28 Boys

by Ashleigh Giannoccaro

  “Naand Engela.” Night, Engela. He steps forwards so he can kiss my forehead. “Ek is net oorkant die pad, I'm just across the road, you can call me any time, day or night, and I will come.”

  He reassures me that he’ll be just across the road and I know I can call him, I also know I won’t. Not yet.

  “Dankie Francis. Vir alles.” Thank you Francis, for everything.

  He smiles a crooked little smile, shakes his head, and I see the sadness under the smile as he turns to go home. He looks back at me one more time from his front door, before I close mine, and lock myself inside with the memories and the harsh truth.

  Turning on the cartoons that Dan used to watch, the background noises comfort me the way they did when they were still here.

  Silence is scary in this place. You can hear gunfire and sirens if there is no other noise, and right now I don’t want to be reminded of guns and death, I just want to remember my baby’s happy smile.

  After I make a cup of instant soup and a piece of toast, I sit on the couch with his little baby blanket over my knees. The kiddies channel still plays, only his little giggle is missing from the room.

  I cannot cry. It’s like I am empty and there is just nothing left where they were— not even sadness. The emptiness hurts more.

  When I can’t take the feeling any longer and I have run out of things to take my mind off the empty cot beside me, I pick up my phone and dial his number. It rings for a while before he picks up.

  I know I woke him by the rough sound of his voice. I don’t know what the time is, I didn’t bother to look, I just needed someone.

  “Engela?” He asks when I don’t say anything at first. “Are you okay?”

  “Nee, ek sal nooit weer okay wees nie. Die huis is leeg, my haart is leeg, and ek weet nie hoe om die pyn weg te vat nie. I want to run away, but I want to be here, close to them. I want to cry, but I can’t. I have nothing left. Alles is seer, Francis.” No, I'll never be okay again. The house is empty, my heart is empty, and I don't know how to stop the agony. Everything hurts.

  I talk and he listens quietly.

  “I let this happen. I made a baby with a bad man, and I couldn’t keep him safe from the very things I promised would never happen to him. Did you feel them judging us today? The old tannies (aunties), they whisper and stare at us, but I have nothing left besides you.”

  “Let them judge, Engela, they don’t know who we are. They just see a gangster and a girl. Net God kan oordeel. Only God can judge. I am not going to leave you unless you want me to go away, and even then I might not go.”

  His voice comforts me more than what he says. I listen to him breathing before I answer him, the sound is a soothing balm to my broken heart.

  “I don’t want you to go. I should, but I don’t.” I swallow the emotion that makes my voice quiver. “Francis…”

  “Ja Engela.” Yes, Engela. (Angela.)

  “Do you think love is something real, or are we just chasing a tokoloshe (evil spirit) in the dark?”

  I know what his face looks like even though I can’t see it.

  “Ek dink daar is liefde in die wêreld vir almal, selfs mense soos ek. I think there is love in the world for everyone, even folks like me. I know I love you, and somewhere inside you you love me, even when you don’t want to.”

  “I want to.” And I really do, but some days I remember my brother and then I want to hate him and all of this feels so wrong. Forgiveness is easy, but it’s forgetting that takes work every day. “But, sometimes Francis…”

  “I know Engela, I am not a good person. Ek gaan nooit goed wees. I will never be good. I will always be a number, and I will probably never earn an honest living. But I will love you no matter what.”

  His sadness as he admits those things out loud is painful to listen to, but it’s honest, and honesty has been the one thing I could rely on from the moment he came home.

  “Do you want me to come over there?” he says.

  “Nee, no, I just wanted to talk to someone. Wat gaan ek nou doen? What am I going to do?” I ask the question burning inside me.

  What now? What happens to me now?

  “Wat will jy doen?” What do you want to do?

  He turns it back on me and I want to hang up on him, but I also want to talk more. I don’t want to be alone.

  “Weet nie.” Dunno.

  I can imagine him shaking his head at me. He’s lucky he didn’t have to make decisions for twelve years, and even now, he came home and everything just worked for him.

