Ishmael Toffee

by Roger Smith

  She smells. Flo, Flo, stinks like poop.

  She sung that once to Mommy and Mommy was very cross. Didn’t smack her—Mommy never did that—but told her she was a very rude little girl. That if Flo heard her she’d be very, very upset. Made Cindy stay up here in her room for the whole afternoon.

  Cindy likes her room so it wasn’t a terrible thing. But she didn’t like it when Mommy was cross. Made her sad. Like thinking of Mommy now. Cindy opens her closet and looks through the books. Finds the right one. She’s too big for it now, but maybe it can help the little man.

  She likes the little man. He’s her friend. And when you have a friend you tell them your secrets, don’t you? If they really, truly are your friend and you can trust them. But she knows she couldn’t tell him with her mouth. Never could do that.

  So she takes out the little pile of cards—pretty with flowery borders—Mommy used to send to people to say thank you when they were nice. Ready to write him her secret.

  “But silly Cindy,” she says, “he can’t read. But he’ll learn, from the book. He will.”

  She takes a card and her pen and very, very, carefully and even more neatly than at kindergarten, she writes him a note. She blows on the card, flaps it the way Mommy used to, slips it between the pages of the book and goes back out to her friend.

  ●

  The taxis are full, so Ishmael rides home on the bus. Slow and stinks of diesel, but what of it? He’s smelled worse and he’s in no hurry, and he gets a seat to himself, back of the bus. Sits with his face against the window, watching the rush hour traffic. All these new cars, small and round looking. When he went away cars were big and square like boxes. Lot more brown people driving now. Even brown women. Didn’t see that, back in his day.

  Apartheid gone, too. Whities and darkies and coloreds all together on the same bus. Go use a public toilet now and you piss next to a white man. Takes some getting used to and that’s a fact.

  Ishmael opens his backpack, lying beside him on the seat. He helped himself to some plants from the big house and who is ever going to notice? Has them in a plastic bag inside his pack, next to the new book the little girly give to him. Checks on the plants—roots still nice and damp—and closes the bag.

  He wipes his hands on his jeans and lifts out the book. Bigger than the last one. More pictures, not so many words. For a smaller kid, he reckons and this makes him laugh. He flips through and comes on a little card, white with flowers, stuck in the pages. Kid must have left it there sometime. He sees a drawing on the front of the card and looks closer. Two stick people, way kids draw, one bigger, one smaller. Bigger one holding something like a net on a pole. Pool scoop.

  Left this for him, the kid did. On purpose. He turns the card over and sees writing and something tells him that what’s written on that card isn’t good. Flashes on those bruises on the kid’s leg, and that gets him all upset and nervous.

  It’s trouble, written on there. For sure. And he wants none of that. But long as he don’t know what it says he’s safe. He folds the card and drops it on the seat beside him.

  The bus drives into Paradise Park and he packs away the book but doesn’t touch that card. Leaves it there. He slings his pack over his shoulder and walks like a sailor to the front, people coming up behind him.

  The bus pulls up and the doors open and Ishmael steps down. Then he stops. Throws a U-turn and he’s back in the bus, and the people are bitching at him. Fuck them. He fights his way to his seat, picks up the card and puts it in his pocket.

  This is trouble, Ishmael. Fucken trouble

  8

  All day long Florence’s nerves have been playing up something terrible. She’s in her room sitting on the kitchen chair given to her by Mrs. Goddard when they redecorated, watching an Afrikaans soap opera set up in Johannesburg. She’s never been to Jo’burg—never left Cape Town—but there are some colored people in the soapie, along with the Afrikaners, and all the broken marriages and love affairs and what-not usually keep her glued to the screen. On nights when she cooks for Mr. Goddard and Cindy, she watches the show on the little portable in the kitchen of the big house, Mr. Goddard doesn’t mind.

  But tonight her attention wanders. She’s terrified of what she has done. Wishes she could rewind the day like it’s a movie, grab those words she said to Mr. Goddard in the kitchen this morning and swallow them back into herself.

