problem?”
“You can’t count, that’s my problem. You can’t even lie good.” He slaps the car. “This g-string runs on petrol, bra, you know what is petrol? This died before you born. All these transis run on petrol, this heap started after D-Day. You know when is D-Day? If you weren’t so thick, you’d know.”
“So? Not all these cars been here since then. That one up there,” Marlboro points to the yellow car I was sitting on earlier, “that one a ’lectric. That car can’t be more than four years old.”
Booysen laughs. “Wanya, you speak out your bum. That ’lectric here because some stupid like you rolled it. That car on the top, this car on the bottom. Your daddy must have plenty zak to waste back then, cruising round in a petrol car after D-Day. If he was such a fat cat, why he chuck you in the bin?”
Booysen and Marlboro stare at each other, eyes dark. Booysen flicks the butt of his cigarette at Marlboro’s feet and cracks his knuckles. I ball my hands into fists, my cheeks tight with glee. “Fight, fight, fight, fight,” I chant.
Marlboro glances down, lifts the toe of his sneak and snuffs the glowing cherry. He turns to Sindi. “You good yet, sista? It’s late-bells. Time to make tracks.”
Sindi stands slow and the boys glance at each other, their faces blank. For the first time since they rescued us, I wonder what they want. I chew my bottom lip, trying to suss if they’re bad inside. What did they do that made the man with the gun want to kill them? I reach out to take hold of Sindi’s arm, to keep her from going with them, but the three of them have already disappeared into the shadowy nest of trees.
Night smudges dusk. We walk in a tight fist of silence, Marlboro trailing behind, kicking at the blackjacks growing between the cracks in the pavements. Soon, the bottom half of his jeans are covered in black specks. I hate the prickly seeds and worry they’ll stick to my socks, but none attach to me. The streetlights come on and we walk through pools of light into darkness, light into darkness for five blocks. We pass houses with warm windows. The muffled sounds of life filter through the brick and glass and curtains and they make me think of Mama and Auntie and sharing slap chips with Sindi on Fridays. They make me want to go home.
Booysen stops at a chain-link fence that spans a gap between two houses, There’s no streetlight in front of the fence, as if someone wants to keep the place it protects secret.
“Check coast, chizboy.”
Marlboro narrows his eyes but he does as he’s told and scans the road.
“All clear,” he says.
Booysen peels back the fence. Someone and their bolt-cutters have been to work on it. A gash, tall as Booysen, runs up the centre. Marlboro climbs through, slipping down so low on the other side that only the top of his head shows at street level. Booysen nods to Sindi. She ducks through.
We drop into a storm-water drain. The walls are bone-dry, but years of rain have seeped into the concrete and the scent of water is strong. The place is full of ghosts; their hands reach out and touch me as I pass. Wet hands, dripping-dripping. I want to run, but Sindi and the boys are making for a massive concrete pipe. Where she goes, I follow.
The banks above the sluice must have once been lush and overgrown, though all that remains now are thirsty trees. Still, their branches close over us, cutting us off from the light completely. The boys’ feet tap out a steady, unfaltering rhythm. It seems they’ve walked this drain many times before and don’t need eyes to know the way. Booysen calls out: “You good, sista?” His voice raps against the walls, fading on the last word. Sista, sista, sista. The echo reverberates though me, sinking in like damp. I can’t help rapping my own voice to the wall. But the walls don’t hear me, and I have to sing my own Sista, sista, sista.
The mouth of the pipe looms like a hole in the night. The air feels dense and my eyes struggle to find points to focus on. I can only make out black and shadows, but they’re vague and unreal, shifting-shifting.
I think of poor Dora. Dora Xplora vetkoek floating.We all thought Gogo Nkosi’s lodger was such a nice man until Dora washed up dead in the vlei. Dora’s mama wrote her name on her schoolbag with black marker. That was the only reason we knew it was her, because black marker doesn’t wash out. At school, we made up a skipping song so it wouldn’t happen to us. I sing it now, to ward off the bad in the pipe:
Dora Xplora didn’t go home
Her fat ouledi called the gata on the phone
He drove up and down in a banana-kaar
Shouting Dora Xplora tell us where you are.
At the mouth of the pipe, Booysen lights a smoke. He takes a few deep draws and the cherry flares bright red and burns down fast. He tosses it and steps into the darkness. Marlboro and Sindi follow. I watch the glow fade out. With my heart bumping and my skin creeping, I let the dark hole swallow me.
Dora Xplora vetkoek floating.
I can hear dripping, as if somewhere there’s water bleeding from the concrete. Not likely. I can’t remember the last time it rained. Still, I crouch and run my fingers over the bottom of the pipe to check.
Dora Xplora dead in the drain
Waiting-waiting, waiting for the rain
One week, two week, three four five
Auntie prays that Dora’s still alive.
Walking down the centre, I can’t touch the sides. The black air sucks and pulls. I could lose myself here, easy, but the boys give off a funky fug and my nostrils cling to their stink.
Dora Xplora blue and bloating.
Furrows and gulleys cut into the pipe by water erosion make me stumble. I count my steps to help me keep focused. After one hundred and five, we turn left. The dark begins to shift. There’s a circle of light ahead. Soon, we’re walking under a row of bulbs strung along a raggedy wire like giant Christmas-tree lights. The pipe ends, and we step into a cavernous circular space. The boys keep walking, but me and Sindi hold back to suss the scene.
Fire drums flicker orange over mattresses and blankets crammed around them like lump-animals looking for warmth. The place is thick with whispers and the funk of piss and bodies. Smoke spirals into the night through three open manholes high above us. Metal rungs climb the walls towards them. One ladder is wired like the passage, but the glow the bulbs give off doesn’t come down far enough to brighten the place. It’s like looking at stars: their twinkles don’t count because they’re part of a different world.
“Sista, you just gonna stand there or what?”
Hunched forms press against the walls, their eyes flicking fire. They’ve been watching us, quiet, but when Booysen speaks they erupt into excited chatter.
“Shut it.”
The noise switches off. I squint into the dim space, trying to find the speaker. My eyes flick over the mouths of six dark pipes set into the wall before I spot her. She steps heavily out of one of the pipes and shuffles toward us, knobkerrie rapping against the hush. She looks like the Oros Man’s ouledi, but she’s grey like meat boiled too long. Rolls of fat spill from the sleeves of a T-shirt the same colour as her skin – I can’t tell where the cotton ends and flab begins. If she weren’t walking I’d take her for dead.
She
