The Boy Next Door (37 page)

I bite, too. And swallow. Just the one slice.

We take a walk to the city center. It seems amazing to me that I can be walking on the pavements of Bulawayo with my teenage
son. But here I am. And here he is.

A board on the pavement is advertising Vuka! Company and the arrow points to stairs going up. I am attracted by the photographs
of traditional Ndebele beaded jewelry and animal figurines, and David by the pictures of wire cars and motorbikes. Sometimes
he surprises me with what
isn’t
too young for him; what’s so gauche, it’s hip; what’s so old-fashioned, it’s retro, happening.

“Cool.”

My hand is deep in the basket of beaded animals when I hear behind me, “Lindiwe, c’est toi?”

I release the animals, and there, here, is Jean. For a moment I can’t remember his name, that’s how stunned I am. And next
to him is a young woman cradling a baby.

“It is you, Lindiwe. What a surprise.”

I finally find the power of speech.

“Jean. Wow.”

“Yes, ‘wow’ as you say. How are you?”

I have the impression of standing there with my mouth gaping; I wish there was a reflecting surface to check.

“Lindiwe,” he says again.

The woman next to him shifts the weight in her arms.

“Lindiwe, my wife, Clara. We have met in Côte d’Ivoire.”

“And you have a baby,” I blab. “Wow,” I add for extra measure. (Two
wows
so far, wow.)

Thankfully, David barges in. Bless him.

“Mum, that motorbike’s supercool.”

“Is that little David?”

“Yes, that’s him.”

“David. How much you have grown. You cannot remember me, of course. Hello to you.”

“Hi,” says grown-up David.

We stand there in a jittery silence, as if any moment someone might drop something and start screaming.

“Is she a girl?” I ask the woman.

Clara smiles down lovingly at the child.

“Yes, she is a girl, Floriana.”

“Congratulations.”

“Mum…”

“Okay, David, I’m coming.”

“Kids,” I say to no one, anyone.

“It was good to see you, Lindiwe. We are en route to Johannesburg. We leave tomorrow.”

Too much information.

“Well, have a great time. Take care.” Are these my words? Really?

“You, as well.”

“Bye.”

I turn away from them and concentrate hard on the mechanics of David’s cool bike.

“See how it moves, Mum, and look at the light, cool, and the pedals; it’s got a motor, look at—”

“Okay, okay, I’m convinced. Let’s take the thing home,” I say as I listen to the sound of Jean’s steps on the stairs, taking
his family away.

“We’ll go to the museum tomorrow,” I say while putting the key in the ignition.

I’m exhausted. I want to talk to Ian. I need to hear his voice.

The engine tries to start, chortles off. I try again. And again. I hit the steering wheel with the edges of my palms. I spy
David through the window with a “could you get a grip” expression on him. One last try and this time we’re off. I turn around
to say something reassuring to David, but he’s leaning back, eyes closed, completely chilled.

*    *    *

I phone home. Four times altogether, the last try at eleven thirty. No one answers.

I draw back the curtains of my old room, and I’m shocked by the bare visage of the house next door. The trees that used to
dot the length of the fence between the two houses have been chopped down for firewood, and now sitting up, I can spy parts
of the McKenzies’ veranda. There it stands.

I took the keys with me. I found them in one of the kitchen drawers.

They should tear it down. Build something new and sparkling on top of it. Something modern with lots of windows like the new
buildings sprouting up all over Harare. Yes, that would be something, quite an attraction, deep in the boondocks here. Or
Ian should give it away. Donate it to somebody. The Social Welfare Department. Have it used for good deeds. Atonement. An
orphanage. A homeless shelter. A refuge for abused women, single mothers, street kids.

I sink back into bed.

I’m ready to leave today. But the ticket’s only for tomorrow afternoon. A whole free day ahead. It was crazy for me to come
running back here. What was I hoping to achieve? A confrontation with Maphosa?

I get up. I tiptoe past David’s room into the bathroom, and then I go to the kitchen. I run the cold water gently, fill the
kettle, put it on, and wait by the sink, my hands cradling my elbows.

In the quiet, I know clearly, sharply, exactly what I want. I want Ian to be here, to be tapping at this window above this
sink. To see him mouth, “no ways are you getting rid of me so easily.” I want him to take us home.

