like wrestlers on WWE in a lock-up. Round and round they go, caught in a spinning vortex for an eternity of seconds and THUD, they sideswipe a barrier and THUMP, tyres squeal and burn black into the road and THWUMP, a nose smashes against the steering wheel, a skull smacks the windscreen, glass shatters, bone splinters. It’s almost music, a melody of broken glass over a bass beat of bumper cars. Thud, thump, thwump. A wind-up traffic-accident circus song.
And after, in the short, shocked vacuum of silence, you can almost hear the hiss of the soul leaving the body.
Then I see the light inside Sindi switch. Her eyes glitter like the glass in her hair and she whispers, “Emi, oru, abiku, O,” and I know, finding beginnings is not why we are here.
Thirteen cars leave the gate, among them three red and two blue. Game Thuli. I peer over Sindi’s shoulder as she examines the intercom board with its shiny silver buttons all in a row. Next to each button, a strip of Perspex holds the occupant’s name: Williams, Gxekwa, Sihoyiya, Abrams, Thwala, Walker, Makofane, Simons, Wynn, Sousa. I try to decide which to press, a random calculation based on nothing but gut. My gut says go with A: it’s easy to say.
“Abrams,” I whisper. Sindi pretends not to hear me and presses her palm against the board, sounding all the bells.
She waits three seconds before thumbing the buttons again, one-one, one-one, one-one.
The speaker fizzes and cracks and spits: “Hello.”
Sindi steps back, as if she’d not expected anyone to be home. I nudge her with my elbow. She clears her throat. “Delivery,” she croaks.
“Leave it in the box,” comes the sigh-reply.
“It’s too big.”
“The madam said nothing about a delivery. Who for?” I smile.
“Mrs Abrams,” I murmur in Sindi’s ear.
“Uhm_m_M,” Sindi peers at the board, “Abrams.”
“Abrams? She’s in number three, buzz her.”
“She’s nnn_not home.” But by the time her words are out, the domestic’s gone. Sindi kicks the ground with the toe of her boot, but still we hang about in the vain hope she’ll buzz us in. After a minute, Sindi walks away. I follow, disappointed I won’t get to see, close-up, the life we could’ve had. We haven’t gone five steps when the motor clicks.
We’re through the gate before it’s wide, ducking into the shadows. Hidden behind a bush, we watch a car reverse clear of a driveway. The driver slicks lipstick over her mouth, checking her reflection in the rear-view mirror, before heading out into the world. Auntie, I think, didn’t anyone ever tell you not to open the gate until you were right there? Unlucky for you, lucky for us.
Sticking to the shadows, we slip behind the houses on the left. A wide service path runs between the eight-foot boundary and another wall painted the same fishy pink; it’s not as high, but we still can’t see over. Wheelie bins stand sentry next to five metal doors, one for each house. We pass door number one: too easy to see from the gate.
At door number two, Sindi cocks her head. A TV blares a tune I know. It takes a second before I get it and flash back to lying on Next-Door-Auntie’s brown couch watching soapies until my eyes burned and my head throbbed. Next-Door-Auntie loved soapies, Isidingo-Generations-Backstage-Scandal-7de Laan-The Bold, she didn’t have time for new-fangled nonsense. She’d started watching with her Ma when she was two bricks high and the starrings in those shows were like family to her. She knew their ins and outs going back decades; who was who, even though the casts weren’t always the same as when she was a girl. Except for The Bold. Those starrings never changed. She said Ridge still looked the same as when she was four. Behind her back we called him Rigid.
There’s an empty silence that says nobody home at number three. Sindi tugs the handle. Locked. At four, my nose fills with Surf Superblue scents. On the other side of the door, Kabelo’s “Can’t Kill Me Now” is playing on the radio. Someone sings along, out of tune and a beat behind. The song reminds me of the radio Mama once bought with her Christmas bonus.
“Don’t touch,” she said when she lifted it from the box. It stood on the kitchen table, shiny plastic casing unmarked by our greasy fingers until, one day at school, Dumisile told us there was going to be a three-hour “Legends of Kwaito” retrospective. That afternoon, me and Sindi jaiva’d jigga jigga around the kitchen table.
You should have killed me,
You should have killed me, cos
You can’t kill me now.
“One day,” I told Sindi, “I’m going to win Idols. I’m going to be a starring.”
“Woo, Sisi!” she said, “Woo woo!”
Mama came home, tired and beat, and found the battery doornail-dead and no soapie to go with her tea. We ran to Saviour’s Pit Stop to beg a new one from Joe so we could restore her happiness, but he said Mama had lost her happiness long before that battery died. I don’t think he understood what that radio meant to Mama. It was a sign she might one day get out of there, and its death, no matter how temporary, reminded her that she never would. There was always a radio playing at Saviour’s. Joe used to tune in to the golden oldies and croon out songs like a dog at full moon – until the Black Preacher began to fill the airways with his new religion. Joe loved those sermons. He’d sit in his chair and listen, chuckling to himself. Sometimes, the things the Black Preacher said made him laugh so hard, he’d fart.
One more door, then we have to cross the little road to get to the houses on the other side. I suck my bottom lip. Forever passes before the singer next door finishes hanging out the washing and her song fades into the house. Sindi eases the handle, leans into the door. The metal groans, shifts. I hold my breath. She pushes harder. The door gives. Holding it just wide enough for her eyes, Sindi peers in. My heart beats fast enough to blow, but I resist the urge to bump her up so I can see. There’s a smell, thick and moist on my tongue.
Sindi slips through the gap, leaving me alone with the wheelie bin. I wait a moment, in case she comes back; then, against my worming guts, I step through the door.
We’re standing in a small yard. The wall’s depressing pinkness is broken only by a kitchen door and window. A gutter runs down one wall and spits a hunk of slime into a choked drain. On the inside sill, an avocado pip moulders in the neck of a jam jar among a clutter of coffee cups, dishwashing liquid and empty bottles. A dead moth, belly-up in a dirty glass, makes me scrunch my nose. I look away. If this were my house, I’d keep it nice.
Squeaking to mark each grinding rotation, a wash line turns in the breeze. Sindi slinks over and frees a raggedy T-shirt from its pegs. She holds it up against her. FIFA World Cup is printed in large letters across the front.
I sniff. Dog kaka litters the yard. I play a mental game of join-the-dots, my eyes leaping from turd to turd until I sight two plastic bowls, too yellow and happy for the place. One is half-filled with water, filmy with dust, the other with dry pellets. I glance at the door. There is a small flap at the bottom, not big enough for a pit bull or a Rottweiler – but mini-mutts are yappers, alarm dogs worse than police sirens for bringing the domestic out to see what’s up.
I turn to Sindi. She’s spotted the bowls and is moving towards them. At the window, she stops and looks in. The glass is a still pond broken only by her reflection, a ghost girl watching. She sinks to her knees and lifts a bowl to her lips.