  “You don’t have to decide right now, Engela. Jy het jou hele lewe, moenie nou daar oor bekommered wees nie.” You have your whole life, don’t worry about it now.

  But it feels like I need to do something now, like waiting isn’t an option.

  “Get some sleep Engeltjie (little angel), I will come see you tomorrow.”

  “Nag Francis. Dankie – vir alles.” Night Francis, thank you – for everything.

  “Nag, lekker slap.” Night, sleep well.

  I can’t hang up on him, and after a short while of listening to each other breathe he finally puts the phone down.

  After our talk I fall asleep easily, with Dan’s blanky snuggled next to my face.

  The kettle whistles – yes it’s that old that it still has a whistle on it. I keep looking out the window, looking for him, wishing he’d come out.

  I don’t want to phone him, but I want to see him.

  My stomach growls and I try think when last I ate. I couldn’t face food yesterday at all, the sick feeling in my gut wouldn’t let me swallow anything.

  Scrounging around the empty kitchen for food that hasn’t gone vrot (rotten), I find six eggs and some bread in the freezer. It makes me miss Ma. She would leave a loaf in there for ‘in case’, or bad days. Well, I think this is an in case sort of day.

  I pop four slices into the toaster, willing Francis to come join me. I set the table just like I would have if Ma was here, with place mats and knives and forks. The butter and jam from the fridge get put in the middle, before I scramble the eggs.

  I stare out the window as I whisk them ’til they are fluffy and light yellow. I can see people moving inside the house and someone came around from the back door to the garage, but still no Francis, and my heart sinks a little deeper as I pour this mixture into the hot pan waiting on the stove top.

  The loud sizzle and spatter of the oil that was too hot hisses up in a cloud of smoke, and I forget what I was looking at and start to stir the eggs, making them fluffy with just the right amount of burnt crispy bits like my Ma would have done.

  The smell is morphing my hunger into starvation and it feels like it’s taking forever to cook. The sound of the extractor fan rumbles loudly in my ears as I try get the smoke out of the kitchen before someone calls the fire brigade.

  While I am hungry, the food makes me sadder. The thought of eating alone, at the table that once was surrounded by so much love, has me choking on newfound tears. It’s like the sleep refilled my tank of sorrow as waves of grief roll over me, drowning me in the harsh reality of what I have lost.

  As smoke fills the room with the smell of burning eggs my legs give way beneath me, but before I land on the old linoleum floor strong arms surround me and hold me up.

  I didn’t hear him come in, but he turns off the stove and tosses the flaming pan into the sink, not letting go of me for a minute.

  His hands hold me firmly and the spatula, as he runs water into the burning pan, creating a steam cloud above the sink, misting up the window. The tap is left running when he lifts me up and puts me onto a chair at the table — the same blue table where my family shared all their meals before my poor decisions left me alone.

  My salty tears make a little puddle on the table. With my head resting on my one hand, I watch them pool up into a shiny little pond of my agony. Tracing their names in the liquid I just sit for a while.

  Francis puts out my fire. When he turns off the tap and the sound of the wat
er stops, he tosses the pan into the dustbin in the corner. I don’t think it could be saved after the inferno I caused.

  “Engela, are you okay? Het jy gebrand?” Did you get burned?

  He sits down beside me now, his concern genuine as he puts an arm around my shoulders, dragging my chair closer to his.

  “I’m fine.” I’m not fine.

  “Jy lieg.” You lie. His voice sounds tight, hiding just how not fine he is too.

  “Jy ook.” You lie too.

  We won’t ever be fine. No one in this place is ever fine. We survive, we cope, we get by, but we are never truly fine.

  “Ek weet dis vroeg, en jy is nog seer, maar Engela ons moet praat.” I know it’s soon, and you are hurting, but Engela we need to talk.

  Here is the ‘we need to talk’ speech that leaves me anxious and shaky. If he leaves, I have nothing left. No reason to wake up every morning.

  “Ek will nie. I don’t want to. Not yet Francis, I need you now. You can run away another day.”

  I look into those black eyes that shine in the kitchen light, and I see the boy who once lived across the street.