I finger the locket on my neck, rub it with my thumb.

I push the curtain to one side expectantly, as though miracles can happen at whim, at one’s bidding, but there is no tapping
at the window. All is still. All is quiet. There is the tree under which Daddy and the chief constable sat discussing the
fire and I—

“Mum!”

Just as with Rosanna, so many years ago, the cup slips from my hands.

“Sorry, I frightened you; you’re up early.”

“You, too, mister. Did you sleep well?”

I get the broom from the corner and sweep the pieces there.

“Okay, the bed’s small. Midget size.”

“You were a midget once, my dear.”

“So you think Dad’s awake?”

“Umm, what time is it? Eight, eight thirty, maybe.”

Not if he’s been up all night, elsewhere.

“We’ll try a bit later. We might wake up Granny and Grandpa if we use the phone now.”

He sits down, jabs his ever-lengthening limbs under the table.

“Shit,” he says, vigorously rubbing his knee.

“You have to stop growing.”

“So I can fit on the fucking midget bed?”

Time for that serious talk.

“David, I don’t think it’s necessary to use that word as a form of expressing yourself. You have a very well-developed vocabulary;
you don’t need it.”

He gives me his “what the?” look and then he twigs on. “Dad says it all the time.”

“No, he doesn’t.”

“Yes, he does.”

“It’s
fricking,
that’s what he says, fricking.”

And I know exactly what David is going to say to this.

“That’s just like
fucking.
”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Yes, it is. Ask Dad.”

“In any case, Dad happens to be an adult.”

David smiles at that and gives me the “oh, really?” mug-shot.

I resort to blackmail. “If I don’t hear that word from you all week, I’ll give you eighty dollars.”

“Ninety.”

“Eighty-five.”

“Done.”

That settled, he stretches out his arms and indulges himself in an elaborate, victorious yawn.

“I wish he was here.”

“Me, too.”

He gets up, tries to open the kitchen door. I fetch the keys from the nook where the telephone is. He steps outside.

“You’re going to catch a cold. There’s dew.”

His chest, exposed by the
V
of his striped pyjama shirt (he only wears the thing when I pack it), seems so ridiculously vulnerable.

“Can we go next door?”

I almost drop the kettle.

“Next door?”

“It’s Dad’s, isn’t it? We can
explore.
”

I know he’s making fun of me for yesterday with that exaggerated “explore.”

“No, I don’t…”

“Come on, Mum, it’s major, major
boring
here.”

“Let me think about it, okay? Remember we have the museum today.”

“Get a hold of the major excitement on my face, Mum.”

*    *    *

I try to phone at nine o’clock and then at nine twenty and then nine thirty-one. Nothing.

“Come on,” I say to David who has been standing behind me. “Let’s get a move on. We’ll have a brunch over at Wimpy’s and then
we’ll go to the museum.”

I sound like a stuck record about this museum.

Mummy comes out of the bedroom wearing a threadbare nightie, which reveals the outlines of her heavy, sagging breasts. I’m
embarrassed for her.

“How is Daddy?” I ask her.

She walks past me into the kitchen, and I listen to the water running.

I put my hand on the door handle, press slowly down, inch the door open. It’s dark. It smells musty and medicinal. I listen
(for what?), to hear Daddy’s breathing?

I gently close the door.

“Remember to take the extra set of keys with you. I’m going to Manyano this afternoon,” Mummy says coming out of the kitchen
with two cups of tea, one black with lemon, the other very milky.

“What about…” but she’s already elbowed the handle down and disappeared into the darkness.

Surely, she can’t leave my father on his own? There must be someone who comes, but why would I need the keys? What if there’s
a fire, or he needs something, how can she—?

“Mum, let’s go. I’m starving.”

The phone rings.

I wait for Mummy to pick it up.

After the fourth ring, I do.

“Hello.”

“Howzit.”

“Ian! We’ve been trying to phone you all yesterday and this morning. Where’ve you been? Oh, hold on, Ian, David wants to speak
to you.”

I hand the phone over to my son, and he gives me his “could I please have some privacy?” look, so I disappear into the lounge.

