of us go quiet.
Then Part and I step out of the Corsa, say goodbye, and watch Iris drive to the BP gas station. For reasons I’ve never asked about, Iris never stays for more than a few days when she’s back from campus. I watch her sink into the dark. Then Part and I start walking up the hill.
“It’s warmer here,” she says.
“I know.”
I pull on my jacket, undoing the zip. In the distance, in between cheers, I make out the dull bassline of an ’NSync song.
“I feel like I haven’t seen you, this week,” she says.
“It’s everything that’s happening at school.”
“Lots?”
“It involves Kiran now.”
Up the hill, Part bends to pick up a paper plate smeared with tomato sauce and crusted mustard, dropping it in a blue bin. “Listen, do you want to make out before we go up there and listen to Space Invaders? I meant it about it being a while.”
I laugh. “I’m amenable.”
I fix my hair in the bathroom mirror afterward. Then I ask Part for her lip gloss and zip up my jacket and we head back out to the grounds, holding hands until we reach the stalls. I cough at the sharp smell of smoke from the braais.
“Is Litha here?” I ask.
“He should be. He said he’d drop in after his shift.”
“I take it you have prefect duties.”
“I won’t be long.”
“I’ll survive.”
Part smiles and leaves for the admin block. I turn and take in the stalls and the people milling under a blanket of smoke in the congested courtyard. Most of the items on sale are pastries, baked in parental kitchens and made to be displayed. Next to them, arranged in neat, sealed rows under the gleam of floodlights, are jars of fig jam, sugared plums, and peaches, while different species of animal, now turned to chorizo and now to biltong, hang on sharp hooks suspended above the stalls.
I weave through the crowd, walking on quiche crumbs, a crosshatch of skid marks, crunched paper cups. Placing a palm over my mouth, I wonder if what happened to me at school was a visit from the machine or if the doctors were right.
Litha waves at me from the back of the courtyard. The two of us hug next to a stall stacked with ceramic dwarfs.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, pointing at my mouth.
“It’s the smoke. It’s also full in here.”
“Do you want to go somewhere else? Hold on.” He returns with two cans of Coke. “I can get cigarettes, too.”
“There’s enough smoke here.”
Litha laughs. “I didn’t know you were allergic to smoke. Or if that was possible.”
I punch him on the shoulder, but let my palm linger on him as a truce.
We leave the courtyard and enter the fringes of the grounds, where the floodlights taper off, and hang our legs over a short wall behind the bleachers.
Litha sighs. “I don’t have a plan.”
“I’m not sure what to do, either.”
“Have you opened it?”
“No.”
“Maybe we can do it together.”
I look up at the night sky, unable to make out the constellations through the smoke.
“Listen, do you want to lean back for a bit?” he asks.
I do. The two of us lie on our backs, taking in the pale smoke coiling against the dark.
Later, when I get home at 9:35 p.m., I see the machine again.
Its hum sounds louder than I remember.
I watch it expand to cover the ceiling, its silver parts blinking, rolling inside the darkness. From the mattress, I turn the recorder on. As I drift off, I make out the triangle again, before it sinks back into the murk.
November 2, 1999
That summer, in what would be the last year of Tata’s life, we drove out to see another herb specialist in East London.
At least, that’s what my aunt told him as we got in the car, but when we entered the city, she turned up Oxford Road and drove us to the office of a GP she knew from university. The car went silent then. I didn’t turn to look at his face when we stopped.
Inside, my aunt cut past the line in the waiting room and forewent a greeting: “Smilo, you should be able to do something for him,” she told the doctor. “This is my brother.”
The GP’s plaque read Dr Khathide. He was a short man with a salt-and-pepper goatee. He sat behind his desk and listened to her. His thick glasses were tinted in the glare that came in through a picture window above his desk, and he appeared calm. He smiled at my aunt and held out his arms, dappling them in sunlight. “That’s the reason I’m here,” he said.
Tata was silent on our trip back to King William’s Town. Each time my aunt tried to speak to him, he closed his eyes and shifted in his seat, ignoring her until she gave up. As we drove past the BP gas station in Berlin, just outside East London, he turned on the radio and dialed up the volume.
From the back seat, I watched as the two of them rode in silence. I opened a water bottle and swallowed my latest regimen, Faverin and Zoloft, and looked out of the window, thinking of Mama and what she could’ve done for us, if anything.
Tata’s silence hung over us until we reached the driveway. Doris killed the engine and leaned back against her headrest with a sigh, taking a moment before getting out and opening the passenger door for him. She extended her hand, but as expected he waved her away, refusing to look at either of us.
My aunt stood back and watched him undo his seatbelt, taking his time. Then she went ’round to the trunk and retrieved the groceries we’d picked up on the way. “Take these inside.”
I carried the bags into the kitchen and dropped them on the counter. I could hear the car door slamming—Tata’s footsteps down the corridor—and then his bedroom door doing the same.
My aunt came into the kitchen and sat at the table, her palms kneading her eyes as she sighed for the umpteenth time. “Do you know how to cook?”
“I do.”
“He used to like lamb stew and dumplings.”
“He still does.”
“That’s what we’ll make for him tonight then, but first go lock the front door and take