  Blackmail, that’s what she’s doing. Blackmailing Mr. Goddard, and him a lawyer with a big firm in Cape Town, offices in a fancy building by the Waterfront.

  Are you mad, Florence April? Mad in your head?

  She’s never done anything like this. Never broken the law, even though where she grew up too many people around her did bad things. Stole. Took drugs. Sold their bodies. Even her useless husband got himself sent to prison for stealing a white man’s car. Got himself murdered in prison, too, for some reason she never properly understood.

  Truth be told, she was glad when he died. Florence never could have children, so there was none of that to worry about. She was working in service, here in the white suburbs, before he got locked up—him demanding money from her all the time for his drink and his sluts. Good riddance when he was stabbed. When the prison officials contacted her to ask if she wanted the body for burial, she said, no, bury him yourself, he’s not my problem no more.

  Not very Christian of her, but that was how she felt and what of it?

  But now, fifty-eight next birthday and she’s doing this crazy thing. She gets up from the chair, the soapie just a gabble to her, and stands by her window and looks out at the house. Only the kitchen is visible from here, but the lights burn and she knows Mr. Goddard is in the living room with Cindy watching DVDs and eating pizza.

  Florence was in the kitchen when he came home. Heard his car pull up and his key in the front door, her stomach all in a knot. Expected him to come and find her and threaten her, but he just called for Cindy and she heard him pouring a drink, the sound of the whiskey bottle against the glass.

  She sneaked out like a thief, back to her room. Her head is pounding and she runs water in the little kitchen and drinks a headache pill. Goes to the closet and takes out the panties. What was she thinking? People like her don’t blackmail the John Goddards of the world. Or if they do, they don’t get away with it.

  She’ll go up to the house now. Take them to Mr. Goddard. Beg his forgiveness, tell him she doesn’t know what came over her. She has the door open, already walking across the lawn with the plastic bag in her hand, when she stops.

  No. It’s too late for that. If she gives him these he’ll throw her out, there and then, and who’s to stop him? She’ll have nothing. And no one.

  She has no family, lost touch with all the people out on the Flats. Her only friend, Etta Sampson—also in service—dead a year now from breast cancer.

  Florence stands in the gloom, clutching the plastic bag to her chest, terrified of keeping it in her closet. Imagines John Goddard searching her room and finding it. So she crosses the garden, hidden from the house now, and comes to the high wall. There is a pile of bricks beside the wall, left by the builders years ago and she lifts a few and hides the bag.

  Florence creeps back to her room, locks the door and puts on the kettle for some tea. She has no appetite and knows that there will be no sleep for her tonight.

  9

  Ishmael Toffee got him a paraffin lamp by the Indian shop near the taxis, and now the wind has died he lights it and puts it outside in his garden. Can’t stop thinking of that card—why didn’t he leave the blessed thing on the bus?—and those bruises like fingerprints on the child’s leg.

  To calm himself down he digs in the sand with a fork, makes a few holes big enough for his new plants. Closes the soil around the roots and wets the ground from the Coke bottle he uses to store his drinking water—fetches it from the communal faucet.

  Ishmael, squatting, fires up the bit of the cigarette still left in his pocket and sits a while, listening to peo
ple shouting in the distance and the sound of banjo music coming from a shack somewhere. A drunk man laughs his stupid head off, then shuts up. Never quiet, here. But nothing like Pollsmoor Prison. Thirty, forty men in a ten-man cell. Them crying, screaming, fucking all day and all livelong night. This place is like a church compared to that.

  A dread takes Ishmael low, thinking back to that prison. He stands, leaking smoke through his nostrils, and kills what’s left of the roll-up on the tin of his hut, little sparks flying like bugs.

  He’s in his doorway, ready to lock himself in for the night, when the girl from the shack opposite comes on, baby tied to her with a cloth. Doesn’t look at him—short memories these bloody people—as she gets busy opening her newly mended door, light from the lamp inside spilling yellow on the dirt.