After about five minutes, David comes in.

“Mum, Dad said he had to go. He’ll phone later.”

We have two plates of very thick pancakes with cream and syrup. David wolfs his down as though he hasn’t eaten for days and
days. And then two tall glasses of chocolate milk. And then he burps, which earns him a look from me.

“Excuse me, mademoiselle,” he says pulling on his earphones.

I look out of the window.

Opposite the road is Woolworths, owned by ZANU-PF. All along its pavement are beggars and cripples and a couple of women selling
bits and pieces: chipped enamel cups, some thread, pieces of faded material, scrawny-looking tomatoes, some sweets. How it
has changed from my schooldays when the pavements were uncluttered.

Just outside Wimpys, right by the stairs, we had to jump over a blind man and his infant son, and even from here, I can hear
the rattle of his tin cup on the stairs. In last night’s news, there was something about the homeless settlement in Killarney,
just outside Bulawayo, being trashed by the army. Street children have been rounded up in the city center and dumped in various
detention centers.

Already, there’s a queue for a consignment of sugar that is rumored to be on its way that stretches from upstairs in the supermarket
at Woolworths, around the counters downstairs, to a side entrance and out onto the pavement.

There is a discarded newspaper on the table. The front page is occupied with a car hijacking in Morningside and an old white
man at the Edith Duly Nursing Home found dead, beaten, his TV taken. Even in Bulawayo crime is on the rise.

The Legal Aid offices downtown were ransacked two days ago and several homeless people who had taken shelter there were beaten.
Like in the rest of the country, inflation, corruption, lawlessness, are all taking their toll here.

David looks up, removes his earphones, and takes a look around and then his eyes settle on me.

“Mum, can I be brutally honest?”

“Yes, of course, what?”

“You’re the bomb.” And he makes those funny hand movements that must come from the music videos he watches.

And then the earphones are back on again.

My son doesn’t seem that impressed by the carnage on display in the Animal Section.

When my father used to bring me here, I would be filled with expectation and dread as I waited behind him at the Admission’s
desk, sneaking looks into the narrow stone passageway, dimly lit, where, on both sides, glass cases were filled with animals
in the wild, tearing apart other animals. There was blood and intestines, the lion’s fur matted with red, the poor once-elegant
impala shredded, and I would feel through my trembling hands and legs that those predators might just be able to break through
the glass and get me, too.

And then there was me and Ian, standing here, too, a long time ago.

But here is my son, already out the other side in the cavernous hall, where in the middle is a huge Styrofoam whale looking
utterly displaced and worse for wear.

“You didn’t enjoy it, the animals?”

“Mum, they’re
stuffed.
”

“Well, in case you haven’t noticed this
is
a museum; next time I’ll take you to Hwange.”

I’m tempted to add “duh.” I sound crosser and more annoyed than I feel. What’s wrong with me?

We go up the long spiral of stairs.

A stop at the reptiles, and these do make a better impression.

The cobra. The black mamba, also known as the three-steps snake, one bite and one, two, three steps, you’re dead. Then over
across to the Hall of Man, the big mural on the wall showing the Ascent of Man from his apelike ancestors to his supposedly
more intelligent and refined present-day incarnation. A few steps and we are in the Hall of Chiefs, and this one seems to
capture David’s imagination, earphones now dangling from his neck, neck craning to see artifacts from the battlefields in
Matabeleland and Mashonaland, the business of how men go about killing each other. The meticulous display of weaponry: guns,
axes, spears, shields; horns to sound out an impending attack; a bullet that got imbedded within a Bible in a soldier’s chest
pocket (and there is the very Bible), a soldier’s life saved by the holy word. And look, there is how a country was bought
and sold: the Great Indaba, Lobengula, sitting on top of a kopje and Rhodes and his men exchanging a few guns and gold for
a simple
X
on a piece of parchment.

Out again, and as we walk out, I turn to see the bench that Ian sat on, looking out of the window, how
he
turned around and saw me. I watch David walk along that same bench and jump gracefully off it.

Into the butterflies and birds. How sad these casements have always made me feel: small, delicate creatures trapped forever,
some of the wings of the butterflies rubbed away by not-so-delicate fingers and time.