than have nothing at all. At least if I have you they didn’t die for fucking nothing — you don’t get to turn them into nothing.”

  Her words are like razor blades being shoved down my throat as I try to digest what she says to me. She’s not angry that I knocked on the door, that I crossed the line in the road, but because I left her alone when she needed me most. I take her small hands in mine and hold them between us, resting my head on hers, my tears falling into her hair.

  What have I done?

  How can she love me?

  “Ek is jammer, Engela.” I am sorry, Engela.

  I keep whispering my apology to her as we stand on the front steps and hold onto the little bit of humanity left in us. Beneath the pain, loss and rage, we understand each other in a way that no one else does.

  “Eke ook.” Me too.

  She has no reason to be sorry. I don’t want an apology.

  “Francis, ek is lief vir jou.” I love you, Francis.

  I can’t help but smile when she says that, and I kiss her wet cheek softly before I tell her, “I love you too, Engela. Maar fok die liefde maak ’n mens seer soos niks anders nie.” But fuck, love hurts like nothing else.

  She laughs a small little laugh and nods her head.

  “Eiran, wag. Ons gaan
laat wees vir kerk.” Eiran is waiting for us, we are going to be late for the church.

  I hold her hand and we walk across to his waiting car, where I open the door for her to get in. The church is close and we normally walk, but the quiet drive goes so fast that we are there before we can even say a word.

  Of all the children born on this little street, only the three of us and Martin are left. A sad reality. This is a war zone and we are all just casualties of the fight that will never end.

  Engela holds my hand so tight it pinches the skin when we walk into the overflowing church. Each step down the aisle to the front is like a slow motion movie clip, those two picture frames of their smiling faces waiting for us in front.

  The caskets are closed out of respect. Auntie was a mess and Dan just a baby. They are dark wood, and I remind myself to thank Eiran for this after the service. He just did it all, no one asked him, he just did it, like it was nothing to him. But it means everything to us, in the moment of our deepest loss, that he was there to catch the pieces.

  Engela pulls me right up to the front where the smallest little coffin stands next to Auntie’s one, and lays our joined hands on the lid. Even the whispers behind us go quiet.

  There is a second where I understand what people mean when they say they can feel God, because I feel him in this moment. The pain is washed away by the warmth, and love, that little boy has given to me.

  Through her heartache, Engela whispers a soft “totsiens” (goodbye), before she kisses the wooden box that holds her heartbeat inside it farewell.

  We sit down just as the minister takes to his pulpit.

  I don’t hear a word of what he says, because God is telling me that I am still a good man even though my past is filled with awful deeds.

  I can still love her. Maybe I am meant to do this to make up for the wrong that came before. The truth is I never wanted to commit the crimes that litter my past. For the since time since I can remember, I want to do something – I want to make her happy no matter what it costs me.

  I would die to save Engela.

  I will be a good man for her.

  Engela and myself walk out of the church behind the coffins that hold our family, and Eiran drives us to the cemetery.

  I sit in the back this time, and she lays on my lap and wipes her eyes with a pink tissue that someone passed over her shoulder in the church.

  This is what despair feels like, right here in my lap.

  With my hand resting on her back is the absolute destruction of an entire generation of youth, lost to the violence that grips our neighborhood like the grim reaper holding your hand after you’re already dead.

  This place is toxic, and if we are ever going to survive we need to leave it behind us.

  18

  Engela

  hopes and dreams buried with our children

  The purple gazebo above me ripples and flaps in the wind, and my feet hurt on the uneven fake-grass carpet beneath them. I could sit, but somehow it feels wrong.

  The plastic chairs are lined up behind us and the elderly from the church are seated in the shade. Their wrinkled faces and gray hair tell of too many funerals.

  Francis is beside me. He stands tall and straight, his shiny shoes are covered in red dust, and I can’t look at anything else because I don’t want to look up and accept this yet. The dream might still end. I could wake up and it would all be over, they’d be here with me again.

  But we all know this isn’t a dream, and I will never wake from the nightmare that surrounds me.

  “Close eyes, let us pray.”

  The minister’s voice carries away with the wind. As everyone shuts their eyes, I look up for the first time at the two graves in front of us.

  There are holes in the earth that will swallow up the future I wanted for my son, that will bury my mother and all the love she brought into my life. Suddenly I am so angry at the ground beneath me, I want to scream at it for taking what was mine.

  I stand and stare at those deep cavities in the earth and let the rage consume me, while a prayer is said in the hopes that my mother and child will find their way to heaven. After living in hell on earth they deserve at least that.

  “Amen.”

  Heads raise up and teary eyes open, many of them looking at me. I see the judgement on their faces. They all blame me for this. I brought Nathaniel into our lives.

  In the eyes of this community I am the problem. Look at me, even now I stand beside a man who we all know is gangster … well was. He is a killer. Once before, I stood in this cemetery and buried my brother, beside my crying mother because he killed him, now he is here next to me.