  Ishmael can’t stop himself, he picks up the little card off the floor, all the time going, no, fuck it, Ishmael, don’t do this, as he walks across to the girl, who is inside now and when she sees him coming she’s closing her door fast, probably thinking he wants his reward for chasing away her rubbish of a boyfriend.

  Ishmael sticks a foot in the door and she gapes at him bug eyed through the gap.

  He holds up the card. “What does it say?”

  She just looks at him.

  “Read it to me,” he says.

  She takes the card and steps back into the light of the paraffin lamp. “‘My daddy hurts me.’” Staring at Ishmael now. “That’s what it says.”

  10

  Cindy lies in bed, holding tight onto the teddy bear Mommy gave her before she went to heaven. Tonight Daddy hasn’t taken her to his bedroom, or made her put on Mommy’s make-up, and she thinks her prayers to gentle-Jesus-meek-and-mild have made him take pity on her.

  And gentle-Jesus has sent her the little man, she is sure. To be her friend, like Teddy, and look after her. She’s getting sleepier and sleepier and running a long time ago on the beach with Mommy when the door makes a creak and the light touches her face like a finger.

  “Cindy? Cindy?” Daddy says, big and dark in the doorway.

  She squeezes her eyes tight shut and buries her face in Teddy’s furry belly, but Daddy is in the room, his shoes saying dirty whispers on the carpet.

  11

  Ishmael’s avoiding the child. Down here in a part of the garden he’s never been to before—almost like he’s in the bush—far from the house. He found a curved blade on a long handle in the tool shed, and he swings it in easy arcs, slicing at the weeds. Lets the heat and the movement take him far away, where nothing can hassle him no more.

  Finds himself singing a song he learned he doesn’t know where. Old slave song. You just sing the months of the year, starting with January, get to December and start all over again. Stupid song. But it gets him through a big clump of weeds in no time—a smell like bitter tobacco filling the air as he chops off their green and yellow heads.

  January, February, March . . .

  Swinging the blade.

  April, May, June, July . . .

  Ishmael stops to wipe sweat from his face on the arm of his shirt, pulls at a stubble of weeds stuck to his jeans and walks deeper into the undergrowth, grass high as his knees, carrying the blade on his shoulder like it’s a gun. Comes to a wall of thick, green bush, pushes his way in and by the time he hears the child crying it’s too bloody late to turn back.

  She lies there, blonde and pink against the green, curled up like a silkworm. Lifts her face and says, “Go away! This my special place!”

  He puts up his hands like he’s surrendering, grabs the blade and he’s out of there, ready to go get some water from the house.

  Hears her voice, “Ishmael?”

  He stops and says, “Ja?”

  “Come back,” she says. “Please.”

  Ishmael lets the blade fall into the long grass and he goes to her. She’s sitting now, holding onto her knees. Her eyes are red but she smiles up at him.

  “Sit down,” she says. “Do you want some tea?”

  There are no tea things, so he knows this is play-play. Kid’s stuff. “Ja,” he says squatting down, “sun makes a man thirsty.”

  He watches as he she pours from a play-play teapot into a play-play cup and hands it to him, the proper little white madam. “Here you are, Ishmael.”

  He takes it and be buggered if he doesn’t drink at it, even sticking out his pinky finger like he seen some whitey do on the TV. Makes her laugh.

  “This is where the fairies live,” she says. “Do you know about the fairies?”

  “Little people? Like me?”

  Gets her giggly. “Even littler.”

  She finishes her play-play tea and puts the cup down, so he does the same.

  “Did you find my note?”

  “I find it, missy. Nice drawing.”

  “Did you read it?”

  “Tole, you. Can’t read.” Sees her eyes. “So I got me a friend to read it to me.” She’s nodding. Waiting.

  Last chance, Ishmael, to get your stupid brown ass up and out of this trouble.

  He stares at her, then he says, “Your daddy, what he do to you, missy?”

