Читать книгу Sister-Sister - Rachel Zadok - Страница 10

Follow You to Your Drowning

“Fphst.”

I sit on the bumper of a yellow electric, blinking. From my perch I can see an ocean of dirt rolling out beneath me, shadowed by the skeletal trees that push skywards like cracks. To my left, pines hunch in a sombre clump. I blink again. The light’s so sharp I can see the crisscross mesh of pine needles carpeting the ground. To the right, the highway arcs against the horizon like a grey rainbow. The sight of it makes me feel empty inside. I look away, not wanting to feel like that when I’m on top of the world, light and free, floating-floating. I wonder how I got to be sitting on a sun-faded plastic bumper, leaning against the dented bonnet of a car. I turn my mind round and round, but all I find is a space, a big black hole, and it makes me feel bad.

“Fphst.”

The noise sounds like someone with no teeth trying to whistle. I look down. Below me, two boys stand on the edge of an old tanker. One boy has his head shoved into the space between a trailer and some cars. The other boy wears a long coat. I stare at them, the funny feeling in my gut getting bigger.

“Hey bra, let’s waai, maybe she not in there,” says the boy with the coat.

“She is,” says the other, pulling his head back into the sunlight, “I can see her feet.” He wipes his nose on the back of his hand then pulls his beanie over his ears and sticks his head back in. “Fphst.”

“That nywana dead, bra, you think of that?”

“How’d she die in here, huh?” His voice sounds like the second bounce of an echo. “No bra, she’s alive, I see her move.”

“Ag, you ’magined it, she dead bra, los it or we gonna miss last dish.”

Beanie Boy pulls his head out. He shrugs. “Let’s waai then, I’m hungry.”

But they stand like statues, waiting-waiting.

I lose interest in them and scan the sky. A few blushing cirrus clouds streak against the blue. The sight of them makes the black in my head swirl and stirs something at the bottom of me. I kick the heels of my baby­dolls against the bumper. The hole spins, faster, faster. I feel sick. I think I might vomit. I open my mouth and a word pops out: “Spookasem.”

It floats in front of my face like a tiny sunset cloud. I stare at it. I want to put it in my mouth, eat it, roll it around on my tongue so I can say it again, again, again. I clap my hands over it, but when I open my palms the fluffy cloud is gone and all that remains is a squashed mat of pink fibre no bigger than a piece of chewing gum. I put it in my mouth. A burst of burnt sugar fizzles on my tongue and is gone. I burp.

On the tanker below, the boys look at each other. “You hear that?” asks Beanie Boy. Sticking his head back into the space, he shouts, “Sista, can’t you speak?” He pauses to listen, but there’s no reply. “She can’t speak, maybe she can’t speak.”

“If she can’t speak, she’s dead. Let’s waai,” says the boy with the coat.

“Sweet, waai. What about Ma Wilma? What you gonna tell her? No, sorry Ma, we chafa a girl and now we lost her. Ma Wilma going to be kwata.”

“Aggg! I don’t know why you told the ouledi we got a nywana in the first place. Why you do that, huh? Move, let me look.”

They shuffle sideways, swap places. The boy in the long coat sticks his head into the space. “Okay, sista, no worries, we going to get you out!” he shouts. He takes off his coat. Without it, he looks skinny-skinny and too tall. He gives it to the other boy, then wriggles into the space until only his feet stick out. I watch the bottom of his shoes kick up and down, like swimmer’s feet. Swimming through cars, a swimmer in a car dump. The thought of it makes me laugh.

“Marlboro, pull bra.” His voice is muffled, metallic, like one of the rotten cars is speaking.

I laugh harder. The laughing catches and I can’t stop. I laugh so hard I begin to cry. Tears roll down my cheeks, dripping off the end of my face. I watch them drop, like tiny stars falling from the sky. When they hit the ground, they explode. Sisi’s going to fall and the . . .

I stop. The weird feeling in my guts is back. I clutch my belly. Something stirs, pushes against my hands. It’s like I’ve swallowed a snake and it’s trying to chew its way out. “Help me,” I try to shout, but my voice is hoarse. I can only manage a whisper.

“Rilexa, sista, we helping you.”