  I feel like a failure. I ratted out Nathaniel to keep them safe, I risked everything for them and still I couldn’t save them from this end.

  Dangerous criminals, boys from the streets, and old women that weep for the loss all surround me, and in this moment of absolute despair we are all just people. No murderers, no villain, thug or drug runner, just people who feel the deep loss of a little boy who didn’t deserve to die and the woman who wore a smile even when the worst days came and went.

  My Ma never let this place kill her spirit, she was so strong. Now I don’t have her strength to see me through and I know I will be lost without it.

  The calloused roughness of Francis’s fingers rub over my knuckles as he takes my hand in his to guide me forward. Slowly my Ma and baby boy are lowered into the ground. The choir ladies sing softly behind us, and I imagine them flying off on angel wings.

  Every breath I take hurts. My heart literally aches inside me as the last little piece of them is ripped from it. It’s like open heart surgery as my chest is ripped open with the agony.

  I can no longer hold myself up and fall to my knees in the dirt beside the grave where my baby will rest forever. I hold his little stuffed airplane to my chest. Hot tears burn their way down my face as I watch the tiny wooden box reach the bottom of the hole in the earth, that is smaller than the one in my soul.

  I feel his hand between my shoulders and I see his dusty shoes in the ground beside me, when I look up Francis is still here with me, my heartache mirrored back at me when I see his face.

  We thought we had everything and now we have nothing, but each other. A small nod from him and I know it’s time to say goodbye.

  The soft toy takes an age to fall down and rest with the flowers on top of his coffin. Mamma is jammer Dan, (Mommy is sorry, Dan).

  It was his cherished toy, and I want to climb in there and get it back. I want to keep it, but I know he can’t sleep without it.

  My tears make little mud pools in the red sand that I kneel on. Francis steps away, his comforting hand gone, as he is first to begin to shovel the freshly dug up sand into that hole.

  The men he lives with are here and they take turns helping him, sweating in the sun. They take off their suit jackets, and slowly they bury my mother and child. Eiran is with him, an unspoken bond that goes back to our childhood is shared in just a look between all three of us.

  Choir hymns continue as the soundtrack of sadness, as the men work hard, their sweat drips like my crying eyes. Red dust swirls around us in the wind and I hear the wailing cries of my mother’s friends beneath the shade behind me.

  Guilt still grips me as I whisper quietly to my family in the ground.

  “Ek is lief vir julle. Ek is jammer, Ma. So, jammer. Ek sal dit reg maak, ek sweer. Ek sal beter doen. Hoe kan ek aan gaan sonder julle? Soet wees kleintjie, ouma sal jou ophou en mamma sal eendag weer saam met julle wees. Moenie huil nie, mamma is lief vir jou. Ma kyk asseblief vir my kind, hou hom mooi op en druk hom elke dag vir my.”

  I love you both. I am sorry, Mom, so sorry. I will make this right, I swear. I'll try harder. How do I go on without you? Be sweet my baby boy, granny will look after you and one day mommy will come to be with you. Don't cry, mommy loves you. Mom, please take care of my child, hold him close, and hug him every day for me.

  Francis’s knees in the
dirt beside me stop me from talking to them. I lean my head against his shoulder and we just stay here for a while as the guests move back to church.

  When it goes quiet and only the cemetery workers are left milling around, packing away the chairs and fake grass mat, then he stands first and helps me to my feet.

  I dust off my knees. My stockings are torn but I don’t care.

  We walk back to the road where Eiran waits at his car for us.

  “Dankie dat jy hier was.” Thank you for being here. I say, as we walk out of the gates to the waiting car.

  “Where else would I be, Engela? Your family was my family,” says Francis.

  Now we both have no family. We are alone together.

  “Jy is al wat ek oor het. Francis, ek het niks, behalwe die huis en jou.”

  You are all I have left. Francis, I have nothing, besides the house and you. Nothing.

  I am beginning to realize just how alone I am.

  “You have more than you think then.”

  He cradles me to his side, wrapping a big arm around me, and for the first time today I don’t want to cry.

  The sun has long set when Eiran drops us at home and I walk up the steps to my front door with Francis behind me.

  We are both tired. My steps feel like I am lifting lead weights, and my arms feel heavy as I unlock the gate and door. The hinges squeak open and I reach in to flick on the lights. The yellow glow of the stoep light buzzes on above us and we just stand here. Me just inside to door, and him one step away, looking at me.

  I want him to stay, but I also want him to go. I just need time to breathe. I want to cry alone, but his arms around me earlier took away the pain and stopped me from crying.

  It’s cheating them if I stop crying. It’s wrong. I need to mourn, and if he comforts me it’s easy to stop.

  “Naand Francis.” Night, Francis.

  I say goodnight and I can see that it stings him. He wanted to come inside. I’m not ready yet. I try tell him that without words. I need him to let me hurt a little longer.