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Boys

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No idea where they came from, but they were often there. To play under the big tree next to the garage. There the soil wasn’t like in the sandpit, we could build houses and dig trenches.

Like most first-borns, my bedroom was filled with toys, everything parents could think of was there in crates and cupboards. I myself could think of many other things, much better objects with which to entertain and educate myself, but for the moment I had to be satisfied with those things suitable for little boys. And as far as toys for boys went, I was only interested in the packaging.

Cars were my father’s entire being and at some stage miniature automobiles, colourful, with a shiny finish and completely true to life, began appearing on shops’ shelves. Fathers and sons lost their minds and spinning tops, catapults, rubber animals and wooden trucks were cast aside. My father had to lose his mind without me, but he still carted a fleet into my bedroom.

I wasn’t ungrateful – every small thing with wheels was packaged in a colourful cardboard box with a see-through plastic window. These new boxes smelled of the factory, they were brand new with sharp corners and printed scenes and designs. I was very impressed with these offerings from a tiny world of glamour, I set them out in formations and held exhibitions lit with my bedside lamp and my flashlight. All of these automobiles, sports cars, bakkies, buses, bulldozers or lorries were called cars.

Go get your cars! Your friends are here!

What friends?

Each time I wanted to explain to my parents that my friends were already around me, couldn’t they see anything, but then the house angel would appear from somewhere and whisper in my ear: They aren’t ready yet.

Perhaps my mother wanted to start an after-school centre, perhaps my father paid their parents, but the boys were there, under the tree, two, three times a week. We had our cars, shovels, buckets of water, scraps of wood from the storeroom and bottles of cooldrink with blue paper straws. We graded roads, mixed mud, built houses, riverbanks and shops. I built the church. Every time. With a bell and a small verger in front of the door.

Next to me a boy pushes a red thing with a red trailer past the row of houses.

Gggrrrooooommmm, he goes.

Are you a lion? I ask.

My pistons are broken, he says.

I am going to tell my mother you swore.

This lorry really pulls, he says.

You are going to break the path, I say. Don’t drive so close to the houses, play neatly!

Wwhhrrr! growls another child.

Shh! I say. They are praying in church!

I need rope, says the child with the golden head. He has short, rock-hard golden-yellow hair, each strand leaning forward like a little soldier bowing before a king.

We don’t have rope, I say.

If I tie my straw to this lorry, it’s a cannon, he says.

A cannon is for war, I say.

War is coming, says the golden head, They want to take our things.

Who?

The people in the location, he says.

We have to build a wall, says the one with the red trailer, High, high, high!

We can smash everything before they come! another one yells, very excited.

What is a location? I ask.

Every town has a location, says the golden head, They want our things, my dad says.

You aren’t playing right, I say, You can’t make cannons! And you can’t smash things!

We can play how we like!

You can’t! I say, And you have to polish your cars! Yours are always dirty and dusty!

You’re stupid, says the golden head.

You’re stupid!

I’m going now, I’m not playing here again!

Me neither!

Me neither!

They are gone, I am relieved, I run to the kitchen: in the bottom drawer are two tiny light-blue bows, my mother took them off my brother’s baby jersey. I run back. I grab a white car and put it in front of the church. Carefully I put the bows on the bonnet. Wedding car.

Look At Me

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