  She looks down at the grass and when she looks back up at him she is a child still, but is also something else. Her eyes fill and tears run down her face. She shakes her head and says nothing, just reaches out for his hand, wrapping all her small fingers round two of his, and holds tight as if she’ll never let go. Just sits there and cries, tears dropping onto the green lawn like broken glass.

  ●

  Ishmael is shirtless, washing himself at the garden tap, crude ink women dancing on his stringy muscles. Faded curse words and knives and guns and playing cards and skulls carved years ago into his skin. Telling more of who he once was, these pictures, than his own tongue ever could.

  He stands and dries himself on a torn old towel he found in the pool house. Time to go home. He pulls on his shirt that stinks of sweat.

  Ishmael hasn’t seen the child seen they walked back together from the bush, hours ago. And she never said no more about her daddy. Maybe there’s nothing to say. Maybe it’s all play-play like the tea things. Maybe those bruises are just bruises kids get.

  Ja, Ishmael. Right. And that crying?

  Maybe just a child crying for its dead mommy, way a child would.

  He goes to where his backpack lies under the tree and when he lifts it he reveals two dolls. Girl doll with long blonde hair and boy doll with short hair. Dolls got no clothes on. Boy doll lies on top of the girl doll.

  Ishmael looks up and sees the child standing by the kitchen door, watching him. Tires chew and spit gravel and the big, quiet car comes up the driveway and stops outside the kitchen.

  The tall white man, all dressed up in his suit, gets out the car and shouts, “Cindy! Cindy!”

  The child stares at Ishmael, walking across to her daddy. The man bends down and says something that Ishmael can’t hear. The child shakes her head and the man takes her by the hand and as he leads her into the house she looks back at Ishmael. Then the white man closes the door and she’s gone.

  ●

  Mr. Goddard comes into the kitchen, holding Cindy’s hand. First time Florence has seen him today. He left by the front door just after she came in this morning.

  He hands her a hundred rand note and says, “Pay the gardener.”

  He walks with the child toward the living room.

  Florence goes out the back door and sees the little man standing there under the tree, everything that makes her ashamed of being colored.

  “Hey,” she says. “Come get your money.”

  He hurries over, backpack hanging from his shoulder, his smell thick in her nose. He sticks out a dirty paw and takes the banknote.

  As she’s walking away he says, “Missus April?”

  She turns back. “Ja?”

  “The little girly—” He stops, eyes down on his torn shoes.

  “What of her?”

  He stares past Florence, toward
the house. “She got these bruises, on her leg, like.”

  “And what you doing looking at the child’s leg?”

  Now he catches her eye and stands up straight. “I think he’s hurting her. The white man.”

  It’s on the tip of her tongue to tell him everything, this little jailbird. Spill all her guilt. Then she hears Mr. Goddard on the phone again, talking about Australia, and she says, “Who do you think you are, you bloody rubbish, coming to me with this?” He stays mute. “That man gives his child the world. He’s a saint, I’m telling you, raising her all alone now her mommy is dead. You want this job, you keep your filthy nose out their business. Do you hear me?”

  He stares her down, looks like he’s going to say more, then he sags limp as a shirt on a clothes line and he turns and walks down the driveway taking his stink with him.

  12

  Ishmael lies on the blanket on the floor of his shack, smoking, staring up at the circles of blue sky showing through the holes in the roof. Morning sun pokes in, making Jesus rays in the smoke.

  Didn’t sleep much last night, kept on seeing that girly’s face as the house door closed on her. Worried all the way down to the taxi about what he should do. Then when he got there, all the people crowding in like animals, he just turned around again and walked home, the sun pushing him down, throwing his bow-legged shadow black as ink on the white sand before him.

  Saying to himself as he walked, you done your best, Ishmael. You done your best. You spoke to the kitchen bitch ’bout that girly. Not your problem the woman don’t want to listen. What more can you do? Let it go.

  Lying on the blanket now, nipping the smoke halfway for later, thinking, ja, he can’t no more worry with a rich white child. He got plenty other worries. Like where this brown-assed jailbird’s gonna get him a new job.