The Boy Next Door (22 page)

“What, oh
that.
Lindiwe, I wasn’t paying attention. I didn’t get what he was going on about…”

“Ian, you just let him. He assumed I was the maid, of course.”

“Lindiwe, I’ve been on the road for what, close to five hours? I’m knackered, I wasn’t listening to the guy… why do you have
to always suppose the worst from me? You want me to go there and tell him you’re my chick? Fine. You want me to shout it out?
Okay. ‘She’s my chick!’ Happy now? Oh and ‘she’s not my fricking house girl!’”

And he hits me with a kiss right there.

“There goes the fricking beers,” he says when he finally lets go of me.

I hit him on his side.

“Do you think we should stay here?”

“What now?”

“Vibes, Ian.”

“Lindiwe, just get the food out the back. Make sure it’s covered, otherwise we’ll really be attacked by monkeys.”

“Ian, where’s David?”

I have a moment of panic until I find him by the toilets.

As Ian puts the last peg on the tent, the minibus guy comes over.

“Invitation still stands,” he says. “It would be an honor to have you and your chick over.”

Ian looks at me. I look at him.

“Ian McKenzie,” he says, holding out his hand. “This is Lindiwe Bishop and my, our son, David.”

“Clive Jenkins. We’re here with my brother from England. He’s pissed off with yours truly, putting my foot in it, my uncultured
bushman self.”

He takes a bow and despite myself I find him rather engagingly silly.

Ian smiles, looks at me, gives me a little prod with his eyes.

“Thank you for the invite. We’ll come later,” I hear myself say.

“You have to give people a chance,” Ian says when we’re alone, and I’m fully expecting him to add his seal of approval: “well
done, Lindiwe, good girl.”

“Ian, he still calls black women girls, okay, and don’t tell me there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s the tone, it’s what
he meant by it.”

“It only hurts if you feel it. Chill.”

*    *    *

The braai is in full swing when we get there. Beer flowing freely. Ian’s brought along a crate and two packets of boerewors
and some steaks. There are some boys fishing over by the lake.

“Heh Ian, good to see you.”

I stand there next to him feeling like a
lightie.

Clive does the introductions.

“Lindiwe, the girls are over there, setting the table.”

“The women,” says Ian, “as in, the wives and girlfriends.”

Clive throws up his hands in either self-defense or defeat.

“Yes,
those
girls.”

I make myself walk over towards the trestle table.

And I stand there like an idiot.

There are four of them arranging plastic plates and cups.

“Hi,” I finally squeak out.

Four pairs of eyes latch on me.

“Oh hi, Lin, Lindiwe, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Nice to meet you. Heard about Clive’s cock-up. Sorry, Meryl, but your husband can be really thick sometimes.”

“You, telling me. Didn’t I tell you that he walked into the Meikles Hotel to pick up a client, and he gets booted out for
tracking mud and horse manure onto the carpet? I keep telling him he has to stop acting like the whole of the country is one
big bush.”

“You have a lovely son. He’s a real sweetie. Oh, I’m Sandra.”

“Thanks.”

“He’s got really lovely hair, where did he—?”

“Sandra.”

“I hope you didn’t get offended,” says Meryl. “He doesn’t mean to be so rough. Just that he was brought up on a farm. You
should have heard some of the things that came out of his mouth, I mean for a city girl…”

“Oh please, Meryl,
what
city girl? You grew up in Marondera, not exactly—”

“Talking about farms, did you hear what Muga—?”

“No, Marge, don’t even start with the politics—”

And it’s as if I’ve come across Geraldine, Tracey, Dawn… all those classmates of mine as grown women, in their inner sanctum.

I pick up the plastic plates, spoons, serviettes and help while the men are out braaing, fishing, and beer drinking, and I
think to myself, what the heck.
Chill.

We’re snug full of sausages and steaks and drink in our tent, David between us. Ian reaches his hand across David and I turn,
put my hand across David on Ian’s, and we go to sleep like this.

“Great Zimbabwe Ruins, heh.”

David is already running, scrambling into the conical structures as if something inside him has been sprung loose.

Ian is in sixth heaven, what with the angles and backdrops, the shading, and the lighting.

