you okay? You seem down,’ she said.
My worries obviously showed. I told her Simphiwe’s story on a walk around campus.
‘My cousin is also on that wunga,’ she said. ‘You leave nothing within reach of that dude. At the height of his madness he stole a pot while it was cooking Sunday chicken curry and sold it with the curry!’
My enamoured eyes were all over her for the whole fifteen-minute walk. We were already at the door to her room.
Whenever I was with Anele, my burdens disappeared. Even Simphiwe was forgotten in that walk, if only for a while.
‘You must eat something,’ she insisted, when we were in her room. She sliced bread and cheese. I bit into the sandwich she offered me but struggled to swallow.
‘I have to return these books due today. I’ll be back in thirty minutes, and we’ll work on the paper then,’ she said.
I worked on the test paper while she was at the library. This was part of my charm offensive: she’d return to a man with all the answers. I was done in twenty minutes.
I did my best to quell drowsiness. I went out to the garden and smoked a cigarette, paced about the room, snooped, opened her photo album, lay on my back on her bed and paged through her celebrity gossip magazines. The softness of her fragrant bedding won. I napped.
I woke to a soft strawberry warmth in my arms – Anele, up close at last. Outside her window the day had gone, the afternoon shaded by the setting sun. I looked into her eyes and my arms circled tightly around her waist, pulling her even closer. We were both fully clothed, but I was aware of every inch of her. Sparks in our eyes set off a series of time-stopping smooches. I was lost in our kisses. The electricity between us rose to a high voltage.
She stopped.
‘You can answer that, you know,’ she said.
I had not heard my phone ringing. There was a missed call from Sango’s father. I ignored it and got back to kissing, but he was persistent and my phone rang twice more. At this perfect moment to seal the Anele deal, I took a call I had to take.
‘They were beaten by people in Claremont for housebreaking. Blood-curdling mob justice,’ Mr Mlaba said, distressed, when I finally answered. ‘Your brother escaped earlier on in the beating. My son Dumisani … he was beaten badly. He was close to death when the police arrived. A case has been opened against Dumisani and Simphiwe. The police are looking for your brother – perhaps they will find him. We are with Dumisani at Westville Hospital. He’s unconscious but stable. The doctors told me there’s heroin and Jik and rat poison in his blood. This wunga of theirs drives them crazy.’ The phone line was crackly and I struggled to hear.
I did not believe what I thought I heard. I convinced myself that my mind had made up the words he’d just told me; that maybe the bad phone connection somehow distorted his speech. I called him right back and Mr Mlaba told it exactly as he had done a few seconds earlier.
On the taxi ride home I worked out many ways of telling Ma, but when I saw again how uncertainty pained her, I told it as bare and gritty as Mr Mlaba had told me. She called him immediately, and broke down when she heard it first-hand.
As her sobs pierced the walls of our home all through the night, I whispered angry questions and a prayer into the darkness of my bedroom.
Why is Simphiwe this lost? Why did he inhale that first wunga drag? Why did I have to witness my mother breaking down? Why did my father die and leave us? Where are you, little brother? Please, God, keep him out of harm’s way, wherever he is.
We were at the taxi stop earlier than the township’s earliest risers. Ma looked far away into the distance; my thoughts were sombre. As we stood in the cold darkness in silence, I had a feeling of déjà vu – this had happened before. I felt exactly like I did that morning my father slipped into a coma and we had to catch the first taxi of the day – part angry, part sad, and really scared. It had been chilly and dark, just like this.
Claremont Police Station was packed, so we only found seating at the edges of the charge office benches. The service was slow, the long queue served by just one officer. And the young constable was unable to multitask. Numerous times I saw him stop certifying a copy to make a leisurely comment on conversations with his colleagues. He had the stamp in mid-air for close to a minute while he yapped.
There were a lot of mothers in the queue. Ma quickly exchanged stories with the woman next to her. This lady was immersed in shock because her son stabbed an old family friend dead. She told her story with sad resignation. ‘Our children,’ they both lamented.
Ma turned to me. She asked, ‘Are you not hungry?’
Her scones appealed to me, but I couldn’t eat once I had seen the gash on a man’s head, further up our bench. The wound was right at the top of his skull, not long, but deep and in need of stitches. It seemed to have a pulse, like there was a tiny heart beating just under it.
‘He crept up on me, hit me with a golf club. I had done nothing! I was just drunk and walking by,’ he told people who asked.
‘No, Ma. I’m not hungry,’ I said, looking away from the gash.
In the three hours we were there, Claremont Police Station continued to malfunction. But it was our turn, eventually. I explained our story.
‘The detective is not in. He’ll be in tomorrow,’ said the young constable.
‘After waiting for so long we can’t get help?’ I couldn’t believe it. ‘Don’t you know anything about the housebreaking case against my brother?’
‘No. The proper person to talk to is the detective in charge of that case.’
‘Are you serious? You mean in this whole place there’s no-one else who can help us?’
‘The detective will be in on the night shift. I’ll give you his office number. Call him and set up an appointment.’
‘Are you serious? This is a joke!’
The group of police officers beyond the counter, who were slacking at their jobs, turned to witness my tantrum.
‘If you paid as much attention to your cases, they’d be solved!’ I vented.
‘Shut your mouth! Go outside and wait by the gate,’ Ma shushed me.
I stormed out of there, irritated. In a glance back I saw that Ma had her hands together as she pleaded with them. Our constable, plus two female constables from the slacking gang, now listened to her.
She joined me outside a while later, shaking her head. As we were waiting for a taxi, one of the young female constables called out to us. She ran up and stopped next to Ma.
‘Here is Detective Shange’s cellphone number. Phone him in the afternoon because he only knocked off this morning. And tell your son to stop being so rude.’
In the taxi that took us home I tried the number three times and got voicemail each time. When we arrived home, Aunt Busi was waiting by the gate. She hugged Ma and put her arm around my shoulders. In the lounge they wallowed in maternal sadness.
I went out and did some neighbourhood digging about the