Below me, the boys begin to pull something from the dark hole. They work as if the thing is fragile. Maybe they’re helping a butterfly from a cocoon – but if you do that, the butterfly will never be strong enough to fly. And if a butterfly can’t fly, it will fall and shatter on the ground.

Sisi’s going to fall and the . . .

A girl emerges. They sit her down on the ledge and hold on to her shoulders. I watch them for a while, relieved that she isn’t a butterfly. After a few minutes, the boys begin to climb down, lowering the girl between them. The snake in my belly squirms. I push down harder, trying to squash it, but each time they drop a car, my abdomen jerks like it’s trying to follow. It jerks so hard I fear I might fall. I let go of my belly and wedge my fingers into the crack between the bonnet and the windscreen, but the pull is strong, dragging me down.

I look at the clouds and the trees and the grey rainbow. I want to stay up here, float above the world forever. The ground is bad, I’ve been there before. Down there it’s dark and cold and you can hear things scratching. Then the girl looks up, straight at me, and I see her face, sharp as the pine needles. The face is my face, mine but not mine. Her name creeps up my throat onto my tongue. I whisper it, “Sindisiwe,” and saying it makes me know my own name.

Her gaze, hot and spiky, pricks my mind slowly – like a pin stuck through sellotape into the skin of a balloon. My memories hiss out and I begin to know myself. In her head and in her heart she holds the pieces of me, and her gaze glues me back together.

Then she looks away and, with a last glance at the twilight dusting the blue, I slide to the ground.

Streetlights flicker through the trees. The boys lead us past the mountain of cars towards the quiet suburban streets that lie on the other side. Three guard dogs come from nowhere and walk alongside us, but the boys don’t seem bothered. The dogs whine, lonely as lost souls, and lick the boys’ fingers.

“Chila,” the one in the coat says, “these hounds been well fed.” He laughs like he’s cracked a joke.

The boys are the same two who ran from the shacks. They’re called Booysen and Marlboro, though Marlboro says his name like he’s not so sure of it. He’s the one wearing the beanie. Booysen, in the coat, is taller and looks older. He has a circle tattooed on his neck, just above the collar.

“Next time you need a spot to hide, sista, check out this g-string,” he says, bouncing on the boot of a white BMW. There’s a click and the latch releases. They let Sindi sit on the mouldy carpet in the boot for a while, “to get straight”. She sits with her legs hanging over the bumper and her head in her hands. Her right hand looks like a boxer’s glove, but the boys, if they notice, say nothing about it.

Marlboro paces, glancing sideways at Sindi. I can tell she makes him nervous. He takes off his beanie and runs his fingers through grimy blond hair. It stands straight up, stark and surprising against his tanned skin. He sits next to Sindi a second, then springs up again. He bounces on the balls of his ragged sneaks a while, then leans forward and wipes his sleeve across the scratched white paint of the BMW. “This was my daddy’s car.”

Booysen laughs. “Sho! You, bra? You think your daddy’s a fat cat now? You wish.” He gets Marlboro in a neck hold and rubs his knuckles across his head.

Marlboro struggles free, cheeks flushing red. “Fo sho, I know the plate. This is my daddy’s car, from way back, when I was a laaitie.”

Booysen leans against the BMW, pulls a packet of Stuyvesants from his pocket and lights one. He drags, slow and long; smoke escapes from the corners of a sneaky smile. He points the cigarette at Marlboro. “Foshizi? Okay, chizboy, tell us then, how long ’go your daddy own this car?”

Marlboro shrugs. “How must I know exact? I was just a laaitie.”

Booysen nods like he doesn’t mean yes. The air between them is electric, and I sense a fight about to spark. “This scrapheap been here years,” he says.

Marlboro tilts his head, sniffs, “So?”

“So, bra, how old you now?”

Marlboro shrugs, looks at his sneaks. Booysen whistles and shakes his head. “You don’t know how old you are? You some kind of stupid?”

“I’m fifteen, you know I’m fifteen. What’s your 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 stops at a fire drum to warm her hands – skinny and delicate, like the fingers of a hungry child. The firelight throws her eyes into deep shadow, but it doesn’t bring colour to her swollen face.

“Well, what gift have my boys brought me today?”

She angles her face towards us and beckons Sindi with a stolen hand.

Her smile speaks of the cold hours of winter nights when it seems dawn will never come. I put my hand on Sindi’s shoulder to hold her back.