He wants to climb up to the Hill Complex into the Eastern Enclosure.

“The view must be breathtaking from up there, Lindiwe. The Shonas really knew what they were doing.”

I woke up with a sore back and a splitting headache; the last thing I feel like doing is climbing hundreds of steps, no matter
the view.

Going up and down the Great Enclosure has been quite enough for me. I didn’t tell Ian, but walking through the very narrow
passageway that leads off from the Conical Tower, the walls of stone rising relentlessly on either side of me, I’d felt a
rush of claustrophobia, panic. I was overcome with thoughts of Maphosa, spirits, ancestors, and for the first time in a long
while of Mrs. McKenzie burning. The screech and cawing of an eagle flying overhead seemed to me like her crazed screams.

There is something about this place that’s getting under my skin.

Out in the open, looking over the undulating land with its pockets of ruins, my eyes wandering up over the hills dotted with
trees, I think of these ancient people, hauling the stones from the hills, setting them on the earth, guided by their gods,
it seems to me, for how did they manage this feat without using cement or any binding substance between the stones? There
they are artfully constructing their settlement, their homes, creating their kingdom, its fortifications. The work of it.
The stones gathering sweat, blood. The children running across the open grassland, getting under the feet of their toiling
fathers, the mothers off to collect water, ever wary of wildlife.

Where did they come from? How did they get here, choose this place to settle in, call home?

And why did they abandon it?

Zimbabwe,
The Great Houses of Stone.

I look back at the tower again and shake myself awake. These stone buildings were built for the kings, the ruling elite; castles.
The povo, as today, had to make do with more humble dwellings;
daga,
mud and grass, long since eroded away, the temporariness of home.

David comes running back, tugging at Ian’s hand.

“You two go up, I’ll wait here.”

I watch them hurry away, hand in hand.

I walk to the gift shop, Matombo Curios, to see if they have some Panadol. I buy some aspirins and sit down at the café. I
massage my forehead with my fingers, close my eyes. And in the dark, I’m suddenly gripped by a dense feeling of foreboding,
sluggish and wet, working its way through my body. I struggle to lift my eyelids, and when I finally free them, there is nothing
but heaps of tacky souvenirs in baskets, great zimbabwe stamped everywhere. I go outside into the chilly air. I look up to
the Hill Complex, wonder if I should try going up the modern ascent. No, I’ll go over to the reconstructed Karanga village,
a gentle walk. Take it easy.

I watch the supposed Karanga villager pounding maize.

Then there’s the singsong and some clapping and a couple of tourists taking pictures, an invitation to tour the huts by one
of “the village elders.”

One of the young male villagers smiles at me and I smile back, and then I turn and walk towards the museum. I’ll go in there
again, cool down.

“I went all the way up!” David shouts, sprinting towards me. He falls, breathless, into my lap, dislodging me from the outcrop
of rock I’ve been sitting on, waiting. “I did it, Mum!” As I’m hugging him I look up, and there is Ian, with his camera, ready
.

The next day Ian and David go off for a drive in the park to see how much wildlife they can come across; they drop me off
at the Great Zimbabwe Hotel, where I read in the gardens and have some tea.

A shadow falls over me, and when I look up, it’s a huge monkey staring at me with its head cocked towards the plate on the
table and a finger digging in its ear, and then in a flash it has grabbed hold of the plate with the scone on it and is rushing
up across the garden onto the roof, where it sits, the plate balanced on its haunches, and scoffs down the scone. I look around
to see if there has been any witness to this, but no, only me, and a surge of emotion sweeps through me with the thought that
I will have a story to tell the boys when they get back from their adventure, an offering.

When we get back to Harare, there’s an envelope on the floor that the postman slipped through. Ian picks it up, takes a look
at it, and hands it to me.

It’s from Jean.

That’s all it takes for all the good feeling from the break to dissipate. By even reading the letter, I know that Ian feels
a kind of betrayal. I should just chuck it into the dustbin, unopened.

I don’t know how to tell him, let him know what Jean says, if I should, if he has any right to it.

Jean is leaving Zimbabwe. He is going to the Ivory Coast.