  His eyes shone with tears when he came inside with skinned knees after the boys were playing too rough outside and he fell in the gravel. Our moms were having tea, but he didn’t cry — boys don’t cry.

  He held those tears in as Ma cleaned it with Dettol (antiseptic wash). I could almost feel it stinging for him. The antiseptic smell filled the kitchen as I stood in the corner with my baby doll and watched his brave face.

  The man in front of me is afraid to cry now, he is holding in the sadness because he has to be strong. To be a man you can’t have feelings, and you certainly are not allowed tears.

  “I don’t care what you want right now, Engela, because you don’t have a fucking clue what you want. You don’t get to feel all of this alone, I loved them too, and I still fucking love you. Fok vroumens, kan jy nie sien nie?” Fuck woman, can’t you see? He grabs my face in his hands, squashing my chubby cheeks into a fish face, making it so I can’t look away from him and those eyes. “Ek gaan nerens nie, Engela.” I’m going nowhere, Engela.

  “You are Francis, you and I both know that this means war and you will fight in it. You will defend your stupid number and end up back inside. Die vier-hoeke roep jou. The four corners are calling you. And I will be left here with nothing, I have nothing, absofuckinglutely nothing left. Ek was stupid om te dink ek kan ’n man soos jy verander, ’n nommer is altyd ’n nommer, ’n mooordenaar kan nie sommer net so verander en ’n held wees nie. I was stupid to think a man like you could change, numbers are always numbers, a murderer can’t just become a hero. It doesn’t work like that, does it? I will always be the girl left behind, because the numbers have taken everything I ever loved, including you.”

  I babble the words out in anger. I’m past denial – I am angry now.

  I’m furious, at him, at God, at this place, and mostly at myself. When I look at him now I see my mistakes, all of them looking back at me.

  I can’t help but wonder, if he hadn’t killed my brother I would have had someone to guide me through all these obstacles that have become defining points in my life. For a second I hate him again, my forgiveness revoked and my heartbreak so excruciating, my body shudders and I shove him away, peeling his hands off my face.

  “Engela?”

  He looks like a puppy that just got kicked. Only I want to kick it again. “Nee Francis, ek kan nie.” No Francis, I can’t.

  I see the little twitch of anger, the violence of who he is coming to the surface as his mouth pulls tight and slightly skew, his tooth catching on his lip and peeking out like a snarling dog.

  “Nee, Engela, jy wil nie. No Engela, you don’t want to. There is a difference.”

  He grabs me by the shoulders, shaking me like he wants to shake sense into me. For the first time his touch isn’t tender, and it scares me. I am reminded in this moment of my place in his world – their world. I am just a woman.

  “I am not a number, I am a person. My heart is breaking with yours. Fuck you for even thinking I’d just go back to what I was before. I’m done killing Engela — I’ve told you that more than once now. Ek is nie ’n Ag en Twintig nie, ek is net ’n man wat baie graag my sondes wil vergeet, ek wil nie daai man wees nie. Ek het ’n haart in my borskas en dit klop vir jou. I’m not a twenty-eight, I’m just a man that desperately wants to forget my sins. I don’t want to be that man anymore. I have a heart inside this ribcage and it beats for you. You were the one that said you forgave me, you let me in, you let me fall in love with all of you. I lost them too.”

  He is seething. His grip is not loving or friendly, it’s hurtful and full of pent up rage, and I fear the look that he wears on his face, like the mask has fallen off and this is Francis. I finally see him and all I want is to love away the hurt, but I am afraid of him — of everything he stands for.

  “Go home, Francis.” I just want this all to end. If I can’t see him, it will stop hurting. “I need to be alone.”

  He looks me dead in the eyes, and answers with a vicious look that makes me want to vomit. “No, I’m never going to leave you alone.”

  How dare he. I scream. My words are incoherent even to me as I lash out at him, swinging, hitting, scratching. I let it all come out. I attack him right here in my mother’s kitchen.

  I turn into a monster as I rip into him. My voice reaches a pitch that should shatter glass. He just stays still, he lets me hurt him.