Ian shuts himself off. For hours after work he disappears, coming home late at night, the smell of chemicals in his clothes,
on his hands; he has been at Ilo’s studio.

The distance grows between us. I don’t know the words, the gesture that will draw us close again.

And David seeks solace, once more, in his giraffe.

David is in
the lounge with his new Bible. It’s full of pictures. Heaven. Hell. Jesus. Even God. I had felt breathless when I saw it
in Kingston, then a flutter of panic when I lifted it off the shelf and saw the price. Ian didn’t make any comment when I
was wrapping it up, but I could see the annoyance in his eyes; he dutifully signed the card.

The Bible is splayed open on the floor on exactly the same page I opened it to, Jonah and the whale. David is not even looking
at it. I’ve made a mistake. He isn’t the same boy we took away. A train set. A bicycle. A ball. A kite. Anything else would
have done.

But Ian’s got his backup plan. A birthday surprise.
I
don’t know what it is. Ian is going to show me how a birthday is done.

We pile in the car and he drives us around the university, where a month ago, I, together with everyone else who wanted to
continue their studies, had to sign a piece of paper saying that for the duration of my course, I would respect the governing
authorities and refrain from demonstrating against them. We go up along The Chase, past Strathaven Shopping Centre, past Circus
Nightclub, and my heart does a dive when I see us go into the grounds of the Old Georgian Sports Ground.

The parking lot is jam packed, and in the end, Ian has to back out and park on the curb. There’s a banner stretched up on
the gates. bmx africa challenge.

There are kids all geared up, padded and helmeted, fathers proudly heaving bikes and coolers from their pickups.

Clusters of mothers are talking as they make their way to the tracks. There are uniformed maids bringing up the rear with
picnic baskets and infants in tow.

My eyes dart and leap, doing their frantic search—yes, spotted, a couple of black kids, fathers, but I don’t see any women.

I look down at David who’s staring at two boys. They’re pushing their bikes.

“Cool!” one of the boys shouts.

“Let’s go and take a look at the action,” Ian says coming around to us. “This will be good, my boy. If you like it, who knows
come Christmas, heh?”

I walk behind them, smiling like an idiot at the maids I pass who look glumly back at me.

I look at David’s hand in Ian’s. The shades of father and son.

My heart is in my mouth when I watch the antics of the riders up and down the humps and troughs of the tracks, the bikes leaping
into the air and crashing on the dirt again. A surge of anger at Ian for being so irresponsible. David is not going to do
something this dangerous. I won’t let him.

But then I look over at David, his neck craning in his effort not to miss anything; his eyes wide-open. He gasps; father and
son do a high five. Perhaps there are things that Ian knows better than me, things I have to trust him with.

“I’ll be back in a sec,” Ian says, and he strides off towards the braai area.

When he’s gone, I hear behind me, “Man, these Affs,” and I feel a dig at my back. I sit stick straight, and then there’s laugher
and someone saying, “It’s disgusting.” Another prod at my back. “Siss, man.” Then “yuck.”

When Ian comes back, he’s looking redder in the face. He’s carrying two Castles and two plates of T-bone steaks, charred rings
of boerewor sausages.

A voice behind him says, “Heh mate, those steaks look good,” and Ian laughs and says, “And they taste even better.”

He sits down, splashing some Castle on my jeans.

“What’s up with you?”

“Nothing.”

“Lindiwe, you haven’t spoken a word since we got back, what is it?”

“I told you, nothing. I’ve got an essay to write.”

I walk past him and sit down by the table.

“He really had a good time. Yes man, he’s getting that bike. Lindiwe—”

“What, Ian?” I say, not looking up from the papers I’m riffling through.

“What is it with you? You blow hot, cold. What’s going on?”

“Ian, I have an essay to write. It’s already late. Give me room, please!”

I can hear the quaver in my voice. The place is too small for us. Too few rooms for us to storm away from each other. At any
one point there must be only two, three meters separating us, so Ian does the sensible thing; he leaves.

“
Thanks for doing
this, Lindiwe.”

It’s such a formal thing for him to say.

We’re driving down to Bulawayo. It’s the Christmas holidays. Everything is so dry and barren it seems it could never once
have been saturated with any other color but this woeful grayness.