  Not once does he try stop me, and when I needed a breath, I slowed enough to see him crying.

  And I broke.

  19

  Francis

  what am I holding onto?

  I let Engela take it all out on me. I allowed her to hit me, and scream and claw at me until she had purged the anger inside her.

  When she had nothing left I held her in my arms, and hugged her to my chest while we cried together. There at the kitchen table we both broke into a million tiny pieces of human pain and suffering. With her clinging to me, and me holding on for dear life, we stand there, healing the hurts and making unspoken deals with God, promising things that we have no business promising each other, never mind God.

  Praying he will save her from this, I put myself at his mercy. Trading my life for her happiness would be worth it.

  I no longer fear death. I fear causing her any more pain.

  “Engela.” I finally speak to her, my throat sore from crying. “Kan ons nou praat?” Can we talk now?

  We need to have this conversation, whether she wants to or not.

  She shakes her head, just a small movement, but I can’t leave this like it is. I want to know what to do now, and she is the only one who can tell me.

  “Not here.” Her answer is soft, the fatigue of her emotional outburst is evident in her heavy eyelids, but she still holds onto me as if letting go would mean it’s all over. “Take me to your house.”

  A whisper and her face nuzzled in my neck is all need to know that I can take her away from the hurt, just for a while. Lifting her small body up against mine, I carry her from the nightmare that she is living, ignoring Eiran’s car, and the looks from my housemates as I walk through the front room. I keep going until I get to my small bedroom. Kicking the door shut behind me, the loud slam rattles the windows as I put her down at the bottom on my unmade bed.

  She looks like the scared little girl she really is. It’s so easy to forget she’s still so young. I feel like an old man looking down at her shivering on my bed. She is afraid of me, of us. I am too, but I can hide my fears better than she can. Twelve years in prison teaches you to hide things so deep that no one can see the real you. Engela has seen me though, she knows who I am, and I am afraid that she will look at me one day and see the ugly truth of it all.

  “You okay here?” I ask her as Eiran knocks on the door behind me.

  “Francis.” He calls.

  “Nie nou nie, Eiran. Ek is besig.” Not now Eiran I’
m busy.

  I wait for him to leave, my eyes locked with hers. She nods her head but I see her uncertainty. Shoving myself off where I lean against the closed door, I go to sit on the small plastic cool-drink crate I use as a side table, scraping it across the floor so that I am sitting in front of her. The small grid pattern is cutting into my butt as I take her small hands into mine and start talking.

  “Engela, I was a gangster and I did horrible things. Then I went to jail and I did worse things. I killed people, I raped women, and men. I assaulted men, maiming them for life. Nothing about the last twenty years of my life is good. I can’t change that. I cannot undo what I have already done, but I can promise that I am not the things I’ve done, that I am never going to go back down that path.”

  She swallows, but doesn’t speak. Her brown eyes are big, and brim with questions I’m not sure I want to answer.

  “I will never be free of the life that I lived, there is no such thing when you were born to be a criminal. But now, with Eiran, I have a chance to be just a little bit better than the bottom feeder that I had become. My life will always be filled with danger and risk, I will always have the 28 hanging over my head even if I am not one of them. They let me go, but you and I both know that doesn’t mean I’m not on a leash like a dog, they can pull that chain any time and I have to obey - or die. I know that you know how it works, you didn’t get involved with Nathaniel not knowing how this shit works Engela. There is a code, rules and I can’t change that, but I can change me. And I have tried so fucking God damned hard to change for you, but more so because of you, can’t you see that?”

  A whisper of a smile flits across her face before she looks away from me again.

  “So, I’m giving you a choice right now.” This is her life and I won’t destroy it any more than I already have. “I will leave, go away and never come near you again. If you can’t live with what I have done, or the loss of your mother and son, which I blame myself for even if you don’t, then I will go. But, if you want to me stay, I will stay and I will love you, protect you, and be the best man I can. I won’t make promises that I can’t keep, but I will be yours and I won’t ever leave you alone. You don’t have nothing. You have me.”